For The Race – Prime Protector.
Chapter Thirteen.
A/N: Thanks to Hummergrey for ideas used in this chapter and to my boyfriend, who made a remark that was so true I had to include it. And, yes, there's a plot twist here from my Muses that even I didn't see coming!
As Sam moved down the corridor, she found herself turning over recent events in her processors. Why had she gotten embarrassed and nervous after the second overload? After what she and Optimus had gone through, after her doing the touching that got him aroused, why had she pulled back, made her excuses and left?
It wasn't fear, that much she knew. There were a lot of things she felt in the presence of Optimus, but fear wasn't one of them. She trusted Optimus not to go any further than she wanted him to, he had proven more than once that he wouldn't take advantage. As he stared to go past the medical bay, his steps slowed and then stopped. Ratchet might just hold the answers, but considering what Optimus had told her, could she sit there and ask him?
The image of Ratchet as a sex-shop proprietor came unbidden back into her processors and she tried to shake it off. She found herself wondering if Ratchet was needy himself, if that explained it. Now she came to think about it, the first thing Ratchet had said upon being introduced had been to announce to all and sundry that 'The boy's pheromone level suggests he wants to mate with the female.' Yup, now she came to think about it, Ratchet, it seemed, was obsessed with it.
She sighed. It seemed that Ratchet was the most likely one to know about why she seemed to blow hot and cold with Optimus. She walked into the mad bay, perhaps hoping that Ratchet wouldn't be there so the issue would be taken out of her hands.
To her relief, he wasn't there, meaning the best she could do would be to put the matter to the back of her processors and hope the problem went away. Yeah, that sounded good, Sam decided, as she looked around the medical bay and confirmed that Ratchet wasn't there.
As she turned, however, she heard footsteps entering and as she turned the corner there he was. As he stopped upon seeing her, she had to stop her optics from wandering to his crotch, thought about looking at his face, decided against that as well, and was looking at one of Ratchet's shelves full of spares when the medic asked "Sam, it's good to see you. How are you? What can I do for you?"
"Um...ah...I've got a little...um...problem, and wondered if you could help me with it," she managed to get out.
"Well, just ask away, you have my undivided attention." It as then he noticed the averted gaze, the awkward wording, and accurately gauged that Sam was embarrassed, although not what about.
"Sam, don't worry about what you want to ask, I'm a medic, I've likely heard about whatever your problem is before, and likely much worse. I've heard it all before, just like if you need to show me, I've seen it all before."
'Ah, but you haven't seen mine before, and I'd rather not need you to!' she thought but didn't say.
"Well, it's just that...um...Optimus and I, we...ah...that is...Um...we..." She tailed off, too embarrassed to continue.
"You interfaced? How far did you go?" Ratchet asked. Sam quite frankly felt like telling him to mind his own business, that was private, but instead he shook his head.
"No, we just, sort of, you know, touched each other, and yes, I liked it, but then I got nervous and ran out and I don't know why!" Sam explained, all in a rush, getting the admission over with as fast as he could. "Why do I at one point feel happy about stuff and then get uncertain. I mean I did enjoy it, it was...well, different, but nice."
"You overloaded?" Ratchet asked, and again Sam felt like telling Ratchet where to go shove his too-personal question and what to do with it once he'd put it there, but instead she nodded mutely.
Ratchet raised his eyebrows briefly and then lowered them again and moved forward past Sam so he could rest one metal aft-plate against one of his work tables and lean against it, immediately looking so relaxed that Sam found herself reassured. Maybe Ratchet really had heard it all before. Perhaps her reactions were actually normal? She began to feel a bit foolish.
"Well, Sam, that question is open to a certain amount of conjecture, as your transformation from organic to mechanical has been heard of before, although it happened only in myth." Sam shuttered her optics in disbelief: her change was real and right here, not a half-believed chapter in a Cybertronian fable. She was about to ask Ratchet if he had anything more solid, but quieted down when Ratchet carried on talking.
"The most likely reason for your conflicting reactions, in my opinion, is that your memories of growing up as an organic male, with your organic programming and societal pressures and preconceptions, are in conflict with your new form's programming. You remember and still have human feelings and thoughts associated with being a male who has the organic imperative to mate and produce offspring in your own image, but you also have Cybertronian femme programming that means you admire the forms and the strength of a mech, and the reasons may be closer to the human ones than we know, particularly in your case."
"Hold on a minute, what do you mean by that?" Sam asked. "I thought the AllSpark did all your reproduction for you? Why would femmes and mechs be driven to mate? And why me in particular?"
"Sam, much of our early history is either shrouded in myth or so far back it is entirely lost, and the origin of the AllSpark is among this, Nobody knows if the AllSpark created us originally, or if we existed previously and then the AllSpark arrived, and the discussions around that are numerous, but useless for our purposes. The thing is, we can reproduce without the AllSpark in a manner similar to humans, so why should we not have the same drive for racial survival as any other race."
He paused, then began talking again.
"As for your second question, Sam, the AllSpark changed you into a femme, perhaps that was its way of ensuring our race continued without it. After all, you are the only femme on Earth, and although it's unlikely, you may remain the only adult femme on Earth for some time. Although others were known of on Cybertron, we've not heard anything from or about them since, They may all either be dead or fled, so you may be all we have to go on."
"You mean...it created me to replace it?" Sam cried. "But...you promised me I'd not be forced, that I'd have the choice but...you all promised!" Sam said. While Ratchet was working out what Sam had said, re-running his own conversation through his processors and realising the conclusion Sam was reaching, Sam had already acted. Ratchet flinched as Sam dodged around him and accelerated to full speed, barrelling out of the medbay door.
"Sam, stop, we need to talk!" he shouted. When he got no response he switched to personal com.
'Sam, stop, we can talk about this, it's not how it sounds!' he tried to tell him but a click told him that Sam had by now learned how to turn his personal comms off. Sam, it seemed, was in no mood to listen, or was in such a panic that she didn't believe him. He thought about giving chase, but decided that pursuit would only reinforce Sam's fears.
He swore quietly, a virulent and impolite Cybertronian curse word that even he used only for the worst situations, and this counted. He had just, by not thinking about what he was saying, put the fear of Primus into Sam, possibly undoing all the progress Optimus had made in showing her she had nothing to fear. He cringed inwardly. He was going to have to tell Prime, admit that he had scared his ward, and the thought of the dressing-down he would likely get made his Spark flicker, but he decided he'd better tell him before Optimus found out some other way. Anyway, Sam was still one of his patients, and it was Sam's welfare that mattered more than the medic's ego.
He opened a com to Optimus. 'Um, Prime, we have a problem.'
Optimus, on the other end, was immediately alert. Ratchet's use of his title formally like this meant this was business, or news, and from what Ratchet had said, the news was unlikely to be good.
'What's up, Ratchet?' Optimus asked.
'It's Sam,' Ratchet said slowly. 'We were talking and I think I said the wrong thing and scared her.' Optimus paused and said nothing for a moment. Then he commed back.
'Do you need me to reassure her? Where is she? I'll come and talk to her.'
'That's the problem, Prime, I don't know,' Ratchet admitted. 'She sort of ran.'
'Ran?' Optimus asked. His voice hardened. 'Ratchet, I think you'd better tell me what happened. Just what did you say to her that would make her run?'
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
Sam fled down the corridor as fast as she could, thankfully meeting nobody on the way. Optimus, Ironhide, the little mech Cliffjumper, even Bumblebee, they were all mechs, all potential threats that she'd rather not risk meeting.
Why hadn't she seen this earlier? As the only femme, she was the only way they could reproduce now, and she didn't believe for a minute they'd let her choose one mech to have children with, no, they'd all want them, and being as long-lived as they were, they had plenty of time to devise ways of convincing her. No wonder they were all being so nice to her! How could she have been so naive?
She'd been told that on Cybertron it was taboo to force another, it was true, but that gave her little comfort. Presumably some of the Decepticons had once held that sacred too, but it seemed they had already abandoned the taboo, the kidnap attempts they had made were proof of that, and the Decepticons were just Cybertronians belonging to one faction. How long before some of the Autobots, too, began to shake of the beliefs of their dead world, especially if they felt that the continuance of their own kind was at stake. No, she wouldn't take it for granted ever again that she was safe with the Autobots.
She needed to work out what she was going to do. Where could she go to work things out? She had previously felt at home in Optimus' or Bumblebee's rooms, but not anymore. She wasn't about to go to Ironhide's armoury either because there was a good chance that Ironhide would be there. Wandering the Base to find somewhere was too dangerous as well, and that only left one place. She couldn't stay there too long because it was too obvious, but it might give her enough space to work out what to do and where to go, because it was obvious to her that she had to leave.
Changing direction, she headed for the only place she might remain hidden for long enough.
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
Optimus sighed through his vents as Ratchet finished explaining.
'We'll discuss this later, Ratchet, but for now we must work out where Sam might have gone.' Optimus said. 'First, I'll alert Cliffjumper on the gate that Sam might try to leave, ask him to stop her. Then we must look for her and find a way of speaking with her, although I have an idea about that already.'
'But won't she be scared of us, even you now?' Ratchet asked.
'Yes, which is why while you work out Sam's most likely location, I will call upon the person I think she'll be least scared of.'
'Who? None of us would make her feel safe. Perhaps a human? Maybe Captain Lennox or Sergeant Epps?' Ratchet asked, but Optimus had already cut the com. He opened a new one to Bumblebee and briefly explained the situation, answering Bumblebee's offer to go looking himself with a negative.
'No, Bumblebee, no mech can help at the moment, not in this matter, Sam is likely scared of all of us, even you. No, this needs what the humans might call "a woman's touch."' He paused.
'Bumblebee, I need you to call upon and bring Mikaela Banes to the Base.'