Notes/ This is a bit of weird chapter. A bit sad. A bit hopeful. A bit… odd. A tiny bit scary in parts perhaps.
Knockout screamed and screamed louder within his own head. In one second he was relieved that his vocalizer seemed only to produce the odd burst of weak static through all of that. And in the next second the idea that no one could hear him terrified him, and only made him scream even louder in his own head. He struggled to open his optics or at least to blink, and when the blackness left, it was replaced instead by Cybertronian digital code, scrolling across his field of vision. Six separate and unique simple characters, appearing in so many nearly infinite combinations, moving upward in various and quickly shifting colors, against an eerily white background.
From somewhere far within the mess of symbols and color and further still from the light behind it, he could just barely get a sense of his own frame. His physical from. He still had one, that he could feel if he struggled – and it seemed to be trembling, shaking hard against his will or control. He could hear the slight sound of metal body plating rattling against itself, over the sound of a steady beeping that he could make no sense of at all.
"Alright…. Alright… right… right..." a voice was speaking from somewhere, echoing badly and he listened over a vast distance within his own perspective, barely making a hint of sense out of the simple word.
The scrolling code slowed a bit and finally it settled on vivid dark green against the still white background. Somewhere far back in his mind, he understood that the white he saw in front of him, was the light given off by a light source somewhere and the slight reflection of every colored thing near him, filtered through his processor as a mess of brightness withing a dying visual center still trying its best to process images. He tried to blink again anyway, knowing he still would not see anything physical through his optics. The idea that soon the background beyond the scrolling characters would turn to blackness instead frightened him far worse and caused him to try for another loud scream. And that only produced a new little burst of static. His processor had severed its link to his vocialier, just slightly before it had his vision.
A slight warmth pressed against his frame and he was vaguely aware of some other bot holding on to him. Whoever it was, he was holding on to them too. It was only the sudden rough jolting of his body as his arms hit a surface beneath him, and the new static burst for a cry at the motion, that told him he had let go, unable to keep holding on.
"Not looking good… good.. good..." The voice spoke again and he felt the warmth move away from him.
No! No. Please don't let go of me just yet. I can't see anything. I don't know where I am anymore!
"Happening too fast… too fast… prossess… shutting down.. down down… faster.. hoped for.. hoped for… for… for.. every vital function…. function… func..." the voice of whoever was speaking was unrecognizable, warped so horribly by a now failing set of audio receptors, that to hear bordered on terrifying. And he understood just enough of it through the echos, to know it was talking about him. Talking just like he was not there.
The code kept on scrolling.
I'm still here. I can't see you. I can barely hear you. But I'm still here… somewhere.
More scrolling code. Faster now. The green shifted into blue and then right into purple and to red.
"Going to… going to… to.. to.. power him down.."
There was a second of relief at that. But so quickly behind it, the terror returned and worse than ever. Oh please hold onto me again. I'm so cold now. Confused… lost…
"Knockout!" The urgent but still quiet gentle voice, and the feeling of someone's small hand lightly shaking his shoulder panel, dragged him slowly back from the memory that had invaded his recharge. "Hey come on. Wake up."
He looked around in relief at the inside of his shared living space, dimly lit by the usual light which shown under the door from the corridor beyond. Arcee was sitting up close to him on the recharge station, her hand still lightly shaking him.
"What time it is?" knockout mumbled, disoriented and still visibly trembling badly. The scrolling code and the horribly echoing and distorted voices played and played back again, even as he shook his head a little and blinked frantically, trying to force it all away.
"It's still the middle of the night," Arcee's quiet reply gave him something to pay attention to, aside from the unshakable memories. "But you were crying quite loudly for a while, and then started shaking pretty bad. It didn't look like you were waking up, so I knew I had better try..."
"Arcee, I'm..."
"Don't," she interrupted him. Her other hand joined the first in resting on his body armor, but of course she had stopped shaking him. "Don't even think of being sorry. Wanna talk to me?"
Knockout reached up to his face-plate, and felt the still wet and fresh streams of washer fluid that had obviously been pouring from his optics. He wished he could move to bury his face against the pillow his head rested on, or ever to run to the wash station where he could clean himself up and pretend it was fine. But he could not do so, and ever worse, he realized to his dismay that he was still almost violently trembling.
He shook his head a little at first, refusing to talk – terrified that in explaining what he had just experienced in his dreams, he might just recall even more of the memory he was only now conscious of for the first time. Arcee sat for a while on the recharge station just watching him and waiting to see if he might speak to her. When many long moments passed in silence, she lay back down again and wrapped her arms tightly around him, with her body pressed tightly against his. After insisting in barely audible mumbles, that he was fine, he shut his optics, and meant to fall right back into recharge. But as soon as the room disappeared from view, he was sure for a second he saw the scrolling lines of steadily color-shifting characters. And and that alone caused his intakes to gasp and hitch in panic, as an involuntary cry of terror escaped his vocalizer.
"You're clearly far from being fine," Arcee said slowly. From her position, still pressed against his frame and hugging him, she looked up with a pair of optics that never broke from his. "Hey. I don't know if I could ever truly understand everything that you must feel, remember and dream about. But I can listen to you."
Hesitantly, Knockout began to put into words the disjointed and horrific fragments of sudden memory that had triggered the shaking and terrible crying. After a moment of speaking, he began to talk a little faster, the whole thing making slightly more sense and his processor easily finding the words to describe a thing that had seemed so impossible to put into words at all. By the time he had finally finished explaining it all, after many long moments, his functional arm was wrapped around her tightly while he fought with some idea in the back of his mind that she might slip away from him, as he repeatedly fell vividly back into those minutes now long passed. A fresh stream of washer fluid fell from his optics and his body trembled much harder than before. But still he did feel better, even if not entirely all together at the moment.
Arcee only looked right at him, with her own tear filled gaze, and still not letting go of him.
"You were so close to being offline," she said. So obviously she was trying to hide the shock and horror in her own voice, but she was not succeeding at that. "No one thought you'd know a thing by the point you're describing..."
"….was nothing left to see but bright white. Visual process was breaking down..." Knockout mumbled, as his tears slowed a little, but he continued to helplessly tremble and shake. "… still heard your voices but… sounded so... distorted.. I'll never get back into recharge now."
But he slowly grew at least slightly calmer. With his arm still wrapped tightly around his soon to be mate, he was able to force his consciousness to understand he was still in the present moment, even as the horrifying scrolling of characters reappeared the second he shut his optics again.
"I've got an idea..." Arcee said. Her voice was still quiet and calm as ever.
"Music player on..." she said, speaking into the dead air of the room, without moving and thus forcing him to move. "Album file… six."
The voice activated controls for the music player, as well as several other things in the room, were of course special adaptations, installed mainly for the purpose of Knockout's freedom and Independence in there. But obviously anybot could work the set up, and she had found a practical use for it herself in that instance. Instrumental music began to play, at low volume, over the room's wall mounted speakers. The increasingly complex piece of music was obviously Cybertronian. Knockout recognized the difference between it any Earth music at once. But it was a song he had never heard before in any case.
"I listened to this so many times when I was little," Arcee said. She moved only a little, so that both of them could get comfortable again on the recharge station, but still she didn't let go of him, or make him let go of her. "My creator would make energon sweets for me and my sisters from time to time and we'd sit and each eat a few of our favorite ones. My carrier would play music over the speakers of the audio system in our main room, and he and my creator would inevitably just end up dancing together sooner or later. All of us had so many favorite songs, but my sisters and I would always ask to hear this one."
Knockout lay still on the recharge station listening to the complex upbeat tune over the speakers, and to Arcee as she went on speaking, slowly.
"Of course the war hadn't started yet. But there was tension in the streets constantly, as bots broke off into factions and made their differing opinions more and more obvious with their fists and guns. There was more and more talking about how one day the increasing amount of swapped paint between scarping bots would eventually lead to an all out war. Funny, those days seem so long ago and almost forgotten now. But I remember listing to that song so often. I remember how much my carrier and creator still loved each other more than anything after at least fourteen centuries together. How much I hoped to find love like that one day. And I remember laughing, grabbing the little bowl of energon sweets first, so that I could grab the copper and cerium flavored ones before by youngest sister could get them all."
She stopped speaking, but the music went on playing, at the same low volume, as both bots fell back into recharge, still holding each other tightly.
Knockout looked up with some confusion at Starscream, who was lounging almost comically in the captains chair at the front of the great hall on board the Nemesis. The red medic's attention was drawn only to the dim, and flickering lights, and to the horrible evil smirk on the face of the spoiled, loud and demanding bot who fancied himself a would be leader. At least a dozen troopers stood guard at various points around the huge room.
"Knockout! How considerate of you to come back. To grace me with your presence. Normally I'd ask, of course – no, demand really – that you sped forward and speak to me on your knees until I tell you to get up. But I see in your case it's not exactly going to work. Humph. Never mind."
The medic held his left palm at the ready over the controls of his cart, prepared to roll forward, or to back up on a second's notice as he watched to see what might happen next. He dared not take his optics away from the other bot for a fraction of a second.
"I should tear out your spark for your betrayal of the Decepticon cause!" Starscream declared. The pitch and tone of his voice were surprisingly even and low, and only the blazing light within his crimson optics hinted at his rage. He tapped the fingers of one hand against the arm of the chair, causing an irritating metallic clicking noise. "I would certainly find some degree of joy in watching the light fade of your optics as you gasp for your final intakes in a living frame. A bot like you, Knockout… now I know you would certainly die screaming, crying, begging..."
Starscream abruptly stopped ranting his disturbing fantasy of murder, and for a moment he just stared right at Knockout, with a scowl of disgust forming on his face-plate. The look soon became one of far too obvious revulsion, as he looked the medic over with narrowing optics.
"Of course on second thought why kill you. What's obviously become of you is a fate so much worse than death, and that somehow seems fitting for you. You're little more than a barely functional pile of scrap metal!"
Something about the whole situation he had found himself in, made no sense at all. For several long moments, he only looked around the room taking notice of as much as he could see, from his position strapped onto the cart and without moving it to turn around. He could hear Starscream laughing as he did so, but there was no apparent danger at the moment.
"Wait," Knockout cried. He allowed himself a feeling of victory, as understanding dawned on him. And he proclaimed his understanding out loud to the bot that suddenly seemed almost powerless to him. "This is no flashback. This never happened! It's only a fragging nightmare and no dream can ever harm me!"
But strarscream only growled at him, with optics still narrowed and blazing again with his rage. "Oh there are so many ways I can hurt you. Even in your dreams you will never escape the truth."
"I… I don't understand..." Knockout stammered over his words in spite of himself. A thought crossed his mind briefly that he should simply will himself to wake from recharge, and free himself from this nonsense. But he did not wake up.
"You think you've got your life all together now," Starscream ranted on. He sat forward in his chair now, and glared down from its high platform, to where Knockout sat on his cart, parked on the floor of the large dim room. The troopers each turned to stare as well, and though they said not a word out loud, he could hear the whispers of the laughter they shared among themselves. The new Decepticon leader went on unrelenting. "You're nothing but a broken, dysfunctional, pathetic mess. You think you're an Autobot now? Remember – they always did take anybot. Their acceptance of your defection means nothing really.You think that pretty little 'bot loves you? Oh no no. Don't go on deluding yourself about that nonsense. Arcee is not stupid, Knockout. And neither are you. She knows you can't possibly live forever, in your fragile and busted up state. And you know full well it's only pity that drives giver her love to the bot no one else could want now."
"That's not true," Knockout cried. He returned the glare of his former commander, without any fear left in his spark, and wondered why it was he had ever once ever tried even tolerate him when serving on the same ship. He dared to shout loudly, over the whispered laughter of vehicons and the growling rage of the psychotic bot that still tried to glare him down. "It's not. Nothing you say is true. There was a time I may have thought you were right. But I've learned I can matter to someone. Too teammates. To one that I believe really does love me, though I still do question why. To a little human..."
"You would have killed that human with only a second's hesitation to save your own spark, had it been ordered of you! As for that little bot you still believe loves you as much as you say, do the right thing, Knockout for once. Give her up. Send her away. You can't fight for her. You can't even take her walking to watch the sunset. She may be the one bot I dislike most of all of those ridiculous Autobots you call friends, and perhaps I should have just shot her dead when I had a chance at it. Perhaps I still will someday. There will other chances… In any case, I will say one thing for that silly little bot. You are the last thing she..."
"Don't you dare hurt Arcee," Knockout screamed in sudden rage, that gave him a new determination to hold his head up and stare forward with clear threat in his optics. "If you so much as lay a filthy hand on her, I promise you'll spend the rest of your miserable life..."
"Knockout. Why exactly are you threatening a nightmare? You said yourself none of this is possibly real..."
Starscream got up from his huge chair and slowly decided the dark staircase leading from the platform. All the while he laughed hard. When he reached Knockout and the cart he sat on top of, he gave the machine a hard kick to the lower back end. That single kick upset the whole thing, sending it flipping forward. The safety harness was jerked loose by the force against it, and Knockout fell forward to the floor, as his machine tumbled sideways.
The medic was at first only relieved that the machine had at least not trapped him partly underneath it, which could well have been bad. But in a second he understood just how truly bad it was anyway, even without that added disaster. He had never spent much time at all laying forwards like that since his health disaster. If he was all but helpless laying on his back, laying like that, face down on the floor, was so much worse. He could not even imagine how he might try to move even the limbs that did work, in a way that might help him. He was all too aware of the coldness of the floor, pressed against his body, and the coolant tears that ran down his face-plate, as he tied so hard to fight them back.
"See. All you do now, all you've done since you defected, and more so since your little 'incident' is cry. You think that Arcee wants a mate that cries because he can't get up? Just how long do you think it might be before she gets tired of being your caregiver?"
"You're not real," Knockout said in reply to the harsh words, affirming it out loud once more as his processor began to react with panic and he felt his own mind began to believe in the illusion of his dream-state. "Yours is the image my own mind chose as the voice of everything I fear the most..."
"You're right of course. You always were a smart one. You could have gone so far as a Decepticon. Certainly further than you'll get among the Aoutbots… even if you hadn't had that little… er… malfunction. Of course they may or may not haven't still happened at all if you hadn't..."
"You're psychotic!" Knockout said. He was now speaking mostly to the floor, because that was all he could do, but his tears stopped at once and instead he let his anger fuel him.
"Oh, well you would hardly be the first to say so." there was a light thud nearby as Starscream landed on the floor to kneel beside him. "But that's hardly relevant right now, is it? You can yell all the insults you want, but that won't change a thing about you, your own pathetic brokenness or the fact that you would have perhaps been better off dying, as you have so little left to truly live for. And don't you give me that slag about how you may just walk again. May run, may transform and drive again, any of that. None of that will ever stop the flashbacks, the nightmares, the screaming in the middle of the night. I can't imagine any lover putting up with that for long, even if she is willing to put up with a mate that can't even sit up on his own, for Primus sake!"
With an almost violent jerk, Knockout found himself laying on his back again, no longer on the cold floor of the nemesis, but comfortable on the recharge station in his room. The music player still payed softly on the shelf across the room and gave off a faint blue light, and music came through the wall mounted speakers. It had long changed tracks and now a piece of decidedly sad jazz music, originating on Earth was playing.
At some time in the night he had released his hold on Arcee, and his arm had fallen to the surface of the recharge station. But she remained pressed tight against him, with one arm thrown over his chest plate and the other warped around his right arm. She had placed her hand in his at some point, and it was still held there now.
For a moment he lay completely unmoving and simply watched her, still in her own recharge cycle. With some hesitation he let her hand go and moved his away a little. With that tiny motion, she moved away from him a little and flopped over to lay on her back, leaving some distance between them. For a second he saw her reach out toward him again, and he wanted to reach back. But he pulled his hand back instead and she seemed to settle back into light recharge, without ever finding it.
He knew a few seconds later though that she hadn't drifted right back into recharge at all after all, because her optics snapped open and she turned her head to look at him with a look of concern.
"You okay?" she questioned. Her little hand reached out again, and still he refused to reach back.
"Um hmm," he mumbled simply, and said nothing more.
"Music player off," he said a moment later, speaking into the empty air. The selection of jazz music that had come up on random play, was sounding far sadder than before. He suddenly felt first ridiculous and then utterly helpless speaking to a machine to control it without moving. He fought back a strange urge to throw something, and wondered if he should almost be glad that he probably couldn't if he tried.
"Ha. I guess we both dozed off with that still playing away," Arcee said. She gave a little laugh. "Doesn't bother me any. Scarp. If I can sleep with Bulkhead's fraggin' heavy metal tracks from Miko, blasting away down the hall, what's a little quiet jazz music."
"Hmm..." was Knockout's only reply.
"It's still early morning. Looks like we've got a while before someone comes in to put you onto
your machine and we start duty shifts. It's kind of nice being up early like this one in a while... to be able to just stay with you on here like this..." Arcee rambled on happily, but still sleepy, as she turned to wrap both of her arms around him again.
"Please. Don't." He almost snapped at her in his need for her to just move back away from him again. Instantly the guilt of that flooded his processor and he fought back a strange need to cry in remorse for it. Turning his head slowly to look at her, he saw that she was so clearly taken aback by the whole thing. He watched her sit up slowing on the recharge station. But instead of getting up entirely, she only pulled her knees up to her chest and sat calmly, just looking down at him with a hand extended, clearly inviting him to take it. He didn't.
"More flashbacks in recharge?" she questioned. She still spoke so kindly to him, even after he had snapped at her. That only served to make his need to cry even worse. He hated the idea of doing so, even more than he usually hated it.
"No," he almost snapped again. It wasn't quite a lie. The slightly angry edge in his voice served, he hoped, to hide any threatening tears.
"Knockout," Arcee said. Her blue optics locked onto his red ones, and even when he gave an uncharacteristic glare of annoyance at her, she held her gaze, and even smiled at little. "Look. I don't know what you might have dreamed after we went back into recharge in the night. What you might have thought about, and worried about. Or what kind of strange idea you must have had in your head when you woke up this morning on the wrong side of the bed, as they might say back on Earth. But whatever it is, please talk to me. I'm not going to give up on you."
"You always did refuse to give up," Knockout mumbled. He looked from her to the ceiling and back to her again, before trying hard to lower his optics and stare at the wall across the room, as the tears he'd been forcing back behind a wall of his own anger fell against his will. "Maybe you should, Arcee. Maybe you should just give up on me and find someone better. Someone functional. Normal. Strong. Capable."
"Please, don't say that..."
"The war is so close to over now." Knockout went on. His tears fell without any hope of stopping them now and he had given up on trying to. "You could have any life you want one day. Why throw away your dreams, your second chance at a future, all for some busted pile of junk like me. I can't be like anyone else again. I know that. Everything I might have wanted is probably gone now. But I love you more than anyone, and I can't just let you throw away everything you ever wanted too."
Arcee was nothing if not persistent. And instead of getting up then, or at least staying where she was and falling silent, she manged to move both of them slowly and carefully so that she was somehow wedged comfortably under his upper body, and sitting up with his head resting in her lap. Form her new position she reached down and moved his left arm back into the proper resting position she had knocked it away from while moving him. Appearing to consider for a second she then lifted it again, so she could grab his hand instead, still without letting his position become an uncomfortable one. Somehow, her concern for him, her thoughtful consideration of the placement of his limbs, only made him cry harder.
"You know what?" she asked, calmly.
He only shook his head helplessly through the flow and tears and almost chocking sobs. As much as he had wanted, or thought he had wanted, her to go away and leave him alone only second before, he now clung to her hand with his barely functional one the best he could.
"From about about the second week after your processor failure, you've been smiling and calm and insisting that you're good with accepting it all so perfectly. Sure there was a little frustration at first. Probably more than a few good screams of rage, or panic, or just that old look that said you're done, you've had it, and just give you an hour or fifteen. But too quickly I think you just forced all that to go away, put on this brilliant smile and convinced everyone, including yourself that you were okay with exactly what fate gave you. You might have almost had a team of bots convinced, and if I know you as well as I think I do by now, I would think you put on a wonderful show of perfect bravery and smiles the other day for little Miko on the comm. But you can't be okay with it. Not completely. Not so quickly."
"I have to be," Knockout cried. His intakes gasped from his crying and he could barely manage to cycle air without horrible sputtering of his vents. "I… have to be… fine. Have to be… functional. I need a purpose… not much left… but need to try… to live… to learn… to do… need… to… keep… going..."
Arcee sat for a moment, saying nothing and simply letting him hold into her hand while she rested her other arm over his chest panel again. She slowed her own intakes, and slowly he was encouraged by that to calm and slow his. His state of upset and the stress his struggling intakes had put on his frame had caused the usual tension to build quickly in his body again. And after a short while Arcee gently pulled her hand free from his, so that she could hold it again in a way that allowed her to gently work on relieving the tension on the many complex joints within the left hand while she just let him keep on crying without voicing any negative judgment at all.
"No, you don't need to be okay." she insisted, as she went on gently working, and he felt a kind of silent appreciation, even so far from a state in which he could have said a thing about it. "Not all the time, anyway. I think that you are finally starting to really process all this. To really face the true reality of this. And that's actually a good thing."
"Arcee, I don't want to be like this forever! If I get the furthest I'm likely to now, it won't feel like it's enough. I wanna go fast again. I wanna hold things with both hands instead of dropping everything. I miss my work in the medbay. I wanna be in there as more than either an errand bot or a fragging patient."
For what must have been a good while, he simply went on crying hard, wordlessly venting months of frustration at the limits of a dysfunctional body, of almost constant terror at so many horrible possibilities both real and imagined, at the true reality of just how so many tiny things he had never given a thought to before, might just be gone forever. His frame began to tremble a bit and then much harder from the stress the extreme emotion was sending through his frame. He moved his stronger arm over the one Arcee still held firmly over his body, still wishing on some level that he could push her away hard enough that she might just give up and leave him. On a greater level though he feared exactly that more than anything else.
"I… I'm sorry… for snapping..." he said, managing again to speak after so many long minutes. He tears only fell harder and his sobbing cries grew louder. "I… didn't mean to… I didn't mean to… I would never shout at… at you..."
For a good while Arcee only stayed where she was, allowing, and even encouraging of his horrible crying. Her intakes were slow, steady. And it was only that that let him calm his own once again too. Knockout tired for the first time to really imagine how long many centuries of living really might be, and for the first time ever he really began to understand all that might mean – both the horrible and the good of it all. That only caused him to cry harder all the while wondering how that was possible.
After some unknown amount of time, he just stopped with no tears left to cry, no more energy to put into any more emotion. He looked up through the haze of washer fluid left behind in his optics, and faced his own feelings of embarrassment and near humiliation at what he could only consider just another unacceptable show of his own pathetic weakness. But through that haze of moisture he saw Arcee smiling at him slightly, calmly.
"I would never tell you your life will be what it was again… that it'll all be fine," she said, still calm, still smiling a bit. "How could I lie and say I know that for sure, when really we both know that nobody does. I won't ever tell you I think it'll be easy for you... for both of us really. It won't be. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth it. I'm not throwing away anything. Who knew I'd ever have a future or that second chance at a life you mentioned. I do have dreams of course. We both do, just like anyone else. Some will happen. Some won't. That's just life doing life. And if you ever call yourself a busted pile of junk again, I swear to Primus, I'm going to borrow Ratchet's favorite old head bonking wrench!"
"I can't dance with you," Knockout mumbled absently, still looking at her as his optics began to finally dry. When she gave a look of confusion over the seemingly random comment, but said nothing, he went on. "You talked about your creators… How they'd play music and dance together… How you wanted..."
"I'd only have stepped on your feet, if we had had the chance to try that one." Arcee laughed out load, making him smile back at the suddenness of it. "They were good at it, yeah. But that hardly means I am."
"I don't believe I ever really tried when I could have," Knockout mused. He was not unhappy. Simply thinking out loud now. "I can't say if I would have been good at it."
"Ha. Well we've got ages to figure out things to be good at together."
"I've done terrible things." Knockout changed the direction of the conversation a little. "I know you believe I can be forgiven for that. I believe this whole base thinks the same by now. Or at least I hope so. But still, I've wondered before if perhaps my dysfunctional broken condition, was some kind of punishment handed down by a force far greater than us all, for..."
"Please don't believe for a second in nonsense like that. We were all at war. We've all down so many terrible things. Autobots too. And on the other side, fighting against us for so long, you were so far from being he worst of the worst..."
"Arcee. Can I be completely honest?"
"Well I certainly wouldn't want you to be anything else." Arcee was laughing a bit as she answered. But her expression stayed serious all the same.
"That evening awhile ago, we went to sit outside and I asked you to be my bond mate – I saw your face-plate light up for a second, nodding your head and sputtering speechless with coolant in your optics. I'd been expecting you to take on that slow and quiet voice that we all try to take on when we want to spare feelings, and you would refuse for practical reasons, while trying to spare mine. I fully expected you may have explained that it could have been so perfect had everything been different. If only we had fought on the same side all along. If only I was functional both in mind and body. If only a lot of things. It took me the rest of that evening to really realize you hadn't said any such thing after all. But as soon as I finally got that through my head, that's the moment I started to fear I had basically fragged up your entire life. Through my poorly considered, impulsive idea that just maybe..."
"Is that why you've put off bonding five times now? It confused me, because it was you that asked me in the first place..."
"I suppose I want to be sure you've really had the time to really think about this. To consider the full implications of being the mate of a former 'con who will always be judged for that, long after the war finally ends for good. And for us it's worse than that even. We're far from being old bots, Arcee. But so much of our lives together will be moving so slowly on a world where others race around the streets in their vehicle forms…
"On some level you still doubt I really want to be your mate forever," Arcee said. It was not fully a question, nor was it fully a statement. She looked look down at him with that same look on her face-plate, that showed her understanding and complete lack of any judgment.
When Knockout gave only a silent nod in reply, with his expression serious and bordering on sad again, Arcee moved a little, shifting the positions of their bodies so that she could hold onto both of his hands. She smiled again with a look that showed anything but the doubts he was so he would see only after he had given her good reasons.
"I would love it if tomorrow night was finally out bonding night," she said. "Neither of us has an early morning duty shift the morning after that. We'll make it clear to the rest of the base that if anyone comms, or otherwise bothers, either of us before midday, it had better be because the entire roof is on fire." When she smiled again, he smiled back at the same time.
Knockout may well have been happy to stay there awhile, just as they were in that moment, and it looked to him like Arcee so clearly was too. When she finally wiggled out from under him, and gently let his head fall back onto the pillows at the top of the recharge station again, it was only because of the light knocking on the door.
"Speaking of interruptions..." Arcee mumbled with a shake of her head as she moved, with no obvious hurry, to get her feet. Her tone was one of only mock annoyance and she laughed lightly.
"It's already morning," Knockout mused as he finally thought to consider the time.
"Sleepy bots this morning it would seem," Ratchet remarked as he stepped in through the door, which Knockout had unlocked and slid open for him using the voice command. Arcee only then got up and stood on the floor.
"I suppose I had better… unplug the mobility cart," she mumbled with a look of sheepish embarrassment on her face-plate. Typically she would have done that well before then, and pulled it closer to the recharge station to leave it in front of the closest wall.
"Is everything alright this morning?" the old medic questioned. There was obvious concern in his voice. And Knockout realized with some unease, that the evidence of his earlier emotional state still showed on his tear-stained face-plate.
"It's fine," the red bot answered slowly, and meant it. In the light of day, and after some time to think, to talk, to consider and cry, it all seemed far more hopeful again.
"I'll grab a washcloth, and we'll get you cleaned up a bit before we go to work," Arcee offered, speaking without turning around, as she struggled with the stiff plug-in for the cart's charging cord, and an outdated power supply outlet. Knockout mumbled his thanks, smiling slightly at her until he realized that she of course could not see him from her position kneeling on the floor and facing the wall. Arcee quickly pushed the cart much closer to the recharge station, before she hurried of to fetch the washcloth she had mentioned bringing.
"You know, I'm always around if you need to talk about about, well anything really," Ratchet said, as Knockout lay on the recharge station, looking up and listening. "That applies to all bots on this base, including you."
"I know," Knockout answered quietly. He never said it but he was grateful for the reminder anyway. He considered for a moment, before he said slowly "So it looks like you're staying on Cybertron now then."
The old medic nodded. "I was back here a couple of Earth months before the big boys in the US military called to say I had a month to get back or my contract would be terminated. I told 'em go ahead. Terminate it. I know where I'm needed, and now I know I'm needed here."
"Yeah." Knockout nodded his understanding. He felt relief at the news, where he never thought he wold.
"Ready to get up?" The old medic questioned.
Nodding, Knockout lifted his right arm, bending it a little, and ready to be lifted up, ready to help as much as he could in moving his body onto the cart. The job o f moving him had become simpler as the months went on. He was much stronger now, and instead of being fully little more than dead weight against anyone lifting him, he could hold himself up well enough to maintain a still unsteady sitting position on the edge of the recharge station, only he was pulled up. From there it was a far more simple matter of being lifted up and placed onto the cart's seat. But even that second step was simpler, with him starting to support more and more of his weight, as he braced his right leg on the footrest.
As it was that morning, Ratchet left him to try to sit, supporting himself on the edge of the recharge station for a moment, in the midst of transferring him over to the cart. His feet slipped forward against the floor and the red bot fell to leaning against the old medic, but he had first managed to hold himself up for long enough to smile a bit at having done so. Knockout realized at once that he had only fallen over because he had been let go of without a change to balance himself. He remembered that he had done it far longer when he had been actively trying to. Once he was sitting properly on the cart, he reached his right arm forward and held into a stable part of the frame, which held up the tray in front of him, so that he could hold himself up steady while he was strapped in.
As all three of the bots left the room and turned into the hallway, Knockout looked to see Arcee grinning at him brightly. He looked back at her for a moment, baffled by the grinning, and nearly colliding with a wall, as the corridor rounded a corner and he forgot to steer the cart to the right. But watching her a moment, as he corrected himself and went on rolling forward, with her now laughing lightly at his near mishap, he saw her joy in having seen him sit up so well, even if only for a moment before he slipped forward. He understood that she had noticed how he finally managed to hold himself up, without leaning to one side before he could be safely secured in his seat, She saw how much he was truly regaining when he had forgotten to count those tiny bits of progress as worth anything at all.