A/N: According to Open Office, I now officially have 100k+ words of Seeker very-much-NOT-porn for a kinkmeme. I am failtastic. *pokes M-rating*. Thank you so much for sticking with me, all you wonderful readers! You rock :)
Being a medic and having access to the internet had left Ratchet with a passable knowledge of human religions. He was never the most religious of mechs but he had seen countless patients pass through his hands and the majority had been quite a lot more religious than Ratchet himself had been. Humans, he had found, were no different, and while most things regarding them were handled by the human medics on base, there had been occasions where Ratchet had stepped in. His size had been a problem at times but that minor issue had been outweighed by whatever other issues had brought the human to him in the first place. Sam, for one, had admitted the second time he showed up for medical attention that he had already spent enough time in the human infirmary, and the fourth time that after what he went through at the hands of the small Decepticon doctor, Ratchet's far larger build was a comfort. Mikaela, for another, simply seemed fascinated with watching him at work, even when her injuries were the ones he was working on.
Ratchet had his Cybertronian patients and his regular human ones as well and so he had eventually spent a little spare time researching what he was actually dealing with beyond the mere physical aspect in an attempt to understand their small, fragile allies better... and against all logic, it was a fragment of a passage in one of those religious records that now whispered through this processors and made him stare at his tools with dim optics without truly seeing them as he waited for the human bond-mate of William Lennox to appear.
Physician, that voice quietly taunted in a voice that sounded uncomfortably like Starscream's distinct vocaliser, heal thyself.
It had been easy to forget, so long ago. Civil unrest had turned into open war, he had been newly-promoted Chief Medical Officer for a hospital that had little to no experience with all-out wartime emergencies, and by the time they had been forced into an effective, experienced medical unit, he had already begun to adapt again. He had earned a reputation for being short-tempered, for having an aim with a wrench that could drop a mech with painful accuracy if they made too much of a pest of themselves, and that had stayed with him even as the effects of Seeker-adapted programming faded and his temper cooled, even if it never vanished completely. The programming that allowed him to adapt was the same that ensured that it would happen without demanding overly much of his attention – he was aware of it if he really focused on it but for the most part it simply happened and wasn't much different from simply choosing to behave in a different way than he used to.
He had never minded. Most medics carried the programming because it made them that much better at their duty and for the most part, it meant only minor changes to their personality. It didn't rewrite who they were but simply allowed specific aspects of their personalities to strengthen as was needed – Seeker-influenced programming born from the unusual amount of time Ratchet had spent with them had been in the more extreme end of things, but hadn't shown something that hadn't already been there; temper, dominant mannerisms, and ego included. Once he had left them, that set of changes had eventually gone dormant but with the Autobots being as varied of a group as they were and it being a wartime hospital, no proper new set had emerged to take its place and so it had remained – dormant and all but forgotten but still very much capable of being triggered again with the right influence... such as, for instance, a newly-onlined Seeker that ran on little more than basic programming and understood only the most straight-forward of instructions.
If their human-turned-Seeker truly had a list of issues to bring up with Primus, Ratchet was quickly finding entries of his own to add to that. That adaptable programming was not particular about what it did. It did not pick and choose what it felt was needed. Programming came as a packaged deal, with some sections of programming feeding on themselves and other lines and sections to create something new entirely and to pick out only certain parts to mirror was likely to do more harm than good in the long run. It wasn't as strong as what it based itself on, would never even approach it, but it was still there, for better or for worse, and what had made sense for a Seeker-trained medic in a pre-War world wasn't always welcome in an Autobot CMO, wartime or not.
Seeker temper, for one. Seeker-ego. A Seeker's strong view of kin, their drive to claim someone strong and competent and dangerous for mate or interface partner...
... And the painful, unwanted, treacherous bit of programming that reminded him that Starscream as Air Commander had rule of all who were of Seeker-kin and Seeker-programming, and that included the ground-pounders that had lived with them, whatever their build or function or faction.
Hatchet, that voice mocked again, low and compelling and nauseating. Flightless, Seeker-trained, half-kin traitor. An Autobot medic with the bedside manners of a Decepticon. What right do you have to keep a Seeker from its proper place? Too weak and cowardly to be kin and too addicted to let go? Medic, fix yourself.
It wasn't Starscream, of course, was nothing more than his own nagging programming letting its disgust be known, and he forced it aside and strengthened the shields that kept the bond between himself and their recharging Seeker contained. And maybe that was why he had been so distracted that he didn't notice the human appear in the door, small alerts in his processors easily drowned out by far heavier programming that demanded his attention, and it wasn't until she knocked hard on the door frame and the sound of approaching footsteps followed without waiting for a response that he realised he was no longer alone in the room.
The footsteps stopped and blue optics returned to their normal intensity as they focused on her, and it also wasn't until then that he realised how little he had actually been in contact with her, even before their Seeker-related situation had begun. Unlike Mikaela, she wasn't part of NEST and her only connection to them was through the husband who had fought at their side since before that alliance had ever even been made official. She was passably familiar with Ironhide and less so with the rest of them, and only now, watching the small human female, did Ratchet realise how little he truly knew about her and how much of a task he had ahead of him with her Seeker-husband so determined to keep her.
Human watched medic watched human and finally she broke the silence, arms wrapped around herself in what Ratchet recognised as a gesture of uncertainty in her kind. "Where is Will?"
"In recharge," Ratchet responded, still watching the small human. She was alone, her sparkling presumably in recharge as well or in the care of someone trusted, but while what he knew of human body language showed uncertainty, there had been no hesitation in her footsteps and the knocks on the door had been strong and firm. Uncertain, perhaps, but not weak. Never weak, if a Seeker had chosen her for a mate.
She nodded slightly in acknowledgement and presumably to let him know she understood what he was talking about, Cybertronian-influenced terms or not. "Bumblebee said you wanted to see me."
Not quite a question, not giving any indication of whether or not she had any idea of why she had been summoned – even if Ratchet strongly suspected she knew it was about more than a mere medical check-up, judging from her mannerisms – and he wondered fleetingly just how much she had learned from her husband. It could have been written off as nothing but uneasiness about the whole situation, uncertainty about how to handle it all and still being unsettled by the presence of alien beings, but he couldn't shake the suspicion that there was more. He had summoned her, not the other way around, and now she was waiting for him to make that first move rather than give up any advantage she might have. She was used to keeping secrets, he realised. Too used to it, perhaps, if she was unwilling to trust even them... or used enough to the workings of the military that she wasn't going to believe they had William's best interests at heart until she had seen proof herself, allies or not.
Suddenly curious as to just how much of a match for her husband she was, he held down his hand in a silent offer to lift her up and she hesitated for a second before she accepted – not out of fear but of simple caution, if her expression was anything to go by, and he put her gently on the Cybertronian-sized table as he responded to her not-quite-question.
"You felt it when Will scanned for you. I simply wish to make sure no harm came to you from it. His Seeker half can be a bit too enthusiastic at times and doesn't always remember that humans are a fragile species when compared to us."
"Like the Twins?" Calm, neutral – mild, even – and she continued before he had the chance to respond to that one, changing the subject with an ease that he was certain came from practice. "I didn't feel much when Will scanned for me. Until Bumblebee asked me if I'd felt anything, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me. He didn't mean anything bad with it, I could feel that much when I think about it, he just couldn't sense me and was worried about where I was at. Nothing happened. I feel just the same as I did before."
She was different from Mikaela or Sam or the NEST personnel that Ratchet came into contact with – be it by current circumstances or simply a matter of a very different kind of personality, and personally he suspected it to be a combination of both – and he adjusted his own approach accordingly, sensing her out as much as he knew she did to him in turn.
"He meant no harm," Ratchet agreed, "but he is still unfamiliar with his abilities and by all rights, he should not have been able to do what he did. Bumblebee can pinpoint his charges' location but they carry an implant to enable that in the first place."
Sarah Lennox stayed silent at that – Mikaela, Ratchet couldn't help but note, would have asked a dozen questions already – and the medic waited for another second for a possible response before he held up a scanner. "With your permission?"
The human nodded – not suspicious enough to ask for further details about what, exactly, he would be doing, and that was a beginning, at least – and he let the scanner run through its battery of tests aimed at humans. It was significantly slower than it would have been to simply hook up to another mech's diagnostics systems but still fast to a human, and she blinked in surprise when the small instrument emitted a soft sound and Ratchet lowered it again to look at the results.
Glyphs scrolled by and a whole range of perfectly average readings was all he had to show for his efforts long moments later. Normal readings. Utterly normal, at that – not even what they had learned to consider a normal baseline reading for the NEST personnel stationed on base with them – and Ratchet wasn't sure if he should have been surprised. After how strongly the Seeker had felt about claiming her... there was the feeling that there should have been something there. Something to set her apart and mark her as something more than a plain, normal female specimen of the human species.
He turned his attention to the human again, not willing to draw any final conclusions just yet. "Have you had any physical symptoms? Headaches, nausea, a higher than normal core temperature?" No to the third one, the scanner had already told him as much, but that was only a here-and-now result and it had been...
... not that long at all since the Seeker's scan of her. He was being ridiculous, Ratchet realised, and he knew it, too, and did what he could to suppress a sigh aimed at himself as the human female shook her head.
"No. There was nothing out of the ordinary in those results, was there?"
And if he had listened to the words alone, it could have been taken as concern or an honest question but the voice more than suggested that she knew the answer already and wasn't in the least surprised by it.
"Nothing that I could find," Ratchet allowed and drew the first genuine response from his human patient as she snorted softly.
"'That you could find'," she repeated. "He's my husband, Ratchet. I know you think he's something big and dangerous and unstable, and maybe he is, but he's still my husband and you weren't there to see it when you people finally let me talk to him without a security detail to watch his every move. He was terrified of hurting me."
Her hands dropped and she took a step closer and if she had been Cybertronian, Ratchet knew her optics would have been glowing bright in anger. Human eyes weren't capable of the same but her expression and voice carried over her anger just fine as it was, though.
"So maybe he has wings," she continued, hard and biting and unrelenting. "So maybe he looks like the jet-things you spend so much time trying to shoot out of the sky. If you people are so highly evolved and we're so primitive, then why are you the ones judging him on how he looks? He has blue eyes and that stupid insignia you all wear. Isn't that good enough? Why's Bobby the one who looked like Christmas had arrived early when you finally decided to let Will be around humans again? Why's their team the ones that can't wait to see what he can do with that stupid test flight dummy you have Mikaela working on? I don't care what he looks like, Ratchet. He's still my husband and the father of my child and I'll fight for him if I have to."
And judging by the Seeker's strong response to her, that feeling was mutual, but Ratchet wasn't about to offer any encouragements of that sort at the moment, and if had been Ironhide reacting so strongly, he would have believed it to be a result of his bond with the Seeker. Sarah Lennox was human, though, which made her response entirely her own and Ratchet wasn't sure if that was any comfort. Explaining Seeker-behaviour to people unfamiliar with them had proven enough of a pain as it was. Explaining it to someone who was already well past angry and fast moving on to furious...
"Judgement based on appearances has very little to do with it," Ratchet said, processors already fast at work to find a way to explain it without making the situation any worse. "He is a Seeker. Whatever else he has been – and might indeed still be – he is a Seeker, with Seeker programming and Seeker behaviour and Cybertronians know this. He is possessive, temperamental, and irrational and nothing he or anyone else can do will change that. At best, he can keep it at a reasonable level. Our core programming is what we are, Sarah Lennox, and in the end, there is nothing we can do to change it. It will always be who we are at our core, however much we might fight it. Yes, part of him is still your husband but the rest of him is very much not."
Silence. The human female watched him with narrowed eyes and clearly considered just how much of his explanation she was willing to accept or even believe, and then she crossed her arms in a classic gesture of defiance that Ratchet was very well acquainted with after continued exposure to the younger of their human allies.
"Then I'll just get to know him again, now won't I?" It wasn't a question, either, and she continued before Ratchet could get any sort of word in. "For all of the few times you've let me seen him, I've never felt anything but safe with him, which is more than I can say about some of the rest of you. You have the Twins running around out there, acting like a pair of six-year-olds brought up by rabid wolverines. What do you think would happen if they hit a human on accident when they were fighting each other? What do you think would happen if that---that two-wheeled, bladed menace forgot to pay attention to where he was going? The only difference between Will and them is that he looks like a Decepticon and you're all so used to the rest of the walking disaster zones here on base that you don't even notice them anymore. I would trust him with Annabelle, programming be damned, and that's all that matters to me."
"Impressive as it sounds," Ratchet responded in a firm, quiet voice, "he is still a Seeker and your species has no experience with the breed. You have no knowledge of what they are. I commend you for your loyalty, Sarah Lennox, but you are making promises based on insufficient knowledge."
She watched him for a moment and clearly considered his words, much to Ratchet's silent relief, and then cold reason seemed to win out over raw anger as she narrowed her eyes slightly but kept her voice even.
"Then tell me what I'm dealing with. Bobby knows about as much as I do, Sam knows even less, Ironhide won't tell me anything without your permission, and Seeker or not, that man is my husband, and I can't learn a damn thing about him if you're not talking and he's terrified of hurting me."
There was the brief thought of being gentle with her but it was gone again from Ratchet's processors almost as soon as it had appeared. He could see what the Seeker saw in her. She was loyal, she was dedicated, and she was willing to go far to protect and keep the people she considered kin. A true Seeker without that human part in it would never have made a claim on her, being organic and all, but from that Seeker-human perspective, Ratchet could see what they saw that made them so fiercely determined to keep her.
He could try and ease her into understanding, try the gentle explanations as a first attempt, but if she meant what she said, he would do all of them a disfavour if he chose that course of action. She was loyal, she was relentless, and she was strong. If the Seeker intended to claim her, she would have to be. Seekers valued strength above all else, in themselves and their mates, and a human female would be no exception to that. She was strong because she would have to be and to coddle her now would do none of them any good at all.
"He is a Seeker," Ratchet finally said. "As it is, he is about as normal as he will ever be, but there is no guarantee that he will remain like that. Seeker programming might resurface to a stronger degree at a later time. As it is, he thinks himself above mere ground-pounders, he considers himself invincible, he is temperamental and possessive and will take no order that is not reinforced by a threat of violence, implied or otherwise."
It had been as much a test as the beginning of an explanation and Ratchet watched Sarah Lennox's reaction closely as he allowed her to consider those words. The muscles in her shoulders tensed slightly and her hands gripped her arms almost imperceptibly harder but the look she had levelled on him didn't waver. "Ironhide told me that the Seeker sees Annabelle as its...its sparkling."
He recognised the hesitation as the unfamiliarity with a new word that it was and he nodded.
"Its offspring. You carried her but Will contributed to her creation, so to speak. As a result, the Seeker considers Annabelle its sparkling as well. Seekers may be Decepticon by nature but they have very strong programming in regards to sparklings – their own as well as others'. I have no doubt that Will would give his life to keep your offspring safe. Understand that the Seeker would do no less." He paused, then continued in a dry voice. "I believe she will find the concept of 'dating' rather difficult to carry out with something as protective as a Seeker watching over her."
Sarah Lennox's snort at that told quite clearly that it wasn't something she was going to lose the slightest bit of sleep over and the words that followed confirmed that. "And that's bad? I've got enough in Will giving me grey hair. I don't need a teenage daughter dating bad boys to add to that." Her eyes narrowed a bit more and for a moment, Ratchet felt like nothing as much as a particularly displeasing experiment under a microscope. "And you're avoiding the topic. What aren't you telling me?"
Seeker-mate, indeed, and Ratchet's intakes vented softly in an approximation of a human sigh. "It has claimed you for a mate. We assumed you to be their bonded – a strong connection of friendship and kinship, but nothing more – but it... disagreed with that. Will still considers you his wife and I suspect that this is what made the Seeker part decide you were a mate rather than a platonic bonded, but I doubt we will ever know for sure. They have claimed you for a mate, Sarah Lennox, and this is not necessarily a good thing."
"Explain." Short, chipped – so very much like her husband in a bad mood in that moment that it made Ratchet's spark twist painfully, and then he pushed those emotions aside and focused on the conversation.
"You are obviously aware of the... physical issue already. Seekers are possessive. If you kept away from it, with an ocean or a continent between you if at all possible, there would be some hope that it would only infrequently seek you out to ensure that you and your offspring were well. You would be able to have some approximation of a normal life. As a widow at first and later on with a new husband, if that was what you wished, but outside of the rare, occasional visits from Will and the Seeker, you would be able to regain somewhat of a normal life again. If you remain in even moderately close proximity to it, it will uphold its claim on you. Any non-platonic interest anyone may show in you would be punished swiftly by it, be it from a human or a Cybertronian. They are violent and possessive and do not tolerate what they see as inferior beings showing interest in what is theirs."
The human female pursed her lips in clear displeasure but didn't say anything and Ratchet pressed on. "It is unlikely we could make it change its mind about you as its mate and even if we did, there would be the very real risk that it would still take an interest in any future relationships of yours. That is your choice, Sarah Lennox. They are violent and possessive and do not easily relinquish a claim on anything again, mates least of all. Seekers mate for life. If you stay near them – if you accept their claim – you will never be able to have another non-platonic relationship, physical or otherwise, without the very real risk that the Seeker will find out and take appropriate action. The appropriate punishment in their culture of anyone non-Seeker initiating that sort of contact with a claimed mate is offlining. Immediate offlining, if the offending ground-pounder was lucky, which was not always the case. In more human terms, if you ever initiated intimate physical contact with another being again, it would be far more merciful to simply take a gun to them yourself."
"And you think I've been taking men to my bed left and right while Will's been out here fighting at your side?" Low, quiet – deadly quiet – and if Ratchet had still had any doubts left about the Seeker's reasons, that vanished the last of them.
Seeker-mate, he realised, right down to the strength, the temper, the loyalty, and the utter lack of reason they were capable of when something offended them, imagined or otherwise.
And just like that, he knew, the issue was settled. There were still explanations to finish, but there wasn't any doubt left about the outcome. Not anymore.
"No," he responded calmly and resolved to handle that issue before it could go any further. "An impressive jump of logic, granted, but not what I implied. If Will had truly died, you would have grieved but presumably, eventually, have married again. Humans are a social species and he would have wanted you to be happy."
Slightly mollified, some of the tensions in the female's shoulders eased and the anger in her eyes faded marginally. "But he's not dead. I don't care what he is, Ratchet. He's still my husband. Yes, I liked the way he looked as a human but I didn't marry him just because he was attractive. I married him because I loved him enough to accept that he spent months at a time in some hellhole somewhere and that he might die there, too, because that was who he was and I knew that when I said 'I do'. Do you think I would have left him if he came home in a wheelchair? If he'd never be able to walk again? And don't answer that because frankly, I don't want to know."
Silence. It was a lost argument, Ratchet knew, and while he knew that a good part of her anger was due to having to keep those emotions locked up since that fatal battle as well as an almost complete lack of information offered, it didn't make it any easier.
It also didn't change the fact that there were still a few more issues to cover.
"Seekers are not monogamous," he continued. "He will claim mates among the mechs here, however much he might deny you the right to see others."
The anger in her eyes flared again before it was reined back in with visible effort.
"Then we'll deal with that, too. I don't care, Ratchet. I don't care what he looks like, I don't care what his programming is, and I don't care in the slightest what you think. He is my husband and I won't leave him. Learn to live with that because I intend to." One, two steps, and she released her tight grip on herself to gesture at the door. "Now put me down again. Our daughter needs me. It's past her bedtime and Bobby tends to forget that. If you want to insult me some more, we can take round two tomorrow. Floor. Now."
Too stunned to be much aware of what he was doing, Ratchet moved on habit alone as he gently placed the human on the ground again and watched her stalk off... and only then did he realise how perfectly her demands had hit his Seeker-affected bits of programming, however unintended it might have been.
She was small, she was human, she was fragile, she was short-lived, but she cared no less for William Lennox than Ironhide did, in her own, human way. Ironhide had proven his sincerity in the code to his spark-cage that now lay nestled around Ratchet's own spark; one transmission all that would be needed to leave him as vulnerable than any sparkling. She had been willing to swear off any close, physical human contact for the rest of their lifetime if that was what was necessary to keep him.
Ratchet wasn't certain that either of them truly knew what they had offered but then, there was little he could do about that. Time would tell and in the end, whatever the Decepticons had planned might make the point moot regardless. He had done what he could for now. He might possibly take Sarah Lennox up on her offer of a round two later but for now, he was quickly developing a processor ache, and with one last look at the empty doorway, he shook his head and went to close the door for the night.
Recharge beckoned and he wasn't about to fight it.