Title: Behind Masks
Rating: M
Universe: TF:Prime [AU]
Characters/Pairings: Ratchet/Optimus Prime, Team Prime ensemble
Content Advisory: Gore/body horror, medical procedures, possible smut in future chapters
Summary: Optimus doesn't tend to get himself hurt very often. When he does – those are the days Ratchet loses sleep over, and for good reason.
A gift/fic exchange for MlleMusketeer, originally posted on my AO3 account.
There was a wildlife doco on TV. It was horrifying in a very special way. I got inspired. …perhaps a little too much so; the fic kind of expanded enough that I had to split it into chapters if I wanted to have any chance of posting it before about, oh, halfway through next year? [It always seems to get quite wordy whenever I write Ratchet…] I have said it before and I will say it again: sometimes I'm incapable of writing short.
BEHIND MASKS
...
There were three little words Ratchet hoped, to the bottom of his cynical wartorn spark, that he'd never have to hear again as long as he lived.
He could count the number of times he'd heard them on the fingers of both hands and still have some left over. For that he was grateful, although even one would have been too many.
Static crackled over the line, lancing painfully through Ratchet's auditory center. Arcee's voice shrilled beneath it, cutting through the noise of bombs and gun blasts in the distance.
"Ratchet, we need a ground bridge now! Optimus is down!"
She relayed a set of coordinates twelve hundred yards to the south of the point they'd arrived by, the databurst patchy with urgency. Ratchet programmed them in and wrenched the bridge control open. The boiling green vortex spun up and out, swallowing the entryway.
Five life signals in northern Canada blinked out of existence on Ratchet's screen. They reappeared within the main hangar of Autobot Outpost Omega One, the fifth flickering rapidly.
Ratchet shut the bridge down and leapt forward to help.
Smokescreen and Arcee were the first to emerge from the entry gate. The former's white paintjob was streaked with black char. It was less noticeable on Arcee's dark blue and black, but as she hurried out of Ratchet's way his medical protocols made note of the ragged-edged slices rent through her upper dorsal plating, the broken and dangling winglet on her left side.
Bumblebee was entirely unharmed, the only black on his plating his paint. He warbled a quick sitrep to Ratchet: Vehicons, Insecticons and lots of them, energon out of our reach! Optimus hurt, badly!
The gate hummed as it spat out the final two, a lick of greenish energy washing over their shoulders before it vanished.
Bulkhead edged forward, taking most of Optimus' weight on his shoulders.
Optimus was walking under his own power – always a good sign – but his steps were stilted, stumbling. He had one arm wrapped around Bulkhead's back and was leaning heavily on the Wrecker; Ratchet glanced down and the leg on that side was resting at an odd angle, the knee joint twisted and sparking. Lower down, panels had been torn away from his shin, his leg mechanisms laid bare down to the protoform and even to the struts in places. His field was taut, blooms of incandescent pain escaping his tightly-wound control. The other arm he'd raised, blocking most of his head and neck from view. Glowing blue energon dripped in rivulets down his chassis.
That meant a major fuel line rupture. Ratchet stepped forward, easing himself under Optimus' other arm and taking a little more of his weight off that damaged leg. Walking on a wound like that would only make it worse; if the struts were compromised in any way he could be looking at a self-inflicted break.
Base protocols looped Optimus' free arm around Ratchet's shoulders. There was an empty moment – Ratchet knew something was missing before he'd realised what it was. Optimus' systems graunched. An odd gurgle followed, and something wet and squishy dripped down the side of Ratchet's cheek.
All the willpower in the world couldn't have stopped him. He looked up.
The lower half of Optimus' face was a dripping, sparking ruin. His left cheek vent had been torn in half and the right was missing entirely; something had ripped across and upwards through his mouth in the world's ghastliest Glasgow Grin, just missing his right audial as it exited below the lower edge of his orbital socket. His lower jaw hung open, dislocated at the left and obliterated at the right, remaining attached to his helm only by a few threads of energon-soaked protoform and a couple of inner neck cables. His dente were smashed, his glossa split open and hanging by a thread. Ratchet could see right into his oral cavity, all the way back to his fuel intake valve.
Optimus' optics glowed dully, focused on a point somewhere above Ratchet's shoulder. They blinked, slower than he liked. The Prime gave another weak, staticky gurgle. There was energon and oral fluid dripping into what was left of his vents, slowly drowning his internal fans. That was what the noise was – a cough.
Ratchet found his voice.
"Arcee, Bumblebee – get me my bandsaw, the nanite gel and the spot welder. Smokescreen, hot water. All humans, up to the mezzanine. Now!" To Bulkhead he added, "Help me get him sitting down – not prone, keep his torso upright, yes, like that. Lean him forward, hold his forehelm and tip his head further forward, let the fluids drain."
They came out a mixed dark purple, dirty with oils. It dripped down the ragged line of his lips, pooling on the floor between his legs. He had to be in absolute agony, and yet he still kept his field – mostly – under control, did not make a single sound.
Bumblebee arrived at the double, welder and bandsaw in his arms. His optics went impossibly wide, his field flaring pain/sympathy/worry – will he be all right?
Ratchet didn't have an answer to that. He took the tools, wordlessly.
The damage didn't stop at Optimus' face. A shallower slice had carved a deep ravine down the column of his neck, deep enough to sever both the main energon conduit and the sensory hardware track leading up into his helm; he was blind, and deaf, and it was a slagging miracle he wasn't dead.
Ratchet hunted through the sparking bundles of wiring, small shocks making his fingers twitch. He found the two ends of the severed energon conduit. Blue liquid covered his hands as he pinched them closed, dripping down his wrists and under the plating on his forearms. Arcee arrived with the nanites, and Smokescreen with the water; he sent them both back for more supplies, then got Bumblebee to staunch the bleeding while he temporarily sealed the wound, melting the edges of the plasfibre conduit back together.
It was a temporary fix, at risk of bursting open again at any moment – but it would keep Optimus alive that much longer.
The Last Prime made a small noise, half sigh and half whimper, cut through with static and wet coughing. A small databurst arrived in Ratchet's inbox, callsigned 'Optimus'.
It simply said, :: Will I survive? ::
"Yes," Ratchet said immediately. Then mentally smacked himself. :: Yes, you will. ::
He had no idea how he'd repair this sort of damage with the tools which he had, but yes, Optimus would survive. In what state, was the real question.
Optimus' hand slid up his arm, hesitantly tracing its way over his shoulder and up his neck, cupping the side of his helm. Ratchet tipped his head into the gesture, humbled all over again by the way Optimus constantly thought of others even when facing such dire circumstances himself.
:: I need you stay as still as possible :: he sent, motioning to Bulkhead to tip Optimus' helm backwards. :: I'm going to detach what's left of your lower jaw and cut the protoform back to the undamaged layers. I'm sorry, but we don't have any painkiller chips strong enough to deal with damage on this level. :: Were he any other mech, Ratchet might have been able to route the pain data through his stress systems and bleed it off in a less agonizing manner, but Optimus' systems were specialised and Ratchet was a surgeon, not a medical programmer. :: How are your energon levels? ::
Optimus' hand dropped to his shoulder and clenched tight. :: I understand. My energon levels are low – not quite in the red, but very close. ::
Ratchet waved Arcee over – small hands for fiddly work, and besides, she had the most advanced first aid training.
"I need you to run a transfusion," he said, handing her the line and bag. "On my lower back, just under the upper dorsal plate edge, there's a large vein. Insert the needle, hold the bag up high, lean it on me if you have to. I am a fully-framed medic; I can spare it more than any of you can."
Smokescreen had, for once, used his processor for something other than mischief. He'd brought a selection of the cotton towels Ratchet had begun using for soft cleaning implements along with the tub of hot water. Energon melted synthetic fibres, but cotton soaked up everything, and was markedly less abrasive than the metalthread cloths they'd brought from Cybertron.
Ratchet took one, carefully packing it into the cavity between Optimus' upper left jaw (what was left of it, Primus) and the inner lining of his cheek. There were two minor conduits damaged here; he simply cauterized both ends, again a temporary measure. Another towel dabbed away the spilled energon. Lacerated strips of protomass hung from the roof of Optimus' mouth. He swapped towel for scalpel and cut them away, depositing them in a clean steel bowl.
The fortunate thing about protomass was that it could be induced to grow outside of its native frame. It took delicate care, of course, and there were long odds on whether he could provide that care with the resources that they had – the alternative being a much greater risk that, provided he could tool new components for Optimus, the Prime's own frame wouldn't accept the implants.
Gradually he stripped the left side of Optimus' mouth back to both upper jaw strut mountings. Investigation revealed that the lower jaw's joint was largely undamaged despite the dislocation. He cut the strut loose from the mounting stays as close to the joint as was possible, then pinned the protomass up beneath the ragged edge of Optimus' cheek lining and severed the hanging portion of his jaws.
Ratchet wondered for a moment what sort of weapon was capable of inflicting this sort of damage. There was one major incisive wound, which implied a sword or some sort of blade. The secondary damage, however, the shattered struts and the roughly-torn soft metalmass; that was more like blunt force trauma. He turned the remnants of Optimus' jaw over in his hands, cutting the external microplating loose from the protomass lining. The internal strut was formed of two lengths joined together in the middle by a partially fused joint. Like all warframe-descended models, Optimus' jaw had enough give in that joint to prevent break under high impact force; it wouldn't just snap in any old brawl. Yet –his jaw had broken, not just at that point but in three other places. Slivers of his dente peeked out of swollen, weeping protomass.
Optimus' vents wheezed and gurgled. "Tip him forward again," Ratchet ordered Bulkhead. "Slowly, gently."
He carefully pressed the flayed flap of microplating hanging from Optimus' right suborbital ridge away from the opening of his cheek vent, finding the point where it clung on and cutting it away. Optimus was going to have hardly any face left at this rate; it was all going to be hanging around in Ratchet's Petri dishes.
The upper row of dente had been damaged just as badly as the lower – if not worse; the grinding tops had been shattered and probably driven right out of his mouth, but the roots had been forced further up into the mounting struts. They'd require surgical extraction later, once Ratchet got Optimus up onto a proper berth.
He barely noticed it as Arcee pulled out the transfusion needle and patched his vein. "Done," she said, tipping the bag upside down and back again to prevent the energon from settling. "What do I do now?"
"Wait for a moment," Ratchet said, wiping fresh streels of oral fluids and energon from Optimus' gaping intake. Damage to the intakes made mecha drool, base coding serving a twofold purpose: to prevent excess dryness from hindering the healing process, and to provide rudimentary cooling to the sensitive intake interior.
Ordinarily, one had a glossa with which to swallow the excess away.
"All right. Bulkhead, sit back, rest him against your chassis. Keep his back as straight as possible, take the weight of his helm with your hand and be very careful about it. Arcee, take his right arm and hold it out at ninety degrees from his side. There's a big vein just underneath the joint in his armpit - that's the one we want. It's the same process: insert the needle, hold the bag up high and let it drain naturally."
"Right."
Arcee did so. Optimus went limp in their hands, trusting them utterly. Even at the sting of the needle he didn't so much as twitch. Ratchet patted his thigh, silently reassuring.
There was an odd scent in the air. Ratchet looked up, past Smokescreen and Bumblebee where they hovered nervously overlooking the proceedings. On the mezzanine, Raf huddled miserably on the couch, flanked by Jack and June. His face shone with clammy sweat, his hair mussed and his glasses on the table two yards away. There was a bowl on the floor in front of him.
Ratchet frowned. "Are you feeling unwell, Rafael?"
The boy's brown eyes shifted over to him, then fluttered shut. He took a deep breath, nodded, very very faintly.
June answered for him. "We're all a bit queasy, I think." She looked at Jack, who grimaced, and Fowler, who had just peeked over the edge of the mezzanine and clearly regretted doing so.
"I'm all good," Miko chirped. She'd draped herself over the railing and watched intently as they attended to Optimus, seemingly unaffected by the gruesome nature of his injuries barring a deep wince as Ratchet sealed a sparking line deep in the back of his patient's oral cavity. "Is Optimus going to be okay?"
"Time will tell," he told her. "He's certainly going to live. That's all I can say for sure at this moment. If any of you are feeling sick, I doubt the proximity to energon fumes will help. Bumblebee, you and Smokescreen should take them up to the roof for a while. There is a cool northeasterly wind today; it may help."
There was a pause, while Bumblebee looked at Smokescreen, no doubt comming each other furiously. Both mechs' expressions were reluctant, but Bumblebee, as expected, recognised the necessity. Since Raf's near-death at the hands of Megatron and subsequent adventure with the tornado, the young scout had thrown himself into research of the care and raising of human children, the better to defend his tiny charge from harm. It was almost cute, really.
"Right, will do," Smokescreen sighed. "Just give us a call if anything comes up, okay?"
Ratchet made a noncommittal noise, recognising the silent plea in the kid's voice. Times like these, he knew that despite the greenhorn's cocky mannerisms, Smokescreen really did just want to help.
He busied himself fixing up the torn ends of muscle cables and protomass fibres that had once joined Optimus' lower jaw to his neck.
Where to from here, that was the question.