Knock Out and Breakdown enjoy their first days outside the enclosure of the base. A mech above on board the Nemesis is confronted by an element of injury he had hoped to avoid.

AN- Remember to comment if you've come this far! I've got 150 comments on this fic over on AO3, so don't be shy here :)

They'd met because of injuries.

Because Motormaster had the habit of hurting his subordinates as much as the autobots did.

Why, out of all of them, the medic had seemed most interested in him was beyond Breakdown.

There wasn't exactly a whole lot he could offer. In fact, he really had nothing to offer at all; not when Knock Out was the one finding and outfitting him with mods, bringing him his energon, talking their nights under Cybertron's polluted sky away.

He remembered when that sky was clear. He wished he could've known Knock Out back then; before the war ravaged the ground and filled the starfield with perpetual smoke.

Even so, the medic was the best thing that ever happened in his life. If that required a war to happen, Breakdown still wanted it.

Because at this point...

He didn't know what life would be without the medic.

These days, he was far less paranoid about anything. The two of them lived easy going lives. Made no responsibilities and took no blame. Of the two, Knock Out was the more uptight and irritable.

But Breakdown still felt the occasional fear.

And his greatest one wasn't losing the war or getting killed or anything it should have been-

It was losing Knock Out to someone, or something, else.

Without the medic or Motormaster's orders or his old siblings telling him who he was, what would he have left?

What would he be?

With a now familiar shnk, the medbay doors slid open. XL-2M99 looked up from his desk, where he was currently trimming a strange Earth tree, to see a vehicon stagger in. The newcomer was a flightframe, built for battle. The alien tree, no matter how peacefully cathartic it was to play with, could wait.

The interim medic moved over to support the purple drone. He recognized the other vaguely: XL-3T09.

"What is it?" the former miner asked, helping support his new patient to a med berth. XL-3T09 actually chuckled, though it sounded pained.

"Not-no-nothing," his reply garbled, but the flyer pushed on, "Just me-messed around wi-th a t-o-oy, th-at's all."

He turned his head as he said this and XL-2M99 caught sight of the brazed metal on the vehicon's silver neck.

"An explosive toy?" he said in an attempt to keep things light. The injury looked far from casual.

"M-may-ybe-" XL-3T09 stuttered out his laugh. The medic pushed him back against the berth and kept one servo there when the flyer tried to rise again.

The neck was not the only area brazed. Down the shoulder, curling down a fraction of the chest, tearing into that arm-

Burns.

The metal rose and twisted in its natural reaction to curl from extreme heat. The purple paint had seared away and left behind a rusty, heated gold.

"Alright. Stay still," XL-2M99 stepped away from the patient, hoping that he'd listen and keep still instead of continuing his efforts to rise.

He gathered up his tools for burn treatments and returned to XL-3T09's side. He did his job quietly and efficiently.

If he happened to rush through the job, the flyer didn't mention it.

"There." XL-2M99 curled his servos into fists when he no longer had to hold a tool. They clenched together tightly but XL-3T09 didn't notice anything odd about that. The flyer sat up from the berth slowly.

"Take the rest of the cycle off," the medic ordered, "Possibly up to the next three cycles off in fact. Give your plating time to accept the welds. If you experience any pain, come back. I'll turn off your pain receptors if you'd like."

XL-3T09 looked at him. Others may find the stare unreadable; but vehicons knew how to see the miniscule expressions on their mostly blank faces. At the moment, the flyer was a bit confused.

"Alright," he replied slowly, "But I think I'll be fine. You know..."

He cocked his head to the side and spoke with amusement. "The last doc in here didn't give a scrap."

That wasn't hard to believe. But the last medic had had a nurse; and Breakdown had been very nice during XL-2M99's stay in the medbay.

"Anyway," XL-3T09 drawled and stretched overhead. It must have hurt. The plating was still raw from the burns and welding; he shouldn't have forced his arms up. He was showing off. "I'll get out of your way then."

One side of the visor dimmed in a 'wink'. It was an expression XL-2M99 could not make anymore; not with one half of his visor roughly welded and almost nonfunctional.

Unimpressed, the medic motioned for the door. The flyer stepped off the berth, winced slightly at the impact, and then made for the exit.

XL- 2M99 managed to wait until the door of the medbay had slid shut behind the patient. Then he leaned down against his table and let his restrained fists uncurl so that his shaking servos could tremble.

The big commercial door rolled upwards. First came the stream of light, searing in a short line where the door lifted from the road. Then came the air, warm desert wind lazily moving forward into the monitored chill of the base.

And finally the door lifted all the way away.

Outside was the wide blue expanse of earth sky. Puffy clouds crawled high above leisurely.

Oh yes. This was Jasper. The warm air, the bright light, the dusty plains and red plateaus.

The first time he had come here was for a street race. Really, the fact that the autobot Bumblebee had been competing in that race and that all of them had later arrived to tear his door off should have given Knock Out the heads up that Jasper was special.

Instead, it took the Damocles incident, with Soundwave pinpointing the location of Raf Esquivel's house, for the decepticons to know what Jasper meant.

Knock Out was pretty sure Soundwave didn't know the location in this timeline. And with Breakdown alive and Silas dead, C.Y.L.A.S. could never bring about the Damocles situation.

It would be nice if the spymaster never discovered this base. In the weeks he'd been here, the medic had grown pretty comfortable with this dumpheap. All things considered, it was still better than the Unit:E dump he'd visited at after the war.

At his side, Breakdown squinted.

"Wait. This is it? Really?"

Pushing past him, Bumblebee rolled both his optics. "Come on. It's home!"

"Yeah-" Knock Out teased, "Show some respect for this glorious wasteland."

He took a step out from under the ceiling of the old bunker and onto the dirt. The carbon based dust gritted up in his pedes; not the first time he'd felt it, not with all the missions they'd been on lately, but it still felt important.

Just like the other cons, he'd never been a big fan of Earth. Organic life was something he could do without and Megatron's original plan of cyberforming the planet wasn't all that unappealing.

But Earth had its perks. Sexy designs for automobiles, high quality rags and polishes, and entertainment quite unlike the dead industry of the dead Cybertron.

When Ratchet had been forcing him to visit Earth for lessons, Knock Out had been forced to adapt to the planet even more than he had when it had just been him and Breakdown travelling around.

And when the planet had become off limits for him-

He'd really grown to miss it. This desert was familiar. This 'wasteland' was a comforting masterpiece of zero civilization and 100% Earth.

Oh yeah- Knock Out shuffled one pede in the dirt and then spun to face Bumblebee.

"Hey, kid. Whatever happened to the 'sports car club'?"

It took the scout a moment to remember what he was talking about.

"Ohh...yeah. That." The yellow mech rubbed behind his helm. "I..."

He'd already made up his mind that if Bumblebee forgot the offer once sober, he'd still make it happen. Or at least get something out of it.

"Come on," he waved impatiently. "What are you waiting for?"

Earth felt just as amazing to tear over as he remembered it would. Knock Out sped over the road laughing while Bumblebee tried to keep up.

Back at the plateau, Breakdown watched them go.

It was a little sad to see.

Felt like the end of an era.

And he didn't really remember what he'd done with himself before that era.

"So is this a picnic?" June asked the kids.

The trio looked amongst each other and then just shrugged.

"Meh," Miko glanced away first with crossed arms and a familiar pout. The other two just shook their heads at her, internally or outwardly. She'd been mad ever since Bulkhead had left on a scouting job earlier that day and she'd failed to sneak after him.

The two sports cars tore back towards the base plateau and then away again, leaving the humans to cough in the dust.

Rather inconsiderate of them.

Laughter and a long whirring buzz followed though and it made the dust bearable.

Wait.

"The big door is open now?" the woman asked. She hadn't heard about this development, but then again she wasn't too invested in this side of her life. She did have a job and social circle of her own.

"Yeah," Miko answered, "We're letting Doc. Knock visit the dog park. Under supervision."

Oh yes, because three human children were such adequate supervision in this scenario. June chuckled quietly and shook her head at the teen's bravado.

"W-we're completely safe out here, mom," Jack started to wave his hands in protest. The woman cut his concerns off.

"I'm not here to bring you back in," she promised.

The two cars sped nearby again. They waited until the noise was down before speaking again.

"If anything," June smiled, "I'd say this should be a picnic. Who wants sandwiches?"

It was impossible not to hear Jack's groan. Raf, on the other hand, just offered a subdued smile of his own. "Um. I'll take one?"

This time it was Miko to hmph. The teen glared out of the sides of her eyes while her head pointed away from them.

"If there's drinks and snacks involved, I guess I'm in."

Trying to offer her most 'fun but motherly' smile, June said: "You hardly need more caffeine. I'll make some lemonades."

Twenty minutes later and they truly were having a picnic. The four humans sat on a tablecloth on the sand while Breakdown and Arcee sat behind the cloth. Both cybertronians were awkwardly quiet, but neither had wanted to interfere on the 'club meeting' that the two race car formats were having.

Despite the fact that they were all ridiculously tall aliens, June enjoyed the traditional feel of normalcy that having a day in the sun was. Picturesque. The family dream. A bonding moment between herself and her son. And his friends and some of hers as well. Arcee was practically a member of the family and Breakdown certainly had his moments.

It was a little lacking in people, what with Ratchet and Wheeljack indoors and Optimus on a scouting mission of his own.

But it was a sunny day and felt nostalgic in an odd sense; obviously there were no giant aliens in her past, but the ideal of a sunny camping trip- of sitting with family and friends, eating easy to make food and drinking powdered lemonade, all the while feeling red and white checkered cotton underneath their jeans and the lumps of the earth beneath the cloth- it was the type of picture out of a child's book or a family-friendly 60's show that made anyone exposed to it as a child nostalgic for it as an adult.

Such thoughts made little sense and forced a bittersweet edge on the ideal-but-unreal-feeling moment. So June put them away and let herself be swept up in that dreamlike moment of friends and family and the great outdoors.

For some reason, Wheeljack was in his medical bay.

For some reason, Wheeljack was tinkering in his medbay.

Ratchet bristled up. The reaction startled the wrecker from what he was doing and he pushed away from the terminal he had been messing with.

"E-e-xcuse me," the medic started up in offense.

Immediately, Wheeljack decided to laugh.

Excuse me, sir.

Why did wreckers have to be such ruffians? Or perhaps that was just Wheeljack.

"Hey, relax." The other mech showed his hands in a 'calm down' motion. "I was just messin' around."

"P-That's what I saw!" Ratchet stammered, "Some nerve you have to come in here and-and-'mess around' with sensitive equipment!"

It was bad enough that the equipment was human based and severely limited-

"Just thought I'd give you a servo," Wheeljack narrowed his optics. "This junk is alien tech. 'thought I'd mess around, see if I could get it to work better for you. I've seen you lecturing it before when it ain't workin' right."

Oh. But, even if that were true, ...

"You're a swordsmech-" the medic gestured, "Not a- an engineer."

Wheeljack smirked.

"Haven' you seen me fixin' up the Jackhammer? I know my way around tech, alien or otherwise," he said and Ratchet found he believed him.

The smirk faded away. Wheeljack was looking out beyond the medbay. There was a quiet while Ratchet waited for him to speak again.

"Hey. I talked with the boss today, when he got back from his scouting trip," the wrecker started up.

There was only one subject the medic could imagine they would have talked about; at least, only one that Wheeljack would bother telling him about.

He hated that he felt disappointed about it.

"I can imagine his answer," Ratchet rolled his optics; they landed, not on the wrecker, but on the terminal nearby. "Those two are already outside, learning everything there is to know about the location of this base. Optimus apparently trusts them enough."

Wheeljack waited a moment before tagging his own words along the end of that: "Enough to say they don' need botsitters anymore."

Well?

Good riddance, he'd say. Wheeljack was an insubordinate thug; why would they need him around base?

No reason, none at all.

...Ratchet didn't buy it.

"This means you're leaving." It wasn't a question. But somehow, the medic felt it deserved an answer; even if the answer would just be a repetition of his own statement.

The wrecker waited another moment. Then, out of the corner of his vision, Ratchet saw his scarred lips quirk up in a smile.

"Figured I would. Been hopin' to for a good couple o' orns now. But wouldn't you know it..." Wheeljack's grin made it into his tone of voice "-I told the big guy no."

Ratchet turned away from where he'd pointedly been glaring at a terminal in mock indifference.

"Re-why?" he asked bluntly.

The wrecker shrugged.

"Eh. Just feel I got unfinished business round here. Thought I'd stick around, just for a bit."

Here he'd thought the apparent modifications Wheeljack had been caught doing on his medical equipment had been the wrecker's way of preparing to say goodbye.

"So...You're going to stay?" Ratchet asked as if to confirm.

"I think so," Wheeljack smiled lazily. "For a bit more, at least."

In that case...

"We-ell then, why don't you keep making yourself useful!" Ratchet laughed. It felt nice to laugh. Besides with Rafael, he didn't get the chance to do so very often.

The wrecker rolled his optics and muttered something about slave driving, but he trudged over to the human equipment he'd been tinkering with before.

Of course it was temporary. Wheeljack would leave sooner or later; it was in his spark to do so. But since he was here, might as well be useful.

That's what Ratchet told himself.

His smile remained even after the laughter had stopped. The old medic crouched to work with his own equipment- recalibrations were always useful with such faulty technology. If he hummed a little as he labored, Wheeljack didn't mention it. And if the wrecker occasionally started conversation, well, Ratchet couldn't say he was surprised; the small mech was chatty, when he wasn't guarded.

It all felt very nice.

But the comfort sped away when the screen began to ring with an alarm.

Ratchet stood up from under his desk to approach it with a professional's speed. His servos lay over the keys and controls while he read the new information.

"It's an SOS..." he mumbled. Wheeljack set his own tools aside to approach.

"Who from?" the wrecker frowned.

The expression only deepened when Ratchet did deliver the news.

"From Bulkhead."