Chapter Two! Yay!

Disclaimer: I own only Lexi, which she's not happy about at the moment.

Chapter 2: Alone time

They were all staring at each other. Lexi and Mrs. Darby were staring at Ratchet. Ratchet was staring at Lexi. Optimus was staring from Lexi to Ratchet and back again.

"What am I?" Lexi repeated softly, almost like she was scared to hear the answer.

"You're just the same as you were before," Ratchet told her. She blinked.

"That's a load of bull crap and we all know it, Ratchet," she said, numb from shock. "Tell me the truth."

"I think you owe it to Alexandra to tell her, old friend," Optimus put in gently. Ratchet forced himself to turn away.

"Is that an order, Optimus?" the medic asked. Prime hesitated.

"No." Lexi answered for him. She glared at Ratchet so fiercely that the medic backed up a step. "I don't want you to tell me because he said to. I want you to trust me and care enough to tell me yourself, without orders. I thought you were my friend, Ratchet. I didn't know you saving my life made you my keeper." Her voice, her expression, everything about her was distant, detached…unfeeling. Like a machine.

"Whoa. I think I walked in at the wrong time." Lexi didn't even glance in Jack's direction.

"I think so, too," Arcee agreed. "Let's go."

"No, stay," Lexi told them. "This conversation is done." Then she turned her back on Ratchet – and just about everyone else – and stalked past Jack and Arcee to the exit tunnel. She was going outside. Maybe she wasn't ready to face the world yet, but she wasn't going to stay inside with a medic who thought she was some weak, soft thing to be protected, either.

No one tried to stop her from leaving.

Lexi stared up at the sun, oddly depressed by the fact that she could look right at it and not even squint. She blinked as her eyes burned and felt moisture on her cheeks. She reached up to wipe it away, and her hand came back coated in a terribly familiar blue-green substance. It was the same substance that she drank now, the same substance that had once flowed freely from Ratchet's wounds as she worked to patch him up, the substance that she knew was poison to humans.

Energon. She was crying energon.

Lexi leaned back against a rocky outcropping outside the Autobot base and cried energon tears until she couldn't cry anymore.

Inside, she was screaming, but outwardly, she was almost completely silent.

After all, it wouldn't do to have someone find her.

I need to know how much of me is human and how much is "synthetic", she thought. But she didn't know how to find out. It was clear Ratchet wasn't going to tell her, and something in her balked at asking anyone else.

"Lexi?" That was Jack's voice. She didn't answer, but he found her anyway. "Are you all right?"

"What are you, the team councilor?" she snapped. "I don't need your concern, burger boy." It was mean and she knew it, but she was a grown woman, and she didn't need some idiot teenager following her out and finding her crying.

"I know you don't. But you do need to come inside. It's getting dark," Jack said. Lexi didn't care, and she told him so. "Everyone's worried about you."

"Not Ratchet, surely," she spat. "Or maybe him most of all, because he thinks I can't handle knowing how much of me isn't human anymore. Does he think I'm afraid of the dark, too?" she asked bitterly. And here I am, spilling my feelings and spewing my anger on a teenage boy. Oh, what a strong, mature woman I am, she thought savagely. She heard Jack sigh.

"Fine. Have it your way," he muttered. She heard him go back inside the base, and heard one of the resident giant alien robots come out a moment later.

"Alexandra Bruner!" Optimus Prime called. Lexi scowled. She hated being called by her full name. She was Lexi. Period.

Go away, you overgrown station wagon, she thought but didn't say.

"Lexi, please come inside now," came Ratchet's voice. Lexi winced at the sound of it. He sounded…tired. Drained. Defeated.

Serves him right, she thought, but there was no force behind it, and she knew it. It hurt to hear him sound like that. Gruff, mildly offensive, snappish, that was Ratchet. "Defeated" was not a quality she ever wanted to hear in his voice.

"Go on in, Prime. I'll find her and bring her in," Ratchet murmured.

"If you're sure, Ratchet," Prime sighed. Lexi squeezed her eyes shut. She felt like a five-year-old hiding from the teacher in kindergarten, and tried not to care.

"I'm sure. Lexi and I need to talk," the medic admitted. Lexi heard Prime go back inside. There was a moment of silence before Ratchet spoke again. "Lexi, if you won't come out, will you at least listen?" Ratchet called softly. Lexi didn't answer. The medic took that as a 'yes'. "I'm sorry. I didn't know how much damage Airachnid did."

Not as much damage as you've done, the mechanic thought angrily.

"If I'd thought, and checked everything completely before I started, maybe I wouldn't have had to do so much to keep you alive. I don't know. But I admit I should have told you what I did, and I'm sorry." Lexi lifted her head slightly.

Ratchet? Admitting he was wrong? Apologizing?

"You said you feel like a machine. You should. I wasn't able to replace your human organs with anything that remotely resembles human anatomy. Most of your skeleton had been crushed, and your organs with it. The only way to save you was to replace what was damaged."

"Why?" Lexi rasped involuntarily. "Why did you do it?"

"Because I couldn't just stand there and let you die," the medic answered. Lexi pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, then rested her head on her knees. She felt like a little kid who had scraped an elbow and had to have stitches. She didn't understand why the thread – or in this case, whatever Ratchet had replaced her insides with – was in her, and she suddenly wanted it out. She didn't want to have "replacements". She didn't want to have a grip so strong it crushed things like oil filters. She didn't even want to know that there were alien robots on her planet.

At that moment, all Lexi wanted was for everything – from the base, to the robots, to the talking ambulance she'd found in her garage a week and a half before – to be nothing more than the dream she had originally thought it was.

"I want to go home," she whispered. "I want to work on cars, and worry about whether I'm going to eat Ramen noodles of macaroni and cheese for supper, and when the bills are due, and whether or not I've fixed enough cars to pay them. I want to go to church and sing along with the radio…and just be normal." Somehow, Ratchet heard her, even though she'd barely even heard herself.

"I'm sorry, Lexi. Your home and garage were destroyed by the Decepticons the day after I brought you to the base," he told her. That wasn't the information the mechanic had wanted him to tell her – it wasn't information she'd ever want to hear in her entire life – and she could hardly believe it.

It can't be true, she thought wildly. It can't be. He's lying.

Ratchet wouldn't lie to me, part of her whispered.

He's keeping secrets – he didn't even tell me this until now. Why shouldn't this be a lie? Another part replied.

Because he believed he was doing what was best, Lexi admitted. That's why he still hasn't told me exactly what he's done. But he wouldn't lie like this.

And that was the heart of the matter. Lexi believed Ratchet was wrong, but Ratchet believed he was doing what was right for her. Her eyes burned again, but apparently she didn't have any energon tears left, because burn as they might, her eyes didn't fill and spill over.

"No," she whispered.

"Yes. I'm sorry, Lexi. Come inside. I have something to show you," Ratchet added. Suddenly totally, completely, utterly numb, Lexi got up and walked through the darkness to the medic. She could see in the dark just fine, she realized. She watched him as he crouched down and offered her his hand. Wearily, because she couldn't think of anything else to do – couldn't think at all, really – she climbed onto his hand and let him carry her back inside the base.

Sorry, I know that was a long chapter and that it still didn't completely explain what happened to Lexi, but there will be more details next chapter. Please review! Flames will be used to make s'mores, or maybe melt Decepticons, or maybe burn all those stupid worksheets and notes from this school year!

Don't forget to vote on which OC should star in my next fanfic!