Ep0.5 - Cleaver's Ship - 'Therapy' - Closed

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Cleaver’s medbay was a retrofitted storage area between the berthrooms and the main living space. Built up meticulously over more years than she cared to think about, it was neatly cluttered and largely used for smallscale maintenance. Barricade’s restoration had been the most intensive work the bay had seen in many vorns, the linkage and articulation work currently taking place far more within the realms of normality.

With her side still tender and seeing no sense in suffering needlessly, Cleaver had brought a workstool to the foot of the berth to manipulate the Saleen’s ankle and knee joints. Like all his joints, the assemblies had been crushed when she’d first carried him back here, and though rebuilt, it took time for the new lines to stretch out and the stabilisers to adapt to the new materials. Each joint had to be manually worked and checked, adjustments regularly made as required from pede to neck. Cradling the base of his left pede in one hand and the back of his calf in the other, Cleaver was pleased to feel the linkages working smoothly.

“Not going to be long before you’re back up to spec, Barricade,” she remarked, optics flicking up from a scan of the joint she was stressing. The medic adjusted her grip to check rotational mobility, twisting with slow pressure. “Autorepairs have just about finished off aside from the cosmetic, which we can do today if you want. Going to need a lot of force behind it for your chassis – more than you can apply yourself.”

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Barricade’s blue optics didn’t waver, watching the medic in her work, expert fingers tweaking and manipulating the hydraulic linkage under her thumb, triggering an automatic flex and hum of gears from the internal structure of his leg. Barricade was sitting back, his weight braced back against his hands at the edge of the berth-padding behind him. He shifted his other leg slightly, moved it so Cleaver had more room to work with the pede in her hand currently. Barricade was a lot of sharp angles and lines backswept and severe in places. Most of that was choice in plate configuration based on the need to look a bit bigger that he was, add some thickness to his racer frame.

“It’s not necessary,” he said, not caring really about most of the cosmetic damage. His vanity was certainly there, but it didn’t lie in his appearance. That said… “The only cosmetic repair I want is to get rid of the weld scarring.” One serrated claw tapped the long, still hard to look at path of jagged silver that ran down his center seam. “I don’t need mechs wondering if its battle damage or,” exactly what it looks like, “something else.”

He bent his knee in her grip. “Is that doable?”

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The ugly central scar had been the precisely the cosmetic damage she'd had in mind, and Cleaver nodded fractionally as she rose from the stool to move further up the mech's body. "Mesh underneath is healed now, and I've a small enough grinder to angle the welds in so that it blends into your plates. A hard buff and polish, and it'll be almost invisible. Alright. Hand now."

His claws slid across her palm with a light note of metal scoring, tense. Cleaver met his optics briefly as she manipulated his wrist. "Have you gotten anywhere with the bond yet?" she asked quietly, holding his hand and forearm to pull the linkages and test their strenght. "Be the easiest way to get back home, if you're ready."

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Barricade’s gaze was on her hands where she was gripping him, focusing on the pull and the comfortable hum of his own rotors flexing and whirring under his plates, a nearly inaudible sound under the noise dampeners built into his exoskeleton – special order for all special operation law bots. His EM field was so smooth it was obvious he was keeping it blank, but he shifted a little bit, rolling his other shoulder and adjusting his wheelmount restlessly.

“No. The link is too weak,” he said flatly, a hum of aggressive static in his voice. He knew enough about the mechanics of bonding to know the longer you were bound, the more of your spark frequencies you shared, the stronger the bond became… thus, his completion of alignment to his bond-partner must have been blisteringly new for it to be this erratic. “But even if it wasn’t weak,” he added, “I don’t know how to manipulate such a thing. Such a familiarity is learned as he is… too far from me.” His fans whirred slightly. “I’ll have to think of something else.”

He didn’t mention the waking up violently or the feeling of another EMF against his back, like sense memory replaying in his body out of sheer longing. He just gritted his dentals and focused on the now, Cleaver’s grip on his weaponized servo, the low hum of her field against his.

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Her hand slid up Barricade's forearm, attention turning to his elbow next. The mech's limbs were a mass of fine welds and chipped armour, and Cleaver's tactile scanners slid across them automatically as she tested for full range of movement. To the Saleen's resigned and unmistakably uncomfortable remark, Cleaver replied, "If contacting your alligned isn't an option, then you're going to have to resort to some detective work."

Finishing with his arm, a glyph and a nudge moved Barricade willingly onto his side for her to examine that more complex mechanism of his shoulder. Major transformation components were housed beneath the wheel arches, and a misalignment in the torque of the linkages could have disastrous consequences during a transformation both into and out of bipedal mode.

She was meticulous, her hands maneuvering him in small movements and her optics bright with constant scans. If there were any real problems she would feel the vibration, the pull. And Barricade would probably have something to say about it too.

"Have you tried any of the old comm. frequencies you still remember? Old cohort." Cleaver braced her hand on Barricade's chassis and pulled his arm upwards in a full extension, then twisted with slow care. "Might be that you were still running with them."

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“Not yet,” he muttered, a low fidelity hum in his voice as he said it.

He didn’t elaborate for a moment, instead siting still and watching the medic work, her hands on his exo-plating, EM field transmuting itself directly into his mesh in that way only a tactile touch did. She tested his fine motor movements, triggering small automatic flex and whirrs inside his arm hydraulics and it felt good – though if it was just being fine-tuned and functional or the touch itself, Barricade would have been hard pressed to say. His current… or rather what he remembered as his current assignment was an isolating deep-cover mission and didn’t much afford him time to touch back with his law cohort or develop even his usual false alliances within the organization he was infiltrating. It was frustrating. He felt… isolated. Just isolated.

Which didn’t explain why the ache was originating from his spark, radiating there, his chest humming clench of longing that he couldn’t figure out or describe and it was humming in his own EMF, feel new patterning in the fractals of his spark and it was maddening. He ex-vented quietly.

“I need to find someone I can trust. I have a few lines I can try. My kind always does.”

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Cleaver rolled the joint in the complex assembly of its socket, detected the minor lag a second time, and finally laid Barricade's arm down across his chassis to bring both hands to his back. A linkage needed tightening four millimeters - easily overlooked and unfelt until it gave under the stress of a high speed turn or deflecting a powerful blow. Whether an Autobot or a Decepticon, Barricade was a fighting frame, and millimeters mattered in battle.

The medic had to negotiate with two stabilizing struts, a series of heavy duty transformation cogs and a tertiary energon injector to get at the slack linkage, and she did so with slow, easing fingers. To help coax the parts aside painlessly, she set the field of her hands to a low freqency vibration that turned most mecha strutless.

"Try them. If you don't want to meet at their location, you can bring them here. Going to be moving along soon anyway..." Finally reaching the linkage, Cleaver transformed the microtools of her hands to do the tightening and callibrating, working by touch and sensor. It left her opics free to study the handsome mech's face in profile. "Just honour my home, Barricade. Don't much care what side you're on, who you bring back to help you, so long as you do that."

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“I won’t put you and yours in danger,” said Barricade, optics studying no particular region of the floor over the medic’s shoulder, her proximity wrapping him in the close-range hum of her EMF, the low frequency from her servo on his back making it necessarily to reach up and grip her shoulder to keep from slumping against the medic in an undignified fashion. He kept upright, cycling his vents with difficulty, hating how aware he was of her proximity, of the energy field crossing his own – not sure if it was a reactive rejection, mass memory that made him anxious at the approach of another… or if it was a comfort. The latter irritated him more.

“Besides, you have a truce with the Decepticons and from the sounds of it the Autobots won’t be the sort to do anything untoward. Either way, no matter what side I’m on, no one will dare attack in the DMZ. So stop your fretting, you are save by your own schemes.” He grimaced slightly at the pressure of her work at his back strut, claws gripping her shoulder tighter. “I will not be a hazard to you.”

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Cleaver paid no mind to the claws leaving shallow marks in her plates, though her defensive armour was closer to a natural civilian's strength that anything that could stand up to Barricade if he did take it into mind to be a hazard. He was right about the DMZ keeping things peaceful here, whichever side he ultimately summoned.

And there really was no telling who it might be. The war had been long, and it hadn't just killed old allies. It had turned mecha formerly united against one another; sewn grudges deep as ocean trenches over small points that seemed massive drifting in space; brought about space madness, or apathy so pronounced that it appeared just the same. If Barricade couldn't remember his last terms with whatever living ties he still had, there was no telling the history and emotion that they'd bring in with them.

Barricade, no doubt, had already considered all this in obsessive detail, and concluded that out of a short pile of slag options, this was the most viable way to get home. The linkage issue continued beyond his shoulder into his thorax - the tightness that had made the adjoing cabling loose.

Her hands continued methodically, her tone softly thoughtful. "Was never alligned, but from what I know about sparkbonds, the one you have must be recent if it's too weak to use now. Probably still closeby." She didn't add any speculation about the timing of such a bond - it was rare for anyone to do it since Cybertron, since death became not just a risk but a common risk. Instead, and because surely Barricade had thoughts that would do better aired, Cleaver murmured, "Can't imagine what it feels like being tied like that to a stranger."

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“No, I don’t imagine you can,” growled Barricade, not bothering to hide his defensiveness about it. “So let’s not ruminate and just get me functional again.

He revved slightly as Cleaver worked, the pressure and pull inside his endo-structures almost painful but the rush of heat after the pressure lets up is good enough to erase that pain quickly, over-writing it. Pale optics flickered toward the medic before roving away to the wall, glaring at it as though he could make out the shape of the mechanism bound in frequency and quantum physics to his core, aligned to an enforcer Six. All he could think is how fragging mad a mech like that a mech had to be to want, catch, and claim something as un-fragging-fathomable as an infiltrator unit… and what kind of bot could have convinced him to it.

There was a long pause, then. “Reflector. When I find a way to break our link, I’ll bring him back to you.” He growled a little at another point of pressure then added, for emphasis, “Free cassettes only get underfoot and I won’t take him on just because you screwed up.”

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Cleaver arched a brow at that, though her expression and field were otherwise blank. She finished the adjustment with one twist, abandoning the gentleness she'd been implementing up until this point. If Barricade wanted to be a glitch and get off the berth quicker, then she could appease him. The quick-and-efficient way was, however, the painful way.

He jerked as the linkage finally lined up to her satisfaction, and she waited for his hiss to trail off before moving up to the next. "And what if Reflector wants to stay with you? Unfathomable as that might be..."

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The pain was easier to deal with than Cleaver’s attempted gentleness, which didn’t gell with the infiltrator on any level, the familiar pulse and surge of heat and pain data was bearable so he cycled his vents, claws digging into the berth padding, warmth radiating from his plating as he tensed under the medic’s hands. HE focused on the wax and wane of the discomfort, brief spike of agony that ached in the wake and lingered in the linkages and the neural circuitry of his back and abdomen. The Saleen shot the medic a look when she finally finished.

“Then he can choose to be useful and remain with me,” snapped Barricade, made testy by a combination of the pain and the question. “I do not abandon link partners and Reflector is competent enough. I’ve had…” He stopped because he had been about to say that he’d had a similar partner in Frenzy… who he could not specifically remember as anything must a mass memory echo in his carrier systems. He huffed. “We’re compatible.”

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Stepping back from the berth to give Barricade room, Cleaver slid her arms back to normal at her sides. The tip of one resting against the decking, she leaned her weight into it to ease off the parts in her still-healing side. "Fine. Now, go refuel and let those adjustments settle. I'll have you back in a breem to smooth out that weld."

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Barricade got off the berth, flexing and arching the length ofhsi dorsal colum slightly, testing the new bend and ease in his hydraulic post-tune up. His glanced at the medic, optics flickering across her face and briefly to the still healing weld down her side seam. The physical price to pay for peace – Barricade understood the reasoning intellectually only. He didn’t know this war, what is had cost her or him for that matter so who was he to say that being half gutted wasn’t a reasonable price for safety.

“Appreciated,” Barricade said, a moved past her to do as she said. He would need to be fully functional to face what came next.

fin