Ep 1 - Patch Job - Closed

[Deleted]

Missions followed predictable patterns. Preparation, action, extraction, report, aftercare. In missions that fouled up there might be a headcount before the report, or a plan B or C before the extraction, and the aftercare might be more or less horrific. This? Had not been a bad mission, however.

He had laid optics on Jazz and Bluestreak and Shadowrunner, assuring himself all three of his cohort were functional and well, barring a reasonable and not terribly noteworthy collection of minor wounds and - in Jazz's case - some residual smoking from what had looked like acid pockmarks marring the saboteur's topmost finish. Upright, on their pedes, and all three of them along with the rest of the Nemesis raiding party, charged up on success.

"Party!" Jazz had all but chirped at him, grin irrepressible despite how Ratchet had been laying into him at the time. "No, really, we've gotta..."

Ironhide had grinned and waved his cohortmate off. "Yeh go on ahead. Ah got a report t' file."

"But...!" Which was when Ratchet had threatened dire things if Jazz didn't hush up and let him finish. PARTY, the saboteur had mouthed over the medic's shoulder in exaggerated silence.

REPORT, Ironhide had mouthed back, with a comm burst of affectionate glyphs, before beating a hasty retreat from the medbay. It was technically true, after all, even if what little he had to report could be summed up and logged in less time than it took him to track down and check in with each of the rest of the team.

Which left him plenty of time while Ratchet still had a medbay full of minor wounds to patch up. All the more reason, Ironhide told himself, for him to pick an option that didn't add more to the medic's workload. Considerate of him, even. Really. And it was the best sort of luck that the severed hydraulic lines in his left arm had drained out by the time they had returned to base, leaving no telltale dripping trace of the damage unless one got a good look at his shoulder or noticed the way he was only minimally moving the arm. Neither of which Ironhide had stood still long enough to give prying optics a chance to gawk at.

So he pinged his cohort with revised plans - ::Coward! You're missing the party!:: Shadow shot back, laughing, while Jazz and Blue sent on their respective encouragements - that just mentioned a likely destination without mentioning why. Nothing wrong with skipping what promised to be a rowdy party for a quieter more personal one, after all.

Honestly, it wasn't any worse than the dings everyone else had taken. Nothing that splicing in a new length of line into his shoulder and topping off his fluid levels wouldn't fix, and it was a patch job he could do himself given enough time, even with the awkward angle. Ratchet just refused to believe he could do it himself and certainly wasn't going to let Ironhide make free with any of the supplies in medbay. Still - an injury was an injury, and he wasn't in the habit of calling on Cleaver in her medical capacity, which made the better part of politeness to give her a head's up before rolling in on her doorstep. ::Cleaver, love? This ain't - repeat, absolutely is NOT - an emergency, but would yeh mind meh grabbin' a spot of space an' some parts from yer medbay?::

[Deleted]

Microtools immersed in the rear external processor components of an amnesic warlord, Cleaver's immediate response to her cohort's message. Stilling with what felt like a Category 2 failure of the support mechanics surrounding her spark chamber, she bit her glossa and considered the scarred grey plates in front of her.

Sideswipe had been deposited through the ground bridge a little over an hour ago, and she'd returned from Hawaii to find that a) the base was intact; b) Megatronus hadn't gotten his chips back and laid slag to her the second to appeared; and c) the mech actually had pain suppressants in hand for her own-stupid-fault injuries. It was an ultimately self-serving gesture (everything with the gladiator had been in the end) as he'd immediately started battering her with questions as soon as her neural lines stopped howling at her.

Having sat his aft down in the Medbay, Cleaver had kept her answers careful and minimal as to details. The War was inescapable, as was his position in it, and after half an hour of doing circuit repairs inside his helm as a means to keep him still whilst she spoke, Megatronus had quieted into a contemplative stare at nothingness. She didn't blame him. And she hated herself a little for that.

Megatronus hadn't heard the comm., continuing to sit quietly as he digested the enormity of what little she'd told him. Cleaver withdrew her hands and touched the split panels of his helmet to indicate he could close.

"All done here, but your spark's throwing errors and conflicts like nothing I've seen. Gonna need you to let your systems rest for a bit before I work on your chassis, though," Cleaver uttered, assured and frank as she came around the large mech and watched him rise to his pedes. She vented a cycle, arms shifting back to blades as she straightened to meet his optics. "Also gonna need you to stay out of sight so there isn't a repeat of what happened with Sideswipe. Just for now. There's a backroom here. Small, but secure and-"

"You are not," Megatronus bit in, optics narrowing with a flash of heat, "putting me in a cupboard, Cleaver."

Cleaver cocked her helm, faceplates twisting into something Kaon-ugly. "Fine, if you'd prefer the fragging basement-"

"I would." Megatronus seemed to enjoy her expression to the curt reply. "As a temporary measure."

"Of course." She sent him the schematics of the mine that would take him down to the sublevel tunnel, the deepest point. Well away from the inhabited areas, the thin energon veins combined with the natural minerals in the stone interfered with sensors and would disguise his presence. Taking two ration cubes from subspace, she slid them into his hand and nodded towards the door. "Down you go. Got an Autobot coming in, so best you stay put until I give you the all clear."

Cleaver didn't acknowledge the rumbled reply, busily clearing away the tools and materials from the repair work. She'd left Ironhide in the cold long enough.

::Sorry love - was in the middle of something. Got berths a-plenty and time for you. 'bridge in when you're ready.::

[Deleted]

::Ain't nothin' serious,:: Ironhide commed back as he made his way to the control room and the bridge. The words were absolutely true, but in the isolation of empty corridors he gave himself the luxury of clamping the arm down immobile, joints locked to still the micro vibrations that all movements transmitted through his frame and which were abrading through the dry and grit-laden arm assembly. ::Everythin' went fine, but everyone's sportin' minor dings an' dents an' Ratchet's on th' warpath about it. Figured Ah'd spare him th' trouble an' Ah could trade his lecture f'r one of yers and come out ahead.::

A quick notation in the logs, familiar coordinates noted freely in the ground bridge, and a nod to Steeljaw who was an immaculate gold lump on the monitor controls who barely cycled an optic at him as he went past. Ironhide gave the symbiont a nod and started for the bridge. ::Besides,:: he added as he stepped into it, ::it ain't like Ah'm lookin' t' take up a berth or nothin'. Easy fix, just need a bit of space t' work an' a length of tubin', Ah can do it mahself if yeh want t' keep restin', love...::

He came out of the groundbridge - and face to face with a somewhat frazzled looking femme, who swept professional optics over him that lingered sharply on the slice carven cleanly into the armor plate at his shoulder, and the stiff line of the arm he had locked at his side. Cleaver's optic ridges dropped, rotors twitching, and Ironhide's vocalizer booted into a guilty blat of static. "Or... not," he concluded sheepishly. "Ah... sorry?"

[Deleted]

Cleaver met his gaze with the same deadpan expression before unleashing a series of scans on the mech's slagged arm and shoulder array. Nothing critical, damage had been stabilized and he'd deadened the pain off himself already. Her rotors slackened again, and she touched a blade to his uninjured arm to motion him towards the Medbay.

"'m not even gonna ask. Guessin' that you couldn't tell me even if I did though." A nod to the berth that Megatronus hadn't been occupying, and thus no residual heat signature. Cleaver gathered up an empty oil drum, reclaimed tubing of various diameters and a cube of energon before coming to stand infront of where Ironhide sat on the foot of the berth. Clearly he'd experienced this type of injury enough times to know that lying down was the worst possible position for the repair.

Still sore frame-through from the bolt of supercharged power from grabbing the business end of Sideswipe's weaponry, Cleaver vented a blast of hot air and set about prying and yanking away the solid armor from Ironhide's powerful shoulder assembly. She knew she was being overly brusque, even by her standards, but she couldn't bring herself to relax into any of the comparative tenderness and ease that this mech usually brought about in her.

On the one servo, the repair was a blessed distraction from the warlord she'd so absurdly hidden in the sublevel. On the other, she wasn't in the mood to be fixing the hurts of cohort. Didn't like the reminder of the danger Ironhide, Jazz and Bluestreak willingly and willfully put themselves in on a regular basis.

Just severed lines, dried out mechanics gotten themselves gummed up, and some structural fractures, she affirmed privately, optics narrowing as the damaged armor finally came away to reveal the mess underneath. It isn't critical or dangerous.

Feeling Ironhide's stare on her faceplates like a cold weight, Cleaver met his optics and forced a small, weary smile. It wasn't his fault that he'd walked in on the tail end of an utter clusterfrag. She pulsed a stronger wave of concerned affection at him, though it was still underscored with agitation and unease.

"How's everyone else faring, love?"

[Deleted]

It had been on the top queue of Ironhide's vocalizer to offer assistance of some sort - an extra hand, a better angle, a flick that shuffled aside undamaged plates to allow easier access to the jammed up and fragged damaged ones, whatever might make what was already a fairly straight forward repair go a little easier and, not incidentally, maybe ease some of the agitated irritation from Cleaver's field.

He'd cycled all of it back as soon as she had gotten hands on his shoulder, because a medic moving with that kind of brusqueness did not, in Ironhide's experience, want any sort of interjection - assistive or otherwise - from non-medical personal putting their two credits in. He'd cut his own sensors - knew she would have, if he hadn't - but the tug and pull and jerk of armor plates being detached was its own uncomfortable routine. He tuned it out and just obligingly angled himself to give the femme the best access to the connectors of the sheared plates. She didn't spare the brisk force of her hands and he could feel, where her field lapped against his, how rattled she was. It made him mentally kick himself - she was a medic but she wasn't an Autobot, she certainly wasn't a warrior, and she probably wasn't used to having to treat those she cared about.

Glitch, he told himself sharply. He hadn't meant to worry her; had, if anything, been prepared to take the lumps an irate medic doled out when they thought their patients were deliberately trying to be stupid, and to have a laugh at his own folly. He didn't like the tight vibration of tension in her field or the way she hadn't spoken a word, which made it a double relief when she finally focused beyond his slagged shoulder relay and a little of the irritation eased from her.

"Doin' alright," he assured her, pulsing reassurance back. "Everybody's got some dings an' dents, but ain't nothing a quick patch an' some polish won't fix, an' they're all raidin' th' still an' throwin' a party right now. Been awhile since we had somethin' go that smooth." He jerked his chin at his own shoulder, giving her a grin. "Ah'm just playin' coward, came over here instead of takin' mah hits with Ratchet. What's that th' humans say about takin' a knife t' a gun fight? Well, Ah was th' slaggin' idiot who took a gun t' a pit fraggin' knife fight." The grin turned teasing. "Gettin' slow in mah old age."

[Deleted]

Cleaver snorted a laugh, mouthplates twitching with a wry, incredulous smile. "Old age, huh?" She stripped the dried line and crushed, and split cabling with one pull, having snipped from the elbow joint to pull clean out from his opened shoulder.

To his credit, Ironhide had saved her a lot of hassle by locking his arm when he did. Allowing the fluids to drain out without putting pressure on the damaged lines with movement kept unlubricated parts from grinding and chipping. It was a simple swap-out job, not the scavenger hunt for errant bits of his mechanisms it could have been.

The discovery as much as Ironhide's easy chatter settled the last of the anxiety that had spiked when he'd come walking through the groundbridge for her Medbay.

"Well. I reckon that it's not your date stamp slowin' you down. Got vorns on you, lad, and I might have a fair chance of taking you in the absence of guns and knives." She paused to switch the configuration of her hands into the different tools necessary to extract the mechanisms that the blow his arm had absorbed had mangled, and arched a brow at him before adding: "Reckon you're just going soft from an abundance of bitlets."

[Deleted]

Ironhide vented half a laugh, hiding the involuntary flinch as Cleaver pulled the damaged tubing free. It didn't hurt, not with his sensors deadened, but it was still a strange feeling of wrongness that was hard to sit still through. "Ain't th' vorn, it's th' mileage?" he suggested. "Ain't ever heard of any of mah class deactivatin' from rust an' pilin' on th' vorns, so much as wear an' tear. Got welds on top of th' welds, darlin'. Damaged goods." He slanted a smile at her, field pulsing reassurance. "Got yerself a fixer upper."

"An'," he added firmly, "ain't no such thing as too many bitlets, an' they sure as Pit don't let yeh go soft." He couldn't reach her properly with his nearest arm deactivated and knowing better than to move when she had her hands in his shoulder relay, but he tipped his helm towards her chassis. "Be lookin' forward t' stressin' all kinds of relays fishin' that one outta wherever it's climbin' into."

[Deleted]

Cleaver hummed a warm sound, a trace of a smile ghosting about her mouth even as her features remained schooled with concentration and the pull of anxiety. Ironhide motioning to that point on her chassis, to their sparkling, brought back how catastrophically stupid and dangerous putting herself in between Sideswipe and Megatronus had been.

There had been no way around it - Megatronus was going to be killed by the younger mech, and they'd all be nuked from orbit by the Nemesis as soon as the Decepticons found out.

But it could have been so much worse than having several thousands volts of searing charge overloading her systems and knocking her out. A shot or blade through the chamber... The femme wouldn't have wanted to survive that.

Shunting the thought aside and firewalling it off to have fluxes about later, Cleaver sidestepped to put her her knee between the red mech's on the edge of the berth. One hand still buried in his shoulder, she touched the other to his mobile wrist and nudged it towards her chassis.

"Feels good," she uttered, hydraulics relaxing a little when the strong span of Ironhide's hand splayed across the chamber. It felt solid and whole, protected by the extra layer of his metal.

Her mouth pulled into a grimace when she finally teased free the big bit of mangled metal and set it beside his hip on the berth. "You one of those with a collection of slagged parts? Had a femme once insisted on keeping, dating and storing every bit of scrap I took out of her."

[Deleted]

"Ain't no use for parts 'cept t' reuse 'em," Ironhide replied, casting a quick, judging eye on the twisted metal that had been part of his own plating. Enough to fill a smaller solid state munitions reservoir, or replenish a patch kit. "Smelt it for raw material, keep it for a later patch - Ah've got a refiner for that, if yeh don't need it."

There was a prickly feel to her field, sour and stinging against his palm where is rested over her plates. Ironhide frowned slightly and spread his servos wider, rubbing gently over the burning hot surface of her chassis. "Yeh alright, dahrlin'? Bitlet okay? Yeh're runnin' hotter than usual."

[Deleted]

They'd argued after he'd found out about Megatron stabbing his hand into her sideseam and leaving her with an infected wound that she'd not only treated herself, but actively hidden from him. Though they were a far cry away from notifying each other of every hurt, Cleaver appreciated that a kind of disclosure had been negotiated after that fight. Hurts didn't need to be toughed out and ignored around cohort. It was a show of trust to let another in on pain, alien as that still felt to her.

She couldn't unload the real hurt of fear that was holding her spark and systems in a vice, not without opening up a munitions-locker-load of Pit, but she could disclose the hurt that had actually been done. What she'd been lucky to get away with, all things considered.

Picking out the rest of the wrecked pieces that removing the large chunk allowed access to, Cleaver flared her plates into Ironhide's hand. Her mouth slanted into a weary diagonal. "Had an accident a little while before you comm.ed in. Grabbed the wrong end of something an' shocked myself."

When Ironhide tensed in field and frame, Cleaver kept one hand-array of tools in place inside his shoulder and transformed the other as she withdrew. She lay her hand over his on her chassis, stroking her thumb firmly. "Just stupidity, and no harm done. Systems're designed to deal with those kinds of surges, and it bypassed the sparkling completely. Fine now, just sore an' embarrassed."

[Deleted]

Ironhide's frown didn't ease, his hand taking up a rhythm of slow, circular sweeps over Cleaver's plating. "Should've told meh t' take mah lumps with Ratchet," he told her gently. "Didn't have t' be comin' over here disturbin' yer rest."

Reaching up, he cupped her cheek gently before dropping his hand back to her chassis. "Or let meh do it mahself. Could reach it just fine with a bit of work, Ah've done it before. Yeh outta be takin' it easy."

Which was, in one lump, more fussing than he'd tried to avoid through most of her carriage so far. Ironhide winced at his own tactlessness, cutting his vocalizer sharply before he spat out any more ill timed advice. "Or not... Ah mean, ain't mah business, Ah know, just didn't mean t' make yeh stress when it ain't that important, dahrlin'."

[Deleted]

Cleaver shook her head a little and moved her hand back to his shoulder, switching the tools back into place to resume the repair. "I know," she replied softly, one optic narrowing as she twisted a sheared piece of metal free and dropped it aside. "But, 'm'glad to see you. Been a slagpit of a day - nothing compared to yours, obviously, but seeing you mostly alright is good. Helping."

She grit her denta for a nanoklik, cycling the warm air that had seemed to thicken between them - and not in the good, more common way. The old femme had spent a long time laying down the law that Ironhide didn't need to fret, that she could take care of herself, and that she'd be quick to smack him back across the line of acceptable levels of fussing if he crossed over it. And now she'd gone and come a little undone for, from his perspective, no good reason.

He didn't know about Megatron, Sideswipe, Moonshot or Cat. He only knew about a stupid mistake (though really grabbing Sideswipe's charged weaponry in the middle of a killing blow had been a high class of stupid) and that she was tired with the sparkling.

Forcing a change in gear, Cleaver gave Ironhide an arch look and a sour twist of her mouth. "And scrap could I be 'restin'' when you're sat botching a repair 'cause of bad angles and repair-kit standard tools. Would just have to muster the energy later to lecture you about it, and then do it again myself."

The last of the debris cleared from the wound, Cleaver shifted her hands back and laid them on Ironhide's thighs, head tipping with a vaguely menacing smirk. "Hphmf. Say you're running from your medic, but remember that I trained medics. Who do you reckon they ran from?"

[Deleted]

"Reckon they ran from yeh for good reason," Ironhide replied, grinning, as he leaned forward to press his forehelm to hers. "An' they probably deserved every dent yeh gave 'em."

He dipped his head slightly, nuzzling at her cheek - it was that or keep looking at the smirk on her mouthplates, and the flush of heat charge that sent through him was probably NOT where they were meant to be going when his arm was still half slagged. He settled for laying light kisses along the side of her face instead. "Glad t' see yeh too, dahrlin'. Ain't been such a bad day - better'n most, really, 'ceptin' th' arm - but Ah'm always glad t' come see yeh."

[Deleted]

He was helping - voice, field and touch all easing away the feeling that she was going to have an electrical aneurysm at any moment. Cleaver knew that it was stupid to want him to stay to prolong the feeling, as Ironhide's ongoing presence meant an ongoing risk of Megatronus being discovered here.

But Megatronus was keeping himself occupied in the sublevel, and she could monitor him constantly via the lone surveillence camera tied in to her optic feed. She'd know if there was a threat of him emerging or being discovered, and no chance in the Pit would Ironhide stray that far away from her without her asking him to go and do something down there.

It was safe enough. And though she wouldn't admit it aloud, Ironhide made her feel safe - something she sorely needed right now.

Leaning her helm into his, Cleaver asked, "You stayin' over?" She onlined her optics to meet his again, spiralling wide from the close proximity. "Can make sure you rest that arm properly."

She made sure to plug his field with glyphs for rest/comfort so ensure he didn't get the wrong idea of her intentions in inviting an overnight stay.

[Deleted]

Ironhide smiled, reaching with his good arm to pull her a little closer. The warm pulse of her field, caring and comfort that rang purely as 'cohort' to him, eased the last of the combat edge that had lingered in his own field and the tinge of worry that her admission of an accident had shot through him. "Medic's orders, yeah? Yes ma'ahm."

And if he held her a little closer, a little tighter, until that sharper edge of aggitation left her own field - well, that was what cohort did.


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