Where the Heart Is 7
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A Transformers Prime Fanfiction
Set During the Events of "Darkest Hour" "Darkmount NV" "Scattered" "Prey"
The medic rolled forward but hesitated when the semi did not respond immediately. With a phalanx of dark clouds rolling in to obscure the moon and threatening rain it was difficult to make out details.
"Optimus?" he asked nervously directing several passive scans at the frame and feeling his spark clench as they returned odd readings.
The Autobot activated his headlights and with a cry of fear the rolled back away from the gunmetal grey big rig.
"Optimus!" there was agony and terror in the voice now.
"No!" Sal finally managed to blurt out rolling forward a short pace, realizing the problem instantly. "I'm not Optimus! And I'm not dead! I chose these colors to be scary to Decepticons," and Autobots too he thought privately and was quite proud of himself for keeping that gem to himself, very politic.
A roll of thunder barked in the distance as the red and white seemed to consider his words suspiciously.
"Who or what are you then?" Ratchet demanded.
"I'm Salcha Franklin. The trucker."
"You are an Autobot?"
"No."
"I highly doubt that you are a Decepticon seeing that I still function," the medic snorted. "Not that it matters."
"I, I'm not Cybertronian."
"Oh," the Autobot seemed to slump down on his wheels before turning back to the scrapheaps.
Bear scratch. Salcha thought in frustration. He had just killed the curiosity in a scientist. That meant he had messed up royally somehow already and they weren't even past introductions. To make matters a bit better soft fat drops of rain began to strike his hood and cab cooling his hot nervousness.
Ratchet heard the truck roll closer and deliberately turned off his headlights. There was a small flicker of curiosity in him about what this strange creature was but it quickly died under the weight of his heavy spark.
"Healer Ratchet? Or, is it Elder Ratchet?"
"Go away."
Sal winced at the harsh tones pulling his tentacles in close to his core mass. This, this was not what he had imagined. Why was the healer being so mean? What had he done wrong? The semi was only trying to help. Gathering his determination up again the truck rolled forward until he was only a few feet from the red and white ambulance.
"Rafael was here," he offered nervously.
"What of it?" Ratchet demanded harshly.
"Is he well?"
"He was fine the last time I saw him," the medic muttered softly.
"That's good. That's good. Are you hungry? Do you need food?"
"What part of go away don't you understand?" the Autobot snarled.
Sal hesitated, mulling over the question. Was it rhetorical? Sometimes questions like that were but it was better to be safe than sorry. Always showing respect was crucial was what Ma said. But had he been wrong to offer food? That worked for humans and Others but the whole point of the Erie Accords was that voidwalkers were different. Maybe the direct approach was best.
"The part where you are hiding out in a cold rusty junkyard when you could just go home."
With a choking roar of rage the ambulance transformed and loomed over the big rig threateningly.
"How dare you!" he snarled. "How dare you!"
Sal backed away, fear suddenly boiling up inside him. The reality that this was indeed a voidwalker, something of another world entirely, surged over the semi burning away what confidence he had managed to build up in the comforting presence of the ambulance. The healer was ranting now as he stepped closer; saying something about how much they had sacrificed for Earth. The truck was planning his escape route frantically, cursing himself for thinking he could do this when something the medic said caught his attention and made his stomachs seize up.
"What did you say?" he growled suddenly surging forward.
"I said I have no home to go to," Ratchet snapped blue optics blazing.
"No," Salcha whispered.
"Yes! Destroyed with no chance of restoring-"
"No!" the semi roared surging forward and pinning the mech to the tower of crushed cars in a rain of rust and shavings.
Caught off guard by the previously submissive behavior of the stranger the medic could only gasp in shock as he was roughly held against the pile.
"No! You said Rafael was just here and Bumblebee was with him! I can smell it! Jack is with Arcee I know and the big green one is with Miko. I may not know where the rookie is but you are wrong! You have to be wrong!"
With each pronouncement the gunmetal grey rig shoved the mech harder into the cold steel behind him.
"Please, be wrong," Salcha whimpered finally letting off the pressure as he seemed to crumple a bit.
The Autobot stared at the wide windshield through the thickening rain mouth agape, curiosity and indignity finally getting the best of his lethargy.
"What is wrong with your processor? I said that my home was destroyed. Not the rest of Team Prime! As far as I know the rest of them are fine. Only," his voice caught and his blue optics dropped to the dark hood as his servos dug into the carbon fiber, "only Optiums stayed behind to make sure no Decepticons could follow us."
The pressure against his chassis released as the truck backed up slowly a strange gurgling coming from the dark engine compartment.
"Franklin? That is the trucking company that handles our deliveries most often isn't it?" the medic realized connecting the dots.
A sound that might have been agreement came from the big rig followed by a moment of silence.
"Optimus stayed behind? In the base? When the Decepticons," a choked sound of near rage came, "when they did what they did?"
"Yes."
The urge to roll forward and seek comfort from the mech suddenly seized the semi but he fought it down. He was here to help Ratchet not the other way around. Gathering himself the truck spoke."
"Still you don't know if he is gone. How can you say that your home is destroyed?"
"Would you try to make sense?" the medic snarled shaking his helm in frustration.
"I am trying!" Sal snarled, anger flaring. "I am trying hard! I'm not a human!"
"Ah-ah-ah," Ratchet sputtered trying to make sense of what the Peterbuilt was saying, finally he gave a vigorous shake of his helm and decided to offer an explanation for the simplest question hoping it would get rid of the intruder.
"My home, our home, Cybertron. The war has destroyed it. There was a chance, Primus there was a chance," the medic covered his faceplates with his servos, "to fix it, to rebuild everything. We were so close. If I had watched the children more closely Megatron would never have taken them. Optimus would not have had to surrender the keys. The Omega lock would have been ours," bitterness tainted his voice, "but Megatron took the Lock and turned it on Earth. Optimus would not let him destroy this planet as ours had been so he struck the Omega Lock with the Starsaber. So the children are safe, Earth is safe, and our home is dead for all time."
There was dead silence for several moments and the distraught medic found himself wondering what was going on in the other's processor and if it was going to leave anytime soon.
"So, your home is a place?" there was confusion and disbelief in the question.
"Of course!" Ratchet snarled. "That is what a home is! The place where you are from!"
There was another moment of silence that seemed to drag on forever interrupted only by small sounds from within the engine compartment. The medic found himself fascinated as he watched the creature struggle with the concept. Finally the semi seemed to shake himself and gave a patient sigh.
"No."
"No what?"Ratchet demanded.
"I have tried to look at it from your perspective. I know we are different and can see things differently," the Franklin sounded obviously proud of himself for recognizing this, "but nope, you are just wrong."
"Wrong about what?" the medic huffed in annoyance.
"Home. It is not a place. Well not one place."
"Then what pray tell is a home?" the Autobot demanded sarcastically.
There was another moment of the grinding thoughtful pause.
"Home is where Pa makes a safe place for the girls to sleep and Ma fills it with soft things to make the sleeping easier. Home is where the brothers fight over who gets to wash their faces first and Galena smacks them into order. Home is where Zech does something stupid but we all forgive him anyway because he loves us. Home is wherever my family is. It's," he hesitated, the strange mech was staring at him with a blank unreadable face and the Cybertronians did not give off pheromones like humans did so he didn't know if his words were sinking home.
What was Ratchet thinking? Suddenly an old saying came to Sal and he staggered a bit at the revelation that came with it.
"Home is where the heart is," he whispered rolling away uneasily from the medic as he felt his respect for the healer suddenly drop. "And your heart is where your treasure is. So," he wanted to bolt to leave but, "so I guess your treasure was that dead planet," but for the first time in his life he felt the need to understand so strongly, "instead of with your family," he had fought for the sparklings' lives with this healer, "so when the planet was dead your home was gone," he didn't want Ratchet, the one he respected to be that shallow, "that's what you meant?"
The semi was angled to roll out of there now, ready to be gone but he let his senses linger on medic trying to make sense of the shocked blank look on the white faceplates through the pounding rain.
"Primus no," Ratchet suddenly groaned falling to his knees, servos digging into the rusty mud. "No, I have a family; had a family but our leader, our 'Pa' is gone. What do you do when the one who is supposed to make the safe place is no longer, no longer…"
"Then it would be my time to make the safe place for the others to call home," Sal said softly rolling a bit closer. "That time will come for me. I do not age. Someday Pa will pass, and then Ma. Zech and Lola will have a family then and my home will be wherever they are. But someday they will be gone too and then it will be up to me to make the safe places."
Ratchet groaned and threw his head back to look up at the dark clouds. Salcha rolled a little closer.
"Don't you have little ones who need you?"
The question hurt and the medic hunched as his all too helpful processor offered up a string of images. The little yellow and black scout clinging to his servos in fear as he realized he would never speak again, drawing strength from the mech who was so much older. Rafael adjusting his glasses in pride as the medic invited him to watch the latest Synth-En experiment. The human bent over his laptop, face twisted in intense concentration as he tried to understand the spiraling alien code the medic was inputting.
Looking at the defeated form before him Sal found himself at a loss. No more ideas popped into his mind. No more words offered themselves. Feeling foolish for ever thinking he could do the humans' task he gave a groan, muttered a goodbye, and rolled slowly back to where the cousin was standing on the covered porch of the junk yard. He opened his driver's door and the lanky ginger climbed in quietly.
"Didn't go too good huh?" the human asked softly.
Sal was about to reply when the determined roar of an engine roared out over the rain behind him. A red and white ambulance came tearing around the piles throwing up sprays of mud in every direction. Salcha lurched forward throwing his cousin against his seatbelts to intercept the mad flight of the medic. Ratchet transformed to avoid crashing into the semi and caught himself with both hands on the dark hood.
"Where are you going Healer Ratchet?" the big rig asked a flare of hope rippling through his stomachs.
"Home!" the medic laughed before leaping over the engine compartment and spinning out of the junkyard.
As soon as he hit the road red lights began to flash and the drone of his siren rolled away into the rain. Inside the warmth of the semi's cab a freckled face stared agape at the retreating ambulance.
"He was, that was a, Thunder over Denali Sal! Was that?"
"Yup."
"And I can't tell a soul…"
"Nope"
"You smug little trucker! How under the wolf moon are you able to handle this?"
"Oh, I guess you humans aren't the only ones with social skills."
The cousin laughed at the tone and shook his head.
"I guess I need to be more careful about what I put in the computer databases after all."
The road to the Harbinger seemed far too long to the old medic but finally he made it to the secluded mountain side where erosion had exposed the entrance. He transformed and carefully walked the echoing halls until he came to the engine compartment. A fierce grin split his faceplates but warred with a worried frown. His spark leapt to see the two youngest members of Team Prime diligently toiling, doing their best to make the situation better but how they were doing it, a groan nearly escaped him as Bumblebee plugged the worn and decayed energon conduit into the power coupling. One glance at the display showed that Rafael had completely miss-calibrated the energon tranceducer. Still pride swelled in the medic's spark as the human danced over the Decepticon controls and the lights flared and inevitably dimmed. To get even this far with the resources available to him was an astounding feat for one so young. Still no need to let the youth get cocky.
"Eh, eh, ep!" He called out schooling his faceplates into a scolding frown as he saw the boy began to attempt the process again.
Shock replaced the concentration as the human spun to face the sound. Bumblebee darted over to his charge's side.
*Do you see what I'm seeing Raf?*
"Ratchet!" Relief and joy filled the tired voice as the boy stepped forward to greet his mentor.
Primus knew when the human had last slept or eaten. Bumblebee usually remembered to make sure Raf took care of himself but they both looked tired and worn. Fierce protective programs rose to the surface as the medic stared down at the youngling and he fought down the undignified urge to snatch both of them up in his arms and just hold them for awhile.
"Now step out of my way so I can work."
He brushed the scout to one side with the wave of an arm and shooed Raf back from the consol with his servos. The Autobot managed to keep his face stoic and emotionless for a few seconds as he focused on the task at hand but from behind him Bumblebee's field radiated joy and relief and trust, all of it pressing as close into his own field as the youngster dared. In front of him Rafael stared up with a look of faith and hope the like of which the medic had never had directed at him. His old spark swelled with determination and resolve. He was not Optimus but for now he was all these young ones had. The Harbinger might be only a derelict Decepticon warship caught in the rock of distant organic world, but for so long as it contained even one of his charges, it was something else entirely, or he would make it something else, for them. The thought filled his spark to over flowing and the old Bot could not hide the warm smile that lit his faceplates.
Home.