Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The war stops. The work doesn't.

The end of the four-million-year-long Great War, announced live on human television, finds Ratchet in his medibay piecing Bumblebee's thigh back together.

Optimus Prime and Megatron shake hands. Optimus gives a speech about peace and coexistence and all the other rights of sentient beings. All the humans visible on camera are ecstatic; the bots are relieved, confused, upset. There's a barely visible crease in Optimus's cheek, a mark of stress and deep exhaustion. It reads as solemn if you don't know him.

And if the camera operators panned forty degrees clockwise, they'd catch the still-rising spire of smoke from the wreckage of their only way back to Cybertron.

"Hey, can't be that bad here. Highway system's solid," Bumblebee says, and winces as the piercing gun goes off again, smacking loudly against his leg.

"Hold still, four left," says Ratchet through the spare brads clenched between his teeth. "Yeah, could be worse. We could be stuck on Orbrix. With the worms."

Bumblebee shivers. "Don't remind me of the worms."

"Hold still," Ratchet barks again, and clamps Bee's leg tighter between his knees, resettling the piercing gun. Bumblebee tangled with Lockdown and came out of the fight with his plating torn from hip to knee. Tearing far too wide to weld back together, and Ratchet's out of spares in Bee's size—so Bumblebee's got to deal with the bracing plate and fasteners till his plating heals.

"Two… one. That's it. You're done." Ratchet's barely pushed himself back on his wheeled work stool before Bumblebee springs up.

Ratchet has to drop the piercing gun to catch Bee's elbows before he falls and takes their privacy curtain with them. "C'mon, you're smarter than this."

"Yeah." Bee's smile is weak. "Gimme the deets, doc-bot."

Ratchet transfers Bee to his stool, his lipful of brads to the workbench, and a copy of Cold Connection Repairs and You: A Patient's Guide from the medibay console to a datacard. First Aid glances up from Ironhide's brutalized shoulder joint when Ratchet steps out from behind the rattling curtain to the medibay proper; they exchange stone-faced nods on Ratchet's way over to the console station.

Bumblebee looks ready to tear out of the medibay. Ratchet makes the care instructions quick, passes over the datacard, and gives his blessing for Bee to have a single drink at the celebrations.

"And that doesn't mean a double. You hear?"

"Yeah, yeah. You gonna swing by the party tonight, doc?"

Ratchet braces his hands on his lower back, takes a survey of the medibay, and clicks his tongue. The do-or-die urgent cases are done. They're down to the big injuries already stabilized in the field and the walking wounded—though most of the latter have scattered, ready to nurse their bullet holes along with their drinks. It's only clamps keeping a comatose Air Raid from bleeding out before they can get to him, and poor Beachcomber's going to need a whole new sensor suite manufactured and installed before he can be discharged.

"Maybe later," he says.

"And what are you going to do when you finally run out of work?" Bee asks it lightly, one hand already on the door, but there's a weight to the question—one none of the Autobots thought they'd have to answer so soon. So soon, and so far from home.

"I'm going to shut down for a month is what I'm going to do. I've been planning this nap for a hundred thousand years, and none of you are keeping me from it."

Bee laughs exactly as much as that deserves and leaves, waving a hand over his shoulder as he goes.

And First Aid steps up beside him, clipboard tucked comfortably into his elbow, with a report on Gears and his missing leg.

Ratchet makes it out to the party a little after Optimus rolls in from the dog-and-cyberpony show. There's a ripple through the crowd wherever Optimus goes: Autobots leaning first towards him, then away from Megatron looming grey and dour like the Necrobot at his side. Makes it easy to sidle up to where they're propping up a patch of wall, drink in one hand and portable scanner in the other.

Ratchet toasts Optimus. "Well, what now?"

"There's the question of the night." Optimus doesn't react as Ratchet checks the temperature of his patches with the side of a finger, making sure no fever's setting in. He politely turns out his arm to let Ratchet at one long, curving weld down his elbow. But he passes his drink to his free hand first.

Optimus sighs into his glass. "Rebuilding. Politics. The forging of a shared vision. A new life."

"On Earth." Megatron stares down at his own drink, bitterness clear on his face. He may be on their side, but that doesn't mean he's not as dangerous as ever. His supposed change of heart rose from ruthless pragmatism. No way he doesn't change his mind again at the next available opportunity. Ratchet's keeping an eye on it, same way he keeps an eye on Trailbreaker's engex consumption and the currently benign lump in Whirl's autogyro.

"We adapt. It's what we are. We can do it again here."

"Save your lines for the UN," Ratchet grumbles, and Optimus shrugs lopsidedly under his scanner. Megatron looks at Ratchet sidelong: you said it, not me.

"What are your plans, Doctor Ratchet?"

Ratchet shoots the last of his drink before it eats through his mug. That's the problem with a Nyon mule: the energon additives react with the traditional copper container given enough time. They drink fast down in Nyon.

Or did.

Ratchet's not thinking about that.

He sets his cup down to give Megatron his own spot check. Megatron bends down at Ratchet's beckoning hand to let him check on the gouge across one cheekbone, a parting gift from Starscream.

"I told Bumblebee I'd sleep for a month," Ratchet says. "And Primus help you all if you wake me up early. Welds are setting well. You could even get out there and dance if you're careful with the shoulder patch."

Megatron grimaces. "What, as punishment?"

Ratchet laughs, startled. That's the hell of it: he'd like Megatron if he could. There's something stern and personable and funny there under four million years of spilt energon.

"Your punishment is making sure Optimus doesn't take any interview requests tonight when he needs to rest. And yours, Optimus, is not raising your arms above shoulder height for another thirty hours."

"Ah, so I'm recused from dancing." Optimus smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling where the metal's worn thin.

"I should tell you both to get out there. Nice mild exercise—keeps your energon flowing, just what the doctor ordered."

"I should make you write a prescription for that."

"Don't test me." Ratchet wags a finger at the both of them, giving them the old CMO eyeball from under his brows. "I mean it. No interviews and no brawling, or I'll give you something worse to think about."

Ratchet leaves his empty mug with them without an ounce of guilt and sets out on a spiral through the packed hall, keeping an eye out for any bleeders on his walk back to the medibay.

With everything, it's a full two weeks before they're done with the last of the major Autobot injuries. And that's with Perceptor and Wheeljack helping out with machining replacement parts, and the delicate work of writing new circuits for poor Beachcomber, who's pining for clearance to go snorkeling again. Summer's in full swing in this hemisphere; as soon as he gets the okay, he won't surface for air again till the fall.

Ratchet ceremonially hands in the all-clear report to Prime, cleans off his office desk for the first time since the acid incident of 1991, hands over control of the medibay to First Aid, and rolls through the base garage to the parking spot he's had his eye on. Out of the way of any overhead glare, in a quiet corner, at just the right distance from a ventilation shaft to promote healthy gas exchange within Cybertronian systems. The Autobot base doesn't have much going for it in the way of luxury, but parking spot E7 makes up for all the rest of it.

He settles into recharge with a sighing little puff of air, ready for his first real rest in four million years.

And wakes up eleven hours later, overheated and uncomfortable.

Ratchet backs out of the spot and back in again. No dice. Stretches out his transformation seams. Blasts his cooling system. Tunes his radio to a local numbers station, for the love of Primus.

Still can't sleep.

Fourteen hours after handing over the CMO keycodes Ratchet stumbles back into the medibay, grinding at his eyes with the heel of one palm.

Triage, a nurse and their primary shift ward manager, looks up from the sanitation station. "What are you doing here?"

"Hello to you too," Ratchet sighs. He hooks a stool over to the main console with one foot and sits down heavily.

"You're clocked out," Triage points out.

"Can't sleep." Ratchet tabs into the schedule. Coolant irrigation procedure for Gears, no problem, oil change for Jazz, good luck getting him into the medibay, follow-up with Sunstreaker on a new elbow joint that isn't sitting right, probably needs a few micrometers shaved off the replacement… Nothing they need him for. Busywork at best. But it's something to do.

A broad blue hand settles on his shoulder, cool against Ratchet's overwarm plating.

"You're clocked out. Don't make me call First Aid."

"You don't need to."

"Oh, no, I need to. He wrote up a protocol for this." Triage stops his next sentence with a raised finger. "And he's acting CMO right now. I can't countermand his orders." Unspoken: neither can you, dipstick.

Ratchet shrugs her hand off irritably. "And what's this protocol of his?"

Triage leans on the desk, blocking his view of the console screen. She's a solid bot, dependable, kept her aftermarket telescope attachment installed all through the war. Tungsten guts. Never let Decepticon shelling stop her from studying an alien sky.

Unfortunately, she's equally as impervious to Ratchet's blandishments.

"If you come in for anything other than a medical issue of your own or a two-tier site-wide incident, I get to pull the intruder alarm and call a security team member of my choosing to escort you out. And First Aid, so he can watch."

Elbow on the desk, rubbing at his eyes, Ratchet looks up at her. There's a small, satisfied smirk working at the corner of her lips.

"That's insubordinate," he proposes without much hope.

"First Aid said I should call Ironhide, you're old friends, he knows how to deal with you. But me—I said, no, we need an expert for this operation, let's call Arcee." She's fully grinning now, one heel kicked forward and wagging against the ground. "So, I'm going to ask just once, Ratchet. It's all clear on the base. No incidents. Are you experiencing any symptoms of your own you'd like to report?"

Ratchet pushes back from the desk, looks up at Triage from his position on the wheeled stool. "Well, nurse, I've got this awful headache, and I can't sleep, and all my juniors are conspiring against me."

Silently Triage opens a desk drawer, pulls out one analgesic chip, one sleeping aid, and a cesium saltwater taffy, and folds them into Ratchet's unresisting hand.

"Get out before I call the cops," she advises.

"I regret the day I signed off on hiring you at Iacon Central."

But he gets up, pats Triage's arm on his way to let her know there's no hard feelings.

"And don't come back later just because you think Ambulon's a softer touch," she calls after him. "He promised to call Arcee, too!"

That's his backup plan out the window. Ratchet sighs and goes.

The base is like a case of nails all shaken up, nothing in its right place. Normally full halls emptied of life, others packed with Autobots congregating, standing a little too close, laughing a little too loud. Nobody trusts the Decepticons not to begin the war again, even without Megatron. Nobody much trusts Megatron not to defect back to the 'Cons, Earth alt or not, for that matter.

Ratchet wanders the halls, overwarm and annoyed, eating his candy. Any fresh energon in his tanks means at least another two hours of wakefulness before he can fall asleep again, but it's not like Ratchet was going to be able to sleep anyway. Tiredness weighs on him, heavy on his shoulders, prickly against the backs of his eyes. On a regular off-shift he'd stay hooked up to his recharge slab and read—back issues of The Vibroscalpel if he could scrape up the attention span, murder mysteries otherwise—till he fell asleep. No chance of that today.

There's a loud game of something that might be billiards spilling over from the rec room into the mess hall. Ratchet dodges around it. He sticks his head into the security booth to say hello and Red Alert looks up with such an alarmed expression on his face that Ratchet just backs out again without saying a word.

Optimus is in his office with the door locked. One more meeting with the human organization he's been talking with, news that hasn't trickled down to the rest of them yet. The muffled voices leaking through the door are low and tense.

Ratchet retreats before he can get roped into some logistical argument; just because he's spent six million years filling out requisition forms between hospital work and the war doesn't mean he likes it.

He ends up at his own door, grumpy, restless, bored.

Their current base, somewhere in the middle-lower portion of the United States, has been occupied by them for the last eight years. Barely a blink in their war, but a significant one. Tire marks and dust have built up on baseboards. There are known blind spots in the security system. Known leaky ceilings.

Ratchet's little suite hasn't had time to build up more than a layer of clipboards and discarded tools on the standard-issue bed and desk. With the filtering they have to do in the base ventilation system to keep organic contaminants out of delicate machinery, there's not even much by way of dust.

There's a stack of single-use sanitizing wipes on his desk, absently carried over from long shifts in the medibay. A small pile of human novels in large print. Akunin, Simenon, Christie, only a little worse for wear. (Manipulating paper materials is an excellent way to keep in practice with the microservos in his hands he doesn't often have to use outside of neural surgery. And Ratchet will admit, if pressed, that some of these humans can really turn a phrase.)

The cruft of years of war. Abruptly intolerable. Ratchet tosses his candy wrapper at the trash can, watches it bounce off the mound of discarded packaging within, and claps his hands together.

Ratchet's got a floor covered in a series of sorting piles and an empty closet when Wheeljack knocks at his open doorway, head fins a hesitant lavender.

"You suitable for company, Ratch?"

Ratchet straightens up with a grunt. "When am I not?"

Wheeljack tips a hand towards Ratchet's floor piles. "When you're surrounded by garbage and on the rampage?"

"If you want to see a rampage, wait till I start on my office. What can I do you for, Jackie?"

"Drink?" Wheeljack grins at Ratchet's suite, warm, just a little mocking. "Somewhere else?"

"I could eat," Ratchet allows.

They stroll together down to the mess hall, the same route they've taken hundreds of times. They've worn ruts into the hallway floors of practically every base they've been deployed to together over the course of the war, talking over engineering puzzles and the gossip of the day.

Wheeljack's not too chatty for once, fiddling with a miniaturized hygrometer. Looks like something spun out of his work on Beachcomber's brain, honestly. Another inspired tangent.

Ratchet lets it lie till they've pulled up a couple of chairs in a corner of the mess hall. The tabletop's just slightly sticky. Ratchet braces his elbows against it and tries not to think too longingly of the cleaning wipes he left back in his room.

A loose billiard ball knocks into his ankle. Ratchet gives it a kick, watches it bounce across the floor towards the rec room door.

"So what's eating you, Wheeljack?"

Wheeljack sighs and spins his full cube of energon delicately around by one corner. (And that, Ratchet thinks with private vindication, is why the sticky table.) "I made a decision, Ratchet, and I'm not thinking of changing it, but I am still asking myself why I made it."

"Must be one hell of a decision."

"What are your plans, anyway? Y'know. With the war done."

Ratchet stretches his legs out under the table, slumping into his creaking chair. "There's the million-shanix question. Who knows? Gotta do something. Something real."

"Or you'll go crazy."

"Or I'll go crazy. And Triage will quit and First Aid will foment revolution in the medibay. Could use a visitation from Primus to tell me what, though."

"Just so you could do the opposite, you old atheist," says Wheeljack fondly. He takes a drink of his energon. "Well, it wasn't Primus but a Prime that put out the call for me, and I'm not as contrarian as you."

Ratchet's eyebrows go up. "Something new with Optimus?"

"Something old." There's barely anyone in the mess hall, just Hound sleepily collecting an armful of cubes and Huffer and Gears kibitzing over a game of petropoker, but Wheeljack leans in conspiratorially anyway. "It's his new group of humans. G.H.O.U.L., something like that. Prime's making a deal with them to handle rogue Decepticons."

"War's over."

"Think the Cons know that?"

Ratchet grunts. "So you're joining up?"

"Reckon so. Something to do," Wheeljack says, with a shrug. "Access to Earth tech. And if Prime says it's the going thing, I'm not arguing."

"I thought the going thing…" Ratchet frowns across the room at Huffer gloating over a pile of chips. "Honestly, I thought you'd be on rebuilding the space bridge as soon as Inferno declared the site safe."

"Yeah? Where am I supposed to get three miles of tironium filament, a reciprocal beacon, and the nucleon to kick off a pan-galactic ignition sequence this side of Gorlam Prime?"

Unhappiness pulls at Ratchet's mouth. "I didn't think any of that could stop you. We don't have anyone better at working around material shortages. Not even Brainstorm."

Wheeljack slumps, fins a deep sullen green.

"Jackie?"

Head on his forearms, muffled by the sticky table, Wheeljack says, "Prime said no go."

Ratchet's half standing before he knows it. "What do you mean no go?"

Huffer and Gears look up at the sudden noise. Wheeljack yanks him back down with a clatter. "Tell everyone, why don't you?"

"Yeah, why don't I?" asks Ratchet, but he lowers his voice before continuing. "You can't say that and not explain yourself."

Wheeljack winces. He rubs at his mustache. "Ah, hell, Ratchet, it's Prime."

"It's Prime," Ratchet agrees. His fingers are tapping without his permission. "And that's that?"

Wheeljack slumps back down onto the table. His elbow squeaks across its tacky surface. "Just don't tell Prime you heard it from me."

Optimus answers his door with a harried expression. "Ratchet? Is something the matter?"

"Like you don't know," Ratchet says hotly. He bulls his way into the office under Optimus's arm; that's what he gets for being built so tall.

Nobody else in the office for once. Optimus must be done with meetings for the day. Ratchet stops in front of the desk, arms folded. It's absolutely covered in paperwork, both on sensible Autobot-issue pads and sheets of local paper. The autographed basketball (Jordan, '92, To the big guy curving along one rib) isn't on its little stand. Like Optimus was just fiddling with it. Diagnosis: nerves.

"I would never judge one of your field decisions," Ratchet starts, and Optimus casts his eyes up as though to far-away Cybertron in the heavens.

"That would be a first," he says. But he steps inside and closes the door anyway.

"I would never judge one of your field decisions," Ratchet repeats, "and destroying the space bridge was that. All right. But we're not even going to try to go back?"

"It's not advisable at the moment." Optimus settles into a patient, listening posture. But Ratchet isn't willing to be stonewalled today.

"Energon—supplies—people who might need our help—home, Optimus."

"We have a home here."

"We have a bivouac. And the locals are getting restless." Ratchet's fuel pump's going like anything, spiking his engine temps for physical exertion that isn't coming. There's a sharp prickling coming from behind his eyes, ready to bleed light. If he cries in Optimus's office he'll never forgive either of them.

"There is no guarantee we could construct a new space bridge. If we did, the remaining Decepticon resistance would only try to capture it again. If Cybertron survives, and they got hold of the Allspark—or if their allies there did, and bridged over new troops—Ratchet, our species would not survive."

There's a deep grief and weariness in Optimus's voice. It takes the wind out of Ratchet's sails all at once.

Ratchet rubs at his eyes. "So it's a triage call."

"It is. I hoped you'd understand, old friend." Optimus gives him the big eyes. "It won't be forever."

"Nothing's forever." There's the first lesson of medicine. You're always fighting a retreating action.

"There's work to be done here on Earth. With G.H.O.S.T., we're going to make Earth a safe home for Cybertronians and humans alike. Outreach and integration—that's the plan. We could use you."

"Oh, don't try selling me on your group project now," Ratchet snaps. "You can run the post-war trials on your own. Good luck finding someone unbiased to serve as judge once you round up all the defendants, by the way."

Optimus's face is entirely impassive. He's not letting Ratchet read him.

"Anyway," Ratchet adds, "I have plans of my own."

That gets the reaction.

"You do?"

Ratchet is as surprised as Optimus is to discover that he does.

"Yeah. I do."

He draws in atmosphere through his medial vents, lets it out the distal ones, breathes in again medial. An old calming technique he learned from Flatline back in the day. When they still saw each other at work and not across a battlefield.

"I'm going to set up a free clinic. A proper one. Neutral. First Aid can handle anything that comes up here; he ought to get more independent experience under his drive belt."

"You could keep treating your patients here."

"You think Decepticons and deserters would show up for drive-through hours when Ironhide's on door duty?"

"And who will keep you safe without Ironhide to scowl at your patients?"

"I've managed before, remember?" With deliberation, Ratchet twists the knife. "You should trust me—you were the one who encouraged me to open a free clinic before the war back in the first place."

"You were so bored you were driving everyone around you up the wall."

"So I'm bored without the challenge of wartime practice. G.H.O.S.T, G.H.A.S.T., whatever, this new project with your pet Decepticon isn't enough for me."

Optimus reaches out for the basketball on his desk. He rolls it between his palms once, twice, strength precisely controlled. No reaction to the dig at Megatron. "You're set on this course?"

"I am. Glad we got this settled." Ratchet eyes Optimus, working up to a second head of steam. "Before you're preoccupied keeping Starscream from suborning the jury."

Optimus looks at him from under the rim of his helmet, just about as sarcastic as Optimus ever lets himself get. He still looks exhausted. There's something he's not saying. Ratchet doesn't have the heart to pull it out of him today.

"Then I'll wish you luck, old friend."

They've had ups and downs as long as they've known each other. They know the routine. Leaving well enough alone till the slag's cooled and they can tip what's left out of the crucible.

Time away will do him good, Ratchet decides. Even without the fresh challenge of a new clinic.

He pauses on his way out, checklists and spreadsheets already populating themselves in his mind. Back to requisitions after all.

Slowly, he says, "Yeah, I'll take the luck. And some of the petty cash to get started."

Chapter Text

Starting up a new clinic is by no means easy work. The logistics, the supplies, the physical effort of building, moving, installing equipment—Ratchet would gladly trade it for a full-body electronerve system replacement surgery. On a shuttle.

But it's work he knows how to do, and it's a good distraction from—

It's a good distraction.

Better that than sit around the base and watch Optimus make his careful rounds, quietly recruiting just a handful of 'Bots for his new propaganda machine.

Real estate listings lead him to his new clinic's site, a long-closed auto shop close enough to a mid-size city unusual vehicles shouldn't be the talk of the week among any locals.

Applying a combination of Optimus's money and Megatron's favourite human's boyfriend's charm to a local real estate agent nets him the property deed. All it costs him is the time for a series of interviews on the development of Cybertronian medicine. Ratchet hasn't lectured in millennia but Alex Malto is an easy audience, as interested in out-of-date Iacon General staff gossip as he is in the development of t-cog replacement surgery techniques. His combiner-sized crush on Bumblebee is a welcome source of contemporary gossip on its own.

Ratchet hauls out and repairs all the disused medibay equipment in their storage closets. Ironhide, Elita, and a quiet Wheeljack help him drag it all down the highway from base to the clinic. First Aid waves goodbye with an expression just slightly shellshocked. No G.H.O.S.T. badge on him; Ratchet tries not to be too obviously relieved.

There's plenty of plain, hard labour. Scrubbing out the entire garage. Neutralizing and disposing of all the old chemicals. Repairing the car lifts and the roll-up doors, and installing new ones between each repair bay. Setting up geothermal taps to power the clinic systems and route spare energy to the energon condenser. Tweaking, with careful nudges, the hologram that keeps the exterior looking abandoned to local eyes.

Ratchet likes the humans he's met, mostly. Doesn't mean he wants to be a tourist attraction.

It's good to work with his hands. Get out of his head. His anger with Optimus—with Earth—with the state of the war, as much a part of their lives as ever even now—boils up and fades, again and again. Kicking at the chip duplicator till it's wedged firmly into its mounting helps.

Grimlock shows up, stays a handful of days, helps with the bigger equipment and the light fixtures on the high ceilings. Everything's a patchwork of old orange-painted equipment from the Ark and new metal, brushed steel or enameled white. But it's taking shape all the same.

He updates Ratchet on things back at Autobot base—who's joining up for the slow work of rousting out the remaining 'Cons, who's taking the opportunity to make themselves scarce and disappear into the crowd of the billion and change automobiles on the planet. Optimus is holding some of them back from joining G.H.O.S.T., Grimlock says, which means for whatever reservations Ratchet thought Optimus had about them, there's even more he didn't see.

It all just makes Ratchet tired. Tired and angry and desperately worried for Optimus and Elita, there in the thick of it.

They made their choices. Ratchet says it to himself, over and over again.

The final step before he can call the clinic open is setting up the broadcast. Low-ping, mostly passive, just enough to let other Cybertronians know he's there. It says, on a loop followed by his comm code: FREE CLINIC – NEUTRAL – REPAIRS FOR ANYONE.

Ratchet flips it on and pings it himself for the pleasure of hearing it respond.

It doesn't take more than one moment of pleased triumph to realize that he's set himself to have nothing to do till patients start rolling in, a hundred miles from the rest of the Autobots.

A month of clinic set-up, after two weeks of post-battle cleanup, after half a lifetime of war, and it's a shining new clinic and absolute lonely boredom that finally lets Ratchet get in a good nap.

He's woken three days later by his first patient: Bumblebee with a brand-new alt on a courtesy visit.

"Sweet digs, doc," Bee says, surveying the clinic with hands on his hips. "Don't even have to crouch to get through the doors."

"The last owners did a decent amount of truck repair. It was the best space I could find short of an airplane hangar." Better, he'd thought, not to make the clinic too inviting for Starscream and his remaining air squadrons. Just in case. "Now, who went and let you scan a new alt on a healing leg? Let me see how the repair's integrating—"

"I blame Aid!" Bee laughs, fending Ratchet off with one hand. "He cleared me! Sent me with paperwork for you, even."

They get settled in a repair bay, Bee reclining and Ratchet at his side. The datacard is meticulously filled out: surface damage healing well enough to accommodate a new alt, no weakening of plating. Even a good handful of checkup tasks crossed off on top of that, leaving Bee in what Ratchet has to admit is perfect condition for a road trip.

"First Aid did good," he says at last. "Let me see that transformation sequence, yeah? Then we're done."

"You know what I want to hear!" Bee hops off the examining table and stretches out. His flip into alt is easy, no signs of pain or catching seams. The scanner agrees with his assessment.

Bumblebee's new alt is a sleek racing model. "Well, medically you're clear, but when it comes to taste…"

"Hey, can't a bot want a change?" Bee revs his engine. "Hear that? I'm ready for the road. Life is a highway, Ratchet."

"That's what they tell me." Ratchet steps away, giving Bee transformation space. "Before you head out on your life-changing journey, though. A word, Bumblebee?"

"Uh-oh. That's the serious voice." Bee unfolds himself again; Ratchet waves him over to a seat.

"It's the G.H.O.S.T. thing."

"Ah." Bee winces. "Bossman talk to you?"

"I manage to have some thoughts all on my own once in a while," Ratchet says, dry. And he hasn't had a substantial conversation with Optimus since he left base with two autoclaves strapped down in the back of his alt. No need to stress Bee by telling him that. "Now, you're not wearing their badge, so can I assume you turned them down?"

"Under strong advisement from himself." Bee waggles his fingers above his chestplate, ta-da! "I'm going off-grid. Just one more reason to refresh the look. Something that hasn't been on television for twenty years straight, y'know."

"I assume you've got it all worked out with Optimus, then." Ratchet lifts a hand—"You don't have to tell me. But off-grid means no easy way to resupply."

"Our scouts are trained in on-site procurement, doc. And I train our scouts."

Ratchet clicks his tongue. He's saying it all wrong. "No, I mean… Come here when you need something." Still likely to ruffle Bee's sense of independence. "I've got an energon condenser. Makes too much for just me. I'm going to run out of storage tanks."

"Yeah? Appreciate it, doc."

"And mention the clinic to anyone you run into along the way. I didn't tell enough people before I went."

"You did kinda run out on us."

There's still some oil on his palm. Ratchet scrubs at it with a shop rag. "First Aid picked up all the patient files I left. I made sure nobody's care was left hanging."

"Not what I meant." Bee sighs. Shakes his head. "I'll keep it in mind. "

Ratchet sees him out with as much energon as Bumblebee can cram into his trunk. It'll leave Ratchet short a day or two till the condenser builds up a new supply, but that's no problem.

Before Bumblebee goes, he asks one last question—"You mean it about this being a neutral clinic, Ratchet?"

Ratchet looks him straight in the eye. "Always."

They both know what they're talking about. No need to say it. Bumblebee twists back to his alt—it's still startling, seeing him so low to the ground—and flashes his brights.

Ratchet lifts a hand. "Safe travels."

And Bee's off like a rocket, burning rubber, sound system cranked. Blasting Tom Cochrane.

First contact he gets from a Decepticon comes with that same question. It's a nameless ping on his comm line, spoofed ID, untraceable. Ratchet's occupied writing out a piece of circuitry—the brain for a medical drone, not necessary outside of an emergency. But emergencies always come, sooner or later. So it's fifteen minutes before he can disentangle himself enough to check the message.

"Neutral." How serious are you?

He's got a stock answer ready.

I meant it back in the Dead End and I mean it now. Don't shoot someone else on the premises and we're golden. Ask around if you need to.

It's not a brag, bringing up his all-too-brief record in the Dead End; it gives the other party a measure of control, giving them something to dig into on their own. He treated plenty of people who went on to join up with the Decepticons back in his unsanctioned little clinic, clinging to existence for a bare century before the war broke out. Even Megatron himself once. Not even the result of the political violence: just a piece of rock that worked its way somewhere even a miner frame wasn't built to handle. It tore up an energon line inside his leg something nasty before Optimus—Orion, back then—had hauled him in.

There's a long pause before his comm beeps again. Ratchet leans back over from his workbench.

Acknowledged.

Ratchet's never managed to get over the feeling of responsibility for anything that happens to his patients once they leave his table. Call it guilt or arrogance; Rung called it both, last time they crossed paths. A life saved—that's on him. A life lost—two, ten, twenty—on him. Repaired killers sent back out to kill again. Long causal chains, if/then statements sprawling out from the moment Ratchet patches a spark chamber and sends its owner back out into the world.

It never stopped him fixing 'Cons when they crossed his table. He'd talked it over with Ironhide, with Prime, with First Aid, who had a ruthless streak Ratchet only ever fell into in triage conditions.

"If there's less 'Cons, we win the war faster," Aid had argued, back a dozen deployments ago.

"Yeah, but what kind of world are we setting up the rest of us to live in if we compromise like that?" Ratchet had asked, sighing, elbow-deep in a patient's energon processing unit.

"One with less 'Cons in it," First Aid had replied, and that was all either of them could really say to the other about it. That hadn't been too long after Pharma. Hard year for both of them. Harder for Aid.

If Ratchet hadn't patched up Megatron before he bled out long before the war, what would be different? If he hadn't been friendly with Shockwave when they both had regular business in the Senate?

No way to know. Not a game he can play for long, not and stay sane.

But it's hard to not chew it over again and again all the same, on quiet shifts when nobody comes by and nobody messages, and there's no living creature for miles bigger than a white-tailed deer.

At first he mistakes the thing circling high above for some kind of Earth bird. It hovers high above the clinic, very steady in the high blue sky, wings barely tipping one way then the other.

But the sun shifts angles, as it does so quickly on this small planet, and Ratchet wouldn't have made it this long into the war if he couldn't recognize the play of light on metal when he sees it.

A drone, then. The humans are experimenting with them, spurred by Cybertronian neighbours and their own military ambitions. Could be G.H.O.S.T. keeping an eye on him.

Staring up at his from the auto shop's driveway, annoyed and developing a crick in his neck, Ratchet makes a rude gesture up at it.

"I never told you not to call till you had something worth saying, Optimus!" he yells up at it. Then, considering, adds: "Or you, Wheeljack!"

When Ratchet goes back inside he slams the door behind him.

Doesn't take too long for the mystery 'Con to show up. The same anonymous Cybertronian messages him, Can you guarantee privacy? Right now?

Ratchet tosses his screwdriver down onto his medical drone's half-finished grasping assembly with relief. Done, he types back, and flicks on the clinic broadcast's busy signal: come back later, doctor's out.

The moment he does, the clinic's proximity sensors go off. Ratchet heaves himself up from his desk.

There's a cassette limping down the cracked asphalt towards the clinic, a second keeping pace in the air ten feet above them. Avian cassette's in decent condition, could use a bite to eat and a polish but who couldn't; it's the cat that worries him, has him cataloguing injuries on their approach. Laserbeak and Ravage, must be. Nobody's seen Buzzsaw in half a decade.

"So it wasn't one of Wheeljack's spy drones staring down at me," Ratchet says, letting his voice carry. He folds his arms, stolid, maybe a little grumpy-looking, but absolutely not a combat stance. If it brings the broken target of the medic's badge on his shoulder into better view, all the better.

"Wrong on two counts, you jalopy!" Laserbeak cackles. "Call me a drone or an Autobot again and you'll see how over this war is."

"No comment on 'spy', then. All right: who's my patient today?"

Laserbeak rolls disbelievingly in the air; Ravage below snarls silently. "You think Ravage's tail is supposed to look like that? What kinda doctor are you?"

"One who needs his patient to either express a need or elect a spokesperson within my hearing," Ratchet stresses. He doesn't move from his position half in front of the clinic's open doors.

His comm pings. Ratchet fumbles for it. There's a new message in the chain from his mystery 'Con reading,

Laserbeak does the talking.

The anonymity falls away from the other party. The signature code is, unmistakably, that of the bot favouring her left paw in front of him.

Ratchet snaps his comm shut. "All right, Laserbeak does the talking. So let's talk, Laserbeak."

He leads them inside to the third bay, less because it's closest to the store room than because he left a stool by the examining table the other day. "Up here, thank you," he says, slapping the table mid-stride on his way for a tool tray. It hadn't taken Ratchet long to perfect a kind of distracted bustle he could deploy with perfect decorum at a moment's notice to keep a patient's dignity intact. By the time he turns back around with everything he needs, Ravage is lounging on the table like it's a throne, and only the security camera would ever be able to tell him if she'd needed the help up.

Laserbeak launches into a chattering account of everything she needs fixed: tail broken off and only not sparking from torn wiring because of the electrician's tape wrapping it, front right leg not recovering even after weeks magnetized to a splint, something rattling loose inside. Prior repairs helpful but incomplete without full medical expertise.

The name "Soundwave" doesn’t appear once in his litany.

"So you said this place is neutral. And anonymous. And free. So here we are. So do your job," Laserbeak concludes gracelessly.

Ratchet lays aside the beginning of a new patient file. "I'd like to start with some scans. But first, it's clinic policy to ask—do you need any assurance of neutrality before I begin?"

It's Ratchet who makes the clinic policy. Another useful dodge.

Ravage yawns at him scornfully, teeth on display. Laserbeak says, "We didn't need to ask around about the Dead End, doc. You fixed Frenzy's drill."

Not that Ratchet remembers every single one of his patients, but he frowns thoughtfully at that; Frenzy is a memorable sort of person, and he tends to remember the patients who go on to kill Autobots.

"She wasn't Frenzy yet back then," Laserbeak adds. And glowers.

"Fair enough. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you—either of you—feel more secure. I'd like to take some mag particle scans, excuse me while I collect the scanner…"

The previous attempts to repair Ravage are clear on her frame. Ratchet frowns down at meticulously clean welds that didn't hold up, metal patches of the wrong composition refusing to integrate to her plating, the tape wrapped around every fraying wire. Care and attention and sub-standard materials, scavenged or bought from humans in a hurry: nobody says Soundwave but nobody needs to.

Ravage's repairs take hours. Ratchet turns away Arcee when she pings his personal line despite the busy signal; she accepts In surgery, can't talk, come back tomorrow with cheerful grace. He settles back with relief when she turns back from the long driveway. So do Ravage and Laserbeak.

He makes a note to check his security system later.

Ravage's new leg joint and tailtip are integrating well, Laserbeak's had a pebble picked out from the fine mechanisms of his claws, and both of them are having a drink of energon when they make their last demand.

"No files. Your Auto-goons don't need to know about us," Laserbeak instructs.

"The clinic's files aren't networked. I'm the only Auto-goon who can get in." Ratchet taps his fingertips against the clipboard, thinking. "I'll delete them if you want, but it will make further care difficult."

"Woooow, and I'm sure your passwords are so secure, you change them every quarter and never reuse them and everything," Laserbeak says. "Sounds like a you problem."

Ratchet sighs, not for the first time today. "Then I'll give 'em to you. You come back and tell me I screwed up Ravage's spine, one of us needs to be able to point out which vertebrae I messed up."

Laserbeak and Ravage both watch narrowly as he transfers their files to a datacard and wipes them first from the clipboard's memory and then from its auto backup. Laserbeak clicks the chip into a port and evidently grabs the files from it; as soon as he pulls it out again, he snaps it in two with his beak.

"I haven't had an appointment this much like a hostage situation since the last time I was a hostage," Ratchet comments, but he accepts the shards of the chip anyway. Silently Ravage laughs at him—at them both, he thinks.

She lopes out of the clinic with Laserbeak above, moving easily now; only the flashes of bare metal where she didn't want to wait for new paint is left to show there was ever anything wrong with her.

"You better remember what snitches get," Laserbeak hollers downwards.

"Good thing I'm a medical professional," Ratchet hollers back, and rolls down the garage doors.

"Tell me what you did with my cassettes," Soundwave says. He's tall and spiked in his current frame, every detail down to the reinforced chest panel suggesting danger.

"How should I know what your cassettes are up to? They're 'Cons. Not my business."

Yesterday Ratchet stood in the clinic's doorway waiting for patients; today he stands there braced for attack. Optimus via Wheeljack via Grimlock had insisted on panic buttons scattered pretty much everywhere through the clinic. There's one tucked to the side of the doorframe, within easy reach if Ratchet can just lean over.

Instead of making the attempt, he gives Soundwave the hairy eyeball.

"Ravage and Laserbeak were here yesterday," Soundwave says.

"Real sneaky of them, coming by without me noticing. Your little gang spying on me, Soundwave?"

"Stand aside, Autobot."

Ratchet doesn't move.

Soundwave angles his shoulder-mounted cannon. A shot at point blank at full power would mean even odds Ratchet could stop all the bleeding from a shattered windshield before he passed out.

Ratchet doesn't move.

At an estimated sixteenth power, the concussive blast is enough to send him ass over teakettle onto the clinic floor.

By the time he's upright again, hip and spine yelling, Soundwave is braced over the console on Ratchet's desk.

Ratchet levers himself up to hit the panic button.

"Those are private," he says loudly. "And password-locked."

He ran out of scared about halfway through the war, when it's just him and a 'Con. Best he can do now is resigned. Shading upwards now into plain annoyance at how much work he's going to have to do to re-secure his files—and at Laserbeak being right.

"Fools and Autobots," Soundwave says to the files. Ratchet only brought truncated versions of a few patient files here from Autobot's base; the latest revision noting Ironhide's latest oil change doesn't make compelling reading. Ironhide only came out here for it because he's ticklish and hates anyone younger than him to know it.

Ratchet pulls the pistol out of his thigh compartment. He takes careful aim.

By the time the console screen has shattered Soundwave is upright and facing Ratchet again. The mouth of his cannon glimmers with waiting charge.

There's no contest between the two of them, if Soundwave takes him as a serious threat. Ratchet's a good shot. Soundwave is Soundwave.

But with the clinic empty, patient files secured, and someone on their way—Ratchet tries not to react to the buzz of his comm—there's nothing left Ratchet has to jump in the way of a bullet for. He puts the safety back on his pistol and sets it down, slowly, on the floor.

"If you want to look for your cassettes, that's your prerogative. Maybe they did sneak in," Ratchet says, projecting calm as hard as he can. "My patient files are private."

Soundwave snarls, so much like Ratchet that he has a moment's difficulty keeping a straight face.

"I'll kill you if you're lying." Megatron's voice, some crackling old recording from long before Earth.

Soundwave stalks through the clinic, inspecting everything. Ratchet waits by the door, trying not to glance outside, trying not to tense up. Bay Three was fully cleaned and sanitized half an hour after Ravage and Laserbeak's departure. The bowls from their energon are, well, not washed yet but hopefully anonymous in the pile of all the other dishes Ratchet needs to put through the kitchen autoclave. He's always been better at keeping up with medibay chores than his own.

Soundwave pushes at the door to the main store room. "What is this."

"Supplies," Ratchet offers. Then, louder as Soundwave stalks down the corridor, "Private room for long-term patients. Condenser housing. Shower. My bedroom, Soundwave."

The last door Soundwave comes to does, in an abrupt prickling wash all the way down his back, make Ratchet nervous. Because it's—"Waste disposal, do you want to see the tank for discard oil that badly?"

Soundwave tilts his head just slightly. Birdlike. "Yes. You will unlock this door."

Ratchet spares a glance out the door as he goes. Shouldn't Arcee be in the area already? She said she'd be back today. Does he have to stall till someone manages the drive in from the main base?

He fumbles with his keycodes, gets in Soundwave's way opening the door, smacks open the top of the waste oil tank with a flourish.

"There," Ratchet announces. "That's everything. Want to stick your arm in and see if there's a cassette hiding at the bottom?"

The oil is thick, with the faintly sweet rancidity typical of oil replaced about a month too late. There are clots floating on the surface. Coagulated oil clumping around bits of dust and rust and whatever junk this relentlessly organic planet has drifting around in its atmosphere. Pollen season was a new one for Ratchet.

Soundwave says, "No."

There just hasn't been time for much concealing garbage to accumulate. The junk room's still almost clean, just a pile of unused construction and packing materials kicked out of the way from the furnace and material recyclers. Ratchet sidles in front of the cool, empty furnace like he's worried about something inside it, hoping the unsorted bin behind his leg doesn't get spotted.

It gets spotted.

Most of the stuff in it is anonymous hanks of wire and pieces of plating, but Ratchet had to replace Ravage's old tail assembly in its entirety, and that can't be mistaken for anything else. Blaster's out in deep space at the moment. There's only one set of cassettes on the entire planet.

Soundwave turns it over in one hand, the other fisted in Ratchet's collar.

"She was here."

Ratchet folds his arms. It's not easy to ignore the claws at his neck. He manages. "Maybe just to drop off some old parts."

Soundwave levels his cannon once again—not at Ratchet but at the open and very flammable waste oil tank.

"Are your principles worth this clinic?"

"If your kids aren't picking up maybe they don't want to talk, Soundwave."

"Are they with G.H.O.S.T.?" The hand on his collar tightens. Ratchet's heels lift up off the ground.

Ratchet grimaces. "Don't look to me for answers about G.H.O.S.T. I'm not part of Optimus's new venture. I thought your old boss was their only 'Con."

"Every Decepticon who encounters G.H.O.S.T disappears. Dead or in custody, we don't know." Soundwave's clawed hands flex. As though it pains him to say it, he adds, "You are a doctor. They could be in danger."

"What?" All of Ratchet's internal systems go absolutely silent for a bare moment, dropping out as every part of him locks in on that one sentence. "What?"

It's a seriously inconvenient moment for the cavalry to arrive.

Arcee bangs open the junk room door and without missing a beat Soundwave tosses Ratchet onto the floor, charges past her, flips into alt in the middle of the clinic, and throws every tool weighing under fifteen kilograms into the walls with the force of his exit.

Arcee leans over to give Ratchet a hand up.

"Why do you look mad at me?" she asks, outraged.

Chapter Text

Ratchet gets a message from Laserbeak two days later. It comes in without a single obfuscating layer of encryption.

respect for the attempt, doc, but pops found us

Attached is an image taken from a grainy human security camera. Soundwave's in the background inspecting Ravage's leg assembly. Laserbeak's head fills half the foreground, one eye cocked directly towards the camera.

Are you safe? Ratchet sends back immediately.

why wouldn't we be

WHY DIDN'T YOU WANT SOUNDWAVE TO KNOW WHERE YOU WERE?

It takes ten solid minutes to get a reply to that. While he waits, Ratchet finishes loading the kitchenette autoclave and slams its door shut. Six people (Arcee, Ironhide, First Aid with Triage, Arcee again, finally Breakdown on what was clearly an errand from a very worried Bee currently stuck in Oceania) have dropped in for a chat or a checkup or a drink since Soundwave's visit and he's out of good mugs. All he's got left are the ones scaled for Optimus or Skyfire, unused since he opened the clinic.

we live in his chassis, not his brain, dipstick, is the eventual answer. he doesn't get to vet it every time one of us goes to the mechanic. he was gonna flip if ravvy put herself in danger or whatever but she's fine so it's fine

One day Ratchet will die, and if his mentors and the Primes are all right he'll return to the Well where all sparks live, and maybe with the combined mental power of every Cybertronian who ever touched metal he'll be able to understand Soundwave's cassettes.

Unfortunately he's been a committed atheist for about five million years (non-consecutive) of his six million years' existence.

Tell him I don't work with G.H.O.S.T., Ratchet types back. Tell him the no shooting rule. I won't fire any of you as patients and I won't turn you in if he doesn't wreck my shop a second time.

Laserbeak's final message is a scornful you think my alt is a carrier pigeon?

Ratchet's on the back porch working on a letter to Optimus. Maybe a lecture. He doesn't know yet. He doesn't have proof of G.H.O.S.T.'s malfeasance, and it's a little rich to come wag a finger in Optimus's face on the word of a single Decepticon, but—but. The 'Bots need human help more than the humans need them. Is let's-hold-hands-and-live-in-peace propaganda enough of a trade? And Optimus looked like he was grieving something the last time they had a real conversation. Like he used to look coming out of Sentinel Prime's office before the coup. When there was some new moral compromise he couldn't see a way out of.

Is it true? If it is, why? Is the war really over, or is that more propaganda? And was there anything Ratchet could have done about any of it?

He's traded out his notes for his comm and is failing to draft a hey, what's up with the big guy? message to Wheeljack when the cloudless sky cracks wide open.

There's a whistling that comes from far overhead, louder and louder, something falling out of atmosphere.

Ratchet abandons his clipboard, comm, and mug on his chair without a single thought. Bad place to get caught during a bombardment.

The doorways are reinforced. Ratchet shelters in place and listens to the whistle turn into a shriek, watches a streak of metal come into view high in the sky, watches it fall. It's propelled by something—but it doesn't look bomb-shaped—

It shakes the ground when it impacts. The clinic proximity alarm goes off belatedly with a startled wail.

Ratchet runs for the wreckage without even stopping to shut it off. Not a bomb, not a piece of a ship, not a satellite. Ratchet skids to his knees in front of it and knows the twisted metal for Soundwave.

"Can you hear me? Soundwave, you have to let me know if you're conscious." Douse the electrical fires from a distance—test with thermometer and multimeter before touching to be sure it's safe—voltage going haywire, get on the rubber gloves.

"I hear," Soundwave groans. "The damage is—superficial."

"You've got a great big hole in your wing and you're saying it's superficial?" Ratchet lays a hand on Soundwave's overheated plating. "Gonna shoot me if I touch you?"

Soundwave grunts. Good enough.

"Transform if you can. Tell me if you can't and I'll give you a tow."

Ratchet braces Soundwave through his transformation; good chance it was the potential indignity of a tow that pushed him to it, but it means they can get to shelter faster—no way to know how soon the 'Cons will restart the attack—

Hold. This was not a Decepticon attack on Autobot forces.

Half-supporting, half-carrying him up the walk to the back door, Ratchet asks urgently, "Soundwave, who did this?"

"Megatron," Soundwave says, crackling voice bleak and half-buried by the continuing ring of the prox alarm.

It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change anything about the work, except that Ratchet redirects them from the main clinic to the private room with a nudge of his hip against Soundwave's leg.

Soundwave collapses on the bed without a word. Shoulder cannon nonfunctional, hanging by a single bent hinge. Holes with melted edges scattered across the torso consonant with a fusion cannon, nasty elongated gouge through the full depth of the wing consonant with a lucky shot from a thrown energon axe. Right knee shredded, with tears radiating up and down from the injury.

"You shouldn't have flown on this."

Soundwave doesn't reply.

Ratchet falls to the task of stabilizing him. Bleeding survivable—first priority taping up anything spitting raw electricity so the rest is safe to work on.

"Can you feel anything wrong inside?" Ratchet clicks on his headlamp and peers down into the deepest wound. "Wet, or rattling, or burning?"

"No." It's not Soundwave's voice but Starscream's. A recording playing off his speakers. Ratchet takes a deep breath. In medial. Out distal.

"All right. That's a good sign. I'm getting monitors set up, they'll tell me if there's anything going on there shouldn't be. A crash out of atmosphere on top of your other injuries won't kill you, Soundwave. We'll get you fixed up."

No response. Soundwave's cracked visor is a dull, pained red.

"I'd like to put you under for treatment. It would save you a lot of pain."

"No." Starscream's voice again.

Ratchet frowns, but—"Heard."

He hustles through mitigating the last of the spitting electricity, torn wires capped or wrapped or detached for later replacement. Next up is stopping all the bleeding. After that, he can get to the real repair work.

He whistles sharply. The medical drone flies into the room, arms folded attentively under its oblong body.

"Knew I'd need you at some point," he murmurs to it. Then he shoos it off again to load a tray with tools from the store room—and turn off that blasted alarm.

The sudden silence leaves an echo behind it, the quiet ringing in Ratchet's ears. Much easier to tell how Soundwave's doing now that his engine's audible, at least. It's a relief to confirm his diagnosis: Soundwave's in a lot of pain, but if he doesn't bleed out or set fire to his own insides none of it's life-threatening. Debilitating, yes—but a Cybertronian can tank a hell of a lot of damage before going into shock. A couple months ago this is where Ratchet would shove Soundwave into a low-priority queue while he focused on anyone he could get back out onto the battlefield.

He swings the x-ray unit on its jointed arm over to Soundwave and frowns.

"You've got a dent in your transformation cog." Soundwave seems like the kind of person to appreciate information delivered as quickly and bluntly as possible. "It's fiddly but fixable. Just takes time. Don't transform again till I give you the clear; we can't stress it too much or the warping will get worse."

He works quickly, clamping and cauterizing and bandaging leaks all over Soundwave's body. The medical drone darts back and forth, bringing supplies and clearing out energon-soaked shop towels. Any spilled energon is a fire risk; they can't stay next to a patient's bed.

The drone comes back from dumping them in the fireproof garbage can not with a new roll of foil tape but with Ratchet's comm, left out on the porch.

"I don't need this," he tells it. It thrusts it at Ratchet's blue-streaked hands. "No, you binary-brained idiot, don't drop that—"

It drops the comm. It falls onto Soundwave's leg.

The comm buzzes: video call incoming. Optimus's face is on the display.

Ratchet knocks at the decline button with the cleanest knuckle he's got. He still leaves a dot of soot and energon behind.

It buzzes again immediately.

Ratchet sucks at his teeth. "We have to do this now?" he asks it.

"Don't talk," he adds to Soundwave.

And hits accept/audio only.

"Ratchet!" Optimus's voice is pure stressed relief. "Listen, I'm sending a patient your way—"

"Is it an emergency?"

"It's urgent, yes. We're fresh out of a battle and I'm perfectly all right, but you're much closer than Autobot base and Megatron needs repairs. He's on his way over. Should be just about there by now."

"Just about—you couldn't have called earlier?" Ratchet stands up, shaking a piece of foil tape off his hands. Soundwave is perfectly still on his bed. Not a breath of movement at all.

"I did. You didn't pick up."

"Blaming the physician! Optimus, I'll be right back."

Another smeary jab at the comm mutes his end. Soundwave looks about ready to try an escape. Ratchet stares him down.

"You are in no shape to move. I am going to lock your door till he's gone. Don't say anything, don't try to get up. Ravage didn't need an external unit to message by comm—can you reach me if you need something?"

His energon-smeared comm unit blinks. Ratchet taps over to his messages.

In a new anonymous chain: Yes.

"Perfect," Ratchet says with relief. He scoops up the comm, and points it for a moment at Soundwave. "I will not tell Optimus Prime, or Megatron, or anyone else, that you are here. Nobody will come into this room or know you were ever here."

He turns for the door. He turns back. Voice low, fiercer than he means to be, Ratchet adds: "I protect my patients, Soundwave."

He locks the door behind him before unmuting the call.

"Set up Bay One." The medical drone whirrs and darts off.

"Oh, you're back! Do you have an assistant? Someone I know?" Optimus asks, with gossipy interest.

"Hah. Nobody wants to work out in the boonies with me, Prime. I built a drone." Ratchet lets the comm clatter on the edge of the sink as he scrubs down his hands and arms.

"First Aid wouldn't let you take the one from base?"

"Wouldn't do that to him." First Aid loves that little thing. Its directional algorithms just got used to the Autobot base layout anyway. Wouldn't be right to make it relearn a new setup.

"He'd appreciate a visit. We all would."

There's a noise from outside the clinic. The white noise of a powerful set of rotors.

"Sorry, no time to talk. Gotta sign off in a moment." Ratchet dries his hands.

Optimus's voice swings into the plaintive. "Do you still have nothing to say to me, old friend?"

"I do," Ratchet says. Pained. "I was going to call. I was… working up to it."

"I'll wait as long as you need," Optimus vows. Drowned out by the damned proximity alarm shrieking again. "That's Megatron, I assume," Optimus adds, voice raised.

Ratchet smacks the alarm off again and runs to roll up the main clinic doors.

"Speak of the devil," he mutters. Optimus squawks at him through the comm.

Megatron, streaked with energon, surrounded by the dust storm raised by his downdraft, eyes feverishly glowing, rises out of alt on the clinic driveway.

"Ah, doctor," he says. He takes a confident step forward.

And tips over face forward onto the asphalt.

There's a dull crunch as his cockpit shatters.

"Optimus, I'll call you back," says Ratchet.

He can lift someone of Soundwave's tonnage more or less alone; Ratchet needs to bring out the floor jack to even haul Megatron onto a dolly.

On a first inspection, his injuries aren't too bad, barring the self-inflicted cockpit breakage, and that's an easy piece to replace. Megatron's covered in dents that need pulling—concussive damage from Soundwave's cannon. A set of nasty claw marks across his nose and throat.

The biggest problem isn't visible from the outside. All of his internal sensors are going to need recalibrating before he's safe to fly. Inner-ear damage—a much nastier and subtler consequence of tangling with Soundwave than the exterior damage would otherwise attest. Hours of calibration ahead, unpleasant for them both.

The medical drone drops a dent puller into Ratchet's hands. Best to get started.

Megatron wakes up as Ratchet's detaching the remains of his shattered cockpit from its frame. Ratchet feels his engines rumble into a higher gear and lays a hand flat on his torso.

"Don't move," he says absently. "I need to get the splinters with the shop vac or they'll work their way deeper into your structure."

Megatron lets his head thump back onto the bed. He grunts. "The cockpit's built to break safely."

"It's not built to have forty tons of Decepticon land on it after taking a hit from a concussion weapon." Ratchet lays the last big piece of acrylic on his tray.

The noise of the vacuum keeps them from having to make conversation for six beautiful minutes, but the reprieve can't last forever.

"Open up, I need to get at your sensors. So, what happened? You and Optimus get jumped?"

Megatron stoically and silently folds away his plating. He's always a good patient. It'd be showing weakness to do anything else, probably.

"Their defense was stronger than we planned for," Megatron admits to the ceiling. "I believe Optimus escaped without a scratch on him. Some Decepticons bear me a grudge."

"Yeah, well," Ratchet says vaguely. His priority order right now is: repair Megatron, listen hard for any noise from the private room, hold a polite conversation with his patient. "You got off pretty light all things considered. Might have some more facial scarring, depending how it heals."

"One more won't show against the rest."

Ratchet hooks into Megatron's altimeter. It tells him confidently that they're five feet below sea level. "Brace, you're going to feel dizzy for about ten seconds."

Megatron sighs hugely. He bears through the reset with nothing but a mild frown on his face, hands curled into loose fists at his side.

"That's better," he says, when the reset's complete. On to the accelerometers—half a dozen of them scattered through Megatron's frame, and all of them offering contradictory readings.

"I'd bet. What, did you get here on nothing but visual?"

"Everything else failed halfway through the flight."

Ratchet hisses from between his teeth. "Make an emergency landing next time and I'll come to you. I don't care if you set fire to a cornfield."

"Optimus would. It'd be terrible optics." The burr of Megatron's voice thickens as he slows down. "I think… Doctor, I think I've been a fool."

"You're about four million years late on that one," Ratchet says tartly.

The drone hands him a soldering iron and chisel; Ratchet starts the work of removing a fried component. Is that a creaking from the private room? No, only the wind outside.

Megatron levers himself up on his elbows with a creak of metal. "Ratchet."

"Megatron." Ratchet pushes on his shoulder with the side of his hand, keeping the hot iron away from Megatron's plating. It has no effect at all. "What?"

"You don't owe it to me—but let me speak. I have to say it to someone before I stop myself."

"And you picked me."

Megatron's sharp canines glint in his quick, pained grin. "I have always been able to trust where your biases are, doctor."

Ratchet sighs. "Consistency's a virtue, I hear. Yeah, alright. Neither of us is going anywhere for a while."

He settles back down, grumbling. Ratchet scrapes away flux from the component.

"I thought it would end with the Allspark," Megatron says. He speaks steadily, but his plating trembles all the same.

Ratchet snorts. "Could've set you straight there. Well, excuse me for my known biases," he says to Megatron's offended look.

"I thought," says Megatron, "my troops would see the futility of the conflict. Species-level extinction or compromise—there was only one choice."

"Hm," Ratchet says, noncommittally. He accepts a new component and a loop of wire from the drone. Its eye tracks his work, waiting for the moment Ratchet will need his next tool handed to him.

"I was fooling myself."

Ratchet's eyebrows go up. "Strong words," he says. Stronger words from a 'Con than they'd be from any 'Bot.

"We have taught that there are three levels of deception." Megatron takes on an abstracted, lecturing tone. Warmonger as frustrated professor.

"First, to be fooled by another: weakness. You've allowed another to impose their will upon you. Second, to fool another: a false strength. Imposing your will on another, but not through force—a lie is built on sand, and falls away as soon as strength touches it. Third, and worst of all, is self-deception. To be so weak you turn away from stone to sand.

"I," Megatron finishes, "have fooled myself. This venture, however painful, is necessary: yes. I still stand on firm ground there. But to think the Decepticons could follow my change of heart, to think our bond greater than it was, more than a philosophy shared for a time… that was a dream and a lie. And a foolish one."

Ratchet eyes Megatron. All his running lights are dim. Ought to get some fresh energon into him after the exertion of a battle.

"No rejoinder? No taunts, doctor?"

"I thought you wanted a captive audience, not feedback. Here, I'll play doctor: did that make you feel better?"

Megatron snorts. "You think we should have continued as we were, warring without end, till attrition ended our people entirely."

Ratchet hands the soldering iron back to the drone. As carefully as he can, he scrapes away the charred remains of a melted gasket from the side of Megatron's fuel tank.

"Nah. I'll grant you did the right thing at the end, Megatron. After millions of years of wasteful, bloody build-up. But I'd be spitting nails if I were a Decepticon right now. I don't know how you expected them to be happy with you beating on them from the other side for a change. Did you ask any of them to come with you? Did you explain yourself to anybody, or just expect them to follow you like they have this whole time? And now you're asking for me to comfort you?"

In the corner of Ratchet's eye, Megatron's hand flexes on the table. He could put some serious gouges into the bed if he wanted. "I don't want comfort!" Megatron barks. "I want them to see the truth!"

Ratchet slams his chisel down on the tool tray harder than he needs to. But he slides the new gasket into place gently.

"Well, good luck," he snaps. "I wish you all the best, Megatron, because I've been an Autobot for four million years and that's not about to change. With all of my spark I hope Starscream shows up tomorrow with a statement countersigned by Primus committing himself and every Decepticon to rebuilding our species and finding our way home. But it's not going to happen. Even without whatever G.H.O.S.T. is up to."

A long pause. Ratchet picks through his screwdrivers, looking for the right size.

"Doctor, you're a cynic." Megatron's voice is unreadable. Giving no information at all.

"How'd you think I survived this long? Lie back, you'll feel a pinch."

Chapter Text

"You could have killed him," Soundwave says.

Ratchet, elbow-deep in Soundwave's torso, sighs. "Megatron's injuries weren't that bad. Better than yours."

"You could have gotten rid of your greatest enemy."

Oh.

"Nah. I took this oath when I got these badges, see. They mean a little bit more than 'stop, don't shoot'." Ratchet disentangles a hand from Soundwave's guts to hook a thumb at the broken target on his shoulder.

Ratchet had waved Megatron off after five hours of calibrating and recalibrating all his sensors, checking his silent comm unit nervously every time he could make an excuse to step away. Then he'd gone out back to sit in the fresh air while he got a drink of energon. Then he'd raked over the crash site in the back, hoping that Megatron hadn't noticed it from the air.

Then he'd put away the rake, washed his hands, and come back to Soundwave.

He does not have the energy for another hard conversation with a 'Con right now. Not when he's still working himself up to one with Optimus.

Soundwave's propped up at an angle, bed tilted to let him get some energon in himself. He has so far used this new vantage point to glare more efficiently rather than eat.

"He is a liar and a fool," Soundwave says, soft, measured.

Ratchet shrugs one shoulder, occupied by chasing a burnt-out wire to its origin point. There are scars deep through the metal of Soundwave's cassette deck; the awful rumours about Rumble must be true, in the end. "Just about what he said too."

Soundwave sets his energon down. "You like him."

"I like Megatron? You bust your brain module along with the cog?"

"You're loud. Your objections to Megatron are philosophical, not personal."

"I'd like you a hell of a lot better if you hadn't killed so many people, too."

"We are not pretending to be friends."

"It's ridiculous to be mad I fixed Megatron when I'm also fixing you, you know that?" Ratchet frowns upwards at Soundwave from his hunched position. "Drink your energon."

"I could have killed him," Soundwave says, broodingly. But he drinks.

"It's against clinic policy." Ratchet measures a new length of wire, juggling spool and shears before he can clip on the connectors to either end.

Soundwave lets him work in silence for a while. Long enough for Ratchet to hook the new wire in and test its current.

"He betrayed us with this scheme. He betrayed the cause. He betrayed—" Soundwave tips the mug to his mouth. Nothing comes out.

It's considered bad bedside manner to laugh at your patients. Ratchet's never been known for his gentle affect, but he manages to not snort out loud at Soundwave's look of consternation.

"Here. You need a refill and I need a break." Ratchet pushes himself up. His back's going to be unhappy with him later, he can feel it. He never stretches enough. Physician, repair thyself.

Ratchet talks through his plan of action with the medical drone as he wanders into the kitchenette, mug dangling from one finger. "Get the wiring fixed. Wing and knee patched. Plating welded. Cannon repaired, Primus help us all. Then it's onto the worst part—the cog. Do I have any spares? No. Why would we have spares of anything? So it's extraction, tune-up, reinsertion. Two days just on that, binary brain. Two full days."

The drone nods seriously to him with its whole body. It's picking things up quick. No match yet for the ones back in Autobot base, but it'll get there.

"Quieter here than the Senate clinic on a stat holiday," he tells it, and rests a hand on its flat little head for a moment.

"Two days," Soundwave asks, when he returns to set the refilled mug by the bed.

"I wasn't talking to you. But yeah, big ears. Two days for the cog, and we won't get to that work till tomorrow at the earliest. I'm doing the easy stuff first because your systems need the break and I want to get a nap in before I start on your cog. It's not an easy job, and I'm not exactly kitted out here like I would've been back at Iacon Central's surgical wing."

"I can't wait."

"It's not a debate; you need the recovery time. Is there someone I can call for you? Something I can do to make you more comfortable?"

"No." In Soundwave's own voice this time, at least. Ratchet throws his hands up and gets back to work.

Soundwave follows every move of Ratchet's, that deep red visor tracking absolutely everything. Likely recording it too.

He wants to clog up his storage with hours of Ratchet replacing wires, that's his call.

They get through a solid hour of work, mostly quiet—preoccupied on Ratchet's end, brooding on Soundwave's—before the next inevitable interruption.

The comm unit buzzes in Ratchet's pocket. Ratchet frowns, but snaps off the vibroscalpel.

Optimus on the horn again. The image capture Ratchet has set for his profile is from Optimus's poorly thought-out flame decal era, just about a decade ago, when all their human allies were doing permanent damage to Hot Rod's psyche by calling things radical.

The photo looks tremendously stupid.

It tugs at Ratchet all the same. "One sec," he tells Soundwave, and pushes his stool back.

Nothing's settled.

Ratchet should be madder that Optimus is acting like nothing's wrong.

That he's using Megatron's injury as an excuse to call again.

That he hasn't answered Ratchet's questions about what G.H.OS.T. is up to—and if Ratchet was right or wrong in guessing that it was setting up the post-war trials.

"You're angry," Soundwave observes. He's sitting up to watch Ratchet work on his legs.

"Yeah, I'm angry," Ratchet sighs. He pushes his magnifying lens out of the way to rub at the bridge of his nose. "What, you never got mad at Megatron before the breakup? He was a perfect leader?"

Softly, Soundwave says, "Very nearly."

"Glad to hear it!" Ratchet flips the lens back down and scowls at Soundwave's busted knee. "Me, I knew Optimus when he was two weight classes smaller. He's the same kind of annoying he's always been."

Soundwave dips his head in a nod.

His joints are complex; Soundwave's chassis has to balance the needs of his current alt, his cassette dock, and his audio/weapon systems. Two complex systems adding weight and an alt—with its own heavy propulsion system—that requires aerodynamics above all.

Getting to the cog is going to be a nightmare, hidden behind his dock the way Optimus's is blocked by the Matrix. It got dented by a blow to Soundwave's back, but Soundwave's back paneling isn't designed to lift away for repair access the way his dock is.

Problem for later. Face the current problem: knee plates needing to be reformed, wires needing replacement, transformation seams needing straightening out. Ratchet sets his teeth into his lower lip and gets back to work.

Most of an hour later, he looks up from the knee assembly in triumph.

Soundwave is still watching him. Like he's waiting for something.

"Spit it out," Ratchet growls.

Soundwave laces his hands together over his fractured chestplate, cool and thoughtful even laid up like this. "The war could have been over earlier if you didn't insist on repairing your enemies."

Ratchet tightens his grip on his scalpel so hard that its metal screeches under his thumb. Eyebrows furrowed, he readjusts his grip. "That so?"

"I don't understand."

"You really want to ask me that? You? Here, now?"

"I want to understand."

Ratchet frowns and sits up on his stool. "Flex your knee for me. Good. Stop. I'm going to adjust a few more things and we'll try again."

Eventually, one last plate adjusted, as he smooths out the edges of a transformation seam with rotary tool, Ratchet says, "Yeah, I could refuse to repair 'Cons. Could refuse the more violent 'Bots, even. Fire all the Wreckers as patients. Won't, though."

Soundwave waits him out. Ratchet puts away the tool, pulls the last grit out of the joint with the shop vac, gives it a squirt of lubricant, talks Soundwave through another stretch to confirm everything's sitting okay. And through it all, Soundwave just watches him, quiet, patient, visor a steady red glow at the head of the bed.

"We're built to change," Ratchet says at last, under the spitting of his welding torch. If Soundwave's going to refuse local anesthetic while he gets put back together, at least Ratchet can distract him through it. "Adaptation is who we are. Don't look at me like that, I'm not about to write a hymn to Adaptus—but it's how we're made. Seems rotten to refuse to give people the opportunity to change for the better."

"You're allowing yourself to be played. Or you're lying to yourself."

"Like Megatron?" Ratchet grins through the torch's glare. "Could be. Hope not. I'd like to think I know what I'm doing. Little rude to complain about my foolishness when you're benefitting from it, anyway."

"I could kill you as soon as you're done."

"I'm betting you won't. And that's a bet I haven't lost yet." The times ex-patients have tried killing him aren't worth bringing up; none of 'em succeeded, after all.

Soundwave grumbles. It could be a recording he's playing, something straight from Ravage's voicebox. Ratchet doesn't think it is.

"Tell you what. People are looking for a change now the war's over. I think it's going to happen. And I hope this clinic can be a part of it. Call me back up in a century or so. If I'm wrong you can call me a wingnut and a fool to my face."

"A hundred years," Soundwave says, almost solemn. "What are we betting?"

"What, calling me a wingnut isn't enough for you?" Ratchet lays down the torch to stretch, right palm pushing his other hand back against his wrist, letting the tendons recalibrate. "Bottle of engex. If I set aside something from the condenser now it might be just about worth drinking by then."

Optimus's voice, now: "I accept those terms."

Attached find latest on Whirl's autogyro. I'd appreciate a consult if you've got time, Ratchet. Sounds like the new clinic's keeping you busy.

Ratchet grimaces at the message from First Aid. There's a veiled reproach if he's ever seen one. He scoots his chair away from his worktable and the t-cog halfway disassembled on it, towards the secondary console. He still hasn't fixed the first one since he shot at it keeping Soundwave out of his files, and the spare is a clunker. It was old before it ever got hauled onto the Ark. But it'll do for going over scans.

Looking as it was, Aid: still benign even at this size. It shouldn't interfere with his autogyro, but if Whirl's reporting dizziness when he flies—or if the other Wreckers report it for him—then removal would be advised, but good luck getting Whirl into the medibay long enough to sort it out. Call me in if you need a second pair of hands to deal with him.

Ratchet taps his stylus against the desk in thought. Before sending off the message, he adds, How are you finding the medibay these days? Anyone giving you guff?, and sends.

There's a message from Megatron he really should answer, too. Ratchet's let it get buried under routine communications for a day and a half now. What, he does one minor procedure for the ex-Lord of the Decepticons and suddenly Ratchet's his therapist on top of his surgeon? Ratchet closes it again and scoots his chair back over.

Soundwave's transformation cog occupies him: peeling back the layers of mechanism to straighten gears and realign cogs. Brushing out grit and smoothing out dents till things move smoothly again. Ratchet's goal is to realign and reassemble everything without having to machine any new pieces, and if there are no hidden gouges under the second sublayer he may even get lucky.

The comm unit pings. Ratchet leans over to read the message.

Whirl's no problem, I'll just promise he can take the mass home in a jar. He'll think it's cool.

He sits up for a moment to laugh. There's a method of dealing with Whirl that never occurred to him.

It's going well. I think. But I've yelled more in the last month than I did in the millennium before! Triage says I sound like you now.

We missed you last 'Bot Bingo night. We're doing Cybersnakes & Turboladders tomorrow night. Got time to drive down for it?

Ratchet clicks away from Aid's message, abruptly unable to stand it. As if in revenge, Megatron's message stares up at him. Annoyed with the world, with all Cybertronians, with himself, he types out Clinic's busy this week but I'll have time for drive-ins again next week. Or make an appointment if you're feeling polite, and sends. The inbound message slips itself virtuously into the Replied/Complete folder.

There. One thing done well, at least.

A hand lands on Ratchet's shoulder. He startles violently, clutching his stylus like a scalpel.

Ratchet spins in the chair. "Soundwave?"

He's looking better, walking easy. It's just the weapons system and t-cog left to fix. Ratchet's not fooling himself that that means Soundwave's at all helpless.

"Do you have paint?" Soundwave taps a thumb against his knee, where deep blue is interrupted by the silver of new welds. His chestplate and right shoulder need work too.

"I'm not stopping in the middle of reassembling your t-cog for a cosmetic procedure."

"I'll do it. Do you have paint?"

Ratchet eyes him. He'd be bored too, stuck as a patient with nobody to talk to but his cranky old doctor. "Yeah, I'll set you up in the spray booth. You'll have to mix your own base colour, but I've got the kit."

He parks Soundwave in the booth; it's within eyeshot of his worktable, so at least Ratchet will spot it fast if Soundwave keels over or something.

"Filler, sander, sprayer, clear coat. Keep the fume hood going—none of this stuff is good for your internals in atomized form, and neither of us want it drifting over and getting into your transformation cog."

Soundwave nods.

First Aid's last message is still blinking, accusatory, when he gets back to his own work. Ratchet frowns down at it.

I'm busy with clinic work this week. Maybe next time, Aid.

Decisively, he turns the comm unit's screen off and kicks his stool back to the t-cog. Something he can fix. That's what he needs.

Detailing work is a lot of repetitive motion and a lot of sitting around waiting for paint to dry. Ratchet finds it unbearable.

Soundwave seems to take it with the equanimity he takes everything outside of a direct confrontation with Megatron. Every time Ratchet glances up he's working diligently away at his plating.

He wanders over, leans back against the wall of the spray booth. "Question, Soundwave."

Soundwave glances up.

"I haven't been able to get a straight answer from Optimus. You never told me everything you know about G.H.O.S.T. What are they up to?"

Soundwave returns to his sander. Metal filler puffs into the air to be sucked away by the fume hood and air filters. "What would you do with that information?"

"I don't know." Ratchet rubs at his forehead. "I have less influence with Optimus than I thought I did, maybe. The others I can still talk to, maybe. Wheeljack's a soft touch."

Soundwave replays Ratchet's own voice: "I don't know."

In his own, he adds: "There are rumours. Nothing confirmed. Nobody's seen Thundercracker in weeks—but that's normal for Thundercracker."

Ratchet sighs. He's got no way to know if he's being fed a line. Soundwave turns off the sander and inspects the bare patch of metal on his leg.

But… "Something's up. I don't know what. But there's something the 'Bots aren't telling me."

Soundwave shrugs elegantly. "You're being lied to. Defect."

"Good joke."

"Third, and worst of all, is self-deception," Soundwave quotes. Ratchet grimaces.

"Let's not exaggerate."

Soundwave shrugs again, brushing dust away from his leg.

"Would you—" Ratchet folds his arms, scowling up at the air filter at the top of the spray booth. "If you could. Would you talk terms with Optimus? For the Decepticons?"

"They would not accept my word as law. And," he adds, "I will not negotiate with a Prime."

"Oh, here we go."

"He's the symbol of the Senate."

"The Senate's been dead for four million years."

"Their doctrine survives."

"So that's it? The fight continues till everyone's dead?"

"If necessary."

"What could possibly make that necessary?"

Soundwave adds a precise drip of red to a canister of paint before screwing it into the sprayer attachment. "Nothing has changed. Megatron's betrayal doesn't change the fact that Decepticon philosophy is superior. Life under Autobot rule would be insupportable."

Ratchet would lay money that Megatron's said a variation of that in every ceasefire negotiation of the last four million years. He watches Soundwave repaint his knee. The new paint's a perfect match for the old.

Quietly, under the white noise of the sprayer and the air filters, Ratchet says, "I kind of hoped you'd have your own space bridge. Secretly."

"With what resources?"

"Yeah," Ratchet sighs. "There's the sticking point, isn't it."

Soundwave touches his chest, right over his cassette dock. "A new spacebridge must be a priority. There are… people on Cybertron I need to check on."

"You and me both," Ratchet says. "—Hey, let me get that shoulder vent, you're missing a spot."

"Are you stalling on the cog repairs?"

"Nah." Ratchet grins. "It's in the annealing oven. Components were getting brittle with how much I had to rework them, but everything should be back in shape. Once it's out and cool we can do our first test. I'm expecting maybe sixteen solid hours of fit tests, mind you—you've got a fussy cog, I can tell you that."

Soundwave's visor blazes with nothing so much as pure relief. He slaps the sprayer into Ratchet's hand.

Chapter Text

Ratchet is haunted by his own clinic's proximity alarm. "Turn that off," he tells the medical drone; "Don't go anywhere," he tells Soundwave.

Soundwave, bracing his shoulder cannon for Ratchet to get at the circuitry inside, glares beneath his visor. Ratchet had put off the cannon as long as he could, but it's the last thing on his list apart from the cog. He doesn't think Soundwave will kill him as soon as the repairs are complete—if nothing else, Soundwave wouldn't need his cannon to do it—but it doesn't make him feel any more sanguine about potential collateral damage to the clinic.

Ratchet's laying down his tools when the alarm stops ringing. He's sliding the door of the private room shut when the drone comes rocketing back, stopping with a sudden jerk a bare foot from Ratchet's windshield. It beeps anxiously.

"Who is it?" Ratchet asks, heading for the door. "If it's Wheeljack, he's not allowed to modify your chassis without permission. I told him."

The door bangs open. The lingering autumn sun draws a heavy stripe across the clinic floor, like the marker line across a limb needing amputation.

"Hey, doc," says Swindle, rifle loose in his hands. Hardtop looms at his shoulder. "This is, eh, what do they call it around here? A stickup."

Ratchet—tries not to glare. He lifts his hands into the air, unthreatening. "Hey, no problem. This is a free clinic; repairs and energon for anyone, no threats needed."

The drone cowers at his back.

"Naw, naw, Ratchet. We're here for more than energon." Swindle steps into the clinic, gesturing loosely with his gun at cabinets and equipment. Hardtop tracks every motion. "There's plenty of money in Cybertronian gear, you know? Shanix, dollars, euros. I've got buyers for everything from medical equipment to cultural artifacts. Don't suppose you've got any pre-war Kaonware on hand, do you?"

"Not for about the last million years, no." Ratchet watches Swindle range through the clinic. "You can get money for a bundle of vibroscalpels now, but that's a single score. You could leave all that stuff and have a steady source of energon here without busting the place up. Isn't that worth more, in the long term? I'd call it a solid investment."

Swindle flashes a grin at him. "There's a deal I'd take any other of the day of the week, Ratchet. Not today, though—I need a big score. And I need it now. Hey, Hardtop, try that one."

Hardtop rips the door off the locked cabinet where Ratchet keeps the medicine: analgesic chips, vanadium supplements, a hundred rare, dangerous compounds that shouldn't get into the hands of people who don't know what they're doing.

Voice calm and perfectly reasonable, Ratchet says, "It's in everyone's interests to have a clinic. Maybe you missed the ping. I'll treat anyone, no charge."

"It's better for my health to get off this continent. Megs and the Prime can keep it—big money's in Eurasia anyway."

It's looking increasingly like the tradeoff for a non-violent encounter is Ratchet's clinic getting stripped for whatever they can carry. Maybe he should have let Wheeljack install the turrets.

He's thinking furiously, hands still up in the air, when there's the faintest sound of metal on metal from the back.

There's absolutely nothing Ratchet can do about it if Soundwave comes out from the private room. Ratchet tries not to wince.

Swindle, directing Hardtop as he empties cabinets into a crate, doesn't notice.

Not till there's another sound, louder this time. Like someone getting down off a bed that was set higher than they expected.

"You said this place was empty," Hardtop accuses.

Swindle throws his hands up. "What, it is, nobody's come in since yesterday! Are you hiding patients from us, doc?"

"Maybe you heard the drone?" Still huddled behind Ratchet, it squeaks frightened binary.

"Drone could be worth a lot," Hardtop muses.

"Then grab it, dingus!"

"Ah, I need it for the clinic," Ratchet says, pushing the drone farther behind himself. "Can't do that one, I'm afraid."

"You need it more than you need your limbs?" Hardtop lets the nose of his gun droop, aiming for Ratchet's leg.

"Drop your weapons." It's Megatron's voice that gives the command. Swindle and Hardtop flinch hard.

Soundwave stands in the doorway, shoulder cannon flickering with gathering charge. It's stuttering in microscopic bursts: the circuitry isn't up to a real shot. Ratchet hopes the others don't notice.

"You missed one, Swindle." Real fear in Hardtop's voice; he steps back, taking aim at Soundwave.

"So I missed him, whatever! So it's two on one!" Swindle raises his own gun. "Where were you hiding, Soundwave?"

"Go now if you want to live." The mouth of Soundwave's cannon glows steadily with purple charge. "I don't have the patience for you right now."

"Why, you busy?" Swindle slides a foot back, looking ready to grab the crate and run.

Ratchet catches Soundwave's eye; he lets a single finger drop to point, delicately, at Hardtop. Soundwave's hand curls into a fist.

"Yeah, what are you doing here? You don't look busted up." Hardtop turns just slightly, enough to track Swindle's arc towards the crate.

Ratchet kicks the gun out of Hardtop's hand. At the same moment, Soundwave dives forward to capture Swindle's.

One of the guns goes off, carving a hole in the ceiling.

When the scuffle's over, Soundwave's got Swindle in a headlock and Ratchet's holding Hardtop off with a #10 blade. And the drone, the blessed little thing, is struggling against its weight class to lift Hardtop's rifle off the ground.

"Let's call it here," Ratchet says, trying for calm despite the whirl of his spark. "No harm, no foul, okay? Everyone walks away."

"I like the sound of no harm," Swindle wheezes. Soundwave's arm tightens around his neck.

Ratchet accepts the rifle from the drone. Finger carefully off the trigger, he says, "Alright, everyone out. You first, big guy."

Hardtop backs towards the door. The sun coming through it paints his edges hard white. Ratchet keeps the gun trained on him.

"I will not be charitable a second time," Soundwave tells Swindle in Starscream's voice. "Don't come back."

"Yup, yup, no worries, no problem at all!"

Soundwave pushes him to stumble towards the door. "Don't suppose that offer of energon is still open? No? What about my gun, can I have that?"

"No." Soundwave grabs at something hidden in Swindle's palm. "Or this."

"Aw man," Swindle says.

"My antideuterium!" Ratchet yelps.

Soundwave chivvies Swindle and Hardtop out the door, Ratchet trailing behind.

Backing onto the packed dirt of the front yard, now apparently far enough from Soundwave to feel safe, Swindle says, "Didn't think you had it in you. Thought fraternizing with the enemy was something you left for Megs."

Ratchet yells from the doorway, "It's a neutral clinic!"

"Yeah, for Autobots! It says 'auto body shop' on the sign, we're not dumb!"

"Well, congrats on being the first two people on the banned list!"

"Don't bother," Soundwave says quietly.

They watch Swindle and Hardtop transform and hit the ground with wheels already rolling, kicking up dust behind them.

Ratchet shades his eyes with a hand and watches till they're long gone, Soundwave at his side, cannon spitting sparks as it powers fitfully down.

"Why don't you have defensive installations? They should never have been allowed to get close."

"Maybe if I say the words 'neutral clinic' often enough they'll sink in."

"You can't change other people."

"I can try." Ratchet rounds on Soundwave, a finger prodding at his chestplate. "We change, Soundwave, it's what we do. People can learn again how to exist without fighting. But they won't if we don't give them a chance."

Soundwave pushes his hand away. Ratchet lets him.

"Well, I appreciate the help," Ratchet sighs. "Come on, let's take a look at what you did to that cannon. I suspect we've got some circuitry to rewrite. And then, hey, we've got a transformation cog to reinstall."

"Lateral flex looks good. Give me a full transformation?"

Soundwave twists into alt, engines coming online with a tooth-rattling buzz to kick dirt around. Standing well back on the back porch, Ratchet nods.

"Any pain?"

"None."

"And how's it feel?"

Soundwave flips back to robot mode. He lands in a crouch and rises back up smoothly, rotating neck and wrist joints. "It feels right."

Ratchet grins. "That's what we like to see."

Reinstalling the t-cog had been a tense moment. They weren't wired in the way a brain module and spark casing were; transformation cogs had to be able to flex and move independently within their protective housing. Typically they relied on physical tension and shielded magnetic bearings. Activating each set of bearings in the right sequence without knocking into anything was tricky even for bots who weren't using most of their chassis on cassette storage space.

Ratchet watches Soundwave test his own joints, motions healthy and free of pain, and tucks a smile into the corner of his cheek.

The prox alarm sing-songs a jolly little MIDI tune, newly chosen to replace its default yell. Ratchet very nearly pegs his clipboard at it in shock.

"Get inside," he tells Soundwave, standing unmoving on the back path like he's not a notorious 'Con and one of the longest-standing MVP targets for the entire Autobot army. "If that's Arcee and she breaks your nose I'm not fixing it!"

He'd called in the Swindle incident—with details fudged—to Autobot base, and now people won't stop calling him. Like he's in any more danger than he used to be!

Soundwave shakes his head. Arms folded. Ratchet just had to repair his weapon systems, didn't he?

Ratchet throws his hands up and stomps inside.

The clinic is dark, and quiet with it once the alarm's off. The main repair bay has the feeling of the base medibay on the off-shift—only the private room's light is on. It's cluttered with tools Ratchet or the drone have brought in one by one. Mugs line the back of the worktable; he's behind on the dishes again.

Ratchet leans in to turn the light off.

He'll get Soundwave his patient file on a datacard, wipe it from his own clipboard, and they'll be done. Back to normal life after a few very odd days. Maybe he'll take up Aid on the invitation to 'Bot Bingo night.

There's a scratching noise from the front door. Ratchet swerves towards it.

"Arcee? It's not locked," he calls.

He opens the door. Nothing.

He looks down.

Ravage's paw is out, claws poised to scratch the door again.

Laserbeak is sitting on the shoulder of a violently purple cassette in robot form.

"There are more of you," Ratchet says, bemused.

"Real polite, doc!" Laserbeak cackles. "No hello? No how-d'ya-do?"

"Yeah, doc," Frenzy says with a sharkticon's grin. She's changed something about her robot mode since Ratchet last saw her during the war, something he can't put his finger on. "Is this how you treat all your patients?"

"Just you. Soundwave know you're here?"

"He'll know when he sees us," Frenzy says airily, and dips under Ratchet's arm into the clinic. Laserbeak has to duck his head to avoid hitting Ratchet's elbow. Ravage, silent and smug, weaves between his feet.

"Wrong way," Ratchet calls over to Frenzy, halfway into the kitchenette already.

Frenzy sticks her head back out the doorway. "I'm hungry! Beak said you had snacks!"

Oh, she's given herself bangs. Last time he was laid up for repairs, Jazz had shown Ratchet a band that had excited him down in Chicago a couple months ago; their bass player had styled his hair just like that. "Clean cups in the autoclave. If anyone else is able to wait for lunch, I'm going to check on Soundwave."

He heads for the back door. Laserbeak launches himself off Frenzy's shoulder. Ravage follows.

Soundwave turns when Ratchet steps outside, poised for action.

"Turns out the visitor wasn't for me. You're raising some rude cassettes, you know?"

Ravage and Laserbeak beeline for Soundwave, who kneels at their approach. Ratchet's starting to get a better sense of his expressions at last; there's fondness and relief in Soundwave's posture.

He leans back against the doorframe, watching the conversation. Laserbeak chattering away, Ravage with one paw laid carefully on Soundwave's knee.

A slurping noise come from his elbow.

"Real sweet," Frenzy says, straw wagging between her teeth. Ratchet keeps those for patients in a locked cupboard; how she found it he doesn't even want to know.

"None of you are sweet." Ratchet eyes the way she tilts her mug, letting the last drops slide around. It's one of his mugs for human visitors, largely used by Alex Malto on another educational interview-meets-gossip session; inexplicably, it reads WORLD'S BEST WIFE. "Need a refill?"

"Nah, I'm good." Frenzy passes him the mug. "Are doctors like, allowed to be bad at doing the dishes? There was nothing in the autoclave."

Ratchet snorts, but accepts the empty mug.

He watches her take a deep breath, square her shoulders, and roll the straw to the other side of her mouth.

"Hey, big man!" she shouts, and strides out into the glare of the sun.

And Soundwave—looks shocked.

Ratchet leaves them to it. He brings in Frenzy's cup. Once he's in the kitchenette, he gets on a roll: fills the empty autoclave up with the clutter of dirty dishes on the counter, wipes down the counter, the sink. Ferries old mugs out of Soundwave's room.

The clinic is dark and cool with the lights off. The air filters come to life with a click-thump.

It's been oddly pleasant, having some life around the place, despite the constant fear of a 'Bot-'Con shootout in his clinic and Soundwave being just about the most stubborn piece of metal this side of Ironhide. Maybe Wheeljack would want to come by for a while, work out of the clinic, make fun of Ratchet's drone not having a rail gun.

Maybe they can talk about the G.H.O.S.T. thing.

Ratchet sets the autoclave going and leans back to watch the pressure and temperature indicators rise. It's clicking past fifty kilopascals when the overhead light flips on.

"Why are you lurking in the dark like a weirdo?" Frenzy demands from the doorway.

Ratchet snorts a laugh and levers himself upright. "It's my darkness, I'm allowed to lurk in it. What is it?"

"We're going."

"I guessed. I'll come say goodbye, then. Before I do, did you want something?"

Ratchet's expecting a quiz on his patient privacy standards. Maybe a question about some embarrassing injury she doesn't want Soundwave to know about. Cassettes and combiners, living in each other's pockets, all get shy about the oddest things.

Instead she asks, "Do you think… do you think Rumble's still alive? On Cybertron? Buzzsaw's with him. What if they're both dead?"

Frenzy ducks her head and glares at whatever face he makes in reply to that.

"No," he says, eventually. "No, kid, they're not dead. Waiting on a body to repair its own magnetic tape isn't fast or fun, but he made it over to Cybertron alive. I'm not counting Rumble out of the fight—and I'm saying that as a medic and as an Autobot."

"That's right," Frenzy says, with a burst of vicious pride. "…Unless he blew up with the entire planet when Megatron and your Prime wrecked the space bridge."

"I didn't know what they were planning—" Ratchet cuts himself off before he starts shouting. He breathes. Medial, distal, okay. "No. It's a guess, and we don't know what the Allspark is capable of. But my guess is that it's probably survived worse, and so has Cybertron. I can't promise you for sure, but I believe that Cybertron's fine, and so is Rumble."

"You would say that."

"Yeah, I'm a medic. Do I need to start sending out literature explaining what that means?" He folds his arms. "I don't give up on life. Not my patients' lives. Not any Cybertronian's. Not our home. I'm not calling time of death till I see the body."

Frenzy scowls down at the floor. "Yeah," she says, voice rough. "Okay. Yeah. He wouldn't die. He doesn't know how."

Ratchet gives Frenzy a minute before he collects his clipboard off the kitchen counter.

"Ready to hear some care instructions?"

"Boring! That's Ravage's job." Frenzy grabs Ratchet by the arm. "Why do you walk so slow if you're so tall, come on. Height's wasted on you."

Ratchet lets her lead him through the clinic and out to the back again. The wind's picking up, rustling the leaves in the trees.

Soundwave's waiting for him, Laserbeak and Ravage tucked comfortably into the crook of one arm. Their shadows stretch long over the ground. The sun's finally lowering itself to the horizon, ready for its nightly recharge.

Ratchet looks them all over. Ravage's tail and leg have healed well; she's moving without pain. And to look at Soundwave, you'd never imagine he was mostly a crumpled ball of tin foil just half a week ago. Ratchet does good work.

He offers Soundwave a datacard. "The cog took long enough that all your welds should be well-set by now, but do me a favour and don't fly through any cloud banks for another two days. Call me if transforming feels…"—Ratchet wiggles his hand evocatively—"too loose or too crunch-y. I'd tell you to stick to fighting bots your own size, but we're in the same weight class. So maybe just take it easy."

Soundwave takes the chip.

Correction, he takes Ratchet's hand.

"You are," Soundwave says, "the most honest person I've ever met."

Frenzy and Laserbeak make an Oooooh sound. Soundwave doesn't dignify them with a response.

"Thank you for the repairs. Consider joining the Decepticons. We could use you."

Ratchet chokes on a laugh. "What an offer!"

Soundwave looks at him steadily. "I am serious."

"So am I." Ratchet has nothing he can do with his hands. One's occupied with the clipboard. The other's occupied with Soundwave. "Look, you're always welcome back for repairs or energon."

"I don't intend to need repairs of this scale again."

"Optimist, are you?" Ratchet blows out a breath. "Well. Thanks but no thanks. Soundwave, I can honestly say I don't want you to win… but good luck, anyway."

Soundwave nods. His hand loosens on Ratchet's. Ratchet, on impulse, tightens his grip.

"Like I said—things change. We change, Soundwave. Four million years of the same war was too much. I don't know what's next for us. Who we'll be. But it's going to be something new."

Soundwave nods, a single grave motion.

"So…" Ratchet tries a smile. "Call me up in a century, Soundwave. We'll see who we are then."

Frenzy kicks his shin. She stage whispers, "Are you going to kiss?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Ratchet tells her, but Soundwave tugs at his hand, pulling it up to where he's folded away his mask.

Soundwave presses Ratchet's knuckles to his lips.

Ratchet's jaw drops.

"A century," Soundwave repeats. "We will see who is right."

Gently, he disentangles the chip from Ratchet's hand.

"It's not about who's right," Ratchet says, contrariness carrying him through shock on autopilot.

Soundwave slides open his chest compartment. "Ravage. Frenzy."

"Not fair, Laserbeak always gets to stay outside," Frenzy complains.

"Laserbeak can fly, dipstick," says Laserbeak.

Ravage and Frenzy flip themselves into cassette form and slide neatly home in Soundwave's dock with the last momentum of their change. Laserbeak bursts upwards from Soundwave's supporting arm, rising to spiral in the air.

On impulse, as Soundwave closes his compartment, Ratchet yanks him forward.

They're just about of a height. Makes it easier for Ratchet to kiss him, once.

"A hundred years," he says again, and tries a smile. "It'll be different. Promise. Hopefully better. Can't promise that. But as a medical professional—the prognosis is good."

Soundwave lifts a silent hand to his mouth before his mask slides home again. His eyes burn through his visor.

It's a pleasure to watch Soundwave take off and join Laserbeak in the air. The easy functioning of his cog, the clean lines of his repaired wings.

Ratchet watches their forms shrink with distance till they're lost in the setting sun.

When he turns back to the clinic, a single light in the kitchenette window beckons him back in, towards all his work still unfinished.