[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Rude Awakening [Thundercloud, Patch, Carbine]

[Patch]

Episode 3, Week 2, Day 4
((This thread is intended to shift between multiple locations.))

The lights were low in the main suite of the medical bay. A single surgical lamp lit bright above a single medic, bent over the helm of an unconscious, supine patient.

Soft little lights blinked on and off across the dark around them. Glowing hexagonal screens, of green, with readouts and vitals upon them. Signals belonging to equipment and monitors blipping like pin holes through a thick, rough blanket. Like stars, in a usually starless sky marking status, and activity alongside the soft, subtle hum of fans, or quiet beeps. Low blips to note that equipment was quietly, patiently settled in wait, in case it was needed.

Beneath the main white light, the frame of the patient in question lay unconscious. His build was long, thin and sharp. His plating angular, with black paint and yellow details. Rotary blades splayed out awkwardly to his sides, and pinned beneath him.

The medic’s frame, was positioned on a rolling stool at the head of the slab. Knees spread beneath where her patient’s helm was suspended. She bent over his face to work, the smooth crackle of wheels across the concrete floor every once in a while as she leaned away to exchange the tip of a tool, or shift the angle of her light.

For what felt like hours, the sounds of shrieking rotary tools and the crackling hiss of suction accompanied a series of songs. Projected through a radio-station Patch had taken to accessing over her data-pad while working on tedious tasks.

He was a disaster.

A mess, with a half-missing face. The inner workings and mechanics well exposed by torturous damage, long ago slapped back together by mecha who clearly had a serious lack of either training, time, or fragging morality. Now terribly neglected, and likely exposed to the elements here on Earth, infected with rust that rivaled the wounds Patch had seen in the trenches outside Iacon.

She’d done what she could, for… what felt like hours now. Grinding and polishing, touching the tiniest chips of rust away at a time. Finessing the rotational speed of the drill so the frequency wouldn’t damage his already fragile neural suspension.

She’d managed to get in the corners he’d missed, beside bolts, and in between plates, and in poc-mark cavities eaten away by long-term infection and moisture. She’d polished down the new solder fillings she’d placed, one by one across braces, and scars, and what of his original metal remained all alike. Taking thin layers away from the junctures of hap-hazard bracing bars with gritted paper to try and improve his jaw’s range and quality of movement. Equipment long ago installed by less considerate medics to save the idiot ex-cop’s life.

Every step Patch took was considered, and cautious, though carried out swiftly. Deftly, and with practiced hands. Doing this whole mess as by-the-book as she was able with the given equipment, as… Though quite definitely necessary for Carbine’s survival, and quality of life -and therefore under the head-medic’s purview-... it was also, debatably consensual…

The evidence of this little caveat remained, if shrouded in shadow from the unconscious perspective of her patient by the worklight over her shoulder. One of the young medic’s optics was cracked, a miniscule nick of glowing blue bashed open and long since dried upon the cheek beneath from the struggle it had taken to GET the fucker here...

Or more accurately keep him from running…

A mess she’d deal with loomingly soon, the last-sparked femme was sure.

Only just now, was Patch applying the last few touches of sealant- the final step in a series of washes for rust and infection control… With care, scarred, stubby, dot flecked digits dabbed the clear coat into what corners and nooks hadn’t been reached by an aerosol spray.

Finally, finally satisfied enough, the young medic reached to her equipment tray to tap her music off, then up to shove the surgical light away, and stand. She placed her servos behind her hips, and stretched back. A light fresh whir of young machinery, laced with a few small crackles of internals as she winced.

An unusually steady, pensive expression cooled and relaxed the femme’s soft, freckled features as she approached the medical bay’s main lights. She flicked them back on, at last, then turned for the wash basin, and opened up a comm-line.

Quiet, low, tired and casual, Patch’s young voice pulled across the coms.

“::Hey Thunder..? What’s your current location. ::”


Art of Carbine provided by Zercon

[Thundercloud]

Thundercloud wasn't what anyone would call a responsible mech. He was reckless, impulsive, prone to shooting first and asking questions later, if he could be bothered to remember. He didn't like being told what to do, didn't follow any rules or regulations that didn't align with his personal goals, principles, or impulses. He was, for lack of a better word, a recalcitrant little shit.

As opposed to authority as he was, however, Thundercloud also had a vested interest in not getting blown out of the sky by anti-aircraft missiles, so it behooved him to have at least a basic understanding of aviation law and an awareness of prohibited airspace.

He had tried to do his own research, tried to figure everything out on his own because he was diametrically opposed to asking for help even when he was entirely out of his depth, but it was a struggle. Most of the documents he had looked up were written in the sort of dense, mind-numbing legalese that made them needlessly difficult to understand. For some reason the humans just loved to use technical language, like upping their word and syllable count somehow made their laws sound more official. It was a waste of everybody's time, far as Thundercloud was concerned, but he supposed there had to be a good reason for the indecipherable wording, aside from just being pretentious. 

He couldn't imagine anybody wasting their time coming up with a sentence like:

“Sovereignty in the space above the lands and waters of this state is declared to rest in the State, except where granted to and assumed by the United States pursuant to a constitutional grant from the people of the State.” just for giggles.

But hey, he wasn't a bureaucrat. Maybe that's what those kinds of people got off on. Technical correctness and pseudo-intellectual prattle.

There was a quiet whirl-click as Thundercloud reset his optics, blinking hard to try and make the words on the datapad in front of him swim back into focus. He was starting to go cross-eyed trying to make sense of all the laws and regulations. He probably should've asked Fowler or somebody to give him the Sparknotes version.

He moved on to section NRS 493.103, whatever the hell that was supposed to stand for, and found his vision glazing back over before he got half way through the first sentence. For a brief moment he debated throwing the datapad or himself into the nearest active volcano to save himself the drudgery of trying to finish this stupid self-imposed task, but the universe seemed to not want him to hugely overreact to a minor frustration because it interrupted his destructive fantasizing with a well-timed deus ex machina.

“::Hey Thunder..? What’s your current location. ::”

Thundercloud didn't have the slightest clue why Patch of all people would be calling him, or why she'd want to know where he was, but he wasn't about to look a gift-distraction in the mouth.

::Hell:: He replied, because he was nothing if not dramatic. ::Why, you need to hide a body or somethin'?::

See, it was funny because Patch was a good kid and would never need to call him to help her cover up a major screw up like that.

[Patch]

Patch squeaked the tap on and began to scrub her servos while continuing to hold the comms button in with her shoulder. There was a contemplative moment before she responded, followed by a single word, high pitched and half serious.

::"...-Well?":: a slight squeak through her voice. ::"... N- No."::

She didn’t sound certain.

::"Liston-...::

How head-on was she going to address this…

She’d been thinking through the words she’d use for this the WHOLE damn time she’d been cleaning. Under her breath and through her denta mostly. Pissed at Carbine, Pissed at Thunder, assuming he knew. He HAD to know. Patch knew how close they were, and she knew well enough by now what angles bots’ could get at on themselves when it came to scrapes and scratches.

These shitty-ass untrained attempts at goring out the rust were recent, and they weren’t marks made by Carbine. His arms wouldn’t reach, and even if they could… the directions of the abrasions-... didn’t line up.

Patch had a tendency however when stressed to take things very much one step at a time. Now that she was getting AROUND to doing the actual call… she hadn’t actually decided what she wanted to say. Hadn’t prepped a specific way to TELL the fragger that his… Well his person -and that person’s fucking dog- were sedated in two different places after having attempted to run for the door, and when failing, attacking their medic and scout.

::“Okay you’re- you’re not gonna be happy with me but I need your help.”::

She didn’t sound bothered- defeated, perhaps, a bit stressed, but not rushed by any means. It seemed important, but it was clearly Not an emergency.

::“Can you meet me outside Sickbay? Carbine ffu-...He-...”::

There was another ex-vent over the comms.

::“He’s fine? But he fucked himself and I need a translator.”::

Certainly not the whole truth- but it also wasn’t a lie! Patch sucked at lying. She just couldn’t bring herself to be convincing when repeating known untruths. And for the life of her, she could not fabricate falsehoods on the spot, or back them up quick enough to sound convincing.

This though, this, this WAS true! Carbine had fucked himself, he WAS, technically fine, for the moment, and Patch did need Thunder’s help- likely As a Translator! She just… Also needed OTHER things, that she wished to omit until she could tell the poor jet to his face.

This would just… foreshadow that Carbine was Here, and, more than likely, get Thunder here quickly.

[Thundercloud]

There was a brief moment of silence on the other end of the line instead of the expected dry rebuttal or exasperated sigh, which had Thundercloud's eyebrows raising in incredulity as he wondered if Patch actually did need his help hiding a body – or covering for some other unscrupulous crime or screw-up that she didn't wanna risk going to anybody else for.

What that could possibly be, he had no idea. Given what he knew of her character and general disposition, he couldn't picture her doing anything sketchy enough to need to turn to a convict for help, so he was probably looking in the wrong direction. Not something sketchy, not something she needed a felon for, but something that required him specifically. That narrowed the list of possibilities down a considerable bit, since there wasn't too much he was good at that she couldn't have gone to somebody else for. He wasn't half bad at sketching, he was great in a scrap, he was one of the few fliers they had, and -

--And Carbine. Ah, fuck, there it was.

Thundercloud felt a pang in his chest at the mention of the other mech's name, irritation and worry bubbling up into the back of his throat. The former because he resented the implication he was Carbine's keeper, even though he pretty much was for all intents and purposes; the latter because Carbine being so glitched out he couldn't form even a half-way intelligible sentence was bad news. It meant something happened, something triggered an acute stress response his patchwork brain and kicked his aphasia into high-gear.

The fact that something happened and Carbine himself wasn't the one calling him was even more concerning. Even if the other mech couldn't speak, a burst of glitchy static over their personal comm. Line would've been enough for him to understand what was going on. Either Carbine didn't want to tell him something was wrong, a thought Thundercloud didn't want to examine even at a distance, or he couldn't tell him, which was slightly less worrying but still not great.

::You're goddamn right I'm not happy:: He said, tossing his datapad in the general direction of the nearest table without bothering to check where it landed.

::The hell happened to him?::

He made it to and out the door in just four quick strides, his footsteps echoing loudly down the hall as he hurried towards the medbay at a pace that was a borderline jog. He wasn't about to start hauling ass, since things didn't sound too serious, but he wasn't going to drag his feet either. Not when his best friend apparently worked himself up into such a state he couldn't even use his damn comm.

[Patch]

::Well?…::

Not terribly dissimilar from the pitch and tone of the first of this series.

The notion struck Patch that perhaps it would be better to describe that there was an altercation of some kind, Before Thunder saw her broken optic. Though, she also wanted to be considerate of how much she said over Comms. Patch knew well that such things could be easily listened in on, and weren’t always kept private. Though she was an open book-... She wanted to respect that Carbine often wasn’t.

“:: I did. ::”

An inconclusive answer but a confident one. Blaming herself for what had gone down. Likely not a response which would help Thunder understand anything more about the situation, yet Patch hoped it would at least clarify that Carbine had NOT landed himself in sickbay by taking damage from an enemy.

Well, perhaps an enemy to him, now, but not someone who meant him HARM.

::“… He-… I…”::

She turned the water off with a hard gesture and placed her servos on the edge of the basin. Her head dropped as took a deep breath, then lifted a hand to the side of her helm to open the line again. Small drips falling down her wrist and onto her shoulder, unnoticed.

Her pace drew up to a rather quick jaunt. Filling the mech in as through ripping a bandaid off. Not wishing to speak the words, but clearly understanding that they needed to be spoken. A quick, jaunting pace to the words.

::“-I saw some rust in his vomit back in Arizona, so I went to the brig for some samples, and That was a fiasco, but talked him into letting me take a scan.”::

She turned around to face the now unconscious mech, leaning her hips and free servo on the edge of the basin, as the other continued to depress the comms button on her audial.

“I uh… I Found something.”

Perhaps the slightest bit incredulous. A pop of a phrase, as it seemed the final words were spoken through an un-meant smile. An almost passive aggressive approach, as it likely became clear from this that Patch was not pleased with what she had discovered.

[Thundercloud]

Thundercloud wasn't what anyone would consider a patient mech, but he sure as hell knew how to wait. That's all anybody could do back in Garrus.Wait for their sentence to run out, for their parole hearing to come up, for some miracle re-trial to find them innocent and put and put an end to their living nightmare. Thundercloud, he didn't hold out for any of those things. He knew better. In Garrus, anything over a couple hundred years was basically a death sentence. Mecha like him and Carbine who were in it for the long haul, who didn't have anybody on the outside who'd give a shit if something happened and they got taken off the census – it was only a matter of time before a CO or another inmate or the shitty excuse for medical care finally got the best of them.

So Thundercloud didn't bother measuring his life by how far away his release date was supposed to be. He wasn't gonna waste his time counting down the days to a pipe dream. For him, the wait was more nebulous. Theoretically infinite, possibly immediate. He didn't know when the end of his stay in Garrus was gonna be but he knew he wasn't ever gonna leave the place alive, so that's what he waited for. The end. For there to be a riot or a brawl he couldn't walk away from, for somebody to jump him, for one of the COs to finally get sick of his smart mouth and bad attitude, for a wound to get infected badly enough that the in-house clinic couldn't save him even if they bothered to try. Something. Anything. The next disaster, that's what he waited for. The next big thing that might be the last he'd ever have to deal with.

He thought the waiting would have stopped, once they got out, but it never did. He just started waiting for more things, like bullets and bombs and a cavalcade of sadists eager to do war crimes on him. He waited to get sent out on suicide missions and for supply lines to dry up, to stick his neck out for somebody who would never return the favor and get rewarded for his service by being put on the bottom of the triage list. He waited for everything and anything life might throw at him, so when shit inevitably hit the fan, he'd be ready to come out – and GO – out swinging.

This time, the fan was Carbine and the shit that hit him was a nosy little glitch who had another thing coming if she thought she could dance around the subject of his best friend's health like they were playing some cute little game.

::You what?::

Talked him into a scan – what kind of bullshit was that? Carbine had a pathological avoidance when it came to letting medics anywhere near his head. The idea that some kid managed to sweet-talk him into allowing something he went out of his way to avoid – it defied belief. There had to be more to the story than that. She had to have coerced him, backed him into a corner, capitalized on a vulnerable moment – something. There's no way Carbine would have let her violate his privacy like that, even though he was rotting from the inside out and had been for years. The mech would literally rather choke on his own rust than let anyone see the gruesome wreck that Garrus had made of him, and Thundercloud had done his best to help him keep that small bit of dignity for millennia.

To have all of that thrown to the wayside, to hear that Carbine had been denied even that small mercy -

Thundercloud had to stop short in the middle of the hall, the vents at his sides hissing as they expelled an angry gust of heat. He set his jaw, clenched his fists so tight his knuckles creaked and the blunt edges of his fingertips cut their imprints into his palms. He needed to stop, cool his head, let the sudden flood of outrage wash over him and recede before he did something Patch would regret.

He cycled in a deep breath of air, did his best to will himself back from the edge of completely losing his shit by reminding himself that punching things wasn't a solution to every problem, only most of them. Without anything to do with his anger, with nowhere to put it and no one to inflict it on, he had no choice but to hold on to it – to let it make a home for itself inside his chest, next to his spark, where it would live until he could evict it with prejudice.

Then, once the urge to commit violence was no longer quite so pressing, Thundercloud opened his comm. and spoke in a low, carefully measured voice.

::Kid. You got no idea how bad you fucked up::

[Patch]

Patch had heard that tone before…

Specifically From Thunder too. Quite recently in fact. At the time, she had absolutely pretended -mostly only with herself- that it hadn’t scared her. Did it? YES. Of course it did! Thundercloud was three times her size! With a LOT more fighting experience!

Now, did Patch believe Thunder could Actually Kill Her and get away with it in this base? No. Likely, -if he really DID go for her- the ex-convict wouldn’t get more than a few good hits in before someone intervened. But STILL, Patch had enough of a mouth on her to know what a mecha pissed beyond PISSED sounded like. It was hard not to be a little shaken by his tone. Especially knowing there was no longer a big-bot grown-up like Ratchet in the room to protect her, or call the mech off.

AND YET.

There was a moment. A good, SOLID moment, that the words, the heat in the small medic’s own chest boiled up in tandem, ready to snap. After all, Patch’s sense of survival was broken, and she felt she had a FAIRLY DECENT idea, what with the running, and the fight, and the broken optic and all how Goddamn BAD this situation was!

BUT-... Despite ALL odds, she caught them- before they could leave. Literally, physically reached up and caught some invisible thing in the air beside her helm as it cocked slightly. She pressed her lips together and grit her dental plates.

Just days before, when Patch had heard Thunder speak like that over comms, she HAD snapped at him, and it had gone VERY poorly. Only just, days before… she had apologized for it. Patch was a femme of her word- when she fragged up? She owned up. And when she apologized? It was a vow she’d make a change. NOW was when that promise mattered. As much as it fragging SUCKED to swallow her pride here

So RATHER, than turning around and barking at the much, MUCH larger mech about how LITTLE TIME Carbine may have had if that infection had remained a few months more. Snapped about how unstable his neural suspension had become with the rust, how a hit to the helm could have easily broken his already compromised mechanical skull, and allowed that infection to spread to his brain.

Rather than snapping about how Thunder's quite Likely omission of truth had stopped not only Patch from doing her SINGULAR JOB HERE, but possibly Ratchet from being able to Actually Possibly HELP with some of the deeper shit Patch couldn’t Dream of trying to mend…

She took a HEAVE of a deep ventilation… and earnestly began,

::“...I know I don’t.”::

Her young, low voice was measured, and serious. Confident, yet… raw. Exhausted, and trying to hide it. Her gaze softened as she continued to look at Carbine. Look at the face, that she'd been staring at for hours on end trying desperately to clean enough to keep the fuck alive.

::”That’s why I’m calling you- that’s why I called you First. You Know More than me here Thundercloud, Please.”::

[Thundercloud]

He had to give the kid credit, she made the right call, not arguing with him. He was already having a hell of a time trying to remain civil – to keep from raising his voice and escalating the already tense situation. He knew it wouldn't help, giving Patch a verbal beat-down. As much as he might've wanted to – and God did he want to – this wasn't a situation he could resolve with his bite or his bark. He had to use his head (the problem-solving tool he had the least experience with) and stop letting his poorly-managed anger-issues get the better of him.

Right then, he was approaching the situation from the perspective of Carbine's best and oldest friend. He needed to pivot, come at it from a different angle. It might've been the most important one to him, the most pressing, but it wasn't the only one. He was also the one person Carbine trusted to advocate for him when he couldn't do it himself. Sure, it wasn't a formal arrangement, there wasn't any paperwork that gave Thundercloud official POA status, but he had played the part for so long that most everybody accepted he was Carbine's de facto healthcare proxy. Even Patch recognized it, and it was a damn good thing she did because if she had called anybody else for help -

Nah. He wasn't gonna think about that. He couldn't, if he wanted to cool off and keep a level head.
Thundercloud closed his optics, took a mental step back. He needed to be Carbine's advocate, not his pissed off attack-dog in mech's clothing. He needed to get his shit together, put on his game face, and swallow down the righteous indignation rising like bile in his throat so that he could face whatever was on the other side of the medbay doors without making an already bad situation worse.

Easier said than done, with his blood boiling like it was – with his hands itching to hurt something, to break something.

Thundercloud shook them out, his fists unfurling as he opened and closed them a few times, as if trying to physically rid himself of their violent impulses. It didn't work, because it rarely ever did, but Thundercloud still gave it a shot before opening his optics and looking down at his hands, debating how much he trusted himself with them.

The debate was settled shortly with a sharp crack as Thundercloud wrenched two of his fingers back until it snapped out of socket. He then moved to do the same to the middle fingers of his opposite hand, which was more difficult with his newly compromised grip strength. Once he heard the sickening snap, he turned his hands this way and that, examining his four lax fingers. He tested his grip, tried to curl his fingers into his palms, but found the four dislocated fingers to be sluggish and unresponsive. Satisfied that he couldn't make a proper fist with either hand, Thundercloud pushed onward towards the medbay, feeling considerably less heated than he had mere moments ago.

::Next time, you call me before you fuck around with his head, not after::

He paused before the medbay doors, taking a moment to psyche himself up and prepare for whatever he would have to face on the other side. Then, with one last steadying breath, he shouldered through the doorway and made a b-line for Patch – the only splash of color in the room.

Behind her was Carbine, laid out like a corpse on a medical gurney. He didn't wanna look to closely at him, didn't wanna risk getting himself all worked up wondering what was wrong, what had happened, and how the hell he was gonna fix it, so he fixed his optics on Patch instead.

“Alright.” He said, in lieu of greeting. “You got five minutes to explain this shitshow. Make 'em count.”

[Patch]

Suddenly a big blue ruckus appeared.

The sharp harsh lights of sickbay picked out every scratch and dent and scar in the frontliner’s paint- as well as the medic’s. White and red meet blue and silver- and at least twice as much of the latter than the first.

There was a cart knocked over, tipped away from Carbine. The body of it dented down, as though something heavy had dropped upon it. A few metallic tools were scattered across the floor. A second cart stood in what must have been its original spot. The items upon it still unorganized and soiled, as though only just set down from work.

Carbine’s face looked much as it did before, beneath his helm; still sunken in and silver on one side. The young medic had clearly done nothing to try and ‘correct’ his asymmetrical features. Rather, his mesh, and the structure supporting it was bright, and clean. The previously sharp, shiny abrasions worn in by brillo pads smoothed to a matte silver now. The hot, infected red of rust now buffed away and treated.

There were angry spots lightly freckled with the blue glowing ends of energon capillaries. Covered in turn with clear, gentle medical grade oil, and powerful sealant to keep out new moisture.

As for Patch…

A slender lightning bolt of a crack obscured the blue of her right optic. Sprawling up from the bottom, above a very slight -now ‘scabbed’- notch of exposed fuel beneath, in her cheek. It appeared she had been bludgeoned with something. Dented in an upward thrusting motion deep enough to bleed, and create a slight robotic black eye of sorts. Any other dents or scratches from a possible altercation blended nicely with those others which remained constant in her plating.

“Right.”

As she crossed the way from the basin to the slab where Carbine lay, the young femme jumped right into words.“Arizona. Rust Puke. Went to check in." The position she assumed to his right, off his shoulder at the head of the slab was a habit, perhaps, from her time in the hospital. As though reporting on his progress to a superior.  Carbine tried to sweet-talk me into going away. I think you can imagine how that went.”

“Suggested a scan. Mech got pissed. Yelled at me a while through the plasma wall. Then once he got it out of his system we actually Talked about some of the shit he-... well… that I guess both of you have been through. Autonomy. Trust. Bullshit medics. I apologized- for them and me.”

Her optics broke from Thunder a moment, to the floor, then up again. Her pedde shifted a little.

“Then he opened up a little bit about Windshield. How doing what he did to the dumbass made him feel. Then I yelled at him a little about… also trust. How we’re a team, and it’s my job to keep my team the fuck alive.”

Her optics as well as her voice drew lower. In tone and in volume. More aloof. Annoyed. As though slipping something brassy in under her breath. “How I feel I’m failing sometimes, these days.”

She reset her voicebox and continued.

“Then he mentioned something about ‘self care’ how he’s been trying to 'take the burden off me' by looking after himself on his Own. So of course THAT brought up questions, we had another go around." Her pace drew slower as her tone lifted in confusion. “Then… He… dared me to take a scan? … I opened the door to the brig, and he let me, so…”

She lightly shrugged. A small shake of the helm.

“I showed him what I found. And… he talked about, how sick he felt. How he just wanted the pain to stop.” Her optics drew heavier as she kept them on Thunder. “So I told him I’d get him out of the brig, and up to sickbay, and I’d help him. Got approval from OP and everything to do what I needed to do.”

“So, we got to sickbay. He… took his helmet off.” She said this as though in disbelief, gaze breaking from Thunder a moment as she lightly shook the notion off. “We had ANOTHER spat while he was nonverbal…” She paused, and squinted at the jet. “I- feel like you understand what that, means?” She shook her helm a little. “Anyway- Came back around. Worked together to get him numb, and… He started getting more comfortable- seemed like he was, at least. He looked fine until he laid down.”

Again, her gaze drew softly across the floor between her and Thunder.

“He uh… he lost his nerve. Pushed me and ran. I got him down with Bee’s help before he got to the door- and before anyone else could show up, but. He’s had a seizure.”

The young medic's voice drew flatter. Relaying vitals. Reporting facts.

“Grand mal. Full frame. Medication stopped it. I damn well Knew I wasn’t gonna get him to take anything again, for this, so I did what I could before the drugs wore off, then called you.”

She Wanted to talk about the time crunch, with the sedative. How she WOULD HAVE called Thunder first, but couldn’t waste the time she had with Carbine unconscious doing anything other than cleaning him up. How she needed to take a thorough scan of his helm after the seizure to ensure nothing was blocked, or actively deteriorating. How she needed to focus on such a procedure, without another asking questions- or trying to stop her.

Those, however, would be excuses.
Which Patch knew better than to give right now.

“No one else knows besides Bee. Not that I know about, at least.”

Her optics lifted to Thunder’s, the words lightened, though their intention was heavy, and meant.

“I did everything I could to get him clean. There’s more to do to treat the infection, but… he isn't actively dying from it anymore.”