Ep0.5 - Things That Were Left Unsaid (Closed)

The base was big - by human standards. By Cybertronian standards, not so much, and even less so with the influx of new 'bots. It was livable, certainly; he'd been in worse, been on a few ships that considered anything beyond the reach of your arms and not knocking a standard frame's head on the doors to be sufficient, and the Earth base was magnitudes better than that. It did, however, leave precious little room when a 'bot wanted time to himself, which probably accounted for all the younglings taking off every chance they got to tear up the human roads outside.

Ironhide had never been much of one for tearing up roads, and while there were some perfectly good points not far from base that served as impromptu firing ranges, blank rock taking a beating from Cybertronian armament, the other thing that was outside was... well... outside. Organic world, organic particles in everything, from the dirt underfoot to the dust in the air and everything inbetween.

Which is why, when he wanted both quiet to work and space to test what he was working on, Ironhide invariably ended up in the lowest levels of the base, where the old human missile pads had been converted into large open spaces that served as sparring room and shooting range both. Also a maintained, cleaned, and controlled space, without quite so many organic hazards as the world outside.

He'd been working, off and on, for days. There was something - a perfectly well known something, makeshift retooled replacement stabalizer cobbled together after a patch weld had failed, done by lesser hands than Ratchet's, and it had never fit perfectly but wear and tear eventually made it worse - throwing his targeting in his primary right blaster. Not by much, six point two inches as humans measured things, but it was more than far enough to drive Ironhide to glitching if he didn't fix it. Off duty periods had, therefore, been finding him more and more down in the base shooting range, tools laid out in a neat line across the floor as he braced his arm across his knee to get at his own shoulder and adjust the calibrations that needed it. It was tedious and painstaking and, to Ironhide, relaxing - he had become, over the vorns, his own best example of his specialty and maintaining that in perfect shape was part and parcel of the job.

Sighting casually down the line towards the far end of the space, he flicked his targeting on without firing and grunted at the results. He'd worked it down from six inches to three millimeters, but that last minuscule bit was going to take hours of fussy tweaking, and then another more hour after that to secure the thing as well as it ever was.

He had re-inserted two plate spreaders, wedging his shoulder open enough for him to thread in a slim manipulating hook, working mostly by feel and his own recorded schematics, when he heard the door open. Without looking up Ironhide raised his voice. "If yeh want th' space, yer gonna have t' wait. Kind of busy here."

When the immediate expected reply - either disappointed and complaining or understanding - didn't materialize, Ironhide paused, manipulator held still, and glanced up. The figure framed in the door made him frown; the com specialist wasn't one to waste time in the shooting range for the fun of it. "Blaster? Yeh lookin' for somethin'?"

Avoiding? Ironhide huffed, having to pause the tricky process of threading past one of his hydraulic lines in order to figure out what in scrap the other mech was talking about. He hadn't been deliberately avoiding anyone, just had hands full with duty shifts and three times as much cohort as he'd had in vorn, and why Blaster would think he was avoiding Shadow...

Oh. OH.

The manipulator rod slipped by half a centimeter, his usually rock steady hand twitching imperceptibly except for that small lapse. The hooked end scraped harder across a sensor than the sensation dampening code he was running was meant to compensate for and he growled, carefully unthreading the tool and sliding it free. Dropping it back with the rest, he slanted an irritated glare at Blaster. "Can't do this and talk, so fine, if yer so dead set on talkin', we'll talk."

Refocusing his glare on his arm, he eased the spreaders out and ran the click hum of a partial transformation to smooth the plate back down. Working the shoulder joint in rotation to ease the stiffness of being held immobile, he started neatly packing away his tools. "Don't know how yeh got th' idea Ah'm avoidin' Shadow," he commented, "or did yeh miss th' weeks she was underfoot every time Ah turned around, yappin' about her guns?" And yes, alright, he had been avoiding Blaster, but like scrap was he going to admit it. "Mech's only got so much free time in a day, an Ah've got two younglings an' Jazz runnin' circles around meh. Ain't exactly had much time t' be social."

The twitch was down in his protoform and strut now, tiny, pale, phantom echoes in his hydraulics of mass and plates shredding under his hands. Ironhide ramped up the suppression in his other arm to keep it from spreading. It was a waking defrag flux, nothing else, ghosting up from unarchived files deep in his processor, and he refused to acknowledge it or lay any more importance on it than the tiny trembling twitch that he couldn't quite control.

He fisted his hand to hide it. He sure as Pit wasn't going to show a scrap of wavering to a mech who was looking to pick a slagging fight.

Climbing slow to his feet, Ironhide crossed his arms over his chassis, mirroring Blaster's pose. "Better way of sayin' it," he rumbled. "Did we save th' world? Yeah. We did. Full slaggin' stop right there, 'cus without that intel an' those codes we wouldn't be standin' here havin' this conversation. We wouldn't be here, not any of us. Not you, not me, not Blue or Arcee, not Prahm. We'd be dead, this war would be lost, an' Megatron would be doin' whatever th' slag he pleased. If Ah went over th' line makin' sure that didn't happen... well, don't expect meh t' apologize for it. Mah job is makin' sure we're all still alive."

Exventing, he swallowed down a hot coil of anger, reigning it in tight and rigid. "Ah will," he admitted stiffly, "apologize t' yeh for draggin' yeh into it. If we'd had time or a choice, Ah wouldn't've. Isn't yer job t' deal with that slag, but yer th' best code cracker we've got."

There was a growl building in the depths of his engine, low and rumbling. Ironhide grit his dente and swallowed it back, force locked his weapons systems to offline. Blaster's words ricocheted uneasily through his processor, dredging up broken plates and energon and a ripped open chassis superimposed across a blasted one in a jumbled mess. He shook it away, shoved it back down, growing anger burning clean through it. "This is a war, Blaster," he ground out. At some point his hands had dropped, no longer crossed, fists clenching tight at his sides. "An' Ah am very sorry yeh had t' get yer servos dirty in it, but some of us have been up t' our fraggin' optics in it ever since we all started this Pit slaggin' mess!"

He dialed his volume back before it could rise, swallowed down growl and the angry flares of EM, and ignored the itching twitch in his struts. Blaster, he reminded himself, was not the enemy. As hard helmed as they came, maybe, and too slagging set in his ways, but he wouldn't be the first or the last and Ironhide was just as dead set in his own.

"Yeh want outta this war without energon on yer servos," he growled. "Ah just want us t' all walk outta it. As many as are left, as many as we can. Even one spark lost t' th' Well is one spark too many, slaggit, but if it has t' go then Ah'll take a filthy 'Con torturer's spark over all of ours any day, an' good riddance t' th' Pit spawn not pickin' off any more of us!"

His volume was rising whether he wanted it to or not. Ironhide reigned himself down harder, tightening his control, and if his hands were shaking now it was anger that was doing it. "An' don't yeh talk t' meh about Prahm. Not until yeh pull yer head outta yer monitors an' go take a good look at him. Mech's got more on his shoulders than anyone should. Ah'll take th' weight an' yes, slaggit, the fraggin' blame if yeh wanna pin it on someone, but Ah will NOT lay one more trouble on him then Ah have t'."

Ironhide's optics had narrowed to hard slits, his field flat and icy. "Ah told Blue exactly what ou needed t' know," he growled. "That th' fraggin' monster that had his sights set on rippin' hir apart is dead. Is THAT what yeh wanna hear? That it was revenge? Payback? That Ah lost mah fraggin' temper because th' Pit spawn was punchin' every button he could t' make meh?"

He couldn't move, not a step - steps lead to being within reach and his fists were flexing, the shiver in them nothing but pure anger. "Here's a news flash. He was trying t' die. Wanted us t' kill him, easy out from lettin' us have those codes. An' yeah, he got t' meh, and it ain't th' first time."

Venting hard, Ironhide gathered a hard earned control, piggy backed on officer protocols that had trained him to reign in his temper when he had to. "What exactly are yeh afraid of, Blaster? That someone'll find out? Ah ain't gonna throw yeh down for it any more'n Shadow. Ah was th' rankin' officer there, it was mah call, mah decision. It comes down t' it, it's mah responsibility, an' that's no paint off yer plates. So what th' frag do yeh actually want?"

It had been... well. Not counting Barricade, in the brig, with Ironhide's fists trying to disable the glitch headed 'Con's mouth, it had been a very long time since Ironhide had been brought up on disciplinary charges involving violence on base. Brawling with Chromia or Jazz through the corridors hadn't counted - that was internal cohort affairs, most of the time it wasn't even a disagreement, and every base and unit they'd served with had figured that one out fairly quick. As long as there wasn't much property damage they'd mostly been left alone. Not even being promoted to officer had curbed that much, though they'd maybe made a little more effort to keep it out of the public corridors.

Actual bona fide brawling, the kind that he could recall a few marks on his record for serving brig time for, had all been before he'd taken officer rank. That weight - Prime's expectations, responsibility to the mechs under his command, the respect and judgement of his peers - those had held back his hand more times than he would have thought possible before he'd been promoted.

It served that same purpose now, though it was a close call. Two steps closed the gap in the flicker of a voltage current and that restraint slammed his hand flat against Blaster's chest - instead of either wrapped around his throat or curled into a fist to his faceplates - driving the other mech back against the wall hard enough to knock his vents loose. Ironhide pinned him there easily, a full head and shoulders taller and twice as massive, bending down to put their faces level as he spoke.

"Yeh," he spat, "need t' stop runnin' yer mouth for a klik and use that upgraded processor yeh swear yeh have - or did yeh fry it on th' Primus forsaken internet? Let meh spell this out for yeh. Ah do not CARE if that slag suckin' 'Con 'won, or if Ah did. Ah do not care if Ah fraggin' sunk t' his level. Ah care that we are STILL ALIVE. Ah care that Prahm is safe, an' whatever lengths Ah have t' go to t' ensure that is NEVER somethin' he's needed t' know."

Combat protocols were begging for release, insistent and primed hot. Ironhide clamped them down, kept his guns cold, barely restrained violence snapping through his field. "Yeh, with yer hands off approach, DO NOT get t' tell meh what measures Ah have t' take. Yeh sure as slag aren't mah Pit sucking conscience. ALL yeh did, 'mate', was scrape those codes out of Barricade's head, an' Ah thank yeh for it, but the rest is MAH business an' yeh need t' get yer Pit slaggin' hands outta it."

The electric sting of viral codes against his firewalls dug deeper than it had any right to and Ironhide cursed himself for not updating them as diligently as he should even as he reeled back a few steps.

It took him a klik to partition the code and rip it apart, engine stuttering a ragged sound as he did. It shredded through several other code patches he had running in the process, including the neural dampeners, and he muted his vocalizer with a hard click as the sensation came rushing back, vents opening wide.

With feeling came the flux, twitching in shivers down his neural relays beneath his plates. He bent, braced his hands against his thighs to still them, fingers digging into his own plates as he let his anti-viral software mop up the last of Blaster's attack.

If he offlined his optics he could feel it, the discordant harmonics and prickling flares of a foreign and unwanted spark crawling up through the plates of his palm into strut and mass and circuits, the taint and searing slick touch of another's soul tinged in nothing but hate and violence. Shuddering, Ironhide vented hard, forcing it down, forcing all of it down, the ghost echo of sensation and the overlapping shadows of truth and the fiction he'd woven as his viral sweepers scoured his systems and declared them clean.

Exventing, Ironhide pushed himself back up, straightening slowly to meet Blaster's optics. "Well," he ground out flatly, "seems we're even now."

He drew himself fully upright, shaking plates into place with a muted cascade of snaps. "For the record," he said heavily, "Ah never meant for yeh t' have t' lie. Ah gave th' report, t' Prahm an' Arcee both. Only thing yeh an' Shadow should've needed t' do was not bring it back up." He nodded his head towards Blaster. "Kinda how yeh don't bring up whatever other secrets yer keepin."

A secondary shiver ran down his dorsal plates; he ignored it, standing firm, the partial slant of his smile having little humor in it. "An' kinda like Ah'm not goin' t' bring up yeh virus punchin' a superior officer."