Ep. 2 - Abyssinia - (Closed)

[Deleted]

Set on Day Five, Week Two! The time is evening-ish, around 8pm local time.

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He had been dreading this.

Ratchet stared down the open ground bridge. Half a dozen steps would carry him through the portal and into Haven. But his spark was heavy. His feet felt like lead.

Putting off this trip had been a deliberate act. A cruel one, perhaps. He should have gone to the Neutral base as soon as the body had been found. Damn it, he should have. Layby deserved to hear the news. But Ratchet couldn't have faced this grim duty the evening before, with the shock still sharp and the pain still raw. Only once midnight had come and gone had he woken out of the bad dream and realized what he needed to do.

The day after the attack on the MECH facility had passed in a haze. He remembered little of it. There had been debriefs with Agent Fowler, sober discussions, data to analysis. Optimus had returned from the facility with valuable data drives in hand. Ratchet had spent much of his day shut up in the medbay pouring over the footage they contained. Most of it had been of experimentation and torment. Video feeds of MECH tests. The footage had gone straight into a locked medical database. No one but himself and Optimus would be allowed to see it.

It had been horrible to watch, but it was better than allowing himself to think about what else had been discovered at the facility.

Only one part had been recovered. A hollow, dreadful part. One part of what had once been a vibrant, dry, intelligent medic. A comrade and friend. Seeing it had nearly cut his knees out from under him.

He hated this. He really did.

Green light cast a halo of light around his frame as Ratchet faced down the bridge. He inhaled, and steeled himself. With heavy strides he trod forward, into the light. The dark silo disappeared, replaced with the roughly hewn rock walls of Haven's atrium.

Ratchet looked around himself. The cave was dim and peaceful. His jaw worked from side to side as he opened his comm.

"Layby?" he said. "This is Ratchet. I apologise for the unannounced visit. But I need to speak with you. It's about Cleaver."

A sealed case was tucked beneath his arm.

[Deleted]

It was James, the smallest of Haven's permanent inhabitants, who came out to meet Ratchet first. The grey cat had been part of Cleaver's excessive digital human footprint; a logical means of getting rid of all the cat food she'd bulk-bought off Amazon. He'd been scarce about the Neutral base lately, waiting for their missing member in assorted hiding places and eschewing much contact with anyone else.

Ratchet smelled a bit like Cleaver - of astringent cleanser, lubricant and fresh oil atop a deeper mechanical scent textured with age and hard living.

James approached at a trot, tail high and keen. Then he stopped, one front paw not quite touching the ground, and his large eyes fixed on the case under the Autobot's arm.

The cat stepped back, fur rising as his whiskers pulled back. He hissed, a harsh spit of a sound, and then he bolted out of the Atrium and back into the Medbay.

Layby appeared just as the tip of his tail vanished between the barely-open doors. The big mech's steps were slow and deliberate, and his expression was unnaturally blank. Like a mask had been pulled down as stiff as the dread weighing heavy in his tanks.

There'd been no prior communication, no update: just the Autobot medic arriving out of nowhere to speak to him. Like a black car driving to a house, and two uniformed men getting out to deliver notice.

As time has passed and snippets of rumours had accumulated, Layby had begun preparing himself for this.

He wasn't prepared for this.

His gaze, too, lingered on the box.

"What?" he croaked, static cutting tired and raw. His chest hurt like his core had been compacted into nothing, leaving a sucking, hollow wound in its place. It was an effort to meet Ratchet's gaze.

[Deleted]

Ratchet looked weary, but solemn. He lingered where he was, as if reluctant to tread further into the room, or into a conversation he feared.

"Layby," he said. "I'm - sorry."

Behind him the ground bridge whirled shut. The green portal collapsed, leaving both mechs standing alone in the atrium and its dim, scraggling light.

"I'm sorry that I had to break the news this way," he said. "That I need to break this news at all. This is not a conversation I ever wanted to have with you - or anyone else. But as her colleague - and, I hope, her friend - I felt it best that I come here myself. To tell you in person, rather than over a monitor."

Ratchet removed the case from beneath his arm and held it gently between his hands. It was white, with sealing locks. Once, it had likely contained either precious medical supplies or even whole biotech parts, to replace those too grievously damaged in battle to repair.

White, clean, sterile. And on Earth, rare.

"Once, we Autobots had an official procedure for moments like this," he said bitterly. "It was very official and clinical. As Chief Medical Officer it usually fell upon my shoulders to carry it out, or Optimus, and I detested its necessity. But neither of you were Autobots, and you deserve better than one of our absurdly cold and impartial formalities. I don't really know why I am telling you this. I suppose I just feel you are more deserving of an explanation than a rehearsed speech. After four million years of war, I'm tired of them. And I'm tired of the reason for them."

The old medic swallowed, but squared off his shoulders. He looked at Layby squarely.

"We recently carried out a raid on a MECH facility," he said. "Inside it, we found Cleaver. I'm sorry, Layby. We were too late."

[Deleted]

Too late. Too late.

The euphemism rattled around his processor for several seconds, weak and understated and terrible. Too late: Cleaver's gone. Cleaver's dead. They tore her up until they were finished with her.

Layby's vocaliser reset with a click.

He knew the procedure for serving notice. Those who dealt death professionally, been forged and sparked for it as soldiers in defense of Cybertronian interests, were required to be aware of the big picture. It kept killing from becoming casual.

Layby had kept out of the great war that had decimated their species, but he was intimately acquainted with the act under that from their time of peace. He'd killed Cybertronians and organics close-range as well as from afar whilst observing heavy artillery raining from orbiting spacecraft and shuttles on strafing runs. The ozone smell of a shot-empty spark chamber was burned into his memory. Layby wasn't the smartest tool in the kit, but he understood death perfectly well.

He couldn't comprehend this. Ratchet's words wouldn't go past the surface of his audio receptors.

His gaze drifted down to the burden the medic bore.

'I Spy' on that horrific two-day trek across the middle of the Australian outback because the groundbridge broke and they had to get back to the shuttle the long way. I spy with my little optic, something beginning with C.

Does it fit in a bread bin?

The box was small - too small to contain the blustering, vibrant life that bore aid down on the injured, hoarded whatever scrap and crap she could get her servos on and could never get the hang of pronouncing 'jalapeno'. Cleaver did not fit in there.

But it was all Ratchet had brought of her. What of her was inside, what state it was in, Layby couldn't imagine. He couldn't ask what was in there, and the wondering was going to be another kind of lifelong torture.

There was a buzzing noise inside his audios. Under his plating.

A gunmetal-grey cube, melted down until it was smooth and alien. Or her fingers. Her spark chamber, cold as buried stone.

Layby twitched violently, jerking out of those all-too-graphic images, and took a step forward.

It came automatically, then, to force his body straighter. Pedes close together without compromising a sturdy base; backstrut erect and pulling his shoulders up and wide; and jaw set into resolved neutrality.

He offered his hands. They didn't feel connected to him. If someone came to give you a box, you took the box.

Cleaver was in the box. Cleaver was home.

Another twitch, optics shuttering and taking a moment to re-calibrate.

"Is this... Was this, all?"

[Deleted]

The case was placed gently into his waiting hands.

No," said Ratchet.

He stepped back and folded his own hands behind his back, to stand uncomfortably at attention. He shook his head. "It took a long time - Agent Fowler's men needed to thoroughly search the site to ensure that MECH did not leave any further traps behind, and to render it safe for further investigation - but her body was recovered by the Autobots, with Decepticon aid. Optimus should be able to provide the details, if you want them. I simply wished to approach you first to break the news, with this, before an official delegation was sent. I owe both you and her that much, and more."

Ratchet sighed heavily. His gaze went to the box.

"There are… parts missing. Her brain module has not been recovered. I can only guess that MECH still has it. But we have her body back at Omega One. When you're ready, we'll arrange to bring it to you. Any other assistance we can offer, you need only ask for."

His optics lifted to Layby's face. His expression was grave. "For what it is worth, I am deeply sorry. I will… miss her. She was a good colleague, and I hope she considered me a friend, as I considered her."

[Deleted]

The weight of the box when it was put in his hands came as a shock. Made the fact that there was something inside real. Cleaver. It was never going to feel real.

"Of course," he murmured, looking at something indistinct in the air just in front of the Autobot's chest.

It felt like a grenade had gone off inside his chassis - hollow and hurting, burning and aching all at once. Layby squeezed the impossible small box in his hands a little, stopping far short of marring the metal.

He mentally replayed what Ratchet had said then looked up again, meeting that deeply emotive gaze.

"Thank yeh for telling me yerself. Cleaver... she always had good things t'say about yeh."

Parts missing. MECH reduced her to parts and she wasn't whole. They still had the hardware of her mind. Her sparkcase was with their kind, though. Ratchet would have said if it were otherwise.

Another click from his vocaliser and he looked down at the box. His expression twisted for a second beneath the overhang of his forehelm, optics narrowing and dente bared until he reigned it back. "An'... thanks for gettin' her out. Haven's hers. She should be... here."

His blast armour ticked, and a transformation cog in his right ankle twisted and reset. It was as if his frame was twitching towards movement but being forced still. Consciously restrained.

Layby couldn't break in front of a witness. Wouldn't.

[Deleted]

Ratchet was silent in the face of his grief.

Then…

"Layby."

He spoke quietly. For once his voice lacked its usual gruffness. Though he still appeared ill at ease - the medic in him was used to delivering bad news, and despised the need for it - something in his gaze had softened. And grown a little wary, as if something in Layby's struggling stoicism worried him.

He laid a firm hand on Layby's shoulder.

"I understand what Cleaver meant to Haven, and to you," he said. "I don't come here often. I rarely have the time or the opportunity to. But if you ever wish to talk…"

Ratchet left the words hanging in the air between them.