The Honor in Duty
Chapter 6
Consequences of Courage
Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers or the Transformers: Prime television series. I own only my OCs and my plot.
Okay guys, the last few chapters have been pretty action-packed, so this one's a bit of a filler, but a vital one. As far as this being so late, well, life's been crazy, so I'll just be updating whenever I can for the forseeable future. So thank you all for your patience and for sticking with TB!
Review Responses: To AllSpark Princess: Yes! Victory for Team Prime, all have returned! I'm not gonna give away any spoilers, but Soundwave is very good at what he does. So is Ratchet though, so who knows? We'll just have to wait and see what happens!
To Cashagon: Ohhh, yes the last chapter was quite a lot of fun to write, I'm glad you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it! Miko is such a fun character to write, and I don't get a chance to very often, but when I do, she's priceless. And this chapter won't disappoint. Lots of emotional stress and recouping in here, so enjoy the feels!
To redlinevcr: Alas, unfortunately not every chapter can be so amazingly long as the last one. I'm glad you enjoyed it, and encourage you onward to the next chapter!
To ZabuzasGirl: Haha! Welcome back! It's nice to see that you've found the sequel to Duty and Deceit. Enjoy!
"Makeshift?" She asked softly, peeking into her mentor's small allotment of space in the over-crowded med-bay.
He sat upright on a berth, his rust red optics offlined, sharp claws clasped and propped casually over his abdomen. The charcoal Shifter's sharp features were mottled in numerous places with patch metal, especially around his chest. Jagged, newly-set welds covered his frame wherever patches didn't, and his lips were curled into a harsh sneer, nullifying the illusion of restfulness.
The little two-wheeler prodded gently at the bond they held between them, volunteering a brief pulse of worry and desire to help in any way she could. Her mentor onlined one optic to regard her with a flat gaze shielding an underlying fury that she could feel tinging the edges of their link.
You okay? She asked silently, using the bond rather than speaking aloud in the packed and bustling medical ward. Reports said your cover broke.
"My cover was handed to the Prime on a silver platter, along with our whole entire slagging attack force!" Makeshift snarled, clenching his fists in anger. Beside him, the monitor's slow beeping sped up significantly.
The masked femme glanced around, noting the curious glances her mentor's outburst brought. What do you mean? Do you think you were sold out?
I know I was sold out. He growled again, We have a spy in the CI and you and the Wave need to find the glitch. We got our afts handed to us, 'Byte.
She grimaced as her datapad vibrated in her servos, sending a ping through her comms system. That would be the casualty list coming in. She'd have to go through each bot's files and transfer them to the deceased records. The two-wheeler noted the size of the file, a resigned dread settling in her spark. That was a lot of loved ones to send condolence letters to.
I know, Shift… I know. She sighed heavily, her outward air of formality hiding very little of her state of mind from the mech. How badly were you harmed?
Makeshift huffed, shrugging the question off and crossing his arms over his chest with a wince. I'm better off than most of our force. They took out a quarter of us before we even knew what was going on, then another quarter snuffed by the time the call to retreat got out. Almost all of the rest of us're in here, rusting on our afts while the 'Lord Protector' tries to fix our screw up.
This massacre… This wasn't your fault, Makeshift.
Her engine rumbled in righteous fury at this betrayal, from within her own division. The division of which she was supposed to be the second in command, the leader. She and Soundwave ought to have noticed if there was a traitor in their midst. She ought to have prevented this before it could even have been an issue, much less a defeat so colossal as this.
She reiterated determinedly, No, this isn't your fault. The life-En shed today rests on my spark. And I swear to Primus and the lives that have joined him: I will find this traitor and when I do, I will end him.
Skyquake smiled down fondly at the little femme hugging him like he was her lifeline. He had to admit it made him feel good. It was also humbling to have such undoubting faith placed in his unworthy self.
In the corner of his optic, the jet saw Bulkhead's expression suddenly go sour as Miko vibrantly related her short adventure of a failed rescue operation with the AWOL Decepticon defector. Almost too late, he pushed Terabyte aside right as the Wrecker's fist swung in, crashing into his face with enough force to make the larger jet stumble back a step.
"What. Were. You. Thinking?!" The olive Wrecker shouted, fist swinging again. The gladiator instinctively grabbed the mech's fist, crushing it hard enough to make the attacks stop. Bulkhead growled at him, yanking his fist back and waving his hand in Miko's direction, "What were you thinking? She's a sparkling! You don't take a sparkling into an enemy mothership! You could have killed her!"
The jet's wings pulled upwards and splayed out in an aggressive stance. He straightened with a challenging rumble of his own, more powerful engine, glaring down at the Autobot, "Miko wanted to help rescue her friends and saw the opportunity when I decided to do something about it. Unlike her guardian. And everybot else in this base."
"Your idea of a rescue is getting yourself beat half to death and imprisoned with a sparkling in your cockpit the whole time?" Bulkhead shrugged off Bumblebee's restraining hand and ignored Miko's loudening protests, mixed with whispers of apology from Terabyte, who was standing to the side of them, mask back up and scarlet optics wide.
"Miko was aware of the dangers when she volunteered. You ought to trust your ward's judgement." Skyquake snarled back, earning a shout of agreement from the human girl.
"Her judgement isn't what I don't trust! You should have known better than to take a child into a war-zone!"
At that, Skyquake flung up his hands, shoving past the Wrecker with a snarl, his tone incredulous as he gestured to the other two children and the woman that was Jack's carrier, "Then what on Cybertron have you been doing for the past year and a half? Because last I checked, using children to rob museums, keeping them in what to them is an alien base where our very life-blood and fuel is deadly to them, and sending them to our war-shattered homeworld didn't count as a school project, Bulkhead."
Optimus came in to the conversation that he'd simply been observing up until then, resting a hand of encouragement on Bulkhead's shoulder. "Skyquake is correct, Bulkhead. The choice was Miko's to make, and he protected her to the best of his ability. She is returned safe and unharmed, and for that you owe Skyquake your gratitude, not judgement."
The Prime turned to him with a small smile, "However, perhaps having a plan of action prior to attacking the Decepticon forces may be more effective, should someone require rescuing again."
"Yes, Prime."
"No, you are not 'just fine' and no you will not go tend to yourself, and you certainly aren't going to go around doing my job for me!" Ratchet bellowed, drawing the Skyquake's attention to the sight of Terabyte getting half dragged to the med-bay.
She was trying to argue the logic of allowing her to help, but the gruff red and white medic was having none of it, and he sent Jetfire out to begin repairs on the other Autobots to attempt to alleviate her concerns.
The medic growled impatiently, "Yes, I can see that Skyquake needs medical attention! Jetfire is more than qualified to take care of it! I don't care who you think is more deserving of my time, youngling, so help me-!"
His grumbling faded into an unintelligibly muffled continuation of his griping as the two disappeared into the medical bay. The remaining Autobots outside chuckled at the femme's plight, each of them having found themselves in her position many times before.
Three Days Later
She sat on the berth in Ratchet's domain, swinging her pedes idly over the edge, for the most part patiently waiting for the medic's assessment of her health. Again. Or still. He had been working on her in between threat-enforced recharge cycles far longer than she cared for, yet appreciated afterwards every time.
She had run a diagnostic over herself, so she was well aware of the reason for the calamitous racket going on in the next room over. Today however, he had apparently discovered what he deemed the last of the wrongs in her frame, and was now having an only partially informative fit about it in the next room over with the rest of Team Prime.
Terabyte supposed that they had left her in here for the purpose of discussing her poor state of frame and mind in privacy, but as usual they forgot just how much better her audial finials were compared to the next bot. She shuddered, wishing Skyquake hadn't have gone in with them. Even Jetfire and the humans had left her in favor of hearing the medic's prognosis.
It wasn't going to be good, she knew that much.
She was far underweight, she had more bruising than she did healthy protoform, including what felt like a cracked spark chamber courtesy of Bulkhead. Ratchet had insisted on putting her in stasis for all of the check-ups so far, so unfortunately, she had nothing but her own self-assessments to base the severity of her injuries off of. Her whole frame in general ached and her pain receptors had been going haywire since about the first two joors back from the Nemesis. Her internal system calibrations were all so far off she knew Ratchet would have to help her get them back in line as a result of the Shifting.
She shuddered again, her tanks churning at the very thought of it. She wriggled on the berth, stopping her swinging pedes as her whole frame seemed to erupt in fire, her armor itching like she had rust mites. Her optics closed and she took in a deep vent, rolling her shoulder tires in agitation.
A finial flicked as Ratchet started yelling incomprehensibly. Very likely finding every derogatory term he could think of for Knockout whilst flinging wrenches at walls and Autobots who couldn't have done anything about it. Terabyte dug her claws into her right gold-jointed knee as it spasmed painfully, her vents trembling.
She hissed faintly, wrapping her now Energon stained servos in her other hand, focusing on smoothing out the inconsistent cycling of her ventilation systems. The two-wheeler's processors whirled through another set of diagnostics, but she still couldn't find anything in them to explain how she felt.
Her systems had been running unusually high temperatures ever since coming back to Outpost Omega, but she'd dismissed it as insignificant. Now that the temperatures had been rising at an alarming rate as the joors passed, she was beginning to grow concerned. Her spark fluttered and her vision blurred over with static briefly.
"Ratchet?" Terabyte called quietly, unable to keep the waver from her voice. "Ratchet!"
When the medic didn't hear her amidst his own yelling, the navy femme slid off the berth and took a few wobbly steps towards where they were meeting. She heard what sounded distinctly like Bulkhead trying to defend himself from the medic's ire as he shouted about buckled spark-chambers.
Terabyte glared at her trembling hand as she pushed on the glass door keeping her in the medical ward. She leaned against the door for support, unable for the moment to open it. The little spy's engine growled weakly as she stood there, afraid to move lest she fall.
/Ratchet.../ She commed sloppily, the misfiring of her pain receptors seeping a blur through her processors that made it difficult to focus. /I think you should check my vitals. Also, I may, incidentally, require some assistance returning to the berth./
Moments later, she found herself scooped up in Skyquake's arms and deposited on the berth with Ratchet hovering over her rattling off a full interrogation of her status to which she responded with a shiver and a mumbled request for the temperature to be turned up. She was suddenly so cold, even with the fire lacing through her frame.
Skyquake stood nearby, watching her with an expression that she vaguely recognized as fear and rage brought with it. The last time those perfect ruby optics held that look, the Autobots lost their best tactical officer and second in command.
"Don't kill anyone, Sky…" She whispered, offering him a weak, lopsided little smile, her mask having slid down at some point. "Promise, I'll be… fine."
Ratchet frowned. "None of your injuries should have this effect on you. Not even Knockout's nanites are responsible for this. Terabyte, I need to know exactly what that malfunction of a medic did to you."
She sat up shakily, clenching her fists as another spasm jolted her frame. "He took out your tracker. He… put in the nanites – took several attempts to make them functional – and painkillers. Lots of painkillers. Also lots of modifications to my transforming cog, vocalizers, and neural net. Then of course there's the slave codes that he and Soundwave installed at the same time that they manipulated me in to believing that Skyquake had been terminated."
The femme's optic ridges pulled together in a contemplative scowl. "Three full Energon purges, first for the Dark Energon, then twice for the nanites. A t-cog transplant after the original tore in a Shift gone wrong – as well the secondary fuel tank, which also ruptured. A couple of joint reconstructions, and he had to rewire communication systems…"
Trailing off, the spy nodded. That about summed it up. Everything else was just minor repairs from the beginning stages of the Shifting. Telling the medic about every single little damage was pointless, it would only send him into an even greater rage than the current, and she was not in the mood for causing needless grievances.
As it were, Ratchet's turquoise optics were narrowed in barely subdued anger. She predicted something would be inexplicably riddled with wrench dents in the near future. The medic's engine rumbled in sync with Skyquake's beside her and she absently leaned towards the green jet and his troubled EM field, allowing her own field to wrap around his, pulsing safety and reassurance.
He was angry enough that his emotional electro-magnetic field was actually beginning to physically spark, but her gently calming field seemed to calm the mech slightly.
Suddenly Ratchet stopped running the scanner over her for the umpteenth time, his optics widened and he let out a brief exclamation of understanding. "By the Allspark, I'm a fool!"
"Congratulations. How is this relevant to Terabyte?" Skyquake drawled, sweeping optic ridge quirked up in impatience.
"How much sedation and painkillers did he administer, and how frequently?" Ratchet demanded, pulling her somewhat gruffly from her attention to Skyquake.
She blinked at him and the force of his questioning, flicking her finials to shake out a tiny amount of ticklish numbness that was creeping through them. "Joorly… I am unaware of the dosage, he just said that it was more than normally acceptable… Why?"
The medic spluttered furiously, grumbling unintelligibly at increasing volumes for half a breem straight, flinging his hands and wrench around like he was mentally beating somebot. At last he exclaimed, "Joorly? Joorly?! Of all the two-bit, glitching-! What on Cybertron was he thinking?!"
The little femme scooted over on the berth so that she was neatly tucked into Skyquake's side, her armor pinned down over her uncontrollably shivering frame. Her voice was small and tentative when she spoke next, looking to Skyquake as she addressed the medic. "I-I suppose now isn't a good time to ask for a pain chip then? R-Ratchet, it hurts…"
He instantly wilted and sighed heavily, looking completely exhausted and drained. He shook his helm gently, then stopped himself. The white and red medic pulled a small chip from his subspace, pressing it into the slot under her wrist-plate gently, "This is three-quarters the recommended maximum dosage. I can't guarantee how long it will it last."
Ratchet turned and dug through his supplies for two breems, then turned to Skyquake and gave him a hand-sized box filled with pain-chips ordered by color in descending order of strength. "She can have one of the blue ones every two joors. No more, no sooner, no matter what. A week of that dosage, move down and increase the time between by one joor. Understood?"
"What is wrong with her, Medic?" The green jet growled, taking the offered box with a suspicious glare, nonetheless pleased to note that Terabyte's trembling had abated slightly.
The medic snarled, then spat, "Knockout got her systems addicted to all the slag he was giving her to keep her functional enough to keep experimenting on her."
"He didn't like it any more than you do, Ratchet." Terabyte defended softly, staring out blankly into space as the chip he'd given her seemed to wipe away the pain with its tender touch. "He didn't-"
Skyquake's deep growling, directed at her, cut her off, making her pull away from him and watch him with confusion in her gaze. "Don't you dare defend that pit-spawned-"
She interrupted him indignantly, "Don't you dare tell me who I can and can't defend! He can change, I just know it. If you and I could change, he deserves the chance as well."
"He is not the same as us. You were misled, Knockout is a demented Decepticon butcher."
"So were you!" Terabyte roared, then glowered at the towering green jet.
The jet whose story she was well aware of, because he had trusted her with that knowledge. Her lips pulled up in a snarl, and she would have stood up and flared out her armor aggressively had she had the energy. At the spark-deep hurt in his optics, she backed down and her tone softened fractionally. She hadn't meant to pull that card on him. She had no right to do that to him, and as his friend she never should have even thought it.
She stared down at her silver claws intertwined in her lap, apology heavy on her revealed, scarred face. "I'm sorry, Sky… That was undeserved. But you weren't there. It may take vorns yet, but Knockout can and will change, I'm certain of it."
Next Rotation
Terabyte drug herself upright in her berth, helm aching and frame burning. The pain was no different than what she had come to accept as normal. She stretched her struts slightly, spun her shoulder tires, and groaned quietly from within her engine, hissing as the stretch put a small amount of pressure on her bruised and freshly welded spark chamber.
The little two-wheeler was about to stand up and leave when she suddenly became aware of the low hum of blasters charging.
"After Optimus offed Unicron with Matrix, he didn't remember us. Megatron told you to take him to their ship, and you followed his orders." Arcee growled, her tone murderous, but her voice not rising yet, "For four months you followed his orders. Do you really expect us to trust you as though nothing's changed? How many times do you think you can switch factions; flip sides on us, and us still buy your excuses?"
She sighed heavily at the words she'd heard so many times, again and again and again; every waking moment she'd lived on that ship, no matter what lengths she'd gone to to avoid their mocking, jeering faces. Traitor, flip-sides, faction jumper. "I would be a fool to presume upon such blind faith in my loyalties, Arcee, and I am more than aware of the fact that my loyalties have been less than trustworthy as of late."
The slightly taller blue and pink femme blinked indigo optics at her in confusion, clearly not having expected such a reply.
"I expect no less of you than of myself, and I know for a fact that I cannot be trusted where Lord Megatron is present." Terabyte's optics narrowed minutely at the respectful title that slipped into her words, her engine growling in distaste. Her voice lowered to hardly more than a broken whisper, "How could I expect you to trust me when I can't even trust myself?"
Arcee scowled distrustfully, then her optics softened slightly, and she put away her blasters. "What do you mean you know for a fact you can't be trusted?"
"Did Ratchet not run a processor scan of me during my time in his care?"
"He wanted your permission before invading your privacy." The other femme said, still not sounding like she particularly agreed with that decision.
"Ah." Terabyte clenched her jaw against a wave of intense craving, followed by a stinging burn through her sensory relays. She vented harshly to clear the static from her vocalizers, "When Soundwave captured me approximately one Earth year ago, he implanted a slave code, the master of which is Megatron, should the memory lock fail. Its existence remained unknown to me until Megatron informed me of it when he offered his services to our Prime."
The little two-wheeler shivered, shaking her helm to clear the continual ache in the back of her processors. She checked her chronometer briefly, finding that she wasn't due for another dose for another joor and a half. Six hours. It would seem that she had even less control over her frame than she'd thought. More than the pain, that was what really hurt.
Her control over all of herself – mentally, physically, emotionally – that was what made her herself and she prided herself on that feature. If she could not control the world around her, at least there could be one thing in her life that she could control and that was herself. Between Megatron's enslavement, her own duty, and now addictions, everything she could restrain and tame was now beyond her grasp.
The things she could once control now controlled her. And she hated every moment of it.
A broken-sounding hiccup of engines touched her audials, and Terabyte felt Arcee sit down beside her, the other femme's EM field, while still carrying the sharpness of its owner's inward pain, brushed in and out against Terabyte's in hesitant, understanding comfort.
A flash of hot pink fluid glittered as it splashed on her silver thigh, and she realized with a slight start that the distressed hiccoughing sobs were her own, along with the pained keen cutting through the near-silence of the night.
Beside her, Arcee wrapped an arm around her awkwardly, allowing the younger femme to cry her unrestrainable tears into her shoulder. The war-hardened Autobot rubbed her roommate's back gently in an attempt to sooth the rattling vents and sobs of a youngling's pain restrained for over a decavorn but now let loose against her will.
She knew all too well what that was like. When everything in your life seemed to shatter into a million irrecoverable pieces all at once and every rage and grief slowly being bottled in day by day suddenly broke through to the surface.
The breakthrough of so much hurt and so much sadness and so much inner darkness and hate; an eruption of more emotion than any one person had a right to ever feel at one time. Unstoppable, unrestrainable, and inconsolable.
She'd been there.
And that was why she simply sat there, holding the tiny, broken femme in her arms, soothing an ache that could never truly be soothed. Simply being there for the very femme that moments ago she'd held her blasters to and snarled biting words that couldn't be taken back. That Arcee honestly didn't particularly want to take back. She regretted them, yes, but she wouldn't take them back.
Also because she'd been there.
She'd been in a place where no one could trust her, where no one could be bothered to attempt to understand what she was going through, where the only words she heard were either orders or insults. But she also knew that when someone – when Cliffjumper – tried to reach her, he reached her by being honest, by being real with her. The distrusting, blunt honesty was sometimes even more touching than the lying comforts and faked understanding.
It was the middle of the night now. Two hours had passed since the young femme's tears began.
Arcee looked down at the trembling femme with indigo optics somewhere between stubborn lack of trust and soft compassion. Her optic ridges pulled into a scowl as she realized that the femme's field had changed from the shattered feeling of an emotional outpouring to something else.
Terabyte's arms wrapped around her middle tightly enough she suspected it would have hurt, her dainty silver claws piercing deep into her elbows. The femme's ragged vents now came in the forced, purposefully even cycles of a bot in extreme physical pain.
"Terabyte?" Arcee asked firmly, almost ordering an answer from her as she pried the femme's claws from her own frame. "Terabyte, what's wrong?"
The navy and black femme laughed coldly, her vocalizers heavily laced with static. She laughed again, louder, even more despairingly icy than the first, "What's wrong? What's wrong?!"
Her laughter trailed off into a hysterical giggle that ended in a weak sobbing chuckle, "She wants to know what's wrong! Oh, oh, that's priceless! Primus help me…"
The last sentence was whispered in a desperate plea that made even Arcee's war-hardened spark cringe at the brokenness. She was about to comm. Ratchet when the door to her shared quarters suddenly tore open – literally – and a massive blur of green rushed in, scooping Terabyte into his lap and settling down on the floor with his wings to the berth.
Arcee blinked at the abrupt entry, but said nothing as the fearsome jet sat cross-legged on her floor with a quivering ball of Terabyte in his lap burrowed into him as closely as she could while he murmured comforting nothings into her trembling black finials. Her armor was clamped tightly enough that her scarlet biolights were hidden, showing her true, tiny size, dwarfed somehow even more so by Skyquake's sheer massiveness.
"Sky… please… It hurts. Make it stop…" The femme whimpered pitifully into his armor.
His engine rumbled steadily, his tone firm, yet soothing, "Shh. I know. I know it hurts, Tera'. You know I know. But you have to be strong, you have to hold on, but you won't be alone in this. I swear to you, you don't have to do this alone."
"I-I don't wanna be strong, Sky. I just wanna make it stop!" She wailed, curling up on herself and keening shrilly, rocking back and forth violently in his embrace. "Please!"
Skyquake just held her close, staring straight ahead with an agonized expression as though remembering a long-forgotten torture. As Arcee watched him try to comfort her, she saw for the first time just why Terabyte was never afraid of the colossal war-mech that was Megatron's own protégé. For just a moment, she understood that the younger femme didn't see a threat in the killer because to her there was no threat.
"I've been where you are, Terabyte, you know what it was like in the Pits. I got through it, and I know you can too." The green defector met the terrified optics of the femme, "I know you can, because you are far stronger than I am, and you have an advantage that was taken from me. You are not alone."
"I should kill you." Terabyte whispered in reply, coolant still streaking her unmasked face, gleaming in the scar that sliced through her fair features. With that comment, the femme hid her face in his chest like a frightened sparkling, shaking in her armor with the intensity of the jolts that wracked her frame.
Several hours later, once the femme had lasted until her next dosage of pain-killers and fallen into an exhausted recharge in his arms, Skyquake gently set Terabyte back into her berth and sat down beside her as she tossed and turned in her fitful sleep.
Arcee watched him closely from where she perched on her own berth, her expression deeply contemplative. For a few breems, the three of them remained in relative silence.
Then, right as she was about to speak, the green jet spoke up quietly, his deep, rough voice minutely sheepish. "Sorry about the door."
The blue and pink Autobot let out a short bark of laughter, something about how he said it striking her as hilarious. She smiled briefly, replying almost to herself, "It needed repaired anyway."
He huffed in amusement, and the two of them fell back into an awkward sort of silence. A few klicks passed and Arcee posed the question that had been nagging at her ever since his unexpected arrival. "How did you know to come? Did she comm. you?"
The jet shook his helm, ruby optics leaving Terabyte for a moment as he looked up at her, a weariness of his own showing on his silver face-plates. "No. She did not contact me. I simply felt her distress and acted."
She pondered that answer for a while, curiosity laying hold. When she could restrain the question no longer, the warrior asked cautiously, slightly wary of what answer might come, "Are you… bonded?"
The way the mech hesitated was somewhat unusual, but she waited for his answer patiently, watching how he glanced to the young femme in her troubled recharge with a look in his optics that far exceeded the casual concern of a fellow soldier.
At last, Skyquake sighed, "No. I cannot explain how I knew to come. I simply did. I have been her protector for far too long to question it. When she needs me, I am there."