Equilibrium
Chapter Nine
I wake from recharging to the chime on the door sounding, feeling warm and muzzy. Ironhide is led on his side, one hand curled beneath the rise of the sparkling and the other draped across my waist to touch my backstrut where it tends to ache the most. He's still in deep recharge, no doubt from his exertions last night, and I move from him regretful to do so. Though not as much as I now regret recharging on the floor. Primus, it's a long way up.
Kneading at the kinked wires in my back as I go, I open the door to my office to find Prowl waiting on the other side. He holds out a cube of pale energon.
"Missed you in the rec room this morning," he says as I take it, feeling a churn of hunger at the smell. He leans to look past me as I take a sip, and I suddenly realise that Ironhide is visible laying beside by desk from the doorway. "I see you two managed to work things out."
Not wanting to disturb Ironside, I step out of the office and allow the door to shut behind me. "You don't seem surprised," I comment as we walk, making our way to the operations room. Prowl's reacting as if he greets me daily at my office with a sleeping mech on the floor and the coppery aroma of interface still lingering in the air. Or perhaps he's just good at being remarkably discrete.
"So long as you're as happy as he is, I'm perfectly indifferent," he replies mildly. It's now abundantly clear that he saw this coming, or at least knew of Ironhide's feelings. Before I can ask him, Prowl gestures to my chassis. "How is your little one this morning?"
"Cramped, but content." Aside from the usual weight and pressure, I'm feeling like my old self. Ironside's ministrations were remarkably effective, and I only hope that I returned as good as I received.
Prowl makes a thoughtful sound. "It's getting close to the end, now. I think you can expect Ironhide to be hovering even more attentively for the next few days."
Clang.
I press over the abused spot. "I might let him. Primus, I don't understand how he's got room to do that."
"He?"
Not realising I've stopped from that kick I get us walking again, nodding around a sip of energon. "Yes, you all lost that one."
Prowl rolls his optics but is smiling, clapping a hand to my shoulder. "Can't stand to see me win anything, can you? Ah well. Here's hoping you birth in your office. I might be able to recoup my losses."
There's an amiable silence around our footfalls and I finish the energon, still finding it novel that there's no nausea to battle against. I'm going to have to get Ratchet something. I stop the thought, accepting that Prowl and I can't indulge ourselves in such levity any longer. "How did things go after I left?"
Prowl hisses through his vents with a grimace. "Mutinous, or close enough to fear for your safety."
"My safety?" I had thought that it would be Starscream first at the post.
"Wheeljack and the twins were all for sabotaging the door to your office to lock you in. When it was pointed out than an explosive device on the locking mechanism may put you at more risk than less, the proposals only become more… intricate."
I can tell from his face that it had been a very trying time deterring the Autobots. "And in the end?"
A sigh, as though Prowl's not happy with the resolution but is backing it. "You are Prime, Optimus. They'll do what you order them to and they trust your judgement. You know your limits at the moment, and we must trust you not to surpass them against the Decepticons at the risk of yourself or the sparkling."
Prowl is a strong negotiator and a remarkably tempering presence, and I've been particularly grateful to have him as my second in command over the last two months. Honestly impressed, I'm unable to keep the surprise out of my tone. "I'm surprised you got that to fly with Ratchet."
"Oh, he's got some plans for your movement servos if you try to do anything he deems unsafe," Prowl replies with a laugh. "He'd call it a well-intentioned intervention."
I stop us again for his full attention. "Thank you for your efforts. I fear I couldn't have achieved the same results at the time."
"Well of course. It's only expected for you to be a bit temperamental at the moment. Carrying a sparkling, particularly –that- one it seems, is a massive strain." I offer a look of weary disbelief at such an obvious statement, and he goes on. "Just don't expect me to try talking Ironhide into letting you go peacefully. I like my parts where they are."
"Actually we discussed it. I think I've convinced him for the most part."
A wicked grin. "So there was –some- talking last night?"
I laugh outright at his suggestive expression, bumping his arm with mine. It carries on almost in the operations room, setting my mood for the job of scrutinising schematics quite well.
Ratchet didn't get as far as I did and is now shattered across the humans he'd been carrying, their bodies burning around his dead parts and adding to the pungent black smoke that hangs over us all. I'd given him cover fire as he'd run but a flyer had torn into him in a suicidal attack whilst it punctured his body with shots. Alarms from the power station are wailing under the sounds of weapons fire and screaming.
Oh Primus, the screaming. I've never heard anything like it.
I know it's Optimus before I've climbed out of the trench bored into the concrete by my body from Blackout's blast. My Prime is on his back. His legs are destroyed and Megatron has one foot trapping the lines hanging from his torn thighs, bleeding energon at a rate he can't survive. His chest plates were open in labour but are now torn utterly asunder by Megatron's hands.
He starts laughing as I try to run, but my body doesn't obey. My cannons are empty for the first time and I cannot move.
The sparkling comes out with a keening wail, impossibly small in Megatron's clawed hands. Its umbilical cables connecting it to Optimus splinter and snap, falling across his ruined chassis with fresh sprays of fluid. It tears like paper when Megatron twists its body and pulls it apart.
Primus, the screaming. No creature should be able to make that sound. I realise I'm screaming with him as Megatron puts the barrel into his ruined chest and fires.
Ironhide jerked with hard gasps shuddering through his vents, feeling his cannons snap out already warm. Optimus was gone, the office painfully hollow now with no sign of where he'd gone or when he'd left.
Shaking off the vestiges of the nightmare, the mech got to his feet and left in a fast jog, a knot of anxiety twisting around and through his spark. It had been a dream and nothing more, he growled to himself as he forced his body to slow to a walk, though he still received odd looks from the few Autobots he passed. He stepped into the operations room with a veneer of calmness he did not feel, his roaming gaze stopping on Optimus on the far side.
The tall mech was gesturing across a schematic with Prowl, their voices serious and quiet. As if sensing Ironhide's presence, Optimus looked up and met his optics with a smile. His brow furrowed quickly, head tipped in a silent question.
Ironhide forced a smile and waved it off, backing out into the corridor when Prowl said something to make Optimus look away. Now that he'd seen for himself that his new lover was safe and unharmed, the old mech clenched his dental plates at the wild, irrational panic that had brought him here. It was ridiculous.
But it wouldn't be if Optimus led them to meet the Decepticons at the plant. He was due any day around the proposed attack, as Megatron had intended, and would be defenceless whilst labouring if it started amidst the fight. It wasn't just a matter of the sparkling being taken. Against the spark-freezing thought of Optimus dying, he found that he didn't even care about that.
The nightmarish scene played over and over in his processor as he made his way to the Medbay, relieved to find it empty except for Ratchet. The medic got to his feet at the other's expression. "What's wrong?" he snapped, urgent.
Ironhide shook his head, unable to stand still. He had to pace. "Optimus can't go. He just can't, Ratch'."
Ratchet lent back against a berth and watched the mech's furious steps. "If the end of the debacle last night is anything to go by he can. And is."
"Over-rule him then!" Ironhide bellowed, turning on the surprised mech. "Make him stay here with you."
"Didn't he shout you down enough in his office?" Ratchet snapped back, straightening against the suddenly redirected anger. "I can't stay here any more than I can make him. I need to be in the field with all the bots who are going to need a medic, just as much as you need to be there laying fire into the Decepticons. And who does that leave who could possibly stop Prime from going? Neither of us could restrain him, and definitely not without harming him in his condition."
"Deactivate his systems then!"
It was a desperate, blind grasp but Ratchet's face still twisted at the suggestion. "Oh yes, that's just the sort of thing I want to inflict on an overclocked and overtaxed body that's already struggling to maintain itself. If that's what's to happen, I may as well just put him out of his misery now."
Ironhide closed his optics and covered them with a hand trembling with agitation, finally catching himself. His head lowered and his spark hurting, he knew Ratchet was right. And there was nothing they could do.
The medic approached him with quiet steps, his face softening. "Since when could we stop Prime from doing anything he was determined to do? We just keep him safe out there. Stay with him, cover his back and see him through whatever happens."
Ironhide brought his hand down at the quiet, firm words. Meeting Ratchet's stare, he laid a hand on a pale shoulder plate. "Swear to me that whatever happens, you'll keep him alive. Even if it costs the sparkling."
Ratchet shifted. "Ironhide, he'd die for it."
"Not if I can help it."
A long silence, tense with a negotiation that couldn't be voiced. Finally Ratchet nodded fractionally, just enough to commit himself.
Ironhide squeezed the shoulder and didn't smile. "Thank you, old friend."
As the weapon's specialist was leaving, Ratchet spoke again from where he'd been left standing. "If that's what it comes down to, I'm telling him about this little talk."
The dark mech didn't break a step. "So be it."
