Author's note: This fic is dedicated to Kookaburra, since it's her birthday. :) Hope you have a wonderful day, with much cake and presents!
The storm hit with the force of a sledgehammer.
In the few months of his life, First Aid had seen bad weather, but nothing like that. Nothing like the lightning that snaked down from the sky, crackling hotter than the surface of the Sun, leaping to whatever conducted electricity—like metal bodies. Nothing like the hailstones the size of ball-bearings, which actually hurt when they struck his headlights. The mud churning beneath his wheels was a minor impediment compared to those, but it still slowed him down enough that one of the Seekers fired at him—and struck.
Hot pain lanced through First Aid's right front tire and he went into a skid. He transformed as he did so, fetching up against a boulder, and scrambled to his feet as he cut the feed from his pain receptors in the damaged area. The tire had burst, and he could tell the axle was nearly severed.
Not much point in transforming. Or merging. Defensor, under those circumstances, would be little more than a huge lightning-rod, with electrical surges scrambling the Protectobots'circuits and components into chaos.
My team. First Aid raised his helm, automatically shutting off fuel and oil lines to his wounded shoulder and searched the sky, but there was no sign of Blades. He hoped fervently the 'copter wasn't trying to fly. The winds had reached gale-force level. Even as he watched, he saw a jet—impossible to tell, in the darkness and the flashes of optic-burning light, whether it was an Aerialbot or a Seeker—tossed through the air before it went into a barrel roll towards the ground.
The storm howled. First Aid tried to see where the plane had landed, because whoever that mech was, he might need medical attention, but it was too dark. He opened his comm, but heard nothing except fragments of words, static, and—worst of all—a brief scream that ended almost at once.
Soundwave's jamming the transmissions. For the first time that night, First Aid felt tired. His only consolation was that no humans had been involved in the battle, though the storm was unlikely to have spared them.
At least the gestalt link that held the Protectobots together was still there. First Aid touched it with a fraction of his consciousness, the rest of his sensors and processors alert to his surroundings.
Cool calculation and raw fury clashed, but beneath them was concern, and a calm authority harnessed it all into a force stronger than the storm. First Aid felt better at once. If he had fed even a flash of pain into the link, his teammates would have fought their way to him, but he didn't want them distracted from their work, and there were mechs with far worse damage. He could wait it out.
Besides, I'm a medic. I can patch myself up.
Thankfully the wind seemed to have slowed; it no longer flung freezing rain or hailstones at his face, and he saw the high, jagged crest of a hill just a few yards away. It was bare rock on which nothing grew, but it was also tall enough to give him some shelter. Thunder roared so loudly that he felt vibrations thrum through his exostructure as he hurried towards the cliff.
One of his feet slipped in the mud and he went to a knee just as he reached the cliff, his vents rasping hoarsely. Hauling himself upright, he glanced behind him and slipped around the cliff, keeping his back to the rock.
His olfactory sensors caught it first—the scent of half-processed energon and spilled fuel. First Aid glanced down, puzzled. He hadn't been leaking that badly.
Then he saw the pink smears on the ground, and the deep scrapes where a heavy weight had been dragged. The top of the cliff slanted slightly overhead, cutting off the rain that might have washed those away.
No longer tired at all, First Aid followed the marks, and his gaze went from them to the mech who sat in the lee of the cliff, half-curled over a leg drawn close to his body. The stains of energon on the limb were so bright they almost outshone the red optics, though in the shadows, both green and purple paint were equally dark.
"Don't come any closer, Autobot," Hook said softly.
With the rain no longer pelting down against his chassis, First Aid heard him clearly enough. He stood where he was, wondering if Hook was going to shoot him, but the Constructicon only watched him in silence without moving.
This is silly, First Aid thought. Obviously Hook needed to perform field repairs on his damaged leg, something a medic should be able to do easily, but he wasn't doing anything because he was too busy staring at First Aid. And vice versa. He took a cautious pace forward.
Hook stiffened, straightening up so his crane-arm was flat against the rock behind him.
"I'm not going to attack you." First Aid was completely out of the storm by then, and water ran off his plating in rivulets as he sat down. He could feel mud oozing cool between his seams.
Hook chuckled without humor. "As if you could."
First Aid said nothing, because it wasn't a question of ability. He was armed. He had just never attacked anyone, especially not a wounded mech—and one who was a medic like him. That was probably the only thing they had in common, though.
"You can go ahead and fix your leg," he said. "Or… did you need any help?"
"If I did, I'd hardly call on someone who rolled off the assembly line yesterday."
One or two of the Autobots had made similar comments to the Protectobots— though not where Ratchet or Wheeljack could hear them—so First Aid had learned not to take it personally. "I can't help when I was built," he said.
Hook looked at him as though First Aid was a calculator which, no matter how often it was repaired and calibrated and adjusted, continued to add two and two to make five. "Perhaps not," he said, "but you could at least attempt not to be so naïve. Offering to repair someone on the opposite side isn't a sign of nobility. It's an indication of rank stupidity instead."
"It's neither." First Aid kept his voice calm, determined not to let himself be riled up. "I don't like to see anyone in pain."
Hook's optics gleamed. "This gets more and more amusing. What are you doing in an army, then?"
"I can't help where I was built, either. Besides, an army needs medics."
"The kind who persist in repairing their enemies are likely to make the war last that much longer." Hook started to straighten his leg and winced, but continued with hardly a pause. "And don't imagine I'll be so grateful for your assistance that I'll considerately refrain from shooting you through the spark if I get the chance. Or, for that matter, from disassembling one of your teammates for spare parts. I think the helicopter would do quite nicely as replacements for some of Vortex's components."
First Aid's fuel turned to cold liquid lead. His pump lurched, struggling to move the icy weight, but although his systems returned to normal in astroseconds, he didn't feel any better. The frozen fear had melted away under an anger he might have felt previously—from one of his teammates—but which had never before originated from him.
And Hook, he realized, had been watching him intently, one corner of his mouth turning upward. "Didn't like that, did you?" he said.
First Aid was glad, insofar as he could feel happy about anything under those circumstances, that he wore a mask, because on the rear wheels of his spurt of temper came confusion. How could Hook—who also had a gestalt whom he must have cared about, on some level—threaten someone else's team? Maybe he's just saying that to make me leave, he thought, though he knew Blades and Streetwise would think it was ridiculous to give any Decepticon that much benefit of the doubt.
Whatever Hook's motives were, though, First Aid didn't plan on listening to any further mind games of that kind. "Leave them out of this," he said, his voice hard.
"No. Elemental fact about gestalt dynamics—you never just deal with one mech."
First Aid was used to handling refractory Autobots who tried to refuse necessary medical attention, or who wanted to leave the repair bay before getting the medic's say-so, and at that moment he needed all the strength of will those experiences had taught him. "I said, leave them out of this. I'm still willing to help you if you're badly damaged, but if you keep on hating me after that, take it out on me, not them."
Hook sighed and shook his head. "You're not important enough to hate. I feel nothing for you except perhaps contempt. But very well, if you want to help me, see what you can do. My right knee joint's completely dislocated, and I don't have enough leverage to reset it."
Familiar ground, at last. First Aid got to his feet, his HUD pulling up a schematic of a typical joint, calculating the exact amount of pressure to apply and where. "Did you seal off every line?" he said.
"No," Hook said flatly. "I'm so unskilled I just sat here and allowed myself to leak to death."
At least there's nothing wrong with your sarcasm subroutines, First Aid thought. "Just making sure," he said as he approached. "All right, extend your leg as much as you can and I'll do a scan before I—"
Hook straightened his leg fully and swept it out in a hard arc. His shin smashed into First Aid's ankle-joints, knocking First Aid's feet out from under him. First Aid fell, saw a burning flash and knew Hook had pulled a laser scalpel from subspace. He landed on his chestplate, hands in the mud as he struggled to get out of reach. A searing line drew itself down the plating over his left arm as Hook struck.
First Aid rolled over, bringing his hands up instinctively—and flung fistfuls of mud at Hook. One wet clump splattered across the red optics. In the second it took him to wipe them clean, First Aid scrambled away out of arm's reach, sat up and drew his photon pistol.
Fire, he thought. His left arm hurt where Hook had carved the armor open, but the emotion that surged through the gestalt link was half panic and half fury, as the other Protectobots realized he was in danger. It was that which pointed his pistol at Hook—who had dropped the laser scalpel in the mud—and it was that which tightened his hands on the gun's grip, edging one finger on to the trigger.
His own conviction wouldn't allow him to go any further. Shoot him? Shoot a medic who doesn't even seem to have a gun? And then what? Leave a blinded mech here alone, surrounded by a storm and in the middle of a battle? Shoot him, so that when he recovers he can shoot me back and it can go round and round in a circle until one or both of us is dead?
Before he could say any of that, before he could even say that he meant no harm, Hook's arm whipped back over one shoulder. He wrenched the cable loose from his crane-mount and lashed it out like a whip. The end of it hit First Aid in the face.
The hook at the cable's tip shattered his right optic and lodged in the socket. First Aid's now-halved vision went red with damage reports and before he could recover, Hook grabbed the cable with both hands. Then he yanked on it with all his strength.
But although First Aid could barely see the cable, he had no difficulty feeling it—and while he carried medical tools as well, his most powerful lasers were built into his wrists. One hand retracted in the next moment, and a lance of concentrated light blazed out like lightning. The cable snapped. Hook staggered back, shoulders striking the cliff behind him, and First Aid's vision cleared just in time to see the faintly surprised look vanish from the other medic's cold, composed face.
Over his own ventilations—and the faint plink as a blue splinter fell on his knee—First Aid heard the storm rasping at the windward side of the hills and the low grind of thunder moving away. He hadn't subspaced his pistol and it still pointed at Hook, but after what felt like a very long time, Hook bent and retrieved his laser scalpel. He extinguished the blade and slipped the hilt into a subspace compartment before sitting down again.
"Still not going to shoot me?" he said, almost conversationally.
First Aid had taken all the pain receptors around his right optical orbit offline—the stab to his plating was a long shallow incision, stinging but not immediately significant—and now he extracted the hook with his free hand before he spoke. "Don't you have a gun?"
"I was disarmed during the battle." Carefully, Hook began to wipe mud and energon from his frame.
Probably another lie, First Aid thought, but either way he knew what his answer would be. "No."
Hook's optic ridges drew together below his helm.
"No, I'm not going to shoot you." First Aid wasn't happy about the new damage he had taken, but he was calm again. He couldn't control this Decepticon's behavior, but he could still keep acting with the courage of his own convictions, and that steadied him. He hoped his team could feel that as well, so they would know he was all right.
Hook's frown now looked curious rather than confused. "You're an Autobot and I'm a Decepticon, yet you don't seem to have understood that."
First Aid would have shaken his head if not for the damage to his optic. "You're a Constructicon and I'm a Protectobot," he said. "You're a medic and so am I."
Hook's features smoothed themselves out again into a faint, supercilious sneer. "Do you really equate us? I'm millions of years old. I've repaired mechs and brought them back from the brink of deactivation and pushed them over that edge. We are nothing alike."
"Other than the fact that I lost an optic and you lost a hook, neither of which needed to have happened." That was the worst of war, First Aid thought, the useless and senseless waste on both sides. And although he tried not to think of medics as being in any way better or more valuable than any other mechs, a cold hollowness formed deep within his frame when he imagined an explosion destroying Hook, wiping out millennia of experience with repairs and with saving mechs only astroseconds away from deactivation.
The millennia of experience with dissecting or deactivating mechs would not be such a loss, but everything else…
"Of course," Hook said casually, as if the idea had just occurred to him, "I could always get my hook back." He rose to his feet.
"Keep your distance or I will fire." First Aid still held his gun in his free hand, the gun he had never fired before.
"Oh? Whatever happened to that pacifism?"
That was one of First Aid's most strongly held convictions, but the bond that connected him to his team ran just as deep, and he knew what they had felt when they'd sensed him being attacked. They would never have been so afraid for Blades or Streetwise, and although Groove also hated fighting, he was a scout—quick and quiet and rarely involved in direct combat.
But I get close to the front lines or closer, I risk my safety to help other mechs and my team knows I won't fight back. First Aid was more than willing to put his neck on the line for his beliefs, but he wasn't prepared to risk any other Protectobot's safety. Or, for that matter, their peace of mind.
"I won't let you harm my team," he said, and although he wanted to speak like Ratchet at his most forceful—in the kind of tone which could make any mech feel as though he was five feet small—his voice came out quiet instead. "In any way."
He wasn't sure if Hook had even heard him, but the thunder was gone and the machine-gun rattle of the rain had quieted to a hushed patter. In the darkness, Hook's optics glowed like embers.
"Speaking of them," he said, "are you stalling for time until they find you?"
"Are you waiting until your self-repairs fix your flight systems?" First Aid couldn't think of any other reason why a Decepticon would simply be… talking… to him. A cynical part of him that was probably spillover from Streetwise's side of the gestalt bond suggested that Hook might have been trying to lead other 'cons to that location, but somehow First Aid couldn't see Hook trying to get other 'cons to take down a Protectobot medic whom he had failed to subdue himself—if only because he ran the risk of being a laughing-stock in his own army if he did so.
"At least you're not a complete fool," Hook said finally, sounding as though this was a great concession on his part. "And since, unlike myself, you are in need of repairs…"
He took a pace closer and First Aid's hands tightened—one on the gun, one on the hook he still held, a snapped length of cable still trailing from it. Hook held up both hands, fingers spread. Then he slowly closed one hand and something appeared in it. First Aid dialed up the zoom and infrared functions on his single optic, wishing he could see better and wondering what kind of weapon that was.
A tool. Decepticon and Autobot technology had diverged a long time ago, but First Aid had no difficulty recognizing repair tools. It looked like a welder, but it was long, narrow and flexible as if it had been multiply jointed, designed to bend at angles.
"Use this to perform field repairs on your axle." Hook's voice was as matter-of-fact as if he hadn't been trying to kill or maim First Aid just minutes earlier. "You can work it through the seams in your armor without having to remove the entire limb assembly."
"I wouldn't have removed—"
"Oh, please. I'm only too aware of the limitations of Autobot medical training." Hook held out the welder. "A trade. This for my hook."
First Aid looked at the welder warily, because he half-expected it to squirt acid into his already damaged shoulder. And if Hook had simply asked for his hook back, First Aid would have given it to him.
"You want to trade a piece of Decepticon medical technology for a hook?" he said.
"It was a gift," Hook said shortly, and threw the welder at him. First Aid dropped his gun and caught the tool automatically. It didn't blow up in his face. He tossed the hook, and a green hand grabbed it from the air and slipped it into subspace.
First Aid's radio crackled. "—are you there?" It was Hot Spot. "Transmit your coordinates; we're coming."
First Aid wasn't sure what to tell his commanding officer about Hook, so he settled for transmitting his coordinates and hoping Hook would leave before the other Protectobots got anywhere near. Then, keeping the welder at arm's-length, he thumbed it active. He dared to look away from Hook while he applied the glowing point to the rent in his arm plating, something he could remove or endure if the welder turned out to be a weapon instead. The cut edges of metal glowed and fused and joined together.
Hook had been watching him with a half-amused smile at the corner of his mouth. "Repair yourself or not, as you please," he said. "Oh, but one last thing before I leave." The smile was gone as though it had never existed, though the edge of disdain had also left his voice. "Optics can be replaced. Sparks can't. Keep that in mind for next time."
Thrusters kicked on with a muffled growl and he soared up into the sky, past the clouds that were starting to clear. The storm was over.
After he had finished recalibrating his new optic, First Aid glanced over at Blades, who had crashed—thankfully not from too high—after his entire tail rotor assembly had been shot off. Blades had been so torqued off that he had limped back into the battle, determined to tear apart any 'cons he could find, but even more unfortunately he had stumbled across Ratchet, who had immediately hauled him off the field for repairs.
Ratchet had not been too pleased to find out about First Aid's damage either, and after hearing who had caused it, he had given First Aid a short but sharp talking-to about not mistaking enemy medics for the kind of repair providers who took oaths to do no harm. "They're Decepticons first," he said, "killers second, experimenters third and opportunists fourth. Somewhere after that the 'medic' part comes in."
Feeling both relieved and guilty that he hadn't divulged the whole story, First Aid watched as Ratchet worked on Blades, and while the repairs were in progress, the rest of the Protectobots arrived, one by one. Groove was last, but then again, he usually was. It was First Aid's turn to be repaired by then, but Ratchet was done with him quickly, and none of the other Protectobots had been damaged. One more battle lived through.
Once Ratchet had left them alone in one of the few private rooms off the repair bay, though, he had to tell his team everything. Streetwise was furious in a cold, steady way that did not bode well for any Constructicon he might encounter in the future, and if Blades had been online First Aid knew he would have felt the same way. Hot Spot shook his helm.
"He was right about one thing," he said finally. He didn't have to specify who he was talking about, because the Protectobots rarely if ever needed to spell things out to each other. "You can't risk your life like that, Aid. Never again."
First Aid felt his shoulders slump. It was true, he couldn't do that to his team, and yet what else could he do if he saw a trail of spilled fuel or found a badly injured mech? Turn his back? And all through the experience he had never felt his life was at risk except for the moments when Hook had attacked him. After that it had quickly gone back to… well, to as normal as possible for a confrontation between an Autobot and a Decepticon.
He knew better than to say any of that, though, so he only apologized for panicking the other members of his team. "I didn't mean to upset any of you," he said.
Groove put an arm around him. "We weren't upset. We were just…"
"Taken aback," Streetwise supplied, "because all we felt from you was the usual—you don't like fighting and you're worried about other mechs but you're happy to help. Then there was this little explosion—"
"I'm sorry. It was a completely autonomic response."
"—before you were fine again, just a little more wary and as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing."
Groove's arm tightened. "We're just glad you weren't badly hurt."
First Aid swallowed, not sure what to say. He felt sure that the reason Hook hadn't tried anything further was because he'd sensed he was up against a mech who wasn't afraid of him. And I didn't feel afraid because… He wasn't sure. He just knew that was his way of dealing with what was wrong, what was unfair and what was a senseless waste—to not be afraid of it.
"It helped that the storm was over by then," he said, thinking of the fallen telephone pole he'd seen on the way back to the Ark, and the trees blackened by lightning strikes. He remembered the plane he'd seen struck down as well; it had to have been a Seeker, because all the Aerialbots were safe and accounted for. "Actually, we must have been in the center of it all the time, because it was calm where we were."
"No, you weren't." Hot Spot rested a hand on his shoulder, and First Aid sensed the start of a smile behind his mask. "You bring the eye of the storm with you, Aid. You always have."
Author's note: Hope you liked it! I thought this would be a one-shot, but given that the Protectobots have no idea what Hook actually had in mind, there's going to be another chapter for his perspective. Stay tuned!