Notes/ More warnings in here again. Another sad kind of chapter. Well at least this time it's only sad in parts. Plus possible trigger warnings for talk of death and borderline suicidal thoughts. Yeah… this is getting to be pretty dark in places now indeed. But I still like it and it's still looking like you do to, so off we go then. Just had to throw out that warning.

Peace and order through tyranny. In Starscream's mind the concept had always made complete and utter sense. He'd been taught young, when he first chosen his side to which to pledge his allegiance, that fear and oppression were the very things that held together any decent society. Sentient beings could barely function in any kind of orderly and productive fashion without motivation to do so. And an ever present fear from the ranks above ones own, would always be the greatest of motivators to anyone.

Starscream had been seemingly hand picked at a point early in his enlistment, to learn the art of leadership and constructive dictatorship, at the hands of his own great leader. It had never been any thing close to a secret that he and the former leader of the Decepticon forces, had had more than their share of differences. Far from hidden rumors had spread among the lower ranks for years, relating to a belief that Starscream assumed Megatron was a mindless idiot. That had in fact never quite been true exactly. He felt he had only been a half mindless and careless fool. Never a true idiot. He would have easily told anyone that had dared to confront him, that there was indeed a difference. But now, months into his own leadership of the fleet, Starscream could no longer deny that he had a problem, and one that simply being smarter than his infamous successor could not solve.

Oh, the simple concept of ruling through fear certainly did work well enough. He had seen work again time and again. He had been a commander of troops himself, and he had long seen himself as a master of the technique in his own right. But, as he was learning more on a near daily basis lately, in the position of lord and master of the Decepticons, the troops just didn't quite fear him nearly enough.

He had extinguished the sparks of low ranked and expendable troopers without warning, and for infractions that seemed each day to be less and less important, or worthy of such punishment. When that had grown both almost ineffective and quite frankly, simply tedious and boring, he had experimented instead with letting the offenders live. From that he had learned that he could beat them, could starve them in the brig, could embarrass and humiliate them, or assign the worst of the dirty and menial tasks, and still it hardly seemed to make a difference.

There had always been dissension among the ranks. As well as near constant infighting among at least four fifths of the troops. That was hardly anything new. He knew full well I fact that he had long been far from above such trouble himself. But things had reached a whole new level, and this time it was him left to feel the frustration of dealing with it and he didn't like it. Starscream would never admit aloud to thinking so, but leadership, as he was learning, was harder than he'd thought.

A loud thumping against the door of his office, startled him from this thoughts. And with his feet still propped up on the top of his work table in front of him, he nearly flipped backward over his chair. His right foot, quickly shifted to catch the edging around the tabletop so that he could somewhat clumsily avoid the horrible spill. In his startled haste to catch himself, his arms flew to the sides and backward, seeking balance and without thinking about his actions, he nearly fired one of his integrated blasters at the wall. There was another, now even louder couple of thumps against the door. He got to his feet, grumbling and stomped across the room, to yank the door open.

A single vehicon trooper stood in the wide corridor, waiting right in front of the door, which he had obviously just banged on. Starscream looked from the trooper, to the little buzzer very close to where he stood. He wasn't sure he even wanted to know who it was that might have taught a trooper to bang on a door like that. Instead he only gestures with a shift of his optics an a slight shake of his head toward the buzzer and hoped he would get the hint.

"What do you want?" he snapped," silently impressed that the trooper had at least located the correct door. Many of them were not unknown for waiting for acknowledgment at the door of a storeroom by mistake.

"I have information for you," the trooper explained, speaking quickly, and showing the good mind to get right to the point. "From Soundwave."

The trooper held out a data pad that the communications officer obviously must have transferred said information into. Starscream snatched the pad at once.

"Come in here," he demanded, stepping back into his office with the trooper following him. While the vehicon stood by the closed door, awaiting the next order, Starscream hurriedly activated and then began to read from the pad. His optics moved across the notes with waning interest as he skimmed over a few notes of things he considered to be of little importance in the moment. After a moment though his optics lit up and opened wide with an undeniable opportunity. He clapped his hands together in front of him, and resisted the urge to leap out of his chair again with excitement.

"So," he said, addressing the waiting trooper simply because there was no one else around to address at the moment. "If this status report retrieved from an Autobot server, is to be trusted, it looks like our runaway medic might have had a little medical emergency of his own. This could perhaps somehow be useful..."

In all truth, Starscream was not, and never had been, all that concerned about a single defector. It was a known fact that he had left the Decepticons himself, even if he had returned again. And Knockout was hardly one to pose any great threat to him or his troops, whatever the case. A medic was not generally a great danger to find oneself on the wrong side of at the best of times. Knockout, for all of his perceived absurdity, was actually highly intelligent. But then so were most of the Autobots, and that had never scared him yet. Starscream may well have simply let his former medic walk away – it would certainly prove better on resources and time than chasing him across the galaxy – if only he was not convinced that Knockout's eventual execution would finally instill some real fear in his troops.

"If I let one get away now, there is little doubt others will up and walk away," he said, again addressing the trooper who mumbled his agreement, probably only out of obedience above anything else. I have so many on the verge of giving up the cause, and of disbanding all over Cybertron. I need to show them that loyalty is the one way to survive."

"Hmm… You!" He pointed a finger at the waiting trooper, and continued. "Get to the main comm, and put out a ship wide alert at once. All flying troops are to report to the flight deck at once."

The trooper mumbled his obedience and walked out. Starscream stood up from his desk, shoved the data pad into a drawer and stomped out to meet his troops. The tips of his wings flicked in anticipation. He was already planning an attack on enemies as he walked the hallway.

Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break

"Now, I know full well, you can do much better than that!" Ratchet said in a tine somewhere between demanding, and the closest he even tended to come to encouraging patience. "Try it again. Both hands flat against mine and push back toward me."

Knockout only glared at him for a long moment. His red optics, if they could have done so, would surely have burned holes through the old medic's armor. But Ratchet was not going to give up. He glared right back, with both of his hands held out in front of him.

It was another minute at least, before Knockout finally raised his right arm, so that he could place his hand against the medic's. The left was much slower to ever try to follow. He could just barely lift it under his own power at all, and to get it high enough for his hand to touch the waiting hand of the old medic was still well past impossible to do. As it was, he pressed against the medic's right hand with his own right hand, and managed in the meantime to hold the left, only just slightly up from the position it had been resting in.

It had been seven Earth days since Knockout had been woken up from power down, after his processor had nearly failed entirely. The first day an a half at least, his condition had remained so perilous, that any real level of any true function was not known. By the end of the second though it had become tragically clear that both of his left limbs, or their function at least, had been left profoundly damaged. The right ones thankfully were far better off. Left weakened, but that would fix itself with enough time and effort.

He'd been placed early in the morning on the second day into a somewhat more elaborate, (and unfortunately also far less comfortable,) version of a recharge station that any bot might use in their living space to rest on. And it had only been in the last couple of days that he'd even been able to finally to safely leave somewhat sitting up with the top section partly upright so that he could rest against it. At present, Arcee was siting in a chair, which she turned and positioned so that she could sit beside him while he practiced motions with the old medic.

Retraining the processor to use and move the two damaged left limbs was possible, and probably to a decent extent, eventually. But it would take daily work at it, and Knockout had began, over the past days, to spiral into a state of increasing helplessness. He was nearly constantly frustrated and felt like he should not be. His own frustration only made him feel worse, but all the same he could hardly help it. The nearly four times daily, long moments of glaring so furiously had become normal.

"Don't you make me go fetch my trusty old bot beatin' wrench," Ratchet warned with a shake of his head, after Knockout had refused a third try at the same motion again. He glanced toward a drawer of his work table where most bots knew full well said large heavy wrench was kept. Knockout sat glaring at him, and a look in his optics said clearly without any words 'you wouldn't.

"Oh you better believe I would," Ratchet huffed. Replying to the obvious unspoken challenge. Everyone knew full well Ratchet would never hit them with a wrench, or any other object for that matter. But somehow just the simple threat of it tended to make patients want to obey him anyway. "I think you're more than well enough by now, it wouldn't exactly be entirely unethical of me to give you a good whack over that stubborn hard head of yours."

Slowly, and still nearly burning holes though armor panels with narrowing optics, Knockout forced himself to try it again.

"Good job. Let your arms drop for a second. Reach back up and we'll do that again." Knockout managed the motion this time slightly faster, and with a bit more strength, and he was rewarded with a slight nod of approval from the older bot medic.

"Hmm…." Ratchet said at once. "Let's bring your hands together, right up in front of you."

Knockout managed to bring his right arm up in front of him, and could hold it above his own body. He turned his wrist perfectly well at the same time. But on top of so much other damage to the left limbs, that wrist did not turn at all. And the fingers of that hand, had no fucnction at all. In order to bring both of the damaged bot's hands together, the medic gently held onto the left lower arm and brought it up to meet the right, which was held weakly under its own power.

Knockout should have been impressed with his own accomplishment, or at least it may have seemed like he should have been. He was of course doing a fair bit of the work himself, when it came to his far more functional arm. But still he only glared straight ahead of himself, with a look of clearly building rage in his optics.

"Let's try this again," Ratchet insisted. He was doing a perfectly fine job of ignoring, or perhaps simply seeing past the furious glaring. Seeing instead a patent still not quite as ready to give up so soon as it might have seemed at first glance.

The medic continued to gently hold onto the red bot's left wrist. He pulled his hand up slowly to meet the other one again. He said in a familiar tone of quiet, gentle firmness. "Remember what we talked about this morning? Your processor forgot some of your body's sense of motion. Movements can be relearned. So let's teach it this one."

A few more repetitions of the same motion, and the red bot finally screamed wordlessly in the rage and frustration he'd been directing toward the wall he'd been glaring at across the room.

"Try it again,. Just once more." came an urging response at once – this time from Arcee, who sat smiling, watching.

So many bots might had backed away nervous, at hearing a enraged scream like that, particular from a red-optic'd former 'con. But Arcee was doing just as fine of a job as Ratchet was, at seeing past the sheer frustration he was unable to stop himself from venting. The red bot did do his part in one more repetition of the motion again, but then he dropped his strongert arm to the recharge station one final time and gave a look that showed his utter refusal to continue on.

Ratchet retrieved an energon container, he'd set down on top of the worktable sometime before, when Knockout had refused to drink from it – another ongoing battle of wills over the last few days. Though thankfully he was become slightly more willing to fuel now, with the right amount of patient convincing.

Arcee took the container from the old medic before he even asked her too. They had learned already the past evening, what worked the best. She placed it into functional hand, and hold hers over his, so that she could help him lift it to drink from it. Even using only his far stronger right hand only, it would have been too heavy and awkward a thing to hold on his own, but the first time Ratchet had tired to make him refuel, on the second day, he'd held it to the red bot's mouth, while Knockout's still then almost entirely uncoordinated limbs did nothing at all. Knockout had only screamed incoherently with utter rage at his own helplessness, and had not even bothered with words. In hindsight of course that had been the trigger for his stubbornness over refueling, and thus the start of that battle of wills.

"Tell you what," Ratchet said, as Knockout slowly drank from the container, with Arcee somewhat awkwardly helping him hold it so he could do so. "If you can drink all of that with the next hour or so, I think later tonight I'll be able to disconnect your fuel line."

Removal of the very last of his life support measures was clearly the motivation Knockout needed, because he was able to drink nearly half of the container before he shook his head, not wanting any more right then.

"Well I have some overdue maintenance to do on the space-bridge," the old medic said as he stepped toward the medbay door. "Arcee, I think you've got this handled."

Arcee nodded. "No problem. I'll keep him company in here, and make sure he drinks this."

After Ratchet had gone, and Arcee had set the container aside for the moment, she reached for a portable computer she had stored in the empty bottom drawer of Ratchet's worktable.

"Want to do something with this?" she asked as she turned in her chair and held the device on her lap where Knockout could see it too.

He only made a motion somewhere close as he could get to a shrug of his sholders.

"June Darby sent over some more files of some Earth television." They'd spent some time the day before watching a few classic sitcom episodes she'd sent over with Agent Fowler. Knockout had clearly not gotten the point of comedy and had been quite unimpressed. "These might be better. These are educational films. Earth medical science, hmm..." she scrolled though the list of files with one finger on the little keypad, gang life in Detroit. Not sure why she'd think we might be even remotely interested in that… the mating habits of big cats in the wild… Oh an Astronomy film. You'd like that."

Knockout only sort of shrugged again. "Maybe later."

"If I can get this to connect to the internet, we can discover some random music videos online."

He looked slightly more interested in that, but then he just looked down at his knees.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine," Knockout's quiet, half mumbled reply was hardly convincing.

"You know you can always talk to me if you want to," Arcee tried slowly.

"I know," Knockout silently considered for at least a minute, before he said hesitantly, "I've been thinking lately about my old friend, Breakdown..."

"You probably don't remember," Arcee said, when Knockout's words died out in mid sentence. She set the computer aside. "I'm not sure you were anywhere close to fully conscious then. But early in the morning on day two, I came in here for a little while. You mumbled something to me, about having seen him, talked to him in some meeting hall on Cybertron."

"You must have assumed I was truly insane."

Arcee shook her head. "No. I do think it sounds a bit crazy, and it's certainly nothing anyone will ever be able to explain with science. But that hardly makes it any less real, or valid.

"Thanks."

"So, what was he like when he was still on line? All I really knew of him is that for whatever reason he and Bulkhead constantly wanted to bash each other heads in."

"He was..." Knockout fell silent again for a long moment as he considered how exactly to answer. "Good. Well good for a Decepticon. Breakdown had honor, a moral code. He believed that any bot on board the warship, no matter his rank or class, was still a bot and he was probably that only one that bothered speak nicely to troopers, energon miners, any of the low-lings. He hated the war for so long. Just wanted to to end, and I'm not sure he cared which side won it, as long as it just meant no more killing and damage. He asked me once what I would have been if Cybertron had never been at war, and I told him I was far to young to know what a world that would have been."

He stopped speaking and for a moment or two he just looked straight ahead at nothing of any great importance at all. Then he went on. "When he went off line, I guess I just kind of accepted it. I mean, I had assumed I'd be gone long before him. But still I just accepted that he was dead. Good bots die all the time in war. It's just how it goes. I regretted that I'd spent about as much time bossing him around and trying to make him buff my finish, than I had actually being grateful to still have one friend left. Still though, I understood that he was long gone, and that was that. Sometimes bad things happen. Get on over it.

"But the day his life signal somehow came back on line, I think that's when I started losing myself. The signal was so corrupted, something was obviously wrong. Breakdown had been pretty much my brother. I realized it was crazy and wrong of me to hardly care. When we found out MECH had found his body, and it was some human that had turned him into some not quite dead but long longer alive kind of mindless machine, I finally went and lost it. He was finally left to me after a failed mission and I was free to do as I would. I finally got a good look at what that… disgusting, depraved human…. had done. He was using the body of my best friend as a type of robotic vehicle, a means to keep himself alive in a human body that should have been dead. I killed him. Ripped that miserable fleshing to pieces even though it meant also further damaging Breakdown's already halfway to mangled body. That human's is one death I still cannot regret."

Without a thought Arcee leaned over so that she could rest her head against Knockout's right shoulder panel. "I can hardly tell you that revenge is only ever a destructive waste of our time and energy," she said, sighing. "I've spent years dreaming of getting some of my own. Some Autobots might not agree, but I can't exactly say that what you did was unjustified."

"Breakdown would have done the same for me in a single sparkbeat had things been different," Knockout said. Again he considered his words as he went on speaking. "He was always my protector. I never asked him to be, but he was anyway. I've lost track of the number of times he'd step in and save me from a beating, even if it meant using his fists to do so. Once in a while he'd end up locked in the brig for his trouble, but no one smart would dare try to beat him like they did me. He even did his best once to try to repair the damage after Starscream attacked me with his sword."

"He attacked you with a….?" Arcee couldn't even finish her sentence, and instead let her words die in the air. Her mouth hung open slightly in shock and she shuddered, although she tried not to do so.

Knockout nodded, silent again. His optics opened wider and he certainly looked quite terrified just thinking back. But he spoke again anyway, explaining. "He always liked to carry that fragging blade around out on the flight deck. Generally he'd use it to gesture in a given direction, to drive home his point when he explained attack strategy and flight formations to the troops. It rarely failed that some low-ling would talk back, or ask some stupid question, and he'd either put the sword right through their spark of just take the bot's head clean off. One day in the corridor of the ship, we had a bit of a confrontation. I hadn't even noticed he had that sword still on him..." Knockout cast his optics down toward his lap. "It obviously missed my spark, but it did… tear up a… fuel line under…. I'm sorry. I just can't think about this right now."

Arcee nodded in understanding. If he wasn't ready to talk much more, she was not going to push him. She sat herself back up straight and reached for the nearly forgotten energon container again.

"Think you can finish this now?"

When he nodded his agreement, she placed it in his hand and placed hers around his to lift it up, like before.

"Have you had yours yet?" he questioned, clearly concerned, as soon as he had finished the container.

"I'll go and grab mine in a bit. You look tired. Maybe you should lay down for a bit."

"No no, I'd much prefer to stay sitting a while." It was only the day before that Knockout was finally able to stay safely in anything resembling a sitting position at all. It make perfect sense that he would refuse to lay back down as long as he could, after so many days of laying down in any position he was placed in, and probably feeling quite perfectly helpless like that.

"You sure you aren't tired?"

Knockout shook his head a little. "Just incredibly bored."

"I can imagine," Arcee answered, sympathizing.

"Perhaps one of those educational films would be somewhat interesting," Knockout said. It was obvious he was trying so hard to stay positive, but quite understandably it was a difficult thing to do.

Arcee shot him a grin as she reached for the little computer again, so that she could hold it on her lap. "Okay, let's pick one to watch." She grinned at him again, if only in some nearly hopeless try at making him grin back. "After we're done watching, I'll see whatever became of your buffer. I should be able to get your finish shinned up nice again for you."

"I do look dull don't I?" Knockout looked so sad at the realization, that his reaction almost made her burst out laughing.

"Yeah, you really do. Ooh you must hate it."

The effort she was putting into not laughing actually made him laugh outright. It was certainly good to hear him laugh like that, even if she hadn't entirely meant to make him.

"I would certainly be grateful for a lovely finish again," he said, seriously. "Thank you."

"So, what do you wanna watch?" Arcee grinned.

"Hmm..." For a second Knockout started to consider. "How about… how a… bout… Ar...cee… I… I don't feel very..."

Arcee set the computer aside fast and turned her full attention back to him. She felt her fuel tank drop a little. He looked very suddenly unwell and was staring off across the room with black optics.

"Ratchet," she yelled toward the door. "We might need you!"

The old medic must have been close enough to the door to easily hear her, and her shout at him must have sounded urgent, because he rushed into the medbay within several seconds. He looked at Knockout silently and unmoving for a second, before he motioned for Arcee to step back a bit. She did so.

"Use those controls underneath here so we can get him laying down flat again." He gestured toward the little hand controls he was talking about, and she quickly followed instructions, while Ratchet placed his arms behind Knockout, supporting most of his weight against him.

"Knockout!" The red and white bot said urgently, yet calm as always. "You awake?"

"Yeah… no…" Knockout mumbled, making almost no sense at all "Now, where'd he leave my..."

"Okay, down we go." Ratchet gently let the red bot fell back, as he turned him so that he came to rest laying on one side.

"Ratchet," Arcee cried, alarmed. "What's happened? He was doing so well."

"He's just lost consciousness for a minute. Processor is still rebuilding itself. Of course this could happen at least a couple of times. He's okay. Let's just give him a second and see if he'll come back around."

Sure enough, it was under a minute before Knockout's optics began to blink a little, and then slowly brighten as they blinked again. He groaned in discomfort and momentary confusion as his body jerked itself too roughly, back into wakefulness.

"Hey," Ratchet, speaking to him while leaning down a little. "Any idea where you are?"

"Uh, Nevada..." Knockout half spoke and half mumbled an answer.

The old medic chuckled a little at that. "A bit vague I'd say, but yes this is Nevada. Just lie still for a bit, and then we'll see if we can't get you sitting back up if you want."

For a moment, Knockout did as he was instructed, and just stayed still where he was. But in another minute he turned his head a little so that it his face was mostly pressed against the surface of the recharge station. He mumbled something impossible to understand. His voice was trembling, and so was his body. His left arm, the far weaker of the two, had been inadvertently bent a bit awkwardly in the hurry to place him in a safe position.

"Knockout?" Arcee said slowly. She reached over top of his slowly, trying not to startle him, so that she could at least re-position him so his arm was not so painfully bent. She recognized at once, the appearance of a body shaking with frantic, if not at first nearly silent, sobbing cries. "Look at me, please. What's wrong?"

The only answer she got was another few horribly mumbled words, from a bot that refused to ever try moving to look at her. She wondered, in the next second, if perhaps he had been scared by the sudden drop from consciousness. Though it had clearly not been the same at all, could it still have been similar enough to remind Knockout of the recent glitching of his processor, which had from his point of view clearly been terrifying?

Finally he turned his head a little so that he could look at her. His face was covered in streams of washer fluid, and his body was still shaking from cries that would not stop. With his voice barely audible he mumbled horribly, "… might have been best if I had died."

"Now, that's ridiculous," Arcee said firmly, trying to be at least somewhat helpful, while at the same time she fought to hide her shock at hearing something she would never have expected to hear.

"Ratchet!" A loud, urgent human voice, recognizable as that of Agent Fowler, hollered from the next room. "Get your tailpipe out here. Now!"

The old medic ignored the shouting entirely, and instead focused his attention on a slight battle with a still slightly disoriented, shaken up, and strangely very emotional patient over a need to quickly scan him.

"Ratchet!" Agent Fowler hollered again, from the other side of the door. "I need you out here!"

"Frag it," Ratchet muttered. He handed Arcee his hand-held scanner, and stepped back a few paces shaking his head hard all the while. "What in the name of Primus is that slagging human shouting for. I already have a now very upset bot, and that fool is only making it worse."

"We have a situation!"

"Arcee," Ratchet said, with a look in his optics and a tone to his voice that both indicated he was mad as anything, and refusing to mistakingy take it out on either of the bots in the room. "See if you can get him to let you scan him quick for me." He smacked the transmitter button on the comm unit by the door. "Enough with the hollering already, Agent Fowler. We have comms in this base for a reason!"

"Ratchet," said Fowler, now using one of the comm units, but still almost shouting anyway. "I believe we might have a situation..."

"Huh. I've already got a slight situation in here," the old Medic snapped. "Unless this base is about to explode I suggest you..."

"One of your bots is outside of the base, correct?" The tone with which Fowler asked the question made Ratchet pause for a second and listen to him. Something really was wrong.

"Yes. 'Bee left a while ago. Went for a drive. Said he needed to clear his head..."

The old medic turned for a second do to look at Arcee, "can you deal with Knockout for a minute. I'm going to speak to Agent Fowler." Not even waiting for her to answer, he hurried out of the medbay.

Forcing herself to ignore a growing sense of unease over the conversation she had heard over comms and shouting, Arcee activated the scanner in her hand. She held onto it, but did nothing else with it.

"I think stressed out old bot would be an understatement," she said lightly glancing toward the door. "He's a wonderful old medic, but I swear one day he's going to blow out a gasket or worse."

She chuckled a little as she spoke, trying hard to make Knockout smile instead of his still helpless sobbing cries. But he only looked up at her helplessly. She set the scanner aside, leaving it still activated on top of the workable just within reach if she stretched a bit. What Knockout needed was certainly not a med-scanner at that moment. She helped him get into a comfortable position again, and then pulled a chair over closer, so that she could sit close to his level and talk with him.

"If I were still with the 'cons when all this happened, I would likely have been off lined at once." Knockout said. The cries had all but stopped now. His voice was calmer, but his face was soaked in the cleaner fluid and his hands shook. "Or perhaps just left to die in some back corner of the medbay, or left all alone in my living quarters."

Arcee forced herself to keep looking him in the optics, though she wanted to throw the closet object in silent rage at the harshness of the reality he was speaking of. She knew well the sparkless brutality of Decepticons. She knew full well that of course they would generally kill, or just throw away, their sick and dying. She had always found the notion quite disgusting and a show of their honor-less moral code. But now it was suddenly closer to home. Scrap, no wonder he was so upset.

"We would never have done that..." she said, needing to say something. Searching for the right thing to say. She never felt like she had ever been much good at such conversation. "That's just so very… wrong."

To her surprise Knockout shook his head a little. Did he disagree? Slowly he started speaking again, quiet, almost calm now. "I think they might have been right to do that, at least in my case."

"Knockout. No! You can't think that!"

"If this was old Cybertron, back before the war, or even long into it, I would likely have been offlined by the council. Yes, Decepticon thinking took it so much further, and that made it so fundamentally wrong. But in a case like mine, it was never only a 'con thing."

Arcee frowned. And then she fought back her frustrated rage. Knockout was right. She could not argue against fact.

"That was the past," she said. "That was the kind of corrupt backward idea of perfect functionalism, that may have lead to the start of this fragging war." Without even a thought she reached out to take both of his still trembling hands in hers.

"But a bot needs a function Arcee," Knockout said. His tone of increasing seriousness was making her uneasy. But she listened anyway, refusing to interrupt, determined to hear him out for longer. "I'll never be fully functional. If I were to regain eighty-five percent, I'd be very lucky. I'm a medic. It's no real secret that bots have always been quite shocked at this, but I actually do like my job. And anyway, it's really the only thing I was ever truly good at. Almost physically functional is just not good enough! Sure I'm relearning and I am impressed with that, but the council of the past would never have accepted eighty-five percent, not for a medi-bot. I could learn something new. I've always thought if I hadn't been a medic I might have been an artist, maybe a musician, something creative. But almost functional is not enough for those fields either."

"I think you're just far too hard on yourself," Arcee said, when he fell silent. She held his hands tighter.

"I know of a few quite efficient methods of off lining a broken bot," Knockout said. He was almost impossibly calm now. Speaking like a medic. Like he was simply having an almost theoretical discussion with colleagues in his field. "Many are perfectly painless and were once considered the 'caring' way. Even now, under modern law, or what passes for law in changing times, a bot has every right to choose to let it end. It's been great. No, it's been wonderful. And to go out as an Autobot… That's something to be truly proud of. I've lived. I've learned. I've done the best I could with what I had, until finally I actually found myself. Even f I were to reach ninety-five percent function, there will always been the mental stuff to live with and that alone would always make me at least a bit broken. I just can't be that anymore. It isn't fair to any of us… and there are so few good bots left…."

Arcee felt her fuel tank flip, and she felt like she was about to lose it's contents. This was not new, she realized. He'd really been thinking about this. And he'd certainly had a lot of time to lay part way to helpless and think. Before she knew exactly what it was she was doing, she had let has hands go and learned forward so that that she could throw her arms around his frame. She sat leaning over, with her head pressed against the side of his chest plate as her own body now began to shake with sobbing cries.

"You think it would be fair to me, for you to just give up?" she half begged and half screamed, as she held on tighter, refusing to let go of him.

"Ar...cee..." he said slowly, thoughtfully, and clearly far beyond confused. His left arm was of course far to non-functional to do very much with at all. But he managed to bring the right one up so that he could rest a hand over her. "I… didn't realize I would upset you. I wasn't try to… I'm thinking only of practicality."

"To the pit with your selfish practicality, you pile of scrap metal!" Arcee said, shocking him with her anger. But all the while she was still both crying hard and shaking, and it was only in the words that he could detect any idea of her anger at all.

It was at that moment that Ratchet walked back into the medbay. Both Knockout and Arcee were far too busy with their own emotions to even notice a hint of the shocked, and utterly baffled look on the old medics face at what he was seeing, and that was probably a good thing.

"I'm truly sorry to… oh…" he said, stammering with an awkwardness he was far from generally known for. His tone went quickly back to good old businesslike fast. Probably another good thing. "Arcee, it looks Fowler really meant it when he said we've got a situation."

She stood up at once, wiping at tears like a ridiculous youngling, and waiting for info.

"Looks like Earth may have 'con problem again," Ratchet said seriously. Thouhg he did brush a fingertip over Arcee's face-plate, in a compassionate attempt to wipe away stray tears without questioning it. "Bumblebee is under attack by several fliers out in the dessert."

"Sounds like he could use some back up," Arcee answered, almost surprised at how unsurprised she truly was at this development. It was all just the usual business and somehow that hardly seemed to bother her in the moment. There would be time later to question where exactly those 'cons had come from in the first place.

"Arcee," Ratchet said, yanking her toward a corner of the medbay as she tried to rush out, and doing so with surprising force. Quietly he almost whispered, "In the name of Primus, are you alright? Can I ask you later what that was all about?"

"I'm good," she said. She gently tugged her arm free of his, again the competent and capable front-line fighter. "We'll talk after I go save 'Bee's tailpipe and scrap a few 'cons."

Notes/ and again I'm just going to leave it here, at a cliffhanging and with everyone confused…. All because why not. I realize that chapter was actually a bit awkwardly done in a couple of parts, or at least I fear it was. I just could not for the life of me figure out to to better tie things together, or word anything. Hopefully it all actually makes sense.

It's taking even longer than I planned now, to reach my wrap up chapters. Have I really done fifteen…. It's becoming a full length ongoing project. Mah, who cares. It's still fun, so I'll just keep writing.