"Director," Ratchet said calmly, meeting her at the door to medbay the next morning. "Thank you for coming."
"Optimus?" she said, looking in the mech's direction, and even with the simple utterance of the name, he could see her spark dance in the bond, generating tendrils that reached across his medbay to connect to the Prime. He also knew she'd received his request to join him with trepidation, fearing that he had bad news.
Well, he did. Probably not the bad news she was fearing, but bad enough, and likely worse. "Presently, he's offline, resting. He's doing fine, almost completely recovered."
She sighed, relief flooding her. "Your office?"
"Yes, that would be best." He offered her his hand.
This morning, he noted, she had come to work wearing another suit jacket, but matched to pants instead of yesterday's skirt. The place she got it from had probably missed a real selling point when it failed to market the outfit as "Perfect for lying on your loved one's spark if he is a thirty-foot-tall alien NBE!"
In the office, Ratchet folded his servos and waited for her to ascend the stairs which led to the human platform that held a desk and chair. She sat neatly at it, folded her own hands, and gazed at him.
He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "Director, how much do you know about the bonds which form between us?"
"They are lifelong. There are no bonded pairs except for the twins among you at present, and theirs is a spark-split, instead of a spark-joined, bond. The Aerialbots' gestalt is something different. That's really all I know."
"Were you aware," he said, and she understood suddenly that he was feeling his way into a minefield, "that both Sideswipe and Sunstreaker have thirty points added to their triage score whenever either is injured?"
"You'll have to explain what a triage score is, Ratchet."
"It determines who gets treated first. The more life-threatening injuries are, the higher the score. If the medical team is overwhelmed with casualties after a battle and has to choose who to treat first, the highest scores get priority."
He wasn't going to tell her about the other triage sort, the one that, among those with similarly grave injuries, gave preference to those with a better chance of survival.
"I see." She said it so calmly that he was reminded, sharply, that this woman could order others to their deaths, and had herself been sent into situations she did not expect to survive. A triage score or something very like it was probably no stranger to her, although he was certain the CIA called it something else.
Ratchet sighed for the necessity of triage scores at all, and continued, "Those thirty points get the twins treated before anyone who isn't actively bleeding out or sliding into cascade failure. They get the points because, if I lose either Sunstreaker or Sideswipe, I can count on losing the other within a vorn, as a result of the severance of their bond."
"And is this true of all bonds, or only spark-split bonds?"
"All bonds."
She nodded, looking somewhat puzzled.
"Director," he said, "both Smokescreen and I have seen evidence that a bond is forming between you and Optimus Prime."
Charlotte Mearing felt the bottom crash out of her world, and Ratchet watched her energy form itself into a dark-red fist aimed directly at him. "You had half-assed bigoted reasons for discouraging our relationship, Ratchet, but you didn't tell me that? You didn't bother to tell me that his death could result from our pursuit of that relationship? Knowing that I have less than a vorn left, in your terms, you didn't bother to tell me that when I die he will too? You son of a bitch!"
He spread his servos. "I had no idea the formation of a bond between species was possible, Director. Everything I know told me that yours would be an ephemeral relationship."
Had she had something to hand, Charlotte would very likely have thrown it at the healer. She settled for repeating more quietly, "You son of a bitch." He did not need to research the epithet on the web to flush.
Charlotte watched whatever was going on inside her head for a very long thirty seconds, and then said flatly, "You're sure there is a bond?"
"Yes, I am."
"And it's too late to break it. I'd suicide if necessary, to keep him safe."
Ratchet opticked her in surprise. "I had no idea you would make such a sacrifice, Director. But fortunately for you, yes, it is too late. Sitting here, I can see that tendrils of the bond-energy from him are reaching for you just as certainly as yours reach for him. If you died, those tendrils would reach out endlessly, leaching his life-force as they dissipated upon not finding you, and that's what would kill him. Eventually. I supervised that process in medical school. It's not pleasant for healer or patient."
Charlotte said nothing for a while, then raised her head to make optic contact with Ratchet (although her eyes were streaming with tears) and say bluntly,"Then we have one option left, the one we discarded at the outset: develop a long-lived frame to house my spark, and transfer me into it permanently. You've got a limited time to make that work, Ratchet. About forty years at the very most, with the life I've led. Plan for half that." She had reached the bottom of the stairs, and strode across his desk to his offered hand. "If a better solution occurs to you, Ratchet, bring it to me immediately. That's an order."
He picked her up. "Yes, Madam Director."
"'Charlotte' to you, healer."
This from a being presently clutching his thumb, so that she would not fall to her death from his servo! You had to give these humans points for nerve, if not for simple common sense. "Yes, Charlotte."
He reached the med bay door and set her down, watching as she disappeared into the distance, small, erect, and, even at a distance, forbidding.
Well. Ratchet had disobeyed a direct order, almost, and had completed about half the work of creating a frame that might support a human. He'd enjoyed the challenges, and expected to continue to do so.
He had what he wanted, and was astonished to find that his victory held no joy in it.
He went to feed the guinea pig, which at this point was staying a term break with him.
The next day, Optimus was released from Ratchet's clutches.
Charlotte had cleared her schedule at Ratchet's request. She would go to their quarters with him, and spend the rest of the day there.
After all, they only had right now.
Charlotte did not allow him to carry her. He could have, without any damage to himself, but she chose to stride beside him, his enormous foot landing beside her with a deafening metallic "Thoom!" once for every eight to ten of her own strides.
He sent the code that opened the door to their quarters on ahead, and they went in and shut it securely behind them.
"I want to lie on your chest," Charlotte said. "We need to talk."
He nodded. "Yes, we do."
They went to his berth room, and arranged themselves.
Ratchet had forbidden the use of the meatsuit for three orn, roughly five days, so Pat was in medbay, getting both a checkup and a holiday.
Charlotte kicked off her heels beside the door, so that they weren't in the traffic pattern. If she stepped on them she would likely break her neck. If Optimus did, she'd end up with a lovely pair of very dense and well-cushioned Manolo Blahnik flats which had begun life as four-inch platform heels.
She curled up on his spark. He lifted a servo to cradle her, and they stayed like that for five or ten eternities.
Then Charlotte sighed. "Optimus. Did Ratchet talk to you about the bond?"
"Yes, he did. He was not pleased, but most of his displeasure was aimed at himself."
"It's both terrifying, and wonderful. I gave him an order to develop a simulacrum with a life expectancy similar to your own that I can move into, and stay there."
"But that will cause big, ugly trouble, he told me."
"My friend. The facts are these: if it comes to big, ugly trouble, trouble so big and so ugly I'm afraid of it, and the alternative is losing the last Prime of Cybertron, and my friend, I find the big ugly trouble is not so big, not so ugly, and not even so troublesome." She sighed again. She would not cry. (For one thing, she didn't have any tissues, and she felt rusting one's beloved to be bad form.) "In my job, I am expected to serve two masters. I have to pursue what is best for your people, unless their benefit comes at my country's cost. In this matter, ensuring your safety brings my country the benefit of the continued, and exponentially extended, services of an experienced agent. Humans have a career span of about a half-vorn, normally. I'll be able to give my country multiple vorns of service, and may never need to collect a pension."
His enormous hand came up, and stroked her arm with a fingertip, very gently. "That is of great benefit to me as well, Charlotte."
"It will still be a lot of big ugly trouble, Optimus. Publicity, nastiness, crazies outside the gate."
He went very quiet. Then he said, "And on a personal level, if you decide to do this, you will lose those you love, Charlotte. All of them."
"Not all of them," she said, and lay listening to his fuel pump for a moment. "But it's true I will become a member of a society whose language I may never be able to speak, and beyond yourself, I haven't made many friends among your people. That's a lot of loneliness to contemplate." She paused. "Or at least, that's what it looks like from here. The reality may be somewhat different."
He made the noise in his chest she knew was a chuckle, stifled. "Reality usually is. But Ratchet also presented another scenario to me."
"Oh?"
"Chemical neutralization of the bond. It's possible, though somewhat dangerous."
She raised her head to look into those bright-blue optics. "Aren't we doing our best to keep you out of danger? My transfer will give your people, who need you, the benefit of your leadership for a good long time. If I found it painful to lose you, the loss to them would be incalculable." She lay quiet for a while, then raised her head again to make eye-to-optic contact and say carefully, "If you decide to try chemical dissolution, Optimus, I won't raise any objections on my own part. If Ratchet has underestimated the danger to you, and the process kills you, I will kill him."
He chuckled again, outright this time. "My bright, particular, and very fierce star," he said, and cradled her close. "Please don't kill him until it becomes absolutely necessary to do so."
She laid her head back down on his spark. "Okay. That I can promise."
