A/N: This is the epilogue, the end of the installments that began from What You Never Know Won't Hurt You, to this. There is going to be no more, and quite honestly this was only supposed to be that first one-shot I did for Halloween. But I hope this is a good enough send off, thanks for those who all asked for sequels. But fair warning, whether or not this a happy ending is up to you, personally I think it's more bittersweet.
When Jack had seen his mother, he felt like crying; in relief and disbelief as June was all healed up so that implied Jack had been on the 'Con ship longer than he thought. June looked over his features rapidly and hesitated in going near him at first as if she was trying to reassure herself that it was him in front of her.
When she arrived at the conclusion that it was in fact him, she rushed to his side and held his face gently between her hands, her eyes starting to mist over. "Jack…what happened to you?"
Jack flinched at the fact he still had to relay what happened, probably to the police and to the Autobots for the fact it was Knock Out who had taken him, only the Autobots would get the real version. Making up a story about getting hit in the back of the head and abducted by an unknown assailant sounded believable enough; he didn't like lying, but what else could he say? He could maybe tell them about the 'red sports car'…but…
Fear suddenly coursed through Jack as he came to a realization; if Knock Out thought Airachnid hadn't killed him then it was startlingly easy to make sure as he knew where he lived! Reaching up to lift his breathing mask off, Jack had to relay this now. "Mom," he started off groggily as he was still being sedated from the pain he was feeling all over, "A 'Con knows where we live, he's been stalking me for a while before I disappeared; I thought he would kill me, but he was the one who kidnapped me."
Horror crossed June's face. "Jack," she said gently yet firmly, "how come you didn't tell me this?"
"Because I know you can't go up against a 'Con, he almost killed you to get to me," Jack replied, "and then he was looking in my room after he did that."
The disgusted outrage was next. "He was looking into your bedroom? Tell me who he is, honey, the Autobots can worry about him, I just want you to be safe."
"His…his name is Knock Out." Jack whispered. "He would keep me in this dollhouse that looked exactly like our house and he'd make me take these baths before…before…" he trailed off and his heart rate rose.
Though she was growing more disturb and angry by what this mech had done to her son, June pushed it aside to calm him down. "Jack, you're alright now; you're safe, I'm here, alright?" she said soothingly.
Jack latched onto the sound of his mother's soothing tone like a lifeline and tried to calm himself. It was difficult but he didn't want to alert the other nurses in the hospital that something might be wrong and make him lose time with his mother. "How's everyone else?" he asked before setting the breathing mask back down.
June shook her head in disbelief of how Jack could ask about anyone else while in his condition. "They're…anxious. When I got the call that you had been found, I had Ratchet ground bridge me here to see you right away, Arcee practically begged me to let her come; she feels so guilty about not being able to protect you."
Jack lifted the mask up. "It's not her fault; I should have tried to get proof that it was Knock Out following me around instead of just thinking he was only just trying to get his rocks off." He said and felt a shudder move through his body and the dull ache the sedatives had numbed it down to. "Well he certainly did that though."
June's eyes widened as she glanced down Jack's body in sympathy and held his hand. "Honey, if you want to talk about it…"
Jack shook his head, the humiliation rearing its ugly head that this had happened in the first place. Even after all the baths he'd taken, he still felt dirty, and he didn't know when he could feel clean again. He'd been stalked, terrorized, and violated by something that wasn't even human, though a human would have been just as bad, but even then he could at least tell the truth instead of making some story up to cover up that he'd been attacked by an alien robot.
'How is this my life?' Jack thought desolately.
Knock Out walked down the hall with a smirk on his face as he made his way back to his quarters. He'd been annoyed with his work load, but the thought of playing with his pet brought a smirk to his faceplate, even the disgusting aftereffect his human did was worth it for the feeling of claiming what was his. And that was true, the boy was his; he claimed him and he wasn't giving that up.
It was treason, oh he was sure it was as Megatron really didn't like that human for some reason, and it wasn't like he hadn't really thought about what he was going to do, but back at the beginning he'd merely wanted to kill the boy, leave his mangled, broken body on the pavement for Arcee to see when he was found outside his home. He could even imagine the look of abject horror on her face for failing to protect her third partner as Airachnid was adamant that the boy could be nothing else to the Autobot femme.
He decided not to think about how that human managed to get under his skin as he reached his quarters and walked straight up to the human's confinement as he was too impatient to wait. When he looked in, he wasn't surprised to find he couldn't see the boy. 'He must be trying to hide from me again.' He thought in amusement and he casually flicked the bed onto its side. "Oh Jack," he called out, "should I remind you of the rules?"
When the boy did not immediately come out of hiding like he had done previously, Knock Out's mood took a rapid turn as he scowled into the prison. "Jack!" he called more forcefully but still the boy did not come out of hiding. His optics narrowed and as he was about to turn the prison upside down he noticed the white sheets hanging out of the side and his optics widened.
As impossible as it should have been, the boy had escaped.
Knock Out turned on his heel and carefully inspected the floor for any sign of the red human fluid they needed to survive for if the boy had injured himself he would not have been able to go very far. He could easily imagine what he would do to the boy when he found him and brought him back. When he walked out of his quarters, he looked around on the floor for any sign of blood before walking down the hall, thinking about he should really go about this. If he mentioned a human was on board then he was finished, especially if Megatron found out that he didn't hand him over when he caught him.
He'd blame excitement for that; he'd been watching the boy so closely that he just couldn't wait.
He stopped at the sight of a sticky white substance on the floor; he knew this particular substance didn't come from the boy, but a femme that held a grudge against the boy. Briefly he thought of mocking Airachnid of getting beaten by a human but if he wanted this human back he was going to keep his mouth shut on that, if the boy was even still alive.
Knock Out made his way to Airachnid's quarters and pounded on the door, keeping his hands at his side when he saw her smug faceplate. "Where is he?"
The femme didn't even bother to keep the smirk off her face. "Probably keeping the rest of the worms fed."
Knock Out showed no outward reaction to the fact she just admitted she killed Jack. He knew that this would have happened eventually, because even though he had grown very possessive of the boy to the point where he would have killed him just so no one else could, he was angrier about someone else doing that than the fact Jack was dead.
Humans, no matter how special, were such short-lived creatures after all.
"And in exchange for your silence, what do you want?" Knock Out wasn't stupid to think he could just ask Airachnid not to say anything.
The femme smirked.
When Jack had disappeared, Arcee felt like she failed as a guardian and looked everywhere she could for him, but when June said she got called about Jack having been found, she had wanted to go with her. Optimus said it was best that June went to see her son first and so she anxiously waited for June to come back from the hospital Jack was in.
Where had he been all this time? Even getting Fowler's help hadn't brought them any closer to finding Jack; and if she could, Arcee would have felt cold as she remembered how scared Jack had been when he told her about Knock Out following him. Could it have been true? Did the 'Con follow Jack around and kidnap him? What reasons could he have had for taking him?
Arcee felt frustrated with these questions and lack of answers, not to mention the fact she didn't believe him when he told her his worries.
She looked around the room and thought about how the others had reacted when Jack went missing; June had been so distraught when she told them and pleaded with Fowler to try and find her son. The general feeling had been one of disbelief that one of the children had been taken, and despite Miko's efforts to keep them cheered up there was just that hanging cloud about what could have been happening to Jack at those moments.
When June had come back through the groundbridge and exited her car, Arcee was the first one to her and she could see the woman had been crying and Arcee's spark pulsed erratically. "Is…is Jack okay?"
June breathed in deeply to calm her nerves before she spoke. "Jack told me it was Knock Out who took him." she relayed shakily.
The disbelief was clear on Ratchet's faceplate. "Why would he take Jack? What use could he have for him?"
The wince June did was not reassuring. "Knock Out wanted him…to…do things to him." she said with great reluctance. "I didn't ask him more about it because I didn't want him to relive it."
"Relive what?" Bulkhead asked confused.
June didn't seem to hear him as her eyes grew a faraway stare. "He told me that Knock Out was the one who tried to kill me, and that he looked into my son's bedroom after he had done it." Her face reflected rage. "And he wasn't going to let my boy go after he touched him."
Feeling alarmed by what June was saying; Arcee cut in quickly, hoping that that she would get a different answer to what she was going to ask. "June, what are you talking about?" Could Knock Out have been so depraved as to hurt Jack like that?
June looked so tired and angry. "He told me Knock Out hurt him in the vilest way, a human doing it to another human is bad enough, but a Decepticon doing it to my son…" she started to choke up and the description of what June was saying was made terrifyingly clear to Arcee.
The femme clenched her fists and her spark pulsed erratically once more, but not out of fear, this time it was rage. "Knock Out better hope I never get my servos on him." she hissed.
"Arcee…" Optimus reprimanded.
Arcee looked at the Prime with incredulous anger. "Optimus, with all due respect, Knock Out deserves nothing less than what's coming to him for what he did to Jack."
"I am merely considering we need to know all the transpired before vengeance can be taken, Jack was on the Nemesis for a very long amount of time." Optimus replied gravely.
"But what more could be done to him than that?" Ratchet questioned as his faceplate twisted up in disgust at the last word.
June choked back a sob as she spoke. "When I talked to the doctors, they told me Jack was lucky to be found because of severe blood loss and wouldn't have survived if he'd been found any later." She said and it had terrified her to know just how close she had come to losing her son.
Once her son was out of the hospital she wasn't letting him out of her sight.
Knock Out scowled down at the doll house that Jack had been in, wishing that the boy was in there just so he could make him pay for what he had to do; Airachnid had wanted him to be her alibi so she could go out and indulge in recreating the collection that Jack had destroyed along with her ship. He had seen nothing depraved about her hobby as he himself had indulged himself when he couldn't go through with killing Jack like he'd wanted to. If only for those days to watch and see the human squirm under his hands did he think he made a good choice in not killing the boy when he was following him around.
Now though, he narrowed his eyes and deep down he thought that this really was a stupid idea in the first place; not the killing or taking the boy, but not making escape impossible, these humans were resourceful little creatures, but he assumed Jack would have been much too injured to do anything other than the bare minimal of movement. Apparently he should have cut the 'recovery' stage down significantly, but it was too late to think about that now.
He could question Airachnid further, but even if she was lying and Jack was still alive out there, he still couldn't go and bring him back because Airachnid would no doubt want to keep playing with his toy and he wasn't sure if she had disfigured him; even if it was a disgusting fleshy creature he was touching, the 'Con had been forced to see that he wasn't bad-looking as far as humans went. But with the amount of time he'd spent stalking the boy these feelings he held were not nice ones and he had still doing harm to the boy.
No need to think he wasn't doing that, because watching the look of pain twist on the human's face certainly showed him he wasn't having fun. Then again he'd never promised the human was going to find it fun.
What did he care he anyway? He got all he wanted out of the boy. It was just a human after all, alive or dead they were all the same, and so was that one.
Jack didn't know how long he'd spent in the hospital for, or how long he was gone for in general, but he'd been glad that he got his story straight for when the police had come in to question him and his mother had returned to be by his side, never leaving once except for a bathroom break. He couldn't blame her for being clingy, the last time they seen each other after all was when their roles had been reversed and he knew better than to try and send his mother off.
She was most likely still feeling guilty about that and he didn't want his mother to feel worse.
Aside from his mother, Jack found it hard to stay still when one of the nurses had to change his bandages to check and make sure nothing was infected; and while he knew they weren't going to hurt him, his mind and body were still too raw from what happened on the Nemesis to stop him from cringing away from their touch. They were patient with him though and merely waited until he registered they didn't mean him any harm and they got to work with the cleaning.
He didn't like to sleep and tried to stave off the urge to slumber for as long as he could but he always remembered those cold steel digits on him and he'd wake up just as quickly to stop the nightmare from continuing. His mother had agreed with him that seeing the Autobots as soon as he got out of the hospital was a bad idea and she would just tell them how he was doing. When they had replied to this, June told Jack they thought it was for the best too and they were going to be living in a small house for the time being until it they were sure Knock Out wasn't going to be coming around Jasper anymore.
Jack had winced when he heard the 'Cons name and the rush of anger that followed. He had never hated anyone before, even his father because that was so long ago, but this was different. He hated Knock Out; he hated him for what he'd done to him, and what he'd done to get him. But the feeling of guilt couldn't be staved off because he had to live with the knowledge that people died, his mother and Vince almost being added to that list, and he was sure Knock Out wasn't feeling guilty about the loss of human lives.
He'd mentioned killing others to deter his own urge to kill Jack after all, it was said in a way that one might talk about the weather, and only sounded annoyed by the fact he'd let a human affect him so much.
Though with what he'd been through, Jack wondered if he was really lucky that Knock Out had let him live, and when he'd voiced this, his mother had firmly stated that she found what happened to him be repugnant, but that she was glad at least he was still alive. She further stated sadly that she never thought her own son would be the one in the hospital for something that had been done to others.
When Jack had finally been declared fit to be discharged, he and June had signed the papers and she and Jack had drove off to a the safe house that they were to be staying in for the time being.
June gently brushed Jack's hair away from his face. "How…how do feel today, honey?"
Jack stayed at the house in front of him, and his shoulders unwound with the knowledge they weren't going back to Jasper right now like he thought his mother meant when she mentioned a safe house. Being away from there would help with easing the stress away. "It's…not going to be easy, but I'll get back to before."
June smiled slightly. "That's the spirit." She said weakly as she couldn't think of another way to say it.
Jack nodded and he smiled frailly back at his mother. He would get back to before that ugliness had happened, he would not let the memory of Knock Out and Airachnid stain him more than they already had. "Yeah, I am going to be better."