Thanks, again, for the support everyone! I really appreciate it.
This chapter is going to throw a neat little twist at you, hopefully you all will like where this is going. I know I did as I was writing it!
"So, what happened next?" Miko asked, excitedly. The young human had long since abandoned her cross-legged sitting position in favor of a seemingly more comfortable one, lying on her belly with her hands supporting the weight of her head; her booted feet lightly treading the air behind her back. "Did you start dating right away or did you wait for a while?"
The enjoyable parade of memory data wrought from his recollections stalled, and Ratchet's head snapped up in startlement at the suddenness of Miko's question. Surprised and unprepared, his processor laboring mightily as it took in all of the comparatively sterile details of their base, a resentful scowl briefly darkened the old medic's face-plate.
This was the third time Miko had derailed his story-to say nothing of his train of thought.
By all rights, Ratchet should be angry. It was Miko, after all, that had goaded him into divulging Io's story under the guise of good-natured, human "fun." If she wanted the information so badly, why in the name of Primus did she insist on interrupting him?
It was completely and utterly irrational.
And yet…
He paused and considered the young human with a thoughtful optic.
As much as he hated to admit it, each of Miko's abeyances had actually forced Ratchet to consider portions of the story that he might have glossed over or, otherwise, left out. It was easy, after all, to misplace snippets of data in such a lengthy narrative…even for a great orator as he and many older models claimed to be.
Her tangents also kept the mech "on his game," as the humans would say.
"It depends on what you mean by 'a while,'" Ratchet replied in a lecturing tone typical of his usual mannerisms. "Cybertronian life-cycles are quite lengthy compared to your own…"
"Like, how long are we talking?" She interjected, with a smirk.
Ratchet sighed and shook his head.
Ever since the humans came under their protection, Miko had done everything in her power to ferret-out Ratchet's age, directly—an inquiry that he ardently refused to answer—or indirectly from the other Autobots—an exercise in futility seeing as none of them had been made privy to that information.
Optimus knew, but the two of them had been friends for eons. And he certainly wouldn't indulge her in her childish antics.
Lips turning in a smirk, the old medic responded with a sly "Long enough."
Miko's shoulders slumped a bit in disappointment, but she still stared up at him with an expectantly smug smile, content in the knowledge that he had already consented to answer her original set of questions.
How can such a tiny creature be so manipulative? Ratchet couldn't help but wonder. Are all femmes like this or am I just blessed with another prodigy like Io?
"Our longer life cycles," the medic continued with a suppressed grimace. "…give us a unique view of time, and this view, this understanding—if you will—dictates the manner with which we live our lives, or view our accomplishments."
The human considered his response for a moment. "So…you have some freaky sort of insight into love and existence and junk, just because you're really, really old?"
Ratchet's lips pursed, slightly in annoyance. "As tactless as your assessment might be…yes; we do."
"But, what kind of insight?"
Ratchet had anticipated her cluelessness, and opened his mouth to answer her question when Rafael's voice sounded, effectively beating him to the energon. "Think about it, Miko." As he spoke, he adjusted his glasses, a strangely endearing habit of his that caused the old medic to smile. "Why do we only go to school for 16 years or so?"
"So our parents can torture us," She replied smartly, without missing a beat.
"Seriously, Miko?" Jack chuckled under his breath.
"I don't know…" She replied after a moment, her shoulders shrugging irritably. "Because we're faster at learning…"
"Are we?" Jack cocked an eyebrow in her direction, but she ignored him.
"And…" Raf drawled, leaning forward, his hands gesturing in a way that made it seem as though he were trying to coax the answer out of her head.
"'And'…I don't know," She admitted, seemingly annoyed with herself more than with Rafael. "I'm sorry, but I'm not a super, braniac-nerd-type like you."
Raf smiled and then blushed, as was his custom, even for roundabout, backhanded praise.
Seeing this, Jack turned his dark eyes on Miko and asked, "Do we live forever?"
"Well, no…"
"So, we can't attend school for thousands of years because we don't live that long? Right?" He pressed.
Miko's brows scrunched in confusion as she processed Jack's reply.
Then…
"Oh, I get it!" She exclaimed, her expression rapturous. Clapping her hands excitedly, she turned her gaze back to Ratchet. "You guys take things slow, right? No rushing stuff?"
The medic nodded his head. "That's correct."
"Does that include relationships?"
"Generally, yes." Ratchet replied, softly; his optics distant. "However, war has a way of changing things…" His voice faltered a bit as a few, painful strands of memory data flitted through his processor.
They were expected, to be sure; but just because they were expected didn't mean that such feelings were easy to contend with.
Subconsciously, the old medic lowered his head and he allowed yet another sigh to flutter across his lips.
"You waited, but not as long as you would have given normal circumstances."
Ratchet's head snapped up at the sound of Rafael's voice, and he couldn't help but blink in startlement; he had been expecting Miko to respond, after all.
After a moment, the old medic smiled, softly; his optics shimmering with emotion as he considered the young boy.
Before the humans came into their lives, it wasn't uncommon for Ratchet to work on a project, uninterrupted by the others, for several days. And, with all of the energon scouting that was necessary to survive on this world, he frequently found himself alone at the base, tasked with all of the background duties necessary to keep their lives as comfortable as possible with naught but human technology—literally millions of years more primitive than what he had enjoyed on Cybertron—to keep him company.
Solitude and silence meant productivity.
But now…
The base was… busy.
And, though he was loathe to admit it, he had come to find busy to be…good.
Even weekends…
No, Ratchet had truly come to care for the humans as their nuances had added something to his existence that before had been lacking—Rafael especially.
Relay would have called it youthful 'pep.'
Ratchet chuckled internally as he looked at the diminutive, human child.
It wasn't just his expertise with human technology that tugged the old medic's spark-casing, but the fact that the young human reminded Ratchet so much of himself when he was young.
Intelligent, confident in his technological prowess…while at the same time introverted and insecure.
Yes, they were very similar.
So much so that they had developed a unique bond with one another; something akin to what a Former might feel toward their own sparkling.
And their skills complemented each other, allowing them to work together for hours, whether fixing the bugs and viruses that seemed to plague the silo's computers, or doing mundane tasks such as monitoring the safety systems on their energon tanks.
As it seemed, Rafael was the only member of Team Prime, other than Optimus, who truly understood him.
And for that, the medic was silently grateful.
Whether Rafael perceived Ratchet's thought processes, or not, he gave no sign, just considered the old medic intently though his red-rimmed spectacles as he awaited additional revelations, but Ratchet was sure the boy could ascertain his general mood.
As if to underscore Ratchet's thoughts, Rafael's smile broadened, and his eyes-as was the norm whenever their gazes met-seemed to exude empathy.
As he considered how just how much Rafael and the others had come to mean to him, his chest tightened, spurred by a series of morbid thoughts that his detail-oriented processor couldn't help but fixate upon.
One of his greatest fears was the loss of their human companions—ranked up there, now, just about equally with the loss of one of their own. Even Special Agent Fowler—as pretentious and irritating as Ratchet sometimes found the human to be—had proven to be a valuable asset to their cause, and as such held a special place in Ratchet's spark.
And the thought of losing one of them…was almost too painful to think about.
Almost as painful as having to think about Io…
At the thought of his former partner, pain lashed at his spark.
Actual, physical pain, and it took every ounce of self-control the old medic could muster to keep his face-plate emotionless, to keep his body from doubling over.
"Ratchet?" Rafael asked, softly. The medic could hear concern in his voice, and his olfactory sensors detected a chemical pheromone that he had come to associate with fear or stress in humans.
But only emanating from Rafael; the other humans hadn't noticed anything unusual in the few moments that had elapsed since his last statement.
Guess I can't hide anything from him, Ratchet thought with an internal, ironic chuckle. Meeting the young human's brown stare, he allowed a soft smile to play across his lips. "I'm fine, Rafael," He admitted and then hesitated for less than a second, his processor whirring as he considered just what he would say to assuage the child's fears. "I was just…collecting my thoughts."
The spiky-haired youth nodded his acceptance, though he seemed skeptical.
The old medic sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck. He hated lying to Rafael, but it would have been...difficult, not to mention time consuming, to explain the nature of his affliction. Literally a story within a story, something that he just wasn't in the mood for, especially when he had yet to finish the first one.
"Anyway…" Ratchet began with a subtle roll of his shoulder-caps. "Io and I were colleagues for the equivalent of two Earth years. And in that time our relationship… evolved." At this, a tiny smile crept across his lips. "Sure, she was still my shield-and I her field mentor-but…the nature of our interactions began to change, mostly as a byproduct of the sheer amount of time we spent in each other's presence." Still smiling, the medic's optics grew distant. "As it would turn out, she was a faster learner than I ever could have anticipated. And what she lacked in experience, she more than made up for in insight and ingenuity." His smile broadened. "She was inquisitive as well, and these combined traits made for some interesting…dialogues between the two of us."
Miko cocked an eyebrow, seemingly intrigued by the medic's tone. "'Dialogues?' Sounds like you mean 'arguments.'"
"No, no, no; not arguments." Ratchet clarified with a slight shake of his helm. "Arguments imply hurt feelings, and though there we were often quite vocal, we were never truly angry with one another. In fact…" The medic's optics brightened. "We grew to enjoy the interchanges."
"Hmmf…" Miko snorted, her thin lips drawn into a sly smirk. "Only Ratchet would actually enjoy arguing with somebody,"
"Really?" Jack cocked an eyebrow and his face was bemused. "You seem to enjoy arguing with everyone."
"You're not helping," Miko growled, and threw a pillow at him.
Where the pillow had come from, Ratchet had no idea. He still didn't know where they had obtained the the couch-let alone figured out how they had managed to get the cumbersome item into the base without him seeing-but he had stopped questioning their behavior long ago.
"BwwwwrrriiiWweetVVVrree?" Bumblebee wondered.
Ratchet considered the scout's question for a moment, his hand moving to stroke his chin-plate. "That's a good question," he mused thoughtfully. "Looking back on it now, we undoubtedly found solace in the fact that we'd both finally found somebody that we could argue with, academically."
"Wwwwerrrt?"
"Well, consider: Io started off as a medic for the Decepticons. She performed her duties, and that was that; there was little intellectual stimulation."
"Didn't want their medics to think for themselves, did they?" Arcee commented darkly.
"No," Ratchet agreed, his voice unusually somber. "They didn't."
The humans exchanged looks of confusion, thought they didn't question Ratchet's tone-he had been hoping that they wouldn't. Io's history was dark enough, and having to explain the details of her medical "duties" to the humans would have been…unpleasant, at the very least.
"So, what did you argue about?" Rafael wondered, changing topics almost as if he could sense the general disquiet in Ratchet's spark.
"Anything and everything. We argued about proper treatments for injured 'Bots-mine from years of training and hers from intuition-everything from cauterizing wounds, to replacing energon lines, to manipulating power couplings for enhanced performance, and even possible augmentations to make field 'Bots more stealthy."
Miko seemed to be drifting off as if this was not what she had been hoping to hear. But that didn't faze him at this point, not with sudden flood of good memories and Rafael's absorptive face.
"One-I guess, you would call it 'epic'-interchange involved us debating the drawbacks to using Scanner's soldering technique for patching protoform-mesh lacerations. It was a rational battlefield implementation, perfect for quick fixes to minimize energon loss from the secondary, sub-mesh lines that were too small to sew in the field…"
Miko's eyes glazed over even more.
"Io advocated eschewing it…"
"She wanted to use a shoe?" Miko, of course.
Ratchet pinched the bridge of his nose-plate with his fingers. It was all the more he could do to prevent himself from laughing out loud. "No, Miko…" He managed, after a moment. "Eschew…" he repeated.
But Miko only looked at him as if he was the one who was crazy.
"Do you even go to school?" Jack asked. "Or is all your time spent escaping detention?"
She stuck out her tongue at him and threatened another pillow.
"It means…" Ratchet began, and then stopped. He put his hand over his optics. "She wanted to cease using the technique as she felt that it did more harm than good."
"Oh! Why didn't you just say that in the first place?" She replied with a dismissive wave of her hand, dropping the pillow.
"But, I…" What's the use? Ratchet thought suddenly, and sighed. "Never mind."
"So, what happened?" Rafael asked, excitedly.
"Well, after several minutes of debate, followed by a few, choice words, it was clear that she was angry, and didn't want to hear any more pontificating from, and I quote, 'an old 'Bot who had his head so far up his tail-pipe that he had missed several centuries worth of terrin advancements.'"
For reasons that he didn't understand, this set everybody laughing. Perhaps they all thought it odd that he would be so carefully circumspect about his dialogue, in a sense making sure they knew whose words were being spoken.
That, or they found it amusing to see him in such rare form, using colloquial dialogue choices instead of the tech-speak that he was more known for.
Regardless of their motives, Ratchet continued. "She threw a spanner at me, and, as she was notoriously difficult to deal with once the tools started flying, I stormed out of the lab…only to find myself in the company of no fewer than twenty of my colleagues."
He chuckled. His listeners goggled.
"I guess they all assumed that we were going to kill each other. In moments, of course, the masses scattered. They never wanted to hang around, but Interlink always managed to give me a parting, knowing smile."
Everyone laughed, even Ratchet.
"Which didn't help matters when I realized later that Io was probably right."
Everyone laughed again, giving him sympathetic but knowing smiles, Arcee especially.
"Granted," The medic continued with a smirk, "I did get her back the next time she took an oil bath."
Silence.
The silo became so quiet that you could have heard a feather hit the ground.
"You did what?!"Arcee blurted out
Ratchet's face-plate blanched as he realized what he had said. "I…" He began, though his voice immediately faltered, and his optics darted about nervously as he thought about just how he was going to talk his way out of this, especially with Miko being present.
As if to underscore his thoughts, Miko chimed in. "Dude, the shower is, like, out-of bounds."
"Indeed," Arcee concurred.
"Oh, puh-leze." Ratchet snapped at her tone, a bit of his typical attitude returning. "How could you even think that I would stoop so low as to do something inappropriate?"
The two-wheeler had no answer to this, and merely shrugged her shoulders resentfully.
At this Bulkhead sniggered. "So, if it wasn't 'inappropriate'…what was it?"
Ratchet's optics widened as everyone burdened him with their collective gazes. Even Arcee, though she merely considered the old medic out of the corner of one pinched optic.
For several moments he was so dumbfounded that his voice-box remained silent.
He had not intended to reveal this information.
It wasn't that the content was too mature for them to handle; on the contrary: Ratchet was and always would be a gentle-bot, even when it came to pranks. Rather, it was just that, a harmless prank. A single event; and not in any way shape or form crucial to the telling of his story.
They didn't need to know that he had spent orns tinkering with various chemical combinations so as to create a batch of oil that, upon physical inspection, looked and felt like regular bath oil…but had the wonderful side-effect of dying the bather's mesh pink.
Nor did they really need to know that in Io's haste to kill Ratchet afterwards, she had forgotten to empty the cistern that she had been using. And, as it was custom for bath users to refill their cisterns with a clean batch of oil after each use, anyone using the bath after her would have assumed that everything was in order; that the oil was fresh, and that it certainly wouldn't dye them pink.
They also really didn't need to know that the first poor soul to discover this was none other than Crossarm himself.
Ratchet chuckled internally as he remembered the Sergeant's frantic com-link message-a communication venue that he generally ignored in favor of visual transmissions-and Io's delight at the thought of a pink Crossarm.
And as much as the glider might have hated Ratchet, he at least recognized the medic's engineering expertise, and practically begged him to create some sort of remedy-while at the same time reminding Ratchet of the clinic's confidentiality clause.
Another internal chuckle.
The humans and their guardians were better off not knowing that Ratchet-even though he made good on his promise to create an antidote for Crossarm-violated the confidentiality clause when he hacked into the clinic's security database and compiled a single image of the salmon-colored Sergeant solely for Io's amusement.
A devious thing indeed, much more so than anything else he had ever done in his existence, but worth it.
Even orns after the event, Ratchet found himself waking, and melting, to the sound of Io's laughter over his comlink as she spied the image in her quarters.
Yes, definitely worth it.
"Well?" Bulkhead pressed, snapping the medic out of his thoughts.
"Erm….nothing." He replied, quickly, rubbing the back of his neck.
"You mean, you're not going to tell us?" Miko practically demanded.
"That's correct." Ratchet replied.
"But…"
"'But' nothing." The medic responded with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Haven't I divulged enough of my personal life, already?"
The human femme huffed something under her breath and turned her head sharply, clearly disappointed at having been shot down.
Something Ratchet was more than willing to do at this point, so long as it would get his story back on track.
"So," Rafael began, softly. "You said that you and Io were friends for two years, right?"
Ratchet raised his optics and considered the tiny human with a look of subtle questioning. Again, it was almost as if the boy could somehow read his thoughts. "Yes, that's right."
"Then…when did you two…" Rafael's face suddenly colored, and he glanced nervously at his human companions almost as if seeking approval or encouragement.
Miko's eyes immediately brightened. "It seems like Raf wants to know when you and Io finally hooked up?"
Ratchet's optics widened in alarm. In their society, the phrase "hooked up" was fairly...risque, so much so that he found himself temporarily silenced.
"When did you start dating?" Bulkhead translated.
"Oh!" Ratchet thought as a wave of relief flooded his spark.
"What did you think I meant?" Miko wondered.
"Moving on…" Ratchet insisted with a shake of his head. "It's difficult to put a date on it, but I guess you could say that we became a couple just after we were asked by Optimus to participate in a military operation that would come to be known as the Orsis Incident."
"You were involved in that?" Bulkhead asked, a look of shock on his faceplate. Not the kind of shock that said millions had died in grotesque manners or that whole sectors of Cybertron had been blown into space, but a look that said it had conjured up some humorous tidbit at odds with the severity of the altercation.
Miko still stared at him, confused, but soon dismissed the entire situation with a shrug of her shoulders, and listened intently to the medic's next statement.
Ratchet's confusion, however, necessitated an inquiry.
"And just how do you know about it? Other than those who participated, very few had been made privy to that information." He paused. "And, you were part of the Wreckers by that time, if I'm not mistaken?"
"Which is where I heard of it. Sort of."
Ratchet considered larger mech with a raised brow-ridge.
Bulkhead help up his hands defensively, as if he feared he had trod into water he had no business knowing about.
"Hey, don't get me wrong, I don't know anything about the mission," Bulkhead said quickly, and Ratchet relaxed. "Just that the day before, Maccadam's had the most legendary bar fight in its long and colorful history."
Ratchet practically tensed like a tightened jor-spring, but managed to keep his features passive. Bulkhead accepted it, and continued on with his story, perceiving nothing.
"Yeah," Bulkhead lounged back against the crate, his head rolling backwards as his eyes tilted up as if at a happy memory. "Old Sea Spray used to tell us the story of 'the night Maccadam's nearly fell down.' He'd always use that story on new recruits who just couldn't wait to get their hands in some Decepticon action. 'Spray would lean back, pull up a mug of energon and say 'The best fight I ever had was the night before Orsis. Got thrown through a window, clubbed nearly senseless with a chair, and stabbed in my right leg by a broken door handle.'"
Bulkhead smiled.
"Old Barnacle Butt and his stories. I don't think anyone in Iacon hadn't heard of 'the night,' but Spray claimed he was there, and, well, no one could exaggerate like he could. Heck, I mean, according to him, the entire brawl was started by two medi-bots. I mean, who could ever believe such…"
He paused and his head snapped up, fixing Ratchet with that look.
"That wasn't you and Io was it?"
Ratchet could only put his head in his hands and sigh. Why did I agree to this?
