Knockout had been moved to the common room of the base. He sat up in the place Ratchet and Bumblebee had placed him, sitting up on the bench closest to side wall. It had taken a bit of thinking to make it work, but it seemed it worked best to lean his far weaker left arm against the armrest so that the structure of the bench could hold him up, and let him still use his right hand as he wanted. He was sitting completely upright for the first time in over an Earth week. The expression of pride in his optics at his accomplishment was more than obvious. Already he'd spent a good couple of minutes, marveling out loud at the fact that his feet were flat on the floor again, even if he may never gain be able to stand or walk, and was nowhere near ever trying to relearn.
"On the subject of two feet on the floor," Ratchet huffed, exchanging a look if annoyance with 'Bee, who stood beside him. "Arcee, why do you have both of yours on the floor like that, not fifteen hours after I told you to keep that damaged one up?"
The old medic, shaking his head and thinking, reached up over the railing that surrounded the human area of the common room. With one hand he picked up a properly sized piece of human furniture, an empty bookshelf, that he reasoned Arcee could use as a foot rest. Ratchet glared at her, staring her down in frustration. Bumblebee promptly joined in, doing the very same thing from his place near the computer terminal. Arcee lifted her foot, to prop it up at once, taking the hint well. But by the time she had done so, Knockout was very obviously glaring at her right along with the other two bots.
"Is it wrong of me to feel ganged up on?" Arcee questioned with a laugh. She shook her head, unsure which of her teammates she should actually be glaring right back at.
"Huh, and just how many times have I faced your own death glare at me, in the past weeks?" Knockout countered at once, with a laugh of his own. He smirked at her as he lifted his energon container with his stronger hand so that he could drink from it.
His left arm was still nowhere near being helpful in such a task, but he could hold a container just fine with the right hand and lift it. With the ability to refuel by himself, had also immediately come the end of his fussing and stubbornness over doing so. It was always more than obvious just how much he disliked taking a container, or for that matter any object from a bot that carried it to him to hand it over. But at least he was learning to accept and even ask for help even if he so clearly hated needing to.
"Point sadly taken," Arcee conceited. She sipped from her own container.
A bleeping sound from the central comm unit wired into the computer set up at the front of the room was the thing that eventually put an end to his uncharacteristically patient and determined tries at moving, instead of a typical bout of growing frustration. Bumblebee, who had been closest to the control board immediately accepted the communication and activated the room's view-screens.
"Call from our teammates on Cybertron," he announced at once. "Just in time for that team meeting."
The monitor clicked on and relieved a mostly clear, though somewhat low quality image of the inside of their base on their home-world. Arcee waved happily toward the monitor, knowing of course that if she could see them, they would see her too. 'Bee immediately joined her in waving at the team. On the monitor, Smokescreen and both Wreckers nodded their greetings.
"Hey, great to see and talk to you guys again," Bumblebee said to the monitor. "How are things on your end?"
"That latest ship arrived four days ago," Bulkhead explained from the Cybertron base. He appeared to read a screen in front of him. Obviously double checking notes and reports. "Forty-nine bots on board. "Housing building five was completed the next day, and we've assigned most of the new refugees apartments in there. More than one of the newest group and a few already here for months have requested licenses to set up shops nearby. We've granted them of course and given them space to build on the main strip behind most of the so far existing housing. Soon enough this place will be at the end of a wide street filled with goods markets, a couple of energon bars, and a gaming hall."
"This little part of the planet is really going to grow fast now, with all the new bots coming home," Smokescreen added, with a voice of excitement as his optics met the monitor. "We've got the first community we built out to the west of here. Then the one to the north. Now the base might just end up the center of downtown! One Earth year and it'll be a real town. Give it longer and it'll be a city! More of the refugees now are pushing for a public pole to officially name this place."
"Oh?" Arcee questioned toward the monitor. A name for the first city on a one day rebuilt Cybertron was not something she had ever taken time to even wonder about in the madness of rebuilding. The thought of it now though made her nearly grin her excitement. "And what are bots so far submitting for possible city names?"
"As soon as someone first mentioned a need for a name, bots started to get excited about a possible chance to help name it," Smokescreen explained. He started talking faster. A sure sign of his own enthusiasm. "There were quite a few suggested. Mostly bots just catch us outside and run one by us to throw into the pot so to speak. Or they send a communication. Two though have come up several times. Many would love to see it named New Iacon. Almost as many are suggesting we call it Pax. Both are pretty fitting tributes to the last of the Primes."
"When we all get back, we could set up a polling box somewhere. Let the refugees cast their votes on the new city name," Bumblebee said.
"Hey Knockout, welcome back," Bulkhead said next, addressing him over the monitor. "Sitting up well and everything now." His half of the divided team had received regular updates in text form about the situation and status of the newest Autobot. They knew full well the outcome had been decidedly terrible.
"Ooh, a new bot on base?" Knockout remarked as he studied the monitor across the room.
The other three inside the Earth base only gave puzzled looks for a second or two, all of them unsure exactly what Knockout was talking about. Arcee was the first of them to notice the partially hidden figure of another Cybertronian, light orange and silver in color, that seemed to be at work with a datapad and a computer console on the farthest edge of the main common room within the Cybertron base. The bot was sitting down, back to the monitor and at the very edge of it's range of focus.
"That's Speedbreaker," Wheeljack joined the conversation for the first time. He gestured toward the unfamiliar bot. "She's one of the refugees that came in on that last ship. She's been working with us drafting construction plans. Not to mention upgrading our systems. And submitting a few decent ideas for repurposing some of the machinery from inside an old energon refinery out south of here." He turned toward the small orange and shining silver frame that bent over her work in the corner. "Speedy, you gonna come over and say hi to the rest of the team or what?"
The small framed and clearly still very young bot slowly came to sit with the others in front of the monitor. Arcee in particular noticed the integrated features of a fellow two-wheeler vehicle mode at once. In her bot form, she displayed small delicate wheels, and a pair of very typical Autobot blue optics glowed a bit through a semitransparent face visor that would likely become her little windshield.
"Bot of all trades, master of none," Speedbreaker chuckled as she flipped the visor up on top of her head with one small chrome hand. "I do it all, but I pretty much want to be an engineer."
Arcee introduced herself quickly and then gestured around the room, from her place still seated on the bench with her foot up on top of the human's bookshelf she was using at a footrest. "Medical officer Ratchet. Though also a bot of all trades we might all say. Bumblebee is the bot by the control board." She gestured toward the red bot she sat with on the bench. "And that's Knockout, the other medic."
"Looks like he really is a former..." the little orange bot's words were cut off at once by Arcee, who held a hand up toward the monitor and gave a serious look.
"He's one of our team," she said without a second thought, and without even noticing the baffled look from Bumblebee at how fast she jumped to verbally defend Knockout."The past is past and the present is now, and that's what matters." She also failed to notice when not a second later 'Bee and their friends on Cybertron all exchanged strange looks. She did catch Ratchet in the middle of a light heated chuckle of laughter, and finally just shook her head and forced herself not to stare at the floor, embarrassed like some young-ling.
But Speedbreaker only shrugged slightly, giving a look of appearing to care less about judging based on affiliation. She only looked ahead at the monitor with a lighthearted laugh at the looks the bots were so obviously exchanging, and muttered a polite and understanding little, "fair enough."
"Arcee, we've only so far received a brief incident in shorthand form regarding a little exchange of weapons-fire and swapping of paint. Relieved to see, you look no worse for wear," Bulkhead said. His optics scanned his screen again, as he read more from the reports.
Arcee nodded, her face serious. "Yep. 'Cons are back. I did better than some of the troopers, and the rest just flew off. Me, I'm good. Just limping a bit and likely dodging Ratchet's wrench if I try to walk to much. But Starscream is still on the loose, he's now back here on Earth, and he's made it clear he's not playing nice."
"And just when has Starscream ever played nice in the whole span of this war?" Ratchet huffed. He sat himself down on a bench near the side wall, and turned so that he could look both at the monitor and the others in the room. "Nearly blowing Arcee's foot off with a blaster, while she had no weapon drawn at all in a fight, is just the kind of dirty, sneaky, and underhanded nonsense anybot can know well to expect from that buffoon!"
"It's also a strange thing to do," Bumblebee said, quietly, and more to himself than anyone else. His expression showed that he was thinking intently, reasoning.
"Nah, 'Bee," Arcee said, shaking her head. "Drawing a weapon in unarmed combat is not so strange at all for a dirty-fighting bot like that one. I knew better than to stop paying attention to his weapons."
But 'Bee shook his head slightly and explained. "It's not the pulling a blaster and shooting that I found so weird. You're right. That would just be a typical sneaky 'con move. It's the fact that he shot you specifically in the foot that I find strange."
"Go on, 'Bee." Arcee was interested now and considering his point.
"Let's all think about this for a second. Starscream may be a lot of things, but he is also a very well trained soldier and a commanding officer. He's been fighting and using his weapons for much longer than I've even lived. Of course I think we've always been clear that shot was not an accidental misfire from his blaster, or just a very bad shot. That would never happen at his level of experience with weapons. He hit where he was aiming. But why try to blow a bot's foot off, when you can just as easily shoot them through the spark, in the head, really anything more fatal than a foot."
"He obviously just wanted to damage her, instead of killin' her," Wheeljack said, from his place on the other side of the conversation. "Thank Primus for his decision not to kill her. But I see what you mean. That is weird and we know he's not above the brutal execution of an Autobot."
"The location of the attack is strange too," Arcee said, as she began to catch on. "Half a kilometer from a campground, full of humans on a weekend. None of the troopers or Starscream fired once on those humans, but there was an obvious and constant worry about exactly that."
"Starscream was clearly trying to send a message," Knockout contributed, finally joining in the conversation after listening to the others a while. "The Autobots' compassion for the human race will always be his greatest weapon against you… us… He didn't kill you, Arcee because he will have wanted make you run home to save the human race from further risk. He can then fight us on Cybertron."
"I hate the thought of giving into the demands of that creep," Arcee grumbled, scowling as she stared ahead at the monitor. "But clearly Starscream is strongly implying he will become a problem for innocent humans otherwise. We can't let that happen."
"You guys have got to come back here," Smokescreen said. He nodded his head and his optics took on a look of determination and. "He wants to fight us all on Cybertron, I say fine, let's let them fight the whole group of us together." The other bot's inside the Cybertron base gave their own nods of agreement.
"What about Knockout?" Bumblebee questioned. He looked to Ratchet for an answer, while his optics gestured slightly toward the still very disabled red bot.
"A fair point," Bulkhead muttered.
Ratchet thought for a moment. His gaze joined those of most of the team, who were all looking in Knockout's direction now. Finally he said slowly, considering out loud, "Well it's probably not ideal to be taking him through a space-bridge, with his processor still prone to random reboots with little warning. And obviously his body is still in bad shape. He can't even sit up under his own power fully unsupported. But there was a need to think of moving him home soon in any case. I'm giving my medical clearance to carry him through the bridge to Cybertron base."
"I say you guys get back here as soon as you can." That was Smokescreen. The Wreckers nodded and mumbled their agreement at once.
"I say we go back," Bumblebee said, nodding along with the others. He looked back at Knockout with a grin on his face-plate. "What do you say?"
"You're… asking me?" Knockout questioned. His confusion and disbelief was more than obvious, and that made Arcee laugh a little.
"Knockout. You're an Autobot too," Ratchet said, meeting his optics. "You get a vote, just the same as anyone else."
"I want to go home," the red bot answered after a second.
"Hey Ratchet, when you get back here, you mind taking a look at Speedy?" Bulkhead asked. The look on his face-plate showed that clearly he had just remembered something he'd nearly forgotten to ask. "She arrived with a bit of a bad knee."
The old medic nodded as he looked from one half of his team to the other. "I'll deal with it soon after we get back there. Autobots, let's pack up and get ready. Tonight we recharge back on our home world."
Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break
The trip through the space-bridge and back home to Cybertron, posed far more difficultly than such a thing typically would have. But with Knockout's badly disabled state, and now with Arcee still quite badly limping and slow, thanks to her still recovering foot, it was not exactly unavoidable. Except for Bulkhead, who hurried to offer Arcee a hand to a bench, the occupants of the Cybertron base remained where they were for the moment, staying out of the way. As soon as Ratchet and Bumblebee had gotten Knockout comfortably sitting up on a bench, much the same as had worked well in Earth base, many of the bots began to chatter at each other in the excitement of a reunited team.
"Knockout, you're looking so much better since the last time we saw you," Wheeljack commented. He approached the red bot, and gave him a friendly smack on his shoulder panel. "Good to have you back."
"Thanks for not dying on us," Smokescreen put in. He laughed a little, but his face-plate showed that he was at least partly serious too. "It was still looking pretty bad the day we left."
"Thank you," Knockout said in reply. For a long moment it looked like he was going to say more, but he didn't. Instead he only sat looking around the inside of the common room of the base, smiling slightly and clearly happy to be home.
"Energon dispenser is filled and ready, if anyone still needs to refuel," Bulkhead gestured toward the dispenser at the far side of the common room. Then he gave a chuckle and grinned at the group. "Also, new batch of high grade is ready and bottled for later. Wheeljack's been teaching Speedy how to refine it well."
The small orange and silver newcomer looked up from her place once again in front of the computer in the corner, and smiled at the group, but said nothing at all.
Knockout, sitting in his place, somewhat awkwardly on the bench, idly worked on practicing movement while he watched the others interact. He lifted his left arm from the armrest and lowered it again several times. Arcee had been conversing with Bulkhead about some new construction plans he had designed with Speedbreaker while she was away. But she stopped speaking right in the middle of her opinion on the height of an archway, as she noticed just how high Knockout could lift his arm. She commented on it out loud, unable to contain her excitement for his achievement, and naturally that got Ratchet's attention in under a second.
"Hmmm…." he said, leaving the seat he had taken near one of the consoles and crossing the room, to kneel on the floor in front of the red bot. "Knockout, do you mind doing that again, once more?"
He did so, and the old medic gave a look of obvious consideration. "That really is a great improvement. How well can that hand move?" He watched as Knockout slowly bent his fingers and turned his wrist joint slightly. There was so clearly still a great degree of difficulty to the motion. But the fingers bent and the wrist turned a bit, where neither had been even slightly possible before.
"The left hand was pretty much completely fragged then?" Wheeljack questioned. He'd gone back to his seat at the other side of the room, but turned in his seat a little as he spoke.
Any updates his half of the team had received abut Knockout's condition had been detailed enough, but still slightly vague of simplicity sake. 'left limbs and digits still limited in function', could have meant many things. They had all known he could speak just fine, and that he could reason and think perfectly well. They knew he had been bored, far more stubborn and openly defiant than usual. But they also knew he was quite badly physically damaged, whatever that might have meant exactly. It had been explained once that he entirely unpredictable emotionally, laying calmly, or even laughing at something one second, only to cry his optics out or scream in frustration over his helplessness. Another messages days later had explained that that situation was, by then, even worse.
Knockout gave a slight nod of his head, and for a fleeting second he wanted to growl in annoyance at the pitiful looks of the other bots. But he realized just as quickly that there were no such looks at all, and it was only his own fear of such a thing that made him believe he saw just that.
"I'd like to bring you back to the medbay for an updated assessment and scans after I've seen to Speedbreaker," Ratchet said. He narrowed his optics and gave a steady glare, as Knockout rolled his optics in dread of going back there.
"Just for a couple of hours at the most," the old medic huffed, still glaring in frustration. "I'm not going to keep you in the medbay. You can recharge in your own room later."
"I had begun to wonder when I might finally be freed from Ratchet's medmay of doom." Knockout remarked, with a grin on his face-plate at the thought of being back in his own living space again.
"Watch it," Ratchet said, in mock warning. "I still have a wench around here somewhere, and Primus help me, it's been a while since anybot has needed a good clunk over the head."
"Hmm," he said after a moment in which Knockout had only glared at him again, before lowering his optics to look down in defeat over so clearly far more than just the implied threat that would never be acted on. He spoke more compassionate to him. "Honestly, I do understand your frustration. It's one thing to spend your days in the medbay working with patients. Quite anther to end up a patient yourself."
"It's just been a long road," Knockout admitted. "Getting recently scrapped and busted up so badly before our trip back to Earth was one thing, and that was bad enough. Even then I remember being terrified and fearing I might off line. This is another thing entirely. I… I've never even seen a bot in a situation anything like this. Because any 'con would most certainly be left to die in a situation like this, surviving, recovering… it's all a complete unknown to me."
Arcee smiled up at him and wiggled on the bench so that she could sit closer to him, while still keeping her foot up.
Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break
"So what's the trouble with that knee then?" Ratchet questioned. He pulled open a drawer in the medbay work table.
Speedbreaker, sitting on top of he repair table, with her legs dangling toward the floor gave a small shrug and shook her head a little, before she answered quietly. It feels fine to me. Bulkhead says he's sure he heard it squeaking and ever since he's been insisting I need it looked at." She shrugged again and gave a look that could only have been meant as an apology.
"Ummhmm," Ratchet muttered, as he gently bent the offending right knee back and forth a couple of times slowly. "Well it certainly is squeaking a little. Sounds like a tiny bit of rust in the joint. Normally I would expect to see this kind of thing in a much older bot. But then of course spending any long amount of time on a refugee ship, with limited exercise and probably not transforming much… That'll do a good number on a frame."
"Is it fixable?' The newcomer looked anxious, and Ratchet chuckled a little as he dug through the drawer, before he shut it hard, and yanked opened the next one down.
"A little oil on the joint. That should have you fixed up, squeak-free and on your feet in seconds." The old medic slammed the drawer just as hard as the first, and pulled open a third one. He promply went to digging through it, while he muttered to himself under his intakes. "A bot's gotta love Knockout's system of organization in here. Now, where in the name of all the rust on Cybertron is that blasted oil can?"
"So what's the deal with that former Decepticon?" Speedbreaker blurted, as she watched the old medic rummage around. "I'm not…. out of line for asking, I hope."
"Not out of line, no. But I don't exactly understand your question?"
Speedbreaker gave a look of confusion that betrayed her youthful and inexperienced ignorance. "Well, Knockout is actually… nice, social, polite..."
"Huh! You're too new to the base and the team. You might not say that if you knew him longer!"
"Growing up, far away from Cybertron, everyone I knew used to tell these absolute horror stories. 'Cons doing the most despicable, disgusting and horrible things, and doing these things all the time. My creator used to tell me those absolute horror stories until my carrier would finally tell him to shut his mouth before he scared me half to death. He was worried I'd never recharge again hearing such things. Bots used to talk about the torching of entire settlements while Autobot citizens burned, trapped in their homes. About how they would murder their own yonglings who were barely walking, simply for appearing 'too nice' or not getting mean early enough in life. There are stories of bots literally ripped apart, limbs torn off in battle, because some commander had a bad day and happened to to grab himself an Autobot. They say the 'cons are not even Cybertronains. That they were some kind of monsters without true sparks..."
"War does things to a society," Ratchet answered simply. His searching finally produced the missing oil can, and he carefully oiled the young bot's bad knee joint. He reached for a rag and wiped away the excess oil before it ran down her leg and made a mess of her and the floor. "It makes bots forget where the truth ends and the myth and exaggerated story telling begins. They are more like us than you would probably think. Most were just taught a very different version of the events that lead to the war in the first place, and made to believe it. Many were, or still are truly deplorable bots, doing truly despicable things. But many others had, and still have, potential. Somewhere a young refugee born to their side is likely siting somewhere now telling all the horror stories they've learned of Autobots."
"Bot of all trades then, huh?" the old medic asked, as he gently straitened and bent the little bot's knee a couple of times slowly, to test the joint, and she only nodded her understanding of what he had said.
"Do you think you could help me build something?' he asked as he put the oil away. "The design of it will need to be a bit specific. It'll need a motor. I'm thinking we can find more than enough salvageable spare parts inside that old energon refinery you mentioned on the comm earlier. Hmmm… I could build something like it by myself, but two of us could work faster. And the faster the better."
The newcomer laughed a little and grinned as she hopped down to the floor, careful of her knee. "I'd love to build this with you, Ratchet. If you want to come with me to that refinery and help me find pieces you have in mind, you can tell me on the way what it is we're building."
Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break
Knockout had been quite happy with the idea of recharging back in his own room again. But to his dismay, once he was in there and left all alone, he found himself unable to recharge. He lay on his recharge station, with the light turned on, and looked around the empty, and still too bare little living space of his. He was aware that it was well into the middle of the night, and that frustrated him because though he was wide awake, he was certainly tired. With the light still on, he closed his optics yet again, for at lest the forth time that night, and choose to lay and think his idle thoughts in hopes that his processor would eventually stop its racing and slow down to rest.
A tapping sound caught his attention quickly and for a moment he assumed he was hearing things. His reasoning was quickly dismissed when he heard it again, and slightly louder. A light knock at his door, he understood, opening his optics again. He was confused by the knocking, and then scared by it, and finally confused again.
"Knockout," someone called from the corridor, on the other side of the closed door. He recognized Arcee's voice as she spoke quietly, clearly trying not to make too much noise and woke half the base. "You awake? You alright in there?"
When he called quietly back to her, she slid the door open and crept inside the room. Her optics were open wider than they should have been, and she was clearly near trembling as she stood in his doorway, just staring almost blankly at him in the dim light.
"Arcee?" he questioned, alarmed. Such a state was hardly one he was used to seeing her in. "What's wrong?"
"I… nothing's wrong… I… had a very bad dream," she admitted. Her embarrassment was more than clear.
"You had a bad dream? Well that's new." Knockout was trying hard to make her giggle about it, hoping she might laugh the whole thing off, and that would make her feel better. But she only stared at him with her wide optics, and crept further into his room, looking every bit like he could only imagine a terrified youngling might look.
"It really was awful," she said, almost in a whispered tone. Entirely baffled and without any clue of what he could actually do, he lifted his right arm, silently inviting her to come closer.
"What did you dream?" he questioned, more than a little baffled now as she took up the edge of his recharge station, and lay almost trembling slightly against him with her arms over his chest-plate as she had learned to safely hold onto him.
"I really don't think you'd wanna know…"
But her gave her a look of seriousness and concern for her as she stare into his optics still looking scared, and she spoke again. "I dreamed I found you dead. Just laying face up on the ground on Cybertron somewhere, optics still open but no light left… body scrapped and broken. Energon spilling all over the ground… The spark chamber had been…. Completely ripped apart. And I just stood screaming, that somehow it was my fault. That I couldn't have protected you."
Arcee paused for a long moment after she had finished explaining, before she said "I… I had to get up after that. I knew I'd never get back into recharge until I knew you were really fine..."
"Of course I'm fine."
"I'm sorry for..."
Arcee," said Knockout, smiling at her. "What is it you tell me time and again about never being sorry for a nightmare?"
She nodded with her head now against him. He managed to move his right arm so that he could wrap it around her and slowly her slight trembling slowed and then stopped. For many long moments they both stayed like that, neither saying a thing at all and neither wanting to move. It was Arcee that eventually broke the comfortable silence first.
"I.. I should not be... in your recharge... station..." But saying so and doing a thing about it were two different things, and she didn't move to get up.
"Perhaps you should, or perhaps you shouldn't." Knockout only laughed, without making a single movement himself. "But since you obviously are, I just might not let you get out now." Arcee only giggled in youngling-like response.
"So what happens now?" she asked, speaking mostly into his armor again, before she lifted her head to look into his red optics.
"I should be asking you the very same question," Knockout answered. "I've thought a lot about this today. I suppose that may well explain the whole laying wide awake thing"
"Hmm?"
"Arcee, I may never be fully functional again. I'm thankful everyday now, that my mental functioning was never effected. But physically, it's anyone's guess now how much a can regain and how long it may take. Autobots, I've noticed are chronically plagued by a state of eternal optimism against any odds. I never could think quite that way. Remember, I'm still a medic too. I realize this is pretty much all up to random chance at this point."
Arcee pulled herself up to a sitting position on the recharge station, and just sat for several seconds smiling. Knockout couldn't sit himself up on his own, and anyway he was not in a position where he could have leaned against anything in order to stay upright. He was in fact still quite helpless in his own room by himself, but still it was far preferable to the medbay. At that moment though, he was happy to stay where he was, laying flat and looking up at her while she grinned at him.
"I'm not about to good old optimistic Autobot on you," she said. Her grin left her face-plate, and her expression was suddenly far more serious, to match his. "I won't say I know you'll walk again and soon, or that you'll ever even hold yourself up unsupported, or use your left limbs for much of anything. I can tell you how much a hope so, because I've learned over meany outnumbered and outgunned in and endless war, that sometimes hope is all we've got left, that's worth a thing. But then I think you know that all too well yourself already."
"You could do so much better in life than some fragile and broken bot..."
Arcee lay back down again and pressed her small body against his much larger frame. His left hand of course still lacked in most useful function, but as soon as she had reached over him to hold it in one of her, he at least tried to squeeze back even if slightly.
"I would fully agree with you, if I thought you were indeed broken," she said, turning her head to avoid mumbling against his body armor again, her body in a somewhat awkward, though not entirely uncomfortable position.
Knockout might have replied quickly. But he didn't immediately know exactly what he should say. A moment passed in silence, and he just smiled at her slightly, sleepily. Finally he opened his mouth to speak again, but closed it at once, when he realized the little bot still laying against him, slightly warming his plating, had obviously fallen into recharge. There was a flash of concern for a reaction that might await them both in the morning, when he knew Ratchet would knock the door and then come into to bring him back to the common room, so that he could sit up and be be part of the group. But he lacked the spark to wake Arcee back up again so that she could creep back out of his room and to her own, especially after she'd had that nightmare. He resolved to simply deal with whatever, if anything, may be said in a few more hours and dropped into recharge himself.