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The elites and the oppressors profit off of your oppression. For this reason, they will never be swayed by pretty words; by pretty and inoffensive moral arguments that can be safely confined to press circuits and away from the foyers and country clubs where true power rests easy. You can entreat, and plead, and patiently explain the reality of your personhood until your spark burns out, but you will never sway enough of them to matter. To acknowledge you as a whole and real mechanism would necessitate, unthinkably, giving up some small amount of the comfort they have become accustomed to. Make no mistake of it, to the very base of their coding, they believe they deserve comfort more than you deserve to live.

— Excerpt from Towards Peace

Ratchet spent his first week with the Decepticons putting hands back on empuratees.

It was hard, grimly satisfying work. Work that he’d half talked himself into, then out of again, performing under the table at his clinic a dozen times. But he’d known that kind of thing would get him shut down and arrested to boot. It was illegal to reconstruct empuratees. And if the Senate had their way, soon it would be illegal to sand off their rust rash, or give them a couple shanix for the trains, or say a kind word to them, or slagging look at them.

It was all going to the pit. The riots. The crackdown on the riots. The riots because of the crackdown because of the riots. Mechs had been flooding into his clinic faster than he could keep up with them, dripping from holes put in them by the enforcers more often than not.

Ratchet had been spending every on shift at Iacon General treating casualties from the protests, then every off shift treating the mechs who couldn’t afford to go to Iacon General.

“You have to pick a Primus-damned side,” Flatline had snarled at him over the smoking engine of some poor leaker who had been caught in the crossfire.

“Get slagged,” Ratchet snapped back and used too much of their fast-dwindling supply of pain patches to knock the patient out.

“My supplier’s gone off the grid,” he’d told Flatline later, when things had mellowed to an uneasy quiet. They were taking advantage of the lull to take stock. “Once we run out, we’re out.”

“The hospital?” Flatline asked, without any real hope.

Ratchet shook his helm. “They’re not going to let me raid the supply store. They already hate the fact that I have this clinic at all.” He braced his hands on the edge of a cart, for a precious moment of steadiness. “I think they’re going to shut me down soon, Flatline. I can feel it coming. It’s a miracle I haven’t been raided yet.”

Flatline’s engine rumbled. “You don’t have to wait for them to shut you down.”

Ratchet pushed himself upright. “I appreciate the help. I can handle it for the rest of the night if you need to head out. Are you on shift tomorrow?”

“I quit.”

The plating on Ratchet’s neck squealed as his head snapped around. “You what?”

Flatline shifted on his pedes. It had always been weird seeing such a big mech look awkward, but he managed it. “I quit this morning. I’m leaving.”

“Slag,” Ratchet said. “Where are you going?”

“Kaon.”

“You’re joining up with the Decepticons,” Ratchet realized. It had made sense. He’d known Flatline was sympathetic—Ratchet was a little sympathetic; anyone with a working processor could see they had a point—but it hadn’t occurred to him that Flatline might do something as drastic as joining what was fast becoming not just a group of activists, but insurrectionists. Ratchet was so used to thinking of medics as inherently neutral. Whatever was going on politically, they patched holes and switched out fuel pumps. It wasn’t supposed to matter whose.

Ratchet had thought then of the pinched look the hospital directors got whenever he used to mention the clinic. The awkward, disapproving silences. He’d eventually stopped mentioning it at all. They hadn’t wanted to think about it, so he’d let them forget.

“Right,” Ratchet said, feeling the last thirty hours hit him all at once. “Good luck.”

“You should come with me,” Flatline said, taking a step forward. “They need doctors. Open a clinic in Kaon—they’d bankroll it.”

Ratchet had snorted at the thought. “I don’t think they can solve my supply chain issues.”

“They have money,” Flatline said cryptically. “Come to Kaon. You said it yourself, the enforcers aren’t going to ignore this place much longer. You’re patching up too many Decepticons. What are you going to do when they raid it?”

The servos in Ratchet’s jaw ground. The answer was protect his patients, of course, and get arrested for his troubles.

“Yeah,” Flatline said as if he’d replied out loud. He took another step forward and put his hand on Ratcher’s arm. Broad, dark palm covering white plating. “You’re no good to anyone in jail, Ratch.” If you even make it to jail, hovered, unsaid, in the air. A lot of people were disappearing. Turning up missing faces and memories, if they turned up at all. If Shockwave hadn’t been safe, then Ratchet sure as hell wasn’t.

That final exchange had been months ago, the last time he’d seen Flatline. Now, the pinch-faced, back-alley medic named Hook who was running the haphazard cluster of tents the Decepticons were calling a hospital squinted at Ratchet’s work and said, “You’re the fastest. Take the next ten.” And Ratchet just nodded sharply and handed the mech on his table, who was slowly bending and unbending his fingers right in front of his optic like he couldn’t quite believe they were there, a rubber ball.

“Pass that from hand to hand, squeezing until your grip strength is strong enough to pop it,” Ratchet told him.

He took the ball. “Will I—get a face too?” he asked timidly. “I don’t need anything fancy,” he rushed to add when Ratchet hesitated. “Just a visor and a mask?”

“When we get more supplies,” Ratchet said, deciding right then that if that wasn’t true he was going to make it true. He pointed to where a little gaggle of his patients were squeezing balls and running calibration exercises in a corner. “Go wait over there. Someone will come to check on you in a bit.”

“Thank you,” said the mech, with the same aching sincerity they’d all thanked him with. Ratchet managed to muster a smile for him, and let it carry him through to the next patient.

It hadn’t been that hard a decision, in the end. Or, it hadn’t seemed that hard when Ratchet was too furious to think. He had been keeping his head down as best as he could, trying desperately to get just a few more operational weeks out of his clinic. Get to just a few more patients before they all fled.

The Dead End was emptying out. For the first time in all the centuries Ratchet had been working there, the name fit. All the stubborn, ugly life of the place sucked out.

The ones who could scrounge up the money for the train were going to Kaon. Ratchet didn’t know where the rest had gone.

Still, Ratchet lingered. Stubbornly planted in his clinic like a turbofox protecting its den, even as the patients stopped coming, and his bosses graduated from hinting to telling him that he needed to stop leaving the city center. It wasn’t safe. There might be a long-overdue inquiry into what exactly it was he was doing with his free time.

The implication had been that any second someone was going to accuse him of being a crypto ‘Con, and then there would be hell to pay.

Ratchet hadn’t been, was the thing. He still wasn’t. The Decepticons seemed to be running Kaon as best as they could, although Ratchet had notes, and he’d never for a second believed they were as bad as Zeta made them out to be, but he hadn’t wanted to throw his lot in with them. He’d already been heartily sick of factions.

Then they found Glit in a trash heap on a pile of dead mechs.

Ratchet had known Glit. Glit had been a good medic. He’d never been to med school, obviously, they didn’t take beastformers, but he had done patchwork as well as any resident in any ER Ratchet had ever worked in.

And, more than that, he’d been a medic. So what if he’d worked under the table and ran with Decepticons. Whatever had been done to him—he hadn’t deserved it. He’d been one of the good ones. One of the ones who’d been trying to make things better.

Ratchet grabbed a bucket of solvent to give his table a quick scrub down before his next patient.

There was a countdown in the corner of his HUD until the next time he needed to recharge. He’d be almost in the red after ten more patients, but he’d make it back to the flophouse they had him quartered in. He was sharing a room with four other mechs in what he was pretty sure used to be an office building. He’d heard the ‘Cons had better digs for their own people, but Ratchet wasn’t about to ask for a badge just to get a better berth. If they were happy to keep letting him work and not bother him too much, then he was happy too.

The solvent stung the chemoreceptors in his nose, but the acrid scent was so familiar that he didn’t even flinch, just kept scrubbing at a stubborn patch of fluid which he was not about to let turn into rust.

He’d scrubbed his whole clinic down before he’d shut it up for good, even though there’d been no reason to. Left all the supplies and equipment he wasn’t taking with him in their labeled cabinets. He’d hoped whoever broke in to steal it all would be able to find some use for them.

He still hadn’t been a hundred percent sure as he’d boarded up the front, but as he’d looked up at the dusty and now permanently unlit Clinic sign, something had solidified.

Orion had been there with him, staring up at the same sign. He’d come by to help Ratchet pack up what little he was taking.

“I’m sorry, Ratchet,” Orion’d said. He sounded almost as gloomy as Ratchet felt.

“Yeah,” Ratchet sighed. “It was only a matter of time before this place got shut down. Surprised it lasted as long as it did.”

“Still. This was a good place, Ratch. You helped a lot of people, against all the odds. It even survived Sentinel.”

“But not Zeta.”

“Zeta’s trying to stop a civil war,” Orion said. Ratchet glanced at him. Up close, his friend looked exhausted. Still upright, still determined, but exhausted. “I don’t—” Orion paused, then lowered his voice, even though they had been the only two people on the street. “I don’t agree with everything he’s doing either, but if there’s another real conflict—it’ll be worse than Sentinel. It’ll be bigger. The Decepticons have gained a lot of power. There are rumors that they’re building a real army.”

Ratchet snorted. He’d heard those rumors too, and didn’t believe them for a second. He didn’t believe all these “terrorist attacks” that cluttered the news were the ‘Cons, either. Ratchet hadn’t been forged yesterday, and he remembered the kind of slag previous Primes liked to accuse their political enemies of only too well.

“Zeta wants to recognize them as a political party,” Orion said, insistent, “but they have to stop using violent tactics. He won’t be able to if they don’t. And we have to protect the civilians getting caught in the crossfire. Sometimes that means,” Orion gestured vaguely around the empty street. A good number of the buildings had obvious bullet holes in the walls.

“Crackdowns?”

“Yeah,” Orion said. He obviously hated it, all of it. Ratchet knew there had been a time not too long ago when Orion had been seriously considering joining up with Megatron himself, but Orion had influence now, and he had Zeta’s audial. He was in a position to do some good. Ratchet, on the other hand, was coming up against the limits of his own influence and feeling it.

Ratchet sighed. “Right. Force for him, pacifism for his enemies.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“It should,” said Ratchet, placing the final metal bar over the door of his clinic. He wouldn’t leave a sign. Anyone who came this way would know what the boarded windows meant and, hopefully, they’d know where to come looking for him. “It’s from your friend Megatron’s book.”

“You’ve read it?”

“Everyone with a functioning text processor’s read it, Orion.” Ratchet placed his hand flat on the door of the clinic, silently saying goodbye to the little, run-down place that had, for a short time, been the one good thing in his life. “I’m heading out.”

“Where will you go?” Orion asked.

Ratchet glanced over at him. At his calm, determined blue optics, his broad shoulders which never seemed to bend under the weight of everything. All the endless, churning slag-melt that sometimes made Ratchet feel like his back strut was about to snap.

Orion wanted Ratchet to come with him, to try and prop up the new Senate and Zeta’s crumbling administration and stop the tidal flow of war from overtaking Cybertron. Ratchet might have gone with him, in another life. War just made corpses, and he didn’t want it any more than Orion did—but Zeta and his people made corpses too. His government still hadn’t banned empurata, even though he’d sworn they would. And there were rumors of some kind of secret horror show that made stumbling, confused mechs who couldn’t remember who they were. And that was on top of the simple, everyday violence of the Dead End, where all the mechs who slipped through the cracks ended up.

Running the clinic had felt at times so much like running a mobile army hospital. Patching up twitchy, traumatized mechs as fast as he could with half the equipment he needed, and sending them right back out into the shredder. So when he’d heard Megatron say, “War is already here for us. It has been here,” at a rally he’d let Flatline talk him into going to, Ratchet had found himself nodding along with everyone else, because he knew it was true.

Orion was still waiting for his answer. Ratchet pushed away from the door, slipping the key into his sub space. “I don’t know,” he said. “Hopefully somewhere I can do some good.”

“You know you always have a place with me, and with the Autobots.”

“I’ll think about it,” Ratchet lied.

He had said goodbye to Orion, and went to catch what he would learn later had been the last train to Kaon.

In the present, Ratchet was hurriedly sucking down a cube and using the precious fifteen minutes of downtime he’s allotted himself to do a spot check on his own systems. He’d gotten a bit of sand or grit or something in his left wrist, and he was deciding if he should spend a precious five minutes opening up the plating to get it out, or just blast the thing with pressurized air and hope that solved the problem.

“You slagger, I can’t believe you,” said a familiar voice and Ratchet turned just in time to be crushed into Flatline’s chest.

“Hello to you too,” Ratchet wheezed, patting Flatline on the arm.

Flatline laughed and set him back down on his pedes. “I can’t believe you’re here. After all that scrap you gave me about ‘doing what we can where we can.’ I thought nothing short of a cosmic event would rip you away from Iacon General.”

“Yeah, well, you turned out to be right about them not looking the other way forever.”

“Sorry, what was that?” Flatline cupped one hand around his audial, tilting his head exaggeratedly. “Didn’t quite catch it.”

Ratchet punched him in the shoulder, but he was smiling. The sight of a familiar face was a relief, and finally knowing for sure that Flatline was okay made a little twist of tension he’d been carrying for months loosen. “I said you were right, you insufferable bag of bolts. Don’t expect to hear it again.”

Flatline shoved him back, snickering. “I’m sorry about the clinic, Ratch,” he said, sobering. “I heard. I was worried about you. I’m glad you made it.”

“You too,” Ratchet said. His shoulders slumped. “It’s getting bad back in Iacon.”

“Yeah,” Flatline said, sobering, “I know. Try not to let it bog you down; we’re doing good work here. We’re helping people. More every day.” He reached out and shoved Ratchet lightly in the shoulder, like he’d always used to when he was trying to convince Ratchet to come with him to some new underground bar instead of out to the clubs.

Ratchet hadn’t been out drinking in so long.

“What are you going to do now?” Flatline asked. “You gonna join up officially? Next branding ceremony’s in a few days. How long have you been here?”

Ratchet’s optics flicked down the purple badge conspicuous in the center of Flatline’s chest. “Been here about a week,” he said. “Still getting used to the place.”

“Digs not quite as nice as your old condo, huh?”

Ratchet snorted. “No, they are not. Where have you been hiding, anyway? I was half-expecting to see your smug face waiting for me at the train station.”

“Oh, I would have been there, believe me. Given you a proper welcome, but I was in Helex. Sorta can’t tell you what I was doing there.”

Ratchet gave him a sideways look. “What, are you doing secret missions now?

Flatline shrugged, looking smug. Oh, he loved knowing something Ratchet didn’t, the glitch. “How’ve you settled in with the team?” he asked, changing the subject. “Most of the medics here didn’t go to school. They’re not bad, don’t get me wrong, but hardly any of them have experience working in a hospital setting. Even a field hospital.”

Ratchet sighed. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. I’d love to show them the ropes, but there’s no time, and they don’t trust me yet. None of the other Dead End medics made it, at least not to this outpost, so they just see me as some fancy doctor from the capital.”

“They know who you are, though?”

“Of course they know who I am.” Ratchet finally remembered that he was still holding a half-full cube and took a sip. “I didn’t even make it off the train without getting recognized.”

The train into Kaon had been packed full to bursting, with more mechs piling in at every stop until finally they had passed the border of Iacon into the barren land surrounding the Rust Sea and every mech had exvented at once.

Ratchet might have started doubting his decision on the long ride—would have if the mech sitting across from him hadn’t had a nasty and untreated rust infection in his front wheel wells. By the time Ratchet had finished lecturing and slapping nanite gel on him, half a dozen other mechs were hovering nervously nearby. And by the time he’d worked through all them someone had recognized him and it had gone all up and down the train that Ratchet of Vaporex was on here and offering free patchwork to anyone who didn’t mind getting sworn at. By the time Ratchet looked up again, they were already through the city gates.

Kaon was a buzzing hive of activity. Like Iacon in that way, but different in just about every other way. No high, shining towers. Just tall smokestacks belching multicolored smoke up to the sky. The ground crunched lightly under Ratchet’s pedes when he stepped off the train, and his ventilation system automatically kicked up a gear to filter out the smog.

There were mechs with purple Decepticon badges directing passengers as they disembarked the train. It was jarring to see, even though Ratchet had known the ‘Cons controlled the city. In Iacon, even in the bad parts, it was still rare to see mechs openly wearing the badge.

“Welcome to Kaon,” a bored sounding Decepticon told Ratchet, holding up a hand to stop him. He glanced down at the pad he was holding and said, in a monotone as if he was reading off a list, “Do you have any friends or endurae in the city who you plan to stay with?”

“No,” Ratchet said impatiently. “I—“

“Are you here seeking asylum, work, or to throw off the yoke of oppression and claim freedom for yourself and all mechs?”

“Uh,” Ratchet said, “work, I suppose. I’m a med—“

“Do you have any professional skills or qualifications you feel are of note?”

“Yes,” Ratchet said. “I’m a fully licensed medic with two million years experience as a general surgeon, and enough specialist qualifications that if I started listing them we’d be here all day.”

The Decepticon’s optics focused on Ratchet for the first time. He looked Ratchet up and down, lingering on the medical crosses on his shoulders.

“Okay,” he said, sounding only marginally less bored. “Report to the tent down there with the red curtain.” He pointed. “They’ll sort you out.”

“Thanks,” Ratchet said dryly.

The tent had been surprisingly uncrowded, and didn’t seem to be just for medics. Most of the mechs actually looked like engineers of some breed or another. None of them looked up as Ratchet entered the tent.

Ratchet had smacked a big purple and green mech on the shoulder to get his attention and said, “Guy at the train station said to come here. I’m a medic.”

“Talk to Hook,” the mech had said and pointed to another, smaller green and purple mech who was definitely an engineer.

Hook, it had turned out, was a self-taught medic who didn’t appreciate Ratchet’s skepticism, but needed help bad enough to tolerate it.

Ratchet had had a vague plan of finding a building no one else was using and setting up shop there. Independent, like he’d been in Iacon. But it quickly became apparent that the ‘Cons were the only game in town when it came to… anything. And every inch of Kaon was already stuffed to the brim with refugees. So, Ratchet had allowed himself to be dragged in to Hook’s little medical outfit. Not a Decepticon, but working in a Decepticon hospital with meager Decepticon equipment plus what he’d stuffed into his subspace.

The open, suspicious hostility the other medics had greeted him with softened when he started pulling mesh, vibroscalpels, wrenches, and screwdrivers out of his subspace and made it clear he was going to share. Not completely, he was still an outsider, but enough that they’d work with him.

Flatline whistled through his vents. “Well, let no one say Ratchet of Vaporex wastes time.”

“Yeah,” Ratchet said, a little glumly. What he’d brought with him hadn’t made a dent, really. They were still out of most things most of the time, not least because supplies had a tendency to walk away out of the disorganized storage locker. When they didn’t just degrade because the locker wasn’t climate controlled. “I don’t know, Flatline. Maybe I should have—I don’t know.” He waved a hand vaguely, not actually sure what he was trying to say. Maybe that he should have gotten here sooner. Or not come. Or found some magical third way that would have fixed everything.

Flatline nodded anyway, like he got it. “You’re where you’re supposed to be.”

Ratchet managed a smile for him. “I hope that’s true.”

“You hope? You waffling already?” Flatline teased.

“No,” Ratchet scoffed automatically, because he wasn’t someone who waffled, but as he said it he realized it was true. Maybe it was just that they were keeping him too busy to think, but he didn’t regret uprooting his life. He was sad about the friends he’d leaving behind in Iacon. There were things he missed, like his condo with its big berth, and his favorite fuel shop, but it was… not bad. Really not bad, actually. Focused, productive. No one was calling him away from work to listen to the weird sound some hypochondriac Senator’s joint was making, there were no endless meetings, no fundraisers, no grant writing, no having to pretend he didn’t hate every mech on the board of directors.

Even the grinding overwork reminded him, in a vaguely nostalgic way, of his residency.

“I’m scrubbing back in,” he told Flatline, standing up, and chugging down the last of his gritty fuel. “You here to help, or did you just stop in on your way to your next secret mission?”

“Here to lend a hand,” Flatline said amiably. He lumbered after Ratchet, his presence familiar and heavy right behind Ratchet’s shoulder. It made the cables in his shoulders relax, just a little.

They worked the rest of the shift chatting idly. Just like old times.

It was as if the arrival of Flatline triggered something, made someone sit up and notice that Ratchet was there. He’d been getting used being treated like a mildly incompetent junior doctor by Hook, and ignored by everyone else unless they wanted something. He’d been resigned to eating slag until everybody was satisfied that he was neither a spy nor some stuck-up high caste on a charity mission, who’d be gone the second his pant got chipped.

He was making his way one day back to the repurposed office building he and the other working refugees had been dumped in, when a sleek little beastformer with missiles on their hips planted themself in his way.

“Soundwave wants to talk to you,” they said, like that was supposed to mean something to Ratchet.

“Yeah?” Ratchet said warily. “Do I want to talk to Soundwave?”

The beastformer’s mouth curled up at the edges, just a little. Ratchet hadn’t had the opportunity to see many beastformers in alt up close before, he’d had no idea they were able to produce micro expressions like that. “You do,” they said and turned to go.

At a loss for what else to do, Ratchet followed.

Soundwave turned out to be a big blue mech with a faceplate and a red visor. The beastformer, who hadn’t bothered to introduce themself, disappeared into the shadows as Soundwave beckoned Ratchet closer.

They were deeper into the city than Ratchet had ever been. Near to where the refineries had run. Were still running, Ratchet supposed. It was hot, and the air above them was dark with smog. There was the faint, and faintly disquieting, scent of melting metal.

“Look, what’s this about?” Ratchet said. “We’ve got a whole crop of patients at the hospital, and they need me there.” Ratchet’s shift was over for the day, which Soundwave no doubt knew, but falling back on the “I’m busy” defense was second nature.

“Conversation: will not take long,” Soundwave said. He was using some kind of voice modulator. It stripped all the emotiveness out of his voice, making him sound more like an AI than a mech. “Purpose in Kaon?” he asked

Ratchet crossed his arms. It was to be an interrogation, then. Later than he’d expected, but perhaps they’d been busy. “Like I told the ‘Con at the train station, I’m here to work.”

“Work: only purpose?”

“Yes.”

Soundwave studied him for a long time, expression unreadable behind his visor. It took everything Ratchet had not to shift nervously under his gaze. He had nothing to hide.

“Sufficient,” Soundwave said, finally. “Follow.” He stood.

“Where are we going now? Your friend already dragged me a halfway across the city,” Ratchet grumbled, but he fell into step behind Soundwave.

“Third round of interviews,” Soundwave said. It was impossible to tell with the modulator, but Ratchet suspected he was being laughed at.

Ratchet was aware, in a vague sense, of where Decepticon HQ was, but he’d never had a reason to go there. It turned out to be in some kind of repurposed factory in the dead center of the city. As they approached, and the building loomed up a them out of the smog, Ratchet’s first impression was of a structure that looked vaguely organic. It had a rounded architectural style he’d never seen before. It reminded him of a rust-hornet nest.

That impression only intensified as they entered. It was buzzing inside. People as far as the optic could see. The main room was a huge, open space, with crisscrossed catwalks going all the way up to the ceiling, and not an inch of it was free from purple-badged mechs striding to and fro with purpose.

In the center—Ratchet caught a glimpse when the crowd parted briefly—was a pit. There were stairs going down into it, and it looked to have been rigged up with computer stations.

They walked towards the pit, wading through the crush. A few mechs nodded to Soundwave as they passed.

There were lot of military builds, a surprising amount of fliers, a lot of industrial builds refitted with auxiliary weaponry. Ratchet paused in horror in front of a bulldozer who some absolute hack had mounted a gatling gun to.

“What’re you looking at?” the bulldozer said, flaring his plating at Ratchet, engine growling.

“That thing’s going to overheat and melt your whole arm the second you try to fire it for more than five seconds,” Ratchet told him. “Who did your installation? They’re an idiot.”

“Um.” A confused look passed over the bulldozer’s face. He glanced sideways at Soundwave.

Ratchet was ready to launch into a lecture, but a broad blue hand wrapped around his arm, and he was being steered by Soundwave down into the pit.

It was larger up close. Maybe it had been used at one point to store molten metal, judging from the black-burnt walls. Mechs orbited around the edge, coming down and going back up. When seen out of the corner of the optics, it almost made it seem like the room was rotating.

Soundwave led him down through the rows of computer stations, to the very middle of the pit, where there was a single station separate and slightly elevated from the rest.

And sat there in a high backed chair, in the center of it all like a sun, was Megatron.

Soundwave gave Ratchet a little nudge forward, and Ratchet figured that was his cue to approach.

“I know you,” said Megatron. He was very big in person. Unnervingly gray. Ratchet knew gladiators liked to paint themselves gray and pink like corpses, and he knew the caustic chemicals used by miners fried nanites, leaving them looking like the walking dead. He wondered which group Megatron was trying to represent. He wondered where on Cybertron Megatron thought he knew him from, since he was sure they had never met. “You’re the medic who runs that patchshop in the Dead End.”

Ah. Ratchet’s reputation had proceeded him.

“Ran,” he corrected. “It got shut down.”

“How unfortunate,” Megatron said, a hint of what might have been mockery lining his voice. “When?”

“About a week ago.” One of Megatron’s optical ridges quirked in surprise. He must have thought Ratchet had come out of desperation. As a last resort.

“And your position at Iacon General? As personal physician to Zeta?” Megatron asked. Not just Ratchet’s reputation had preceded him, then. Megatron had looked into him, or at least had a lackey take a glance at Autopedia.

The tempo of the pit’s rotation was slowing, people pausing, heads turning. A small crowd was gathering, studying Ratchet like Megatron studied him. The buzz of activity quieting as mechs abandoned their work to watch.

Ratchet hoped they enjoyed the show.

“I quit,” he said.

“You quit.”

“Yep.” Ratchet let the P really pop. He was starting to enjoy himself, as Megatron’s expression grew more and more incredulous.

“I see,” Megatron said, his face smoothing back to neutrality, even though his optics remained hard and suspicious.

He was, Ratchet had noted absently, quite handsome. Cold constructs often were. Ratchet had known a lot of engineers over the years, and none of them could resist making something beautiful.

“You must think we’re stupid,” Megatron said, musingly. “You must think I’m stupid if you think I’d believe that Zeta Prime’s personal doctor willingly came all the way to Kaon to sleep in refugee housing and weld disposibles back together. The question remains if you’re a spy, or just a mech fallen out of favor.”

“That’s not—” Ratchet glanced at where Soundwave was standing against the wall. Soundwave looked impassively back. There’d be no intervention from him, even though he had to know Ratchet wasn’t either of those things. “I’m not trying to save face here; I left on my own.”

“A spy, then.”

“Do I seem like a spy?” Ratchet said, exasperated.

Megatron didn’t answer. He rested his elbow on the arm of his chair, and his cheek on the knuckles of his fist. An affectation of boredom, but Ratchet still felt his gaze like a physical weight on his plating.

“Look,” Ratchet said, suddenly aware that he would get one shot and one shot only at convincing Megatron of his good intentions. “I know how it looks—though I’m not sure why you think a medic like me would be anything but a scrap spy—but I came here because this is where my patients came. It’s as simple as that.”

“All of your patients? Surely some of your patrons are still in Iacon.”

“They don’t need me. The mechs who needed me were the ones who came to my clinic. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Dead End—”

“I have.”

“Then you know it’s a slag pit, and it’s gotten worse under every single Prime, and that’s the honest truth.” Ratchet spread his hands. “I’m just trying to do my job.”

Megatron leaned forward, huge forearms coming to rest on his thighs with a thunk. “But why come here?” he asked. He sounded honestly curious now. “Not every needy mech on the planet has come to Kaon, although,” he huffed to himself; some private amusement, “it certainly seems that way sometimes. Why not go to Nyon? Rodion? Petrex?”

Ratchet hesitated. It was… true that there were other cities, any number of cities, that could have used his help as much as Kaon, but Ratchet hadn’t seriously considered migrating to any of them. It’d seemed perfectly clear in his head. If he wasn’t there, he’d be here.

“Are you here hiding? Did you see a glimpse of your masters’ true faces and did it frighten and disgust you? Did you come here hoping we would protect you?”

Ratchet shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t like how close that was hitting. “I’m not hiding.”

“Are you here to join the revolution?”

“Of course not,” Ratchet scoffed. “War doesn’t bring justice, kid. War just makes corpses.”

“‘Kid,’” somebody from the sidelines whispered, probably a little louder than they’d intended.

Megatron seemed unfazed. “War is already here for us.”

Ratchet waved a hand at him, irritably. “‘It comes first to the streets and gutters,’ yeah, I’ve heard the speech.”

“You did come to us for protection, no matter what you’ve convinced yourself,” Megatron said. His optics bored into Ratchet’s. Ratchet felt pinned in their red light, like a spotlight in a dark room. “You want us to keep you safe while you work, and you want to use our facilities, our supplies, and our medics to aid in your work. And what do we get in return?”

Ratchet had to cycle his optics at that. He’d never had anyone do anything but thank him for trying to work in their city.

“Well,” he said, “you get a damn fine medic.”

A beat.

Someone snickered, then somebody else giggled, then Ratchet was rudely and suddenly reminded that they had an audience as the entire room erupted into laughter.

Even Megatron cracked a smile. A big, lazy grin that crinkled up the corners of his optics and exposed sharpened incisors.

“That’s good enough!” someone called, which triggered a chorus of agreement from the watching Decepticons. Ratchet had kept his optics on Megatron.

Megatron gave him a little nod.

“And that was that,” Ratchet told Flatline the next day, as they scrubbed wrenches and spanners clean behind the hospital tent. “Pretty sure Hook still thinks I’m a spy, though.”

Flateline snorted. “Hook just hates anyone who got accepted to med school. He treats me like an interloper too, even though it took a letter from a senator to get the dean to even read my application. Shockwave’s here, by the way.”

Ratchet looked up at him sharply. “He’s—how is he?”

“Not good,” Flatline shook his head. “I mean, he’s functional. Cognizant, rational. But he isn’t himself. You’d have to talk to him to understand what I mean. He never leaves the labs, though.”

“They’ve got him working in their labs?”

“We’ve got him running our labs. And he’s the only reason we have a steady supply of medical grade solvent.” Flatline flicked a few droplets from his fingers at Ratchet.

Ratchet frowned, absently brushing the liquid off his plating. “Think they’d let me see him?”

“Not if you’re still playing at being neutral.” Flateline’s optics narrowed, sly. “Good reason to sign up, though. Lab access whenever you want it.”

Ratchet rolled his optics. “I’m not that desperate.”

“Still dead set on not taking a side, huh?”

“Shut up,” Ratchet told him. Flatline grinned. “I did take a side, glitchhead. I chose the patients.”

Ratchet didn’t work much with junior doctors anymore. You get to a certain level of specialist, and everyone you talk to is also a specialist. And of course the Primal med team was made up entirely of mechs at the top of their fields.

But Ratchet had paid his dues at the teaching hospital, back before he’d opened up the clinic and had still had a whisper of free time.

Working in the ramshackle Decepticon med bay—and they’d expanded into the corner of a hastily cleared out real building now—reminded him of that. A bunch of nervous, half-trained, semi-doctors trying to look confident in front of the patients.

Ratchet’s initial assessment had been right: there wasn’t a fully licensed, forged medic among them. Flatline was the closest apart from Ratchet, by virtue of being forged and having an alt that was just passable as a heavily armored patient transport. He’d skated into med school right before they’d tightened requirements.

But all the mechs here who had actually worked in a legitimate medical establishment before had been med techs, or nursing assistants, or palliative care workers wiping drool off mechs in the final throes of cybercrosis. The others were all quite literally back alley medics who’d either flunked med school or never been in the first place. Hook was a civil engineer who’d apparently used to pick up extra cash patching up gladiators, and met Megatron that way.

Which wasn’t to say they were bad or unworthy mechs. They were for the most part keen and bright and here because they wanted to be, which counted for a lot. Ratchet just kept coming up against gaps in the communal knowledge.

Although, to their credit, he’d only had to explain once why they needed to soak the tools in solvent instead of giving them a quick dip unless they wanted a rust outbreak on their hands.

Old, long unused teaching code was starting to wake up in the back of his processor. Except Hook kept piling all the complicated work on him until he barely had time to cycle his optics, let alone try to turn a bunch of support staff into proper doctors.

Ratchet was pondering this while scrubbing down the back counters when a hush fell over the whole room.

He heard the sound of pedes quickly tapping across the floor. Then murmured voices. Then Hook, squeakily, “No, yes, of course, Ratchet’s nearly off shift now,” which Ratchet wasn’t, and when he turned around to say something, there was Megatron.

Hook beckoned him over emphatically, so Ratchet dropped his sponge back in the bucket and went, drying his hands on a rag.

Go with it, Hook mouthed at him from behind Megatron’s shoulder.

Ratchet looked Megatron up and down. He was just as big and gray as the last time.

“Doctor,” Megatron greeted him, “walk with me.”

Megatron held the door open for him, so Ratchet had to duck under his arm. Ratchet caught a hint of engine oil as he passed, felt warm air from his vents.

Ratchet watched Megatron out of the corner of his optics as he led them out onto the bustling street. He moved with a surprising smoothness for such heavy machinery.

Ratchet realized he didn’t recognize the part of Kaon Megatron was leading him.

“You taking me somewhere to murder me?” Ratchet asked dryly, breaking the silence.

Megatron huffed steam out of his vents. “Of course not. I’m taking you to get a drink.”

“Why?” Ratchet asked, suspicious.

“Is it so hard to believe you intrigued me?” Megatron glanced down at him, red optics meeting his. “I’ve been thinking about our conversation. You weren’t what I expected.”

Ratchet wasn’t sure “conversation” was the right word for him pleading his case in front of Megatron’s throne, but he wasn’t going to litigate that point right now. “What did you expect?”

“Someone more in line with his colleagues, clients, and friends among the Cybertronian elite.”

Ratchet snorted. “Some friends they turned out to be, in the end.”

“So you did fall out of favor.”

“Well, I have now,” Ratchet said wryly. “No, I was doing just fine for myself. It was everyone else who wasn’t doing fine.”

“How selfless.”

Ratchet scowled at Megatron’s tone, but didn’t take the bait. Megatron led him past a street market, full of haphazard carts and shouting mechs, to a squat, out of the way building. The side door opened at his touch, and Ratchet found himself being led into a dim, hazy room. The tang of engex and sweetness of cygar smoke was immediately thick on his chemoreceptors.

Ratchet stepped forward and stumbled on a step that he’d missed in the dark. Megatron steadied him with one hand between his shoulders. The hand slid down his spinal strut to the small of his back, right above his hips. Ratchet stiffened, but Megatron was already moving past him, leading them both to a table tucked into a corner, half-hidden from the rest of the room.

“What is this place?” Ratchet asked curiously as a server appeared from the gloom, leaving a glowing bottle of engex and two glasses on the table before disappearing again.

“Just a bar.” Megatron poured a generous glug of the bright lavender liquid into Ratchet’s cube, then his own. “It was a speakeasy of sorts, once. Where criminals, gladiators, and malcontents gathered to say treasonous things in hushed voices. We planned the takeover of this city,” he rapped his fingers on the tabletop, clunk clunk, “right at this table.”

“Got yourself a bigger office since then,” Ratchet commented. He took a sip of his engex, letting it slide over his tongue. It had the slightly gritty texture of something that had probably been distilled in someone’s basement. Local. A slight zing from the concentrated minerals. It was pretty nice, truth be told.

Ratchet’s cables all released tension he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding as the first trickles hit his tank.

He’d been running on orange nearly since he’d got to the city. The low and mid grade that were the refugee rations never quite enough to satisfy his engine. Medics were made to be durable, but not necessarily fuel efficient.

Megatron made a satisfied sound into his own glass and Ratchet glanced at him. A heavy industrial build like him must even worse fuel demands than Ratchet. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought Megatron’s biolights and might have been glowing brighter. His optics a banked red that reminded Ratchet of looking through the grating of a closed forge.

“So?” Ratchet asked. “What’s the pitch?”

“Who says there is one?”

“Please,” Ratchet snorted, “you’re the big shot around here. I’m sure you’ve got a queue of mechs twenty miles long trying to get a moment alone with you.”

Megatron shrugged impassively, as if to say Ratchet was welcome to his assumptions. Ratchet felt a flare of irritation.

“I saw you speak, once, you know,” he said to cover it. “In Rodion.”

“I haven’t been to Rodion in a long time.”

“Well, it was a while ago. Friend of mine talked me into going.”

“What did you think?”

“What, you want a review?”

Megatron smirked behind his glass and didn’t answer.

He was riling Ratchet up on purpose. For what reason Ratchet couldn’t guess. Maybe he was still looking for an excuse to toss Ratchet out on his aft into the desert.

“It was. Fine,” Ratchet said stiffly. Then, because he didn’t want to be dishonest, “Persuasive.”

“Thank you. Did you have many friends who were Decepticons?”

Ratchet hesitated. “Just two that I know of.”

“Of course, you’d never associate with criminals like us.”

“Hey now,” Ratchet protested, “I never said that. I’m not—prejudiced. I mean, I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here. I don’t agree with all your methods, but I don’t think you’re nothing but terrorists like Sentinel and the rest say.”

“You don’t agree with our methods.”

“No.”

“Yet you’re perfectly happy to indulge yourself in whatever mercy mission you’ve convinced yourself this is, while taking advantage of the security my people provide. You’ve felt the reprieve, haven’t you? The pressure of the Primacy lifted, leaving you to move and do as you please. You have the Decepticons to thank for that.”

“Thank you,” Ratchet said sarcastically.

“You think you’ve cured yourself of it,” Megatron continued, unbothered by Ratchet’s bristling hackles, “the willful helplessness, the criminal self-indulgence of the elites.”

“‘Self-indulgence—?’” Ratchet’s fingers tightened around his glass, the hard silicone creaking. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you think you’re better than them,” Megatron said, optics flicking up to meet Ratchet’s, pinning him back in his chair. “Smarter, more talented, forged superior by the grace of Primus, and morally superior because you spare a thought for the disadvantaged.”

“Is it bad to care, now?”

“Is it? Some of your former compatriots certainly seem to think so.”

Ratchet’s jaw worked. “I don’t believe in Primus,” he said because it seemed important to clarify that for some reason. “Never went in for any of that woo-woo scrap. What we see is what we get.”

“An atheist in the house of the Primes,” Megatron said, rolling the words slowly over his tongue like the engex. “Fascinating.”

“We aren’t—aren’t all fanatics and Functionists. Look, we wouldn’t all toss a dozen disposibles in the smelter for the sake of a faster-charging berth or whatever.”

“I will have to take your word for it,” Megatron said. “You may have noticed, but there aren’t many high caste mechs in Kaon.”

“Heard Shockwave was around here somewhere.”

“Oh, I don’t fool myself into thinking Shockwave would have remained anything but a sympathetic bystander if he hadn’t been so dramatically betrayed by his old friends.” Megatron rubbed his finger along the side of his glass thoughtfully. “There are certain… experiences a mech can have that leave him no choice but to change into something new.”

Ratchet suspected they weren’t talking about Shockwave anymore. “And, what? You’re trying to figure out what happened to me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m the same as I always was,” Ratchet said. “It’s everyone else who’s gone insane.”

Megatron studied him for a long time in silence. Ratchet stared defiantly back, refusing to be intimidated over drinks of all things. Too many noblemechs had tried that with him back in the day, and he’d sent them all packing with nothing more than ringing audials.

“The pitch,” Megatron said, “is join us. Join the Decepticons, take the brand, do more good with us than you ever could hovering on the sidelines.” Megatron smiled suddenly, his banked red optics squinting up at the corners. “I never believed in any of that ‘woo-woo scrap’ either. It’s hard to see the hand of any god down in the sodium mines, or in prison, or the stinking, energon-soaked gladiator pits.”

“I know your sob story. I’ve read it,” Ratchet said, but without any real bite. He was too distracted by the fact that he was—actually sort of considering it.

It wasn’t that Megatron was all the way right—there were good mechs in Iacon. There was Orion, except the previous Prime had tried his best to murder Orion, and Zeta treated him like a shiny pet turbofox, just there to look good on TV—but Ratchet could see the grim practicality in his offer. He would be able to do more good on the inside, at least in the short term. Ratchet had been trying his best to ignore it, but the sad fact was no one trusted him. He was an outsider, and that made his job very hard. It was obvious that Megatron was banking on his frustration and impatience, but that didn’t make him wrong.

Megatron’s smile widened, showing a hint of fang. “No sympathy for the poor, disposable miner?”

Ratchet snorted humorlessly. “Is sympathy all you wanted? That’s easy.” He reached across the table and patted the back of Megatron’s hand. “Poor you.”

Megatron froze. He recovered quickly enough, but not so quickly that Ratchet missed his shock.

He was a smooth bastard, and had no doubt been through things no mech should go through, but he was still young. Startlingly young, when Ratchet paused to think about it. A quarter Ratchet’s age, if that. When Ratchet had been that age, the only thing he’d been worried about was which bar to hit after class.

“You realize,” Megatron said, tucking his hand into the crook of the opposite elbow in a way that was probably less subtle than he wanted it to be, “that for all intents and purposes, you already have joined the Decepticons. At least, that’s what all your old friends in Iacon think you’ve done. They’ll never accept you back into their fold, with Kaon’s taint on you.”

“So, what, your argument is I might as well be shot for stealing the Basilica as for stealing a single tile?”

Megatron shrugged. “I have other arguments, if you want to hear them.”

“Knock yourself out.”

Megatron took a sip of his engex, contemplatively. “I need you.”

Ratchet nearly choked. “No foreplay before that one?”

“I bought you a drink, didn’t I?” Megatron set his cube down, leaning forward to rest his forearms on the table. “The medical corps is not where we need it to be. Not if we’re going to weather the coming conflict. I’m sure you’ve noticed certain deficiencies.”

Ratchet had, of course, but, “I didn’t come here to join a revolutionary army, Megatron. I’m just trying to take care of my patients.”

“I’m also here to help your patients, Ratchet.” Megatron leaned in further, his expression serious. “I want to help every mech on Cybertron who’s been failed by a corrupt, apathetic system. That’s not just talk, I mean that. But I need the help of good mechs to do it. Mechs who share my ideals. Of equality, of fairness, of everyone getting what they need. Fuel, shelter, medical care, power, safety, a life, meaning—isn’t that their right? To have those things? Don’t you think they deserve it?”

“Of course I do,” Ratchet said, wishing vaguely that he hadn’t been quite so gung-ho with the engex.

“You’re not a fool, doctor, and I think you came here to do some good. I think you know you could do more if you were with us, instead of relying on our good will. Wouldn’t you like your own med bay again?”

“I—“

“One without the burden of an apathetic board of directors who know nothing about what it’s like to hold another mech’s life in your hands, one where you designed the program from the ground up, trained your own doctors, called the shots.”

“Not all the shots,” Ratchet said. “I’d be working for you.”

“I believe in appointing competent people. That way I don’t have to look over their shoulders.”

“More time for making speeches and writing books?”

“My speeches and books brought you here, didn’t they? They must be good for something.”

Ratchet stood, knocking back the dregs of his engex before setting it on the table. “Thanks for the drink. This has been great, but I have another shift in four hours, so I’ll be going.” He turned to leave, but a hand caught his wrist. Big blunt fingers closing over his plating. He could feel the strength in that grip, enough that Ratchet might have even had trouble breaking free.

He looked over, meeting Megatron’s optics.

“Think about it,” Megatron said and let him go.

Ratchet thought about it alright. He thought about it all through the next four shifts, carried by the excess fuel he was still burning off, then he ranted to Flatline about it for two hours. Flatline who was no help at all because he had a damn agenda.

“At least I’d be able to organize the slagging supply room,” Ratchet said, propping his chin up on his fist.

“Ratch, I’m running out of ways to say Megatron is right, you should join up,” Flatline said.

Ratchet glared at him. Flatline shrugged.

“You think he’s serious?” Ratchet asked, for the tenth time.

Flatline threw up his hands. “Yes, I think he’s serious. Do you think Megatron personally recruits everyone?” He leaned back in his chair, face settling into something a little harder as he studied Ratchet’s face. “You piss me off sometimes. You have the most charmed life of any mech I know. Anyone else who tried to skip out on the Prime would be dead, but not you. You landed right on your feet, at the top of the ladder. I’m Iacon trained too, you know? Nobody’s trying to put me in charge.”

Ratchet frowned. “You’re a good medic.”

“But I’m not a famously brilliant surgeon whose spike everyone is lining around the block to suck. Look,” Flatline put his hand down flat on the table between them, pushing himself to his feet, “just slagging take the brand. Take over the medical corps, and give me my own division.” He shot a finger gun at Ratchet, mimicking the kickback with a little too much realism. “Never had nepotism work in my favor before, I’m excited to see what it’s like.”

Flatline left him sitting. Ratchet stared down at his hands. The paint at the tips of his fingers was beginning to go dull with wear. He hadn’t had a chance to do maintenance for a while.

“Primus,” Ratchet said, to no one, “fine.” Then he got up and got back to work.

Ratchet’s whole chest ached. A dull, pulsing pain that radiated down to his fuel pump.

“This is what I need,” he said, resisting the urge to rub his fingers over the center of his windshield. He was fine. He was on his feet. He’d stopped using pain patches after the full inventory had revealed they were running dangerously low.

“We don’t need all of that,” Hook interrupted from where he was hovering next to Ratchet. He seemed twitchy, maybe just failing to suppress his annoyance at having to share the spotlight. “It’s just a wishlist. We’ve been doing just fine—”

“No, we are not doing just fine, and I do need everything on this list.” Ratchet pressed his finger down on the pad, tapping the screen twice so the display projected up. “What we’ve got is a few haphazard medbays in tents with about half the staff we need, who have about half the training they need. The second we get an actual rush, the whole thing’s gonna topple.”

“We’ve been dealing with—” Hook tried to interrupt, but Ratchet talked over him.

“We’ve been dealing with a steady trickle. Just mechs who’re still strong enough to walk to the med center. Nothing like what it’d be like if there some kind of accident, or—or if we were attacked.” Ratchet’s vocalizer skipped, but he barreled along anyway. He didn’t like thinking about the possibility of open conflict breaking out, but everyone talked about war like it was a done deal. That meant Ratchet had to plan for it. “We have to start worrying about infectious diseases too. They’re rare, but mechs’re packed in like carbon molecules out there.”

Megatron reached out, scrolling through Ratchet’s report. He frowned to himself, probably crunching through the figures internally.

“Uh,” Hook said after a long silence. “So, what do you think?” He sounded cautiously hopeful, as if Megatron not shooting them down right away had made him remember what it was like to not be constantly running out of differential fluid.

“Acceptable,” Megatron said. “Soundwave will contact you about provisioning. Hook,” Hook’s back strut went perfectly straight, “you and your team will consider finishing the medical facilities a priority.”

“Yes, Megatron,” Hook said, sounding almost giddy.

He and Ratchet grinned at each other as they stepped out of Megatron’s office, until Hook remembered himself and scowled.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Hook said.

“What am I doing?” Ratchet sighed. He’d been in a good mood too.

“What snotty, upper-caste mechs like you always do. Waltz in and think you have a right to be in charge just by virtue of being you.” Hook reached out and flicked Ratchet right in the center of his badge, the tunk vibrating painfully through his chassis. “We can’t all be pretty forged medics with delicate hands and shiny bumpers. Enjoy being on top while you can, but war is coming, and you’re going to wish you had thicker armor.”

Hook turned on his heel and marched away. Ratchet waited until he was out of sight before pressing a hand to the center of his chest and wincing.

That had been brewing for a while. Hook was more the passive aggressive type, but medics were territorial. Usually not against each other, but, well.

Ratchet was aware he was being an aft to Hook, undermining him like this when Hook wasn’t a bad doctor, or even a bad administrator. He just wasn’t good enough, and Ratchet was. It wasn’t personal.

Ratchet had never worked in a single hospital that wasn’t rife with petty drama. Ignoring it had always worked for him in the past.

At least it was mostly just Hook. The rest of the Decepticon med crew had reacted to Ratchet nudging himself into the lead spot with a mixture of relief and honest enthusiasm. A few had already approached him about training. It seemed sticking a purple badge on his chest really had been all he needed to gain their trust. Flatline was endlessly smug about having been right, of course.

Ratchet would have loved to start teaching the more advanced medics to do spark transplants and deep-wire surgery, but he was busy enough trying to make sure everyone had the basics down on top of his own caseload.

And on top of all that, Kaon seemed to be packed fuller of mechs by the hour.

Ratchet only got drips and trickles of news—mostly third hand from the other medics—but apparently Vos was in open revolt and Praxus was under martial law and there was something happening in Tarn, but no one knew what.

They were feeling their staffing problems. And they weren’t getting any new medics in, even though statistically some of the new refugees had to know their way around a wrench.

He went to see Hook about it, but Hook just sneered at him and said, “I’m not the one who keeps track of personnel. Go ask Starscream.”

Ratchet had seen Starscream in passing a few times, but had never spoken to him. He’d heard all about him, of course, because once they’d warmed up to him, Decepticon medics turned out to gossip just like regular medics. And Starscream was a favorite topic.

He was a brightly painted, highly polished fighter jet who was the reason Ratchet kept running into Vosian ex-military everywhere. He’d either been a mercenary or a commander in the Vosian air force, the story changed every time Ratchet heard it, and he was, according to himself, the sole reason that the Decepticon Movement had any hope of victory at all.

Ratchet’s money was on former mercenary. That was certainly how he acted.

“What’s in it for me?” Starscream asked, crossing his arms.

“How about,” Ratchet said, trying to reign in his exasperation, “next time you or one of your mechs gets their wings ripped off, I’ll weld them back on.”

Ratchet was being sarcastic, because obviously he was going to repair anyone who stumbled into his medbay, but Starscream made a face like he was really considering it. “Acceptable,” he said, then narrowed his optics at Ratchet. “For how long?”

“I don’t know, forever?” Ratchet said.

For some reason, this very generous offer made Starscream scowl. “And you only want to know who’s coming into the city? Don’t play games with me, medic. What do you really want?”

Ratchet threw up his hands. “Fine. How about this: I want regular reports on who’s coming into and out of Decepticon territory. I want to know who they are, where they’re going, and if they need medical care. And I want you to keep a special optic out for anyone with medical training. How’s that? Big enough ask?”

“Full spectrum medical care for the entire Air Force. On demand, no questions asked.”

“Sure.”

“Done.” Starscream held out his hand. Ratchet shook it, feeling like he’d just agreed to something he wasn’t entirely sure the scope of. Starscream grinned at him broadly. “Fantastic, meeting you, Ratchet. I’ve heard so many things.”

Which was how Ratchet found out he was apparently the second hottest subject of gossip, next to Starscream himself.

“Surprised more people aren’t gabbing about Megatron,” Ratchet said, accepting another one of the fizzy little energon treats Starscream had produced from his desk. Judging from the way his systems were ticking up, they weren’t pure energon, but it had been a while since Ratchet had relaxed. If Starscream wanted to share his drugs, Ratchet wasn’t going to tell him off for it.

“Oh, they are,” Starscream said, popping a treat into his own mouth and cracking it open between his teeth. “But there’s no point starting rumors about Megatron; he insists on telling his whole life story to anyone who’ll listen.”

Starscream shuddered dramatically. Ratchet laughed. “I guess he does.”

“Anyway,” Starscream propped his chin on one hand, “is it true you once saved Sentinel Prime’s life by grafting your own fuel pump to his, then carried him a hundred miles across the desert?”

“Yeah,” Ratchet chuckled. “I refused to tag along on any more hunting trips after that.”

“Do you regret it?”

“What?”

“Do you regret it,” Starscream repeated. “Saving Sentinel’s life, when he went on to kill so many people?”

Ratchet sobered instantly, the energon treats twisting uneasily in his fuel tank. Starscream’s optics were sharp. Not accusatory, although his words were. Just curious and keen.

“I don’t,” Ratchet said. “Being a medic means saving the person in front of you. It can’t matter who they are.”

“Alright,” Starscream said gracefully. Ratchet wondered if he had passed or failed whatever test that had been.

It was a good thing the badges were chemically treated instead of painted purple. Ratchet found himself worrying at his. Rubbing at the sharp edge of it with his thumb.

He was as healed as he was going to be, but he still felt a phantom ache. It felt like he had a chamber breach, all the time, even though he had watched Flatline carefully lay a patch on him.

“Does this make us amica?” Flatline had whispered to him, and Ratchet had been in so much damn pain that he’d laughed, louder than he meant to. Loud enough that Megatron had looked over from where he was talking to some recruit all the way on the other side of the arena.

Ratchet hissed as the edge of his badge caught the wrong way on his thumb, chipping the paint. He popped it in his mouth to heat up the nanites and carried on.

It was the end of gamma shift, so Ratchet was alone—the three-shift schedule was new, something Ratchet had introduced in an attempt to give people more time to sleep and fuel and do whatever else mechs did when they weren’t working.

Everyone was still getting used to it, so when Ratchet heard the new doors swish open, he assumed it was someone from alpha in early. Probably Ambulon, who turned up as early as possible to everything.

Ratchet didn’t look up from where he was restocking medical carts. Whoever it was would come over to bother him as soon as they washed.

“You’re really here,” said a voice Ratchet didn’t recognize. He turned to see a black and white speedster, bulky with add-on armor.

Ratchet was so busy eyeing the big gun at the other mech’s hip that it took a minute for him to realize he knew him.

“Drift?” he said and Drift’s harshly painted face immediately split into a smile.

“Yeah,” Drift said. “I go by Deadlock now, but yeah. It’s good to see you, doc.”

“You too,” Ratchet said automatically. He’d assumed—well he’d assumed Drift was dead, if he was being honest. Dead in the riots, picked up off the street by the enforcers and left to rot in a cell, or overdosed in an alley somewhere, maybe years before the unrest even broke out.

He felt an irrational burst of irritation with Megatron, for not telling him that Drift—Deadlock was here, even though Megatron had no way of knowing that they’d met. Had no way of knowing that this broken down street mech, out of all the broken down street mechs that had passed through Ratchet’s clinic, was the one he still thought about sometimes. Wished he could have helped more.

Deadlock didn’t look so broken down now. He looked healthy, well-fueled. His optics were bright and clear, not dim and flickering fitfully like when Ratchet had seen him last. He’d had the glass replaced, sometime between then and now. It was a rich red, instead of cracked and cloudy yellow.

“You look good,” Ratchet said honestly.

“I’m clean now,” Deadlock said eagerly, taking a step closer. “Have been since I joined.”

“I’m glad,” Ratchet said, then he scrubbed one hand down his face, laughing at himself, his own awkwardness. “Slag, kid, I’m glad you’re alive. I never saw you again after you left my clinic, and I thought—“

“You thought I’d overdosed again and died,” Deadlock said wryly. He paused, studying Ratchet. “I’m happy you made it here. You’re a good person, doc. This is where you belong.”

“Thanks,” Ratchet said, studying Deadlock back. There was something odd and a little sheepish about the expression on Deadlock’s face. It took him a moment to place it, before he realized that it was a near-perfect mirror of his own expression. “You thought I’d end up with the Autobots, didn’t you?”

Deadlock’s lips quirked. “Looks like we both underestimated each other, huh?”

“I almost did,” Ratchet admitted. He turned to finish setting restocking his med station; the last thing he needed to do before going off shift.

“What stopped you?”

Ratchet shrugged one shoulder, carefully counting out solder sticks into their drawer. “I worked for the Senate a long time. I knew what kind of mechs they are. Were.” Ratchet grimaced. The massacre of the senate didn’t sit right with him, and never had. He’d had the necessity of it explained to him so many times he’d stopped arguing about it, but it still didn’t sit right. It seemed cruel.

As cruel as what the Senate did to the mechs who defied them? said a voice that sounded a lot like Megatron in his head.

Ratchet shook himself. “Yeah,” he said, and left it there.

“Come get fuel with me,” Deadlock said. “Are you almost off shift? We can catch up. I have so much to tell you.”

“Okay.” Ratchet smiled helplessly. “Give me ten minutes.”

Deadlock had been in Tarn, Ratchet learned as they made the long trek from the medical bay to the galley—another repurposed office building—helping the resistance there in ways that he was vague about. Ratchet didn’t push, he didn’t really need to know and he wasn’t about to get Deadlock in trouble for leaking anything sensitive.

What Deadlock did tell him was illuminating, though. Ratchet was up to his chest in medical solvent nine hours out of every ten, so he wasn’t really plugged in to what was happening. Apparently, other cities were looking to follow Kaon’s lead and declare independence from the Primacy.

“Well, I hope they manage it,” Ratchet said. They’d found themselves a little table in the corner. Deadlock had wedged himself up against the wall, at an angle where he could see all the doors.

“It won’t be easy,” Deadlock said. “It took Megatron centuries to build enough support to take Kaon, but they won’t be doing it alone. Not like he had to.”

Deadlock changed the subject then, and started pestering Ratchet with question after question until Ratchet was telling him his whole story. The hellhole that Iacon was becoming, closing his clinic, resigning, fleeing the city in secret.

“It wasn’t that dramatic, honestly,” Ratchet said. “I just bought a train ticket. I had absolutely no plan at all for what to do if someone tried to stop me.”

“You don’t even realize the risk you took.” Deadlock shook his head, huffing air out of his neck vents. “They’re shooting anyone who tries to get in or out of Iacon now. The city’s in total lockdown.”

“Oh,” said Ratchet. He’d left a lot of friends behind in Iacon. He felt a flare of guilt now for how little thought he’d spared for them since he’d arrived. He hadn’t even said goodbye to most of them, worried that someone would try to stop him. It seemed that Flatline had been right, Ratchet did lead a charmed life. He had, mostly by accident, managed to get himself to the only protected place on Cybertron.

“What’s wrong?” Deadlock asked. He must have seen some of that on Ratchet’s face.

Ratchet glanced up, studying him.

He’d never actually… known Drift, Ratchet was realizing. He’d thought about him enough times over the years that he’d almost tricked his own processor into thinking he did, but they’d only met a handful of times. He’d barely noticed Drift in the endless stream of mechs who passed through his clinic.

Not until that last time when Drift had clutched at his hands and looked up at him with foggy, frightened optics and asked him if he was going to die.

And Ratchet had told him of course he wasn’t, because Ratchet would save him. Then he’d said a bunch of other deeply unprofessional slag as he’d sluiced out Drift’s lines as gently as he could, because the look of gratitude and hope on Drift’s face was everything.

It was everything now to see living proof that he had helped someone back then. It had felt sometimes like he wasn’t making any difference at all. Patching mechs up just to send them back into the shredder, hoping they’d survive long enough to limp their way back to his doors again. He’d wondered on more than one rechargeless night if what he did mattered at all.

But it had mattered for Deadlock. If Deadlock had died back then, he wouldn’t be here now, helping people in Tarn, asking Ratchet what was wrong, smiling little secret smiles at Ratchet that he hid away again when anyone else walked too close to their table.

Ratchet realized that he’d been quiet for a long time, staring into Deadlock’s optics. “I—” he stuttered “—I have friends who are still in Iacon. I’m worried about them.”

Deadlock nodded. “Me too. And it’s slagged that they’re on their own while we’re safe,” he said, somehow repeating exactly what Ratchet had been thinking, “but it won’t be like that for long. Tarn is just the beginning. After Tarn, Vos, Helex, Praxus, Iacon too. We’re not a separatist movement. We’re for all of Cybertron”

“You’re not worried about Zeta retaliating?”

“We’ll be ready when he does,” Deadlock said confidently. “No one has to stand alone anymore. The Decepticons will never back down. Not until we win.” Deadlock reached across the table and pressed the tip of his claw gently against the center of Ratchet’s badge. “Not until we’ve made a Cybertron ‘where every mech owns his own body, his own mind, and his own spark.’”

He let his hand drop. Automatically, Ratchet brought his own hand up to rub the place it had touched.

He could name the exact passage from Towards Peace that line about bodies and sparks was from. He’d been slowly rereading it, if only because everyone was so eager to quote it at him, mulling it over. It still sounded a bit fanciful to Ratchet, although he’d obviously warmed up to the basic concepts enough to join the Decepticons, but hearing the same words out of Deadlock’s mouth made them seem somehow more real. Not true, but something that could be true. Maybe. Someday. If they worked very, very hard for it.

“Does it still hurt?” Deadlock asked, eyeing where Ratchet was still rubbing his thumb across the center of his chest.

“Feels like scraplets got into my internals,” Ratchet said wryly. “Not as bad as it was a week ago. I’ll be fine.”

“You will be,” said Deadlock.

His chest finally stopped hurting two weeks later. Which was good, because that was when Ratchet somehow got even busier.

The medical facility was finally more or less done, Ratchet judged his staff to have the basics down, which meant he create lesson plans for the more advanced stuff. Unfortunately, there was one major downside to having a real medical center in one spot that didn’t move around full of competent medics, and that was that people came. Ratchet had started forcing mechs to make appointments to keep the wait times under control.

On top of the refugees, there were Starscream’s fliers swanning in, demanding immediate care for every dent. The rest of the ‘Cons had come flowing in after, all convinced they had to barter to get Ratchet to even glance at their readouts.

Ratchet was trying to be tolerant. He supposed that was what came when the only medical care you were used to was the kind where you were just as likely to online missing your t-cog as get fixed.

Still, it was all coming together. In fits and starts, but it was coming. It just took every second of every waking moment to stay on top of.

“Hey, Ratchet?” said Ambulon, popping his head through the door of the storage closet that doubled as Ratchet’s office. He looked nervous. “We need you up front.”

“What is it?” Ratchet sighed. Probably another overcharged idiot who didn’t want to turn on his chip.

“Megatron is here.”

Megatron, it turned out, was there. He had what looked like a cannon strapped to one arm.

“Ratchet,” he greeted with a jerk of his chin. “Pick five medics, we’re going to Tarn.”

“Wha—when?” Ratchet spluttered.

“Now.”

Soundwave briefed them in the transport—a big shuttle named Astrotrain. Whatever had been brewing in Tarn was bubbling over right now, but there was a snag. Just as the Decepticon-aligned rebels had been about to take the city, reinforcements from Zeta had shown up. Now, they were pinned down, stuck between mercenaries who worked for the mining companies and Zeta’s soldiers. They’d managed to send a frantic message to Kaon, begging for help.

“Would have loved to know we were going to an active combat zone!” Ratchet yelled over the roar of Astrotrain’s engines. “I would have brought more medics!”

“Not enough room!” Megatron yelled back. He grinned, apparently in an excellent mood.

It was chaos immediately. Ratchet could barely process any of what was happening. Only that there were explosions going off everywhere and that they were slammed with injured mechs the second they set up the first portable berth. From there, it was a haze of triage, sparking circuitry, and sticky energon.

Ratchet resurfaced hours or perhaps centuries later. He wiped condensation off his face—slimy, evaporated coolant—and looked around.

It was starting to get dark. It had been morning when they left. Ratchet didn’t hear any more explosions, although there were still thick plumes of smoke reaching up into the sky as something burned.

“You’ll be good here for a little bit?” he asked the nearest one of his medics. They nodded. “I’m going to go find our fearless leader.”

He found Megatron standing alone, literally dripping in energon.

“None of it’s mine,” he said when Ratchet hurried up to him, scanner out.

Ratchet put his hands on his hips. “You think none of it’s yours. I still want to do a full exam, somewhere a bit more private. Can’t have the commander collapsing because he’s got a leak behind the secondary flexion cable in his left knee that’s been slowly draining all his fuel into his ankle for eight hours.”

Megatron raised one browridge. “That’s quite specific.”

“I’ve seen it happen,” Ratchet said darkly. He leaned in to see if he could smell any smoke coming out of Megatron’s vents. Heavy frames like him were always at risk of overheating. “Most modern mechs aren’t built with robust internal damage sensors, especially not cold-con manual labor bots. No offense.”

“Why would I be offended?” Megatron said. “It’s what I am.” He pointed to a large, flat building nearby that was miraculously intact. “We can go there. I think you’ll be interested in what we discovered inside.”

Ratchet felt a grind of trepidation in his gears as he followed Megatron. He didn’t know much about what the enforcers and soldiers had been up to in Tarn, but from the rumors he had unwillingly absorbed, he half expected the place to be stacked ceiling high with dead disposables.

The building had looked squat and flat from the outside, but from the inside Ratchet saw it was a single huge room. It was stacked to the ceiling, but not with corpses. Boxes, high enough that the tops of the stacks were lost in shadow.

“A warehouse?” Ratchet guessed, glancing around. He spied some low crates that looked about the right height and gestured Megatron over to them.

“Yes,” Megatron said. He let Ratchet sit him down, and raised and lowered his arms cooperatively as Ratchet did his scan, then started sponging off some of the energon. “How are our casualties?” he asked.

“Not bad, all things considered,” Ratchet said. He jabbed at a spot near Megatron’s waist that looked like it took a bad blow from something. He heard Megatron’s vents stutter before evening out. “Couple of mechs I want to medevac back to Kaon, few who didn’t make it, everyone else stable. People we brought with us are all fine as far as I’ve seen.”

Megatron hummed, pleased. “They are fierce warriors.”

“Yeah…” Ratchet had glanced up from his patients long enough to see Skywarp literally rip the helm off a mercenary. It was easy to forget seekers were military builds, when he was used to seeing them mincing through his medbay, demanding he personally file their claws. He hadn’t liked seeing it, but he probably wouldn’t have liked watching what the mercenaries would have done if they’d overrun the med tent either.

He shook himself, bringing his attention back to his patient. “This plate’s been structurally weakened, can you feel it?” He pressed lightly against the edge of the damaged piece of armor.

Megatron’s tongue flicked out to wet his lower lip. He nodded. “‘Nother couple good bangs and it’ll buckle and damage the internals behind it. This is right by your fuel pump, so it’s not out of the question that you’ll get hit wrong and explode unless you let me replace it right when we get back to Kaon and don’t argue.” Ratchet was exaggerating the danger slightly, but he didn’t want Megatron thinking he was too tough for medical care. He’d seen more than enough tough mechs end up seriously hurt that way.

“Alright,” Megatron said. There was a faint breathy quality to his voice. Maybe he was in more pain than he was letting on.

“I’m going to pull the dent on your thigh, then try not to let anyone punch you in the abdomen until we get home.”

Megatron let out an amused huff then stretched out his leg for easier access. Ratchet knelt down, bracing one hand against Megatron’s broad thigh, and got out his strongest suction cup, fitting it over the dent. “This’ll hurt, but I need you to keep your leg as still as you can. Don’t let me move you,” he told Megatron, who planted his foot a little more firmly and gestured for him to go on.

Ratchet pulled his arm back, keeping his forearm precisely straight. There was a hell of a lot of resistance, but it was no match for medical grade suction. The dent popped back into place with a dull metallic ping that almost drowned out the low crackle that emitted from Megatron’s vocalizer.

“There,” Ratchet said. He prodded at the armor with the tips of his fingers. “Quick and easy. Side’ll take a little longer. It’s too bad we don’t have the right equipment to make it go faster.”

To Ratchet’s surprise, Megatron grinned. He stood, shaking his leg out. “Let me show you something,” he said and grabbed one of the long, flat crates surrounding them, dragging it to the floor. He dug his fingers under the lip and pried the top off with no apparent effort.

Ratchet moved closer to peer inside, and saw, nestled in a pile of foam cushioning, a brand new medical grade linear accelerator.

“Oh, scrap,” Ratchet said. He couldn’t resist reaching out to place his hand on the shiny white side. It was cool, powered down, but Ratchet could only remember too well how these things hummed. “What is this place?”

“A distribution warehouse. Tarn is full of them. There is very little manufacturing in Tarn, but its central location makes it an ideal hub. Companies send all their bounty here to be shipped to Praxus, Iacon, Rodion, and the people of Tarn never get a taste.” Megatron reached out, running his fingers along the lip of a crate. “There’s more.”

Ratchet leaned in to rest his forehead on his wrists, just for a moment. “Megatron, this is huge. If there’s more like this, we could set up a real hospital. Proper medbays.”

“Enough to put us on even footing with the Autobots?”

Ratchet hesitated. “We’d still be at a disadvantage—comes of having to start from scratch—but it would make a difference. What else is in here? It can’t all be medical equipment.”

“A bit of everything,” Megatron said, glancing around them. The room really was huge. It would probably take five minutes to drive straight from one side to the other. “From the crates we’ve pried open: consumer electronics, almost twenty tons of lob balls, paint, candy, and,” Megatron’s lips twitched. He was excited, but trying to play it down, “weapons. Likely meant for Praxus.”

A windfall for an insurgent army. A huge one if this was only one of dozens of similar warehouses. Ratchet couldn’t repress his grin. “You better put a guard rotation on that candy,” he joked, “or somebody’s gonna steal it all. Probably Starscream.”

Megatron barked a laugh. “Likely.”

Ratchet chuckled along with him. “Speaking of guards, where are you keeping the prisoners? I’ll want to take a look at them before we transport them anywhere.”

“There are no prisoners.”

Ratchet frowned, confused. “What are you talking about, of course there are prisoners. Zeta’s mechs? The mercs? They surrendered, didn’t they?”

“We have no facilities to keep prisoners,” Megatron said blithely. “They would have been more danger than they were worth.”

Ratchet felt a sinking sensation in his fuel tank. “You didn’t—kill them. Did you?”

“Of course not,” Megatron said, and Ratchet was just about to sigh in relief when he continued, “We released them into the Waste.”

The city of Tarn was famous for its high, rust-colored walls, built to keep out the sandstorms that ripped across the Red Waste. They were half a mile thick, and tall enough that Ratchet’s processor had trouble estimating the height. From the inside, they made the city look like a prison, from the outside, a fortress. But Ratchet knew, from half-remembered history classes back in undergrad, that they were a necessity. Getting caught in a sandstorm in the Waste was functionally the same as getting hit with an industrial sander. Those sharp winds would grind a mech’s armor right of his body.

“What?” said Ratchet faintly. Then louder, “What?”

Megatron gave him a nonplussed look, like he didn’t think there was anything wrong with sending prisoners out into the murderous desert on wheel.

“They’ll die,” Ratchet said, although, of course, Megatron had to know that.

Megatron spread his hands in a helpless shrug and Ratchet saw red.

“What the slagging slag is wrong with you!” Ratchet shouted. He could feel himself swelling, plating flaring aggressively. “It doesn’t matter if they’re the enemy, this is Primus-damned murder.”

Megatron’s face darkened, his own armor lifting and flaring in what was a much more impressive threat display than Ratchet could ever manage.

“Would you prefer we simply shot them?” Megatron said coldly. “Or perhaps you’d prefer we let them stay. I doubt they would be peaceful prisoners. It would only be a matter of time before they made another attempt on the city, if they weren’t murdered first by an angry mob. And I’m certainly not going to allocate resources to protect Zeta’s toy soldiers, when there’s a whole city full of newly free, innocent mechs who truly need them.”

Ratchet’s engine snarled, but Megatron wasn’t done. “Or perhaps you want me to escort them back to Iacon personally. Deliver them safely back home after they’ve spent days slaughtering our people in their homes?”

“This isn’t the answer.” Ratchet held up a trembling hand. “We’re supposed to be better than them.”

Fast as an electroviper, Megatron grabbed his wrist, yanking him forward so they were nearly chest to chest. “We are,” Megatron growled into his face.

“We have to act like it,” Ratchet growled back, refusing to be cowed. Then, suspiciously, “Did you know about these warehouses?”

Megatron’s optics flared in anger as he caught the implication. His hand tightened around Ratchet’s wrist, hard enough that a less sturdy mech’s armor might have buckled. Then, abruptly, he dropped Ratchet’s arm, taking a step back. He paced a narrow circuit back and forth in front of the wall of crates, steam escaping from the seams in his shoulders, visibly trying to reign in his temper.

Ratchet crossed his arms, unimpressed with the little display. “Well?”

“I knew about them,” Megatron said, still pacing.

“Oh, so you did—“

“I knew about them because I was constructed in this city.” Megatron flung one arm out, pointing towards the western wall. “Nine kliks in that direction is the factory where I was built. I onlined just in time to see two of my batch mates shot for not passing their initial system checks. They had my face. That is my first memory.”

Air caught in Ratchet’s vents. Anger drained from him as horror and pity launched themselves up the emotional processing queue. His empathetic subsystem tried to draw up a similar memory, but he didn’t have any matching files. Ratchet’s first memory was a smith gently flexing his fingers back and forth, cooing over his “exceptional articulation.”

Too caught up in his own emotional turmoil to notice Ratchet’s, Megatron pointed again, in the opposite direction. “Twenty kliks that way is the first mining pit they threw me into. A week after my construction, I was one of only five of my batch left alive. They throw the bodies into great pits, too cheaply made to be worth recycling. Deep, deep pits, next to every mine in Tarn. Full of dead miners with my face.”

“Megatron, I—” Ratchet said, and stopped because he had no idea what he wanted to say. That he hadn’t known? That he was sorry? Both sentiments seemed banal and inappropriate.

A thread of deep-coded guilt entered the queue. Megatron was his patient and it was fundamentally bad to see a patient vulnerable and in distress like this, especially when there was nothing Ratchet could do to ease it. Ratchet wasn’t a mnemosurgeon; he couldn’t cure memory.

Megatron’s mouth twisted. “I hated this city for many years. Perhaps I still do, but Tarn is mine and I’m going to protect it. And Helex and Vos and Praxus and Rodion and even Iacon. I won’t stop until the Decepticon flag flies over every city on Cybertron. Until there are no more castes and no more mass graves and we are all free.”

Ratchet met Megatron’s optics. They were bright around the edges, almost pink. Megatron held his gaze for a long moment, before he looked away.

“You have already done much for the Cause,” he said. “I’d be happy to escort you back to Iacon. Back to your old compatriots, who will fill the ditches with corpses, but make sure you never, ever see them.”

That shocked Ratchet enough to get his vocalizer going. “I’m not leaving.” He reached out, putting one hand on Megatron’s arm. “Primus below, of course I’m not leaving, how could you think that? Is that how little you think of me?”

Megatron was stiff under his hand, almost vibrating with tension. He didn’t answer.

“Oh for—sit down, you’re still injured.” Megatron let Ratchet herd him backwards, until he was leaning against the lip of the open crate. “You’re so melodramatic,” he muttered, running his hand up and down Megatron’s torso, making sure he hadn’t strained anything pacing around like that. Megatron let out a sharp whine of feedback when Ratchet’s hand passed over the weakened plate, his hand coming up to cover Ratchet’s, stilling him.

“Does that—” he glanced up, meeting Megatron’s bright optics. His face was a lot closer to Ratchet’s face than he’d expected “—hurt?”

“Yes,” Megatron breathed. His optics flicked down to Ratchet’s lips then back up.

Then, because it seemed like the only thing to do, because Megatron was so young and handsome and tragic and vulnerable and Ratchet was only made of metal, he rose up on the tips of his pedes and covered Megatron’s frowning mouth with his own.

Megatron startled, his hand tightening around Ratchet’s, but he opened for him. Ratchet felt the bright buzz of their electroconductive oral lubricant mixing, and the hot air from Megatron’s auricle fans blowing over his cheeks. Little connection points flared as their glossas touched, exchanging micro-bursts of data. Sensory stuff and surface emotions. Ratchet could feel how his own plating felt under Megatron’s fingers—smooth, strong, healthy. He could feel a hint of Megatron’s surprised and slightly disbelieving pleasure.

Static crackled through Megatron’s vocalizer. Ratchet could almost taste it.

Megatron’s free hand curled around Ratchet’s hip, pulling him closer until their chassis clanked together. He pressed himself so hard against Ratchet that Ratchet thought he’d hurt himself. Until he did make a pained noise, and broke the kiss.

He slid down the crate until he was sitting on the floor, Ratchet still standing between his splayed legs.

Ratchet looked down at him, puzzled. Megatron looked back up. Then he leaned in and pressed a kiss to the inside of Ratchet’s thigh.

Steam hissed from Ratchet’s shoulder vents, startled out by the sudden spike in his core temperature. “You sure?” Ratchet asked.

In response, Megatron ran his tongue filthily over Ratchet’s codpiece.

“I don’t have parts with me,” Ratchet warned him. “If you fry your tongue, you’ll have to wait to get it replaced.”

Megatron just looked up at him. He opened his mouth wider, maintaining optic contact with Ratchet, letting lubricant drip from the corners of his mouth onto Ratchet’s plating. He exvented, blowing hot exhaust into Ratchet’s sensitive seams.

“Okay, then,” Ratchet said, and let his codpiece fold away.

Megatron coaxed him into hooking one leg over his shoulder, which left Ratchet precariously balanced on his left pedetip, braced half on Megatron, half on the lip of the crate, and entirely vulnerable to Megatron’s tongue.

He licked into Ratchet’s valve fearlessly. Aggressive and a little clumsy. Ratchet thought that he had done this before, but maybe not too often. It didn’t stop him from finding Ratchet’s favorite node and start flicking over it mercilessly with his tongue, however.

“Well damn,” Ratchet gasped, half-laughing, “you know what you’re about.” He stroked his fingers down the bell curve of Megatron’s helm. “Careful with your teeth. Those’ll really hurt if you get zapped.”

Megatron did as instructed. He sheathed his teeth behind his lips, and plunged his tongue into Ratchet’s valve.

“Good, good,” Ratchet said, reaching down to adjust Megatron’s face until he could grind his primary anterior node against the bridge of his nose.

Megatron moaned as Ratchet rode his face. His hands tightened around Ratchet’s thighs.

Ratchet’s overload came on quick, and he only just managed to shove Megatron’s head back before charge was arcing between his nodes. Megatron sat back, the light of it reflected across his face.

“I’m not afraid of pain,” he said when Ratchet’s overload was through, the first words he’d spoken in long minutes. He sounded resentful that Ratchet had spared his mouth.

“Yeah?” Ratchet reached out, running his thumb along Megatron’s slick bottom lip. “You like a little sting?” Megatron’s mouth opened, his tongue curling around Ratchet’s finger. “You want to put your spike in me?”

Megatron’s engine stuttered.

It turned out Megatron very much wanted to put his spike in Ratchet. He stayed where he was, because Ratchet had refused to let him stand up, while Ratchet lowered himself slowly down his thick, node-laden spike.

They both let out hot billows of steam when Ratchet’s weight came to rest on his hips. Ratchet set himself a reminder to make them both drink coolant before heading back to the ships.

“That’s nice,” Ratchet groaned as nodes lined up, trading little streams of charge. He let the outer shell of his valve loosen, relaxing into it. Megatron let out a little, strangled noise. His hips jerked up, jostling Ratchet. His fans were practically screaming.

Ratchet rose up on his knees, bracing himself on Megatron’s shoulders, letting Megatron thrust up without having to move his whole weight. Megatron did so with gusto, planting his pedes flat on the floor for leverage, hips snapping up until Ratchet swore he could feel each clanging thrust in his fuel pump. He should have told Megatron to slow down, not strain his injury, but it felt too good. It felt really good.

Ratchet overloaded again hard, with a sharp crack of electricity that snapped through his valve.

Megatron gasped in pain, but kept moving, gritting his teeth through it as he chased his own overload. He came a few moments later, his charge grounding deep in Ratchet’s torso. It left an aching but pleasant buzz all through his abdomen.

Megatron’s hips crashed to the floor, and Ratchet sat down heavily on them. They both moaned at the jolt it sent through their tender arrays.

Ratchet didn’t move for a long time, drifting happily on a wave of overcharge, until his circuits rebalanced themselves and he noticed that their lubricant was starting to congeal. He slide off Megatron’s spike, ignoring Megatron’s plaintive noise, and wiped them both down, making sure Megatron’s spike retracted smoothly. Then he got up to try and see where his scanner had wandered off to, Megatron’s fans slowly ticking down in the background. It sounded like a smooth cooldown to Ratchet’s audials, but he’d still be giving them both a thorough checkup once he could find the damn thing.

Ratchet finally found his scanner, behind some loose packing foam. He glanced over at Megatron to see him looking much more alert than he had a moment ago, frowning about something as he spoke on internal comms.

“Is something wrong?” Ratchet asked as Megatron pulled out his commpad.

“News from the capital,” Megatron said, expanding the screen. Ratchet sat down next to him to watch.

It opened to what looked like a press conference from the steps of the Primal Basilica. Zeta stood there, looking grim. Across the bottom of the screen scrolled the text Prime Declares War on Decepticon Terrorist Threat.

Ratchet leaned in closer, his side pressed to Megatron’s. Megatron’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, making it more comfortable.

“We can no longer ignore the Decepticon threat,” Zeta said, as if he had been ignoring them for even a second. Behind him, in a line of other mechs, but standing taller than any of them, was Orion. “They have prayed on our goodwill, smacked aside every offer of friendship or legitimacy. We have offered them an open hand again and again, despite their repeated terrorist acts. But no more. They have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that despite the words of their leader, they want war, not peace. I am here to say that while I love peace, as any leader loves peace, I will not let that love prevent me from protecting Cybertron from this threat, the latest in a long line of many. If the Decepticons want war, know that we will fight. And know that we will win, because we are fighting to protect what we love, whereas they are fighting to destroy what they hate.”

Ratchet stared at the viewscreen for a long moment. Megatron’s face was unreadable, the light from the screen reflecting off his facial plating.

“Well,” said Ratchet, breaking the silence, “he’s gotten a better speechwriter.”

Megatron snorted, and pulled him closer.

Vos rebelled next. Then Helex, then Tesarus, then before Ratchet knew it they controlled five cities and were making headway on a dozen others. There was even a virulent rumor among the ranks—and there were ranks now too because they weren’t just the Decepticons anymore, they were the Decepticon Army—that they’d make a push for Luna-2.

No one had come asking Ratchet about moon diseases yet, so he figured that was still a while in coming. The brass still mulling it over.

As CMO, Ratchet was technically “the brass” himself. Except he didn’t hold military rank, so also he technically wasn’t. He was only allowed to order people around for medical reasons, which suited him just fine. Privately, he thought of it as having all the perks of being a commander, like signing off on his own requisition requests, while getting to skip out on most of the strategy meetings.

“Believe me, you’re not missing a thing,” Starscream said, somehow managing to lounge on a medical berth like he was at a spa. “They’re all boring. Except for the ones where I tell everyone about my latest, brilliant breakthrough in aerial tactics. Those are fun.”

“Uh huh,” Ratchet said. He pointed down at Starscream’s crumpled right thruster. “That one of your breakthroughs?”

Starscream scowled at him. He settled back on the birth with his arms crossed while Ratchet ran a blowtorch along his ankle seam to soften it. “Does that hurt?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” Starscream said sulkily.

Ratchet dug the tips of his fingers into the ankle-join, pressing until the plating parted and he could wiggle a jimmy in there to pry it all the way open. “This is coming off now, but I’ve got a new foot for you right here.”

“You don’t need to coddle me,” Starscream snapped. “I’ve been repaired a thousand times.”

“Okay,” Ratchet said and twisted Starscream’s foot until the joint popped free. Despite his words, Starscream spent the entire time Ratchet was installing his new pede staring determinedly at the wall.

Well, if he wanted to act all tough, that was his prerogative as Air Commander.

After he got the new foot seated, Ratchet helped Starscream stand and had him do a couple circuits around the room to see how it was taking weight.

“Is it getting bad out there?” Ratchet asked impulsively, watching Starscream walk. “And stop walking on your pedetips, I need to make sure the thruster’s strong enough to hold your full weight.”

Starscream stopped, glaring at Ratchet balefully. He was always sulky about repairs, even though he’d once bargained so keenly for them.

Resentment clear in every line of his body, he stood properly. Then, for good measure, he stood on one foot, his entire body weight resting on the newly installed pede. Nothing creaked, so Ratchet was inclined to call it good. He waved for Starscream to stop, and turned to make a note on his chart.

“It’s been bad since the beginning,” Starscream said, behind him. “There’s just more of it now. Why are you asking me, anyway? You see the casualty reports.”

“I’m not in the slag,” Ratchet said, clicking his lightpen twice before setting it down. “I spend most of my time safe on base.” He glanced back at Starscream, who was kicking his leg back and forth now. “Is that feeling stiff?”

“No,” Starscream said. “I know you haven’t been doing the whole war thing for that long, but it doesn’t ‘get bad.’ It starts bad then it stays bad and sometimes it gets worse, but it doesn’t get better until it ends.”

Starscream was in a mood, apparently.

“Megatron says its better than it was. ‘The honest violence of war is better than the hidden atrocities committed every day on these peaceful streets’ —or something like that. I might not be remembering it right.”

“And you bought that?” Starscream said incredulously. “It’s better for him.”

Ratchet frowned. “I don’t think—”

“When did you become one of the mechs who quotes Towards Peace at everyone?”

“I,” Ratchet cycled his optics. He didn’t know when he’d picked up the habit, “wasn’t aware that was a category.”

“What, don’t you hear them out in the halls repeating the same lines to each other like broken news drones? As if Megatron’s the only mech who’s ever had a thought. As if he built the whole Movement by himself. As if it doesn’t say right in his stupid book, ‘it takes a hundred-thousand hands to build a city.’” Starscream stopped, vents flaring, wings folded in close to his body.

This mood was Megatron’s doing, then. He and Starscream got into some kind of melodramatic fight—usually over strategy, but it could be anything that set them off—every few months, and Starscream was always like this afterwards. Snappish and sullen and prickly.

Ratchet set his little stack of patches down on the table. “What’s slagged you off so much today?”

“Nothing,” Starscream said defensively. “I just don’t understand what you want from this war.”

“I just want it to be over quickly,” Ratchet said.

“It won’t be,” sneered Starscream. It looked like he would say something else, but instead he walked away.

He didn’t take his pain patches.

“I want it to be over quickly,” Ratchet said, hours later, to Deadlock, who had come to haunt his medbay the way he always did whenever he was on base.

“Me too,” said Deadlock. “The sooner we crush the last of the Autobot resistance, the sooner we can start building something new. Something better. For them too.”

“Right,” Ratchet said, turning a wrench over and over in his hands.

“You okay, doc? You seem worn down, are you recharging enough?” Deadlock asked. He was uncannily perceptive sometimes, and was one of the few mechs who didn’t seem afraid to annoy Ratchet by drawing attention to the fact that he wasn’t a tireless medical drone.

“Probably not,” Ratchet admitted, setting down his wrench. He glanced up at Deadlock, studying him. “Hey, can I tell you something?”

“Of course,” Deadlock said without hesitation.

He was always so eager to do things for Ratchet. Ratchet wondered if he was so generous with all his friends. If so, he worked hard to conceal it. The scattered rumors that had trickled down to Ratchet painted Deadlock as a cold mech, and a hard bargainer. Someone who took debts seriously, and not someone you wanted to renege on a deal with.

Perhaps he considered Ratchet saving his life that one time enough payment. More likely the Decepticons’ many rumor-mongers were talking out of their subspaces, just like they always did. Ratchet had heard some of the nasty stuff going around about Starscream. It was enough to make a decent mech’s fuel curdle.

Deadlock quirked a brow-ridge. Ratchet fluffed his plating, embarrassed at how long he’d let the silence stretch.

“Don’t let this get out,” he warned, waving a stern finger at Deadlock, “but I worry sometimes.”

“About what?”

“If I’m doing a good enough job. If I’m just doing enough. All this,” he gestured vaguely around the big, mostly empty medbay. Practically cavernous, compared to what they’d started with, “it’s—a bit out of my purview. I’ve been a surgeon for a long time, I’ve taught, I’ve run hospitals, I’ve even been an army medic—”

“But you’ve never done everything all at once,” Deadlock finished for him. “And you’ve never been the CMO of a revolutionary army.”

“Sure haven’t,” Ratchet said, laughing a little to hear it out loud. Him, a revolutionary. Who would have thought.

Deadlock was silent, letting Ratchet gather his thoughts.

“I just—“ Ratchet’s jaw worked. He almost didn’t want to say it, in case he summoned it into being. “What if we slag it all up? What if I slag it all up and mechs die because I couldn’t cut it?”

“Then they’ll be dead,” Deadlock said bluntly, “so don’t slag it up.” His tone softened. “You haven’t so far. You know a hell of a lot more mechs would be dying if it wasn’t for you, right? You’re the only reason the ‘Cons have a real medical corps.”

“Awful lot of credit you’re giving me there.”

“Maybe.” Deadlock shrugged. “I’m not a medic, I don’t know the inner workings of your department, but I know if one of my mechs gets their arm blown off, I have somewhere to send them where they’ll get fixed and won’t have to sell their spark paying for it. Maybe that’s what you’re used to, but it’s not what most ‘Cons are used to. For us, it means a lot.”

“Oh,” said Ratchet, and couldn’t think of what else to say after that. He looked down at his hands. He’d need to repaint his palms soon. “I don’t know how you frontliners do it.”

“You just have to keep your optics on the future. You have to believe we’re gonna build a better world. Do you believe that, doc?”

Ratchet glanced back up at Deadlock, at his warm, red optics. “I guess I must.”

“Did you see the battleship they just brought in?” Flatline asked. All the medical leads were at HQ for a few days to fight over the newly-graduated trainees. There was a vicious dance of bribery, blackmail, seduction, and threats that was going on behind Ratchet’s back as they all competed for the most promising young medics; but Flatline had just given him hearty clap on the shoulder as he’d gotten off the transport, whispered “nepotism” in his audial, planted himself in the comfy chair in the corner of Ratchet’s office, and hadn’t moved since. He was currently playing some kind of handheld game.

“Hard to miss,” Ratchet said. The ship in question had blocked out the sun as it had flown over the city, and made Ratchet’s spark swoop in his chest. It was airdocked a few miles above Kaon now. A steady stream of repair crews and supplies trickling up to it.

“Do you know what it’s for?”

“Why would I know?” Ratchet said, squinting down at the report he was trying to read. “I saw it same time as you. Nearly gave me a spark attack.”

“Yeah, well, you’re part of the Conclave,” Flatline shrugged. “Figured you’d know.”

“I’m part of the what now?” said Ratchet.

“Megatron’s inner circle.”

That gave Ratchet pause. He’d never thought of himself as an inner circle type of mech—that was for politicians like Starscream and true believers like Deadlock and Soundwave. Although, now that he was thinking about it, he did get more face time with Megatron than anyone outside of High Command. But it wasn’t like Megatron listened to him more than once in a blue moon.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like there are ‘Conclave’ meetings. And if there are, I haven’t been invited to them.” Ratchet said, adding exaggerated air quotes because he knew Flatline thought that was funny.

Sure enough, Flatline snickered. “Ask Deadlock next time he comes around to stare at your rear bumpers, okay? He’s a frontliner. He’ll probably know.”

Ratchet decided to think about the rear bumper comment later. “Sure.”

Megatron was restless that night, and he fucked Ratchet twice before settling with his heavy head on Ratchet’s thigh, playing absently with his array while he stared into space.

“I don’t actually keep all the secrets to the universe in my valve, you know,” Ratchet quipped.

Megatron snorted. “You should give yourself more credit.”

It reminded Ratchet of the conversation he’d had with Deadlock. Ratchet wondered if they had ever talked about him; he knew they were friendly, intimate even. It was always strange to think about people talking about him when he wasn’t there.

“Hey, what’s that big battle cruiser about?” Ratchet asked, changing the subject. “Did we capture it? It’s been hanging above the city like an acid cloud for days now.”

He wondered for a moment if Megatron would tell him. Megatron didn’t usually hide things from him, but this was on the understanding that Ratchet wouldn’t stick his nose too far into military affairs. Which was fine with Ratchet for the most part, but something about the looming ship made him nervous. More so since Flatline had asked about it. As if having someone else point it out had brought the thing into sharp relief.

Megatron didn’t tell him to mind his own business, though. Instead he stretched out on the berth, flinging one huge arm across Ratchet’s hips and tucking his face into the curve of his waist.

“We bought it,” Megatron said, voicebox buzzing against Ratchet’s plating. “The first ship in our fleet. We will expand outwards. The moon, the rest of the solar system, farther.”

“Why?” Ratchet asked. He reached down, stroking his fingers over the curve of Megatron’s helm.

Megatron hummed into his touch. “Resources,” he said simply. “The Autobots have a stranglehold on the cities we don’t yet control, and they are moving to cut us off. We need raw materials, and energon.”

“Deadlock told me we were gaining ground.”

“We are,” Megatron said. “We have momentum, and we cannot allow an Autobot supply chokehold to slow it. If we could control the energon deposits on Luna-2, mine the asteroid belt, we could take Iacon before the century is out.”

“You think so?” Ratchet looked down at him. That was sooner than even he was hoping for.

Megatron smiled up at him, showing a flash of teeth. “An optimistic estimate, but not an impossibility, if fortune continues to favor us.” He rose up in his elbows, trailing his fingers lazily over Ratchet’s plating, already covered in scuffs and black paint transfers. “Does Deadlock speak to you often about things like this?”

Ratchet made a scoffing noise, relaxing into Megatron’s touch. “He’s not gabbing to me about classified stuff, don’t worry.”

Megatron sat all the way up, leaning over Ratchet, his hand coming up to lay a finger over Ratchet’s lips. Gently, but Megatron had heavy hands, and Ratchet could feel his lip pressing into his teeth. “This is need to know,” Megatron said.

Ratchet nodded to show he understood. He let his mouth fall open slightly, his tongue coming up to curl around Megatron’s finger.

Megatron leaned down to lick into his mouth.

“Look, it’s not like this whole ‘Conclave’ thing is official,” Ratchet tried to explain to Flatline later, over drinks in the officer’s commissary that Flatline, technically, wasn’t supposed to be in.

Flatline snorted. “Yeah, you always sat with the popular crowd in school too. Good to know nothing changes.”

Ratchet made a face at him.

Ratchet had no idea they were being attacked until an Autobot crashed into his medbay waving a gun around.

The Autobot skidded to a halt, just inside the doors, whipping his head around as if confused, and trying to point his gun at every one of the frozen, equally confused medics at once.

“Hey,” Ratchet said, trying his best to sound calm and nonthreatening, “this is Medical. Nothing here but doctors and patients.”

The Autobot shot him a wild look, blue optics going white around the edges, and pointed his gun at Ratchet.

Ratchet guessed that was better than him pointing it at the patients.

“Wh—” said the Autobot. “Where—?”

“Where what?” Ratchet asked. In the corner of his vision, he saw Ambulon slowly creeping forward. He was in the Autobot’s blind spot. Ratchet didn’t have any way to signal him to cut that out before he got himself killed without drawing attention to him, so he’d just have to be ready.

The Autobot’s lips curved around a word, and Ambulon shoved a medical cart over.

The Autobot whipped around at the noise, gun raised, and Ratchet let the wrench he’d been hiding behind his back fly.

It hit the Autobot right in the indent where his finials met his facial mesh and he went out like a light.

Ratchet shared a glance with the mech next to him, then every medic in the bay rushed to barricade the doors. Ratchet let the others secure the unconscious Autobot and calm down the patients while he got on comms to try and see what the hell was going on.

Every line he tried came up static until finally he tried Starscream’s personal comm and got a distorted but audible, “What?”

“Starscream?”

“Ratchet? Hang on, I’ve got Megatron here, I’m putting you on speaker. Hey!” Starscream shouted like he was trying to get someone’s attention. “I’ve got comm contact with Ratchet!” There was a muffled question. “No, it’s on my private.”

“Private comms: still functional?” came Soundwave’s voice, slightly less muffled.

“Apparently.”

“Soundwave, contact all commanders on their personnel comms now,” came Megatron’s voice, getting louder as he approached. “Ratchet,” he said, clearly, talking right into Starscream’s comm, “report. Are you still in the South Wing?”

“Yeah,” Ratchet said, glancing around the bay. It looked like they had everything as boarded up as they could, and his team was moving all their patients deeper into the bay, away from the door. “I’m in the main bay with six medics and ten patients. We’re all okay, doors secure for now. What’s going on, Megatron? An Autobot blasted his way in here not too long ago.”

“Status of Autobot?” interjected Soundwave.

“You are all yelling into my audial,” complained Starscream.

“Unconscious and tied up,” Ratchet said.

“Need to secure prisoner: urgent,” Soundwave said, probably directed at Megatron or Starscream since the prisoner was as already as secure as Ratchet could make him.

“How’s contacting the unit commanders going, Soundwave?” Starscream said.

“Five responses. Collecting reports.”

“What in Primus’s name is going on?” Ratchet said. There was banging coming from the other side of the medbay door, and Ratchet didn’t think it was reinforcements trying to get in.

“We are being attacked,” Megatron said simply. “Main comm lines are down. We don’t know any more than that.”

A surprise attack. How had they managed to sneak all the way to Decepticon HQ in the heart of Kaon without alerting anyone? Ratchet felt a chill in his energon tank.

“Starscream,” Megatron said, voice clipped. “Establish contact with your troops, then secure a path to the medbay. We’ll need it.”

“On it,” Starscream said, not even pausing to be snide. He had to be as worried as Ratchet felt.

“I think there are mechs trying to break in here,” Ratchet said. “But I don’t know how many.”

“Any way to get optics on the hallway?” Starscream said. Ratchet could hear rapid clanking, like he was walking.

“I’ll figure something out,” Ratchet said grimly.

They ended up sending a medical drone out through one of the air vents. It only got a few seconds of footage before someone shot it.

It was only a few hours, but it felt like eons until their people made enough inroads into the South Wing to secure a path to the medbay.

Ratchet spent the whole time pacing, prepping for patients, trying to keep everyone calm, and feeling useless. Main comms were still down, so he only got updates sporadically, whenever Starscream had a second to tell him that they were still coming, but the slagging Autobots were entrenched like rust-barnacles and it was gonna take a while. Ratchet had nothing to do but slowly go out of his mind.

Then a path opened up and half of South Wing was theirs again and the casualties started flooding in.

His crew was immediately overwhelmed. Ratchet was slapping on patches and plugging leaks as fast as he could.

He wished fervently that Flatline was still at HQ. It was barely forty-eight hours since he’d left. There wasn’t a medic Ratchet had met who was faster at reattaching limbs.

Most of his med crew was either pinned down in their quarters or unable to get into the HQ building. Apparently the Autobots had mechs at every door, keeping reinforcements out as long as they could.

Ratchet didn’t have a clue how they could have gotten the jump on them this bad. In their capital city. It simply shouldn’t have happened.

He was keeping it together for his team and his patients, but Ratchet was scared. If they were overrun—ninety percent of Decepticon command was right here in the building. If they were all captured or killed, that was the end of the revolution. Which was no doubt exactly what the Autobots and Zeta intended.

Ratchet shoved the images of Megatron shot through the spark—Starscream, Soundwave, Deadlock, in chains—into the back of his processor and stomped them down. He didn’t have time for that. He especially didn’t have time to wonder what the Autobots would do to him. He supposed it depended on if Zeta was holding a grudge, and if anyone bothered to mention it to Orion before they executed him.

He didn’t know how many hours later it was when Megatron stumbled in with a hole blasted straight through his arm.

Wordlessly, Ratchet gestured him over the nearest empty berth. The other medics didn’t need to be told to leave Megatron to him.

Megatron didn’t look so hot. Apart from the slagged arm, tension was clear in every line of his body. His armor kept rising up in aggressive spikes, then settling back down, biolights pulsing fitfully.

“How is it?” Ratchet asked quietly. He started prying up the warped metal edges, pretending not to hear the stutter of Megatron’s ventilation.

“Bad,” Megatron said, understanding that Ratchet was asking about the siege, not his arm.

Megatron flexed one heavy gauntlet restlessly as Ratchet worked. Ratchet reattached wires as fast as he could, layering mesh over the wound as he worked. A stroke of luck had left the humeral strut intact. Ratchet only installed a small brace for it.

“We still know little,” Megatron continued, a recognizable thread of fury in his voice. “How they took us unawares, how they invaded our city, our base with us none the wiser.”

Ratchet pressed down the mesh until it bonded, then he reached for heavier duty mesh to patch the armor.

“We have been betrayed.”

Ratchet’s lips thinned unhappily. It was the same conclusion that his own processor kept offering up, only to be shoved back in the queue because he didn’t have time to worry about that right now. “Maybe” he said grimly.

“Someone with ties to the Autobots.”

“Maybe,” Ratchet said again, leaning in to fit the next layer.

There was a heavy pause, and Ratchet looked up to see Megatron eyeing him.

“You were friends with Orion Pax,” Megatron said, an edge of danger in his voice.

“You were friends with Orion Pax,” Ratchet snapped back. He wasn’t in the mood for Megatron’s restless paranoia, not with battlefield casualties coming in and only a skeleton crew in his med bay. “Shockwave was friends with Orion Pax. Orion was friends with half the damn planet.”

Out of the corner of his optic, Ratchet saw Megatron relax incrementally, plating slicking back down, aggression-bright biolights dimming. “Yes,” he said, and of course Megatron would never stoop to apologizing, but there was something like contrition in his voice. “Yes, and he didn’t manage to save any of us, did he?”

“Nope,” Ratchet said. He slapped the last layer of mesh down on Megatron’s arm and turned away. “You’re done. Get out of my med bay, Commander, I need the berth.”

The bay was still right on the edge of the contested halls, and medical storage was on the other side of the line. That meant when they started to run low on supplies, it was a problem.

“Resupply: not possible at this time,” Soundwave said over the comms. He sounded almost apologetic.

“Look,” Ratchet said, “we’re not gonna be much good if we don’t have pain patches. Casualties aren’t slowing down. Don’t you have the labs over there? Can’t Shockwave whip us up something?”

“Shockwave’s location: unknown.”

Ratchet felt cold pool in his fuel tank. “Did something happen to him? Do you know—?”

“Unknown.” Soundwave ended the call.

“Great,” Ratchet said to the silent line, and got back to work.

Later, Ratchet was taking advantage of a brief lull to use some of the last solvent to get the coagulated energon out of his knuckle seams, when someone pinged his comms.

“Yeah?” he said, not checking the id before answering. Expecting Starscream or Soundwave again.

“Ratchet?” came a familiar and distinctly not Soundwave or Starscream voice.

“Deadlock?” Ratchet braced himself on the edge of the sink, a flood of relief for something he hadn’t even realized he was worried about coursing through him. “I’m really glad to hear from you, kid. Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Deadlock said, a little hushed like he was trying not to be overheard. “My team fought our way to the command deck. We’ve secured most of North Wing. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, mostly,” Ratchet said. “Up to my neck in casualties, and out of damn near everything, but okay. There’s—“

“You’re running out of medical supplies?” Deadlock interrupted.

“Ran out a while ago,” Ratchet said. “But there’s no way to get more right now. Believe me, I’ve been harassing Soundwave over it.”

“What do you need the most? Give me a list,” Deadlock said brusquely.

Nonplussed, Ratchet rattled off a list of the stuff they were hurting for the most. “—but no one can get near the supply rooms. Soundwave said they were completely overrun.”

“Let me worry about that,” Deadlock. “Hang tight, Ratchet.”

“Hey, you’re not about to do something stupid, right?” Ratchet asked.

Deadlock huffed, causing a little buzz of static over the comms. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“What are you—”

Deadlock hung up. Everyone was just hanging up on Ratchet lately.

He let the worry slide into backprocessing along with the with all the other worry he was pushing off until later—he was going to be recharging like slag for weeks if they miraculously managed not to all die—and concentrated on the six new patients who’d just rolled in all leaking from six holes each. Then the ten patients after that. Then—

He’d nearly forgotten about it when the squeal of tires made him jerk upright in alarm.

He was half-convinced it was another Autobot who’d broke their lines, but then someone from outside shouted, “Hold fire! That’s one of ours,” and the medbay doors banged open and a severely damaged car limped in dripping a trail of multi-colored fluid and dragging a trailer behind him.

The car had a deep gash across his hood, and a popped tire that was making an ugly grinding noise across the floor. Ratchet couldn’t immediately tell where all the liquid was coming from. Somewhere under the carriage.

Ratchet was hurrying forward to help them, when the car dropped his hitch, did a weird sort of half-rolling maneuver to dump the contents of his trunk on the floor. He then transformed with a series of painful sounding clunks until he stood swaying in the center of the floor. Ratchet got to him just in time for Deadlock to collapse into his arms.

Ratchet could immediately see where all the energon was coming from, because Deadlock was missing an arm.

Raggedly severed at the shoulder, energon was fitfully spurting from open tubes.

“You didn’t think to stop to clamp those?” Ratchet asked Deadlock, who grinned hazily up at him.

“Nah, I was heading to the medbay anyway,” he said.

Ratchet suppressed the urge to hit him and instead dragged him over to the nearest berth. He wasn’t too gentle about clamping off the lines. Deadlock wheezed quietly. It sounded like there might be something fucky with his ventilation system, which Ratchet would investigate as soon as he wasn’t bleeding out.

“Is it enough?” Deadlock asked, reaching out to grab Ratchet’s hand.

Ratchet hadn’t even registered what any of the packages scattered across the floor were. He glanced over to where a handful of medics were clustered, one pulling open the doors of the trailer. Another one caught Ratchet’s optic and gave him a slightly giddy grin, holding up a sealed packet of coolant in one hand.

Ratchet looked back down at Deadlock’s flickering optics. “Yeah. You did good. Thank you,” Ratchet said and mustered a smile.

Deadlock smiled back, an achingly sweet expression in his harshly painted face, and passed out.

They found Shockwave not too long after. Trapped under an exploded wall and halfway to dead.

While the ‘Cons retook their base and rounded the last of the Autobot invaders, Ratchet was up to the elbows in Shockwave’s chest, trying to keep his spark from stuttering out. As cheers echoed through the halls, Ratchet was finally standing up and wiping condensation from his optics.

Later, long after the whirl of cleanup and debriefings, Ratchet made it back to the medbay. It was quiet now, most of the patients who were being kept overnight already in recharge. Deadlock was sleeping in the berth nearest to Ratchet’s office door. Shockwave had a curtained off corner in the back.

As he approached, he saw someone else slipping out from behind Shockwave’s curtains. It was Soundwave, probably catching Shockwave up on all the reports he’d missed.

Ratchet nodded to Soundwave, meaning to walk around him, but Soundwave held up a hand for him to stop.

“Shockwave: about to receive further treatment?”

“No, he’s stable for now. I’m just gonna grab a quick word with him.”

“Purpose?”

“It’s my medbay, I check on my patients,” Ratchet scoffed, trying to duck around Soundwave. He was stopped again by Soundwave’s hand on his arm.

“Shockwave: will not appreciate your concern,” Soundwave told him. “Aware you were acquainted in a previous life. Shockwave: likely does not consider you acquainted anymore.” After giving this cryptic speech, Soundwave let go of him and left.

Ratchet frowned after him, wondering at his uncharacteristically fanciful words. “A previous life,” as if one or both of them had died.

Soundwave turned out to be right, of course, as he usually did. Shockwave gave Ratchet a perfectly blank look as he ducked behind the curtain and said, “My mineral drip is not due for another two hours.”

This was the first time he’d seen Shockwave alone in years, without the buffer of a command meeting between them. Shockwave had declined each and every one of his meeting requests, citing scheduling conflicts. But Ratchet knew he did that to everyone who wasn’t Megatron. He was aware that he was currently taking advantage of the fact that Shockwave literally couldn’t run away, but somehow, he still hadn’t expected this blank coldness.

“No, I,” he said awkwardly, “I knew that. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“My condition has not deteriorated since my surgery.”

“Right,” said Ratchet, even though that was really for him to decide, not Shockwave.

“Was there something else?”

“No,” said Ratchet, and turned around and left.

He felt like a bit of a coward for it later, but, well, what had he been supposed to do?

Ratchet stood as far away from Shockwave as possible at the medal ceremony, and managed to mostly forget about him as Deadlock was officially promoted to Field Commander. On the stage, he looked shiny and healthy and brand new.

“I got the briefing,” Flatline said, on their biweekly “conference call” that usually turned into them talking about nothing for hours, late at night. “We’re really going to space, huh?”

“Yeah.” Ratchet sighed, resting his chin on his knuckles as he hunched over the desk in his dim and mostly-empty quarters. “Megatron wants Command to be mobile, not tied down to any one city.”

“The attack really spooked you guys in Kaon, didn’t it?”

“Of course it did,” Ratchet said, feeling a flash of annoyance through his lethargy, but he couldn’t maintain it. Flatline’s mild needling was familiar. Comforting in a way. “I don’t know,” he said, pressing a knuckle into his optic, trying to chase down the little ache behind it. He probably shouldn’t have indulged so much at Deadlock’s party. “What do you think about it? Expanding off-world?”

“You know the reasoning behind it better than I do,” Flatline said. His voice was getting softer, like he was drifting into recharge. “I think I’m not a general, just a medic. It’s our job to pull dents and stick people’s legs back on. Leave the tactics to the tacticians.”

“Yeah,” Ratchet agreed. Flatline was right, of course, and he was relieved to realize it.

The transition to space was jarring. It seemed like one second they were still a scrappy little rebel army desperately trying to maintain control of a handful of cities, and the next they had a space fleet. Ratchet wasn’t even sure where the space fleet had come from. Or where they’d gotten the money for it.

He was on the big flagship, the Nemesis. It was a huge ship; seemed practically the size of a city itself. Ratchet mapped out a little triangle from the medbay to his quarters to the common rooms and back and stuck to it. He felt like if he wandered, he’d get lost in the labyrinthine corridors of the ship and never find his way out.

It was so dark all the time in space. The ship was lit well enough, but whoever had owned it before the Decepticons had painted all the corridors a dim gray that ate light. It made the whole place look gloomy. Foreboding.

The first thing Ratchet did was paint every inch of the medbay blinding white and scrub it until even he was squinting.

He was making his way back to his rooms after shift, keeping an eye on the little map on his HUD so he didn’t turn the wrong way and end up in the engines again.

Ratchet saw movement out of the corner of his optics, but didn’t totally register it until Deadlock whispered, “You should watch your peripherals better, doc,” right into his audial.

Ratchet startled, nearly throwing the pad he was carrying. He pressed a hand against the center of his chest. “Only thing liable to get me on this ship is a spark attack,” he said, a little faint.

Deadlock laughed.

“How’s the arm?” Ratchet asked, turning to face him in the otherwise empty hall.

Deadlock stretched his arm out, showing off the smooth way the tensor cables flexed. “Good as new.” His plating flared then slicked back down in a way Ratchet thought might have been a bit flirty. “You’re free, right?”

“Yeah, I’m off shift,” Ratchet said, which he suspected Deadlock already knew.

“Come with me. I want to show you something.”

Ratchet followed gamely while Deadlock led him deeper into the bowels of the ship. He thought they might be going to the engine room, but Deadlock led him through a door he would have missed if he hadn’t been taken right to it. It was inset into the wall, and blended so well that Ratchet could have looked right at it and never seen a thing.

Inside was a cavernous room. Ratchet heard a gentle sloshing, then his eyes adjusted to the dark and he saw they were in the oil reservoir.

“Oh, wow,” Ratchet said, taking a step inside, walking closer to the lip of the wide lake of oil. “I’ve never seen one of these up close before.” Only giant ships designed to be in space for long periods of time had them. “Always seemed dangerous to me to have it in a giant puddle like that. What if the ship flips? Oil everywhere.”

Deadlock chuckled. His voice echoed strangely in the big room. Something about the oil twisted the reverb of it.

He sat down cross legged on the lip of the oil lake, reaching out to drag the tips of his claws through the thick liquid.

“This room has its own gravitational generator. No matter what the rest of the ship is doing, gravity in here is always pointing straight down,” he said.

Ratchet sat down next to Deadlock and leaned back on his hands to take it all in. There were gentle ripples in the surface of the oil, probably caused by vibrations from the engine.

“I hope you didn’t bring me here to go swimming,” Ratchet said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly buoyant.”

Deadlock shook his head. He brought his finger up to his lips.

“Dim your lights and stay quiet,” he whispered. “It’ll take a minute.” Then his biolights all went out, optics dimming until there was just the barest glow deep in their centers. Ratchet followed suit, letting his own lights dim until there was almost no light in the cavernous room at all.

With his optics most of the way off like this, his lowlight vision wasn’t so good. He could barely see Deadlock, just the barely-there embers of his optics. The oil lake was just a giant black mass.

Ratchet relaxed as the minutes dragged on, slipping into an almost meditative state as he listened to the gentle lapping of the oil.

Then, out of the corner of his optic, he got a flash of something. He made to sit all the way up, but Deadlock’s hand stopped him.

Don’t move too fast, Deadlock messaged him over internal comms. Don’t make any noise.

What was that? Ratchet messaged back. He rotated his head slowly, careful not to let the gears whir too loudly, scanning the dark reservoir, trying to catch that flash again.

There, on the surface of the dark oil, a curl of luminous blue-green. Ratchet pointed silently, and Deadlock followed his finger.

Ion algae, Deadlock messaged him. It’s feeding on the oil.

Should we be worried about that? Ratchet asked. As he watched, the reservoir slowly lit up with swirls of the glowing algae.

It was beautiful, like a light painting.

Deadlock shook his head, whatever stealth mods he had installed rendering the motion completely silent. We’ll use it up and replace it faster than they can eat. They’re harmless, just pretty.

Really pretty, Ratchet agreed.

They watched in silence for a time, until Deadlock messaged him again.

Someone once told me, he said, then paused. Someone once told me that it used to live in the Rust Sea. And if you sat at night and watched the waves long enough, you’d see the optics of everyone you’d ever lost in the algae, looking back.

That’s sweet, Ratchet said, deciding not to ruin the mood by pointing out that that definitely wasn’t true. He looked back over the glowing green and gently rippling oil. Thank you for showing me this.

Deadlock glanced at him out of the corner of his optics. Then, slowly, he placed his hand over Ratchet’s.

Ratchet looked down at their hands, startled, then back up, meeting Deadlock’s optics. Deadlock stared back at him, face frozen in some unreadable expression.

Ratchet rotated his wrist, letting his fingers twine with Deadlock’s, and turned back to watch the lights drift.

So, he and Deadlock were courting. Maybe. Potentially. There weren’t a whole lot of mechs with time or resources to do conjunx rites with the war raging on, but you couldn’t walk a meter without tripping over someone having a passionate love affair. Not that he and Deadlock were having an affair, but Ratchet thought that Deadlock might want to. Unless he’d completely misread the whole thing, and getting his arm ripped off to deliver vital medical supplies was something Deadlock did for all his friends.

It might well be. The mech had a selfless streak that he tried hard to hide, but came out at inopportune times.

The rumor mill seemed to have a better idea of what was going on than Ratchet did, because Starscream smirked at him over a table in the officer’s commissary and said, “It’s a good match.”

“What?” said Ratchet resignedly.

“You and Deadlock,” Starscream said, studying his claws casually. “You’re roughly equivalent ranks, not in each other’s chain of command, and you’re both Conclave so no one can accuse you of trying to sleep your way into Megatron’s good graces.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to frag Megatron directly, if that’s what you’re trying to do?” Ratchet asked.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Starscream rested his chin on his palm, elbow propped lazily on the table. “And there’s your image to think about, too. Deadlock’s a good pick. Being connected to someone that steadfastly loyal to the Cause will do a lot to smooth over certain concerns about your conflicted loyalties.”

“I don’t have conflicted loyalties,” Ratchet said. “My loyalty is to my patien—“

“Yeah. That’s it exactly.”

Ratchet glared at him. “Well, I’m just overjoyed to have your blessing, Starscream.”

Starscream grinned back at him lazily.

It took a while, to get used to space, but Ratchet didn’t have any chose but to get used to it. Artificial gravity never stopped feeling damned weird, though.

The Nemesis was in the thick of things more often than not, because Megatron wasn’t the type to lead from behind, so Ratchet got used to working under fire. It stopped freaking him out by the second millennia or so. He nearly forgot about the quiet conversation he and Megatron had all those years ago when they’d still hoped to end the war quickly.

He didn’t know when it would be over anymore. The estimates kept getting longer every time he heard them. For every clever, war-ending maneuver they came up with. The Autobots had a counter. Optimus had a counter; Zeta was long dead, but they were somehow still fighting—

Ratchet’s spark still ached to think of his one-time friend. He wished he could talk to Optimus, ask him what he was thinking.

He knew Optimus wasn’t keeping the war going just for the pleasure of it. He’d always hated conflict, although he’d never met a fight he didn’t end up in the middle of. If Ratchet could understand.

But Ratchet wasn’t a diplomat, just a medic, and every attempt to negotiate ended the same way, for one reason or another. Autobots unwilling to compromise, even though there was no reason for them to still be fighting, when they all wanted the same thing in the end, didn’t they? A free Cybertron?

Although there were a lot of people saying that wasn’t true anymore. That Optimus taking the title of Prime was evidence he wanted to reestablish the old social order, preserve the Primacy. Ratchet thought that couldn’t be right, because Orion had never approved of the Primacy for a second. It was like everyone had forgotten the nightmare Orion had been for Sentinel. The mech Ratchet had known had always tried to do the right thing.

He tried to talk about it to Megatron, sometimes, but the only thing made Megatron’s temper flare faster than Starscream needling him was someone mentioning Optimus Prime.

Ratchet brought it up anyway, one night when he and Megatron were sharing a drink and a dross stick in his dim quarters. It was in that liminal time in the middle of gamma shift when most everyone was in recharge. A quiet night, but they were both restless. They tended to gravitate towards each other on restless, quiet nights.

They both sat in the little pool of starlight in front of the window. Ratchet was starting to feel mellow, sweet smoke curling over his plating. Dross was contraband technically, but no one was going to say anything if Megatron wanted indulge after hours in his own quarters.

Maybe it was the quiet of the night, or the particular buzz of the dross, but Ratchet said, contextless, into the comfortable silence, “He was a good guy when I knew him.”

Megatron knew who he was talking about right away. The name had been hanging in the silence between them, just like it always did when the ‘Cons suffered a particularly embarrassing defeat at his hands.

They’d just been chased out of the Grangean System by Optimus and a bare handful of Autobots, and everyone on the ship was touchy with the sting of it.

“I don’t wish to speak about him,” Megatron said, which was a lot politer than he’d normally be about the topic. He was slouched deeply in his chair, staring broodily out at the stars, a cube balanced on the broad expanse of his thigh.

Ratchet let the silence cover them again, not wanting to irritate Megatron, even though he was aching to talk to someone about it, and Megatron was the only one who had a chance of understanding.

As if responding to his thoughts, Megatron broke the silence again. “I thought the same thing once, a long time ago. I was young. Trusting. Stupidly so.”

“We all think dumb slag when we’re young,” Ratchet said soothingly. He picked up his own cube from where it was sitting on the table and took a sip.

Megatron huffed quietly. “I suppose.”

“I used to want to go to space, you know. See the galaxy.”

Megatron smiled, small and ironic. “I used to want to be a medic.”

“Really?” Ratchet goggled at him.

Megatron chuckled. “I know, I know, but yes. When I was still a miner, before my imprisonment, I used to think that if by some miracle I ever achieved alt-exemption, I’d study medicine. I was very young, then.”

Ratchet frowned into the mouth of his cube. “Thought you wanted to be a writer.”

One of Megatron’s optical ridges quirked. “Can’t mechs be more than one thing?”

Ratchet was too smart to fall into that idealogical trap. He rolled his optics at Megatron and took a sip of his engex instead.

Megatron smiled and brought his own cube to his lips. The silence stretched again, comfortably, for a while.

Ratchet surprised himself by breaking it. “You’d have to have your forearms completely rebuilt. Hands replaced, of course. You’d probably never have enough manual dexterity to do the really complicated surgeries, but you don’t need that to be a GP.” He eyed Megatron’s thick wrists, huge shoulders. He’d layered on so much bulk since the start of the war, on top of his already bulky frame—Ratchet was keeping an optic on him for sparkstrain—but bulk was good for a medic. Strength was an asset in a field that often called on doctors to haul tons of unconscious metal. It wasn’t a career for the spindly, or the faint of spark, but no one could accuse Megatron of being either.

Megatron looked at him silently. “Well, you would,” Ratchet said defensively. “Not that you’ll have time for that kind of deep rewiring anytime soon.”

“Thank you,” said Megatron solemnly. “A dream for peacetime.” He held out his cube; Ratchet clinked. A wistful little toast for a peace that seemed further and further away every day.

Megatron chuckled and leaned back in his seat. “I won’t be able to study medicine after the war is over either, of course. Who else is going to oversee the transitional government? The reconstruction efforts?” Megatron’s mood was darkening as he thought about the long path ahead of them, on which victory was only a stop along the way.

“You’ll be able to retire eventually,” Ratchet said.

“Will I?”

“Yes,” Ratchet insisted. “You have to believe in what you’re doing. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Something is going on,” Ambulon said. He sounded genuinely worried, not his normal, anxious fluttering, which made Ratchet sit up and pay attention.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” Ambulon said, shifting nervously from foot to foot, “but—look, could we talk in private?”

“Yeah,” Ratchet said, feeling a tinge of worry now, and gestured Ambulon into his little office.

Ambulon waited until Ratchet closed the door then burst out, “So, you know how people ask me things.”

Ratchet nodded, levering himself down behind his desk. Ambulon, for some reason, was the mech every ‘Con went to with the embarrassing, “hypothetical,” so-I-have-this-friend questions. It meant he was usually the one who caught wind when there was a new interface virus making the rounds.

Ambulon didn’t have the long-suffering expression of someone who’d just been scraping rust off someone’s spike, though. He looked tense. Worried.

“I think mechs are going missing,” Ambulon said, which was not what Ratchet had expected at all. “Or maybe just one or two. I don’t know, but something is going on.”

“Any of our people?”

“No, medical’s all accounted for. It seems like it’s just troops? But mechs haven’t been showing up for their shifts, then shift-leaders are dodging questions about it, and some of the crew are getting really worried, and—”

Ratchet held up a hand. “I’ll look into it. Thanks for bringing this up.”

Ambulon nodded nervously. Ratchet went to go have a word with Soundwave.

Soundwave knew what he was talking about right away. And was, bizarrely, not concerned.

“Mechs: accounted for,” Soundwave said, although Ratchet thought there was an unhappy tilt to his chin as he said it. “Assisting Shockwave.”

“With what? They aren’t lab techs,” Ratchet asked, surprised.

“Correct. Requisitioned as experimental subjects.”

Ratchet’s entire processing queue skipped.

“What,” he said flatly. Soundwave just looked at him. “Are you serious?”

“Affirmative.”

“What—absolutely the slag not. I—” Something occurred to him. “Should you be telling me this?”

“No specific instructions to keep information from CMO provided,” Soundwave said, without inflection. “Subjects: will likely still be located in main laboratory.”

Ratchet turned to go, not bothering to say thank you. Soundwave knew.

No one stopped Ratchet as he descended through the floors of the ship towards what he had always, privately, thought of as Shockwave’s lair. By all rights, the Science Division’s wing should have been as brightly lit as Medical, but Shockwave kept it habitually dim.

Ratchet suspected that an improperly installed optic made him sensitive to light, not that he’d ever let Ratchet close enough to his helm to look. Shockwave liked to do his own repairs. Or perhaps he just liked avoiding Ratchet.

The labs looked as deserted as they ever did. There was an entire team of lab techs on the books, but hell if Ratchet had ever seen a single one of them. The impression the labs always gave him was of a place long abandoned. Dark and cold and almost completely lifeless, if it hadn’t been for the dull glow of unidentifiable chemicals in jars, and mysterious machines quietly beeping.

And, now, the muffled sound of someone crying.

Ratchet beelined straight for the sound, until he came to what could only be described as a cage.

It held three mechs. None he knew. Two seekers, one of whom was painted so similarly to Skywarp that Ratchet thought it was him until he noticed the red highlights on his wings. The one car, who had been the one crying, quickly scrubbed his face and stood. He was covered in a spiderweb of sensors, the wires trailing out through the slats of the cage into a fitfully blinking machine.

“CMO Ratchet?” the car said tremulously.

None of them looked especially happy to see him, and Ratchet found out why when not-Skywarp said, “You’re here to examine us before Shockwave starts, right? Make sure we’re healthy enough?” in resigned, resentful tones.

“Yes,” Ratchet said decisively, even though he didn’t have the first clue what was going on. “You’re not. You’re all experiencing a medical emergency and you need to accompany me back to the medbay immediately. Do you know how to get this thing open?”

All three mechs looked at him blankly for a moment, then they jumped to point at a small hatch near the foot of the cage. It was locked, so Ratchet just banged on the hinge until it gave way and pulled the entire thing out.

They all scrambled out, tearing handfuls of wires off their plates.

“Come on, come on,” Ratchet said in a low voice, gesturing for them to follow him. They hurried in his wake back towards the doors. It seemed like they might be home free, when Shockwave stepped out from somewhere right in front of them.

Ratchet skidded to a halt, almost causing a pileup behind him.

Shockwave looked down at him. His single red optic was utterly blank. “What are you doing?” he asked.

The car inched a little farther back, as if he was trying to hide between Ratchet.

“Taking these mechs back with me,” Ratchet said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“Under what authority are you taking these soldiers?”

“I have reason to suspect these mechs are carrying an infectious pathogen, and I’m putting them in quarantine for the safety of the ship,” Ratchet said firmly.

Shockwave looked at him. Shockwave had to know he was bullshitting, but it remained to be seen if Shockwave called him out on it.

The seconds stretched. Ratchet barely vented, caught in Shockwave’s gaze.

The cables of Shockwave’s gun-arm flexed.

“As CMO, your authority overrides mine in terms crew health,” he said, as neutrally as if he was commenting on the weather.

“It does,” said Ratchet. He took a step forward. Shockwave stepped aside.

None of them vented again until they were out of the science wing and well on the way to Medical. And they didn’t relax until Ratchet had herded them into the medbay and shut the doors behind them.

Ratchet took a moment to run a lubrication cycle on his tense joints, and to vent slowly. When he switched his optics back on the car was hovering by his elbow, the two fliers hovering behind him.

“CMO Ratchet?” said the car. “You probably don’t recognize me. You put new hands on me a long time ago, back when we were still planet side.”

“Slag, kid, I’m sorry.” Ratchet scrubbed one hand down his own face. “I don’t remember. I put a lot of hands back on people back in the day.” He looked the car up and down. “You look well, though.”

“Can’t even tell, right?” the car grinned, shyly. Ratchet smiled back.

“What’s going to happen to us?” interrupted the purple seeker who looked like Skywarp.

“Right,” Ratchet said, back to business. “You three are under quarantine. That’s two weeks isolation in the medbay. Try to get some rest for now, okay? I’ll figure the rest out.”

The car looked relieved, the seeker didn’t look so sure, the third one turned without complaint and led the other two into the isolation ward. Ratchet closed and sealed the hatch behind them.

Ratchet sequestered himself in the supply room—which was connected directly to the medbay, he was never getting stranded like in Kaon again—to contemplate while he refilled kits.

He was still debating whether it should be a Command meeting issue or if he should bring it straight to Megatron when the supply room door opened. “Coolant packs are over there,” he said, pointing without looking around. “Take some from the open box before you open a new one.”

Silence greeted him. He looked around to see Shockwave standing in front of the door.

“What?” Ratchet asked. “Quarantine’s two weeks, you know the rules.”

“I have come to appeal to your reason, doctor,” Shockwave said, like he thought Ratchet was being unreasonable.

“My reason,” Ratchet repeated, incredulous.

“We are both aware the reasons you gave for confiscating my test subjects were flimsily constructed lies.”

“Confiscating—rescuing, I would say! It was obvious those mechs didn’t want to be there!”

“A soldier’s duties are not always pleasant—”

“Nowhere is lab rat listed as part of a soldier’s duties.”

Shockwave paused.

“Why have you made it your mission to undermine me at every turn, doctor?” Shockwave said, and for someone who claimed to have no emotions at all, he sounded very aggrieved.

“I haven’t,” Ratchet said. “My ‘mission’ is keeping the mechs in this army alive and well, and I don’t think the mechs who disappear into your lab are going to show up again alive and well. I don’t think that for a second.”

“It is not my intention to harm them. I merely need subjects to—“

“I don’t give a single piece of scrap about your intentions. If intensions were worth anything, we wouldn’t be in this damn mess. I’d still have a hospital, Megatron would be a senator or something, and you’d still have a face.” He turned away from Shockwave, deliberately showing him his back, and pulled a stack of medkits onto the table to restock. “You don’t understand, because those hacks at the Institute scrambled your processor so good you can’t even remember what having a functional emotional subsystem is like, so why don’t you think about this logically? What’re rank and file Decepticons going to think if they know they could be turned into test subjects at any time? What’s that going to do to moral?”

“Sacrifices must be made for the Cause—“

“What the slag is the Cause if it’s not these mechs? How is you kidnapping them from their barracks any different from the Institute snatching them off the streets? What the slag are we fighting for, if it’s not for them?” Ratchet had to loosen his grip on the medkit before he warped the metal. He set it down and let his fans click on, cycling heat out of his frame as the anger cycled out of his system.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to yell at Shockwave. Ratchet was sure he honestly didn’t understand what was wrong. This was a conversation he should be having with Megatron.

Shockwave was silent for a long time. Ratchet heard the creak and hiss of him shifting his weight.

“If I could obtain volunteers?” he said, finally.

Ratchet glared over his shoulder. Shockwave’s single optic gazed impassively back. “These experiments are not purely according to my own whims, doctor,” he continued. “Megatron has asked for weapons. Megatron has asked for stronger soldiers. Both are needed. Both it is my duty to provide.”

“Right,” said Ratchet grimly, and went to find Megatron.

Megatron found him first, as it turned out. Ratchet almost literally ran into him in the halls.

Megatron reared back in surprise, cycling his optics, then his face hardened. “You. My office. Now.” he said, jabbing a finger into Ratchet’s chest.

“Do you know the slag Shockwave has been up to?” Ratchet burst out the second the door closed behind him.

“Ratchet—”

“Because whatever you asked him to do, he’s taking it as permission to basically kidnap crew members—”

“Ratchet—”

“—and if he thinks for a second I’m just going to stand back and—”

“Ratchet!” Megatron shouted, startling Ratchet into silence. “It’s not your place to interfere in the science division’s affairs.”

Ratchet gaped at him, dumbstruck.

“I will not have my senior officers undermining each other,” Megatron growled. “Did Starscream put you up to this? I would have thought you too smart to be pulled in by his histrionics.”

“I—no,” Ratchet spluttered.

“Because he ought to know Shockwave isn’t about to actually harm his fliers. They’re too valuable.”

“So, you did know about this,” Ratchet said, swelling up.

“Of course, I did,” Megatron said bluntly. “We need an edge, something the Autobots won’t be able to anticipate and counter. We are being pushed out of system after system and it cannot be allowed to continue. Measures have to be taken.”

“These measures are unacceptable.”

“These measures are temporary,” Megatron snapped. “Which you would have learned if you hadn’t insisted on taking action on the basis of rumor, consulting no one but your own conviction that you are the sole arbitrator of morality and reason in the universe.”

Ratchet’s mouth clicked shut. That had stung.

Megatron turned away, to the window, folding his arms behind his back. “You will learn the purpose of Shockwave’s research in due time. Until then, I expect you to concentrate on your own division. Am I clear?”

Ratchet gritted his teeth. “Crystal.”

By far the worst part of living on a spaceship was the lack of decent hinged doors. Ratchet would have dearly loved to slam Megatron’s door as he left, but instead it only swished closed behind him, almost silently.

He settled instead for storming through the halls in a blind rage, taking a small amount of satisfaction as mechs practically flung themselves out of his way.

He paused in front of his habsuite, staring at the door. It was long after his shift had ended, and Pipette and Razorburn would give him hangdog looks if he tried to go back to the medbay now, but the idea of being alone in his room seemed like the least appealing prospect in the galaxy right now. Not that he’d be good company for anyone. Maybe he would call Flatline—

“Hey, doc—”

Deadlock actually took a startled step backwards as Ratchet rounded on him, although he covered for it quickly.

“Oh,” Ratchet rubbed a hand over his chin, “we were supposed to get fuel tonight.” In the chaos of the day, he’d completely forgotten. It was hours past when anyone would be reasonably refueling. Ratchet’s gage was in the orange, now that he actually glanced at it in the corner of his HUD.

Ratchet turned and opened the door to his hab. He left it open behind him. Deadlock hovered uncertainly on the doorstep for a long moment before following him in, door swishing shut behind.

Silently, Ratchet pulled the little mini fridge he kept under his recharge slab for days like this when he’d been to busy and distracted to eat, and pulled out two cubes. He turned one over in his hand, watching the way the dull glow reflected off his fingers.

“Is something wrong?” asked Deadlock. He was hovering right behind Ratchet. Ratchet was so tired that he didn’t even flinch, even though he hadn’t heard Deadlock approach.

“I’m not going to be good company tonight, kid, sorry,” Ratchet said, standing up and turning. He pressed one of the cubes into Deadlock’s hand. He levered himself down to sit on the edge of his berth. Slowly, Deadlock sank into the chair next to his desk, watching him.

Ratchet cracked open his cube. Deadlock followed suit. Ratchet took a long pull, until his fuel gage stopped complaining. He rubbed his thumb restlessly over the lightly textured material of the cube.

“You ever feel like you’re going crazy?” he asked Deadlock. “Or like everyone around you is going crazy, but you can’t go around thinking you’re the last bastion of sanity, so it’s gotta be you.

“Because I feel like that all the slagging time. It’s not new. I felt like that as a student, I felt like that when I worked for the Primes, the Senate, at every hospital. I always think, okay, here’s the right thing to do. Here’s how we help people. It’s so obvious. We can start right now. Then,” he made a mute gesture. Trying and failing to encompass the frustration of being told, constantly, by everyone, that he had to be patient, to accept that things were just so complicated, that he had to wait and wait and smile while he waited. “When I joined up, I thought here, finally, I wouldn’t have to compromise, you know? I could do the right thing, not just try to carve a little right out of all the wrong—Does that make sense?”

“I understand,” Deadlock said, although Ratchet thought there was something a little hesitant about his tone. “I was tired of being forced to choose between bad and worse too. Although, I think,” one corner of his mouth quirked, “we probably weren’t making the same choices.”

“No, I suppose we weren’t,” Ratchet said. He felt like an aft, then. Then a little resentful of Deadlock for making him feel that way, even though that wasn’t fair. It hadn’t been the same for him, and Ratchet knew it.

Deadlock had been getting by on the streets for Primus knew how long, while Ratchet—well, he’d been Ratchet of Vaporex. And he’d never been one of the bad ones, but he doubted more and more if being good all by himself had ever made much of a difference at all.

Ratchet resisted the urge to rub at his face again. He was going to wear off all the paint on his nose at this rate. “I’m sorry,” he told Deadlock again instead, “I’m in a mood. We can reschedule if you want, get drinks tomorrow.”

“No,” Deadlock said, leaning forward in his chair, “tell me what you want to say.”

Ratchet hesitated for a long moment, but he desperately did want to talk to someone. Maybe hearing it out loud would make it all make sense, and Deadlock could always be relied upon to be a good, if not always unjudgmental, listener.

“You know how it is when you talk to Megatron, right?” he asked. “He makes everything sound possible. I wanted to live in a world like he described. Where slag was fair and mechs got what they needed and I wouldn’t have to spend half my time screaming at people who didn’t care. And I knew it would be hard. I knew we’d be hurting whole time right up until we won, and no one told me any different, but,” he licked his lips, “I’m worried what happens if we start losing ourselves along the way. What if we start not caring?” Ratchet gave in and pressed his thumb against the ache under his right optical. “I must be crazy, because it seems like I’m the only one who’s worried.”

Deadlock put his hand on Ratchet’s knee, squeezing just a little too hard. “You’re not crazy,” he said fiercely. “You’re a good person.”

Ratchet grimaced at him. “Am I?”

“Yes.” Deadlock slid off the chair, coming to crouch on the floor in front of Ratchet, looking up at him intensely. “You have to know that, Ratch. You’re the best damn person I know. Whatever’s going on, you’re going to get through it, and you’re going to do the right thing because that’s what you do.”

“That’s nice of you to say, but—”

Deadlock kissed him, launching up from the floor like a pouncing turbofox.

Ratchet opened his mouth more out of surprise than anything else, and immediately tasted a rush of charge as Deadlock licked the connection points inside his lips.

Ratchet made a muffled, startled noise. He planted his hand right in the center of Deadlock’s collar fairing and pushed him back. Deadlock resisted a little, but Ratchet was stronger. He levered them apart.

Once Deadlock realized he was being pushed away, he scrambled back.

He gave Ratchet a panicked look. “I’m sorry—I—”

“No,” Ratchet said, reaching out after him as if he could stop Deadlock diving through the door like he looked like he wanted. “You just startled me, is all—”

Deadlock’s optics flicked between the door and Ratchet’s face. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay,” Ratchet said, trying to regain control of the conversation and tell Deadlock he wasn’t opposed to kissing, he’d just been surprised by it. “I swear I’m not trying to be nice, you really did surprise me.”

Deadlock hesitated, still looking ready to bolt. He looked away, folding all the expression on his face away, until it was very nearly his normal, perpetually unimpressed mask. The only thing that gave him away was the tension around his optics.

“It’s okay if you don’t—want me. The way I want you. I can’t expect that.”

“Of course I want you,” Ratchet said, but Deadlock’s face twisted up like he didn’t believe him. “I do.” But Deadlock was turning away. Ratchet made a wild, panicked snatch for Deadlock’s wrist, and surprised them both by catching it. They stared down at it, Ratchet’s fingers bright against Deadlock’s dark plating.

Experimentally, Deadlock tugged his wrist a little. Ratchet tightened his grip.

“Kid,” he said, not having trouble finding the words anymore, because he had a million that had been building for a long time and now they all wanted out, “slagging listen to me, okay? I want you. I want to hold you and I want to stick my tongue in that little gap right under your shoulder pauldrons. I want to hold you down. I want to give you system damage, make you unfit for duty. I want to bolt you to a berth in the medbay and ride you until you redline, then hook you up to spark support and keep going.”

Deadlock made an ugly grinding noise, like three of his systems were all trying to activate at once.

“Fuck, Ratch,” he said, his voicebox crackling. “I’d let you. I’d let you rip me apart. I know you’d always put me back together.”

“Yeah,” said Ratchet into a heavy, hot silence that fell between them like an asteroid into earth.

Ratchet heard his own fans click on. “Hell,” he said, “you doing anything for the next three hours?”

“No,” Deadlock said breathlessly.

“Then c’mere.”

Deadlock launched himself at Ratchet, practically leaving sparks behind. Deadlock’s lips were back on his before Ratchet even had time to think, and Deadlock was moaning into his mouth. Deadlock’s free hand clenched around Ratchet’s shoulder, then he pushed Ratchet down flat on the berth.

It was covered in junk Ratchet kept meaning to put away. He felt a pad crack under his back, but he didn’t care. He let go of Deadlock’s wrist and brought both his hands up to cup his face, thumbs stroking over the smooth curve of his finials.

Deadlock caught his bottom lip between his teeth, making Ratchet gasp, then broke the kiss, licking and nipping his way down Ratchet’s front until he was crouched between Ratchet’s thighs.

“Let me suck your spike,” he said, scratching plaintively at Ratchet’s panel with his claws.

Well, it wasn’t like Ratchet was going to argue with that. He let his spike transform out, Deadlock’s optics following as it twisted up, all the little sensitive platelets locking together. Deadlock leaned forward. He exvented, open-mouthed, against Ratchet. The rush of hot, humid air made him shiver.

The inside of his mouth was even hotter.

It didn’t take Ratchet long to overload, but he didn’t have time to be embarrassed about that because Deadlock was climbing up his body to kiss him again, Ratchet’s own charge still crackling in his mouth.

Ratchet sighed into it. He could taste smoke on Deadlock’s tongue too, and made a mental note to take a look in there with a penlight sometime before Deadlock left. Later, though. Much later.

He stroked his hands up Deadlock’s sides, enjoying the rumble of his racing engines. He rolled them over so he could wiggle his fingers into the tempting vents on Deadlock’s chest, which was when he felt Deadlock tense up.

“You okay?” He asked.

“Yeah, I just—” Deadlock’s jaw worked. “I don’t usually let people touch me that much.”

“I don’t have to,” Ratchet said.

“I want you to. Please.”

“Slowly,” Ratchet decided.

He just stroked his hands over Deadlock’s plating to start, enjoying the feel of his polish, and the subtle variations in texture where his armor was scratched or dinged or had been repaired. Subtle enough stuff that it wouldn’t be immediately obvious to the optics, but Ratchet’s fingers didn’t miss much.

He worked his way up and down Deadlock’s body, almost a massage. Slowly, Deadlock relaxed. His fans picked up, and his panel opened all the way, silent on its hinges. Ratchet caught a glimpse of dark mesh and a bright yellow node.

Deadlock froze as Ratchet’s fingers brushed over his valve.

Ratchet froze too. “No?” he asked.

“No, yes, I—“ Deadlock shuddered all over, his hands clenching on Ratchet’s shoulders. “Sorry, yes. Fuck. Just go slow, and tell me what you’re going to do before you do it, okay? Don’t say any slag like ‘we don’t have to if you’re not comfortable.’”

Ratchet, who had been about to say exactly that, bit his lip. “Okay, I can do that.”

“And don’t—“ Deadlock’s engine growled, frustrated “—this is stupid. Don’t try to be sexy about. No dirty talk for a bit, alright? Just. Tell me what you’re doing. Like an exam.”

“Like an exam?”

“Yeah.”

Ratchet managed not to smile, because the kid was obviously mortified about being this vulnerable. Letting his tough mech exterior slip, just for Ratchet. “Okay, I’m going to manually stimulate your primary anterior receptor node. You know what that is?”

Deadlock bared his teeth, his plating rattling audibly. “Fuck you. I know what that is.”

“Okay,” Ratchet said pleasantly, slipping easily into his bedside manner. “This might be a little cold.”

He twisted his wrist to get the little lubricant nozzle flowing and wet his fingers. Deadlock exvented slowly.

Deadlock made a hurt-sounding noise when Ratchet put his fingers on his node, but he stayed perfectly still as Ratchet gently rolled it back and forth. “How does that feel?” Ratchet asked.

“Like I’m going to die,” Deadlock said.

“Could you be more specific?”

“Fuck you. It’s good. It’s really good, Ratch.”

“You’re doing great,” Ratchet said, sounding a little breathless to his own audials. There was a little trickle of lubricant oozing out of Deadlock’s valve. “I’m going to rub the outside of your valve, okay?”

“Okay,” Deadlock said and gasped as Ratchet gathered up the trickle of lubricant with his thumb, spreading it over Deadlock’s slit, feeling the tingly bump of nodes hidden under the mesh. Only Deadlock’s fat, shining anterior node was visible from the outside, the rest had to be internal.

“Doing alright?” Ratchet asked.

“Uh-huh.” Deadlock licked his lips. “Could you put a finger in me?” He asked, fast like he was embarrassed to say it.

“Sure,” Ratchet said, keeping his tone light. He pressed the tip of one finger against Deadlock’s entrance. “Relax. On one, two—”

Deadlock did not relax, but he was thoroughly wet now and Ratchet’s fingers weren’t unreasonably thick. Ratchet had been right, the nodes were clustered thick in Deadlock’s mesh, he could feel them sizzling as Deadlock clenched around him.

Deadlock moaned raggedly, hips surging up into Ratchet’s hands. “More.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, dammit.”

“Okay,” Ratchet said. “Again, try to relax.”

The second finger was a bit of a struggle, but Deadlock grabbed his wrist and growled “don’t stop” when he tried to slow down, so he kept going until he was knuckle deep in Deadlock’s valve and Deadlock was venting out of his mouth, fans loud enough to hear from the hall.

“Slag,” Ratchet breathed. He licked his thumb and brought it back to Deadlock’s anterior node, just barely remembering to warn him first.

His motor whined as Ratchet’s hands worked in tandem. Thumb rubbing his exterior node, fingers trying every node he could reach until he found the ones that made Deadlock’s voice break.

Deadlock covered his face in his hands as he overloaded. The quiet, hurt noise he made was almost completely lost under the roar of his fans. Ratchet gasped as electricity snapped across his fingers. He kept his rhythm steady through sheer force of will, letting Deadlock ride it out.

Deadlock sagged down onto the berth, a few final spasms making his valve and platting both twitch.

Ratchet pulled away as gently as he could, giving his hand a cursory glance for damage. The plating looked fine, but one of his fingers was twitching uncontrollably in a way that looked like a wire problem.

He clambered up the berth, plonking himself down next to Deadlock, and pulled out a screwdriver. Deadlock curled into his side and seemed to fall into recharge almost immediately. Ratchet felt a little smug at how worn out he looked.

Repairs didn’t take long, and Ratchet was feeling lethargy taking over his limbs too by the end of it. He waved at the lights to turn them off.

Ratchet was drowsing, almost in recharge, when he felt Deadlock shift behind him on the berth.

“It’s going to be okay,” Deadlock whispered to him in the dark, and pressed a kiss to the back of his shoulder. Ratchet didn’t say anything back, and pretty soon Deadlock’s ventilations slowed, his frame cooling as he slipped into true recharge.

Deadlock was famously good at predicting the outcomes of battles, fist fights, and card games, to the point where most mechs refused to play with him due to the belief that he was either psychic (unlikely) or a truly excellent cheat (more likely, although Ratchet had never managed to catch him at it).

Ratchet was still happy to play, since it ate up the time between shifts, and when it was just the two of them, they usually ended up betting the kind of stuff neither of them really minded losing.

Ratchet was down three kisses and a blowjob when Deadlock stiffened, and Starscream’s clawed gauntlet curled around Ratchet’s shoulder.

“Need to steal the CMO from you for a moment, Field Commander,” Starscream said. From his tone and the sour look on Deadlock’s face, he was giving him the smile that pissed everyone off. “Slag off for a bit, will you?”

Deadlock tossed down his cards with bad grace and got up from the table, endeavoring to look like he was leaving because he wanted to, not because a superior officer had told him to.

Starscream sat down in Deadlock’s seat and picked up his cards, squinting at them.

“You’re losing,” Starscream guessed, “unless you’ve got something truly exceptional hiding in your wrist compartments.”

“Just a pair of tens,” Rathcet said, setting his own cards down on the table. “You could have commed me to come to your office—”

“I don’t know why you play with him. Everyone knows he cheats.”

“—instead of interrupting my free time,” Ratchet finished.

“I don’t want to talk in my office,” Starscream said. “It’s cramped. I want to know what’s going on with you and Megatron and Shockwave.”

“Zenith didn’t tell you?” Ratchet asked, surprised. Usually Starscream knew if any of his fliers so much as banged their wing in a doorframe.

Zenith was that flier who looked so much like Skywarp. Ratchet had learned all their names during the awkward weeks they’d all spent staring at each other through the glass of the quarantine ward.

“He told me what happened, of course, but he, like any reasonable person, assumed that you’d been acting with Megatron’s blessing.” Starscream pinned the corner of one card with the tip of his claw, spinning it back and forth. “Apparently, that isn’t the case?”

Ratchet’s lips thinned. “I didn’t stop in to ask first, no.”

“How unlike you.”

“There wasn’t time,” Ratchet said, defensively. “I notice I haven’t heard a thank you yet.”

“Why should I thank you? I didn’t ask for your help, and he’ll be right back in the lab with Shockwave’s gross little fingers in his wiring in a week. Besides, now Megatron is angry with you, which means I can’t get you to talk him into increasing my research budget.”

“I’ve never talked Megatron into anything,” Ratchet said. He felt like he was starting to lose control of the conversation. Not that he’d ever had a conversation with Starscream that didn’t feel like getting dragged behind a star freighter.

“Of course you haven’t. You just happen to mention something you think might be a good idea in front of him and he realizes that he’s been itching to steal that medical outpost on Delphi from the Autobots for months and commits ten-thousand troops to it.”

“It’s a good strategic location,” Ratchet grumbled, leaning back in his chair. He hoped Starscream would get to the point soon. He wanted to get back to his game with Deadlock. He’d been thinking about recklessly upping the ante, and throwing some auxiliary port stuff in the pot. He might even be able to get Deadlock to fumble a hand if he sprang it at the right time.

Starscream hummed absently. Ratchet felt a curl of annoyance in his tank. Usually, even Starscream didn’t talk in circles this big. “Maybe,” Ratchet said, “if you didn’t spend half your time deliberately pushing his buttons, you’d be able to ask for funding yourself.”

“Ha!” Starscream let out a single bark of laughter. “Now, I know you know that’s not true. Megatron only gives presents he already wants to give. What do you think he’d have told you if you’d asked him to stop Shockwave, instead of taking it into your own hands?” He smirked when Ratchet frowned. “Probably the same thing he told you when he dragged you into his office by the finial, right?” Starscream tapped his claw on the table, muffled by the card still trapped beneath his finger. “No one’s arguing Megatron’s talent for violence and stirring rhetoric, but he has… blind spots. Surely, you’ve noticed them by now.”

Ratchet frowned deeper. Megatron did get a bit tunnel-visioned when he had a goal in sight—it was a flaw they shared, actually. This wasn’t even the first time they’d come into conflict over it, although never quite this bad.

“Sometimes to get things done you have to, well, do exactly what you did. Take it into your own hands, even if it isn’t necessarily what our fearless leader wants.”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying, Starscream,” Ratchet said slowly. “Me and Megatron just had a disagreement. We’ll sort it soon enough.”

There was something almost like a flinch that passed over Starscream’s face, but it smoothed so fast that Ratchet thought he must have imagined it.

“Oh, I’m not saying anything at all,” Starscream said airily. “I just thought if there was trouble in paradise, you might need a friend. If the old rustbucket isn’t turning your gears anymore, I’d be happy to step in,” Starscream said, and gave such an exaggerated wink that Ratchet had to laugh, relieved as the odd tension in the air cleared.

Starscream pulsed his lights, an outrageously flirtatious display, which was how Ratchet knew for sure he was being made fun of. Starscream was very handsome, of course, but they’d never been like that. He appreciated Starscream trying to cheer him up, though.

Starscream’s flirty smile shifted into a scowl when Ratchet took too long to respond. “Never mind,” he said irritably. “Nothing. Forget it. Deadlock’d have my wings anyway.”

“Deadlock doesn’t mind,” Ratchet said, nonplussed.

Starscream snorted. “Deadlock doesn’t mind Megatron. Believe me, I’m a different story altogether.”

Nobody apologized to each other about what had been said. Ratchet wasn’t especially the apologizing type and Megatron definitely wasn’t, but after a few weeks of moving gingerly around each other, the tension broke like a storm and things were back to normal.

Mostly.

As if his fight with Megatron had triggered it, Ratchet started noticing a kind of ambient… muttering.

Ratchet didn’t spend all that much time paying attention to what the crew of the Nemesis was gossiping about on any giving day, but something about the way mechs were deliberately keeping their voices down made his audials prick up.

The snatches of conversation he heard in the moments before one of the crew noticed him and cut themselves off didn’t sound like the usual idle chatter of mechs with four hours left on a boring shift. He heard things like running out of fuel, outpost overrun, organics ganging up on us, and most damningly from a communications tech just outside the sixth level canteen: “If we don’t win soon, it might not matter if we ever do.”

No one was saying anything to Ratchet, of course. The troops, on principle, avoided saying anything to the brass that wasn’t “yes, sir,” and Ratchet was brass-adjacent enough to count.

But the snatches he’d heard stuck with him. All throughout the afternoon and right into the follow up he had with a soldier he’d given a full frame rehaul to a few days ago.

He was making small talk with his patient, a polite mech with a Towers accent who, until recently, had been a neat little orange truck. Reframes with large size class differences were tricky, which was probably why he absently repeated something he’d heard earlier that day and felt Damus stiffen under his hands.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Damus said quietly.

“What does it matter? Mechs say worse in the halls every day.” Ratchet grabbed a penlight, shining it into Damus’s optics. Reactive apertures. That was a good sign. Frame rejection could start anywhere, but the first signs were often in the optics.

“They shouldn’t,” Damus said, grimacing as Ratchet increased the brightness. “It’s a sign of poor moral, and lax discipline.”

Ratchet frowned. “You’re not going to convince unhappy mechs to be happy by forcing them not to complain.”

“Perhaps not. But the dissatisfied will spread their dissatisfaction. They will influence the undecided, making doubt spring up where there was none.”

“Sounds like how the Movement got started,” Ratchet said, clicking his light off and setting it down, going to rummage for the rubber-tip hammer. Damus was quiet long enough that Ratchet realized—“Is that what you’re worried about? There isn’t a coup brewing, Damus, for pity’s sake. Mechs’re just tired, and sick of being on half rations.”

“Starscream is encouraging—“

“Megatron has Starscream handled.” Ratchet shook the hammer at Damus for emphasis. “Look, you haven’t been here that long. You’re still adjusting. Believe me, this is what passes for normal around here. Speaking of adjusting, how is the new frame feeling? Any lag?”

Damus hesitated just a little too long before saying, “No.”

Ratchet glared at him until he fidgeted.

“The face,” he admitted. “When I try to change expressions, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Ratchet nodded, drawing closer. “Might not be fully integrated. Any pain? Numbness?”

“No pain,” Damus said. He hesitated again. “There might be numbness, but I—don’t remember what it’s supposed to feel like.”

“That’s fine,” Ratchet said. “We can test the neural wires one by one to see if they’re responding.”

“Will it take long?”

“You got somewhere to be?”

Damus was silent, which Ratchet took as permission to get started. He tried to go slow, quietly narrating what he was doing as he did it—a habit he had picked up for his more skittish patients. Damus was perfectly cooperative, but Ratchet could see the flinch around his optics whenever he poked too hard at his facial wiring.

“Well, I think I see where the problem is. Wiring’s not fully integrated. Now, facial wiring is finicky, you’ve got a lot of tiny platelets on the face that all need to move in sync. We can wait to see if the lag clears up on its own, or we can try a reinstall.”

“I don’t want a new face,” Damus said quickly. “I don’t want that. Even if this one’s broken.”

Yeah, Ratchet could guess why he might not be eager to have someone prying his brand new face back off.

“That’s fine,” Ratchet said, pretending not to notice Damus’s nerves. “As long all your limbs and organs are working and you can see alright, then that’s all you need. Let’s reassess in a few days, okay?”

He saw Damus out, eyeing his balance as he walked.

Damus was a keen one. A rescue from the Autobots and determined to be the best Decepticon in the universe to make up for it. Thought Megatron hung Luna-2 too.

Ratchet was inclined to think Damus’s worrying was just that, but he couldn’t stop mulling it over in the back of his processor.

Later, as he was lounging on the sinfully conductive couch Deadlock had liberated from some pirate or smuggler or something on a mission, he was still thinking about it.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hmm?” Deadlock hummed. He was sitting cross legged on the floor, surrounded by the disassembled parts of a sniper rifle, each of which he was carefully inspecting and cleaning in sequence. He could spend hours like this. He claimed it was meditative.

“Have you—” Ratchet started, then stopped, unsure of how to bring it up, or even what exactly he was bringing up. “I’ve been hearing some things.”

“What things?” Deadlock didn’t look up from his work.

“I’m not sure, truth be told,” Ratchet admitted. He sank down further on the couch, putting his pedes up on the arm. “I don’t usually pay attention to troop gossip, you know, moral’s not my job, but I was talking to Damus—do you know him? Was a little orange empuratee? Just got reframed. Used to be an Autobot?”

“The outlier. I know him,” Deadlock confirmed. “I’m surprised he’d participate in gossip.”

“He wasn’t,” Ratchet told the ceiling, “he was warning me off it. I just wanted to know if you’ve heard anything. You spend more time with the rank and file than I do. At least,” Ratchet amended, “more time with them when they’re conscious, and not too busy puking or bleeding to talk.”

Deadlock was quiet for a long moment, then he said, slowly, “There are some mechs who aren’t… happy about some of the recent command decisions. They’re saying that we shouldn’t be opening up new fronts when we still don’t control Cybertron.”

Ratchet cycled his optics. He’d been expecting something more along the lines of long hours and short rations. The things everyone complained about. “Right.”

“And,” Deadlock continued, seemingly emboldened by Ratchet’s neutral response, “some mechs don’t like that we’ve been invading inhabited worlds. They feel like it’s more trouble than its worth; that we’re making enemies quicker than we can afford. Some people even—think it’s stealing. Basically. From the organics. Who’ve never done anything to us.”

“It’s opened the supply lines up at least,” Ratchet said absently. “Haven’t run out of coolant for months.”

There was a heavy silence. Ratchet looked up to see Deadlock staring at him.

“What?” Ratchet asked, defensive.

“You’re so tunnel-visioned,” Deadlock said sharply. “All you think about is your medbay, and you think anything that happens outside of it isn’t your problem. The war is bigger than your operating table. Things aren’t good just because they make your job easier.”

“Excuse me?” Ratchet said, stung.

“Just—” Deadlock scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Forget it.”

Ratchet fidgeted, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the knuckles of his other hand. “Is it widespread? Are the troops really that unhappy?”

“No, just a handful,” Deadlock said, and even though his tone was perfectly even, Ratchet couldn’t shake the feeling that he was lying.

“No one’s said anything to me.”

Deadlock shrugged. “Well, they wouldn’t. You’re Command.”

“You’re saying they’re scared to talk to me?” Ratchet snorted derisively. “That’s ridiculous. The crew know they can always come to me for help.”

“You think no one’s afraid of you?” Deadlock laughed harshly. “Mechs are scared stiff of you, Ratch. You’ve got the whole medical corps under your pede, you’re practically Megatron’s amica—even Starscream respects you. You have so much power. You could do whatever you wanted.”

“Under my—I don’t treat my medics badly,” Ratchet snapped, aware that he was proving Deadlock’s earlier point about tunnel vision.

“No,” Deadlock sighed, “of course you don’t. But none of them will so much as vent without your say-so. If you told them, they’d let any mech die, and everyone is terrified of pissing you off so much that you will.”

“I wouldn’t,” Ratchet said, feeling something twist in his spark. “Deadlock—you know I’d never do that. Not to anyone, but especially—especially not to you. Never. Not if we fight. Not even if we break up. You know that, right?”

“That’s not—“ Deadlock shook his head. “I know.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” Deadlock said.

It was the first time either of them had said it, but it didn’t feel good the way it should have. All Ratchet felt was a twist of foreboding in his spark.

“Listen,” Starscream said, catching Ratchet’s arm in the hall, dragging him into a secluded corner. “I’m telling you this so you can get ahead of it.”

“Telling me what?” Ratchet asked.

“Deadlock’s getting demoted.”

Ratchet’s vents stuttered. “What? Why? What the hell happened?”

“He pissed off Megatron, obviously,” Starscream said. “That’s the only way any idiot gets demoted around here.”

Ratchet gave Starscream a look. “Starscream, Megatron doesn’t just demote people he’s angry with. You’re still SIC aren’t you? For all you and Megatron fight like two scraplets over steel slag. Hell, I’ve had my fair share of fights with him.”

Starscream shot Ratchet a disparaging look back. “We’re us, Ratchet. You’re completely irreplaceable because the medics would all revolt if he tried to put Hook back in charge, and he’d never get the Air Force back under control if he got rid of me. Deadlock’s just a good sniper, who everyone’s scared of, but no one is friends with. He’s always thought he was too good to play the game, then he made the wrong move.”

“I don’t play,” Ratchet said weakly and Starscream’s look turned pitying.

“Oh, Ratchet. Yes, you do. You were just forged with a winning hand, and it hasn’t let you down yet.”

Ratchet had a weird sense of deja vu, a conversation he’d had with Flatline a lifetime ago.

“Right,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “What can I do?”

“Nothing, if you’re smart. And I would very much like you to be smart right now. Let Deadlock lick his wounds, then go fuck him until he feels better. And make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

Ratchet shook his head slowly. “I just don’t understand what happened.”

Starscream shrugged. “I only heard it second hand. Apparently, Deadlock’s not happy with some of Megatron’s recent strategic decisions, and was dumb enough to bring it up to him directly. Wouldn’t you know more about it than me? The two of you are practically living in each other’s subspace.”

“Yeah,” Ratchet said grimly, and waved Starscream off. He needed to go talk to Deadlock right now.

“Bright side,” said Starscream, who only ever left on his own terms, “apparently whatever Deadlock said kicked the rust off Megatron’s processor enough to make him want to finally finish what we started.”

“What?”

“A big, final push for Cybertron. Not officially announced yet, of course, so keep your vocalizer off about it, but I have it on very good authority,” Starscream leaned in close, “that we’re going home.”

Cybertron looked different than Ratchet remembered. He couldn’t stop staring at it, through the big viewscreens that took up the outer wall of the war room. He didn’t spend as much time in this room as other the other officers, but he was always struck by the view, even when it was only distant stars and the smeary ring of the galaxy itself.

The planet loomed large, taking up almost the entire wall. Big and dark. Ratchet had only seen it from space a handful of times, but he remembered how brightly it had shone. Almost like a star itself. Now, there were only a few scattered points of illumination, and they all glowed orange or red, instead of the bright green and gold of old Cybertron. Ratchet was paying attention to the meeting as best he could—the last one before tomorrow’s deployment—but he couldn’t look away.

Megatron lingered after the war meeting ended. He seemed restless, almost giddy. Ratchet could feel it too, a buzzing anticipation just under his plating.

He caught Ratchet by the wrist as he was leaving, so Ratchet lingered too as the rest of the officers filed out.

Starscream gave them both an inscrutable look as he left.

“Got a secret mission for me?” Ratchet joked once they were alone.

He was rewarded with a crooked smile. “No,” Megatron said, “I just wanted to speak to you.” He paused then, looking out over the dim and alien surface of their home world. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we will take back Cybertron once and for all, and the mission I set for myself all those millennia ago will be complete.”

Ratchet was silent. He could have told Megatron not to count his cyberducks before they hatched or something pithy like that, but it seemed inappropriate for the moment.

“Do you remember,” Megatron continued, “some time back, we spoke about what we’d do after the war was over, and I told you I once wanted to be a medic.”

“Yeah?” Ratchet said, a smile starting to tug up the corners of his own mouth. “I know we’ll all be busy as the pit in the aftermath, but even you have mandatory free time. If you want to just get a bit of first aid down to start—”

“I understand now that was foolishness,” Megatron said. “A bit of lingering whimsy from a more innocent time, before I learned how the universe works.”

“Oh,” Ratchet said, smile slipping from his face.

“I don’t mean any insult to you or your profession. It’s just that this,” Megatron gestured out the window at the dim surface of Cybertron, “is my path.”

From up here it wasn’t as apparent, but Ratchet knew the surface was pockmarked with holes. Just over the horizon, invisible from where they were, was the black crater where Nyon used to be. The graceful floating towers of Vos were long gone too. Starscream still spoke bitterly of it, the famous floating city permanently grounded, its wings ripped off.

Ratchet thought he understood why Megatron thought he’d never have time for anything else, even though it made his spark twist. Fix everything was the kind of quest that took a lifetime.

But it was part of the oath they had all taken, to put the shining vision of a free, good Cybertron before everything else. Before their own happiness and lives. They had, all of them, given their entire selves to the Movement. Megatron, perhaps, more so than any of them.

“I know—” Ratchet said, because even though winning the damn war was only the first step of a million steps and it had already taken so long, he couldn’t let his friend give up on living. “I know it seems impossible that we’ll ever be doing anything but running from one crisis to the next, but the war won’t be forever. It won’t. We’ll mop up the last bit of Cybertron, then the last cells of Autobot resistance will have to surrender, and we can start building. That’s the future.”

The corner of Megatron’s mouth was pulling up on one side. “Yes,” he said, “that is the future. It won’t be so simple, of course.”

Ratchet waved a hand impatiently. “Of course not.”

“We won’t be truly safe until there are no Autobots left,” Megatron said, sounding almost wistful. “And there are other forces in the galaxy that threaten us as well. The organics are banding together, and I believe they intend to destroy us all. It might be a very long time until we can stop fighting. That is why,” he gestured to himself, “I cannot think of other things. Not right now.”

“But isn’t that what we’ve been fighting for?” Ratchet asked, frustrated. “Every mech deciding for themselves what they do and who they are?”

“Not for me.” Megatron’s optics cut to Ratchet’s face. “After the final battle, I hope you’ll stay with me. Help me build our new Cybertron; to keep it safe, and good. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have by my side.”

“Alright?” Ratchet said, confused. “I wasn’t exactly planning to abandon you all the second peace is declared.”

“Good,” Megatron said, nodding, like that was something he’d actually been worried about.

“Are you alright?” Ratchet asked. He wasn’t sure he liked whatever mood Megatron was in today. Although it didn’t seem like a bad mood. He seemed, if Ratchet was being honest, a bit manic. Even more so than he usually got before battles.

“Of course,” Megatron said. “Go now. Make your final preparations. We’ll all need our rest before tomorrow.”

Ratchet’s preparations were all more or less done, with meant he had nothing to do but rotate that interaction around in his processor again and again, worrying at it. That wasn’t productive, so he went to find Deadlock instead.

Deadlock was alone in the shooting range, shooting dummies through the spark again and again, looking like he was barely even paying attention. Most of the other soldiers were drinking, as was the custom before a battle, but Deadlock had never been one for group activities.

“Do you really need to practice?” Ratchet asked. “Pretty sure you could do that with your optics shut off.”

The corner of Deadlock mouth twitched up. He covered his optics with one hand. “Tell me which one to shoot.”

“Hmm,” Ratchet rubbed his chin, screwing up his face performatively, even though Deadlock couldn’t see him. “That one, second from left.”

Deadlock raised his gun in one hand and shot the dummy perfectly through the spark. He switched his optics back on and turned to Ratchet, a smug little smile playing around his mouth.

“Very impressive,” Ratchet said dryly. It would have been impressive if he hadn’t already seen Deadlock do trick shots three times as hard while so overcharged he could barely walk in a straight line—they’d had some wild nights the first few months after they’d started officially dating. “Tomorrow’s the big day. How are you feeling?”

Deadlock shrugged one shoulder. He settled back on his heels, pulling out a meshcloth to wipe down his gun. “It’s just another battle.” He sounded indifferent, but the line of his shoulders was tense.

He had been having a rough time of it since he’d been transferred under Turmoil—the two of them famously did not get along. He was more closed off, even with Ratchet. More reluctant to share his opinions.

“Do you have,” Ratchet said, feeling silly even as he asked, because he didn’t believe in premonitions, but gut feeling was something real and Deadlock’s was always spot on, “any sense about tomorrow?”

Deadlock was silent for a long moment, then he shook his head. “I don’t know. Not for sure. I don’t feel like we’re going to lose, but—I don’t know. It feels like a cube of metal, heated until it’s just about to melt. I know that doesn’t make sense.”

Ratchet hummed. Deadlock was right, that didn’t make sense, but the image was… evocative.

“I’ll be in a sniper nest for the whole battle,” Deadlock said, changing the subject. “I won’t see you, unless something goes wrong.”

“I’ll be in the main medtent, right by the mobile HQ. I won’t bug you,” Ratchet said.

“Ratch,” Deadlock reached out and put his hand on Ratchet’s wrist, “if you get into trouble. Overrun, cut off, whatever, comm me, okay? I’ll come get you.”

“I don’t think that’s very likely—“

“Ratchet.”

“You could be hundreds of miles away,” Ratchet protested. “We’ll be fine. Medtent’s always guarded.”

“Just promise me, okay?”

“Okay,” Ratchet agreed. Deadlock obviously wasn’t going to leave it alone until he did. “Hey,” he said, putting his hand over Deadlock’s. “We’re going to be alright. You and me? We’ll be okay. No matter what happens.”

Deadlock studied his face for a long moment, then he smiled, only a little strained, and nodded. “Yeah.”

They slept separately that night. They’d be deploying from opposite ends of the ship tomorrow and it was only practical, but still, Ratchet found himself staring at the ceiling of his hab, missing Deadlock’s warmth beside him.

He must have recharged at some point because he woke up plugged in to his slab. If he’d managed any defrag, it was gone. Nothing but a sense of uneasy images in incomprehensible sequences.

He met Flatline in the halls right before they got on separate shuttles, bound for separate ships. They didn’t have time to do more than say a quick “good luck” to each other before going to their respective shuttles and respective crews.

Ratchet went over the strategy in his head one more time as he did a final headcount on his medics.

Flatline, Hook, and him had spent weeks hammering out as close to a flawless plan as they could, then Ratchet had run it past Megatron, then Starscream, then Soundwave, then they’d reworked the thing six times until even Soundwave had said, “Strategy: extremely thorough,” sounding honestly impressed. They were as prepared as it was possible to be.

Not that it mattered. They hit the ground in a barrage of mortar fire.

“Slag this to death,” the medic strapped in next to Ratchet swore, and that sounded just about right.

“Let’s go!” Ratchet yelled, ripping the restraints off his chest the second the transport hit the ground with a tooth-clacking jolt.

They were one of five that had made it to the ground. The rest had veered off or been shot down. Somewhere, over the sounds of gunfire, he could hear the boom of Megatron’s cannon.

Ratchet ran around to the back of the transport, blaster fire kicking up dust by his feet, and hit the button to open the cargo hold.

Nothing happened. A big piece of jagged metal was embedded right above the open hatch release, probably severing half the wires. Ratchet would have to open the door manually.

Not giving himself time to think about how in Primus’s name the Autobots had known about their land site, or how slagged they were, Ratchet started the manual opening sequence, but a blaster shot pinging off his armor forced him to flatten himself against the side of the transport. More shots zinged past, pinning him down.

Then someone was rounding around the back of the ship, returning fire. Someone big and heavily armored and familiar.

“Flatline?”

Flatline shot a grin back at Ratchet as his shoulder-guns screamed. Ratchet had made fun of him so much when he’d first had them installed. He was wishing he had a little more internal weaponry himself now.

“Got shot down!” Flatline yelled. “Only six of us still alive, so I thought we’d join up with you!”

“Welcome aboard!” Ratchet yelled back, pushing down the queasy twist in his fuel tank. There had been over fifty medics on Flatline’s ship. “Cover me while I unload the equipment!”

They stuck close to the infantry as they waded into the battlefield, huddled in a cluster with the equipment and least armored medics in the middle.

The position they ended up entrenched was nowhere near where they’d intended, in a relatively sheltered valley between two outcroppings of red rock.

They were already down to two units, and Primus knew how the actual army was doing. When Ratchet tried to comm Hook, he got Ambulon instead, Devastator already called out onto the battlefield. Casualties were flooding into Ratchet’s tent almost before they finished erecting it.

It was the kind of vicious resistance they hadn’t seen from the Autobots since the early days of the war. There’d been the prevailing feeling that this battle would be the Autobot’s last stand, and apparently the Autobots had taken that as their cue to fight with the crazed ferocity of a cornered mechanimal. Dying soldiers clutched at Ratchet’s energon-soaked hands and whispered that the enemy didn’t care. They fought like it didn’t matter they were losing the war, like they didn’t even care about winning the battle. They only cared about killing the soldier in front of them.

They had to move the hospital twice the first day as the Autobots relentlessly pushed their line back. The second time, Ratchet caught a glimpse of Optimus Prime in the distance, cutting a swathe through mechs with his battleaxe. Like some actual avatar of a war god.

Two or maybe four days later, after they’d finally gotten the front line under control, Starscream was dragged into Ratchet’s tent with a blast hole right through his torso. Spilling energon so fast that he should have been out cold.

But Starscream was conscious, and furious. Spitting venom as Ratchet’s hands blurred over his chest. Clamping lines, ripping sparking wires out before they could ignite the fuel dripping steadily onto the floor.

“He’s an idiot,” Starscream snarled as Ratchet traced his fingers up a line to find the leak. Ratchet didn’t need to ask who Starscream meant. “I told him it wouldn’t be so simple—we should have bombed them from orbit—I told him. There was no point in having this battle at all! They would have had to leave on their own in another century or two, we could have ignored them. But no, he had to have his dramatic final battle, one more chance to get a whiff of the Prime’s pussy—Primus damn it!” Starscream cut himself off with a yowl as Ratchet stuck a pry bar under his ruined left chest vent and levered it up. He’d slapped as many pain patches on Starscream as was safe, but couldn’t wait for them to fully activate.

“It’s bad,” Ratchet said quietly, once Starscream had stopped screaming. He’d meant it to be a question, but it came out as a statement.

Starscream snorted, energon spraying out of his nostrils. “Oh, aren’t you observant? Nothing gets past the great and wise Hatchet, does it? Of course it’s fucking bad.”

Ratchet ignored that, fitting a new piece of armor over the newly filled in hole.

Starscream leaned back, teeth gritted as Ratchet brought out the welder. “We’re slagged every which way. Every time we get close to breaking the line, the Autobots dump fifty bombs on us and retreat. We’re taking the ground, but paying half a battalion for every slagging mile.”

“Can we still win?”

“It won’t slagging matter if we win this.” Starscream slammed the last bit of his plating down himself with an ugly crack. “We’re not coming back from this. The planet’s melting under our feet, and the corpses are melting into it.” He slashed at the air with his hands, optics overbright, manic. “This is it, Ratchet. This is it. The end of the Movement. We’re all going to die here, and if we don’t, it won’t matter because we’re finished. Completely fucking done.”

He lurched to his feet. Ratchet reached out to steady him, but he jerked away.

“What are you going to do?” Ratchet asked.

“I’m going to go take back command of the air forces from Thundercracker.” Starscream brushed himself down briskly, as if it would do any good against the layers of dried energon caked on him. “Then I’m going to try and make sure whoever isn’t dead stays that way.” He turned his head, meeting Ratchet’s optics. “You’re going to go find Megatron, and tell him we need to fucking surrender.”

“I—“

“You’re the only one with a glimmer of a chance of convincing him and you know it.” Starscream jerked open the flap of the med tent. “Good luck, Ratchet. Don’t die.”

“Don’t die,” Ratchet echoed, but Starscream was already gone.

He found Megatron alone on the bombed out battlefield, surrounded by bodies. Autobots mostly.

The ground wasn’t quite melting here, but it was hot under Ratchet’s pedes.

Megatron was sat on a rock, ankles crossed in front of him, blowing heat out of all his vents, giving his engine a chance to cool. His fusion cannon was propped next to him. He had energon all over him, and Ratchet could hear it sizzle on his hot plating as he drew nearer. The smell reminded him of that first battle, in Tarn, all those years ago.

“Ratchet,” Megatron called out as he approached. “I’m not injured, but good of you to check on me. Do you have news?”

“Have you read the casualty reports from Soundwave?” Ratchet asked, not managing to return Megatron’s smile. He didn’t know why Megatron looked so relaxed, while his army was being shredded around him.

“No,” said Megatron, sounding unconcerned.

“They’re not good.”

“You needn’t worry,” said Megatron placidly, look out over the battlefield. There were great gouts of smoke coming up from just over the hill where something burned. A mushroom cloud bloomed a long way away as a bomb landed. “We will still take the battle.”

Ratchet’s jaw worked. He was very aware in that moment that he wasn’t a tactician, and had never made the effort to learn, but everything depended on him convincingly arguing tactics with Megatron, who’d made war his whole self.

“I’m worried,” he started, “about what comes after the battle.”

“Has Starscream been whining in your audials again?”

“So what if he has?” Ratchet said defensively. “He’s not always wrong. He’s even right once in a blue moon. What is going to happen after the battle, if we use up all our supplies and all our soldiers winning it?”

Megatron scoffed, pushing himself to his feet. “And here I thought you were eager to end this war.”

“I am.”

“Well, this is how.” Megatron made a sweeping gesture, encompassing the entire, hellish breadth of the battlefield. “Not clean and sterile enough for you, doctor? I’m aware that your time on the front lines has been limited, due to your duties and rank.” Ratchet flinched. “Perhaps the reality of pitched battle has shocked you. I suppose I cannot blame you if it has.”

“I—”

“I know what Starscream has sent you here to say.” Megatron leaned in close, his shadow falling heavily over Ratchet. “If you value your life, don’t.”

Ratchet’s mouth clicked shut, more from shock than alarm. Megatron had never—threatened him before. Not like that. Not like he meant it.

“Just think about it,” Ratchet pleaded, but Megatron was already turning away. He picked up his fusion cannon, optics on the battlefield.

The celebrations started with a rousing victory speech that Ratchet barely heard. He was beyond tired. His batteries were so strained that he kept seeing glitches in the corner of his vision. He kept thinking that his fuel pump had stopped working, because he couldn’t feel it.

He needed to be with his medics. They needed to gather up their dead. Take the thousands of good, brave, smart doctors who had lost their lives and strip them gently of their armor. Gather what could be reused. Ratchet had never had much patience for religion, tradition, or any of that spiritual slag, but here in this moment he was as thirsty for the ritual of it as his engine was for coolant.

Just. Anything. Anything except standing there with his audials ringing, the numbers turning over and over in his processor. Dead-missing-accounted for. Dead-missing-accounted for.

He clapped along listlessly with everyone else.

Even through the fugue, he noticed that he wasn’t the only one not really listening. The mech next to him kept craning his neck, scanning the crowd. Ratchet hoped whoever he was looking for was still alive.

He was off like a shot the second they were allowed to disperse. Everyone else clustered tight with their units, mostly ignoring the spread of energon.

Ratchet glanced to where Megatron and Shockwave and a couple of the division commanders had congregated. Starscream was notably absent from the group.

Ratchet turned away. He had his own people to look for.

Deadlock came to find him, near the tattered remains of the medtent. Ratchet was dripping in energon again, but Deadlock slid right into his arms without hesitation.

Even though he’d already known Deadlock had survived, Ratchet still clutched at him, unable to let go. Deadlock clutched him back, claws digging painfully into Ratchet’s back. One of them, Ratchet couldn’t tell who, was shaking.

“You’re okay,” Deadlock whispered into his neck.

“Yeah.” It took an effort to let go, but Ratchet took a step back, scanning Deadlock up and down. He was singed and battered, and there were deep dents in the armor of one thigh where it looked like he’d been shot by something low-caliber. “Are you?”

Deadlock hesitated before he said, “I’m alive.”

“Come on,” Ratchet said, curling one hand around Deadlock’s wrist. “Let’s go somewhere more private. I’ll patch you up.”

“Where is everyone else?” Deadlock asked after Ratchet had situated him on top of a pile of crates in the half-enclosed space between two tents—he wasn’t injured enough to really need a medberth and Ratchet didn’t particularly want to go back inside.

“They’re just finishing up,” Ratchet said vaguely.

“Hey.” Deadlock caught one of Ratchet’s hands between his. Ratchet realized that he’d been shaking. Not enough to trip any performance alarms, just a little vibration in his knuckles. He could feel it now buzzing against the plating of Deadlock’s palms. “Hey,” Deadlock said again, quieter. “It’s just us, no one’s listening. Are you really okay?”

Ratchet licked his lips, then shook his head.

“Me neither,” Deadlock said. “I don’t like how that went down. We lost too many people.” He hesitated, then said, frustrated. “It wasn’t worth it.”

Ratchet drew back, curling in on himself. He didn’t feel ready to think about the battle in terms of ‘worth it’ or not—he didn’t want to think about it at all. He wanted to be back in the familiar dark halls of the Nemesis, back in his quiet comfortable habsuite. He wanted to put himself in a stasis nap for a month.

Deadlock was talking again. Ratchet tuned back in in time to hear him say, “—leaving.”

“Do you need to report back to Turmoil?” Ratchet asked.

The look Deadlock gave him was inscrutable. He took Ratchet’s hands back in his. “I’m not reporting back to Turmoil. I’m leaving.”

“Cybertron?” Ratchet asked, uncomprehending.

Deadlock made a frustrated sound. “No, Ratchet, I’m going. I’m leaving all of it.”

It clicked. “You’re deserting?” Ratchet said in a shocked hiss.

“I’m not the only one.”

Ratchet thought back to the celebrations, and how many heads had been missing from the crowd. Starscream—but Starscream would never leave Megatron. He had to be off brooding with his trine. Slag, this had to be what he’d been talking about when he’d told Ratchet to keep Deadlock from doing anything stupid.

“Look,” Ratchet said, “I know you’re unhappy under Turmoil, but don’t do anything rash.”

“It’s not just that,” Deadlock insisted. “Ratchet—You have to see this is slagged up. This—” he made a broad gesture, encompassing the burnt and burning surface of the planet “—is slagged. Literally. We haven’t saved Cybertron, we’ve made it fucking uninhabitable. This isn’t even the end. The Autobots will never surrender, we’ll never surrender, we’ll be chasing each other’s dust forever, destroying everything in our path. That’s the future.” His optics bored into Ratchet’s, willing him to understand. To believe him.

That’s not true, was on the tip of his tongue, but it tasted too much like a lie. “Where will you even go?” he said instead, changing the subject. “What will you even do?”

“I don’t know,” Deadlock said, laughing a little. “I just know if there’s an end to this war, it’s out there, not here. I have money, I have a ship. I’m going to go find it.” His hands squeezed Ratchet’s. “I want you to come with me.”

Ratchet jerked back. “No,” he said automatically, then Deadlock’s expression did something alarming, and he scrambled to clarify, “It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, I do, but you know I can’t. I’m the goddamn CMO, I can’t abandon everyone. Especially not now.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone, obviously. If you want to go, you should. Now, before anyone notices.” Ratchet felt the urgency suddenly. He wasn’t totally blind to how things worked; he knew that if anyone caught wind of Deadlock deserting, he would be killed. “Slag, yeah, you should go right now.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Deadlock said as Ratchet dragged him to his feet.

“Don’t,” Ratchet said, trying to hurry Deadlock along. “Deadlock, listen to me. Don’t look back.”

Deadlock ducked under Ratchet’s arm, coming up to cup Ratchet’s face, pressing both his thumbs over Ratchet’s lips. “Shut up,” he told Ratchet. “I’ll wait. For two tendays, no more. Do whatever you need to, then follow me. Please.” Then he pulled Ratchet in close and whispered a set of coordinates in his audial.

Ratchet committed the coordinates to deep memory, then buried them in ten layers of encrypted folders, and made sure no one saw him cry.

Deadlock was right of course, about not being the only one leaving. They limped back into space with a fourth of the contingent they’d brought down, and just about half of that was gone within a week. They were hemorrhaging personnel. Fast enough that even Megatron, still flying high on their Pyrrhic victory, noticed.

His mood turned sour, and everyone, including Ratchet felt it. Starscream, who was pointedly not speaking to Ratchet even though Ratchet couldn’t see how it was his fault, seemed to be taking the brunt of Megatron’s temper, but he was taking it out on all his officers. Looming over their shoulders, demanding to know how they were going to fix it.

Ratchet was with him now, laying out his flimsy strategy to deal with the alarming state of morale in the medical corps. Unfortunately, anything Ratchet tried to do, and he explained this to Megatron, would only be a pain patch over a missing limb. The problem was that everyone was sad and scared and angry because a bunch of people they knew had just died and Ratchet didn’t have a cure for that short of mass mnemosurgery. Which would have been completely out of the question even if Ratchet was qualified to do it. Which he wasn’t. All the mnemosurgeons had joined up with the Autobots.

Megatron rapped the tips of his fingers against the table. “That is much what the rest told me, although I got a lot more sniveling and excuses from them than you. There’s nothing else you can do?”

Ratchet cycled his vocalizer. “No.”

“Then you’ve failed me,” Megatron said, glancing out the viewscreen at the stars. He sounded strangely placid about it, but his disappointment hit Ratchet like a physical blow. He’d never realized how much he’d taken the warmth of Megatron’s approval for granted, not until lately, when it’s absence made the whole Nemesis feel colder. “I suppose it was only a matter of time. Very well, if none of my so-called officers can offer me a solution, it falls to me to find one myself. You need not concern yourself with this further. Although, do try not to let anymore medics sneak away under your watch.” He looked at Ratchet through the corner of one optic. “Or anyone else.”

Megatron took every AWOL soldier personally, but were some he took more personally than the others.

“I don’t know what you expected me to do,” Ratchet snapped, because he couldn’t stand this passive-aggressive slag. “I didn’t know.”

Ratchet had known, of course, because Deadlock had literally told him. He could any number of things to stop him from leaving, from begging Deadlock to stay, to shooting out his tires and having him arrested. He’d chosen not to, and now he was choosing to lie to Megatron’s face.

Megatron growled, “You must have suspected something. Seen some sign. This cant’s have come from nowhere. Deadlock was loyal.”

“Yeah, well, maybe loyalty only gets you so far.”

“Deadlock always understood the lengths necessary for our victory,” Megatron said, talking over Ratchet. He shot Ratchet a baleful glare. “Unlike some.”

Ratchet bristled, voice rising. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You infected him,” Megatron snarled.

“I didn’t infect slag!” Ratchet yelled back. “You did that when you demoted him and stuck him under Turmoil of all people. You knew they hated each other, what the slag did you expect? Deadlock to be quietly miserable for a few millennia until you decided you weren’t mad anymore? When has Deadlock ever been the type to let things go?”

Megatron slammed his fist on the table, denting it. “You will not speak to me like that!”

“Or what?”

“Or you will find yourself on the wrong side of that window.”

“Oh, please,” Ratchet said as a flare of real fear was buried under a lifetime of being belligerent and stubborn. He remembered a conversation he’d had with Starscream, a long time ago, and snatched at words he hadn’t fully understood at the time. “Anything happens to me and that’s the rest of your medical division gone. How many of them do you think are going to stick around for Hook?”

It was only after Megatron lapsed into a furious silence that Ratchet realized he’d taken his words as a threat, not an observation.

“What do you want?” Megatron asked, wary. He was eyeing Ratchet in a way he never had before. Like he was sizing up an opponent. Ratchet wasn’t sure he liked it, not least because he was actively trying to do the opposite of sabotage the medical corps.

“Wouldn’t now be a good time to sue for peace?” Ratchet said, modulating his tone, not sure how to deescalate, but desperate to all the same. “We had it bad, but they had it worse. And no I haven’t been talking to Starscream. This is me saying it.”

“They haven’t surrendered,” Megatron sneered.

“Because they think you’re going to have them all executed if they do! Megatron. Come on. They’ve got enough cells hidden across enough solar systems that we might never root them out. We’ll be hunting them forever.”

“Then so be it.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“I do.”

Ratchet believed him.

He wasn’t even angry when he made it back to his habsuite that night, just tired. A deep tiredness that made him feel like his struts had the structural integrity of energon jelly.

Inside his small, familiar room, he let himself sink down onto the floor with his head in his hands.

He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t strong enough to keep it all together by himself, not when everything was so determined to fall apart. He had no allies left, just a bunch of equally exhausted and hopeless medics who were looking to him to lead them through, when he didn’t know the way through. He’d tried. He’d watched the clock tick closer and closer to Deadlock’s deadline and he’d tried so hard. It had ticked over, and he was still trying. Failing.

It was two tendays past when Deadlock said he would stop waiting. Ratchet still had the coordinates saved so deep they were practically in spark memory. A memento. Another regret.

Something to carry with him into deep space, because as much as Ratchet had always hated it, and put it off as long as he could, he knew when he’d done all he could do. It was part of being a medic, thinking you could fix anything , thinking you could go toe to toe with Mortilus and come out on top. And Ratchet did, most of the time he did, but not this time.

Ratchet pressed his palms against his optics until the glass creaked. He needed to get moving.

He’d never actually stolen a ship before, but it turned out to be easy. Whoever was supposed to be guarding the secondary shuttle bay was simply not at the guard station. The whole ship seemed like a ghost town these days, which worked to Ratchet’s advantage.

Ratchet jimmied the lock on the fuel storage locker in the office, the little one they used to top ships up on their way out, and when he turned around with his arms full of fuel cells, Flatline was in the doorway.

“I thought that was you,” Flatline said. He stepped inside, his body filling up the whole doorframe. “What the slag do you think you’re doing, Ratchet?”

“I’m—” Ratchet couldn’t think of anything to say that would be remotely convincing.

“Are you serious?” Flatline hissed at him. “You choose now? You know how many more mechs are going to die because of this? Because you decided you missed your slagging boyfriend so much you’d abandon everything you believed in—everything we’ve been working for for thousands of years?”

“It’s not Deadlock,” Ratchet insisted. “He asked me to leave with him and I said no. I tried, Flatline. I—“ he mad a helpless gesture “—I can’t fix this.”

“So you’re giving up?”

“No,” Ratchet snapped. “I’m not giving up. That’s why I’m leaving. This isn’t working, Flatline, you have to see that. The war isn’t shrinking, it’s just getting bigger. No matter how hard I work, it just keeps getting bigger. All that equality and freedom and justice and truth slag,” Ratchet gestured with his full arms, nearly dropping his stolen fuel cells “The only equality this war is going to give us is the equality of the grave. You have to see that. The Functionists are all dead, and we’re going to follow them if we can’t find a path to peace and soon.”

Flatline hadn’t moved an inch, arms crossed, optics narrow. But he hadn’t pulled a gun on Ratchet either.

“I’m—” Ratchet said. “I’m sorry, but you’ll do fine as CMO, you’ll be amazing. I don’t have any doubts at all about you.”

“They’re not going to give it to me,” Flatline snarled, “because everyone knows I’m friends with you. They’ll think I helped you leave, and they’ll be right.” He stepped to the side, leaving Ratchet the smallest gap to squeeze through. “Go. I’ll give you a head start before I report it.”

“Thank you,” Ratchet breathed, immense relief flooding through him. Flatline didn’t reply, his face cold as Ratchet slipped past.

“Ratchet,” Flatline called after him. Ratchet turned, expecting a grudging wish of good luck.

“If I ever see you again,” Flatline said, “I’ll put a bullet through your traitor spark.”

He expected to be overcome with doubts the second he was out of Decepticon airspace, just like an eon ago when he’d fled Iacon and nearly threw his spark up on the train, but with every light year between him and the Nemesis, Ratchet felt more determined to move forward, not less.

The guilt was intense—Flatline, Megatron, Starscream, every damn mech in the fleet who Ratchet had sworn on his own spark to protect—but Ratchet found he could move through it. He’d find a way to help them, even if they hated him for it. The cure was painful, sometimes, and he had the beginning of a plan percolating in the back of his processor.

Just one thing he needed to do first.

The asteroid Deadlock’s coordinates led to was small and barren, covered in a thin layer of ice that made Ratchet feel like his feet were about to go out from under him. There was no sign of any other life. It was long past the deadline, but he had come anyway. Hope, or maybe that sentimentality everyone always accused him of.

Whatever it was it made him walk the surface of the asteroid, trying his best not to fall on his face on the gelid surface.

He wasn’t sure how long he spent wandering on that frozen rock in the middle of the void, but it was long enough that all his joints started subtly vibrating to keep his lubricant from freezing. He was just thinking of going back to the ship when his proximity warnings flared.

There was no sound in the vacuum, but instinct had Ratchet whipping his head up to look the Decepticon stealth runner that had just uncloaked right in the headlamps.

Ratchet didn’t bother trying to run as the little ship, painted void black to be almost invisible on visual scanners, set down a hundred yards away. The asteroid was small, but he was on the opposite side of it from his own ship.

He supposed it was too much to hope that Megatron had sent someone who could be talked into letting him go. Ratchet shouldn’t have spent so much time in one place, completely wasting the head start Flatline had given him.

He crossed his arms, endeavoring to look nothing but annoyed as the gangplank of the ship lowered.

Ratchet’s arms fell to his sides in shock as Deadlock ducked out into the open.

“That isn’t your ship,” Ratchet said, which was objectively the stupidest possible thing he could have said.

“It’s mine now,” said Deadlock. He glanced around, scanning the starry void like he expected more stealth ships to pop into existence. “Are you here for real?”

“Of course I’m—this isn’t a trap,” Ratchet spluttered. “I can’t believe you’d think that.” Although, really, Ratchet could believe it if he took a moment to think. “No. No, I’m here for real. You were right.”

Deadlock took a cautious step forward, over the ice. “I don’t hear that very often.”

“It pains me greatly to say it,” Ratchet said, laughing a little. All the fear and tension drained out of him all at once. He’d been avoiding thinking about it, but he had been terrified of doing this alone. Grimly determined, but terrified. “I’m sorry. I had to try.”

Deadlock made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You’re so slagging stubborn.”

“I know.” Ratchet held out his arms. “Come here.”

Deadlock was across the ice in an instance folding himself into Ratchet’s arms.

Ratchet cupped his face in one hand, feeling the hot fizz behind his nasal strut that meant his optics were going to start sparking any second. “Hi,” he said softly.

“Hi,” Deadlock whispered back. His optics were sparking. Little sparkles of red at the edges, like sparks off hot metal.

“Slag, I’m really sorry.” Ratchet pressed his forehead hard against Deadlock’s so Deadlock wouldn’t see him falling apart. “You were right, it’s all slagged up, and I didn’t want to see it. I should have left with you. I’ve been fucking miserable.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Deadlock murmured. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter how bad it gets, as long as you’re there with me. Someday Unicron will swallow the universe whole, and I’ll die happy, as long as the last thing I feel is your hand in mine.”

“Hell,” Ratchet sobbed into Deadlock’s collar faring, “we’re doing this all out of order.”

He felt Deadlock grin against the side of his face. “Come inside.”

By some miracle, they stayed on their feet long enough to stumble into Deadlock’s ship. Ratchet had been out in the cold so long the neutral warmth of the interior felt like a smelter. His plating immediately began to steam.

Deadlock hustled him to a low couch and curled around him, like he thought Ratchet would disappear if he let go for even a moment. Ratchet relaxed into it, letting the couch and Deadlock take his weight while his processor tried to crunch through all the emotions he was feeling. They sat in silence for a long time, only broken by their armor dinging as it warmed.

“I—” Deadlock said quietly, hesitantly “—I think I’m going to start going by Drift again. Megatron named me Deadlock. It doesn’t feel right using it when we’ve—“

Abandoned him, hung unsaid in the air.

“Drift,” Ratchet said, rolling it over his tongue. Drift smiled.

“I know a place in neutral territory where we can go,” he said. “No one will be able to get at us there. We can regroup. Decide what to do next.” He hesitated, then, one finger rubbing restlessly over the plating on Ratchet’s knee. He had something to say that he thought Ratchet wouldn’t take well.

“If it was me,” he said, “just me, I mean, I was going to work for a while. Until I figured something out. Maybe steal a warship. Maybe Turmoil’s warship. I was brainstorming.”

“A warship,” Ratchet said faintly. “Maybe. I had an idea too, and you’re going to hate it, but I think it would help. If our goal is still ending the war fast.”

Drift nodded. Ratchet told him his plan. Drift, as predicted, hated it.

“I want to execute myself for treason,” Drift groaned, pressing his hands against his optics. “You’re right, though. We could end the war if we move fast.”

“Right,” Ratchet said. “Let’s do it. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“We succeed.”

“That’s the spirit.”

They abandoned Ratchet’s little craft on the asteroid, transferring the supplies to Drift’s slightly bigger ship.

As the little rock got smaller and smaller in the rear viewscreen, Ratchet let out a slow exvent. He met Drift’s optics. Drift nodded.

Ratchet pulled up a comm number that he hadn’t dialed in over five-hundred-thousand years, but had never deleted out of his memory, for reasons he’d hadn’t examined too close.

He had no idea if it was still even connected, it had been so long, but—

It was picked up faster than Ratchet expected. He startled, then held up a hand for Drift to be quiet.

There was no sound on the other end of the line for a long time, except the faint hum of ship engines.

“Is that actually you, Ratchet?” came the faint voice.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Ratchet said. “Hey, Orion. Listen, I’m on route in a small ship to the Helva system. Could you maybe tell your people not to shoot me down? I want to talk.”

“Um,” said Optimus, “could you hold on for a moment?”

After everything, Ratchet stood on the burnt-out ground of Cybertron and only wobbled a little as Starscream shoved him in the shoulder. Starscream, who had somehow in the bare couple years after peace had broken out, managed to get himself made king of Cybertron.

“I didn’t mean for you to leave,” Starscream said. He had a crown. He looked ridiculous in it.

“You look ridiculous in that crown,” Ratchet told him.

Starscream ignored him. “Everything fell apart after you and Deadlock ran, although I suppose you know that. There was no one left who Megatron would listen to, so he just went utterly insane like he’d always threatened.”

Ratchet felt a tight twist of sorrow in his spark. Even after everything, Megatron had been his friend—practically his amica, as Drift had once said. Ratchet had never stopped feeling guilty for abandoning him, even if he’d had to, even if it had been the right thing to do. Some days he still felt sick with it.

Starscream must have noticed the heaviness of Ratchet’s silence because he reached out and put his hand on Ratchet’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too,” Ratchet said, covering Starscream’s hand with his own. Starscream had always insisted that he’d throw a century-long party when Megatron finally kicked the bucket, but here and now, after it had actually happened, he just looked tired. “You been recharging?”

Starscream scowled and took his hand back. “Don’t think you can start mechahenning me just because we’re on the same planet again. I’m the duly elected Emperor of Cybertron, haven’t you heard?”

Ratchet grinned. “Yeah, I heard.” He’d heard a lot. There was a long time where he’d snapped up every hint of news about his old compatriots because he couldn’t stop worrying. He’d lost a lot of recharge hunting down rumors until Drift had physically dragged him away from the ship computer and sat on him until he promised to stop obsessing over things he couldn’t do anything about. He hadn’t—he hadn’t expected to see Starscream in the metal again. He wasn’t even sure if they’d really been friends, but seeing him now and here was making something go all twisty right under Ratchet’s spark chamber.

He shook himself mentally, hitching his smile back up. “What’s next, your highness?”

“Rebuilding, I suppose,” Starscream said. “Even though half the planet’s radioactive, and there’s no energon, and all the mechanimals that didn’t go extinct are vicious mech-eating mutants, and don’t get me started on the neutrals—”

Ratchet let Starscream’s complaining wash over him, letting his struts relax into the familiar gravity of his home planet. It made his body feel right again, after eons spend mostly on spaceships and hundreds of foreign worlds. He thought even his hands ached a little less.

Starscream’s rant petered out. He just stood next to Ratchet for a while, watching the sand slowly shift.

“What about you?” he asked. “Are you staying? Or did you just stop by to make sure I didn’t set the planet on fire.”

“Not sure,” Ratchet said, ignoring the small jab. “Me and Drift have been on the move for so long. It seems strange to even think about putting down roots.”

Starscream hummed, but didn’t push. Which surprised Ratchet, since he’d never known Starscream not to push.

“Not going to try and get me to stay?” Ratchet said glancing at Starscream out of the corner of his optic.

“Who am I, Megatron?” Starscream tossed his head. “I don’t need you. Do what you want. I have things to do.” He spun on his heel and started walking back towards the dilapidated city.

“Hey!” Ratchet called after him. “Is Flatline here?”

“He’s not going to want to see you!” Starscream yelled and kicked off, rocketing directly up into the air.

“Yeah, probably not,” Ratchet muttered to himself, and settled back in to watch as the sun slowly sank towards the horizon. If there was one thing radiation was good for, it was beautiful sunsets.

He heard the familiar rumble of Drift’s engines approaching, then the crunch of gravel under his pedes as he approached. He leaned into the kiss Drift pressed to his cheek. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Drift said. He slotted himself against Ratchet’s side, pressing in close. “Was that Starscream I saw flying?”

“Yeah, he just left.”

“We should get back to the ship before nightfall, it’s starting to get cold.”

“First Cybertronian sunset in four million years, and he wants to miss it,” Ratchet huffed, but he opened the vents in his side a little wider, blowing hot air onto Drift’s plating. It wasn’t his fault speedsters were designed to cool down fast. Worse now that he’d shed so much armor. He put his arm around Drift’s shoulders. “We’ll go back in a minute.”

The sky was a mess of red and purple and energon pink. It was halfway between beautiful and sickly.

“It looks different than I remember,” Drift said. Ratchet could feel him shivering a little, pressing closer, as the air cooled.

“Yeah,” Ratchet said, “it does. Let’s go back.”

Their ship was parked under a little overhang, a ways from the city. Drift had insisted on covering it with a reflective tarp so it wouldn’t show up on scanners.

The inside was warm and familiar. Incredibly small after standing on the wide flat plains of Cybertron. Ratchet parked himself at the little table while Drift warmed fuel.

“Flatline’s on planet,” Ratchet said, aiming for casual and more or less hitting it.

Drift hummed, carefully measuring out mica.

“I was thinking,” Ratchet said. He licked the backs of his teeth, “of going to go see him.”

“Just to say hi?” Drift asked leadingly. He looked at Ratchet over the top of his measuring spoon, making it clear he knew Ratchet was up to something. He’d probably guessed what too, the insightful bastard.

“No,” Ratchet admitted. Drift set a cup of lightly steaming energon by his elbow and sat down across from him. Ratchet rotated his wrist back and forth, feeling the way the joint popped, before picking it up. “I’m going to see him about my hands. If anyone could fix them up, it’s him. And I wouldn’t trust anyone else to replace them, if it comes to that.”

Drift nodded seriously, holding his cube just in front of his chin so the steam curled up around his face. “And you’re absolutely confident he was just kidding when he said he was going to, and I quote, ‘shoot you through your traitor spark’ next time he saw you.”

His face crinkled up into a teasing smile as Ratchet huffed and rolled his optics. “No, he wasn’t kidding, but he’s not going to do it.”

“Mmm,” Drift hummed good naturedly, letting it drop. Ratchet was sure if he did actually go to see Flatline, Drift would be shadowing him the whole time.

“Shut up,” Ratchet said and drank his energon.

They chatted about nothing in particular for a while, until their cubes were empty of everything but residue. They lapsed into a comfortable silence for a while, before Drift broke it.

“Are you glad to be back home? After so long?” he asked, sounding a little unsure himself. There was something anxious in the set of his jaw, as if he was worried that Ratchet’s answer might be different than his.

Ratchet nudged his ankle under the table with the tip of his pede. “Hey,” he said, keeping up pressure until Drift met his optics, “brace yourself, because I’m about to be real slagging sappy: home’s wherever you are.”

“Oh Primus,” Drift said, covering his optics with his hands, but Ratchet could see his delighted grin underneath. Drift loved sappy scrap.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Ratchet said, going in for the kill. “The planet’s weird and radioactive and I don’t know what’s going to come next, but I’m just happy to be here with you.”

“Stop,” Drift moaned, burying his head in his arms.

“Love you,” Ratchet said triumphantly.

“Love you too,” Drift said, muffled.

Ratchet snagged both their empty cubes and took them to the recycler. He paused by the port window, looking out at the nighttime planet. In the distance, New Iacon stood. It was the only bright thing out there.

“The skyline is completely different,” he said. “It looks like a whole new city. It’s so small.”

“From the rubble, a humble future rises,” Drift said, a little wistfully.

Ratchet tapped one finger on the glass. “‘I dream of a Cybertron that is nothing more than what every mech needs,’” he said, finishing the quote. Then he snorted to himself. “Slag, we can’t let the Autobots hear us talking like that.”

“No one’s listening right now,” Drift shrugged. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“See Flatline, see Optimus, avoid seeing Prowl,” Ratchet checked off on his fingers, “see if anyone’s selling real estate in the city.”

“Planning a business venture?”

“Sort of,” Ratchet said. “I was thinking I might open a clinic.”