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Ironhide: Knight's Promise

Medics, he has come to believe in his not so short life, are nothing but a necessary evil, something to keep around in preparation of a likely injury. Most of them cannot be used for anything but their chosen profession, making it near to impossible to find their closeness comforting in any probable way. In short, they were one of the very few things that scared him more than death.

On a normal day he would have simply ignored the pain and tried to swallow any annoying reactions caused by it. He has a reputation to maintain after all. But today isn't a normal day, not even the most nightmarish parody of a normal day. Today is his scheduled maintenance check.

The thought alone makes him shudder in revulsion.

"You're the last for today." That makes him smile, despite the knowledge that there aren't enough of his people on the planet to fill more than a half day of the medic's time. "Open up."

He does not do such thing. Instead he lets the good physician make all the test that such a mind can imagine, and some more.

"This is not a field hospital where you can expect to just get soldered back together, Ironhide. You do not need to be fully active at the moment."

Of course, he already knows that. Has known that for some months now, though fully accepting this fact is a whole different matter for him. There is always a chance that the two remaining henchmen of Megatron's army could decide that living more than a continent away from Prime is not safe enough for them. They could decide that a dead Prime is better than no Prime at all. This he just cannot allow.

He only grunts in answer.

"I need to have a look at your exo lines. Don't you understand that?" He adapts one of those sometimes strange human mannerisms and shakes his head in denial.

"You and your stubborn old-fashioned Decepticon pride!" Here he is again forced to remember exactly why a young and barely through his fifth transformation Ratchet became the private surgeon of Optimus Prime. Such shot accuracy should not be wasted in a repair shop.

Before he has a chance to act in retaliation, the medic has found his manual override switch and shut down his body. The only thing he is able to do now is wish for some plasma lasers built into his eyes. Gentle hands pry open his chest, move things around and take other things out to clean them.

This is probably the most pathetic moment of his whole life. Then, a gasp of shock from his traitorous battle brother.

"Your inner chamber was breached." He looks at a startled face with the coldness of death in his eyes. "It was surgically breached."

He wonders why Ratchet is so surprized at this fact. Wasn't it an open secret that the bodyguards of Prime and Lord Protector tended to help with the family line? Didn't the medic already know why he was one of the last warriors to choose a side in this useless civil war?

Only now does he realize that his voice has not been muted like the rest of his body. "Orion wanted it this way." And Trion followed the path of a honoured celibate gladiator, so there really was no other way for the then Prime to get what wanted.

"He wanted..." There it is again, this strange look of enraged shock on Ratchet's face. It perplexes the fighter, makes it near possible for him to understand what special kind of injury was created all those long years ago. True understanding though, the kind that is capable of explaining everything, that stays far away from his conscious mind.

When the outer casing of his most cherished sanctum is opened, he feels it like a breath of heat against the void between blind stars. It reminds him of forbidden tastes and worse prohibited treacheries, of hidden caresses and broken promises. It reminds him of a past that never was, never could be, but still yearns for the kind of freedom which only dead secrets can provide.

Somehow, beyond all thoughts of duty and honour, he wants nothing more than oblivion. He wishes to not be fully aware of what is done to him in the name of health and medicine, though avoidance is not in his reach.

Later, when it is over, the one he sometimes likes to call friend gives him permission to move again. Clicks and creaks paint his continued mobility in a light of perseverance, a sign of too old joints being too thick-headed to admit defeat. A small part of himself is happy that the next check-up will perhaps only happen after his death.

"You can go." Ratchet sounds like a shadow, hot mist on a jagged piece of armour. He sounds so...

"I won't tell Optimus." This he has no time to discuss with the medic, old comrade or not. To speak about it is as useless as a swimmer on dry land. "Your sons are safe."

"Thanks," he says. It is one of only six words he has spoken this day. Not much, even for him, but all he can give here and now.

Medics, he has come to learn, are nothing but a necessary evil. Something to keep around in case of injury.

Nothing more.