Title: It's not a weakness
Univers: G1, post movie
Pairing/Characters: First Aid and Red Alert
Prompt: 5. Never Give Up for 10_orders community on livejournal
Rating: K+/Pg
Warnings: Unbeta'd, mentions of character death
Summary: Just because he refused to willingly fight, didn't mean he was helpless.

Being a pacifist in a war was considered a suicidal ideal. To refuse to take up a weapon and fight looked down upon even as they came to him cycle after cycle to fix a limb or recalibrate a joint. Or carried in like so much weight and the conscious ones looking to him to fix them and send them out again to fight and kill, and one day actually be killed. All the while they overlooked the fact he went out with his brothers and dodged bullets and energy shots alongside them, joined in the gestalt programming when needed and allowing himself to be used in a greater whole to fight. None of that mattering when they were all so fixated on the fact he wouldn't carry a gun unless forced and didn't jump into battle, even reluctantly like Groove did.

He was starting to see why Ratchet had gained a bit of a temper when dealing with his patients and didn't hold back his words on them when they back talked him. But, First Aid wasn't that imposing and even he didn't believe half the time that he was the Chief Medical Officer and not Ratchet. It was still hard to enter and not see the white and red mech already there and setting things up the way he wanted it set up and grousing at him about having everything ready for any type of emergency.

So the flash of red and white as the medbay doors opened before him had his spark clenching for a brief moment in desperate hope. Until his cpu caught up with his optics and noticed that instead of predominantly white panels as his teacher's, were instead the light weight red panels of a mech he never thought to see willingly in the medbay.

"Red Alert?"

The security director barely paused in his actions at this. Optics flickering to him and every corner of the medbay rapidly before focusing once more on the camera being delicately placed in a high corner; typical Red Alert behavior if one paid attention and didn't get offended by the lack of response. First Aid had learned from Ratchet and his own dealings with Red Alert to just wait it out a bit until the stubborn glitch answered back, which he did while First Aid was in the middle of setting up his equipment for his shift.

"Scamper is going to be assigned some shifts near this area, so you should get used to him popping up every now and then."

"I'm not defenseless!"

It had finally clicked together with that admission from the Lamborghini. The extra cameras slowly populating this section of Autobot City, the influx of mechs just happening to wander down this hallway when the threat level was raised and he was in the medbay, and now Red Alert having Metroplex and his composites also watching him; They were looking down on him again for his unwillingness to fight.

"You refuse to give up on your beliefs, thus we should never give up on ours as autobots."

The tirade that had started to build up in his vocalizer suddenly crumbled at the calm, for Red Alert, tone and bluntness of that statement. Almost like he was reminding one of the humans that came and went through Autobot City that they were suppose to protect all life, and were not originally designed for war.

"I…thank you."

It didn't even bother him when Red Alert promptly ignored him again, finished up his camera adjusting and left as if he was in enemy territory. Typical Red Alert, something that First Aid had started to forget despite knowing the Lamborghini better then any other mech still functioning.

Though, he was starting to regret just knowing Red Alert on just a clinical level as a medic. He may have to start looking as a friend, or as close as a friend as one can get with a security director with a paranoia streak the size of Cybertron some days. It might be the only way to figure out what Red Alert really means at times. For now, he had a medbay to run and the tension he felt in struts didn't seem as bad anymore.

After all, he was pretty much ordered to not back down from his ideals.