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
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.
[* * * * *]
Part Seven: "Don't wake up"
[* * * * *]
Tarn slept heavily when he managed to drop into recharge. Sleep was a difficult thing, for him. He...worried. He recharged on a rotating schedule with the Autobots stationed at the mine, taking his turn on patrols despite being based in the clinic. It kept the clinic safer having him here in his downtime.
He still worried whenever he started to shut down. His mind flitted from thought to thought: concerns about what would happen while he slept, the cold metal of the bed next to him if Pharma wasn't there, immense caution not to move in his sleep if the surgeon was. Sometimes he worried about what he didn't know. Sometimes he worried about what he did. The worries made it hard to drop into recharge.
He slept deeply when he finally dropped off, but lousily despite that. His dreams yawned hollow. Because he slept so heavily, they felt inescapable. Recharge felt like wandering into a labyrinth with no exit. Whatever worries he didn't think about while awake cropped up here. The shadows of cored-out databanks chilled him, and he ran from ghosts of whom he'd been.
Lost inside his empty memories, he hoped for rescue, and it came. He slept until Pharma's hand slid down his arm and twined, finger by careful finger, with his own. The small, restless twitches at his transformation points stopped. The jittery, confused energy field smoothed out, and old feelings melted away into blissful happiness as red optics came online behind that purple mask.
Pharma talked with his hands, gesticulating with them as if they were a natural extension of his voice. Every emotion he felt broadcasted through them. When he was calm, they shaped lazy swirls and slid slowly along desktops or equipment. When he felt defensive, they fell to his sides, rigidly controlled. Suspicion tucked them away in his crossed arms to protect them from damage. Anger pointed them into weapons that stabbed under already sharp words.
When Pharma touched Tarn, his hands spoke for him. He spoke to the tank the same way he did First Aid or Ambulon, perhaps even harsher, but it was the way he touched Tarn that made all the difference. A firm hand on his arm to guide him; a push to the chest to tell him to back off; the slow slide of a thumb under his optic; the back of two fingers brushing down the front of his throat. Even in the first few weeks where the suspicion kept Pharma's hands out of reach behind armored forearms or present only in quick, brittle gestures, Tarn listened to how those hands spoke to him.
More than that, he welcomed their touch. He learned their language. He courted them. He did everything he could to invite Pharma to cease filling silences with a wall of words and just feel him. There were times Tarn pretended to sleep, just for that moment of waking. He felt like he belonged to the surgeon, stroked like a prize possession.
He would kill for Pharma to touch him like that when he was awake. Just a casual touch, hands held together for even a moment. Something tender and softly pained squeezed in his spark at the idea of Pharma allowing him to pick up one vulnerable, precious, ever-so-talented surgeon's hand for no reason. Just on a whim, because he felt like showing his affection in the silent language of gestures. He was an expert in Pharma's unspoken words. He wanted to say them back in the surgeon's own gestures.
Words were no comfort to him.
"I don't love you," the jet told him, standing across the office with his back to him. "You do know that?"
The shorter Autobot stood with his hands tucked tight under his arms, shoulders practically vibrating in defensive wariness, as if Pharma expected him to attack for saying the truth aloud. "I know," Tarn said, watching the tiny sliver of blue he could see peeking out from around his surgeon's turned back. Pharma's fingers were clenched into fists, fists hidden behind folded arms. A double layer of protection the jet didn't need around Tarn, of anyone. "I love you," he added, unable not to. He loved this mech so much the words were practically meaningless. They didn't adequately convey everything he felt.
Pharma flinched a bit. "I didn't mean for that. I didn't intend for - " Doubt made the fists loosen, fingers wavering into an indecisive motion. "Love isn't what you should feel toward me, I mean." Those eloquent hands hesitated, saying in the way they stayed protected that Pharma didn't trust the words Tarn helplessly kept repeating.
Tarn looked down at his own hands, the broad, strong hands of a soldier of war, and winced. Shame peeled strips off his self-confidence, because they were mechs from two entirely different worlds. The finicky details of medicine versus brute force; repairs versus destruction. He was supposed to be a subordinate, or at least a close protector. Falling in love seemed inevitable, but a betrayal as well. Why should Pharma trust him when he said he loved the jet? Reassign a guardian, and the guardian moved on. Love implied permanence, but assignments were temporary. At least, that's probably what Pharma thought every time Tarn said the same useless words.
"What am I to you?" he asked a little sickly. He hoped - well, he wasn't sure what he hoped. Words were such an imprecise medium, and Pharma still wouldn't unfold his arms.
The surgeon did turn to glance toward him. "You're...my duty. A responsibility of care, I suppose."
Tarn stared.
Something that had been wound tense inside him for a while now relaxed in a sudden rush. The world snapped into place around him in an elastic release. Duty. Responsibility. Those were solid, meaningful words with measurable meanings. Not like love.
Tarn knew he loved Pharma, knew it with all his being, but he couldn't tell the surgeon what that meant. It meant he wouldn't hurt the jet, except that he would. He would do whatever it took to save the jet, even betray or shoot or drive him away. It meant he protected him, except that Pharma protected him. The tank felt that in his very struts. Love meant Pharma was the most important person who had ever entered his world, and that was true but somehow nebulous. The intensity of emotion couldn't be laid out. The boundaries changed day by day. Every statement he could make had stipulations depending on the circumstances. He had no way to explain what he felt that that didn't come out trite or obsessive.
Pharma was his Cause, poetry in motion, words and movement to fill all the missing pieces deep inside him. Tarn had been adrift, cut loose, and the surgeon took the place of all that had been lost.
In return, Tarn was Pharma's duty, and that was good. That was incredibly good. That was something he understood! He understood duty, how it had strict regulations and actual, written-out guidelines. They didn't change. There were no shifts depending on situation or reactions. Those who abandoned duty were traitors and were punished as such. There were no sighing tragedies in duty. Tarn couldn't count the number of stories about lovers who cheated, who turned to hate, who used one another. But duty? Duty was black-and-white.
Pharma, Tarn felt, had given him a far better deal that he offered in return.
Guilt joined the shame. It was just one more worry among the many that made it hard to recharge.
But when he did sleep, he dreamed. He dreamed of a grand, vast meaning to his life. He couldn't remember what it was, only that the words had meant so much. Pharma spoke to him when he was awake, and the words were important, but still…deep inside him, he craved something more. Something solid to believe in, because he doubted his own words when he tried to assign them definite meaning.
In his sleep, he waited for the touch of hands. They said the words Pharma would never tell him out loud, and Tarn didn't have to say anything in return.
[* * * * *]
