The sun had begun to set on Cybertron. And Knockout sat on his cart, parked just close enough to the edge of a high cliff to still be safe to be there. Arcee was at his right hand side, sitting on the smooth metallic ground, resting against him and the cart the best she could do, while the sun slowly fell lower in the sky.
"I don't think I'll ever get tired of just watching the sun setting on our world," Arcee said, her tone sentimental and reflecting. "Not after we all came so close to never again having a world at all. To watch it set and to know that it will always rise again, that our home is really okay again… even now, after being back here a while, it's still incredible to me."
"Same here," Knockout answered when she stopped speaking. "Now granted, Earth did have some wonderful views at sundown. It was amazing, beautiful to see it really. But to see ours again..."
He stopped talking again and looked down at his mate, giving a quizzical look, as her mouth fell open slightly and she looked up at him with clear shocked surprise.
"It was a wonderful view," Arcee said after a moment, smiling up at him from her place still seated on the ground. "I'm just honestly amazed that you thought so too."
"Sure I did. I never hated Earth you know, even if it might just have been easy to assume so. It was not our world. I missed our home as much as anyone would expect. But there were things to like. I remember how I would take off away from the worship whenever I could, and drive just for the sake of driving. Just myself on a long and lonely road across the desert of Nevada. I'd drive along perhaps faster than any bot or human driver should have done, watching the sun set behind me and wishing that if I could only just go fast enough, maybe I could just escape whatever it was that I was trying so hard to run away from."
Arcee was lost for anything to say to that. So instead she just leaned further over and let the side of her face-plate rest against the cool metal of his bent knee. The pair sat that way for a while, both just smiling faintly as they watched Cybtertron's distant and almost bright white sun drop lower in the sky above them.
"I have a question for you," Arcee said, speaking quietly as the sun dropped over the horizon, leaving the pair quickly in near blackness. Both bots activated the lights on the fronts of their frames, letting their built-in beams serve to light their own tiny corner of the world.
"I have an answer for you," Knockout replied with a laughing grin in under a second. But as soon as he had spoken he fell silent again considering, before he looked down at her.
"Come up here," he said, reaching with his functional hand, to find the catch that would let him push the front tray and arm rest of the cart up. He grinned at his mate, as he gave it a light upward shove and showed her just how well he could move up the front of the cart himself by then. Surely, Arcee reflected then, the next logical step would now be to simply detach the entire front tray set up from the cart altogether so that he could drive it with nothing in front of him at all, and just pull up to work tables like anyone else would, in order to make use of a flat work surface. The trouble with that, it seemed, was that of course he needed his hand controls… Arcee dismissed any worry about the matter for the moment. Surely that would be worked out with little trouble eventually.
She stood up from her place on the ground, with with some hesitation she lightly moved to place her weight against him and then slide up to sit across his lap with her legs hanging over the side of the cart. She leaned against his right shoulder panel giggling slightly, and letting him use his bent arm to hold her up.
"All good," knockout said laughing a little at the worried look on her face-plate, as she thought about safety. "I can hold your weight just fine."
It was true, his frame could still support a decent amount of weight on top of it. Probably close to what any bot of his size and frame type could hold, really; though of course there had never been a cause to really find out for sure. And she knew he'd quickly ask her to get off again, if she was far too heavy.
"Have you ever thought much about being a creator?" she asked him, still leaning comfortably against his shoulder panel.
"Being a creator?" Knockout echoed the question thoughtfully. "As in us with our own youngling?"
"UmHmm." Arcee nodded against his plating. After a moment she lifted her head again, and turned herself a little, so that she could sit looking up into the pair of red optics that now glowed in the darkness. "I'm just curious. If I told you one day I was carrying…?"
Knockout stayed silent for a moment, thinking hard. Finally he gave a hesitant and uncertain reply. "I cant say I've ever given much thought to it really. I imagine I'd be terrified at first. I'd question so many little matters of practicality. That said though I'd love the young one, and I'd always do the best I could… I know we both would. And you would make a wonderful carrier."
"Any child of yours would surely have the shiniest paint on Cybertron," Arcee said, with sudden laughter.
"Of course," Knockout said grinning. He laughed too. "Perfect buffing of one's paintjob is an important and useful life skill."
"We'd teach our little one that he could be anybot he wanted to be one day," he said after another moment. He still smiled but his tone was far more serious again too. "We'd love him unconditionally, teach him to work hard, and play harder. If his drive to fight for what he believes in and to never give up, was anywhere close to yours he'd be unstoppable. Of course this is all just a what if and a daydream for now..."
"What if it wasn't?" Arcee continued to look up at his optics. Her face-plate visible in the darkness only by glow of their headlight and the shine from her optics, showed slightly more than playful curiosity now.
"What if it wasn't what?" Knockout's tone was anxious behind his confusion.
"What if it wasn't a 'what if'?" Arcee leaned her head back down against against his shoulder panel, and speaking now partly into his armor again she said, "what it was a for real and a now and ready or not, thing?"
There was no reply for a moment. And then another moment wore on without one. Arcee shifted a little so that she could sit up straight on his upper legs. She turned to face more forward and he wrapped his functioning arm around her again in her new position, as she tipped her head back to look at his optics again, trying to read his expression.
"Hey," she said, her tone half joking but her words serious too. "Say something, will, you."
"Are you… do you really mean..." Knockout stumbled clumsily over language, with a look of wonder and shocked confusion on his face-plate.
Arcee only nodded, nervous and hesitant at first, but with a growing grin forming on her face-plate after another second. "Carrying status was confirmed today. I… suspected for a little while but I wanted to wait to say a word about it until I was sure..."
"You've regained so much strength, and you're quite mobile now," she said after another several long moments in which her mate only sat in shocked silence. Through the connection the pair hared as bond mates, she had begun to sense and understand his fast growing concerns and to understand how quickly they were reaching a point close to panic. Though she sensed too at the same time, an underlying kind of happiness beneath the sudden waves of growing fright over it all. "You have independence and there's so much you can do now. That will include doing so much with a little one. The timing is so obviously far from ideal. We still live on base and everything. But it would never have been perfect..."
She stopped then in the middle of a sentence, realizing suddenly just how ridiculously she had been rambling. Her blue optics met her mate's red one's again and she saw that he had began to smile slightly at her. With his functional arm he moved to pull her closer against his frame.
"It was commonly believed once in the city I came from," he said, speaking slowly as his little smile turned to a grin that spread over his face-plate, "that a youngling created on its creators' bonding night would be blessed with a lifetime of luck."
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Ratchet hummed the off key notes of a song, as he worked alone in the medbay. He wished as he hummed that he could remember the words, or at least the first verse and the chorus, But it was long forgotten, and all he knew was the tune. Regardless it was wonderful to hum a song again, to feel like doing so – regardless of all the bots over the years that had told him in no uncertain terms how lucky they were he had devoted his life to medicine instead of music, because he could not carry a tune in a bucket.
He busied himself with the overdue collaboration of both of the base's spark monitors, and replacing the weakening battery inside a handheld diagnostic scanner. Then, still humming away, he gathered up a few tools and carried them over to load into the sanitaizer, before starting to wipe down the fronts of cupboards. When he turned toward the door of the medbay after not too long, the old medic jumped back, startled, and wide-optic'd, with a hand held tight over his spark chamber.
Soundwave stood in the doorway of the medbay, silent and completely unmoving. Laserbeak, perched on his arm, tipped her head slightly from the right to the left and back again, but remained as silent and otherwise motionless as her master.
"Well good morning," Ratchet said, gathering his wits quickly and lowering his hand again. He never would admit to anyone on base, just how much both Soundwave and that bird of his unnerved him. Though he could hardly imagine he would have been alone in his opinion had he ever bothered to voice it. He wondered just how long the bot had been standing motionless in the doorway, and could not even imagine how he had managed to approach the door without making any obvious noise at all.
"What can I do for you?" he asked, after a moment. He took step forward toward the door, and through centuries of practice at such things, he managed to keep his tone friendly and even, showing confidence as he walked.
"Soundwave – instructed to report to medical bay for routine analysis."
"I hadn't expected you nearly this early," Ratchet said, surprised. He had indeed sent him a memo regarding said analysis. But he was half expecting it would be a full on argument and battle just to get him to comply. Yet here, he had shown up on his own free will after all, and barely after the start of a workday.
"Well come in then," he said, and gestured behind him with a wave of his hand. "Go and sit up on repair table two.
Laserbeak left her position on Soundwave's arm, and as the bot moved to follow the medic's instructions, the bird began to fly a slow circle around the medbay, staying up high, close to the ceiling. Ratchet nearly shook his head in annoyance about it, but made up his mind instead to simply let her fly. She wasn't exactly hurting anything.
"Have you been recharging adequately?" the old medic questioned, as he reached behind him for a scanner that was sitting on a nearby work table. Soundwave gave no reply, but after a second, the scanner showed clear indication of the bot's lack of rest. Ratchet looked then toward the rough place his optic's would be behind the face-shield. Only then did he notice the network of cracks that spread over it.
"You need to up your energon consumption," Ratchet said. Soundwave's fuel levels were low, in fact barely above a level that should have allowed him to remain fully functional. And he dared to tell him so.
"Full potions, twice a day, morning and early evening," he continued, his tone serious. "Laserbeak as well."
Soundwave only nodded at him mutely.
"What happened to your face-covering?" the old medic questioned. He'd put off any questioning about the matter, but he really did need to ask eventually.
Soundwave only sat still and silent. The medic imagined he could almost feel the strange bot's optics staring into his, behind the series of cracks.
"It's important that I have some understanding of how that happened," Ratchet explained. He made his tone remain patient, though he generally disliked dealing with such stubbornness. "With damage like that, my concern is that you've also done damage to your face-plate."
"Cause – impact with training gym punching bag," Soundwave finally explained. "Underlying damage – seemingly minimal."
"Still, I really should take a look at that. Impacts like that can be quite dangerous. I would be concerned about you having cracked any number of facial components, and done underlying damage."
Soundwave tipped his head down toward the floor and for a while he simply sat like that, looking down, saying nothing and making no move to do a thing. Ratchet could only assume he was going to move to leave the medbay at any moment, refusing to submit to medical care. And he knew he could not hope to push the issue if that happened. But slowly the black and purple bot, reached up and to the relief of the frustrated medic, he unclipped the edges of the broken face-shield, and slowly raised his head again while he held the broken cover in his hand.
Ratchet had of course taken the face-shield off, while repairing a nearly fatally damaged Soundwave not so long before. But there had been urgently pressing injuries to deal with, and because the face-plate had not been among them, he had barely given it a second thought or taken the time to fully register what it was he was seeing.
He realized now, for the first time, just how badly destroyed the face-plate was. The great majority of his facial features had been obliterated, clearly melted away by some source of extreme heat, into a mess of blacked and gray metal, far beyond anything a bot's self repair mechanisms could hope to fully take care of. He had an apparently functional mouth, but judging but the extent to which it was damaged, he was clearly lucky to be able to open and close it at all. He was likely barely able to smile or frown. The bot's optics strangely stayed closed and the old medic cautiously questioned the matter.
Soundwave slowly opened his optics, or at least he clearly tried to to some decent extent. The right one far less than even half open at all, leaked coolant horribly in reaction to the light of the medbay until in only a second it blinked shut again. The left, thankfully still able to function independent of the right, was in somewhat better condition and could at least easily remain open if little else. Ratchet stared for a second with sinking dread at the obviously once bright red optic now long faded to a faint pink with impossibly dim lightening shining out behind it. The old medic, his sinking feeling quickly increasing, held a hand out in front of his seated patient's face a slight ways back from him, and slowly moved it from left to right and back again. Any bot should naturally have tracked his motion, but Soundwave's one still open optic did so hardly at all. With a slight ad shake of his head that he now knew full well the other bot would never have been aware of in any case, Ratchet reached behind him to dim the overhead lights with a click of a near by switch. He quickly fetched a land held light from the drawer of his work table and slowly moved that in one direction and then another near the other bot's faceplate. Hope rose slowly again when he saw him clearly try to track the light.
"Your optics were destroyed along with your face-plate?" Ratchet remarked slowly, still cautious with his words, and not entirely sure if he had even meant it more as a question or a statement of realization.
"How much do you actuality see?" he questioned after another second, not exactly expecting he would receive any answer at all from the bot who spoke so very little.
"Little more than lights, and vague outlines in bright enough colors," Soundwave said slowly, surprising the medic with a clearly spoken answer.
Ratchet shook his head slightly again, in his own disbelief. How could the third in the command of the Decepticon army, the bot who always served at both a communications officer and chief of surveillance have so perfectly functioned while for all intents and purposes almost completely blinded? His gaze fell suddenly on the face-shield, still held in the bot's hand at his side. In a quick flash, something clicked in his processor and he understood that there was clearly more to this bot's always hidden face-plate, than a need to hide horrific damage.
"Lay back for a moment," the old medic instructed then, reaching out, ready to gently take the other bot's arm and carefully assist him, in case he could not determine without vision where the repair table's edges were.
"Inquiry – why?" Soundwave demanded, reverting right back into his awkward formal speech and doing nothing in the way of simply following simple direction.
For a fleeting second Ratchet only shook his head again, this time in mild annoyance at the bot and his blatant refusal of a request so simple and harmless. He'd known full well in the back of his mind that sooner or later he would likely have at least a small fight on his hands with this bot, because Soundwave had fought so much in his own strange and unpredictable ways since he had regained conscious after being rescued by Autobots. The old medic wanted so badly to simply mumble a short 'because I said so,' him. But instead he found himself looking again toward his devastated face-plate. Without the cover that it was usually hidden behind, he could make out an expression on the bot's face, which though so damaged so still at least somewhat capable or readable expressions. On on his, Ratchet suddenly read a kind of anxious fright that so often seemed to come with any bot's uncertainty.
"There's a fair chance at least some of this damage is repairable," Ratchet said, deciding it likely wise to explain now what he ad at first planned to withhold until he was certain of his assessment. He spoke calmly and patiently instead of the near snapping tone he had been ready to use only a second before. Just the simple ability to see and to read expressions on his face, reminded him that Soundwave, for all his far reaching reputation for so many traits that should have made him socially unreachable, was still just a bot like any other. The old medic shook his head again once, this time in his own shame at barely having considered that.
"I need to run far more detailed scans, map out optical relay systems… create a three dimensional computer image of your face-plate so that I can possibly work with a bit later and get a decent idea of what it is we've got to work with here..." he started to explain, this time letting compassionate understanding show in his tone.
Soundwave slowly turned his body so that he could reach out, feeling with his hands for the edges of the surface he was seated on top of. Finally, when it was clear he was certain of where exactly he was going, he moved to follow instruction and silently lay down as directed. With a feeling of relief at not having to face another battle of stubborn wills with this bot at that second, Ratchet left him alone a moment so that he could step several paces back. Concerned for the obvious discomfort to the bot's near destroyed optics, he decided to dim the lights to as low a setting as he could while still comfortably able to work. Just as he had hoped, the right optic sure enough half opened again in the dimmer lighting. Making another quick decision, the old medic activated his comm. Quickly he called up a comm code.
-Knockout – Ratchet said over a private commlink – you receiving? -
-Yep – came the quick reply over the commlink. - Go ahead, Ratchet. Whats up? -
-Are you currently mobile? -
The question was hardly an illogical one. Lately Knockout had began more and more to like to spend time off his mobility cart, sitting on benches instead with his teammates. Any of those strong enough to do so, were confidant in transferring him off the cart and back again. More than once now he had even managed to sit on the floor (seemingly he had wanted to) with his back against a wall so that he would remain stable enough. Just the day before he had sat through, and taken part in, an entire crew meeting in such a position, simply because clearly he saw real wisdom in a point Ratchet had recently made, about a benefit to growing comfortable with trying to sit in different positions.
-Yep- came a quick reply.
-Good. Can you please come to the medbay for a moment?-
The request was greeted only by a momentary silence, and Ratchet chucked over the commlink, as he resisted the urge to shake his head yet again.
-I'm not calling you in as a patient again, Knockout, don't panic. I'd like a quick consult with you actually about another medical case.-
-I'm on my way.-
Killing the communication, Ratchet stepped back to his patient, and immediately he got to work setting up and turning on needed equipment. In the corner of his vision he saw Soundwave turn his head slightly, obviously trying to determine by the sound of footsteps where the medic was in relation to himself. The bot did not put up any real fight, or even attempt to move again, but it was all too clear in the subtle motions of his hands, the posture of his body and the facial expression he showed within his limited capability, that he was anxious anyway. Anybot far less disciplined than this one may well have refused to remain laying, or far worse moved to physically attack a medical officer. It certainly did happen and Ratchet, in his many concerning in the field had lost count of the number of times he had quite wrongly found himself on the wrong side of such attacks against him.
"How are you liking your living space?" Ratchet questioned, making simple conversation while he quickly located and clicked open Soundwave's processor access port, and just as quickly connected a cable to attach him to a scanner.
"Space – beyond adequate," Soundwave answered slowly. It was thanks only to endless amounts of experience with patients, that Ratchet knew from watching subtle hand movements, that the bot was at some risk of anxiously starting to tug on the monitoring cable.
"You know, you're permitted to decorate your space a bit if you like. It's your living space. Ours are all quite uniquely ours." Ratchet went on speaking a bit. Considering again, he made a quick grab for the cable, moving it so that it fell entirely behind the repair table, instead any of it catching close to the bot's hands on an edge. If his hand could not find it, he know, he could not pull or panic over it.
"I'll need to run a quick analysis on Laserbeak at some point too," Ratchet tried cautiously after another second, and knowing full that he would never get close to the tiny bot without Soudwave's clear say so. "If you would be willing to assist me with her..."
Across the room a door slid open and shut and the old medic turned quickly, looking behind him to see Knockout enter the medbay. The mobility cart was not noisy by any means, much quieter by far than the heavy stomping of a bot's feet. But Soundwave, clearly having picked up the sound of the electric motor, moved a little in order to turn his head in the direction of the sound. His face-plate took on a look of confusion, and growing nervousness.
"I asked Knockout to come and consult with me about you," Ratchet explained quickly, speaking with self assurance. "I respect him as a fellow medic, and I'd value his opinions on your case."
Slowly, and remaining silent, Soundwave nodded slightly.
"Inquiry – why do you wish to repair me?" he questioned slowly, hesitantly and still so clearly nervous. His nearly sightless optics made the motions of tracking the sounds of scanning equipment, and following lights in any direction he could. He was outwardly calm and surprising compliant, but the subtle signs of his still present and growing anxiety could not slip by a well experienced medic unnoticed.
"You are a fellow Cybertronian, Soundwave," Ratchet answered slowly, after a moment to consider his words. All the while he typed commands into a computer console he had moved near him on top of the portable work table it sat on. Transferring copies of the scans into the computer, he labeled and saved the file along the many medical related files contained on a secure hard drive. "Whatever any one may have done, or believed in… whatever side they may have fought on during the war, no one could possibly deserve to have been damaged like you were. This ridiculous war for Cybertron is as good as over, and you are just as entitled to a future, a fair shot at starting over, as anyone."
Soundwave only nodded at that, appearing to accept the answer.
He was dismissed from the medbay some time later, after scans and assessment and some hope that he might ask more questions of his own - which he didn't. Ratchet had at some point, taken the face-shield from him, to set it down on the closest worktable. He retrieved it, and Soundwave immediately placed it back over his face-plate as soon as it was returned to him. He stood back on the floor, and the second he could, he turned around, made for the door and walked out of there with long and hurried strides. His arm was extended the whole time he had been moving again. And Laserbeak perched on it obediently as he walked, in order to be silently carried.
"If anyone is skilled enough to make the kind of repairs required here, surely you are," Knockout said. He turned the cart a little so that he could face the older bot, while they talked.
"Thank you for that vote of confidence," Ratchet answered with a decidedly nervous edge to his voice. He believed his proposed repair work was certainly doable – if he had not, he would never have bothered with the amount of considering he had already done, and he certainly would not have said a word about it, and dared to possible raise a patent's hopes. But at the same time he knew that to even try would be a complex and risky thing. There was no denying the number of things that could go wrong.
"It'll certainly take multiple repair sessions to fix him," Knockout considered. He flexed and unflexed the fingers of his right hand idly as he talked. And on his face-plate, Ratchet could not ignore the look of his still never quite forgotten passion, for medical science. "I'd assume your plan would be to devote the first repair session, to an attempt at restoring his vision?"
Ratchet nodded, and thought hard. "The visual input center is perfectly intact. He's capable of seeing, as far as his processor goes. The optics themselves, the connections directly behind them, everything is totaled to the point of being useless in sending any useful information to the processor. The light filter behind the right one is gone too… I'll need to replace the optics, the right filter, at least forty-two little connections. Hey, Knockout…?"
"Yes?" the red bod questioned after a second and after it was obvious the old medic's question had been allowed to die in the air.
"You didn't you mention to me that Soundwave was blind." Ratchet could still not fully believe that new revelation himself and sure the tone of his voice showed his shock over it. "Well blind without that face-shield of his anyway….yes. I'm still clueless about exactly how that bit of technology works exactly."
"I didn't know," Knockout insisted. He raised his good hand in front of him in a gesture of surrender. "Believe me when I say I was just as shocked as you surely must have been, when I realized he couldn't see. You said it yourself. He's only truly blind without the face-shield."
"I still don't understand how he could possibly have…" Ratchet stopped speaking, once again in the middle of a sentence. Stepping toward the computer, he called up the files he had just saved before closing down, and spent a minute going through the images that had been created by his scanner. He mumbled wordlessly and glanced around the room a second, before his attention went back to the images again. He wished then that he had bothered to take a decent look at the face-shield during the brief time he had held it in his hand. But he had still thought so little of it then and instead had set it down behind him without a second thought. Looking again yet again at the computer screen though, studying a 3D image with it's optics and visual hardware included, realization clicked in his processor, ad the old medic stepped back again toward his teammate.
"Oh, that's brilliant," he muttered out loud, while Knockout only shot a look of baffled confusion in his direction, and glanced cluelessly toward the image himself.
"A kind of set up involving a refracted data beam," Ratchet explained to his still baffled and curious colleague. With an extended fingertip, he tapped carefully on various parts of various images as he explained. "Soundwave's visual input center, at the front of the processor a ways behind the optics, is working perfectly fine of course. It just can't 'see' anything to input for processing. Now, if an outside device could see for him, capture moving images in real time, like a high speed video capture basically, and if that device could then beam what is sees, backwards right through the optics and directly onto the visual input..."
"He can see perfectly well by simply bypassing his own optics and using the face-shield among other things, like a real time camera," Knockout finished the thought, understanding now dawning. He shook his head in his own amazement over it.
"He hid it so well for centuries from the entire Decepticon army," the red bot reflected. His tone was clearly sad, and the old medic knew he was clearly faced once again with his own remorse at his own part in whatever it was he was getting at. "If that had only gotten out, if word had spread on the warship, that the faultless and brilliant communication and surveillance officer was in fact blinded by the event that had destroyed his face… Blindness is far too great a fault and a handicap. Probably a little worse even than mine would have been considered. He would never have been allowed to live another hour."
"Are you alright, Knockout?"
"Yeah, I'm good. Just… just give me a second."
"Alright."
"You've heard rumors, I suppose, of the 'cons many excuses for medics over the years I would imagine," Knockout said after a moment of sitting quietly on the cart and thinking. He'd been so clearly shaken up by all of his understanding and reflections. But the look of sinking dread and horror was quickly fading again from his face-plate and his crimson optics.
"Sparkless and generally sadistic bots as a rule," Ratchet nodded very slowly while he visibly cringed and let his look of disgust clearly show. "I know all too well the stories of batched and barely viable patch up job excuses for completed repairs, on bots who there were lucky to not have off lined with their idiocy and lack of any technique or ever proper training."
The old medic cringed again at his own words, before he glanced sadly in Knockout's direction. He remembered well a time when he would have assumed the very same of the young bot that was now his colleague and teammate. Knockout though, as he had quickly learned once, had been a surprising exception to that alarming statistic. He'd been good at a job that no 'con generally wanted – had done it by choice, instead of being shoved into the role after being yanked forcefully away from science and experimentation and made to fill a medic role without truly understanding that living bots were not simply new experiments. If only the Autobots had possibly found and recruited him first…
"Most of the medics that served the needs of the common bots in Kaon, way back at the very start of the war, were little better than those drafted by Megatron for the 'cons, or so I've often heard," Knockout said. His tone was both serious and once again regretful. "Many of them were the very same bots, as of course that was the first city to be drafted from. In order to have even survived injuries as horrific as Soundwave's would have have have been, he would have been thrown to the mercy of those depraved bot-butchers. I assume you were trying to ask me if that's why he's clearly beyond nervous of medics and accepting any real help? You're sure to have a real job on your hands with that one."
"I'll keep all of that in mind when and if he decides to submit to repairs at all. He may or may not, and I know that of course."
After a moment, Knockout turned the cart in the direction of the door, and moved to roll out of the medbay. Halfway to the door though he stopped, and sat where he was for a moment. Finally he turned back around to face the old medic again.
"Thank you for allowing me an opinion on this case," he said thoughtfully. "it means a lot to be able to still have a part, however small, in the medical field."
"You're still a fellow medic," Ratchet answered at once, with a confidant look of assurance at the disabled bot seated on the mobility cart. "You were good at your job, and you still know your stuff. I meant what I said, when I told Soundwave I value your medical opinions."
"It still means a lot. Say, Arcee had some news for me last night. It would have to have been you that saw her and gave her some scan results..."
"I scan a lot of bots for a lot of reasons, on a nearly daily basis," Ratchet answered, smiling only slightly and choosing to feign cluelessness as to what his teammate was talking about.
"She is carrying," Knockout blurted then. He rolled himself forward again on the cart and moved back toward the old bot. His face-plate, the look on which had been one of professional seriousness as he consulted on and discussed a patient case, gave way suddenly to a bright grin. He shook his head a little, probably still in near disbelief. But the grin, once present, stayed planted on his face-plate. "You knew, because of course you gave her the news. But you never said a thing about it it."
The old bot shrugged slight and gave a small chuckle of laughter. "Ha. It was hardly my place to go saying a thing. But my well wishes and congratulations to the both of you. Has it really hit home yet?"
"Honesty no. Well yes, to a point I suppose. She and I were out of recharge much of last night, just talking, planning, wondering. I would imagine by sometime next week, I'll realize its really true, and maybe then I'll have a good panic attack or something. Hmm, she may just do the same I would guess. It is it now though were are both just happy and laughing maybe too much."
"You're whole lives will be so different soon."
"I know. Well I think I know… I can imagine it anyway."
"A young one is never a bad thing. Each one is a blessing from Primus. But of course you surely agree with that. It's wonderful to have started to see little ones coming back home again. Even more so to think that soon a brand new one will exist, and one born on our own home world. There are so few of us left anywhere… Never let anyone tell you you can't do it, that you shouldn't, that you and Arcee were wrong..."
"Thank you."
"How would you feel about going to the oil pool again this evening? Doing another rehabilitation session in there? Floating in the pool is doing you some real good, I think."
Knockout only nodded his agreement in reply, and went on grinning mostly to himself before he turned to roll out of the medbay.
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Arcee let the doors to the blaster range slid shut behind her, and walked immediately to the rack in front to the closet wall, to pick up a targeting blaster. Turning toward the control board, intending to set up her targeting patterns, she instead saw bumblebee already busy with the control board, and obviously having already started his own practice. Seeing her enter, he held his blaster in one hand at his side and nodded a friendly greeting.
"Hey 'Bee." Arcee read some shooting stats on the monitor screen over her teammates shoulder. "Ooh, looks like someone's got a new top rank in here. Who the frag is shooting 99.9 percent accuracy?"
The score had been record by the system simply under the designation of 'unregistered participant.' But whoever it was, Arcee had to admit it was impriessive.
"Soundwave," 'Bee answered. "I told him more than once, if he's going to use blaster range, which of course is fine, we'd prefer he register his name in the system. But no such luck so far."
"He's good. Always was pretty slagging scary on a battle field."
"Yeah. Just kinda too bad he was on the wrong side of the battles..."
"It is what it is 'Bee," Arcee shrugged, and leaned lightly against the wall behind her. "I never thought I'd live to see the day Soundwave, of any bot, would defect. I offered him the choice myself. But even then I didn't think he'd take it, even with a price on his metal at the hands of his own… You waiting for a challenger, 'Bee?"
Arcee held up her blaster with a slight laugh. "Best two of three?"
She would have expected that he would simply hit the 'go' button on the panel, and accept her challenge without a word about it. But instead her gave a funny look she had never seen before on his face-plate and looked her over with clearly mild concern.
"What?" she demanded laughing slightly as she stepped away from the wall.
"Should you still be target shooting?" he questioned in a voice that made her roll her optics at him. "I mean… I heard you're…."
"How'd you hear?" Arcee asked back. She laughed again, just a little. 'Bee was now the third bot in two days to comment in some manner or other on her 'status.'
"Knockout," Bumblebee said quickly, and with a grin. "He was so excited to tell me and Smokey this morning at the energon dispenser.
Arcee only laughed again at that, and rolled her optics again at her friend and teammate. "I may be a carrying bot, yeah. But that hardly means I can't shoot a blaster." 'Bee was going to be a medibot, and she really thought in that moment he should certainly have known better.
"Arcee, what's it really like to have a bondmate?" 'Bee's question made her blink a couple of times in baffled shock. But she remembered a second later, that the small black and yellow bot really was still barely an adult himself. He may have achieved so much as an Autobot solider, but still, behind that was still only the innocence and curious wonder of youth.
"It's…." Arcee began, but she stopped almost speaking almost immediately so that she could sit herself down and the floor of the range. 'Bee followed suit at once and joined her sitting on the thinly padded floor. "It's a difficult thing to really explain. Your bondmate is your best friend, the one bot that truly knows you as well as you know yourself. Hmmm, maybe better even. Theyy're the one who will always call it exactly how they see it, tell you the truth even when no one else will and you still try to lie to yourself. But its never in judgment and anger. They're always the one you hurry back to at the end of the day and you go back because you want to and because you need to see them again, because you miss them already five minutes after you left."
"Sounds like it would be a wonderful life. Challenging at times maybe, but still pretty amazing too."
"It is," Arcee answered grinning. She considered a second and then said honestly, "I suppose for some it would be more of a challenge than others. "For me it's probably far more so, only because Knockout is still so badly disabled. He needs so much help and everything takes so much extra time, consideration, planning. Then his emotions are so up and down. He'll be laughing his head off five minutes after crying his spark out and not even knowing exactly why… But I wouldn't trade it all for anything. I'd be lost without him now."
"If someone had told any one of us on this base that you and Knockout of all bots, would end up together..." 'Bee shook his head a little and gave a slight laugh, before his expression turned more serious again. "It was the two of you though that showed me how real love can still happen on our world… how no matter how much craziness and tragedy the war threw at us, sparks meant to find each other will still find a way..."
"Someday you will find your 'someone' too 'Bee. Yeah, I can't explain exactly how you'll know. I would assume that might have been your next question. You'll just know I suppose when the time is right to figure it out and realize it..."
"I think I already have."
"Speedbreaker?" Arcee questioned, with a look of understanding in his direction. And 'Bee just nodded slowly at first.
"Her creators are a shopkeeper and a maintenance bot, and her family is dedicated natural. Neither of her creators exactly loves the idea of her getting so close to a bot that holds a faction. Either one would have been equally bad for her, in their processors. But still she comes to see me whenever she can. We just talk and talk and talk about anything at all, and we have so much fun together. We've probably told each other things about ourselves, our lives, that no other bot will ever know… Last night she comm'd me just to say she missed me while stuck working her in carrier's shop all evening. I grabbed the call in under a second only because I already had a commlink open so I could tell her I missed her too."
Still sitting on the floor on the blaster ranger, Arcee only nodded her head in wordless understanding, before she laughed again and thumped her hand against in shoulder panel in a gesture of friendship.
Things were changing so fast, and Arcee knew that. Soon she would have her very own child and though she would once never had even thought of such a thing, she could only admit now it was both amazing and exciting to wonder who it become someday. The energy she had not so long ago put into constant battles in a war that never truly saw any real winner, had so many more constructive outlets. And now it so clearly looked like the bot she practically considered a younger brother, might just soon be dreaming of his own little apartment, a bondmate and hopes of a youngling of his own.
"Best two out of three' Bee?" Arcee said, repeating her earlier challenge she she stood up quickly and gestured with the targetting blaster she still held in her hand. As wonderful as change was, in that moment it was still wonderful just to forget to think of the future and only living in the same familiar moment. "Even carrying, I'm pretty sure I can still nearly kick your tail pipe!"
Notes/ well it looked from comments in reviews that a couple of you obviously wanted to see if Knockout and Arcee would have a little bot eventually. Ha, looks like now Im officially committed to really letting this fanfic project go on for longer because, obviously I decided to run with the idea.
Also, hopefully Soundwave is not coming off as weak or ridiculous. I'm writing his character the way I'm doing it, because I feel like the mysterious and silent bot about whom really so little is known, must surely have a story too.