Author's Note: For Kaede Akira and others who have clamored to see Ironhide alive and well, here's an extra-fast update. :)

Also, a cube of high-grade to Jason M. Lee for recognizing the real-world inspiration for my Ratchet's toy design. We have a Bumblebee and an Optimus Prime Gravity Bot and I thought for sure those things wouldn't last a month. We've had them for almost half a year now, and they've survived being regularly played with by autistic toddlers. Those scrapping things are TOUGH! :) (If you search for "Gravity Bots" on Hasbro's website, you can see what I'm talking about.)

Now...on with the show! :)

It's amazing how many lumps and bumps are on an Autobot's chest – all gears and wires and tubing and armor plates. It's also amazing how, if you're persistent enough, you can find a comfortable place next to the spark of someone whose chassis is as unforgiving as Ironhide's. Ratchet helped a lot with that, I have to admit, positioning Ironhide's arms so that his front tires were exposed a little more. It was marginally softer than the surrounding gears, but I took what I could get and perched there, my hand resting on the foot-thick armor that protected his spark. Ratchet thought the contact close to 'Hide's spark might be helpful in some vague way.

I suspected it was more that Ratchet didn't know what else to do. The external injuries were almost insignificant (especially for Ironhide who, I'd been told, was quite literally tough as nails), and the damaged internal parts had been replaced. It was the electrical relays and circuits that had taken the most damage, and that was all so minute and wide-spread that Ratchet didn't even try to repair it all. He'd replaced the relays that needed it, repaired the most critical circuits, and then just placed his trust in Primus and in Ironhide's own repair systems. Every day, Ratchet did a little more work on him, but he didn't like to keep Ironhide sedated for long, because the slagger should have woken up already. It had been two and a half days now.

So Mom and I became like lucky rabbits' feet – comforting but useless. We took turns, and Dad did, too, when he wasn't on duty, cuddling up to Ironhide's spark chamber. We'd go through the motions of life – eating, showering, going to school, working shifts – but one or the other of us was always with Ironhide.

Time passes slowly when you're keeping watch with the dying. Ratchet and Arcee both assured me that Ironhide would come around, but I until could see the light in his eyes, um…optics, and apologize for being such a brat, it felt like my life was teetering on the edge of some terrible brink. Each passing second weighed heavily on my heart.

Mom was dozing on the med-bay cot; she hadn't slept well last night. Lost in my worried thoughts, I stroked the warm, silvery metal that protected Ironhide's spark. What was taking him so long?

Arcee came into the med bay and glanced up at me. "How are you doing, Annabelle?"

I half-laughed. "Okay. You?"

"Me?" she asked coyly. "I'm suspicious."

"About what?"

"About you. I'll bet you're bored to tears."

I shook my head. This was part of my penance for treating them all so badly. If boredom was the worst they would let me endure, I was getting off easy. Way too easy.

"This might cheer you up," she said, walking back into a storage area of the med bay. A moment later she returned with a smudged-up and worn cardboard box in her hands. Climbing the platform to where she could reach me, she offered it to me. "If nothing else, it should bring back some memories."

Curiosity got the better of me, and I took the box, pulling back the folded flaps that closed the top. It was full of cars – toy transforming cars. A Christmas present from Ratchet and the younger twins many years ago.

Tears filled my eyes as I picked up the black truck that sat on the top of the pile. Memories rushed over me of playing with them when I was little. Two of them – the matching orange and green cars – had been lost when I left them on the beach one night. Still gritty, they were both safe and sound near the bottom of the box. Dad had accidentally stepped on and broke the red-and-blue semi and claimed that Ratchet wasn't able to repair it. Only now did I appreciate why he had burst out in laughter when he realized that he'd stepped on the truck. It was in one piece, sitting next to the green car. The pink motorcycle I'd left in California one year when Mom and R.C. and I went to visit the ranch. It and the yellow sports car and the ambulance and the silver-and-blue truck and the matching Corvettes…they were all there. "I always wondered where these went."

"We gathered them up over the years," Arcee said gently. "Prowl felt that it was too much of a risk for you to keep them – you weren't supposed to know about us and these toys came dangerously close to revealing the truth. But we kept them, hoping to return them some day."

And Ironhide was on top because I'd kept him the longest. I still remembered the day I wanted the truck to haul a load of "hay" for my horses (I was on a Black Stallion kick at the time) and couldn't find it. It was one of the few times I'd voluntarily cleaned my room, but I never did find it. "Mom had to steal Ironhide, didn't she."

"Yes," Arcee admitted. "You never even noticed when you 'lost' Prowl or Wheelie, but Ironhide hadn't been gone a week before you missed him."

I shook my head in disbelief, tipping Ironhide up to reveal the robot. "Now I feel really stupid."

Arcee lightly laughed. "I don't know why you should. You were only nine when we finally confiscated Ironhide."

I'd freaked out because they'd lied, but…"You were trying to tell me all along."

"No."

The firmness of her tone made me look up in surprise. "The twins and Ratchet were trying to make you happy. That's all. Mudflap and Skids were watching the actors' commentary on a movie and one of the actresses jokingly complained that her action figure made her look fat. They thought that they would be the coolest action figures ever and bribed Ratchet into helping them make transforming toys of themselves."

Wiping away the tears, I asked, "How in the world did the twins pull that off?"

"They promised Ratchet that as long as he was building the toys – and for an equal number of days afterward – he wouldn't have to repair them, that they wouldn't fight at all."

"Wow. How long did that last?"

"The twins were true to their word, and that's why Ratchet made cars of all of us. He figured it was a public service."

I chuckled and reached into the box to pull out Motorcycle Lady. She was near the top of the pile, too. Glancing up again, I smiled at Arcee. "Thank you."

"My pleasure, little one."

…

The third day, Mom sent me to school despite my protests. 'Hide should be waking up any minute – he was overdue. Something was undeniably wrong with him and they expected me to go to school?

I refused to go until Arcee finally transformed into her alt-mode, pulled out her holoform, and physically escorted me to her bike. "Ride with me or with Sideswipe, but we're taking you one way or another. Ironhide would be angry if you skipped out on your studies because of him." Deciding it was better (both less attention-grabbing and more pleasant) to ride with Arcee, I'd smashed the helmet on my head with poor grace and swung up behind her holoform, trying to ignore the fact that she'd said 'Ironhide would be angry' instead of 'will.' Funny how little things like that made a world – a universe – of difference.

Just like with the last two days, I didn't learn a thing at school. Arcee picked me up again afterward and brought me back to the med bay. Seeing us, Mom stood up from her seat on Ironhide's front tire and stretched. "I'm beginning to feel like an actual mother hen," she joked, "brooding up here in an Autobot nest."

I rolled my eyes and groaned. "Good grief, Mom! How many puns can you cram into a single sentence?"

"I thought it was rather witty," Ratchet said behind me, and I did a double-take when I turned. Even in this setting and after spending several days here, I still associated that voice with the human-looking Ron Hatchett, not the twenty-foot-tall Autobot medic. This would take a while to get used to.

Climbing the platform up to the repair berth, I asked Ratchet, "How's he doing?"

He turned away from the other berth where he was working on Arcee's purple component to run a scan on Ironhide. "Neural processor activity is approximately 80% of normal. His spark stability isn't quite where I'd like it to be, but as long as he doesn't see any action or excitement for a while, he should be fine. Diagnostics were still detecting some problem areas in the repair systems and motor functions, so I performed surgery again while you were at school." He stepped over to Ironhide and removed two disks that had been magnetically attached to 'Hide's head; they were neural processor dampeners, the Autobot equivalent of general anesthesia. "I was just waiting for you to arrive to see if he'll come around this time."

"I'm going to grab something from the break room quick," Mom said as she passed me on the stairs. "Do you want anything?"

"A package of those cheese and crackers would be nice."

She grinned. "You got it." Touching Ironhide's helm lightly as she passed, she said, "Feel better."

I shrugged into the modified parachute harness that was required when working near injured 'bots. It was similar to the one Johnston had been wearing that first time I came into the med bay. If Ratchet needed to snatch you out of the way in a hurry, he needed an easy handle. Quinn had developed it years ago after nearly being squished – first by a semi-conscious Prime and then in a hasty grab by Ratchet. All the repair crew wore one while working.

Finding a hand-hold on some of the armor on his side, I scrambled up onto Ironhide's chassis. "Come on, you lug," I said, resting my cheek on the warm steel above his spark. "What's the hold-up?"

No answer.

I sighed, idly tracing lines on the steel for several long minutes. "Tell me about him, Ratchet. Something you weren't allowed to tell me before."

"You will have a chance to ask him yourself," he pointed out. "It's taking longer than I anticipated, but his repair systems are slowly overcoming the damage."

"But I don't know hardly anything about him."

"That's a double-negative," he absentmindedly corrected me.

I huffed. "You know what I mean. I hardly know anything about him."

"What do you want to know?"

I thought for a second. "How did you meet him?"

He half-smiled. "The first time I met him was when he defected to the Autobots."

"He was a Decepticon?!"

"Almost."

Arcee and Chromia came in then and Arcee jumped right into repairing the purple component. I wondered briefly what it would be like to repair yourself like that.

"He was part of the Cybertron defense forces back before the war," Ratchet continued. "I may have helped repair him at some point – I honestly don't remember – but I didn't really get to know him until after the war broke out. Megatron declared a war of aggression against another species, but Optimus rose up in defiance against him, saying that it went against every principle of our civilization. Most of the science division sided with Optimus, while most of the planetary defense forces sided with Megatron. Ironhide was one of the few exceptions."

"He and I both were," Chromia put in.

Ratchet nodded in agreement. "Megatron declared Optimus' faction traitors and turned on his fellow Cybertronians. That was the beginning of the end for our entire species."

"Ironhide was the first to choose the Autobots," Chromia admitted. "He was convinced that Optimus and the others weren't guilty of the things Megatron accused them of, but I wasn't so sure. Megatron made some very convincing arguments. Ironhide left, but I stayed – with reservations. If Optimus was guilty, then I wasn't going to remain a neutral, but I didn't like some of the things Megatron was tolerating and encouraging among his ranks."

"At the same time," Arcee cut in, "Ironhide was known for being an efficient and enthusiastic warrior, and he knew that we would be distrustful. So he wandered for a while, eventually finding his way to Autobot territory and Optimus. I was part of the contingent that captured him."

Ratchet snorted. "Would you believe he pulled his cannons on Prime during their first interview? Nobody…" he elbowed Arcee, "thought to put stasis cuffs on him or to deactivate his weapons."

I tried to imagine it, Ironhide threatening Optimus like that. "You're kidding."

"Nope," Chromia sniggered. "It let him prove his point, though. They weren't fighters, and they would need mechs like him. Once Optimus was convinced of 'Hide's sincerity, he allowed Ironhide to contact me. I brought two other femmes with me – Firestar and Flareup."

"Decepticon ranks are not a safe place for femmes," Arcee explained. "They're considered too weak."

Chromia snorted. "Until we blow their afts off."

Arcee tipped her head in acknowledgement.

"Slagger," a rough, familiar voice mumbled.

I jumped to my feet and Ratchet literally dropped what he was doing to hurry to the berth. I protested when the medic picked me up by the harness, but he only moved me as far as the platform. "Ironhide?"

"Ne'er…was…a…'con. Slagger."

Chromia was at his side, her fingers lightly caressing his face. "You're too tough to be a 'con," she soothingly agreed. "Too strong."

I started toward him again, but the medic's hand blocked my way. "Ratchet," I whined.

"Spitlet?" 'Hide asked, the light in his optics flickering as he tried to bring them online.

"Annabelle is right here," Ratchet said. "You've not been left without a Lennox at your side for the last three days."

He turned his head, looking for me. "Annabelle…"

I hopped over Ratchet's hand and climbed up Ironhide's shoulder to my place by his spark. Ratchet gave me a warning look but didn't stop me. Resting my cheek against the silver armor again, I said, "I'm so sorry, Ironhide. So sorry. I was stupid and mean and childish, and I'm so sorry. You were so excited to tell me and I ruined it for you. Tell me how to make it up to you? Please? Please forgive me?"

Slowly, he lifted the hand on the other side of his body and brought it to rest lightly over my shoulders. "Little one," he sighed. His thumb gently stroked my hair. "I frightened you, little one. It's my fault, not yours."

"I wasn't scared of you," I firmly declared. "Never. I was upset because you had lied to me, but I understand now why you had to. You were as honest with me as you could be. But I was never afraid that you'd hurt me."

Chuckling, he stroked my hair again. "My little one," he said, pride in his voice. "A Lennox through and through, with your mother's fearless fire." His hand rested a little more heavily on me then – holding me close to his spark.

Again I felt…small. Not like when I was in the Autobot barracks – that was intimidating and the enormous size of everything just put my short, fragile human life in perspective. Here, cradled by Ironhide, I felt almost like how I imagine an infant feels in her daddy's arms. Safe, cherished, warm. Of course, even when I was an infant, I was never as small as I was here in Ironhide's hand. "Forgive me?" I pleaded again.

"On one condition," he said softly.

"Anything."

"Never tell anyone else that you're not afraid of me. Bad for the reputation."

The femmes and Ratchet laughed with me at that one. "Deal." With a contented sigh, I said, "Missed you, 'Hide."

"Missed you, too, Spitlet," he softly answered.

"She goes by Annabelle, now," Arcee gently corrected.

I bit my lip, realizing that however Ironhide might interpret that, it was bound to be hurtful. I almost took it back and told them they could call me by my Autobot name. But it really was a humiliating nickname. They were a bunch of advanced sentient robots – they couldn't come up with something better for me?

"What's this?" Mom's voice demanded, and I could hear her shoes tapping on the cement floor as she crossed the med bay. "I keep watch for the last three days and you decide to wake up during one of the few times I leave?"

"I could go back into recharge," Ironhide threatened.

"Slagger," she cheerfully insulted him as she climbed the platform.

Ironhide let me go, and I climbed down from his chassis. As soon as I had the harness off, Mom handed me my food and climbed up onto his chest, but this time she stood defiantly on the tire with her arms crossed and looking down at him. "Who gave you permission to get wounded, anyway?"

"Won't happen again," he assured her. "What did happen, anyway?"

All the happiness drained from Mom's expression. "Shockwave."

"Frag," he muttered.

"There's time enough for that later," Ratchet interrupted, gingerly picking unharnessed Mom up and setting her beside me. She and Dad were probably the only humans on the planet who could ignore Ratchet's safety procedures and get away with it. "The repair team could handle the pellets without injury, so they pulled them out. Annabelle helped in her own way, too. But that's all for later. You need rest."

Turning to Mom and me, the medic said, "You've seen him now. He's awake and will be fine. Now both of you – out. Visiting hours will resume at 1900 hours."

"Thanks, Ratchet," Mom said warmly as she led the way toward the med bay doors. "Feel better, Ironhide."

"Already do," he rumbled.

"Oh," I said, turning around to point at first Ironhide and then Ratchet. "You and you – there's a wash and wax with your name on it. We'd better see you both within a week."

Ironhide chuckled again. "Yes ma'am."