Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ratchet couldn’t believe what he had just heard. He leaned back in his seat, jaw slack and optics wide in shock.

That couldn’t have been correct.

Absolutely not.

He shook his head as though that would make the world make sense again.

It didn’t.

The meeting had started simply enough; his presence at the peace negotiations had only been a formality—a function of his high rank—since he had little de jure authority beyond medical decisions. Sure, he had some measure of personal influence but that generally didn’t translate to political sway.

Ratchet slowly turned his head sideways to look at his fellows. His side of the table all appeared to be in various stages of shock. Prowl looked like he’d been zapped by an electrified pylon. Ironhide looked like Megatron had insulted him personally. Kup looked like he thought this was all some kind of joke. And Jazz… for once had been rendered utterly speechless.

Optimus leaned forward in his seat, cautiously like the entire situation was a bomb. It might as well have been.

“Would you… run that by us one more time, Megatron?” he asked, surely making some kind of baffled expression with his mouth behind that battle mask. “I’m… not sure we heard you correctly.”

Megatron, for his part, sat there on the opposite side of the literal bargaining table, hands folded together as he frowned. Nothing unusual about how he was holding himself, except perhaps the usual signs of exhaustion and fatigue that Ratchet had noticed over the years. Optimus bore similar signs, making them easy to recognize.

It was as though he thought he hadn’t said anything remarkable at all.

None of the lieutenants at his side seemed surprised either. However, two of them had no visible face and Starscream did tense his own frown in what might have been a measure of disgust.

Ratchet wasn’t sure what to make of this.

“Is your hearing going, Prime?” Megatron scoffed. “But, very well, I suppose I could do you the courtesy of repeating myself.”

Ratchet braced himself, certain that he wouldn’t say it again. That they had heard incorrectly or that Megatron had misspoken the first time. There had to have been some kind of mistake.

“All I’m asking for… is Ratchet.” There was a pause. “In a conjunxual union.”

Then he hadn’t misheard after all.

The shuttle, rickety with age, shuddered as it passed through the outer layers of the atmosphere to enter a high orbit. It whisked Ratchet away from the ruins of Iacon, the one city remaining on Cybertron that had enough structures intact to call it a settlement… up to where the Nemesis waited, falling perpetually around the planet.

The reflected light of the sky dropped away as the shuttle left the firmament, and thus Cybertron, behind.

Everything since the meeting had been a blur. Optimus and the others had decided that peace and control of the planet had been worth the low, low cost of handing over Ratchet to Megatron.

Even Ratchet could understand the logic of the choice. At the time, he had even verbally agreed.

In a way, he had reasoned at the time, he would be sacrificing himself for the good of them all. It was, comparatively, a small cost.

Megatron could have demanded land for settling, resources, a skewed trade agreement, access to research and technologies, hostages, political power, anything that made sense to ask for when negotiating an equitable peace treaty… but he hadn’t.

He had only asked… for Ratchet’s hand in union.

It was baffling.

Something clearly wasn’t right here.

Ratchet didn’t even know Megatron particularly well, not personally. He knew of him; he had seen him many times in meetings and battles, had heard him bloviating in both person and media releases. He didn’t know him in the way that Optimus did, through close, direct opposition.

By that token, Megatron couldn’t have really known Ratchet either. It was highly unlikely that Megatron had been secretly nursing a flame of unrequited love—or lust—for a random Autobot medic for some indefinite amount of time. Why pick him ? Why demand him and no one else?

The blackness of the void moved slowly outside the shuttle; the sliding points of light—distant stars—and the growing edge of a warship’s hull were the only visual signs of motion now that the sky had vanished.

An unkind thought in the back of his processor pushed its way forward: Ratchet likely deserved this. For something. For patients he had failed to save. For conflicts he had failed to intervene in. For something. There was always something he could have done better.

And Megatron, personally, was to be his punishment.

That and separation from his fellow Autobots until such a time as relations between the two armies could be normalized, if such a time ever came. Until then—even then—Megatron would loom large in his life, an all-encompassing shadow.

The worldburner-class ship that was to be his home loomed ahead, now filling the entirety of the shuttle’s forward viewscreen, blocking out even a hint of the field of stars beyond. The Decepticons were to live in exile and search for a new homeworld elsewhere among the stars; it would be a long journey to find a place both suitable, uninhabited, and far enough from any civilizations the Decepticons had angered. They were, quite understandably in Ratchet’s opinion, also barred from settling on any worlds that they had previously sterilized.

Ships like this, Ratchet knew, could easily destroy worlds, even if now it’s role was nominally that of a colony ship. This flagship had proved its power many times over throughout the war. It was only happenstance that Cybertron had the near-sacred status of “home” even if it was in ruins, destroyed in all other ways that mattered. Worldburners were saved, it seemed, for organic worlds.

Ratchet could only hope that once he boarded the Nemesis, that Megatron wouldn’t turn the ship’s armaments against their planet in one last vindictive blow before speeding off into deep space to… wherever it was they were going. Somewhere far, far away.

The Decepticon pilots aboard the shuttle, thankfully, ignored Ratchet and his silent musings as he sat in one of the passenger seats, his medical kit tucked underneath, behind his legs.

At least, he thought, he had few belongings. His medical kit and nothing more, not counting the long-distance communicator Prowl had granted him. “Just in case” was what he had been told. Over the millions of years of war and constantly being on the move, he had learned to not keep more than the essentials.

His real dowry was the treaty. For all the good it did.

He leaned forward in his seat to watch the final approach.

A small square in the distance opened up in the worldburner’s hull, a little hatch of some kind, barely visible on the viewscreen.

At first, he thought, perhaps it was for a docking cable or some other equipment, but as the square grew in size as they neared… the sheer scale of the Nemesis became clear.

The “small square” was the mouth of their distant landing dock on this utterly titanic ship.

His spark stirred uncomfortably in his chest, chilled by a sense of his own frailty and insignificance.

It had been some time since Ratchet had felt so… minuscule.

The Nemesis’s corridors were vast, designed to allow huge warframes to pass through unencumbered. Ratchet, an average Cybertronian in size, felt like little more than a minibot as his and Megatron’s footsteps echoed off the walls. Even Megatron seemed comparatively small.

It would be easy to get lost for hours, maybe days, in a warship this size, simply by taking one wrong turn and ending up in an entirely different deck or sector.

Megatron’s voice joined the footsteps in the echoes, detailing to Ratchet general information about the ship, what deck they were currently on, what the current work shift was.

A strange first topic to discuss with a legal partner, Ratchet thought, letting the data wash over him as he tried to habituate to hearing Megatron’s voice without imagining Autobots shattered into pieces on a fuel-soaked battlefield at the same time.

Perhaps it was for the best that whatever Megatron was telling him was mundane, momentarily unimportant. The information could get lost and do no harm in disappearing.

Megatron and Soundwave had both met him in the shuttle’s docking bay.

Soundwave, of course, had remained inscrutable. As usual.

Yet, Megatron had scowled.

However, that had seemed to be his default expression over the last millions of years, so Ratchet had reasoned that it likely wasn’t a particular scowl meant for him personally. That was, unfortunately, just his face rather than a sign of displeasure or impending threat.

With no preamble other than a brief “welcome,” Soundwave had presented Ratchet with his identification documents, allowing him the rights and privileges of any Decepticon, though strictly, for now, he was one of the Decepticons’ few civilians. He hadn’t been given a job classification or salary schedule, but he would be offered those, apparently, after he had gotten settled in.

Soundwave, however, had then promptly left, leaving Ratchet alone with Megatron… for the first time… of what would likely be many such occasions in the coming endless years.

Ratchet had opened his mouth, like he had wanted to say something, to tell Megatron that this had only been for the good of their peoples, to not expect much despite the legal paperwork that was already in place.

But Megatron had suddenly smirked, a look oddly more threatening than the scowl had been. Maybe it had been intended to be a smile, but at the time Ratchet couldn’t have been certain. Whatever it was supposed to have been, it had interrupted whatever sounds had been waiting in Ratchet’s vocalizer.

“Allow me to echo what Soundwave said before: welcome, Ratchet,” he had said, his smirk struggling slightly as though the word sans sarcasm had been foreign to him. There was a twitch to his mouth, not unlike when certain patients were hesitant in telling Ratchet how exactly they had come by their injuries. “Your stay here has been a long time coming.”

What had that meant?

Now, walking side by side easily twenty minutes later, Ratchet could only wonder just how far they had to go to reach their destination… and what Megatron intended upon their arrival.

Megatron had, of course, managed to talk the entire time. A great windbag.

He abruptly turned down another, smaller corridor, one with a lower ceiling and closer walls, clearly not meant for the largest of mechs. The likes of Overlord and his ilk would have had to stoop. Perhaps this was intentional in the design.

Though the floors could have used a shine, scuff marks on the surface and clumps of dust congregating in the corners.

Ratchet nearly walked right past the turn before scrambling to change direction.

“Hey!”

Megatron stopped, looking back over his shoulder.

“My apologies, Ratchet.” What apologies? Had Megatron ever once possessed apologies to offer anyone? “Old habits, you see; it’s easy to forget you don’t know your way around yet.”

An oddly reasonable excuse for just ducking around corners without warning.

Terrible.

It was a shame that Megatron was still smirking at him. Though, that might have been meant as a smile. Did he even know how to smile normally? Was he trying and failing?

“It’s fine,” Ratchet said, letting it slide.

His patience would probably be truly put to the test before long, but so far this was nothing. He had gotten more lip from Prowl and Ironhide while getting loaded up into the transport shuttle that morning when they warned him to keep his wits about him.

All the same, he narrowed his eyes as he caught up to Megatron’s position.

He didn’t really know Megatron as a person beyond his warmongering and murderous roles. It was hard to know what to expect, despite the fact that they had already been joined in the legal sense.

There hadn’t even been a ceremony; it had all been done through Ultra Magnus and Prowl mediating paperwork. For most people, no ceremony would have been unsurprising. The decision to become conjunx endurae was a private, personal matter. For a high-ranked individuals joining as part of a peace deal, though, a nominal ceremony would have been more expected.

It didn’t quite add up.

Ratchet let Megatron continue to lead the way to wherever it was they were going. Most likely some private residence. He hadn’t been sure if he would be expected to reside with Megatron or if he would be allotted his own private space.

Soon, however, after ducking through another few hallways, they stopped at a nondescript door.

“Here we are.”

“And where is ‘here’ exactly?” Ratchet asked, putting his free hand on his hip as he frowned up at Megatron. Some of his initial discomfort having worn off in the mundanity and boredom of wandering around the hallways.

“Our quarters.”

So they would be sharing after all—but in this out of the way place? Was it to deter intruders and traitors? It would be harder to locate the leader if the leader didn’t reside in obvious places, Ratchet supposed.

Being alone in private quarters with someone perfectly capable of extreme violence, while not unknown to Ratchet from caring for various high-risk patients, was not something he relished. Who knew what Megatron would do?

“Our?” he questioned, despite the obvious implication of Megatron’s original answer.

“Of course, it goes without saying.”

Megatron shrugged nonchalantly as the door slid open. He gestured inside for Ratchet to go in ahead of him.

“Does it though? Does it really?” Ratchet pressed, stubbornly keeping his place in the hall. He raised his hand, pointing up at Megatron’s nose. If Ratchet stretched up just a little, he could probably jab Megatron right in the face. “This is just a political—“

“Yes,” Megatron cut him off, still keeping his arm out towards the door. His posture was stiff, like he didn’t know what to do with himself.

Ratchet wasn’t one of his soldiers to command; there was no reason for Ratchet to defer to his authority. Retaliation could endanger the treaty: one little call to Prowl on the communicator and the Autobots would extract him.

Hopefully.

Maybe.

If they weren’t too far away to mount a rescue if—when—something went wrong.

If they didn’t deem the costs of retrieving Ratchet too high for the value of keeping the Decepticons out of sight and out of mind. Why bother demanding a refund when the deal was such a bargain?

Maybe Ratchet ought to be mindful of proverbial land mines—

“Yes, it is a political arrangement, but it needn’t be solely such.”

Ratchet’s jaw went slack, his hand still raised.

Megatron continued regardless, as though what he said didn’t have serious implications.

“Even with a political arrangement, it would look like we’re flouting the treaty to not cohabit by disregarding the spirit of the thing.”

He waved his arm up and down, nonverbally reiterating his request that Ratchet cross the threshold.

“A separate room has been set aside for you personally, which you would see if you went in.”

“Oh—” Ratchet finally dropped his hand, feeling a little foolish.

So he wasn’t expected to share a slab with the oaf, at least not for the time being. And, by extension, he probably wasn’t expected to share a slab in less literal terms.

“Alright, but no funny business. I may have taken oaths to heal, but don’t think that makes me helpless. You know better than that by now.”

During the war, field medics often had to become just as handy with guns and hand-to-hand combat as the soldiers they put back together. Ratchet just always preferred to head off violence with other means wherever possible, but he wouldn’t let Megatron forget that he wasn’t some pushover.

Megatron held up his palms in mock surrender, grinning like he thought this whole thing was funny.

“Ratchet, I wouldn’t dream of such a fallacy.”

Ratchet scoffed, ducking around Megatron to avoid contact as he went through the door.

Megatron slumped into his chair on the Nemesis’s bridge, rather than standing like he usually would during a launch.

He had left Ratchet to their quarters, so that he could explore and settle in. Maps of the ship and other informational materials about the vessel, its utilities, conveniences, and sundries had been left with him for perusal.

Their personal refinery in the quarters had been stocked with fuel and whatever sparse flavorings and additives the Decepticons had been able to source. Ratchet would not be able to accuse him of having abandoned him to starve.

Mechs scurried back and forth in Megatron’s field of vision, coming and going and shuffling about throughout the bridge. Even though they were already in orbit, rather than lifting off from the ground, it still took a lot of coordination to move a ship of this size.

Especially given the condition it was in.

At first glance, the vessel was impressive, powerful and in great shape.

But having spent untold eons dwelling on it after it had been discovered, Megatron and the other Decepticons stationed here knew its failings, saw where its condition had deteriorated.

There was metal fatigue in places where there oughtn’t be, corrosion without explanation, paint flaking akin to nutrient deficiencies. The hull and bulkheads would groan without obvious cause. Components would fail sometimes without warning. Each of the engines required “rituals” of percussive maintenance unique to each one, to kick on and stay on.

The ship was, for lack of a better word, ill… and becoming slowly sicker by the day.

A ridiculous statement, but one Megatron had had to confront on the daily for ages now. If something wasn’t done….

Megatron leaned his head against his elbow, propped up on the arm of the chair. He closed his optics against the headache building in his forehead.

“What did you tell him?” Starscream’s voice grated against his audio receptors.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, still not bothering to look at his second-in-command. He knew what Starscream looked like. He could easily imagine what skeptical expression was being made in his direction.

Keeping the identity of their flagship a secret from the Autobots had been a major logistical challenge during the war. If they knew that the Decepticons had been piloting around a comatose, chronically ill titan for ages—Their ship had been the model for the other worldburners, the remaining fleet waiting patiently near the heliopause to set off for their final destination.

“Nothing,” he said, “yet.”

He couldn’t afford to show their hand too early. With his own medics either too incompetent or too inexperienced to treat a titan, Ratchet was their only hope.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

When he had asked Megatron to show him somewhere “useful,” Ratchet had expected perhaps a commissary or recreational area or maybe even the bridge. Instead, for reasons not immediately clear, Megatron had taken him to the medical center.

Or rather “medical center.” Small, cramped, and understaffed. Likely undersupplied as well.

The walls here too were just as barren as the rest of the ship that he had seen so far: marked only by traces of white paint over flaking layers of purple.

It was a glorified first aid station compared to the overall size of the vessel and the amount of crew it ought to house. The oddly empty hallways he had seen gave Ratchet cause to doubt that there was much more than a skeleton crew stationed on this alleged flagship. Even with a minimal crew, this was still insufficient to adequately provide care for them all.

Especially in an emergency. With these clowns, an emergency at the worst possible time would be inevitable.

“It’s not much, of course,” Megatron added, broadly gesturing with an easy wave his arm at the entire room.

Did he expect Ratchet to improve the situation? Was that his charge here?

“No, no, I can figure out that much for myself.” Ratchet sighed, shaking his hand in frustration at the overworked staff. “And this is… what? Some sort of tourist attraction to you? What am I supposed to be seeing here exactly?”

Other than the results of a long-standing administrative failure to invest in medical infrastructure. Not that Prime had ever been a paragon in that regard himself; the Autobots had skirted by with the advantages of available medical expertise and improved supply lines for some types of items.

Not that the Decepticons had ever had terribly many medics. They had always operated at a significant disadvantage in that field.

The majority of academy-trained physicians had sided with the Autobots early on the conflict, the exceptions like Flatline having been rare. There were occasional scientists with medical leanings, of course, like Rossum, but….

From the looks of this place, field medics, self-taught and otherwise, tended to be the experts on hand when an expert was available at all. There were only a few staffers here that he even recognized; perhaps some of them knew Ambulon before he had defected.

“Given your profession, I thought it would interest you— Ah. ”

Megatron calmly put his hands on Ratchet’s shoulders and effortlessly turned him aside, as though Ratchet weighed nothing . Not an easy feat, given that he was sturdily built for the purpose of hefting patients larger than himself.

As his spark leaped like a spooked dieselle in his chest, Ratchet threw his arms in the air, ready to regain his personal space from this functional stranger by force if necessary. He was no stranger to reciprocal violence if the situation called for it; being a noncombatant didn’t mean he was defenseless.

Just as Ratchet opened his mouth to complain, a purple and orange mech with fragile insect-like wings was rolled past him—right through where he had just been standing—on a dilapidated gurney.

One of the field medics—Hook, if Ratchet remembered correctly—could be heard muttering “again” in exasperation as the new patient was wheeled into place. This one was a regular apparently.

The patient made a rude gesture in Hook’s direction.

Ratchet was, unfortunately, very familiar with that type of patient. Ill-tempered, obstinate soldiers were a feature of any army. Any minute now, there would be the inevitable insults disparaging the soil of someone’s hot spot or factory.

“Another busy day for the medical staff, you see,” Megatron explained, casually letting go of Ratchet’s shoulders as though he hadn’t just manhandled him without warning. “I’d recommend staying on your toes when standing in this doorway. It’s quite the high-traffic area as you’ve no doubt noticed.”

There was a chuckle, stale in sound, like Megatron mistakenly thought he had just told a joke.

Disregarding the questionable state of Megatron’s sense of humor, Ratchet just shook his head as he looked over the crowded exam tables, lowering his arms now that there was no immediate threat to his person. There was no need to reach for his welder to fend off roving hands, whatever their intents.

He also reasoned Megatron would likely not hurt him here, not in public, even among his own soldiers. If only to support the “spirit” of the agreement that Megatron had mentioned to him earlier. They were still within easy reach of the Autobots on Cybertron. Shuttles and ships could easily overtake the Nemesis’s sluggish impulse engines.

He recalled the unnecessarily wide berth in Megatron’s room, a confused unease settling into his core.

“Oh, yes, I’ve certainly noticed,” Ratchet said, brushing the thought aside and replacing it with a new, more plausible concern.

Did Megatron expect him to work here?

Wedding someone solely for the purpose of hiring them—headhunting them from a competitor, more accurately—was certainly a different tactic. Would his benefits, assuming there were any benefits to be had, be better through his personal connection to Megatron? Probably not, if his cynicism was to be believed.

Hopefully Megatron had a better reason to beg the Autobots for Ratchet—and Ratchet alone —than simply reinforcing his meager medical corps. There were better ways, especially under a peace treaty, to secure an exchange of expertise.

Even without a war on, apparently Decepticons were prone to injury. Not that Autobots were any different in this regard.

All the same, none of that seemed reason enough for just Ratchet.

The request, even though he had been present at the negotiating table for it, still felt surreal, like he had imagined it, like he had dreamed it up and was still asleep.

The field medics on staff were scurrying back and forth to the best of their ability. From the looks of it, the patients were all presenting with minor symptoms, simple injuries common from small accidents—dents, cracks, leakage, the occasional lost finger. The patient wheeled in past Ratchet when Megatron had moved him out the way seemed to be the most “serious” case with what looked like a few new holes his shoulder.

None of these were emergencies, but the urge to jump in and help triage or treat nagged at him; Ratchet’s hand reflexively reached for his scanner which was tucked away safely in his medical kit.

No.

This didn’t require his intervention.

For the moment.

This was all under control—or what passed for “under control” in a Decepticon medical center. Or “medical center.”

Ratchet took in a long, slow ventilation, forcing himself to relax and let it go.

For the moment.

He turned back towards Megatron, who still stood at his side.

Megatron’s optics were dim, the focal rings spiraled as tightly as possible as he looked at some point on the floor as though he were shutting out as much ambient light as possible without simply turning his optics off. The finger tips of his left hand were digging into his narrowed optical ridges.

Not unlike when Ratchet had found him in the hallway, looking more than a little miserable.

Ah.

Ratchet could empathize.

“It looks like you’re my first patient.” Without a doubt there would be more. “You look like garbage.”

Unfortunately, there was no space in here that wasn’t already spoken for, so they would just have to make do elsewhere.

He reached up and grabbed Megatron by his elbow before dragging him off, out of the medical center and into the corridors beyond.

Within a day of being aboard the Nemesis , Ratchet was already forcibly providing Megatron with medical care. It was almost as though he couldn’t help himself, as though the slightest ailment was worthy of his professional notice.

If Megatron weren’t feeling like someone were trying to take the entire contents of his head and squeeze , he would have found it funny.

For now though, the only relief was the chilly metal of the bench beneath him.

He had thought that over millions of years he had managed to become adept at hiding whenever he was suffering. It was a matter of safety to disguise any flaws or chinks in one’s armor.

It seemed, however, that Ratchet had spotted his pain immediately ; apparently he still needed to further practice concealing some of his few remaining weaknesses.

Then again, he couldn’t entirely discount the possibility that the headache had been obvious the entire time and his subordinates had simply pretended not to notice. An embarrassing possibility that Megatron tried to put out of his mind while Ratchet stood in front of him with a scanner in hand.

After telling Megatron in the medical center that he looked like trash, to which Megatron had decided not to object, Ratchet had hauled him to a smaller hallway nearby, off the main path, and “forced” him to sit on a cold bench.

Megatron had resigned himself to humoring Ratchet this once.

The scanner passed slowly in front of his face, beeping calmly.

He wasn’t sure what results Ratchet was exactly looking for with his little tool. While he could probably take an educated guess, the pain made deeper reasoning more taxing of a task than usual, so he let it go for now.

It would make no difference to him anyway.

“Do you experience pain often?”

“Pain is just another sensation, like all the others,” Megatron said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve been subjected to pain of all kinds since I came online; haven’t you?”

A clever answer, in his humble, personal opinion.

“ This pain in particular, you smart aleck.”

Ratchet roughly jabbed his index finger at Megatron’s forehead, square in the spot between his brow ridges.

The sudden pressure, though itself uncomfortable, helped relieve the pain. This was doubtless no accident on the medic’s part. Even Ratchet’s punishment, his mocking and derision, was healing in a way.

An absurd notion, to be sure, but Megatron had previously entertained absurder ones.

However, on reflex despite the momentary respite from the pain, Megatron leaned away from the touch, his armor rattling as he instinctively bristled.

There was no such thing as personal space, as far as he was concerned… except for immediately in front of his face.

Good sense, of course, told him that Ratchet was bound by oaths and wouldn’t intentionally damage him, but … instinct and past experience with other “experts”—before the war—didn’t always pay mind to good sense.

“Mind where you put your hands!” he growled, an attempt to cover up his mistaken reflex.

Ratchet just frowned at him, unfazed as he patiently kept his hands up like he was waiting out a temper tantrum.

“I’ve heard better excuses from newly cooled protoforms,” he said, “now hold still. I’m not going to hurt you. You can hurt yourself on your own time.”

If, gun to his head, Megatron had to describe Ratchet’s bedside manner, the word he would choose, he decided, would be “brusque.” A handful of minutes passed as Ratchet consulted with the readings from his scanner, occasionally asking a few clarifying questions about Megatron’s symptoms.

A diagnosis, a name for the enemy: stress-induced episodic migraine, not intractable. A mitigating treatment, ammunition for the battle: mild pain relieving patches, for occasional use.

“For now,” Ratchet said, holding up one such magnetic patch, pulled from the unknown void of his medical kit. “I’ll just put this on the back of your neck.”

The hand came closer; a deeply buried fear rose up in his circuits, chilling his spark—No, no , there was a limit. Megatron had begrudgingly tolerated Ratchet’s hands on his face, but the back of his neck was a bridge too far.

“It’ll wear off in an hour, but by then the worst should have subsided. We’ll figure out something more long-term later. For now this will do—“

Tensing up, Megatron snatched the patch from Ratchet’s hand.

“ Hey —“

“I’ll do it myself; I hardly need a nanny !”

With a huff, he reached up underneath his helmet and slapped it to his own neck.

Ratchet, optics wide, kept his hands up and palms turned out, a signal that he had meant no harm.

“Alright, alright, just take it easy….” Megatron could hear the slow, smooth sound of air being gently passed through Ratchet’s vents. A practiced calm in the storm. The rhythm alone helped the hydraulics in his own shoulders relax. “We’ll see how you’re doing again in an hour; set a timer, alright?”

Fearless little Autobot.

The Nemesis had come to a creaky halt outside of their home system’s heliosphere about half an hour prior, allegedly ready to rendezvous with fellow members of the fleet.

Standing next to Megatron’s throne, Ratchet focused his gaze on the giant viewscreens stretched across the front of the bridge. Of course, he had been offered a seat in a rickety chair—likely the nicest spare on hand—that had been brought in for his use, but he had declined the offer. Keeping on his feet suited him just fine after all the millions of years he spent working with scarcely a moment to rest.

The bridge was a flurry of activity, commands being issued by various navigators through communicators to Decepticons stationed off-ship. The navigators all sat or stood at consoles set into a recessed pit at the far end of the bridge, just under the viewscreens and opposite the exits. The cacophony of mingling voices and the clicks of buttons being pressed on consoles filled the chilly air of the cavernous bridge. Even with so many mechs, there was too much space for their frames alone to heat the room. The ruckus was somehow… comforting, reminding him of the busy hospital he had worked at in Iacon before setting up his little clinic in the Dead End.

It had all been so long ago….

He cast his optics once more onto the huge screens that spanned the front of the bridge.

Watching the patchwork remnants of the Decepticon “armada”—Megatron’s term for the sum of his forces was more than a little generous —as they slowly clustered together was preferable to trying to stare down Starscream. The second-in-command kept glancing at him from his post, lurking among the crowd of navigators to keep them on task, like there was something odd on Ratchet’s face.

He supposed it would make sense to assemble everyone together before setting off on a journey into deep space. Ratchet still didn’t know where they were going.

Megatron, sitting in his throne with his face propped up on his fist, had not said what the plan was.

Yet.

He probably would in time.

Ratchet knew very little of Megatron personally, aside from what he had seen and what Prime and Impactor had told him over the years. One thing he did know for sure was that Megatron liked to talk, liked to show how “clever” he was. Given time, of which Ratchet now had plenty, he was sure his new conjunx would blab. The braggart just couldn’t help himself.

At least he looked less miserable now, Ratchet thought, sparing a moment to look him over. The pain patch had worn off hours ago, but Megatron seemed far less like he longed to stick his head in a trash compactor and push the power button. He’d left the inactive patch on though, probably having forgotten it was there.

Looking back at the viewscreens, Ratchet saw stars speckling the distant void. Even Cybertron’s own sun appeared to be a large pinprick of light from here, with the ship having turned around to cast a last look at their former home. Cybertron itself was invisible, likely no more than a cool gray dot, indistinct against the blackness of the void.

The ships swarming outside looked to be in far better shape than the Nemesis , odd given the latter’s status as the flagship. Their hulls looked far less corroded and their motion through space looked smoother than anything Ratchet had felt aboard this ancient tub.

The floor rumbled underfoot and Megatron could be heard smacking the wall behind his throne. The rumbling immediately stopped.

That shouldn’t have worked, but Ratchet wasn’t a shipwright so he couldn’t say for sure.

The screens caught his attention once more when hull components of one of the newer-looking worldburners began to float off, a pair of shuttles nearby wrangling it with stasis beams. Maybe the “nicer” ships only looked it from the outside. They were probably just as worn down as this one.

“Megatron,” he said, snapping his fingers in front of Megatron’s face before pointing at the screen.

“Hm?”

“Your piles are junk probably aren’t going to make it all the way to wherever we’re heading, are they? That one parked and started falling apart—“

Megatron scoffed.

“No, you misunderstand, Ratchet. Look closer.” He stood, gesturing for Soundwave, who had been standing nearby to assist with supervising, to come over. “The ship isn’t ‘falling apart’ at all.”

Soundwave approached immediately, awaiting his orders.

“Magnify the image of the Grand Entrance —Yes, good.”

Soundwave walked away as the image zoomed in to show tiny specks against the ship’s hull—crews of mechs with plasma torches if the small flashes of bright light were any indication—as more plating came loose.

Megatron walked forward, each step echoing heavily against the paneling, approaching the guard railing above the navigator pit and waving for Ratchet to join him. After a moment’s hesitation, he did.

“Ratchet, don’t you see?” he asked, holding his hand up to indicate the destructive little dots flitting to and fro. “The ship is being decommissioned. Most of the armada is.”

Decommissioned?

Ratchet couldn’t stop himself from sputtering, throwing his arm out wide. For all of his bragging over the years about what a powerful fighting force he commanded, why would Megatron purposefully dismantle the source of that power? It didn’t make any sense.

“Why would—“

“To consolidate resources. We have a long journey ahead of us and we have neither the labor nor the supplies to maintain this many vessels. The spare ships will be broken down, torn apart, and salvaged in order to—“

“Now wait just a moment,” he said.

Megatron paused, turning to look at him curiously as he let his arm fall.

Resource scarcity very well may have been a good cause to downsize some , but… one question lingered in Ratchet’s mind, one question that Megatron’s explanation left untouched.

“Why not salvage this ship? It’s barely space-worthy! We could just transfer to one that isn’t a floating scrapheap!”

That curiosity fixed on him shifted into a look Ratchet didn’t quite understand. Brows furrowed, optics narrowed, mouth pressed into a line. Was that resignation? Disappointment? Regret?

“Another time, Ratchet.” Megatron heaved a tired sigh. “We’ll talk about it another time.”

Something wasn’t right here, even more so than the peculiar terms of the peace accord that put him on this bridge in the first place.

Chapter Text

Months.

Megatron had told him that the decommissioning of most of the “armada” would take several months .

They would be tugged along in their home system’s gravity well for several months, dragged in the star’s wake as it plowed through the interstellar medium on its way around the galactic center, all while the Nemesis was turned to point forlornly at a home they could no longer see.

There was only so much wandering through empty halls on a ship with flaking paint that he could occupy himself with before going completely insane.

And for the first several days, Ratchet, still assigned no tasks beyond existing, hardly saw Megatron at all.

Megatron came home, usually looking exhausted, when he was off-duty—in what passed for the “evening” in space using the Decepticon reckoning of time and schedules—but mostly he fueled, showered, and recharged in that overly large berth. The mysteriously secured room was never once opened. Furthermore, Megatron didn’t even bother locking or closing the door to his personal room, like he wasn’t concerned by Ratchet’s presence at all beyond acknowledging him with a “good evening.”

Strange, given his prior comments about how this didn’t have to be a solely political arrangement and how the spirit of the thing mattered.

Now, late into the “night,” Ratchet stood in the doorway to Megatron’s room. The room was illuminated solely by the light flowing in from the hallway and the regular blinking glow of red biolights. His cast shadow merged with the dim grayness at the end of the door’s bright silhouette.

Megatron, the back of his neck plugged into the recharge unit on the slab, snored loudly. Again. Something was interfering with the natural flow of his ventilations. Ratchet would have to look into it at some point, since the snoring would limit how restful recharge could be.

His limbs were rigid: arms at his sides and legs together, like a statue someone had simply pushed over. On his arm was even still mounted the ridiculously large cannon that he carried with him everywhere, like it was some sort of emotional support weapon.

No wonder he always looked so tired.

He slept like he might be ambushed at any second.

Tonight, unfortunately, that fear would be validated. At least a little bit.

Ratchet approached the side of the slab in the dark, navigating by biolights and vague outlines.

Hands up. One deep breath in and out. And another.

He grabbed Megatron by the arm, ignoring the fact for now that he wore the damn cannon to berth like an idiot, and shook him.

“Wake up,” he said, gently at first. When Megatron only groaned in response, Ratchet repeated himself with a bit more volume. “Wake up!”

If he was worried about being ambushed, Megatron wasn’t doing a great job addressing actually being attacked. Groggy grumbling would hardly deter someone who actually wanted to do him harm. Though, Ratchet considered, it was possible this level of exhaustion was abnormal for Megatron. He didn’t have enough information yet to know for sure.

Optics still off, Megatron awkwardly reached back with one arm and pulled the recharge cables free. They flopped uselessly off the side of the berth, the jacks on the ends clicking together from inertia.

“What is—“

Ratchet let go of him, but still leaned over the berth to inspect his supine “patient.”

“I need to ask you something.”

Well, there were several “somethings,” many unknowns bouncing around in Ratchet’s processor thanks to Megatron being less than forthcoming with information ever since Ratchet had arrived. He would just have to start with the simplest of his queries.

Points of red flashed as Megatron finally bothered to turn his optics on, the light pushing back against the shadows.

With his head tilted to the side as he sluggishly pushed himself up onto his elbow, Megatron frowned in, probably, confusion at Ratchet. This brought their faces closer together, but Ratchet wasn’t about to flinch away. He was no coward and Megatron was ninety-five percent composed of pure, unadulterated bluster.

He also didn’t seem to presently be in pain, but the grogginess could have been obfuscating other symptoms.

Ratchet would just have to keep an eye on him.

No matter what Megatron may have done or what their relationship was on paper, Ratchet was still compelled by his oaths as a physician to preserve his health… at least up until the point Megatron deigned to refuse care.

If he ever did. So far he hadn’t, but he also hadn’t asked Ratchet for more pain patches. Whether he didn’t need them or he was just being obstinate remained to be seen. More observation was required.

“You woke me up in the middle of the night… just to ask me a question ?”

“You’re not exactly around at any other time.”

The levels of spousal interaction had been a little more of a “passing like ships in the night” situation than Ratchet had even expected even from a political arrangement.

“That’s hardly in the spirit of the thing, is it?” he continued. Ratchet had no qualms at all about throwing Megatron’s own words back in his face when it was convenient. It was more than fair in his opinion. “You leave me alone all day to ‘supervise’ and then when you come home, you pay me no mind. When else am I supposed to ask you anything? Tell me, Megatron; I’m listening.”

Of course, he had the fool’s personal frequency and could call him at any time but there was no guarantee he would—or could, depending on his schedule—pick up.

Cornering Megatron when he couldn’t as easily escape had higher odds of success.

A few moments passed, consisting of nothing but silence and Megatron staring at him. It was difficult to read what he was thinking in the shadows.

Other than the soft combined glow of their optics, Ratchet had little by which to make out facial features, let alone expressions even with their faces a hand’s breadth apart. Monochromatic optical lights alone were poor at providing the necessary contrast for visual acuity; they were an aid for low-light situations but not a true solution .

Ratchet saw a small motion and heard the stiff rotation of jaw hinges in need of oiling, but no words, like Megatron had second thoughts about what he had been about to say.

Another pause.

He could hear the humming of their engines: Ratchet’s slow but steady and Megatron’s… clanking and clunking, barely muffled by all of his heavy armor.

Like “captain,” like ship.

Garbage.

“Fine.” Megatron’s resigned voice interrupted the silence, followed by a sigh. “What do you want to ask?”

“What am I supposed to be doing here?” Before Megatron had the chance to answer with something asinine, Ratchet added: “With my time.”

“A wonderful question, Ratchet, but surely what you ought to be doing with your time right now is recharging —“

“It is my professional opinion that you will have a much better medical outcome if you saved your abundant supply of backsass for the bridge.”

Megatron hadn’t told him the whole truth, of course. Not even half of the truth, but none of it had been a lie . Ratchet would be hard pressed to accuse him of actually lying .

Technicalities could be a dear friend when leveraged correctly.

Though, newly endowed with his somewhat meaningless title of “Special Medical Consultant” and a salary schedule, Ratchet was beginning to make Megatron question whether or not he had made the right decision with his little fib by omission.

Ratchet didn’t have set working hours. Yet. He didn’t even have an official duty station aside from the Nemesis itself. Broad, but in Megatron’s opinion, accurate, especially since Ratchet had called the medical center an affront to medical care.

Technically, Megatron was also his direct supervisor, ethically questionable, given their legal relationship, but Megatron had not actually given Ratchet any duties or orders.

Unfortunately, this professional autonomy—this freedom —had led to Ratchet making himself something of a nuisance in the halls of the Nemesis .

Probably a side effect of spending millions of years, both during the war and before, being constantly busy. Medicine waited for no mech and Megatron could intimately understand the inability to relax. The very word “relax” itself felt obscene .

Yet, even the mild glee of watching—from the hopefully safe vantage point of his “throne”—Ratchet provide surprise health care to Starscream in the form of a wet-dry vac on the ship’s bridge made him wonder if perhaps Megatron ought to be more open to the concept of leisure.

“I can hear your fans struggling from across the ship!” Ratchet said, holding the seeker down on the floor with a knee to his middle. “It’s a wonder you can even ventilate. You and everyone else around here!”

The nozzle of the vacuum was stuffed into one of the large vents on Starscream’s shoulders, the appliance whirring away as it unclogged whatever had gotten wedged in there over the years.

An unpleasant experience, to be sure, Megatron thought, leaning his face against his fist to watch, but better Starscream than him.

Starscream struggled, his wings pinned under him and smacking against the floor as he tried to push Ratchet away. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to have quite enough leverage from his supine position to dislodge such a heavy assailant as a medic.

“ Megatron! ” he shouted. “Get him off me! Get your stupid Autobot off me !”

All other potential saviors—Soundwave and the rest of the current shift’s bridge crew—had stepped away, hurriedly devoting their complete attentions to their various labors the moment Ratchet had appeared on the bridge with the vacuum in tow.

All except Starscream.

Who had been wheezing loudly all morning, likely from the paint flakes constantly shedding from the ship’s walls. Flight frames had more finicky ventilation systems after all. Combined with the air scrubbers being on the fritz that morning, Starscream had stood no chance.

The alacrity with which Ratchet had subdued Starscream made Megatron wonder why the Autobots had kept this one-mech squadron off the field.

Aside from the “obvious” ethical compunctions about utilizing noncombatants in overtly belligerent roles, as though it had ever stopped them before. Ratchet could have dominated entire swathes of the battlefield if he had been so inclined.

What an entertaining thought. Who would have guessed that such a valuable secret weapon—a medical genius and a rolling antipersonnel mine—was now living in his home.

He had prepared certain accommodations for his living quarters on the off-chance this… civil arrangement went well , but… he would just leave that proverbial door open for the time being, yes.

With such a windfall, Megatron also had half a mind to turn the fleet around and reclaim their former world just to parade Ratchet around its surface in victory. It would never work, of course, but, regardless, the impossible, ridiculous daydream brought a grin to his face, a grin only strengthened by Starscream’s harmless misery.

“No, Starscream,” Megatron said, smirking from his seat, “on the contrary, I think you had this coming. A thorough clean will do you a world of good.”

He let out a laugh, only for it catch in his throat on the way out. All that came out instead was a loud, dusty hacking noise.

The whir of the vacuum stopped.

A blurry mass of red and white streaked towards him.

“Ratchet, no, there’s no need—“

Starscream’s malicious cackling from the floor only rubbed salt into the proverbial wound.

After brutally robbing both Megatron and Starscream of their dignity on the bridge of the ship earlier that morning, Ratchet had finally become convinced of the validity of one of his hypotheses.

More testing would be needed to truly support it, of course. Always more testing. Though, unless he wanted to take vital resources from the already strained medical center on the ship, Ratchet would be on his own to get the information he needed.

From what he could determine through observation alone, the environment on the Nemesis , a direct result of the ship’s lack of maintenance, was adversely affecting the crew’s health. Or, at least, one aspect was. The constant shedding of paint had to be clogging vents and filters.

It had started with hearing Megatron whenever he was home. One mech experiencing idiomatic symptoms—being a hunk of junk—was easy enough to dismiss as not being part of a larger pattern.

Ratchet hadn’t gotten close enough to most mechs aboard yet to hear them ceaselessly rattling as they went around on their regular business.

But Starscream and his fellow flight frames coughing and hacking and wheezing like they were on their last legs, necessitating the use of a wet-dry vacuum for immediate relief to prevent overheating, had been the last straw.

A few moments prior, Ratchet had tucked himself into a quiet corner of one of the hallways near the quarters he shared with Megatron. There were few security cameras in this corridor, perhaps to afford the Decepticons’ “beloved” leader a measure of privacy.

Scalpel in one hand, he ran the fingertips of the other over the wall to find a promising spot.

The ghastly purple paint was mottled in places, like it had been exposed to some mild, long-term corrosion. Something acid maybe. It was dry and flaking in corners and along edges, not dissimilar from what he had seen at the joints on some mechs experiencing low-level, chronic starvation or slow-onset cybercrosis.

The paint chipped off easily, falling away with a revolting crunch under even the lightest brush of Ratchet’s fingertips.

Even with the air scrubbers and gas filtration back in place for the vessel, the amount paint polluting the ship’s air and getting caught in vents was higher than it ought to have been. It seemed almost like the ship was actively shedding the paint rather than the paint simply coming off as a result of wear and disrepair.

He would need to take a sample in order to better understand the hazard this material posed to the crew.

At this rate, any spot would be good to take a sample, but if he took one from a place that was less obtrusive, there wouldn’t be a big hand-shaped print left over to accuse him of stripping the walls without authorization. He didn’t even know if that was technically a policy violation, but he would rather not find out, all the same.

The corner joining itself would be inconspicuous enough, he reasoned.

And far enough from the “Do Not Make Dust” posters that had been put up in the past few days to claim he had never seen the warnings. Simply putting up the posters in the first place had probably made plenty of dust on its own anyway.

The scalpel lightly scraped against the metal of the bulkhead; even that gentle touch knocking more than a few flakes off onto the scanner’s collection tray. Thank goodness that was all the pressure it took. His hands didn’t always want to cooperate these days.

This scanner wasn’t as powerful as one found in a properly equipped medical center and it could only work with small amounts of sample material, but it would do. If the results of this preliminary test showed enough promise, perhaps he could strong-arm one of the science units in the fleet—either via another compulsory late night spark-to-spark conversation with Megatron or on his own—into letting him borrow some lab equipment.

If Megatron wasn’t willing to scrap this purportedly sound tub for whatever reason, Ratchet could at least try to make it more habitable. Maybe he could utilize material from the ships that Megatron was having taken apart. The limits of Ratchet’s authority and influence among the Decepticons were still unknown, but he would find them and he would push them.

Commands were punched into the scanner’s interface, the worn buttons clicking down in a practiced sequence that Ratchet could follow in his recharge.

It would take a few minutes to process, unfortunately, but that was just the price of doing business.

Ratchet looked over each of his shoulders in turn, checking the hall on either side of his corner was still clear of nosy bystanders.

Given the sparse security system coverage and the skeletal staffing rosters, he didn’t expect anyone to happen upon him suspiciously poking at the walls, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still somehow being observed.

Everywhere he went on the Nemesis seemed to be saturated in the oppressive sensation of being in some kind of panopticon. Prowl and Red Alert would have given into the paranoia by now, but Ratchet, thankfully, was willing to entertain explanations other than conspiracies.

Being on a previously enemy ship with a bunch of mechs who had been formerly openly hostile towards him could do a number on the nervous system. Hypervigilance affecting his sense of peace would hardly be surprising. That was the most likely explanation.

Even if anyone on the ship wished him ill, they would likely have to contend with Megatron’s wrath for acting on those wishes. Perhaps not in the name of “love” or “affection”—the large berth and odd statements implying some wishful thinking notwithstanding—but certainly in the name of endangering the fragile peace treaty. Ratchet knew by now, cognizantly if not elsewise, that he had little to fear on that front.

Validating his assumption, the halls remained empty of anyone but himself and his little scanner.

After the allotted time, the scanner beeped softly to let him know it had finished running the tests.

He looked at the readout and blinked.

That couldn’t have been right.

That made no sense. Why would… why would a vessel have…?

No, that couldn’t be. He must have accidentally contaminated the sample with paint from his own hands or something. The stress of adapting to a new environment must have been making him shed microscopic flakes himself.

Ratchet huffed, dumping out the collection tray. He would just have to be more careful this time around.

After a spray of sterile air from a canister in his medical kit, Ratchet reran the test, just to be sure.

The soft beeping soon called to him again.

The results were the same. A chill settled in his spark.

Megatron had a lot of explaining to do.

Chapter Text

Ratchet had no compunctions about barging onto the flagship’s bridge. At this point, he figured it was safe to assume he had the run of the place until told otherwise. Megatron had thus far not barred him from any place that wasn’t already physically locked.

Thus far.

Of course, Ratchet still hadn’t seen the entire ship; it was far too massive to so easily fully explore—though most of it so far looked rather like more of the same boring, empty halls. Perhaps there were forbidden areas that he simply hadn’t encountered yet, but the bridge was surely exempted. He had already been on the bridge several times now, both with and without Megatron’s invitation.

Besides, even if the bridge were off-limits, he needed to bend Megatron’s ear. Immediately.

What he had found in the paint sample was too troubling, had too many grave implications, for Ratchet to ignore. What good was he if he failed this most basic tenet of his medical oaths?

Either Megatron was a fool and had no idea that there was something decidedly different about his flagship… or he had been keeping secrets from Ratchet. Neither option would have surprised him.

It seemed so obvious to him now why nothing on the ship seemed to work correctly, why he felt constantly as though he were being observed….

“Megatron!” He pushed the main doors open until they stuck in their tracks while retreating into the wall. “Confound it— Augh! “

Ratchet wedged his torso in the gap and slammed his shoulder into one of the doors. The force jiggled it past whatever was causing the track to stick, letting the door finally fully retreat. Shoving his frame through the sufficiently larger gap at last, he decided he would let someone else deal with the door’s twin later.

“Megatron!”

Standing at the railing overlooking the navigator pit, Megatron looked up from a datapad in his hand. His focal rings were slightly wide, likely surprised by Ratchet’s “outburst.”

The viewscreens high on the walls behind Megatron and the navigator pit showed the infamous Decepticon fleet—many vessels now half-skeletal—scattered across the field of stars.

A far cry from the visually impressive force he had seen weeks prior.

It seemed that Megatron’s partial decommissioning of the fleet was proceeding well ahead of schedule. Megatron had said before that this work would take months , but he would, of course, be familiar with the concept of high-balling time estimates so as to set expectations. How many vessels exactly would he be keeping?

Frowning like he had been interrupted in the middle of some task, Megatron silently gestured for him to approach, not that Ratchet had been waiting for an invitation anyway. He was already stomping towards his conjunx, his medical kit swinging from his hand with each step.

Invitations be damned.

He ignored the stares of the others on the bridge; the stares had started becoming just another background feature of his existence here. After millions of wasted years waging a brutal war, Decepticons, as a group, were understandably not used to the presence of an Autobot walking around amongst them. They were used to either seeing Autobots either on the battlefield, in fuzzy pictures from a distance, or in their prison cells.

Ratchet stopped right on front of Megatron, having given up caring about other mech’s personal space bubbles early into his medical training so long ago.

Megatron, to his credit, didn’t seem to care, only sighing.

The closest to expressing discomfort at being in close proximity was when Ratchet had attempted to put a pain patch on the back of his neck—He had simply let Megatron apply them himself when needed after that.

“What exactly is the matter?” Megatron asked, tilting his head to the side. His shoulders dropped slightly, like he was bored. The datapad remained firmly in his hand, rather than being put away or set aside somewhere. Did he expect this to be quick? “What would be such an emergency that would warrant that kind of—“

Ratchet reached up and pointed his finger right at Megatron’s nose, barely a wiresbreadth between them.

He watched as Megatron’s optics reflexively adjusted their focus, the focal rings spiraling in and angling inwards toward the invading finger. For all that many Autobots, especially MTOs, thought of Megatron as some sort of boogeyman, Ratchet knew he was just another Cybertronian, made of oil and metal and idiocy.

“You’ve been hiding something from me,” he said, “You’ve either been hiding it or you’re a moron .”

Frankly, they weren’t mutually exclusive possibilities. Megatron was demonstrably a fool; there were millions of years of evidence to support that conclusion. And he had a propensity for keeping all manner of secrets. The more Ratchet considered it, the more likely he was certain the answer was both .

Megatron opened his mouth to retort, but Ratchet had already retracted his hand, pulling out the scanner from his medical kit.

“Ah, ah—Shush. I’m not finished.”

He keyed up the scanner with one hand, using his thumb to navigate to the results of his informal paint study.

Once on the right screen, he thrust the device square into Megatron’s face.

The scanner displayed the details in mostly medical jargon; of course, it was possible that Megatron wasn’t familiar enough with the specific terminology or data to understand at a glance. Luckily for him, Ratchet was more than willing to interpret if necessary.

“Do you understand what this is? What it means?”

“Ratchet, I hardly think that—“ Hedging again, apparently one of his favorite tactics when he didn’t want to answer a question. Ratchet was beginning to pick up on his partner’s quirks.

“Do you understand , Megatron?”

The bridge went silent, the navigators in the pit freezing at their consoles. Only a few on the far side, too engrossed in their work to notice, continued to chatter through their headsets with the demolition crews they were coordinating.

There was another heavy sigh.

Megatron turned away, placing his free hand on the railing, the only thing between his frame and falling headlong into the crowded navigator pit. Probably wouldn’t even dent his armor, but that was hardly the point. He didn’t want to have to patch up the several navigators who would have gotten more than a little squashed.

“Broadly, yes.”

His voice was relatively quiet, almost a normal speaking volume for once as opposed to when he barked orders to the crew. Was this how he talked when he’d been caught out in a scheme? Ratchet didn’t know him well enough yet to make that judgment call. Soon though, maybe. Marriages, barring extenuating circumstances, tended to be long .

As for the results of the testing, Ratchet was more than qualified to draw conclusions… or at least strong inferences.

The specific composition of the paint, based on the chemical preparations found by the scanner, were more similar to the type of paint that tended to be found on metal animated by the energy of a spark, more resistant to chipping and flaking, more amenable to supporting the nanite microbiota that compromised their immune systems. The composition used to paint non-living stuff was varied, but left vastly different signatures than the narrow band used for protecting the outer plating of Cybertronian bodies.

Megatron, however, did not continue, leaving his partial acknowledgment to stand for itself.

Ratchet furrowed his optical ridges, hand tightening on the scanner despite the fact that his “audience” couldn’t even see it now.

“You’ve been hiding a very, very sick patient from me, Megatron,” he chided, as though talking to a freshly-cooled newspark who hadn’t yet learned how to lie with any finesse.

Megatron didn’t look at him, instead staring at the viewscreens and the cluttered junkyard beyond.

Ratchet lowered the scanner, tucking it back into his medical kit. It took a moment longer than he would have liked for his knuckle joints to cooperate and loosen his grip.

The flaking paint, pulling free in joins of metal and crumbling at the lightest touch, outer layers peeling away first, bare metal walls revealing thin lines of acidic corrosion….

Now knowing what he was looking at, even to the naked eye, Ratchet knew he was seeing some of the symptoms of cybercrosis, a name for the suite of ailments suffered by a mech declining at the end of a long life. The mech in question was just the largest damn titan that Ratchet had ever knowingly laid eyes on.

The ship, the Nemesis … was dying of old age. A rarity for their species, let alone a titan, given their propensity to make war.

“You knew , didn’t you?”

Megatron neither nodded nor shook his head, as thought he were actively avoiding giving away too much. Did he really need to play his cards so close to his chest or was that just an old habit dying hard?

“… I’ll be home in an hour; we’ll discuss this in more… detail then. Not now , not here .”

Megatron didn’t close his mouth, like he wasn’t sure how to phrase his thoughts. Even skilled orators had off days, especially when confronted with the truth, Ratchet supposed.

Was he hiding this from his troops as well? Surely, he couldn’t have kept it from them all ; someone else had to know. But who? Starscream perhaps, Soundwave as well…. All the members of High Command would likely be aware.

An hour wouldn’t be quite enough time to find them all, let alone solicit their opinions on a potentially classified subject. Tracking down more information would have to wait.

Then Megatron turned his head slightly, his focal rings sliding to allow him to see Ratchet somewhat better out of the side of his eye.

“I give you my word, Ratchet.”

For whatever that was worth, but, circumstances being what they were, Ratchet had no real other choice but to take it.

“ One hour,” he said, pointing at Megatron in accusation, “and not one minute more, you understand me?”

This prompted another one of Megatron’s odd smirks. What that meant, however, he couldn’t say.

The tests Ratchet had run hadn’t been conclusive , no, but they were certainly more than suggestive . Megatron hadn’t quite understood the minute details of the readout he had been shown, but that could change. Would change. He would learn, like he had wanted so long ago—Now wasn’t the time.

Megatron stood in front of the locked door in their shared quarters; Ratchet waited at his side with his arms crossed, tapping his foot.

The aggravation radiating off of the medic was almost charming , even if Megatron wished it weren’t being directed at him. Ratchet’s stubbornness and bravery were some of his more… appealing features.

In the moment on the bridge, he had understood two major components of the results: that the scan was done on a sample of purple paint—a given among the Decepticons—and that the overall chemical formulation of the paint. Proper paint for living metal had been a rare resource in the mines, where many were given whatever paint was on hand, never mind what it was intended to coat. Identifying the “good stuff” from labeling or smell alone had been a commonplace practice.

It was now obvious even to Megatron that outright denial would not be a viable option at this stage; denials would only further encourage Ratchet’s suspicions and crack the new, fragile veneer of trust they had managed to build. While giving up the game now could still cause some damage, it didn’t take a genius to foresee that further delays would be far riskier.

Megatron had wanted to wait until he knew for certain that Ratchet would be amenable to the burden being placed upon him, but… perhaps deferring of potential treatment until some unknown point in the future would only bite him—and, by extension, all of his Decepticons—in the end.

“Ratchet, you must understand one thing before you see what is on the other side of this door,” he said, keeping his hand poised over the keys on the access pad. “There was no malice involved.”

“No malice? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly that.” It was obvious, clearly.

Ratchet huffed at his side and Megatron decided to take that as acceptance of his condition.

“I’m showing you this in good faith,” he said, swiftly striking the keys. In addition, he made no attempt at hiding the access code from Ratchet’s view; he would need it shortly anyway. Barring this knowledge would be pointless.

“Why? Good faith for what exactly?”

“Because, Ratchet….”

Megatron sighed. He loathed showing weakness.

The door slid aside with a soft hiss, for once with little trouble. Perhaps the ship was making an effort this time.

“… I… need your help.”

Beyond the door was a room the size of a small office, but it was packed with consoles and screens. The screens were powered down and the consoles’ yellow standby lights flashed in a slow, repeating pattern. The overhead lights were in emergency power mode, illuminating the room in only a dim red glow. Just enough to be visible with minimal energy input.

The walls housed what looked to Megatron’s untrained optic like large access ports of some kind, though the labeling had long since flaked off; only a seasoned professional would know what they were for now. Maybe. Assuming titan physiology in any way resembled that of the rest of their species aside from scale.

On a far wall, there was a door, a manually sealed bulkhead rather than a conventional sliding door. The was likely to make access possible even in the event of a power failure, or so Megatron had assumed. He had never opened it, being too large to comfortably fit through the opening.

Stepping aside, he saw a wide-eyed look on Ratchet’s face, likely that of bafflement.

“What do you need my help for—I… I don’t….”

With an outstretched arm, Megatron allowed Ratchet to go ahead of him.

“I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what this room is for, Ratchet.”

“Actually,” Ratchet said, pausing at the threshold, “you do. I’m… not really sure what I’m looking at other than what I presume are huge medical access ports on the walls.”

He waved an arm helplessly at the room.

Well, a category of port was more than Megatron could have said for certain about them, so Ratchet’s expertise was already coming in handy.

He had once shown this room to Flatline a number of years ago, but… had never received a report of findings. Flatline had disappeared not long afterward. Megatron could only hope that Ratchet didn’t follow in Flatline’s footsteps.

“Yes, of course, for… Hm.” Megatron shrugged, putting his hand to his chin in thought. “… The Nemesis . We don’t know the titan’s name; he was already non-responsive when we initially… recovered him. His vessel name was inspired by—”

Ratchet abruptly lifted a hand, cutting him off.

“No, no, Megatron, I know you named him; I don’t need the details about that right now.”

Fine, he would save the etymology lesson for later.

Ratchet wandered ahead of him, slowly making his way to the nearest console as the color of his red paint deepened in the overlay of the emergency lights.

He gingerly ran his hands over the controls, fingers rigid, but didn’t push any of them, leaving the systems inactive. Perhaps that was intentional. A wise move to not poke around too carelessly.

“So,” Ratchet started, “the fact that he’s a titan is why you’re prioritizing him over your other ships.”

“That’s certainly a factor,” he said, finally stepping into the doorway himself. The room was cramped, however, and he doubted Ratchet would want to be stuck in such a claustrophobic place with him. “One of many.”

Megatron had always been loath to prioritize the life of one of his brethren over the advancement of the Cause, a grand scheme that had partially fallen to the wayside when combat could no longer be sustained. It had become a brutal war of attrition and the goals necessarily shifted. Home and peace… would be found elsewhere; the Nemesis was key to the success of that endeavor.

Thankfully, it wasn’t the titan’s life he needed, just his frame and not even for that long. Ratchet would probably abhor that notion if he knew.

The titan, of course, had also not joined the Cause of his own volition, being probably in some kind of seemingly endless torpor. A minor complication.

Ratchet paused like he was looking for something in particular, his hands still flat like blades out in front of him. With his back to Megatron, his face was blocked from view.

Cautiously, Megatron approached him, testing whether or not he would be banished for making the space seem too confined, too dangerous.

No response.

He slowly leaned over Ratchet’s shoulder to get a better view. Of the console, of course.

Yet, the frown on the medic’s face was unmistakable; this one did not come from some minor annoyance, yet something more profound.

Ratchet’s optics were fixed on his hands.

“Is something the matter?”

“ No! ”

With a huff, Ratchet smacked his hands together before curling them into fists.

“No,” he repeated, more softly this time, as though the vigor of the first denial had been unintentional. “No… I’m just… Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Many reasons, naturally, as with any decision one might make. Some selfish, some selfless. For Ratchet's sake, he would pick one of them.

“In truth?” It pained Megatron's pride to make an admission like this, but perhaps in the spirit of further building a trusting rapport with his new conjunx, it was a worthwhile sacrifice. “I wasn’t ready.”

"You weren't… ready?"

Ratchet turned over one his hands, grabbing it with the other and rubbing the palm with the thumb as though to soothe it. It seemed like a reflexive action, since he turned his head to look up at the mech looming over his shoulder.

There was no fear in Ratchet's optics, only curiosity… and doubt.

Good.

Chapter Text

The ships that Megatron had unilaterally designated for consolidation had been stripped down, their crews reassigned and their materials put aside for storage. The occasional component was used for urgent repairs on remaining vessels, but the work of downsizing to something more manageable had been done.

The Nemesis and its fellows now soared through hyperspace, careening at speeds that made stars blur into streaks of washed out color.

The quantum jump drives that had been ad hoc installed into the titan after they had found him were at least somewhat functional.

The destination? A waypoint between the first candidate worlds for resettlement. Visiting each individually with the full fleet would put too much strain on the Nemesis and, frankly, Megatron wasn’t sure how many more light-years the slumbering titan had left in him. Exploratory excursions would be made with small groups of shuttles accompanied by a larger vessel.

As long as they got to their ultimate destination and the titan, or what was left of it, could do one last thing for him, he would be satisfied. It would be far easier if the titan were still alive, of course, but it wasn't a requirement. Megatron would find a way to make it work.

And with Ratchet now spending more of his time studying the titan’s one known access point, he wasn’t prowling the ship, providing surprise checkups to unwary Decepticons.

Seated on a scavenged sofa—it would be more accurate to call it a lightly upholstered bench—Megatron frowned at the warm, blue cube on the low table in front of him.

The cube’s contents bubbled with the fizzy, bitter-tasting stimulant additive that he had thrown into the refinery’s percolator ten minutes prior. It had only taken five to prepare and he had been glowering at it for another five.

Ratchet, now in the refinery himself to prepare some manner of morning fuel, had warned him that the stimulant might aggravate his pains, that it would be best to avoid the risk. The analgesic patches could only do so much and so on and so forth.

It was a strange danger that Megatron didn’t understand, having had this concoction untold times in the past, but never had he associated it with the pain that occasionally wracked his processor.

Frankly, he had often believed them to brought on by Starscream.

Unfortunately, there was only one way to know for sure… and that was to challenge the enemy head on.

Scowling at the cube, he snatched it up and chugged the medicinal-tasting solution to the last drop. Finished, he slammed the cube back down onto the table.

So far… nothing. Nothing but the bracing, astringent taste lingering in his mouth. Disgusting, but he’d sooner choose this, his regular swill, than adding bourgeois indulgences like lead shavings.

Such things could be left to the Autobots, whom they would ideally never see again. Save, of course, for the notable exception now swearing at something in the refinery but a handful of meters away.

Cybertron and its solar system were about to become only memories. Their old home, ravaged beyond recognition, disappeared in the fleet's wake; it might as well have stopped existing when the war had changed its nature forever. Sure, the Autobots would rebuild a new home there, but it wouldn't be the one that would be missed by the Decepticons exiling themselves to the far reaches of space.

Would Ratchet long for whatever the Autobots dreamed of building?

It didn't matter now; what was done was done and Ratchet could be counted on to verbalize any complaints.

Now that they had embarked on the first leg of their voyage, Megatron found himself with more free time. He no longer had to rush to the bridge immediately upon waking to oversee mass scale demolition.

Thus the opportunity to test Ratchet’s threats about the stimulants.

Still no pain.

Though no time frame for symptom onset—enemy assault—had been given. Megatron needed to be vigilant until he could be certain that the danger had passed. He would not be defeated by an everyday substance.

The swearing in the refinery stopped and Ratchet wandered out with his own fizzy blue cube; Megatron could smell the high concentration of stimulant in it. Rather hypocritical, unless Ratchet fancied himself immune from the supposed negative neurological effects of consuming this chemical.

He raised an optical ridge as Ratchet sat down on the other end of the couch, his joints creaking in the process.

There was something charming in the overtired way Ratchet leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands wrapped around the warm cube of fuel; a sort of casual dignity, if Megatron needed to label it. It reminded him somewhat of how Terminus had looked in the mornings before their shifts so long ago.

All that was missing from the picture was a cheap, smuggled rust stick for Ratchet to dunk in his drink. That and, now, Megatron felt a little out of place with his already drained cube in front of him on the table.

Ratchet sighed after taking a sip.

“I’ve been wondering for a little while now….” That was apropos of nothing, but he was willing to let Ratchet fill the silence. “Megatron, where are your doctors? They should have caught the ship’s cybercrosis ages ago and taken mitigating—”

Maybe not fill the silence with that particular question though.

Still no pain.

“The medical center.” Megatron scoffed, leaning back against the corner of the couch, turning to face his companion. “Ratchet, you just saw them last night when you were restocking your medical kit.”

Which he had made Megatron be present for, given that the restock was solely for pain patches. He still wasn’t sure if Ratchet had been trying to shame him or trying to show him the effort he was going to for Megatron’s benefit.

Ratchet’s motives were still difficult for Megatron to read, but he chalked that up to a previously busy schedule that had left little room for “getting to know you” time.

“No, not your field medics.” Ratchet clucked his tongue. “Your doctors . Your physicians .”

Megatron managed to avoid sighing, but his shoulders slumped all the same.

“… Excluding you , of course… they are, for better or worse, unavailable .”

Some were dead, some missing in action, some on other vessels. None, for any number of disparate reasons, were up to the enormity of the task that Megatron would soon have to put before Ratchet. While, on one hand, time was of the essence, on the other, he had not wanted to show his hand quite so soon.

The ship groaned overhead, an audible reminder of the limited time remaining to get the Nemesis to its final destination in one piece. What they needed from it—him—was so little and yet… possibly far more than could be dreamed of by a sane mind.

Days ago, he had only revealed the truth about the titan, but nothing more than that. Though, smart mech that the medic was, Ratchet may have already intuited that Megatron wanted him to treat the Nemesis .

Still no pain—The normal blurring in the periphery of his vision expanded, vibrating as it took up more of the field of view. A pressure began to build behind and above his optics. But it wasn’t pain . Yet.

It seemed, regrettably, Ratchet had been right to warn him. Now, however, even as he started squinting, resisting the signals of impending agony, he had his foe’s measure. The stimulants were interfering with his functioning—his engaging in praxis—and could thus be discarded.

Perhaps there would be relief in telling Ratchet the entire truth, a shared burden. That was what a union was for, after all, to bear the impossible weight of reality together.

Ratchet clucked his tongue again as though Megatron had just told him a stupid excuse for an embarrassing injury.

“Unavailable? And just what is that supposed to mean? You’re an awful liar for someone who leads a group called the Decepticons .”

“For one reason or another,” Megatron said, elaborating as minimally as possible while waving his hand flippantly at nothing, “what’s important is that they are not here .”

“Why,” in the grand scheme, wasn’t strictly important.

Ratchet was here. That was what presently mattered.

The pressure grew, shifting into what felt like clamps pressing down on his optics. Megatron refused to flinch in the face of something so mundane, so banal , as a little pain. He was a w arrior , dammit—

“Flatline? Rossum?”

Names. Of course. Ratchet’s old colleagues.

He would have known them before they had seen fit to serve a greater cause than the systems that had privileged them, yes.

“Gone,” Megatron said.

Short answers would do. The less processing power he used for anything but bolstering his resolve, the better.

Rossum had been killed by Overlord, during the latter’s regrettable upgrades. A sacrifice in the line of duty. Phase Sixers had been a grave mistake.

Flatline, however, Megatron did not have an answer for. He had been assigned to the Nemesis , but hadn’t been seen in many months. Missing in action. No one had been able to locate him and his tracking signals had disappeared. He had been Megatron’s previous hope for the vessel; Flatline’s untimely loss had forced the plans to change.

The lights in their living quarters were too bright, far too bright. Loud, as though the very photons buzzed like insects.

“They’re long gone,” he reiterated when Ratchet frowned at his previous monosyllabic answer.

There was a moment of silence as Ratchet scrutinized him. This wasn’t how Megatron wanted his attention, but he supposed he would take it.

“Dead, you mean—Ah, so that’s it.”

Interrupting himself, Ratchet suddenly leaned towards him, holding out a pain patch. Where was he keeping that? Megatron hadn’t noticed him pull it out… or put his cube of fuel down for that matter.

“I was wondering when your headache would kick in after I saw your empty cube; you’re one of those obstinate mechs who has to learn everything the hard way, aren’t you?”

Megatron squinted at him, reaching out with one hand to take the patch. He stopped just before making contact, as though Ratchet might take it away from him to teach him some sort of lesson.

“Go on; take it. I’m not going to punish you for being a fool. You already did that by drinking the stimulant.”

“A kind spark like that will make you vulnerable, Ratchet.”

He took the patch, gingerly applying it to the back of his neck. A cool, numbing sensation spread across raw, angry circuits. He tried to ignore the patronizing way Ratchet patted his knee before retreating once more to his own side of the sofa.

“Better that than the alternative.”

And still Ratchet smiled at him, no malice, no trickery, no hidden agendas. Just a smile, rare and precious. If only he could capture it forever.

Ratchet had made very little headway in deciphering what he was looking at in the access point. It was a glorified closet. He had managed to reroute power to turn on the lights properly and boot up the main menu of the largest console.

Unfortunately, the holographic interface and labels projected onto the physical buttons were all encoded using a script that Ratchet had only encountered in passing mention in his youth, only mentioned in the context of historical records about titans. He had seen a few of the glyphs but never with any gloss or information about how they could be read.

The writing predated modern Neocybex and knowledge of how to read them was already, even when Ratchet was a younger, only available to specialist experts… until archeology and history became taboo subjects during the Clampdown. Furthermore, conventional medical training didn’t exactly include those fields as subjects of study and the data on them had never been entered into universal translator technology.

The glyphs might as well have been alien.

What he wouldn’t have given for a cityspeaker, but they were just as lost to history as the titans themselves.

All he wanted to was to see if he could find some sort of diagnostic screen or anything else he could have made sense of, anything he could have used as a place to start. Anything to be sure he was administering treatment correctly.

Ideally, he would have been able to find a way to make contact with the titan, talk to him in some way, Cybertronian to Cybertronian, even if the titan wasn’t conscious.

It was a shame he couldn’t pull the communicator out of his kit. Prowl would have been able to at least run a statistical analysis on the glyphs and give him something about how the system worked. Unfortunately, using it would have probably just been interpreted as Ratchet asking for a rescue… a rescue that he didn’t want. That and he still would have preferred to keep the existence of the communicator a secret for the time being.

He grumbled under his breath as he used his finger, which was currently stuck in an extended position anyway, to scroll through the long list of options, none of them having any obvious meaning.

Might as well start trying various adapters to plug into the wall ports and just take the risk of contracting something, connecting to corrupted drives, or suffering a power surge. It was a terrible idea but he was running out of options to crack the code.

Behind him, he could hear the subtle shift of metal brushing against a wall. He felt the weight of a gaze on him. It appeared he was no longer home alone.

“Stop lurking.” It was difficult for Ratchet to focus while being watched, even if he weren’t fighting an uphill linguistic battle. “Megatron, I know you’re there. You’re not exactly stealthy . You might as well have shouted ‘honey, I’m home’ as loud as possible.”

There was a heavy pause, as though Megatron were debating the merits of continuing to pretend to not be there.

“I’m observing .”

At least he owned up to it. Though Ratchet doubted that was the only reason Megatron was loitering nearby; he supposed he ought to be grateful that Megatron had kept his hands to himself.

“Watching me try to read menus in a long disused titan-specific script doesn’t sound like it would be that interesting for you,” Ratchet said, “Don’t you have some subordinates to supervise? I’m sure you’d much rather be micromanaging the resettlement program.”

Though, strictly, Ratchet was now Megatron’s subordinate according to the employment hierarchy, not that he had been given any real instructions of any sort. He could practically hear the technicality waiting on Megatron’s tongue.

“Ratchet, I am supervising—“

“Don’t start.”

“Let me… rephrase it for you; I think you’re merely missing some… additional context.”

The steps behind him told him that Megatron had well and truly given up hiding, the footsteps stopping just behind the chair that Ratchet had previously dragged into the access point.

“You’re distracting me," he said, not bothering to turn around. He knew what Megatron looked like.

He was probably even smirking in that awkward way of his. If Megatron hadn't been a murderous tyrant, it would have been a cute quirk that he could only smile like he was hiding something.

“Allow me to finish.” There was another uncomfortably long pause, a heavy nothingness as the much larger mech silently loomed behind him. Did Megatron suddenly remember his manners? “ Please. ”

Apparently so. Might as well reward good behavior; maybe that would encourage more. Humoring him briefly would probably also be the only way he would get Megatron to leave him in peace for awhile.

“Fine, fine, just get on with it.”

Ratchet threw up his hands in frustration and turned around to face his intruder… who was standing immediately behind him. Did Megatron have to stand so damn close? It made Ratchet feel so… small . He wasn’t even smaller than average and yet Megatron seemed like an overwhelming shadow.

“I’m—“ Megatron stopped, almost as though he hadn’t expected Ratchet to actually lend him an ear. But he quickly recovered. “Ratchet, what you don’t realize is that what you’re doing here, with the ship, is absolutely vital to the resettlement program, to the plans. It is, in fact, utterly crucial to the future of every Decepticon yet living under my command.”

“I don’t understand how that’s supposed to—Megatron, the ship is dying .“

Probably, assuming he was right about what was wrong with the ship.

Cybercrosis had no cure, but how could you cure a spark of the passage of time?

Even Ratchet wasn’t immune to temporality; the frame fatigue in his hands from millions of years of use reminded him daily.

The only saving grace here was that, given the ship’s size, the symptom onset and progression seemed to be dramatically slowed. The Nemesis’s decline had clearly already been on the order a thousand years or more rather than the months or weeks for more typical members of their species. Unfortunately, that meant Ratchet had no idea how much time he had and had no way to know if he could ease the Nemesis’s suffering in any way.

He opened his mouth continue but Megatron stopped him with a raised palm.

“Ratchet, I’m not finished. Please. ”

That was someone’s new favorite word today apparently.

“Some… time ago—“ Of course, no specific time frames. “—I had asked Flatline to look into the health of the vessel. Like you, he had deduced early on that the Nemesis was a titan. He had never previously treated one. While I don’t have access to his notes, he suspected the ship had at least two additional alt-modes.”

Ratchet tilted his head to the side, not quite sure where Megatron was going with this.

Megatron, however, extended one finger on the hand he had raised.

“A root mode, as expected of course, but another that would be… advantageous.” He extended a second finger. “A building or base mode. When we get to our destination, wherever that may be, our chances of survival will be much higher if we have—”

“Ah-ah,” Ratchet clucked, cutting him off. He poked Megatron in the middle, the only appropriate part he could really reach from his chair. “I hate to burst your bubble, but one of the first symptoms of cybercrosis is the complete inability to transform! I highly doubt the ship could turn into a base at this point, even if he wanted to.”

“And you’re certain of your diagnosis?”

“As certain as I can be without being able to get any corroborating data!”

“Then a chance, infinitesimal though it may be, remains. Or we will need alternatives.”

Chapter Text

Megatron watched from his post at the circular projector table as Soundwave worked the controls nearby to display report data.

The holograms hardly even fluctuated on the edges, as though Soundwave had taken the time to carefully calibrate the projector ahead of the meeting to work with his data formatting. His extra steps to maintain professionalism did not go unnoticed. It was one of the things that Megatron had always appreciated about Soundwave.

He had also always known how to work a crowd, especially when the crowd in question was High Command and certain invited officers, even if his diction was markedly less traditionally emotive than was average for most Cybertronians.

Even Starscream was paying attention—Unfortunately, he usually paid attention, but he rarely made it visibly obvious. His back was straight and his optics were focused on the projected images, rather than examining his fingers for scratches like he tended to when Megatron was speaking.

Megatron himself, however, was still adjusting to the nearly alien comfort of having an unclogged air filter. Ratchet had insisted on yanking out the old one last night. Megatron swore that he could still feel impossible latent warmth on his armor where the seasoned medic had popped open his chassis with ease.

Today’s report was an overview of their potential ultimate destinations and locations with potential resources that they could exploit on the way. He was already well-versed in its contents; the review was, of course, for the others present, allowing him to lend his mind to… other concerns.

A sudden beam of light from the hall, broken only by someone standing its way had woken him.

“This has gone on long enough, Megatron.”

Megatron had barely had the time to grumble a questioning noise before deft hands had been on him, prying his chest open with the efficiency of an experienced professional.

“You still sound like a suffocating vacuum cleaner; this has to stop .”

A hand dove in, deeper than the assault with the wet-dry vacuum had been able to reach.

Then the irritating sound of a gritty rattling had scraped his audio sensors, followed by a horrible, sickening pop .

A filter, black and grimy with millions of years of smoke and vaporized debris, was tossed with a disgusted grimace to the floor of his room.

He had scarcely had the time to process what had just occurred before something else, cold—a new filter perhaps—was slapped into the fresh void with loud click .

Ratchet had then slammed Megatron’s chassis shut and retreated to his own room, leaving him to lie there supine on the berth, baffled and alone.

And, now, as he let Soundwave lead this portion of the meeting, Megatron regretted that he had been unable to do a damn thing about Ratchet’s impromptu repairs. He had been too sluggish on startup to even put up a struggle, let alone fight back. Not that the repair hadn’t been beneficial, but it was the idea of the thing.

What an embarrassment, though he doubted Ratchet would “treat and tell.”

If only Ratchet would come to see him at night for non-medical reasons, even just to talk, anything.

A sharp pain in his side brought him back to reality.

Next to him, Starscream sighed, his elbow having apparently been the source of the blow.

Unfortunately, the pain patches Ratchet supplied him with only seemed to target migraines and not other pains in the neck, particularly ones with wings.

Soundwave, meanwhile, calmly and professionally reiterated their priorities and stipulations, moving a glowing indicator over each one in turn as he reminded all those gathered in the dim war room of what was at stake.

“ Or we will need alternatives. ”

Ratchet shouldn’t have been surprised by Megatron’s apparent callousness towards the titan’s life; he knew better, he really did. That came with the territory in Megatron’s line of work and the personality that role required. Optimus Prime had similar, though not identical, tendencies, as Ratchet had learned over the years.

He had tried to put it aside.

On habit, after he had given up trying to understand the Nemesis’s access console for the day, Ratchet found himself wandering onto the bridge, uninvited as usual. Though, without Megatron there, would he have even been welcome? Not that he had exactly been “welcome” among the majority of the Decepticons.

His occasional checkups of opportunity probably hadn’t endeared him to them either, but with actual work to be done on his newest patient, he had been too busy to prowl the halls at random.

The doors to the bridge slid aside for him, for once, without much fuss. Maybe one of the few engineers had been ordered to oil the track.

Ratchet sighed, thinking how little use his expertise would be without any infrastructure or assistants to either assist him directly or to carry out his instructions for the titan’s care. After all, he was only one mech… one mech who was struggling to read an archaic dialect of Primal Vernacular, a language already fallen out of use by the time Ratchet was forged.

“ Or we will need alternatives. ”

The words echoed in his processor.

Millions of years of war had taught Ratchet that Megatron was pragmatic, that he viewed things through the ruthless lens of means to an end. On one hand, Ratchet could understand it; it was a perspective he had often used, with a patient’s wellbeing being the “end” for him.

Even with that in mind, Megatron’s words still didn’t quite sit right with him.

Was Ratchet also just a means to an end? A means to eke out more useful time for the probably doomed titan? Maybe, but why bother with a titan—and a politically expensive medic—for shelter when surely Megatron could have sourced that some other way.

Now, at least, Ratchet had more time to think and ruminate in relative peace.

Yet the need to be with others, to socialize, gnawed at him.

Some time ago, early in the “morning,” Megatron had left for a meeting, something about planning for planetary survey excursions. He hadn’t been sure when he would return given the natures of those that would be in attendance.

Ratchet wasn’t sure if he was relieved to have an unknown number of hours guaranteed to himself or more lonely.

He hadn’t really “assimilated” into what constituted Decepticon society, not yet anyway. Not that he had really expected to be anything other than an outsider when he had agreed to his union. Megatron was really the only one he regularly conversed with; even visiting the meager medical center didn’t lend itself to conversations longer than “here’s the sign out sheet for supplies.” The overworked staff was understandably too busy for anything else.

He would have to seek social stimulation on purpose.

Now he wasn’t sure who exactly he was expecting to find on the bridge, still unfamiliar with the chain of command beyond Megatron and a few other key players. Sure, he had run into soldiers of many ranks over the course of the war, but their place in the grand Decepticon scheme never stuck with him. That sort of political knowledge had been other people’s problem.

He also wasn’t sure what he would even say to anyone.

For once, the bridge was relatively quiet and sparsely populated. No familiar faces save for a few of the taller navigators in the pit that Ratchet could see over the edge of the deck. He didn’t even know any of their names.

Ratchet, having stopped just past the doors, wondered if the strategy meeting was to blame for the slow shift.

One person present, however, did catch his attention.

Standing at the railing, overseeing the navigators like Primus himself had ordered him to, was a tall mech with purple and slate gray plating. Huge pairs of treads gave his shoulders a wide, imposing silhouette. A pair of tank guns on his back looked rather like antennae. His hands were clasped professionally behind his stiffly straight back, while an overly large double-barreled cannon was proudly mounted to one arm. He was probably the one left temporarily in charge of the bridge.

There was an uncanny resemblance to Ultra Magnus.

Every army had to have one of them, Ratchet supposed, making his way over to Megatron’s vacant throne. If he was going to people watch, he might as well have a seat.

Even if the seat was a touch too big for him and not nearly as supportive as a chair for all-day occupation ought to be. Ratchet leaned back, his arms just a little to short to comfortably rest on the sides and his knees didn’t quite reach the end of the seat, forcing his legs to stick out awkwardly into the air.

Even with the incorrect scale for his frame, this chair wasn’t exactly… comfortable. The metal was worn and lacking in any upholstery. It was like sitting on a chair-shaped warehouse crate. No wonder Megatron was always so stiff; this “throne” just exacerbated his unhealthy lifestyle.

As soon as he got situated—as situated as he could be—one of the navigators that Ratchet could see from his vantage point yawned.

“You shame the Cause,” said the mech at the railing.

The navigator froze at the smooth voice’s reprimand, as though the owner might strike him dead in an instant.

“Would you dare yawn on duty with Megatron present?”

Of all the things Megatron would care about for staff behavior, Ratchet doubted the occasional yawn would make it on the list of misdeeds. Someone was looking a little too self-important.

Ratchet couldn’t hold in a scoff.

The thin veneer of professionalism evaporated in an instant.

The mech at the railing wheeled around, a hulking, faceless shape as his arms swung wide, fingers curling into threatening claws. Red optics burned with offense through an aggressively violet mask in the shape of a Deceptibrand; the ridiculousness of the getup ruined any potential intimidating effect.

The absurdity set off more laughter from Ratchet.

“How dare you laugh at—“ The mech froze as he saw the source of the mockery. “You! You dare to sit in Megatron’s throne!”

Shrugging, Ratchet said nothing. He let his smirk speak for itself.

Of course, he knew that it would be unwise to antagonize Decepticon soldiers, but he couldn’t be faulted for laughing at clowns on parade.

His nonchalance only seemed to further upset the mech. Heavy armor rattling, the soldier stomped towards him as though he intended to pull Ratchet from the “sacred throne of Megatron” by force.

A cold fear that perhaps he had gone too far in his teasing settled in Ratchet’s spark… only for the furious mech to freeze at the halfway point, his optics dimming in realization.

Realization of what exactly, he couldn’t be sure.

“You… you’re….”

“Did you run out of steam there?”

The mech dropped to his knees, a horrible clank echoing through the open bridge.

“My sincerest apologies. I beg your forgiveness; I did not realize at first that you are Megatron’s consort—“ The words that followed just flowed over Ratchet like a wave of eloquent, yet indistinct sound.

Was… was he groveling ? The secondhand embarrassment jittered in Ratchet’s circuits.

Worse, the reverent way he kept saying Megatron’s name, like the loudmouthed fool were some sort of deity, was unsettling. The cult of personality around here had gotten worse than Ratchet had previously thought. He would need to have a talk with Megatron about this at some point in the future.

“Stop that!” Ratchet snapped. This was just a touch too creepy for his tastes. “What’s the matter with you, you… What is your name?”

“Tarn, my lord.”

What an odd name, but, sure, he had heard weirder and Ratchet wasn’t about to make fun of him for it. There were plenty of other things to make fun of this strange fellow for.

Ratchet hesitated for a moment before asking, “Tarn of…?”

If it was Tarn again, Ratchet swore he would just leave the bridge and take his chances bothering his “comrades” at the medical center again so he didn’t laugh in this poor bastard’s face.

“Of the Glorious Decepticon Revolution, my lord.”

Sweet Solus Prime, that was the worst name he had ever heard.

“… A pleasure.”

After several minutes of answering repetitive last minute questions, Soundwave finally finished the initial review, summarizing the main points one last time.

Far away from Cybertron, defined by a minimal number of light-years.

Far away from systems known to be hostile.

Uninhabited, both now and in the past.

Starscream scoffed. He stood with his arms crossed and wings low.

“The Autobots should have at least included a free leash for each of us in this ‘ deal ,’” he said, the sardonic tone unmistakable.

The peace treaty, even the very idea of initiating a treaty negotiation, had not been universally popular amongst his soldiers. Mechs like Starscream had viewed it as a glorified surrender, a sign that Megatron had lost his edge, his resolve to see the Cause through.

Though Starscream had been the only one to voice his dissent, there were surely others who had shared the sentiment. His second-in-command was just the most vocal, at least to Megatron’s face.

Megatron watched Starscream narrow his optics and meet his gaze out of the corner of his vision.

“Then again, I suppose they already did .”

While the particulars of their bans were difficult for the Autobots to enforce, violating any of these terms would nullify the peace accord, granting a causus belli against them. If the Autobots did manage to muster any sort of attack or to summon allies to do the work for them, the Decepticons may not have had sufficient time to build up a defense by then.

It wasn’t worth the risk. Not yet anyway. Who knew what dire straits the future doubtlessly held for them. Right now all the steering of fate that they could do was damage mitigation.

There was also the small, but nonzero risk that the Autobots might also try to extract Ratchet, but given the ease with which they had handed him over… perhaps not. Perhaps Ratchet had already been classified as an “acceptable loss.”

Not that Megatron had interest in returning him. The fussing and weaponized altruism had started to become a comforting background to the usual ruckus of life on a Decepticon vessel.

At least, in front of the invited officers who weren’t part of High Command, barely out of the rank and file, Starscream was tactful enough to not take his snide remarks further. The seeker was no fool. Megatron knew the words “capitulation present” or something in the same vein were waiting for a more private opportunity to emerge, but not here where the veneer of a united front was more valuable.

It was tempting to make a verbal swipe at the insubordination, but then he would have been taking obvious bait. Starscream, more competent and ruthless than Megatron would ever admit aloud, would bring him down one day, he knew, but not today, not over something so mundane.

Besides, nothing would upset Starscream so much as to simply ignore him.

“Thank you, Soundwave, for your thorough overview,” he said, reaching down to manipulate the projector’s controls on the console in front of him. “Now, onto the main matter of business… our new home.”

Or the current candidates for them, rather.

Megatron, Starscream, and Soundwave had reviewed the candidate worlds before, but these possible futures had not yet been shown to anyone else in the faction. Even those that had gathered the initial data hadn’t known which worlds would make the short list.

The projector summoned up a rotating sphere in minimally contrasting colors, a jittery green world with some swathes of black of red.

A viewscreen would have given better resolution and a more accurate palette, but projector feeds, with their localized data and lack of network connections, were more difficult for unwanted listeners to intercept.

“Our first candidate for in-depth surveying at the upcoming holding point is this volcanic world, rich in basalt and other minerals that could be used for manufacturing and could be processed into energon. Though, regrettably as you can plainly see, the world contains an ocean, initial reports suggest that it is devoid of even microbial organic life.”

Megatron continued with the approved short list: a wet but frozen organic world with abundant carbon for energy; a dry, windswept planet with large desert features; a sweltering hothouse world, toxic to any organic life but rich in sulfuric acid; an oceanic world with rich deep sea volcanic activity and countless hydrothermal vents.

There were no perfect candidates and all of their surveys had been done from afar, so even a hypothetical “perfect” candidate was not guaranteed to be a welcoming home without putting mechs on the ground to be sure.

And these were just the candidates that they could readily reach from the first holding point. Regrettably, the contenders after that were… rather less ideal: barren, crater-laden worlds with limited resources or worlds too close to Galactic Council or Black Bloc Consortium space or worlds too far away to hope to even tow the Nemesis to.

“Of course, if a better opportunity presents itself, we will pivot accordingly. Are there any que—“

“If you want my opinion,” Starscream interrupted, waving his hand at the spheres floating in the projector.

Unfortunately, this was, in fact, one of those times where his opinion was entirely warranted , though strictly still not wanted . If only he were more modest about it.

“I think we ought to prioritize the worlds where exposure to the elements is less of a risk.”

Not an unreasonable concern to voice, but strange to mention at this juncture as opposed to anything else he could possibly have brought up. This was something he ought to have mentioned when they were screening the candidates.

“And… why is that exactly?” Megatron asked.

“I doubt that your current infrastructural investment…“ He meant, of course, the Nemesis . “Will make it to the project site.”

And that was without regard for Ratchet’s ominous prognosis about the ship’s ability to transform.

“If there are no actual questions, meeting adjourned.” Not that they had really accomplished all that Megatron had hoped to… as usual.

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“You’re all dismissed.”

And Megatron needed to consult Ratchet. Even if just to have another sane mind to commiserate with.

Chapter Text

With the fleet, such as it now was, having reached the first expeditionary waypoint, it was time for the Decepticons to embark on the next stage of their search for a place to call home.

The titanic ship had barely shuddered to a halt before the soldiers swarmed through the halls to the kick off the new phase.

All remaining vessels flanking the flagship, on cue, began to adjust their relative positions to accommodate preparations. A handful of them would be charged with ferrying shuttles to their respective stars, a more efficient use of time, fuel, and labor then sending shuttles directly from the waypoint.

The shuttle bays of the Nemesis buzzed with activity as crates of supplies were shifted onto the small hopper vessels, meant to be transferred to some of the larger remaining ships. A few mechs assigned to the expeditions but not also to moving matériel loitered in the hallways out of the way of their fellows, waiting to themselves be relocated to their new interim duty stations.

In one of the larger bays, Megatron found himself in the midst of the bustle, correcting mistakes as mechs jostled into each other and their cargo around him.

The clang of metal plating and the tromping of heavy, careless footsteps. Shouting, swearing, and barked orders. A simmering din filled the air, voices echoing off the walls and doubling back over themselves to form an utter cacophony as Decepticons carried out their tasks.

It was hardly any different than directing a battlefield, Megatron thought, holding his arm out to wave a passing crate to Shuttle 3, bound for a wet, but frozen carbon-rich world. Though, he had to admit that the lack of enemy fire did make for less of a stimulating challenge.

A crate framed by green helmet and blue shoulders passed by him, heading right towards the wrong shuttle.

“ Stop! ”

He grabbed the wayward mech—a stubborn soldier by the name of Dropshot, if Megatron remembered correctly—originally bound for Shuttle 4, slated for an acidic hothouse world, by those blue shoulders, hooking his fingers into the wheel wells.

Dropshot yelped.

“Those ablative heat shields are slated for Shuttle 5 !” Megatron swiftly spun him by the shoulders to face the right direction of the shuttle bound for the volcanic planet encrusted with basalt flows. Those shields would have done little good against the other planet’s acidic rains.

Dropshot, thankfully without a word, scampered off in the right direction as though that had always been his intention.

Days like today, Megatron felt more like a nanny at an incubator for freshly-harvested hot spot sparks than the supreme commander of a fearsome, seasoned army.

Soon, however, he too would be loading up onto one of the shuttles, packed in amongst the crates like the rest of his warriors. Practicality won out over rank.

Not that he thought of himself as any different from his soldiers, aside from his exceptional vision and adamantium will to keep them on the right path forward, no matter how difficult or chaotic the situation might become. Rank was merely a convention, not a right to additional extraneous luxury.

Strictly, Megatron didn’t need to go on the evaluation expeditions to candidate planets. His subordinates could handle it on their own. Deathsaurus, Bludgeon, and their peers were competent enough. Though, poor Bludgeon had been assigned to take Shuttle 1 to investigate undersea hydrothermal vents.

However, it would be wise to at least go to one of the first candidate planets. It would be good for morale to show some personal involvement in the project and it wasn’t often he could get off the ship these days. A chance to step away from some of the more mundane tasks and focus on his faction’s future. He would board Shuttle 2, off to see a dry desert with, according to preliminary scans, vast mineral deposits hidden underneath the sands.

One of Deathsaurus’s crew trod sharply on Megatron’s foot while passing by, presumably on accident. He clenched his jaw to keep from visibly reacting to the pain, lest he disturb the workflow. There were more pressing matters for Megatron to focus on now than a soldier’s lack of grace as long as they were on the right path. Loading up was nearly finished as it was.

Among the sea of shifting metal plating and armor, someone essential was missing.

Megatron peered over the heads of his men, trying to no avail to spot a familiar white chevron amidst the chaos.

The absence summoned a dull throb in his spark, for no reason he could label. Maybe he was coming down with something, a weak virus perhaps. It was no matter; a problem for later should his robust immune system fail.

It was a shame, he thought, that he couldn’t bring Ratchet with him on the excursion itself. Not because of Megatron’s health, but because his intelligent company would be sorely missed. Megatron had gotten used to both their conversations and their amiable silences.

Alas the medic’s skills were needed aboard the Nemesis , with his all-important task of trying to treat the slumbering titan. Not that there had been much success on that front lately, but Ratchet hadn’t confided in him what his current obstacles were. As much as Megatron detested a secret being dangled right in front of him, he supposed it would show Ratchet a measure of trust if he allowed him that small gift of privacy.

Perhaps the problem was hope, a fragile ideal that Autobots liked to cling to, even when the writing was on the wall and the circumstances so dire. It seemed even Ratchet, practical as he was, wasn’t immune from it.

Megatron already knew there was little hope for a positive outcome for the titan, but if there could be a positive outcome for his army, that would be all that he could have asked at this point.

Ratchet must have been struggling.

Whereas Megatron had asked for the medic’s aid out of calculated pragmatism, poor Ratchet was at risk of being afflicted by sentimentality. A incorrigible quirk, charming in appropriate measure, that Megatron would simply have to accommodate.

The only hope Megatron himself held, as he looked back over his shoulder towards the door to the maze of hallways deeper into the vessel, was that Ratchet would soon cross that very threshold yonder to see him off, like they had agreed.

Soundwave and Starscream, both of them professional soldiers in need of no sparkfelt goodbyes, had already been left in charge of the bridge—and the forces remaining behind by extension—for the duration of the expedition. They could babysit a slumbering ship and routine operations without much fuss, especially with Tarn and his operatives assigned to support them and enforce the order on board.

Megatron hadn’t received a call, so Ratchet must not have needed his assistance navigating. He would have called of his own volition, but doing so might have implied he didn’t trust in Ratchet’s capabilities. Now, before being apart for at least a number of weeks, was hardly the appropriate time to question his independence.

Megatron would simply have to wait.

The sooner Ratchet arrived, the better, but Megatron would wait however long it took.

Even with his wanderings about the ship, Ratchet still didn’t know his way around the entire thing, especially not areas he had only been a time or two like sections near the shuttle bays.

He could reliably find the bridge, the medical center, the commissary, some of the supply depots, and, of course, the quarters he shared with Megatron. Other than that short list of locations, he had little experience with local wayfinding. Even with maps, sometimes it felt like he might as well be searching for Luna-1 or the mythical Cyberutopia.

Unfortunately, turning into another dead-end hallway, Ratchet realized the immediate consequence of his inexperience was repeatedly getting lost on his way to send his conjunx off on an adventure into the unknown elsewhere.

He swore. Not for the first time that morning. If anyone had decided to tail him with a swear jar in hand, they would have been as wealthy as a pre-war Prime by now.

Would Megatron, pragmatic and ruthless to a fault, grow impatient with waiting and leave without so much as a goodbye? Ratchet certainly hoped not. For all of his flaws, Megatron was still his only actual companion onboard this damn vessel, even if the existence their mutual trust remained an open question.

An answer to that question could come later. Barring some kind of cataclysm, they functionally had all eternity to sort it out.

He debated simply calling Megatron on his commlink, but that would probably just be a bother; Megatron was surely exceedingly busy organizing his ragtag band of thugs into something resembling a functional taskforce. A phone call would just get in the way.

Besides, Ratchet had an urgent delivery to be made before mission launch. Clutched to his chest was a small box, about as large as a short stack of datapads. Carefully packed within were pain patches, should Megatron cause himself undue stress and trigger a migraine while out in the field.

Without his own supply in his subspace, Megatron would surely try to push through the pain.

Like a stubborn idiot.

Did Ratchet feel a little guilty for pilfering the Nemesis’s stocks for these? Perhaps some, but hardly anyone would blame him for prioritizing his patient. A family member no less. Not that Ratchet had ever had a family member before; forming elective kinship bonds of any kind were rare for their kind.

Though “elective” only technically applied in a very broad sense in their particular situation. Ratchet could have theoretically refused, but at what cost ? Now, however, it didn’t matter. What was done was done and Megatron was a moron who had chronically neglected his own health for eons .

Turning back towards what he believed to be a main hallway, Ratchet would just have to try again and hope for the best.

The unlabeled sections of the maps were little use in the places he hadn’t yet been able to mark down. Most corridors were unnamed and very few walls had any posted signage. The titan’s illness had caused most of what there had once been to slough off, requiring the crew to rely on memory and habit. The distraction of being in a hurry didn’t make it any easier.

A voice, unfortunately familiar and smooth, called out to him from elsewhere in the hall. Ratchet could already feel aggravation building in his wires on top of the frustration of being lost.

“My lord!”

Tarn.

Why? Why was Ratchet so perpetually unlucky?

That utter clown was one of the last people that he would have wanted to see, especially while he was in a rush to be anywhere else.

Footsteps echoed through a hall, a sign that Tarn was closing in. Might as well face the music.

Megatron had told Ratchet a little more about this particular officer, that he was charge of both criminal law and political enforcement. There was little distinction between the two in the Decepticons. Ratchet, of course, had been given special dispensations by Megatron himself for political dissension, given that he remained an honorary Autobot, even if he was now a civilian.

He had been warned that Tarn’s voice alone could kill, but so could a well-aimed scalpel. Not that he thought Tarn would try to kill him. Ratchet’s biggest concern was that Tarn would be annoying; that was a far greater personal offense, frankly, in his opinion.

Pulling the box of pain patches protectively close to his chest, he rotated his body to face the source of the voice.

Tarn marched closer, every motion of his joints measured and calculated. A veteran combat officer, disciplined down to the circuits. His wide frame closed in at he approached like a growing shadow. It would have been intimidating… if not for the ridiculous mask in the shape of a Decepticon brand, the absolutely absurd double-barreled fusion cannon, and the overwhelming sense of someone trying way too hard. His ostentatious nom de guerre was a dead giveaway on its own.

Ratchet coughed, clearing his vocalizer to avoid bursting out in laughter at this poor bastard’s expense. Again.

Even Ultra Magnus, for all of his obsessive devotion to the letter of the law, didn’t seem quite this ridiculous, but he would have to put them side by side to truly say one way or the other.

Tarn stopped a few paces away, as though he were abiding by some self-imposed arbitrary notion of a respectable distance to the conjunx of his idol. He ducked his head, a polite acknowledgment, his arm stiffly held in a horizontal orientation against his middle, presumably in some kind of deference. Hardly very egalitarian of him.

Before Ratchet could say anything or object to being treated like some “important” aristocrat, Tarn said, “You appear to be disoriented.”

Was he pretending to be some kind of fancy butler? The idea of Tarn serving up cups of expensive, complicated drinks on a tray while using his refined voice to ask sophisticated socialites if they would care for more was almost too much to bear.

Ratchet frowned to prevent himself from laughing at Tarn’s expense again.

“Is it really that obvious?”

Maybe Tarn would at least know the way to the shuttle bay area, or better yet… Megatron’s location specifically. At the questionable cost of being in Tarn’s presence.

“One would hardly expect you to be familiar with this portion of the ship, of course. Megatron would surely….”

Tarn lapsed into an impromptu tangent, waxing poetic about what he understood Megatron’s expectations for the care of such an honored individual.

Ratchet stopped paying attention to the specific words, just letting the pointless, misguided speech happen around him. Despite Megatron’s warning, Ratchet doubted these particular words could hurt.

The more Tarn talked, the more there was some sense of recognition in the back of Ratchet’s mind, as though he had met this person before, a long time ago. But where? Had he been a patient? Ratchet was certain he would have remembered someone that looked like this, even under a different name. Perhaps it was merely a passing resemblance to someone else or major reconstructive surgery that altered a former patient beyond easy recognition.

“No, I guess not,” Ratchet said as soon as Tarn stopped talking, tapping his fingers against the box. Just how obedient would this officer be if a little favor was asked of him? “Say, Tarn, maybe you could help me with something.”

“Without a doubt.” He eagerly clasped his hands together, the fingers tipped in sharp points that glinted in the light.

“Could you take me to Megatron? I have something for him; he needs it urgently , you understand.”

Tarn’s optics brightened behind his stupid mask, like a turbofox on the hunt.

"Make way! Make way!”

A voice that could only be Tarn echoed overhead as the last mechs, save for Megatron, were loaded into the shuttle. There was hardly anyone left in the shuttle bay to ask to make way in the first place, save for a few launch technicians assigned to maintain the bay itself.

Were it not for the fact that he was waiting for someone, he too would have already been on a shuttle, packed in with his brethren as they began the search for a new home in earnest.

It was his word alone now that forestalled takeoff.

Rolling his optics, Megatron turned towards the voice, ready to tell Tarn that command was neither necessary nor appropriate.

However, he froze, mouth half open, once he saw exactly who it was lurking behind Tarn’s outstretched arm—More accurately, who it was pushing Tarn’s outstretched arm out of his way.

“Good.” Ratchet had finally arrived. With an escort no less, one that he knew Ratchet didn’t personally care for. “You’re still here.”

Tarn was talking, but Megatron pushed it out of his mind. Nothing in the tone was urgent and there much more important things that required his attention right now. If Tarn had something vital to say, he could leave it in a report with either Soundwave or Starscream. They would loop Megatron in if his oversight were found to be necessary.

Instead, he focused on the red and white armor stomping in his direction.

“Yes, we haven’t quite finished the pre-launch checklist yet,” he said, not sure it was wise to outright say he had been hanging around waiting for Ratchet to find his way here.

Though once all of the usual ones had been completed, moving onto “waiting for Ratchet” for some seemingly nebulous purpose was rather uncharted territory for the standard operating procedure.

Ratchet stopped a pace or so ahead of him, well within reach. Though, now that Ratchet was here, he wasn’t exactly sure what to do with him. Simply saying “farewell” and departing seemed inappropriately curt and locking arms like he had done frequently as a miner with his fellows seemed a little like it would have the wrong tone.

He had never had family to speak of before. How did one say goodbye to family, even if in name only? Elective kinship had seemed like a good tool at the time, but its rarity left him out of his depth.

Megatron finally noticed the small-ish box in Ratchet’s hands, a distraction from the fact that they had been staring awkwardly at each other for at least a solid minute.

“What is that you’ve got there?”

Ratchet held it up in front of Megatron’s face, a little too high, perhaps, the box practically brushing up against the end of his nose.

Leaning back slightly, he took the box from Ratchet’s hands and opened it to look inside.

It was packed full of pain patches, probably pilfered.

“Ratchet, that’s hardly n—“

“Use them or don’t, but I’d rather you have the option so you don’t suffer needlessly like an idiot.”

Despite the insult, Megatron found himself smiling—it might have been smirking, out of habit—as he tucked the box away into his subspace.

“Blunt as always.”

“It’s usually the only way to make some people listen.”

“Some people” clearly meaning Megatron.

He stifled a laugh.

“Point taken, but now I—“

Arms wrapped around his middle, just under his chest, and pulled tight. He froze again, optics wide.

No one had ever hugged him before.

So this was how he ought to say goodbye.

Megatron lowered his arms to Ratchet’s shoulders and embraced him.

Chapter Text

It was quiet now with Megatron and a significant portion of the Nemesis’s crew elsewhere. Even if he went to the bridge to look out of the giant viewscreens, the starfield seemed empty with many of the remaining ships gone off in search of a final destination.

It reminded him of his old clinic in the Dead End in the dark, pre-dawn hours of the morning before patients from the last night could crawl or be carried in.

The uneasy peace and stillness always felt like the moments after a disaster had passed.

He hated it.

A familiar jittery nervousness settled into his circuits waiting for the expected chaos to resume.

The first night without hearing the soft rattle of Megatron’s wreck of a frame sleeping in another room had been restless. The first morning without seeing a large fool hunched over a cube on the couch while trying to look like he wasn’t also reading reports while off duty had been lonely.

Sitting on the couch now, two days later, Ratchet felt like a fool himself.

He had, on reflex, grabbed two cubes from the refinery stock. One was set down in front of where Megatron normally ended up. Again.

The old adage about not knowing what you had until it was gone seemed to hold true, with the exception that Ratchet had every reason to believe Megatron would return. Eventually.

In all of his years serving as an Autobot medic, he had never thought he would want Megatron’s presence, let alone consider him a valued companion. Not after the longstanding hostilities.

Experience told him that the only thing for it was a distraction, something to take his mind off of both his stalled investigation into the titan’s health and welfare and the ugly void of Megatron’s absence.

Thankfully, he had just the thing.

Hook and his subordinates weren’t particularly enthused about Ratchet’s offer to volunteer at the clinic for a few hours now and again. However, they couldn’t exactly refuse him, not outright, not with his position at their supreme commander’s side. That was just what Ratchet had been banking on.

More hands were clearly necessary with the frequency of “accidents” and general lack of routine maintenance among the Decepticons.

That and Ratchet had figured his ties to Megatron had to be good for occasionally getting his away around here.

The cases that came in were usually intellectually simple: minor injuries from being inadvertently careless or actively reckless. Usually something that just needed cleaning and welding, fluids changed, and maybe even the verbal equivalent of the most effective placebo of all: the almighty boo-boo kiss.

Good distractions from his frustration at failing to figure out how to communicate with the titan to even establish a wellbeing baseline . It let him feel like he was doing something, anything productive. Being idle—worse: idle and alone —always drove him up the wall.

A bright magenta mech with a penchant for not shutting up sat on the table as Ratchet tested his welder’s function.

“Misfire” he had said his name was on intake, from one of the smaller crews that had been relocated to the Nemesis when the fleet was consolidated.

“And you lost your hand how exactly?” Ratchet asked, interrupting the babbling about his crew’s ship being scrapped.

“Would you believe I lost it in a bet?”

Patients were all the same, no matter what badge they wore or what their rank was: stupid. But often stupid in surprising ways.

“… Yes.”

He didn’t need to know the rest of the details.

“Let’s leave it at that.”

Given that a hand that matched the one already attached to Misfire was brought in with him, he can only presume that the patient had managed to regain ownership of his hand in some way. Since the hand had also been terribly scratched up and covered in both bite marks and some unknown slime, Misfire likely retrieved his hand through a series of improbable hijinks that Ratchet would rather leave as a mystery of the universe.

At least the hand was now clean.

He lowered the protective shields behind his lenses. It was easier, as a medic, to have them built into his optical housing rather than carry around a welder’s mask.

Misfire, however, seemed to disregard his request for no additional information.

“Well, it’s actually quite the funny story, you see. It all started when Krok….”

Ratchet just drowned him out with the sounds of the welder as he started to reconnect the wrist to the arm.

Someone was talking to him and he was being useful; that was what mattered the most.

About halfway through the repair, Misfire’s voice broke through Ratchet’s concentration.

“And that’s when Flywheels said ‘no,’ which was a lie, which caused him to compulsively transform and fling us out of the small storage room we’d been hiding in so Kaon’s turbofox wouldn’t—“

“I’m sorry.” Ratchet put the welder down on the tool tray. “What?”

Not only did he have no idea who any of the people mentioned in the story were, but that was ridiculous.

“No, sorry, you’re right. Anyway, Flywheels can’t—“

“Wait.” Ratchet held up his hand.

Misfire pressed his lips together to comply; it looked uncomfortable, but Ratchet barely registered it as his mind followed some words that had been recently said.

Hiding in a closet.

The closet in the access terminal.

Ratchet hadn’t even thought to check back there.

Primus, he was just as much of a moron as everyone else around here. Megatron at least had the excuse of not fitting through the door, but Ratchet had never considered that he himself could just walk in .

That was it !

“I’ve got it!”

He pointed at Misfire, before remembering that, by all accounts, this unlucky Decepticon was not at all privy to what was going on in Ratchet’s head. Which was probably in everyone’s best interest.

Misfire, however, now, in addition to being confused, also looked a little like he might explode if words didn’t leave his mouth as soon as possible.

“… Go on; let’s finish with your hand here.”

“So, as I was saying….”

He let the words wash over him; Misfire’s yapping had already brought him an unexpected boon. Ratchet finally had another angle that wasn’t throwing himself repeatedly at a wall of text he couldn’t read.

If Ratchet had an adapter, he could have tried to make use of the medical access ports in the walls of the access room, but they were too big for his onboard jacks and connecting directly to a patient with an unknown viral load was risky to everyone involved. Even if the readouts of a diagnostic were in a strange script, he could likely still puzzle his way through some of the data… if he could access the readouts in the first place.

He had stubbornly told himself he could just puzzle through the glyphs of the currently available screens, but after days of struggling in vain, he had to admit that he needed to try a different approach to make progress. While highly educated, he was still no linguist; he didn’t have the tools or expertise to try to unravel the script unaided.

But that chatty Decepticon in the clinic had unintentionally given him an idea.

He would need a third path.

As he stood in the access room with his hands on his hips, he was annoyed that it had taken listening to the unrelated ramblings of an urgent care patient to realize that a third path had been staring him in the face all this time.

The sealed door in the back of the access room had to go somewhere .

Ratchet was tired of secrets hiding right in front of him. Maybe through this sealed bulkhead he could find something useful, something that would tell him how he could help the titan… anything. Anything at all would be more than he currently had: the shame of poking blindly through unintelligible menus.

Looking too closely without understanding what he was seeing could do more harm than good with a careless slip of a finger. It was like operating on a patient with unknown health needs while wearing a blindfold.

Megatron hadn’t told him not go past the sealed bulkhead, not directly anyway. Megatron hadn’t even mentioned the door to him. Then again, the door appeared a touch too small for the large mech. Ratchet was grateful for his own comparatively more average build this time.

Of course, there was a chance it was locked. Perhaps then curiosity would be self-policing, but standing around and pondering wouldn’t give him the answer.

Hands stiff, he smacked them together to loosen the joints before seizing the wheel on the door.

A little torque and the silicone seal popped open with a puff of shed paint flakes.

The disused hallway beyond was dim, lit only by red emergency lights, just as the access room had been when Megatron had first showed it to him before they had somehow managed to restore some power.

Along the walls, he could just barely see what looked like a few more mysterious ports and access panels. Some of them looked incredibly similar to what could be found on a more typically-sized Cybertronian, only scaled up, but some he couldn’t begin to imagine what they were for.

The path also disappeared around a bend in the hall, leading off to somewhere unknown. The access room itself didn’t even show on the maps that Megatron had given him, let alone whatever was accessible from it. The unknown, however, was where answers liked to hide.

The air in the hallway was still, stagnant and cold against his olfactory sensors. No ventilation to cycle heat, but this area was likely not intended to be heavily trafficked.

Old purple paint had long since flaked off onto the floor, leaving naked, exposed walls; this area had, unsurprisingly, not been on the maintenance schedule. The metal was likely sensitive without a protective ablative layer. Paint served more purposes than simply aesthetics.

The paint on the floor had formed a thin layer of lightweight debris, likely to be kicked up by any footsteps, generating a more hazardous concentrated cloud than the paint shedding elsewhere on the ship.

If he were wise, he would have found industrial respirators to cover his vents and face with, or better yet, a contained hazard suit, but those weren’t to be found aboard any Decepticon vessel. The supplies for that level of personal protective equipment were simply not available—even Autobots with their many alien alliances would struggle to find them these days. The disposable face respirator in his subspace would have to do to keep the paint flakes out of the more difficult to clean vents.

Ratchet let the cheap respirator magnetize to his face. It was uncomfortable with the now warm air closed in against his plating. Heat exchange would still occur, but more slowly.

The vents elsewhere on his body would just have to put up with a little abuse, he thought, carefully stepping across the threshold into the dim, narrow hallway.

Little clouds of paint flakes puffed upwards into the air, hanging there for what felt like ages before slowly sagging back towards the floor. It was probably too much to hope that the air stirred by his own ventilation wouldn’t disturb the dust too much; if anything it would just further agitate what his steps were kicking up.

If Ratchet waited for the mess to settle after each step, he would never get anywhere.

To hell with it, he thought, marching forward through what was quickly becoming a maelstrom of paint particles that would undoubtedly lodge into every single one of his exposed seams.

Hot, dry air blew across his vents as Megatron stepped out of the shuttle onto the warm sand. He frowned at contact with the breeze, holding his hand above his optics to cut down on the glare from the planet’s bright sun.

Most of what he could see was a sea of gray dunes with occasional rocky outcroppings. Mountains, worn round by time and the elements, loomed in the distance. Perhaps they should have put down closer to those.

Aridity alone was scarcely the problem; Cybertron itself was mostly devoid of water, the thoroughly polluted Rust Sea and the occasional red polar glaciers notwithstanding. Unlike the organic creatures he had encountered over the course of the war that required water to live , his people only needed water for industrial and cleaning purposes. A dry environment could be a reasonably comfortable home.

Megatron took a few steps out onto the desert, letting his weight come to rest on the sand to see how the terrain behaved. It shifted slightly underfoot, but just slightly. There was either enough of it compacted together below the surface to remain relatively stable or, more likely, the layer in this particular spot was relatively thin with a solid rock support not far beneath.

The warm air continued to blow past his plating, too gentle to have picked up any particles of sand.

He crouched down, scooping up some of the sand in his hand.

Light, worn smooth by the wind. Mostly black basalt grains with white quartz mixed in guessing by sight. Produced by ancient lava flows that had long since cooled and then weathered into this after volcanic activity subsided. The mixed composition of the sand led to the overall gray color.

Ample materials for glass, lenses, and cabling. Likely some other useful minerals could extracted as well with some clever separation equipment.

That matched the report. More materials would likely be available elsewhere on the world with a little more exploring. The sandy expanses, however, had at least been expected.

Of course, the original spectral analysis of the planet’s composition had been done from a distance, so some details would necessarily have been difficult to determine without boots on the ground.

The heat , however, posed more of an obstacle than the aridity. It could cause metal to swell and deform, joints could stick, transformations could be less smooth or accurate, electrical equipment or components could malfunction or melt. Even without any in-depth anatomical knowledge, Megatron could just imagine some of the complaints Ratchet might have made.

If only Ratchet were here with him now to make them.

Better that than the chatter and rustle of his soldiers scrambling about taking samples and measurements and falling down the dune with indignant screams.

With a sigh, he let the grains of sand slip away through his fingers.

If only they had taken the strange longing in his chest away with them. Perhaps he had simply habituated to Ratchet’s company. The problem would likely resolve itself upon his return to the Nemesis in a few weeks, but in the meantime… the best he could was ignore it or distract himself from it.

Worst of all, aside from the potential complications from excessive heat itself, it would take more energy to make a comfortable home than on a cooler world. It was easier to warm a cold space than dissipate an excess of warmth, especially since their own bodies gave off heat continuously. It didn’t help that energon liked to spontaneously explode above certain temperatures.

Perhaps this world wasn’t quite that hot, at least not where his shuttle had touched down. The reports indicated a hot, but tolerable, peak daytime temperature followed by frigid nights. Not impossible to deal with, but the temperature swing could put additional stress on any infrastructure they would build.

Regardless, they would need something more solid to put any actual structures up.

Of course, more surveys would be done with drones along with manual data collection as they hopped around the surface on the shuttle, but initial impressions of this particular world were not as promising as he had been led to believe.

It was tempting to call the whole thing a waste of time when they had none to lose, but….

The white grains of quartz sparkled pleasantly amongst their basalt brethren in the light.

Megatron held his hand out to the side, still crouched.

“Vial,” he said, addressing no one in particular. One of his soldiers would surely be lurking nearby.

“Of course, sir.” Ah, Bitstream.

At least he knew what a vial was, something which couldn’t be said for a number of Decepticons. Though factional efforts to improve literacy for the underserved since the beginning of the war had changed some of that. There were still plenty, unfortunately, who had little interest in something if it couldn’t be used to shoot an Autobot.

In short order, something cold and smooth was placed in his hands, one of the pieces of glassware they had brought for taking samples. He knew by touch alone. They used vials like these in new mine tunnels to ensure sufficient presence of the desired minerals in the rock. It wasn’t often he benefited from the skillset he had been forced to develop upon his construction.

Grinning to himself, he scooped some of the mixed sand into the vial before capping it off.

Rather than handing it off for analysis, however, he tucked it away in his subspace.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Bitstream?” he said, standing back up.

Bitstream was holding an open case, empty vials waiting inside. He had clearly been expecting to get that vial back. Of course, he would have no idea that this particular batch of sand had a much better place to go than some laboratory back on the Nemesis or one of the fleet’s flanking ships.

Autobots liked little keepsakes, didn’t they? Arbitrarily sentimental objects were important for morale, after all. Perhaps a piece of the very candidate world itself would be a suitable one.

“Aren’t you—“

“No, not this one.” A pained shout carried up from the gully between this dune and the next. “Take another after you help Hotlink back up. Again. While you’re at it, tell Nacelle to look for the largest clearing of bedrock in the area. We need to know what sort of space is available for building without having to shift the sand.”

Bitstream clapped the case closed. Though rather than flying off as might be expected to get the job done promptly, he hesitated, standing still in front of Megatron like he had seen something unusual.

Megatron waved him off, as though that would get the message across.

“Sir, you’re smiling.”

“Get going, Bitstream,” he warned, “ before your comrades sandblast themselves into oblivion.”

Chapter Text

Ratchet hadn’t been sure what he would find around the corner of the hall. Maybe more doors to unknown places, maybe reference material compiled by ancient engineers, maybe incredibly oxidized oil cake from a long forgotten creation day party.

However, charred Cybertronian remains had not been anywhere on the list of possibilities he had considered, especially not charred remains that he could recognize .

Even after all the long years since he had seen his old colleague up close, Ratchet knew instantly that the scorched black plating piled on the floor was… Flatline.

There was no doubt in his mind.

Heavy armor lay curled up on itself as lifeless hands clasped tightly in fists around the memory of something—cabling perhaps—that had long since fallen away… or that he had fallen away from. Even with how dark his armor had naturally been, a thick layer of soot coated the surface, particularly around his hands and face. That soot was also flecked with dust and shed paint. A pained grimace was frozen in place on Flatline’s immobile face, optics long ago having gone dark.

Stubborn, stubborn Flatline.

No wonder no one had found him or knew what had happened to him. Megatron had only said that Flatline had been “gone,” which Ratchet had taken at the time to mean “dead” but… not like this, not… misplaced in a closet that didn’t officially exist.

Almost no one would dare enter Megatron’s private quarters uninvited… let alone access a sealed off room and hallway not on any official records. Starscream or Soundwave theoretically had the sheer bolts to try and the authority to get away with that level of trespassing, but Ratchet couldn’t see any reason or benefit for them to not report Flatline’s death in some capacity—perhaps with some delicate truths carefully withheld. So Ratchet reasoned that they were likely in the dark.

And Megatron himself couldn’t fit down here, so it stood to reason that he himself had no idea exactly what had happened, though he might have had suspicions . Odd, though, that he had never sent anyone in to explore….

Perhaps that was intentional, given the secrecy around the ship’s true nature.

Did he not suspect that Flatline could have gone into this passageway? Did he think that Flatline had just disappeared somewhere else ? Did he even know this door had been unlocked? Surely, he had known something .

However, what Megatron did or didn’t know was a problem for later, Ratchet decided. Megatron wasn’t even here right now to ask about it. Instead, he was many light-years away, bothering someone else. Unable to explain himself.

Unless Megatron had been withholding information from him—a distinct possibility that couldn’t be easily discounted—Ratchet was the only one who A) knew exactly where Flatline had gone and B) knew for absolute fact that he was dead.

All the while Ratchet wondered about who knew what, Flatline simply stared, unseeing upward at the ceiling. Had he been dead before he even hit the floor?

Cautiously, Ratchet approached the heap that had once been Flatline, crouching down to get a better view without necessarily having to touch him.

Not yet anyway.

His profession had accustomed him to taking a detached stance from dead bodies; the war had then accustomed him to having to do the same for the corpses of those he had known personally.

The hurt could come later; it usually did.

Flatline was just another unlucky victim for examination, a corpse in a makeshift morgue.

A datapad lay on the floor at the body’s feet. Ratchet pocketed it on reflex for later perusal before he leaned in to start his visual examination of the decedent’s remains.

The hands, lifted up, were locked into a sort of rictus, as though the joints had been welded into that posture by intense heat.

The exterior armor didn’t match that though. It was scorched but neither melted nor significantly warped, except perhaps on his palms—hard to tell from this angle. The entirety of the frame was similarly seized, supine like he had simply fallen over. Typically the hydraulics in their limbs would relax after death, allowing an inanimate body to flop around, but if damaged by heat or power, they could become stuck in place.

Ratchet’s initial impression was that cause of death was electrocution, highly dangerous and excruciatingly painful but not always outright fatal to their kind. The charge would have had to have been powerful, but it would explain the mismatch between the seized posture and the lack of widespread armor warping.

The typical acrid smell of scorched metal had long since dissipated, so the now unoccupied frame had been here for quite some time. At least weeks, but more likely months or years given how must dust had settled. He didn’t have a timeframe for when the victim had been reported missing.

There was no crackling sound of electricity coming from the frame, no thrown off heat, so the decedent’s body had clearly stopped closing whatever circuit he had tripped as soon as he had dropped away.

Which meant he was safe to touch. Probably.

Good, Ratchet thought, given that he would need a more thorough examination. However, there remained a chance that whatever had done this to him still lurked in the environment, an open circuit, ready to strike.

The dead, even if they represented a failure to intervene, were at least obedient patients. They didn’t need to be told to stay put.

Ratchet stood, turning himself to face the same direction as the victim must have been before his death, based on where he had fallen.

The wall.

With its various access panels and ports. One panel, about the height of his shoulder, remained wide open to reveal a heavy cable, a similar diameter to the gap in the victim’s fists, hanging down, loose. It resembled one of the connecting wires used to transfer energy from the activated energon power generators throughout their bodies… only orders of magnitude larger. In the average Cybetronian body, these were barely visible without the aid of a microscope unless they were bunched together in ganglia. Even then, they’d be a lump, with each generator indistinguishable.

Ratchet could just hear the faint, soft hiss of ungrounded power. Live, still wasting energy and probably further draining the Nemesis’s reserves and strength.

“ Really? ”

Even new-builds would know better than to just grab a hot line with their bare hands. Flatline—the victim , he corrected himself, couldn’t have been that foolish; Ratchet refused to believe it.

Something else must have happened here.

The rubber insulation on the cable itself was cracked and split, fraying off every which way. Had that been damaged before or after the victim had grabbed it? If it were visibly damaged before, then the victim surely would have seen the danger.

The back of the panel’s open door, however, caught Ratchet’s eye. There would be time to figure out what exactly happened here later, time to mull over the details. The cause of death was at least now obvious enough.

All the exterior metal in the hall was bare, but yet here, better preserved on the back of the panel until someone had opened it, were markings in the very same script from the menus that had frustrated Ratchet for days . They had doubtlessly been the bane of the victim’s own investigation before the—probable—accident, but there was at least minimal paint flaking on this component.

Wait.

Investigation.

The datapad.

Ratchet yanked it out of his subspace and hastily powered it on.

A menu—thankfully one in modern Neocybex—appeared, neatly categorizing the datapad’s contents. The victim had always been fastidious with his notes on patient care; good to see that transferred to… whatever this was. Still technically patient care in a way.

None of the labels jumped out at him as being immediately relevant to the current situation, but one title—“PV”—piqued his curiosity. Ratchet selected it.

This summoned up what looked like a small, partially filled correspondence chart for some of the very glyphs that Ratchet had wasted countless hours wrestling with.

Aha!

“PV” for Primal Vernacular. Straightforward, easier to notate repeatedly than the full name. Ratchet had known that was what he had been looking at before, but little else.

Very few glyphs in this partial chart actually had any Neocybex equivalents noted down, but there were some. More than he had before.

If he could have just sounded the glyphs out, perhaps he would have had better luck, given the sheer overwhelming volume of Primal Vernacular borrowings in medical and technological terminology. Unfortunately, Primal Vernacular had been written in an entirely different script that didn’t readily map to the modern language. He couldn’t have even begun to guess the sounds, but… somehow Flatline had found some starting data.

One of the filled in glyphs matched with a fragment on the panel in front of him.

“Energy,” he said, squinting at the character on the wall.

Well, that felt obvious given the nature of the cable. And the dead mech on the floor, a testament to the forces the cable could wield.

He scoffed.

“Hardly a mystery of the universe what that thing is for.”

The marking, however, was nestled in the midst of a longer, unknown sequence. The only other character he could recognize was a numeral—the numbers from Primal Vernacular’s script were still in active use—shunted off to the end.

Or was it the front? Primal Vernacular went the other way, didn’t it? Ratchet had no idea. This wasn’t his field.

By the time Ratchet had been forged, the Functionist Council had severely curtailed who could learn what of Primal Vernacular. Medics like him had been limited to the transliterated bits and pieces pertinent to their profession… and whatever shards had been available in religious practice for those who had cared for that sort of thing.

That was part of the problem, a problem he had never imagined having until he were trying to treat a dying titan from what might as well have been the dawn of time .

He frowned down at the datapad.

While not the perfect answer, it was more than he had before. Something he could start to work off of, maybe. A partial key to the puzzle—One of the other entries in the chart had a button for additional notes.

Ratchet clicked it, a box of supplemental text popping up next to the entry.

Verify with Soundwave; seems inaccurate.

Aha. So, that was the trick.

The victim—no, Flatline had had help .

Ratchet turned to look at the silent corpse on the floor, a charred husk where his old colleague had once been.

“It appears we’ll be working together again, Flatline… in a manner of speaking. One more time.”

Ratchet felt like a fool.

Soundwave had been there, an available resource this entire time. Yet Ratchet had never once considered reaching out for his assistance. Flatline hadn’t let his pride in self-reliance get in the way of marching towards progress, whereas Ratchet had. Instead, he had been so sure that he ought to fail or succeed solely on his own merits.

He ought to have known better by now; he was far too old to be that blind or so he told himself.

Of course, Soundwave would have already known about the titan, he assumed. Megatron couldn’t keep his plans, at least ones of this magnitude, in any semblance of order without Soundwave’s involvement. He surely already knew of Ratchet’s role in them.

Datapad tucked away safely in his subspace, Ratchet rapped his knuckles against the door to third-in-command’s office. It was Starscream’s shift on the bridge, based on the voices he had heard when passing by earlier, which meant that Soundwave would most likely be here.

The impression he had gotten from other Decepticons was that Soundwave was one of those… dedicated officers. It reminded Ratchet a lot of Megatron actually… which meant it was easy to guess a likely hiding place for his quarry.

Before Ratchet could call out to identify himself, the door slid aside and… as expected, Soundwave waited in his seat behind the desk.

He waved his guest in.

Ratchet complied, letting the door close behind him.

In his personal experience, Soundwave had always been one of the stable Decepticons, not prone to unprovoked violent outbursts or juvenile shenanigans, an example of good behavior. Being alone in an office with him would likely be comparatively safe, as safe as anywhere else on this rickety old titan.

“What do you need?” Soundwave asked when Ratchet stopped in front of the desk.

There was an empty chair that he was almost certainly welcome to use, but Ratchet, instead, decided to remain standing. This would hopefully be brief.

“I actually was hoping you could help me with a little translation work. I’m trying to read some old medical texts in Primal Vernacular, but….” He left the fact that he was out of his depth unsaid. Soundwave could figure it out.

“Do you have the text in question?”

Ratchet nodded, pulling out another datapad from his subspace, leaving Flatline’s tucked away. He had copied some of the glyphs down, stripping them of their original formatting.

It was a poor attempt at hiding the original source, of course, but perhaps Soundwave would do him the courtesy of not looking too closely. It was an unlikely hope. He hadn’t exactly prepared a good lie for how he’d come across the information in the first place.

“Pieces of it.”

Soundwave took the datapad from him, looking through it. His face was inscrutable behind that mask and visor, but Ratchet wasn’t put off by it, not by that part. He had worked with many mechs in the past who had similarly chosen to completely conceal their faces for various reasons, including First Aid.

The trouble Ratchet had was with Soundwave’s lack of any other obvious emotional tells to make up for it,. With a rigid posture, measured gestures, and a deliberately monotone voice, he was left guessing what suspicions this loyal lieutenant might be harboring.

Soundwave set the datapad down, turning his opaque face back to Ratchet.

“Where was this found?” he asked, pointing at the datapad’s glowing screen.

“Flatline’s quarters. I was looking for any clues he might have left behind, any of his notes about the titan.”

Ratchet didn’t even know where Flatline’s quarters were or if he could even get in if he found them.

“This is just the part of his notes that I needed your help with.”

He had been hesitant to hand over the original datapad itself, soot having fallen onto it from Flatline’s demise. It would have been too suspicious.

Flatline’s recent membership with the silent majority needn’t have been made public knowledge quite yet. It might have caused unnecessary panic and too many questions. The existence of the titan was still a secret from most of the Decepticons, after all.

Furthermore, an Autobot finding his remains would also have only stirred up resentment, accusations…. Ratchet’s position on this ship was already somewhat tenuous and with Megatron away, he reasoned it was best to not agitate that particular slumbering swarm.

Besides, Flatline had already been “missing” for many months. What were a few more days or weeks? He wasn’t exactly getting any deader. Any announcement could wait until Megatron returned.

Hoping to hide his small deception, Ratchet straightened his back, the plating overlaying his struts loudly clicking back into place.

Soundwave said nothing, only nodding before turning back to the screen.

His light-pen flew across the screen, the glowing diode jotting down some quick notes on the sensitive material.

He handed the datapad back, which Ratchet promptly tucked away.

“It is not much. My knowledge of Primal Vernacular is minimal, incomplete. Ask Vos for further detail. He is fluent.”

“Vos?” Just how many clowns in this army were named after cities? Tarn of the Glorious Decepticon Revolution or whatever had been silly enough.

“A member of Tarn’s team in the Decepticon Justice Division. Tarn can put you in contact.”

Great. Just great .

Soundwave turned on the commlink on his desk, dialing in Ravage’s frequency on the holographic display, now that Ratchet had had several minutes to walk away. It was unlikely he would backtrack to visit Soundwave again so soon.

He had expected Ratchet to be a poor liar.

Doctors, in his experience, had tended to come in two flavors: masterful liars or doomed truth-tellers. It was good to see that, once again, he had judged someone correctly.

Ratchet was hiding something .

The circumstances for how he had found that data could have been easily disproved with access records and camera footage.

But why would he hide something? That alone was usually a more valuable question to ask than what someone might be hiding. Everyone hid things, secrets, intentionally or not. It was the reasons for it that tended to be more revealing than the secrets themselves.

Soundwave recalled seeing the document Flatline had compiled previously, of which Ratchet’s notes were clearly a partial copy. Flatline had asked for some basic assistance and… hadn’t reported back afterward. Not that it was terribly surprising given that it had seemed a casual request. How Ratchet came to possess either the original document or a rough copy was a question that summoned others like it.

Why hide it from him specifically? Where was Flatline other than “missing in action”? What was Ratchet’s agenda? Was Ratchet keeping something secret from Megatron as well?

No image of Ravage appeared on the holographic display once the line connected. It would have caused an unnecessary distraction for an agent in the field for their feeds to be clogged up with visuals while on calls.

“Yes?”

“Ravage,” he said, “There is a new assignment.”

“I’m listening.”

Ravage was a skilled agent, a mentor that Soundwave had always respected even if their ranks implied it was the other way around. He trusted that Ravage would find the missing links quickly and with great care.

“The Autobot, Ratchet, is hiding something. Follow him.”

Soundwave didn’t mention that Ratchet oughtn’t to be harmed; they had both understood that from the moment the treaty had been ratified. Ratchet wasn’t the enemy of the Cause; he wasn’t the enemy of their quest for “home.”

“Of course, Soundwave. I’ll report back when I have more information.”

He ended the call with the push of a button.

Chapter Text

Ravage found following the Autobot’s path to be a simple, almost routine task. The Autobot made absolutely no attempts to hide his comings and goings or to obfuscate his trail in anyway. He certainly didn’t walk like he was hiding something. If anything, his movements were more reflective of the probable reality that he wasn’t exactly sure where he was going nor how to reliably get there.

Not that the Nemesis was exactly easy to navigate without experience, Ravage supposed, as he stalked along the halls behind his target.

The Autobot mumbled angrily to himself as he turned around… right into another dead end hallway.

That bumbling, of course, could still have been an act, part of the cover—Autobots weren’t inherently stupid despite appearances to the contrary—if there even was anything to cover up. There was no guarantee that there was any subterfuge here to find and Soundwave hadn’t said he was certain something was amiss, just that he wanted Ravage to check .

And so check he would, for Soundwave’s sake. Whatever good it would do in the end. An example of following through to model integrity, even if just to be a counterpoint to those less ideal models set by Buzzsaw and Laserbeak.

Besides, it was at least a task, which was more than he had on his list of pending duties prior to Soundwave’s call the other day. With a nearly empty ship to lurk aboard, it had been unsettlingly quiet. Little to do, little to watch. Most remaining on the vessel had been assessed as “low risk”.

Though Tarn, now traipsing about the Nemesis like he owned the place, did occasionally make himself an amusing spectacle. Soundwave’s replays of the camera feed, many angles perfectly captured, of Tarn’s introduction to Megatron’s pet Autobot awhile back had been a source of rare amusement.

Not today, however.

The starkly cold metal of the halls underneath his paws was a reminder that he was on a mission, even if it was a boring one.

The Autobot, after much arguing with himself, had finally started off down the sector’s main hall once more. He still seemed blissfully unaware of his surroundings. Not someone Ravage would have chosen to perform surgery, let alone lead the entire medical apparatus.

Megatron was clearly desperate.

However, Ravage, having remained unnoticed with the help of both his attention deflectors and the Autobot’s preoccupation, was sure he had heard the word “clinic” just now. Somewhere in that pile of grumbled complaints.

Well, the Autobot would never get there going that way. Camera feeds from the Nemesis’s security systems had shown him heading to the clinic on numerous occasions previously… and getting lost each time. Ravage had no interest in tailing his quarry for that long. It would just be a waste of time.

Silently, Ravage deactivated his attention deflectors with a soft click . Even without having yet been seen, the imagined sensation of potentially being visible chilled his circuits.

He ran past the Autobot, before wheeling around to come to a halt in front the wayward medic.

The Autobot stopped in his tracks, looking down at Ravage in surprise, which just confirmed that he been mistakenly sure he had been alone. As originally planned. It would have remained that way if he hadn’t gotten lost. It wasn’t like the halls rearranged themselves.

“Ravage?” he asked, foolishly.

Who else could he possibly have been? Just how many beastformers with this shape had the Autobot seen on this ship? The answer was likely zero given that Ravage had not previously shown himself, but the point remained.

Ravage said nothing, merely sitting down in front of the Autobot, waiting to be sure he had the interloper’s full attention. He knew and understood why Megatron had wanted this medic aboard, but that didn’t mean Ravage had to like it; he just had to follow orders.

“Do you need something?” the Autobot asked, in a patronizingly friendly tone rather like he thought he was talking to an animal.

Typical higher caste behavior. Ravage was used to it, even if it always made him bristle. Even other Decepticons would treat him like a mere animal sometimes, whether intentionally or because they simply didn’t think about it, acting on habit.

He kept quiet and simply nodded his head, indicating the path behind.

“That way?”

Yes, you idiot.

He pointedly nodded again to underscore the instruction.

While Ravage was just as capable of talking as almost any other Cybertronian, he often chose not to… when the alternative was very possibly saying something he might regret, something that Soundwave wouldn’t have been proud of. He had to be an appropriate role model, even after all these years and knowing Soundwave would do the right thing of his own volition. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw certainly wouldn’t. Especially not Buzzsaw .

Anything Ravage might have said to the Autobot now… was best left unsaid. As long as Ratchet kept his hands to himself, ignorant comments could be disregarded.

For now.

Instead, he wove past the Autobot, silently leading the way. The sound of footsteps behind him confirmed that at least the fool was choosing to follow him, perhaps for lack of any better options.

Standing at the open doorway to the Nemesis’s modest “clinic,” Ratchet was grateful that Ravage had appeared out of nowhere like some mythological psychopomp. Thankfully, that hadn’t meant he was dead and would therefore be forced to confront the existence metaphysical realities.

Historically, before his paperwork union, a sudden Decepticon in the vicinity would have been a cause for alarm, but aboard the Nemesis , that tendency no longer held weight. Encountering anyone other than a Decepticon now ? That would raise far more questions.

All the same, Ratchet considered himself lucky that this one had decided to have mercy on him and his struggle with navigating this damn boat.

How kind of one of Soundwave’s clever pets—Ratchet wondered where he had even found them all—to show him the way to the clinic. Sightings of them, however, during the War had tended to mean one was being watched but on this ship, perhaps Ravage had simply been en route elsewhere.

Having been to this clinic several times now, both to restock and to volunteer his time and skills, it was embarrassing to still get lost on the way. Sometimes it felt like the halls were rearranging themselves, but he doubted the ship was healthy enough to pull those kinds of shenanigans. The only time he had made it there without getting waylaid at least once was when he had dragged Megatron with him to restock on pain patches.

At least if an animal were to judge him, they wouldn’t say anything to anyone else about his shortcomings. A meager balm for his lightly bruised dignity.

Ravage waited patiently at his side.

“Thank you,” he said, leaning down towards Ravage with a smile. He reached out to very gently pat the creature on the head in gratitude.

He didn’t notice Ravage’s ears flattening until his hand had already touched the warm, smooth metal of his brow.

In an instant, claws buried themselves into the back of his hand, the sharp edges dragging bleeding score lines into the plating.

Ratchet yelped, recoiling immediately and holding his wounded hand protectively to his chest. He was distantly aware of Hook and his team pausing in their work nearby, but no one said a word.

“Don’t patronize me, Autobot!”

A voice!

Ravage… Ravage spoke? Ratchet didn’t ever recall hearing Ravage speak before, unless he had forgotten, but…. He had never thought that….

“I’m….” Ratchet struggled with what to say next. Icy shame bubbled up around his spark, cloying at his core and searching frantically for some sort of excuse to defuse the situation.

All this time and he had never once realized… that Ravage hadn’t been just a clever animal. Ratchet had seen “domesticated”—lobotomized—beastformers before, but Ravage wasn’t. He couldn’t… none of the telltale weld scars on the back of the head and, well, the talking was evidence enough that he was whole.

While Ratchet’s thoughts whirled in a storm confused defense, Ravage calmly sat down, glowering up at him with a rigid, dignified posture.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered, searching for the right words to apologize with, “I… I didn’t….”

“You didn’t know that I’m a person.” The words were cold, mirroring on the outside the shame Ratchet nursed inside, like Ravage were forcibly reigning himself back in after lashing out.

This must have happened frequently over his life; Ratchet could only imagine Ravage had an abundance of patience.

Still recovering from the realization of what he’d done, Ratchet slowly shook his head. Gritting his jaw, he flexed his hand just to be sure he still could, warm fuel dripping sluggishly from the shallow gouges. He could repair the physical injuries, a simple matter.

“Right.” Ravage continued to scowl, an air of bored annoyance in the squint of his optics.

Ratchet opened his mouth to respond, to defend himself. He hadn’t meant harm, but… but no words came out.

Then again, maybe words alone wouldn’t undo years of this sort of treatment.

Ratchet’s jaw still hanging open, Ravage continued, his voice measured and stiffly calm, “It would do you good to remember , Autobot, that there are no animals aboard this ship.”

Looking away for just a moment, Ratchet took a deep ventilation while his processor scrambled to find anything he could say, anything at all.

A soft click sounded nearby and when Ratchet looked back, Ravage was gone.

Everyone else in the clinic had already resumed their business, leaving Ratchet to dwell on yet another entry in his lifelong list of mistakes, yet another thing that couldn’t be repaired by the touch of his welder.

The desert had thus far been a failure. A complete and utter failure.

Megatron shouted orders to the soldiers as they dug into a promising spot in the sand, sheltered by a craggy overhang. The sun, blazing down wherever the overhang’s shadow didn’t reach, warmed his back. His voice echoed off the rocks as the contingent of seekers he had brought with him scrambled to obey.

The scanners had indicated some solid material underneath the overhang, one last point of interest. They still, even this close, couldn’t quite determine what it was. The outline was mostly straight but something about the material reflected fuzzy, indistinct borders with it and the surrounding minerals.

The true richness of the mineral deposits had not lived up to the initial scans and what could have feasibly been extracted would have yielded far less than would have been necessary to make a viable outpost, let alone support the demanding, complex infrastructure required for a homeworld.

Whatever land wasn’t buried in sand was made up of exposed rocky outcroppings, uneven and brittle. Not suitable for structures of any significant weight if a whole foundation could sheer in half at a moment’s notice.

After several days, he had tired of the climate. What had started as a warm breeze eventually became an abrasive gust, the honeymoon period of being outside of the confinement of a spacegoing vessel having worn off.

All the more so without any conversation with anyone other than his soldiers to keep him company. His position was, often by necessity, a lonely one. If only Ratchet hadn’t been needed on the Nemesis , ensuring that there would even be a ship to which they could return.

If they found nothing worthwhile today… Megatron would end this particular expedition and send them back to the Nemesis . This was the final item on the preliminary itinerary.

Shoveled sand rhythmically hissed its way down the slope.

At least he had a gift, he thought as he stood under the glaring sun, well away from the shoveling under the outcropping.

A paltry sample of sand, to bring back for Ratchet, stashed away in his subspace. It was but a trifle of a thing, but something to both let Ratchet imagine he had seen this world and for Megatron, while keeping it close, to imagine that Ratchet had been at his side to keep him company.

Together with Bitstream, Megatron monitored the sensor outputs nearby while the others toiled. While he was no stranger physical labor alongside his soldiers, digging… was something he preferred to personally avoid where possible.

And shifting sand was something his team here was more than capable of without his effort. Hotlink was doing a fine enough job setting an example of what not to do, having managed to bury his feet, despite having gone through an entire war having had to dig more than enough foxholes to have figured out how to do it right.

“Redwing!” Megatron yelled, his voice echoing off the overhang. “Get Hotlink free before he entombs himself!”

The scarlet seeker hesitated before tossing his shovel aside and forcibly hauling Hotlink out of the sand by his elbows, a pleasant experience for absolutely no one involved.

A sharp crack, partially muffled below the hill of sand, caused everyone to freeze. The soft hiss of sand flowing under its own weight grew louder and the slope began to dip inward.

Mechs shouted as they scrambled to run down the slope. Shovels flew and the sensor equipment lower down toppled over out of Bitstream’s hands.

Hotlink fell face first to the sand, knocking Redwing over as they were both pulled down. Nacelle and Blazewake disappeared, along with their shovels, beneath the sand, swept backwards into the yawning hole that had opened up in the hillside. Screams were swallowed up, drowned by the inexorable cascading flow of rock.

Megatron’s grip on Bitstream’s shoulder was all that kept the shouting fool from running after his brethren, as though he too wouldn’t be swept away.

For Cybertronians with wings, it was as though they had all collectively forgotten they could fly away from most ground-based threats.

Carved brown rock, streaked with red rust, was uncovered as the sand disappeared, the anomalous material from the sands.

By the time the sand came to a halt, the four diggers were nowhere to be seen and an ancient stone gate, inclined backwards towards the outcropping gaped up at them from the wreck of the hillside. The sides of the gate has cracks like a door had given way, broken the under pressure of the excavation above.

Bitstream tried to pull free and Megatron simply released his grasp. With no torrent left to pose a threat, there was no need to restrain him.

Pained and annoyed groans echoed up from the maw of the gate, signaling that despite their sudden relocation, the four seekers seemingly lost in the line of duty would be ready for roll call as soon as they were unburied.

Megatron cautiously followed after Bitstream, finding no need to scramble. Their team wouldn’t be going anywhere.

The sand squirmed as wings and limbs wriggled themselves free, the occasional swear punctuating the process as Bitstream jumped down to dig his colleagues out with nothing but his hands. Despite the exposed shovel on the floor nearby. Decepticon intelligence and ingenuity would never cease to amaze him.

However, Megatron thought, as he crouched by the wide, slanted gate and looking over the edge into the pile of sand below, this gate itself presented a new complicating problem.

He put his hand on the carefully carved surface, worn smooth by sand and time, widening and flattening all exposed grooves.

The material itself was likely some mineral containing iron, which would have explained some of the problems with the scanners. Anything generating or responsive to magnetic fields could interfere with the signal bounceback if not accounted for.

Environmental clues in the earlier reports had indicated that perhaps this world had suffered significant climatic shifts over thousands of years, leading to the predominantly hothouse desert environment they now sweltered in, but there had been no prior indications that it had once been inhabited. Perhaps that was because the signs had all been buried, lost to the combined forces of time and nature, as the sand overtook whatever had been here before. Much like the desert had swallowed this magnetic gate.

This structure, while itself long abandoned, stood as silent testament to the contrary: that this empty world had previously been someone else’s home.

Per the terms of their peace treaty, this world was now officially off-limits.

Of course, the ruins’ existence could theoretically have been covered up or they could have merely been ignored, but… Ratchet would have expected good faith behavior for the treaty. Especially after Megatron had insisted on not flouting the spirit of the thing back when they had left Cybertron.

And, ultimately, there was nothing on this world they either wanted or needed. This world meant nothing, not to them. Perhaps it would be worth sending a xenologist one day to engage in some archeology… if they had one to send, but that sort of social science had been lacking in the Decepticon wartime apparatus. Peacetime remained to be seen, but wandering through space only really felt like a new flavor of war, with the whims of universe itself being their enemy, rather than the beings that lived within it.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t a problem for now. Now they needed to leave and return to the Nemesis empty-handed, save for the meager mineral samples.

Perhaps the other teams had had better luck. There was no telling how long he could keep the Nemesis alive, even with Ratchet’s help given the vessel’s terminal diagnosis.

Seekers variously mumbled and grumbled in the chamber below, flapping their wings and ailerons to rid them of embedded sand.

“Prepare to board the shuttle,” he said, voice echoing off the stone walls of the chamber. “Grab your tools and move; there’s nothing for us here. Not now.”

They would just have to knuckle under and search for their home elsewhere.

The only bright spot to this utter failure was that they could leave, a week early no less; the thought of hearing Ratchet’s incessant fussing and complaining seemed oddly soothing to his exhausted spark.