Pride and war drove Pharma to break his medical oaths, but a single choice made differently brought the consequences down on Tarn. He couldn't be any happier. The Autobots still aren't sure what to think about that.
Title: Amnesia
Warning: Nonconsensual medical procedure (within the context of war), definite dubcon as a result
Rating: R?
Continuity: MTMTE AU
Characters: Pharma, Tarn, Ambulon, First Aid, Prowl, Ratchet, Rung
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.
Motivation (Prompt): FelixFellow made a gorgeous picture of Pharma kissing Tarn. I had to reason out how this could happen. Things got a bit out of my control.
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Part One: "Ethics of War"
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War was a vise. It compressed everyone stuck in its jaws, squeezing them until desperation caused them to do things they otherwise wouldn't. It wasn't fair to say it was a measure of a mech what he chose to discard. Vises had jaws because they were mouths. War preyed on mechs, and sometimes the situation did as much to wring certain bits free as a mech's own choices did.
Pharma's pride might strangle him yet, but he'd been trapped by war. It was a toss-up if he'd be hung or crushed first.
He had been stranded inside the Decepticon Justice Division's territory, head of an emergency clinic whose ward manager was on the List. Prowl refused to reassign either Pharma or Ambulon. Pharma had struck a deal with the leader of the D.J.D., but it had become increasingly clear that the bargain was a lost cause. Tarn took and took, changing the terms of the agreement according to his sadistic whims. If not for that unexpected addiction of his - Pharma counted himself lucky he'd spotted the twitchy signs of a transformation addiction before Tarn fired the final shot - the Delphi Medical Clinic would have been razed to the ground long ago. As it was, the D.J.D. demanded more of Pharma that the doctor was willing to give.
T-cogs from the already dead were a disgusting price to pay, but Pharma could justify that price. The patients were already dead. Grotesque as it was to use their parts in a blackmarket dealing like this, his conscious only gave a twinge when he salvaged T-cogs from bodies. T-cogs from the living, however, backed him into a moral corner he couldn't escape with a minute of logical thought.
The surgeon sat at his desk, wings low and optics pressed against his clenched fists. His elbows dug into the desk harder and harder.
Was there anything about this situation that didn't scream claustrophobia?
He was on his own. Prowl wouldn't change his assignment, and anyway, Delphi was his clinic. He'd smelt himself before conceding he needed help.
It didn't help that the last message from Autobot Command had concealed a subtle threat to replace him with Ratchet. Anything - anything - that Ratchet could do, Pharma could do. Maybe not better, but he would slag himself trying.
He lifted his face from his hands and glowered at the far wall. Ratchet would not take over this clinic from him like a savior sent from Prowl to lift Delphi from the Pit. Anything Ratchet could do, Pharma would do. Provide medical care for the miners, save his ward manager, confound the D.J.D. in their own Primus' forsaken territory, win at Tarn's sick game. Anything.
One slender hand laid delicately atop a file of a critical patient. The mech was one step from death. Pharma was one T-cog short of quota for Tarn's arbitrarily set amount for 'tribute' this month. It would be simple, so simple, to let war chew up his medical ethics. One slip of his oaths to preserve life and guide the unhealthy of mind and body, and he'd meet Tarn's price to spare the clinic. Just once, and the patient might not make it, anyway. A nudge from Pharma was only tipping the scales a touch. Death had the mech mostly in its arms already.
He could see how giving way once might degrade his ability to resist justifying murder a second time, but Pharma was proud of his strength.
Perhaps too proud.
He hesitated, troubled optics locked on the patient's file. He wasn't normally one for doubting himself, but oaths were important because breaking them carried consequences. It might not matter how proud he was in the aftermath. The strength of a medic's word came from the involatile nature of his oaths. Break them once, and their power shattered. His own pride could trap him in a vise after that. What he could do to himself was no worse than what pressures war brought on him. Pride could drive him mad, like punishment for broken promises.
If he let it.
Pharma straightened slowly, drawing himself up as if facing down an invisible audience of peers, enemies, and himself. Ratchet, Tarn, Prowl, the Decepticons, the Autobots here at the mines. All of them. His shoulders went back, his wings lifted, and he tilted his chin up in a haughty sneer down his nose at them. He would not lower himself to killing a patient because of pressure from an arrogant slag-eating boltcutter like Tarn. If he was going to break his medical oaths because of this blasted war, then he would do it on his terms, and his alone. He would not be Tarn's puppet, and he wouldn't be shown up by Ratchet.
His lips turned down at the corners, and he turned on his desk console. There was a way to turn Tarn's deal against him. The 'Con was far too confident in his ability to control Pharma. So confident that he'd walk right into a trap if the surgeon had the nerve to set it. It would have to be specialized, fine-tuned to take down Tarn and Tarn alone. Something more general would take time Pharma didn't have, but beheading the D.J.D. would cause enough chaos that it'd at least buy him some room to maneuver. A virus. He could make a virus. A highly infectious one meant to spread via something the Autobots could control.
Hmmm. That idea had potential, and he set aside for later. In the future, if there was one, he'd start researching the idea of warfare via cyberbiology. Yes, it would break his oaths to preserve and protect, but no more so than the plans he began to draft for a mech-specific poison. A paralyzing agent strong enough to knock out an entire unit, based off of sedatives used to slow fuel pump rate, and a whole cocktail of common medications tweaked to target the most vulnerable internal parts of a mech. Useless on the outside, but he could get inside Tarn's guard. Tarn himself would make sure of that, and then Tarn's body would turn into the weapon Pharma lacked to take down someone that powerful.
Prowl wouldn't help the Autobots of Messatine. Well, then. Pharma would. But he would do it his way. He would use his skill to fight to save his clinic, not merely to hide a murder and extend a rigged deal. If his oaths had to be broken, then he would make the breakage a weapon he could use.
Thus, the smallest moment of self-reflection changed what the vise of war crushed - or rather, whom its jaws closed on.
Thirty hours later, the patient still lived. Despite that fact, Pharma's hand was steady as it keyed in a comm. frequency no Autobot should know. "Tarn? I have your package." A smile crossed the surgeon's face as he looked upon the results of thirty hours of concentrated, rage-fueled, brilliant but broken effort. Something under his angry pride ached sharply for what he'd sacrificed to make this.
But the patient still lived. The end justified the means. This was surgical removal of a disease to save someone, really. A medic's oaths were not so lightly broken, and if there was a chance to save a life, a medic was honor-bound to take that chance. It didn't matter whose life, or who the medic was. War was a vise, and snatching a spark out of its pitiless jaws was sometimes the only victory a medic could celebrate amidst the crushing defeat. The patient had made it, and Pharma was proud of saving the mech, even if it wasn't the conventional skillset of a surgeon he'd practiced.
"Where and when do you want me to meet you this time?" The final time. "Make it soon. I'm a busy mech." Death waited for no mech, but it would be right on time for Tarn. Pharma would make certain of it.
At least, that was the plan. Plans did have a tendency not to last past the first engagement in war. All that pressure changed things, even minds. Maybe especially them.
Pharma stood in the snow and stared down at Tarn. The massive Decepticon convulsed, body destroying itself the way Tarn had threatened to destroy him only minutes ago. Pain wracked the tank in long seizures that weakened each time. Heat blasted off purple and black armor as internal errors fried him alive.
Watching this should have felt like triumph. It should have felt good. It should have been a vindictive pleasure to watch the Decepticon who'd tortured and demeaned him for so long get his just desserts. This was what he could report to Prowl, and he could be proud that he'd won. He'd won.
In the back of his mind, Ratchet scowled at him. Had he?
Pharma's hands curled into fists. Satisfaction curdled in his spark when Tarn choked out a garbled scream. This was what he was proud of? Death, torture, and broken oaths? This was everything a medic resisted when war pressed in. Although, it was Tarn, and Tarn deserved every powerplant hitch sputtering pain through him. Didn't he?
Ratchet wouldn't approve. Prowl would. The soldiers at the mine would. No medic true to his oaths would.
There was a mech dying in front of a surgeon. There was only one victory to be had, here.
"I hope you remember this," Pharma hissed at Tarn as he fell to his knees in the snow. "Remember that I saved you. If you remember nothing else, you recycled tin can, remember me."
His fingers paused in prying the Decepticon's chest open.
…oh.
Oh, now that was an idea. Difficult to pull off, complicated as the Pit, but Tarn would live. Technically. If Pharma could do it. It'd be a compromise between ethics and war, nothing more, but why couldn't that enough? He could do it, and neither Prowl nor Ratchet would be able to naysay his decision.
Pharma laughed in relief as built-up pressure suddenly released. He bent back to work with a will.
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[ A/N: Yes, it turned into a fic on its own. I think there's a wordcount these things pass that trigger the changeover in my head from 'ficlets' to 'fic.' I'm fond of the ficlet nature of each chapter, but they are much easier to fit into the plot for this story. They're easier to sit down and write than anything more complicated.]