After a couple of months of weekly group therapy sessions, Jolt's and Arcee's sparks had shown significant healing. It wasn't as much as they would have experienced if they'd been able to properly mourn with a clan, but Ratchet informed me it was pretty close to 80% of that. (For context, he explained, both Jolt and Arcee started somewhere around 60% of full healing.) His spark was slower to heal, but even when Jolt's and Arcee's spark-mending plateaued around the end of the third month, Ratchet's continued.

It was encouraging enough that, over our next power lunch, Ratchet and I discussed the possibility of starting up another therapy group for the 'bots.

We still weren't sure if talk therapy of any kind was something we dared use on a 'bot with a broken mate-bond, though. Ratchet's healing was due to his primary function as a doctor, so his case was rather unique.

Samuel Prime was disappointed when I informed him of this when he next called me.

"Between you and me," he said, "I'm not sure Optimus is recovering enough from losing Ultra Magnus. He's trying to give me space and not emotionally burden me because Mikaela and I have the baby now, but I know he's struggling more than he lets on."

"He's trying to be tough," I said with a wry smile, remembering my very first conversation with Optimus. "As are you, from the sound of it. Being a first-time father – or any new father, for that matter – is going to run you down. Don't forget your own self-care."

"I am – as Optimus' brother, his spark-wounds wear on me, too. And I don't think he's trying to be tough. I think it's more that he feels like he's out of other options," Sam gravely said.

…

The text from Ratchet was terse. /Report to Ops in the Autobot Hangar at 11:00 hours./

I glanced at my clock. That was in less than five minutes. My schedule was clear until 14:00 hours, so I blocked off the time between now and then on my scheduling calendar and texted back, /HUA/

Then I hurried over to the hangar. I could hear Prime's booming voice from fifty feet away. Scanning my ID at the human door, I entered the building and climbed up to the top of the Ops scaffolding. Lennox gave me a puzzled look, but I shrugged and showed him the text from Ratchet. The colonel grimaced slightly and looked back at the drama playing out in front of us.

Optimus Prime was furious about something and berating Prowl. "I haven't been this angry with you in four-thousand years!"

Prowl was stoically looking straight ahead, his doorwings dipped low in submission.

"Of all the cracked-processor stunts to pull, you were the last mech I expected this from!"

Ratchet strode in from the med bay, Arcee and Jolt at his side. Making eye contact with me, he said, "Good, you made it." To Lennox, he said, "This is a medical matter now."

Optimus growled in frustration, but Ratchet continued, "I need the hangar cleared of humans. You and Sarkisian can remain." In a lower voice he added, "It'll be an education."

Optimus' hand transformed into a glowing sword, and he wheeled on the medic. "You wouldn't dare!"

Several humans exclaimed in surprise and scrambled back.

"Optimus, stand down," Lennox ordered, while Ratchet said, "Drop your battle protocols, Prime."

I put a warning hand on Colonel Lennox's arm. Optimus was clearly not acting like himself, and the mention of battle protocols made me worried. Was this a code corruption we were dealing with?

Optimus straightened to his terrifyingly-full height. "I was disciplining – "

"I'm pulling medical rank," Ratchet interrupted, perfectly matter of fact.

"Evacuate the hangar," Lennox ordered but made no move himself to leave. We would both be staying, then.

Optimus raised his sword, and several things happened at once. My fellow humans bolted from the room, most of the Autobots retreated too, Jolt shook loose and electrified his whips, and Ratchet lunged forward. I heard a drawn-out zap that reminded me of a Taser, but I couldn't clearly see what exactly Ratchet had done. In a blink, though, Optimus was flat on his back, stunned. Ratchet stepped over to Optimus' side and, with a grunt, flipped the Prime over onto his face. Arcee hurried in with handcuffs and restrained the mech, while Prowl stood aside, as unreadable as ever.

"You see, Sarkisian," Ratchet said almost casually, stepping back a couple of paces, "those battle protocols that are so helpful at blocking the spark-pain of loss during a fight were never intended to be used outside of active combat. In fact, they're programmed to raise and drop in a highly automated way based on perceived levels of threat. But sometimes, the pain is too much. Sometimes, we manually override the controls and raise those battle protocols even when we're not in a fight. We've all done it – blocked the pain when we couldn't handle it anymore. But that can create its own problems."

Optimus groaned, already coming around from being Tased or its equivalent.

"Once the Decepticons stole the code for battle protocols, they weaponized them. They keep those protocols up as a matter of course because it creates heightened aggression, emotional instability, and recklessness. For them, they see it as a tactical advantage, but we Autobots are different. We value peace, but Optimus here…" Ratchet said, shaking his head, "well, you saw it with your own eyes months ago. He's suffering."

"If you're looking for ideas from me," I said, "I don't have any. This is beyond anything we've explored so far."

"I know. There's one adaptation we've used with occasional success during the War. Bonds can't be restored, but connection with severed kin can sometimes help. We call it aligning – placing our contained sparks in close enough physical proximity that they can sense each other. Arcee," he nodded at the femme, "is the sister of Optimus' extinguished mate. Though their bond has been severed, she still claims him as kin through sister privilege, roughly the social equivalent of adoption. She's willing to align with him, if he is, to help him through this rough patch. But first, we have to deal with this oversized can-opener of a Prime. Jolt is our resident hacker, and with the right kind of charge, he can force a mech to drop his battle protocols. Usually it's more useful in interrogation, but we're using it medically today."

"You're using electric shock therapy on him?" Colonel Lennox interrupted, a bit incredulous.

"Slagger," Optimus muttered, the word sounding shockingly slurred.

Ratchet's faceplates shifted into something that looked suspiciously like a little smirk. "Oddly enough, ECT is one of the few natural therapeutic overlaps between our species. As I was saying, this doesn't provide long-term healing – I'm still hopeful your modified human techniques can help fill that gap – but it can be an effective intervention in an emergency."

"As long as you have a medic with the combat skills necessary to take down a rampaging Prime," Arcee said, more amused than I expected.

"There's a reason he's always assigned to Optimus' squad," Prowl agreed.

"And here I thought it was because of my sunny disposition," Ratchet grumbled. Then he gestured toward Optimus, who was shifting like he was trying to sit up. "Jolt?"

The smell of ozone filled the air as his crackling whips expertly flicked forward and grabbed Prime's frame. Ratchet's takedown of his patient had been violent, but Optimus' reaction to the whips was surprisingly anticlimactic. With a moan that sounded sorrowing rather than pained, he relaxed back onto the concrete of the hangar floor. He lay there for a long moment, the hum of Jolt's whips still vibrating low and echoing through the hangar, and then he curled in on himself.

"That's enough, Jolt," Ratchet said. "Thank you."

He disengaged his whips and put them away. Ratchet came forward to unlock and remove the cuffs, and then he knelt beside Optimus, who was still curled up on his side.

"I'm sorry," the Prime ground out, and Ratchet rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't move just yet." Ratchet glanced up at me once and then focused on Optimus again. "I know you feel badly, and so does Prowl. Your kin still stand by you, both for Elita's sake and your own. You don't have to carry all this pain alone."

He curled in on himself even more tightly, and I had to fight the urge to run down to his side.

"Sam…" he croaked.

"I know," Ratchet soothed. "He's going to be fine."

"There's something wrong with the kid?" Lennox asked in a hushed tone.

Arcee softly answered, "He was rushed to the hospital about two hours ago for an emergency appendectomy. Bumblebee got him to the hospital in time, but he's still under anesthesia, so Optimus can't really feel him…"

Ah. Yes, compound that crisis with all the others and it became the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

"When you feel steady enough," Ratchet said to Prime, "let's get you into the med bay."

Optimus gingerly rolled to all fours and, after taking a moment there, climbed to his feet. But he kept a hand on Ratchet's shoulder.

To Prowl, Optimus said, "My apologies, old friend."

Prowl jutted out his chin. "I refuse to accept any apology from you because none is needed. You bear patiently with my glitch. I can bear yours with the same amity."

Optimus bowed his helm in acknowledgment then, looking at the soldier beside me, he said, "I'm sorry you had to see that, Colonel Lennox."

"I'm not," he said, perfectly serious. "I hope in my worst moments that I have friends and family as good as yours."

The Prime nodded in agreement. "You do, Iron Will."

I smiled both at the sentiment and to hear Colonel Lennox referred to by his "Autobot name."

Optimus was a bit more guarded with me, though. "I expect this will be a useful case study."

"Only for Ratchet's purposes. I would never breathe a word of what I've seen here today."

"I appreciate your discretion." Then gingerly holding one hand over the center of his chest, he limped beside Ratchet toward the med bay.

"Give the all-clear," Prowl said to Jolt while Arcee followed Ratchet and Optimus.

Colonel Lennox stepped over to the intercom, sending the same message to the human part of NEST.

As he did, I suddenly realized he'd seen this coming. Optimus' stability had been his concern all along. "How did you know this would happen?"

He glanced toward the med bay. "I didn't, not for sure. But for all that they're alien robots, they're an awful lot like us in some ways."

…

Three days later, I got an alert saying Optimus Prime had scheduled another appointment with me. I stared at that notification for a good, long time, weighing my options.

…

When he showed up, it was as a holoform with a familiar cowboy hat and a very unfamiliar sheepish expression.

"Welcome," I said, gesturing him inside.

"Thank you." He took his seat, I took mine, and I waited patiently. After a moment, he said, "I wanted to meet with you again to apologize. Ratchet wanted me to meet with you because he thought I might benefit from the conversation."

The therapist in me wanted to ask why he didn't think he'd benefit, but there was something I needed to say first. "If I may, Optimus, I've thought a lot about what happened when we last saw each other and what impact that might have on today. Three things have become clear to me. First, we humans all have limits, and we almost all hit them eventually. The incident illustrated that Cybertronians and humans are alike in that way as well."

A wry smile tugged at a corner of his lips, but he didn't say anything.

I continued, "Second, among humans, the only way we can lift each others' trauma burdens really is to talk about them, but not unlike Cybertronians, we typically only share those burdens with people with whom we share a bond of trust. Regardless, though, for a professional psychiatrist like me, talking about your struggles isn't an imposition; it's what I'm here for. And we already know that there are some tangible benefits Cybertronians can get from therapy. Just like you wanted your human soldiers to seek healing in this office, that healing is here for you, too."

He tilted his head, mulling that over. "I appreciate that, Dr. Sarkisian, particularly the idea of a bond of trust."

But I'd come to my most important point. "Third, you are doing all you can to preserve your people and their culture – even at great personal cost. The therapy I can offer will alter you through that mimic instinct, and that might put the goal of preserving your people's culture at risk. So if I were to try to strong-arm you into receiving human-style therapy, that would be an imposition on you. If you'd rather talk about cultural random convergence or whatever, I'd happily spend the next hour with you talking about that. The only thing worse than projecting my humanity onto you would be to impose it on you."

He sighed and looked down. After a moment's hesitation, he said, "This is only the second time Ratchet has had to go to such extremes with me over battle protocols. The first time was relatively early in the war, after the First Battle of Iacon. It raged for two months." Looking up to meet my gaze, he said, "Not a campaign, but a battle. We went two months without any recharge or scheduled refuellings. Two months in which we lost almost four thousand Autobot warriors. Two months without pause or rest." He dropped his gaze, hiding from me again. "As you put it, we hit our limits. When Megatron finally withdrew, vigilance and violence had become a habit. I still felt under threat and my battle protocols stayed up. It affected Elita and the rest of my kin, too, and our clan wasn't the only one to go through such struggles. Jazz was the one who assisted Ratchet in hacking through to forcibly take down my battle protocols. We sent out a software patch after that to include a manual override."

When he lifted his gaze to mine again, he straightened his shoulders decisively. "This wasn't supposed to happen again. The overrides were to ensure that no one was again compelled to violence, to ensure we all had a choice, and I chose foolishly. Selfishly."

He hadn't been selfish, he'd been setting the only kind of boundary he could against staggering hurt. He would never let me tell him it had actually been a healthy instinct, though, even if the method wasn't the best. Instead, I asked, "What if it had been Sam?"

"Pardon?"

"What if it had been Samuel who had recently lost his wife, who lost Bumblebee, and who was facing the very real prospect of losing you? Would you blame him for raising his battle protocols outside of an actual firefight?"

"He is human..."

"He's a sentient."

I'd stumped him with that, and I gave myself a mental pat on my primitive, fleshling back.

"As a military leader, I hold myself to a higher standard. I must."

"I understand. That's why I chose your fellow Prime as an example."

He sighed, having no answer for that.

"You came to apologize," I said. "It's unnecessary, but for what it's worth you have my complete forgiveness. Especially after this conversation, I know it won't happen again. And if I could ever hope to offer you advice, it would be to prioritize self-care – partly because you are a sentient who therefore deserves that care, but also because you are the Autobots' most important surviving military asset, cultural icon, and religious treasure all rolled into one. And while I'm always happy to talk with you on either a personal or professional level, you are one of the lucky ones, Prime. You have a brother bond. Use it."

A slow smile spread across his face. "Are you kicking me out?"

"Yep," I cheerfully answered, "with some doctor-mandated leave to go visit your brother and permission to tell Ratchet where to shove it. And with an open invitation to darken my door whenever you might need or want to."

"Both the permission and the invitation are appreciated, and I'll be taking you up on both, once my casing fractures stabilize a little more."

That made me actually smile.

He settled in more comfortably on his recliner. "My first experience with locked-in battle protocols had always seemed similar to human PTSD to me. Do you think that's an accurate observation, Dr. Sarkisian?"

This kind of conversation between us was comfortably familiar, and I settled into it myself. "From what you've said, they do seem pretty similar. I wonder about the mechanism, though. With humans, so much of it is chemical in nature…"

We whiled away our time, and at the door we shook hands again as friends.

As he put his hat back on, he said, "The circumstances were unfortunate, but I am glad you have joined NEST."

"So am I," I answered. More than I could say.