Ratchet's labored work over Cliffjumper hadn't ceased once since the broken mech had made it in. The extensive wounding had everyone in jitters—the massing tears through his body; the gaping hole in his right shoulder and the scraps on his left; his revoltingly mutilated hand; his repulsively mauled face; his sickeningly ripped up leg plating on the right and the un-curable wounds that Arachnid's venom had left festering inside him.
When Ratchet had found traces of hardened lava he didn't believe it. No matter how much he didn't want to believe it, he had to force himself to because he kept finding traces—scratches over his body that came directly from lava, and the solidified chunks he had to force free from Cliffjumper's arm and face.
They had to contact Fowler for shipments of parts and Ratchet eventually admitted that there were some places he couldn't save. Cliffjumper's hand was lost—there would be no salvaging it, and he would try to get to work on creating another immediately. He could pull together Cliffjumper's face as well as he could, but even that might not heal straight.
The wound of Arachnid's venom on his left knee worried him. Ratchet knew he had to replace the entire leg. All the plating on his body was going to have to be removed and replaced because the scratches from Arachnid's venom and lava had weakened the metal too much to protect him.
Cliffjumper was locked in stasis, a trauma that he would not awaken from for a long time. Ratchet worked never-ceasing to stabilize his critical condition, taking help where he could—but for the most part, Cliffjumper was in Ratchet's hands. Jack, Raf, and Miko had all wanted to see Cliffjumper since they knew the Autobots cared for him so much, but they were forbidden from the medical area. Not only because Ratchet claimed they would distract him, but none of the Autobots wanted them to see the grisly aftermath of Cliffjumper's torture.
Worse still, Megatron had not ceased his diabolical work. As the days slowly passed in which Ratchet didn't even take a measly stasis nap, Optimus and the team had time to escape the explosion of the mines Cliffjumper had been supposed to been taken too. They learned what dark energon was when it brought a piece of Ratchet's equipment to life. The kids managed to follow Bulkhead when he tried to help the captured Fowler, and they halted one of Megatron's rising zombie armies.
These events passed, but Ratchet remained, toiling without pause on Cliffjumper, slowly managing to at least stabilize the mech if not fix every part of him. He considered the leg his biggest option, and he began to piece the new one together first, the huge job taxing his patience. He salvaged as much bio mechanics from Cliffjumper's original leg as possible, but it was a difficult feat when most bio mechanics had been damaged beyond repair by Arachnid's venom.
All the while, Nightstalker remained in the back.
Nothing happened on her end. She had been leaking from her crash, but Bumblebee came back with the welder and fixed her up some. He was the only one she saw. He brought her energon cubes for recharge, checked her systems to be sure her homing signal and weapons were offline, but nothing more. It took Nightstalker long enough to stop flinching when the bot came in, but she eventually sensed that no harm would come to her of Bumblebee's making. However, even Bumblebee gave up talking to her after a while when she refused to speak.
The only thing that made her solitude nearly unbearable was the voices.
She had tried to close her communications towards the Decepticons, but Soundwave must have managed to hack her channel and keep it open. Starscream openly threatened her with all kinds of gruesome things, some which rattled her and some that weren't nearly imaginative enough to shake her. The Vehicons would periodically taunt her as weak.
She didn't know what the Autobots were going to do with her, and that probably scared her even more. Nightstalker waited, locked up in stasis cuffs, bracing herself for the imminent end of death.
The whips lashed. Energon splashed, staining his vision sickening blue. The hoarse, agonized screams didn't stop, and it was terrifying to know that they were his own. Her hands touched him, and slow-burning fires sliced through his metal like old cheese. His voice splintered again, jerking, thrashing, writhing without escape.
"Mercy! Mercy!"
Her diabolical laugh echoed in his audio receptors, cruel, unfeeling. She ripped and tore at his body, burning, the stench rising, coils of smoke overwhelming his vision. A cackle and a furious demand and more screaming and more energon spattering. Darkness. Alone. Unheard howls and shrieks, desperate, pleading, ignored. Blazing orange optics viewing him as nothing. The touch of the dead.
Burning—brutal—slashing and tearing—crippling terror rising and crashing over him. Hands picked and pulled apart, metal shaved away with the highly sensitive pain receptors on, broken, wires yanked free and glistening in sight—An upheaval of the stomach and more energon. No escape—captivity of eternal dole, endless sorrowing and lamenting of life—
To beg a master for death. Howling, shrieking, weeping, gnashing of teeth and crippling terror. "Mercy! Mercy!" An infinite plea to mock. Trepidation pressing in, claws penetrating through the weak neck, symbolizing of fear choking his life away, suffocating as bile rose and clotted his throat.
Buried beneath—!
Buried beneath—!
Dying, screaming, begging, empty supplications for those without ears. "Mercy! Mercy!" Cold orange optics of lava, glaring with vicious malice, dread closing in, unpitying, unforgiving, and cruel to the end. Unearthly screams from the incarnation of suffering, weeping sobs of the despondent, despair sweeping him away as chaff, forlorn hopes burned to ash and blown away by the wind. Kept alive to suffer. Kept alive to die!
"Mercy!"
"Mercy!"
Cliffjumper jolted back to the land of the living, hearing himself screaming but unable to register how to stop it. The bright lights blinded him, and a shape was moving, hands touching his body—
His screams renewed instantly, terrified of someone touching him—it was her! She was here to break him down like slag! He quaked on his hard bed, twisting away from the clawed hands reaching out to him.
"Cliff! Cliff! Calm down!"
A piercing wail left his lips when she touched him again, stroking his cheeks with mocking sympathy before she took the coup to make his anguish heighten. What would it be this time? His other hand? His spark chamber? His interface paneling!
"Mercy! Mercy!" he half-wept half-shrieked. His spark slammed inside his aching body, and he writhed beneath the touch that tried to get him to focus for the upcoming punishment. "Mercy, please, I beg of you! Please, mercy, I'll do anything—!"
"Cliff!" her voice persisted. Cliffjumper snapped his optics shut, trembling in apprehension of seeing those vindictive orange optics glowing in spite and malicious intent. A soft hand was patting his cheek. "Cliff, it's okay! Calm down, it's me, Arcee! Remember? We rescued you, you're safe now. Shh, calm down . . ."
Trembling, mind latching to the different sounding voice and the mention of Arcee, Cliffjumper forced his eyes to crack back open. True enough, he saw blue optics, and another wail escaped his lips, laden with respite from his sufferings.
He couldn't even focus his mind to make enough sense. "Please, m-mercy . . ."
Her compassionate voice filled his ears. "Shh, it's all right, Cliff, I'm here. I won't let her hurt you. I'm here, it's going to be okay . . ."
He was weeping now, hands groping through the blinding lights for her. "Arcee—Arcee—please! The pain—I can't do it anymore! I can't! I can't! Please—make it stop!"
He felt her comforting lips touching over his face, careful of wounded spots. It was like a brush of a butterfly's wings against him. "Shh," she crooned softly, hands stroking his cheeks. "It's all right. She can't hurt you anymore. You're safe at the base. Ratchet's fixing you."
She can't hurt him—a choked sound tore past Cliffjumper's vocals, half stocked up with terror when he couldn't find his hand to touch Arcee back. "You don't know!" he howled at her, twitching in revolution on the medical berth. "You can't understand!" He shook his head wildly, still groping through the white wall of light to find her. He couldn't.
"Cliff, I understand perfectly," he heard her passionate whisper in his audio receptor. He shook his head—no, she had endured Arachnid, not—not—"I'm here for you. I—"
"You DON'T understand!" he wailed helplessly. "She's merciless! Worse than Megatron! She's cruel beyond reasoning—those—those orange optics—!" Cliffjumper's rising voice broke on an agonized moan. He writhed on the medical berth.
Arcee froze then, hands stilling their comforting strokes to his face. "O-Orange optics?"
"Like hells fire!" he wept freely, pressing his helm up towards Arcee. He needed her touch, Primus KNEW he needed her touch—! His hysterical panic was only dampened slightly by her kissing the top of his helm. "Please—Arcee—Arcee—Arcee, please—"
"Shh . . ." She kissed his trembling lips lightly, pressing her face into his when he leaned forward again. "I'm here. I won't ever leave you . . ."
"Please—Arcee . . . Mercy . . . Arcee . . ."
Arcee watched him drop back into a stasis that was sure to be wrought with the demonic shadows of the torture chamber. Her spark swelled with painful compassion while another side raised its ugly head.
Her hands clenched into fists. Her back stouts hinged up. Arcee ground her jaw as she turned in fury on Optimus, ignoring all those in the room. She forgot Ratchet, she forgot Bumblebee and Bulkhead, she even forgot the innocent ears of the humans out of sight. There was no one but her, Cliffjumper, Optimus—
And that devil in the back.
"It was her!" Arcee exploded at him. The blades on her arms came unsheathed without her noticing as she gestured angrily to the back. "SHE was his fragging torturer, not—not Arachnid! That little glitch we've got locked up in the back closet is the embodiment of his nightmares!"
Optimus's optics dilated at her irate outburst, and he conceded, "Arcee, I did not know at the time that she was his torturer—"
Arcee's eyes widened at the look on his face. "But you had a feeling!" she shouted right back, shaking she was trying so hard to refrain from attack, from losing it right then and there. When Optimus hesitated to respond, Arcee let out a mocking laugh. "Yes, you had a thought that she was his torturer, and yet you didn't say a slagging thing!"
His optics flashed. "So I did," he said with that warning of steel beneath his voice. "How else could he have been assisted from the dungeons—"
"I don't care what the frag she's done to help!" Arcee bellowed at Optimus. "You see what she's done to him! He's traumatized, Optimus, and you're standing here telling me that we're going to keep that fragging spawn of Unicron—"
"Arcee!" he barked back, seeing now that he wasn't getting through to her. "Stand down!"
"Stand the frag down?" she yelled back, slashing a hand through the air. "I'll kill her, Optimus!"
When she took the first two steps, a steely hand clamped down on her arm. "Arcee, I will not permit you to do this," Optimus stated severely. "Killing for revenge is NOT the Autobot way, and I will not let you fall as low as Decepticons have."
"Revenge?" Arcee hissed back. She threw an arm to Cliffjumper locked in stasis on Ratchet's medical berth. "I call it justice."
"And you cannot justify her death as justice when your optics carry nothing but hate." Arcee flushed bright with energon, infuriation bubbling behind her complexion. Optimus gave a strict nod, optics waning a little from their stress of before. "I will speak to her myself," he stated, wanting to demand answers himself.
Arcee jerked her arm from his grip, silently seething at him as she returned to Cliffjumper's side. Optimus cast his eyes over his worried soldiers, Bumblebee farthest back as he kept the humans at bay. His optics tightened a little. Those kids should not have heard Cliffjumper's delusional screams.
Optimus moved down the hallway, steps a bit heavier in his agitation. Cliffjumper's extensive wounding enraged him as well. Cliffjumper claimed her merciless and cruel—and gauging by the horrific sight of his wounds, Optimus believed it. Yet, he was conflicted with this thought. He had seen her cowering before them even as she stuttered a believable confession of surrender. She feared them.
This fact was only reinforced in Optimus's mind when he opened the door to her cell. The black femme Decepticon seeker cringed into her corner, tiny compared to the rest as she quite clearly expressed her terror of him. It was hard to wrap his central processor around the thought that this panicky femme had been malicious enough to do what she had done to Cliffjumper.
Then, it suddenly occurred to Optimus why she was so afraid. She was terrified because she knew she was Cliffjumper's torturer, and she expected death the minute they learned what she had done.
His optics had been so cold when he stepped in that Nightstalker knew it was the end. She cringed into her corner, trying to press herself smaller than a speck because she was so guilty. She ducked her head into her knees, unable to look up at the Autobot leader.
He paused in the doorway, and Nightstalker risked a chancy look at him. His blue optics weren't as livid as before, though traces of that rage remained. He had collected himself for the interrogation.
"You—" Nightstalker jumped and shrank at the sound of his voice. He started again. "You are Cliffjumper's torturer. Why did you not speak of this before?"
Nightstalker's lips trembled. She tried to speak, but nothing could squeeze past her tight throat. Her internal temperatures rose with her fear.
"I asked a question. I expect an answer."
His words weren't cruel, but they scared the pit out of Nightstalker. Her dread rose to suddenly overflowing, and she shrank as much as she could into her corner, stasis cuffs holding her immobile and exposed. Her gasps escalated to audible and rapid, and she rocked, wings twitching in panic against the stasis cuffs that held her prisoner. Dear Primus, lubricants were leaking from her eyes as she quaked beneath the gaze of Optimus Prime, neither compassionate nor hateful, but deadpanned.
"An answer," he repeated, making Nightstalker flinch violently.
Her mouth moved without sounds for the longest time. The words stuck there, pathetic and worthless, locked in her vocal processor by extreme trepidation. Optimus frowned at her silence, and before he could demand again, a name burst from Nightstalker's lips.
"Cliffjumper!"
She was aware she was crying with fright now, barely able to get the words to function properly. "Is he—Is he—he—he okay? C-C-Cliffjumper—" Nightstalker gasped and swallowed, trembling violently as she looked up at Optimus for his answer.
His gaze was shielded, unable to be understood. "That question remains to be answered," he finally said. "Why did you not speak of your functioning?"
Nightstalker cowered in her corner, feeling as if his massive size was impeding on the entire room. "I—I thought—I thought—" Nightstalker choked briefly on her terror again, unable to force the words through her constricting vocal processor. "I thought you would kill me!" Nightstalker dropped her face into her knees with a sob, shaking her head. "Primus knows I deserve it!" she cried, unable to stop it now that she had started.
Maybe it was a good thing they would kill her. Nightstalker shuddered in revolution of spending an eternity in the pit, but she knew she deserved nothing less. What kind of Cybertronian went around with torture as their function? It was sickening and degrading. Only those corrupt in the spark without compassion could take that vile job, and she had done it. She had done it for Fli-Ni, her brother—that Autobot that had killed him. But was that truly enough to make her despicable on all levels? Nightstalker wept, unable to choose what she really was and why she had really done these things.
The silence seemed to stretch for a long time, and Nightstalker didn't know if it was just because Optimus was watching her that made it seem so long. "What is your designation?" he finally asked.
Nightstalker shook her head, unable to speak around her guilt anymore.
"You have no designation?"
She shook her head again. Cliffjumper's screams echoed in her mind, scarring her and haunting her. A choking sob gritted between clamped teeth.
"Please, tell me what your name is. You will come to no harm."
How could he possibly promise her that? Arcee was sure to murder her for what she had fraternized with—her arch nemesis, and the one who had tortured her. And who could possibly forgive the one who had tortured the mech she cared about within an inch of his life?
There was a long pause. "You regret your actions?" he asked quietly.
Unable to scream out exactly how much she regretted it, Nightstalker nodded furiously into her knees.
There was a tired vent, and his heavy voice spoke again. "Calm yourself," he said quietly. "Cliffjumper yet lives. And I will not allow my troops to harm you, no matter what you may have done, because you seek repentance."
Nightstalker heard the door shut behind him, and she wept freely once out of his presence.
He was wrong. There was no atoning for her sins, no forgiveness for what she had done. She was beyond redemption, and she wept in misery for what she had allowed herself to become.
Fli-Ni would despise her.