Claustrophobia
Chapter Two.
Ratchet stopped advancing at that point - he didn't want Starscream to think he was trying to corner or trap him, and he was between the Seeker and the now-available exit.
"Starscream?" he queried. "Starscream, it's going to be okay, I'm a friend, I want to help you." the medic slowly extended a hand, and the Seeker's optics watched it as it drew closer warily.
"Ra-Ratchet?" Starscream replied, in a thin and terrified voice. Ratchet filed the response away in his processors as a good sign: the Seeker knew who he was.
"Yes, Starscream, it's me, Ratchet. I'm a medic and I've come to get you out of here." He kept the hand extended, watching Starscream carefully to see what he would do.
Starscream lifted one trembling hand from the rock, reached slowly towards Ratchet with it. Ratchet smiled encouragingly but made no other move. Ratchet watched as the Seeker tentatively touched his hand, drew back, reached out, and grabbed at the hand. Ratchet closed his hand firmly over Starscream's in a way he hoped implied stability rather than captivity. Starscream edged towards Ratchet, one hand still contacting the rock, then he pushed himself away, towards Ratchet, grasping his shoulder, sliding the arm down his back, and clinging to the medic as if his Spark depended on it. Ratchet shutter-blinked: none of the literature had suggested a need for physical closeness, but then again Starscream had had no contact with another for four orns either: he was dealing with a form of sensory deprivation as well as the madness of the forcibly grounded.
Ratchet swayed: the Seeker was a third again his height and top-heavy, but Ratchet's built-in stabilising feature kept both himself and his patient upright. Starscream's hand left Ratchet's back, and Ratchet could feel the Decepticon pushing against him as he stretched his hand out behind Ratchet.
"S-sky…" the Seeker stuttered pleadingly.
"Yes Starscream, let's go, I'm taking you out to where you can see the sky." Ratchet said, taking first one step back, then another. As Ratchet had hoped he would, Starscream followed.
They made slow progress until they were five foot from the opening of the cave, when Starscream suddenly resisted his pulling. Turning his head, Ratchet saw Ironhide peering in.
Back off! Back away! You're scaring him! Ratchet databurst, and the big weapons specialist backed away.
I'll go relieve Cliffjumper at the gates, make sure you get in without issues, Cliffjumper can be a bit hot-headed at times. Ironhide databurst back.
Ratchet tuned his attention back to Starscream, who was now rocking back and forth, transferring his weight from one foot to the other. Ratchet thought that the motion signified uncertainty rather than fear, Starscream had begged for the sky, but it was still possible that he was scared of it.
"Come on, a few more steps and you'll be out of the cave, free, out in the open air." Ratchet cajoled the Seeker. Once again he tried pulling back, and this time Starscream followed him. A few more steps, and Starscream was beyond the entrance of the cave. Starscream had stopped, and looking up, Ratchet could see Starscream's head was tipped back.
"Sky…I can see…the sky!" said Starscream, a note of happiness entering his otherwise distressed voice. It was the longest sentence that Starscream had so far used, something that Ratchet once again saw as a good thing. Starscream's hands left Ratchet as Starscream tipped forwards, and Ratchet gripped harder as he tried to stop Starscream from toppling. Then Ratchet hung on even harder as he realised, a little too late, what was happening: Starscream wasn't falling over, he was taking wing!
"Starscream-no!" said Ratchet, too late, as Starscream activated his engines and took off, Ratchet clinging to the Seeker's hips. He wobbled, as Ratchet feared he would, the damage to his wings and the seven-ton medic dangling from his hips destabilising him. He tilted one way, then the other, then banked sharply to one side, unable to keep straight or gain altitude: he would also be low on energy and fuel, Ratchet figured.
Ratchet managed, somehow, to swing out on one hand to grab one of Starscream's arms, pulling on it to swing his own body over to the other side of Starscream: he did not want the Seeker to flip over and crash on his back. The shift in weight pulled the other side down, and Ratchet's feet hit the ground and then Starscream crashed, right on top of Ratchet, who took the brunt of the impact.
There was something to be said for multiple redundancy in his systems, Ratchet thought as he rebooted. Starscream was still wriggling atop him: wriggling and keening wordlessly. Slag! He did not need to have doubt of his flying ability heaped on top of everything else!
"It's okay, Starscream, your wings are damaged and you're out of fuel, I'll fix your wings and you will fly again, I promise!" Ratchet said. The keening subsided, and then stopped.
"I..I will? Promise?" pleaded the broken Seeker, in a voice that made Ratchet's Spark ache.
"Yes, Starscream, I promise, you will fly again." Ratchet said, hoping he wasn't making a promise he couldn't keep.
Ratchet could mend the physical damage and rectify the fuel problem easily, but the mental distress was another matter. So far, all the indicators were that with the right sort of support and care, Starscream could be coaxed back to a semblance of sanity, but Ratchet was no processor doctor and could only rely on medical files that had few similar cases to refer back to.
As Starscream got to hands and knees, Ratchet pushed himself back to his feet, holding out his hands to Starscream again. Starscream took them gently, turning them over in his own hands and examining them.
"Medic's hands…healing hands?" he asked hopefully, those unsettling optics meeting Ratchet's own again. Ratchet nodded.
"Yes, Starscream." He tried to speak in an encouraging tone of voice. "Healing hands that can mend your wings and help you fly again." He smiled at the still-hunched Seeker, who kissed each of Ratchet's hands almost reverently before he slid his ownarms back around Ratchet: Ratchet manoeuvred so he could guide Starscream to walk sideways on, like a crab, so he could still hold on to them but neither would have to walk blind.
It took some time for them to reach the Autobot base like this, and a few times Ratchet had to remind the Seeker that he couldn't fly till Ratchet had fixed his wings, and that to mend his wings they needed to get to the base. Starscream for his part acquiesced, and that compliancy in itself troubled Ratchet because when he was in his right mind, Starscream was in a different class of awkward altogether.
Eventually they reached the Autobot base, and Ratchet was relieved to see that Ironhide had opened the gates wide. Once again Starscream paused, this time just before the gates, doing the same forward-back-forward-back rocking from foot to foot as he had at the entrance to the cave. A few more words of encouragement, and
Ratchet was able to get Starscream over the threshold, inside the gates, and as he drew the Seeker further into the big courtyard, Ratchet blew a relieved sigh through his vents. The first hard part was over.
Starscream needed recharging, mending, and refuelling, pretty much in that order, Ratchet mused, pulling Starscream towards the Base, and sending a databurst to open the main Base building door as the gates rumbled shut behind them.
It would be a bit of a tight squeeze, Ratchet thought, although Air Raid and Skyblast had not had problems, they were both smaller and differently configured to Starscream.
At that point Starscream stiffened in Ratchet's arms, and began pulling back, back away from the Base, so hard that he dragged Ratchet a couple of feet with him.
"What the frag?" Ratchet said, as Starscream began to cry out, babbling not-quite words and almost falling over in his panic. He keened again, twisting in the medic's grip, seemingly careless of the fact that the action bent and curled the edges of his wings. Starscream's desperation was such that Ratchet was forced to release his grip on him lest Starscream's struggles caused more damage.
Starscream ran for the gate, clawing at it, and Ratchet ran after him. He stroked the Seeker's hide, trying to work out what had panicked him so.
"No…please…promise…not again…sorry…please…no…"Starscream said, then let out a keen again as he turned, this time pressing his back against the gates as he looked back towards the Base. Ratchet was nonplussed. He couldn't see anyone or anything there that could account for Starscream's panic, there was just the Base, and the empty doorway into it….oh SLAG!
It was at that point that Ratchet realised what had panicked Starscream so. He saw the Base door, a space beyond….and then the image of the cave mouth overlaid itself over the Base door in his mind.
Ratchet swore internally, while trying to soothe Starscream out loud. Of course Starscream would panic at Ratchet trying to take him into the Base. As far as Starscream was concerned, Ratchet was taking him underground again, inside a room that would again seem as much of a prison as the cave, keeping the Seeker away from the sky.
"Shh, Starscream, it's okay, I won't take you in there, I promise, I can treat you out here in the courtyard, hush." Ratchet said.
As Starscream's panic subsided, Ratchet wondered exactly how he would manage that.