Knock Out attempts to learn how to dis-attach from Breakdown's side, with some help from another bot.
Dreadwing begins his investigation and an Iacon relic crashes down to Earth.

AN- Title comes from the ID song Polaroid


A cybertronian pod tore through Earth's atmosphere.

Inside was a young autobot rookie trapped in stasis; placed on him, not by an enemy as he assumed, by the old master he'd been tasked to protect.

Inside that rookie lay something that Alpha Trion trusted only with one mech alive.

Falling now through the stratosphere towards a coniferous forest in the north americas, the pod's exterior burned and peeled. But it was built to withstand any atmosphere. It was built to survive any fall.

Alpha Trion could not allow it to come to a fiery end anymore than he could let it fall into the servos of the decepticons.

After all, this pod, only big enough to fit one cybertronian in stasis, contained a cargo far more precious than any one bot.


Dreadwing circled in the air above SA:9. He had blown the trees away earlier to give himself a better view of the ground.

Tire treads. Ones that did not all match vehicon treads.

So the story told by the drone was true. There were humans here. Humans messing with things they shouldn't be.

He flew downwards to find the weapon XL-2M99 reported dropping.

It was not on the ground.

But the seeker worried that such a lack of sighting it was not due to the entire story being fabricated. Rather, it seemed, the humans may have stolen their abominable weapon back. Their caves of hidden atrocities, after all, had vanished as well.

The tracks were a mixture of human trucks (he had cross-ran the images left in the dirt with the wide repository of knowledge the humans shared on their 'internet' to confirm what model and make the tires were and which type of vehicles such wheels were used on) and vehicon treads. If the story was true, these vehicon tracks were not from any of the decepticons nearby; rather, they were from the puppets these humans had made.

But he could find no such abominations nor any living captives in the many caves the humans had been using.

So this was scrubbed. The prisoners were transported elsewhere. These humans were of a large enough group to have multiple bases of operations.

Soundwave had provided information regarding the humans that had apparently captured the traitor Breakdown while Dreadwing himself was still traversing space. In all likelihood, these were the same. The communications officer had caught sight of their operations spanning multiple continents and yet they were hard to trace in full; even for one as skilled as Soundwave.

It made the seeker even more uneasy.

This new knowledge, combined with the story of XL-2M99 and the tread marks he had found here had convinced him:

It was all true.

Dreadwing rose higher, prepared to follow these tracks through whatever borders to find those he had promised to bring back.


"You jealous?"

The voice caught him off guard. Knock Out jolted forward and cursed as he scrapped against the wall. Spinning around to see the culprit only revealed a smug looking Arcee. She was smirking at him.

"I-wel-what? What are you accusing me of?" he asked and her smirk grew.

"Really?" she asked, unimpressed. "You're standing here, spying on those two, jumping when you're caught- and you really think I'm not going to see what this is?"

Put like that...

Well, she had caught him (both in the act and the lie- he was spying and he was jealous).

Lately, Breakdown had been...distracted. Or preoccupied, rather. Instead of spending free time with Knock Out, like he had at the start of this venture (even if the blue mech himself had seemed bored as he sat unoccupied while the medic read), he was distant.

On the bright side, he seemed to actually be invested in the autobots of the base now.

Knock Out wasn't sure if he was reading that right. He (a normally over-confident mech) was not exactly confident in his ability to read his partner.

He had thought going back would allow him to try to fix that. He thought he would be able to look at Breakdown and break down his person in an attempt to categorize and understand the mech like he had been doing with Team Prime after the end of the war.

Somehow, it didn't feel like he had.

Somehow, it felt like going back had also meant going back to old roles; like merely seeing and speaking with Breakdown again had returned him to his previous way of viewing other mechs (or, more specifically, viewing Breakdown).

Was he really going to blame himself for trying to get past that roadblock?

Was he really going to feel guilt over trying to get a more accurate analysis of what the mech was like rather than see the role he'd created for the guy?

Knock Out had noticed them as he finished refining one of Ratchet's practice formulas. They were led by the scout, who was bouncing his way over to where the humans kept their tiny little television screen. Breakdown was following.

Well, well, what was this?

He'd almost joined them.

But somehow he got the intense feeling that this wasn't meant to include him.

What had given him that impression, he wasn't sure. Whether it was a signal given off by either of the mechs, or how they had marched past the medbay without looking at him- did it really matter? What mattered was the other intense feeling such a hunch gave him.

Insult was a glitch.

Still, what was Bumblebee thinking? Was he trying to watch a movie? Pft, then he'd grabbed the wrong mech. Knock Out was the one who loved a good human horror film. Really, he should have grabbed the medic from the get go and they could've laughed like the good old days on an alternate cybertron-

Wait.

And then a different thought had replaced any jealous offense.

Was he the one who loved it? Did Bumblebee somehow find out something about Breakdown's entertainment tastes?

Something that perhaps Knock Out didn't know yet?

Maybe, if he snuck a peek, he could find out. And then maybe he could surprise his partner with that knowledge.

And this time, he would know with better certainty that Breakdown's surprised happiness was really his and not Knock Out's own projecting.

The idea was far too appealing to pass up.

The medic had tiptoed out of the medbay to spy from the hall. A part of him expected the duo to turn around and notice him (call him over).

Instead, the blue mech was dragging his pedes behind the yellow bot.

"-looks boring," he was muttering.

Bumblebee ignored the comment, pulling over one of the makeshift seats with a flourish and gesturing at it.

"It's a classic! The herald of the age of westerns; Ennio Morricone practically cemented iconic cowboy music. You've got to see it!"

"How can it be a classic if it's less than a vorn old?" Breakdown grumbled, but shuffled to the seat the scout had prepared regardless of protests.

Whatever they were watching was far too tiny to see from his spot in the hall.

But far more interesting than some human movie was the dynamic he was looking at.

Bumblebee was supposed to be his friend.

Wait, no, that wasn't the right thinking-

It was around that time when Arcee had decided to scare the living daylights out of him.

"Fine." Knock Out mirrored her posture and crossed his own arms. "You caught me. I was spying. But it wasn't why you think!"

"That so?" the two-wheeler lifted one brow.

Then she looked past him at the movie viewing. Her arms unfolded and one waved for him to follow.

"Think you can tell me then? After getting out of their way, I mean."

Seemed fair enough.

More than fair.

The insult and sting he'd felt earlier at being excluded vanished under a distracting enough glee.

She wanted to talk with him.

There was a key verb in there that mattered far more than it should have.

They vanished from the room where his partner and the mute scout were watching some old drab earth movie and found themselves in the training center.

"So." Arcee turned on him. "What's going on with you?"

That was a very broad question with a very broad set of answers.

Knock Out opted to cop out that way.

"What isn't?" he chuckled. "M.E.C.H. is still kicking and probably has their sights on one of the test subjects they let get away. Airachnid is who knows where and we're both pretty sure she holds a grudge. The war isn't exactly over. The om- There just seems to be a standstill, that's all."

She glanced to the side to frown.

They both knew it was true enough.

And, as was typical, the name of her old partner's murderer always served to rile her up.

Knock Out remembered how he had reacted to Breakdown's death. How Dreadwing had tried to offer words of comfort he hadn't understood. How even Megatron had not assigned any missions until he himself had volunteered for the one to New York.

How he hadn't understood what death meant in relation to him until C.Y.L.A.S. had appeared.

That had thrown all pretenses out of the window.

Death was an abstract. The loss of something so familiar in everyday life should have quickly elicited grief.

But it took time for him to notice the absence of the familiar.

He noticed it in the way he couldn't reach certain spots while buffing himself. He noticed it in the absence of loyalty Starscream had shown with the mere words "It's Knock Out's fault!"; loyalty he always could take for granted with his now-deceased partner.

It was seeing Breakdown, though, seeing him walk, seeing his metal rusted and paint distorted in a way Knock Out never would have allowed, seeing him pander to Megatron in a way so vastly out of his usual way-

The human's voice leaving whenever his mouth opened-

The missing optic replaced and unbalanced with the monochromatic filter on the other-

Wrong, wrong, wrong

Maybe death was an abstract that was too far from what he could see that he couldn't react to it.

But seeing Breakdown again twisted so wrong?

That was no unreachable abstract.

That had been a slap in the face.

And he had reacted to it.

On Cybertron, he and Arcee had ended up discussing such. After all, both had lost their partners towards the end of the war.

Her reaction was right. His felt off. "But that's grief," she'd said when he described the feelings seeing C.Y.L.A.S. (she was the only autobot he dared discuss the entire C.Y.L.A.S. debacle with; the others were just far too much of bleeding sparks to understand his, ahem, reaction to it all) had brought about. "But it's not how you described yours!" he had protested. Arcee had taken none of that. "Everyone grieves differently. Hey, even the sickest of bots can grieve. It won't look like grief does on the rest of us, but it's there. Your process doesn't have to look like ours."

The way she said it? It made him feel excluded from the whole 'sickest bots' category she'd mentioned.

"I mean," he started up hesitantly, "What would you do? If-" Oh, like he'd forget the name when Starscream mentioned it nearly every cycle; but he had to act a little slow with it here. The Arcee here hadn't ever talked about her offlined partner. "...Cliffjumper survived, would you change? Wouldn't you panic at the possibility of losing him? Stress about whether you'd been doing things wrong before and fate had given you a second chance to correct that?"

It took her a while to respond. Knock Out worried during the silence that maybe she was going to blow up over hearing her partner referred to.

Finally, Arcee turned back to him.

"I don't think so. Cliff always told me when I was acting out of line. Even if I'm not a very open bot, he always spoke enough for the two of us to understand where we stood with each other. But if I did have a second chance, I...I would freak out over the possibility of almost losing him again." She grew quieter when she added: "Primus knows how I acted after losing Tailgate."

She remained somber for a moment. Then the two-wheeler brightened up into sarcasm again.

"Look-" Arcee said, giving him an amused glance. "None of this is an excuse to act like a creeper."

A moment later and she tagged on: "Bee needs friends. Let him have this."

The garbled noise the medic made was better left untranslated. He was confused, and irritated about being confused, and confused about being irritated, and-

It was a mess.

"I don't understand why they're doing this!" Knock Out started up in frustration. Arcee cut him off.

"Do you think Breakdown understands why we hang out?"

Oh.

He hadn't considered that.

Why couldn't he just naturally wonder scrap like that? Life would be so much easier if he was just normal.

"Look," the two-wheeler sighed. "Honestly, I'm just trying to give you a helping servo. Maybe, instead of being clingy, you can follow Breakdown's lead. Try to let go a little bit. You've been attached to the hip ever since Airachnid almost killed him and I think...I think it's suffocating him. Both of you."

Knock Out didn't want to accept that.

They were supposed to be connected. They were supposed to act attached. It was the whole reason they'd sacrificed so much running from the Stunticons.

But he hadn't found it crippling to live on his own before; it was the curiosity that crippled him. It was the fragging autobot 'friendships' that made him eat himself in wonder over who Breakdown really was.

Stupid autobots, he thought endearingly.

"Hey." Arcee piped up again. "All this you're going through, he's going through, I'm going through; it's not forever. The war is gonna end someday. I'm sure Optimus will get us through to that end. All of us."

She offered him one of those rare smiles that didn't feel sarcastic.

"We're both going to make it."

His own expression melted into one of relief.

Had he mentioned yet he had really missed her when she'd left him behind on Cybertron?


"Follow the light."

Bulkhead rolled his one good optic.

"Come on, Ratch, it's fin-"

Honestly, listening to wreckers try to ignore their medics was a bit familiar. The Stunticons had often whined similarly. Dead End used to slip away from any of Knock Out's check ups with some excuse about how useless medicine was when they 'were all going to die anyway'. Wildrider wouldn't ever hold still long enough for a check up. Heatseeker would comply, but only just; unless he was bleeding more than the 'other guy', he thought they were useless too. And Motormaster?

Well, they all had known just how much he had cared about having a medic on the team.

Really, Breakdown had been the only one to behave in routine check ups.

If the doctor had been someone else, he may have been far less excited about going.

But Knock Out didn't treat him like an idiot. If Breakdown asked, he would explain each technique he was doing.

One cycle, he was trying to restrain a wriggling Wildrider and had turned right to the blue mech.

"Well? Get over here and help out!" he'd said and Breakdown had done just that.

It hadn't ended with helping hold the impatient con down; the medic would let him run energon lines, administer medical grade, other such small, assistant tasks.

He'd begun as the assistant while they were still in the Stunticons.

It was much later that he'd started calling himself a nurse.

Long after they both had left the Stunticons behind.

Whoever they practiced on after that were strangers. Randoms. Important officers, sometimes, but unknowns all the same.

Giving check ups to strangers felt very different from doing it to a teammate.

Sometimes, during their travels, he'd missed the times they'd administer physical exams to one of the other Stunticons.

Sometimes, he'd missed being one of the Stunticons.

He had often wondered what had happened to the team.

Which one's were still alive, if any. What they were doing now.

He'd never had the nerve to research the answers.

"It is not fine until I say it is," the autobot medic interrupted with a roll of his optics.

Huh. Autobot medic.

He guessed there wasn't just one anymore.

Knock Out was prancing around with that symbol these days. There were two, then. And so long as Knock Out worked here, Breakdown was going to be his assistant.

Or Ratchet's, when the situation demanded it.

Though the old medic didn't want him helping just now.

It was better that he not work in the medbay when either of the wreckers were patients, or so the line of thought went.

Honestly?

Smart idea.

Even if Breakdown hadn't really...felt a whole lotta hate towards the green guy these days.

In truth, he'd been hard to hate ever since the bot had broke him out of M.E.C.H.'s lab.

All this meant was that as Ratchet tried to make sure that Bulkhead's replacement optic (a messy, scraped together thing) continued to operate well, he stood out of the way organizing the medical report.

Part of him was distracted by looking at the weird replacement optic on the green mech. If he did what the scout recommended, he could get one of those scrappy optics too. And having a full range of vision and depth perception was pretty wonderful. So why did he feel so hesitant to do it?

A short distance away, Ratchet let Bulkhead off the berth.

"Alright, go," he waved him away, "But remember to do your expressional reps."

"Aww, Ratch, but Miko and I were gonna-"

"No excuses!" the medic interrupted, "You don't want-"

-those facial muscles to atrophy, Breakdown thought at the same time the medic said it.

See? Knock Out had done just fine at teaching him his stuff. Sure, he was no medic but Breakdown knew his fair share.

He moved out of the way as Bulkhead left the medbay. The green mech nodded at him and he returned the gesture briefly.

Better than ignoring each other's existence, he supposed.

Everytime Optimus saw this sort of interaction, he looked as if he was going to step in and...what? Offer a bunch of praise and compliments now that they could tolerate each other?

That sounded incredibly uncomfortable. He hoped the Prime wouldn't try it.

The wrecker had barely made it a few steps away before the little human pet (called Raf, he was pretty sure) called both the bots over. Ratchet sighed and left his tools where they were to go investigate; as he would have with Knock Out, Breakdown moved over to start putting the tools away for the medic.

"What is it?" Bulkhead asked from the other side of the partition.

"If it's just another Bumblebee sighting...wait. Is that a cybertronian escape pod? In Earth's atmosphere?"

Huh. It'd been a few days since any sort of excitement had happened. Looked like the fun was about to start again.