Ep. 1.5 - The World of the Living Miserable - Closed

[Deleted]

Fortress Maximus hated waking up out of stasis.

Always had.

At one time in his life waking up on a medic's berth meant that he had been damaged so badly in combat that he had nearly paid for it with his life - a dismal injury to his frame but an even worse blow to his pride. Humiliating. He despised the thought that he had screwed up badly enough that a Decepticon had managed to inflict that kind of damage against him. He was a Maximus, an officer. A soldier who fought to the death was doing it wrong.

And now…

Now he knew that even he could be hurt - terribly, obscenely hurt - without warning. Without battle. Out of a clear red sky. That there existed mechs in the cold, harsh universe who could crush him without thought, grind him underfoot and cast him aside like a lump of slag from a smelter. That had been a hard lesson to learn. Still hadn't recovered from it.

His red optics whirred, irised open. His self-diagnosis booted up and paged glyphs across his internal HUD while beyond it a dark and unfamiliar ceiling came into view. A spindly medical armature loomed over him, studded with various monitor nodules. Even their dimmed lights were painful against his unfocused optics.

Maximus squinted. He was on his back on a strange medical berth. He recognized the dreaded rise out of stasis - that slow return to consciousness as his self-repair systems laboured to bring him online bit by bit. It was a disorienting sensation. Half of him was there. He felt his brain module humming with activity, his spark burning in his core. But nothing registered from the rest of his frame. Only phantom pulses fired back from his limbs when he tried to curl his fingers. Electric currents, connecting with nothing.

The big mech fought back an irrational sense of panic. He laid still and tried to gather his erratic thoughts. Calm down. He was in a strange medical bay. He had been damaged and put into stasis. He was fine. It was normal that he could not properly interrogate all of his systems yet. His internal repair was still churning nanites through every net and cell of his frame. It was fine.

It was dark in here. Hushed. What little sound he heard echoed differently than it did in the Autobot base. Someone was standing nearby. Their movements were slight, studious.

He hated that he had to ask this.

"Where am I?" he said. His voice rasped in his throat.

[Deleted]

Cleaver had spent the time after the repairs stripping and cleaning the turret for reinstalling, one optic on his readings from the berth. She'd put it into a bin and tucked it away, out of sight, as soon as the signs of his processor booting towards consciousness appeared. Drying the cleanser off her hands, she answered as she approached the berth.

"In the medbay of the DMZ." Maximus's optics were not comforted, and Cleaver prioritized as might best reassure him. "Arcee brought you here. Jazz is standing guard outside, but there's no one but him and the neutral residents here in the mine. No Cons." You're safe.

She swung aside the monitor that had been standing vigilant since Arcee had left, raising a blade to begin her own scans. Surgery had been long, the wounds going down to the protoskeleton in places and needing even further decontamination for the dark energon exposure. The turret had come out as twisted and catching as it had gone in, and tracking down all the leaks and pools of lost fluids from where bundles had been torn out had taken an hour in itself.

"You were impaled in your right flank. I've removed the debris and repaired the internal damage, but your protomatter is going to take a good six cycles to heal. So take it easy." Scan completed, the medic came to stand at Maximus's shoulder. "How's your processor? You took a clear shot to the head."

[Deleted]

The neutral DMZ...

With the monitor gone, Maximus heaved himself upright. Internal warnings registered at the motion, and immediately he felt it: that dull, endoskeletal-deep ache that spoke of deep frame trauma and recent repair work. The worst of it was focused in his side, where the blast had caught him and the turret lodged deep.

He glanced down. True to her word, the hole was gone. He saw raw new plating there, the seams still fresh.

Maximus sat silent. There was an odd satisfaction in that. The big new warbuild he had walked out of Delphi with had felt strange to him, too perfect. He had felt like a ghost drifting through life in a borrowed frame that bore only a passing resemblance to his old one, disconnected.

Now it felt- worn in. A little more like his old body, which had grounded him to his existence through a past of old damage and scars.

His head, on the other hand...

Moving stiffly, Maximus slowly swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the berth. He looked around warily. They seemed to be alone, the ward dim and quiet. No Autobots nearby to observe them. So he allowed himself to briefly rest his aching head in his hands.

He processed what she had told him. He was in the demilitarized zone. He had sworn to himself he would never step foot here again. He had no past here, had suffered no injury within these walls. But they were too close, bore too much similarity to another place of pain that for an instant he had returned there, in mind if not in body. Electromagnetic phantoms with Decepticon faces had flickered and jeered at him, their presence irradiated into the very rock.

But now...

Only a medical bay. Maybe he was just tired.

"Clearing," he said. He hesitated, then lifted his head and looked around at her. His red-eyed gaze was weary, wondering. "You... saved my life."

[Deleted]

Throughout her time as a medic, first in the Towers right through Kaon to this hollowed out rock on an alien world, Cleaver had found unwavering certainty in her domain. She'd manhandled gladiators still thrashing with aggro-tech onto berths and knocked them bodily into stasis; pinned an amnesic Decepticon to the floor of a shuttle with her dead weight; and taken hours upon hours of verbal abuse in multiple languages without a flinch. But when Fortress Maximus pushed himself upright and swung his legs over the edge of the berth, pedes touching the floor, Cleaver took a step back. Gave ground.

Cleaver knew Maximus would hold to the DMZ, and that he was even more unlikely to lunge at her after she'd just finished repairing him. The spike of fear had moved her back before she could process the feeling, however.

She told herself it was because he was massive, powerful and had seemed on the verge of inflicting violence the only time he had come here under his own volition. That is was because the sparkling was on the verge of emergence, self-preservation instincts on the new spark's behalf ramped up tenfold. Not that her recent exchanges with Ironhide, Jazz and Sideswipe had made her feel lost and uncertain. Even in the one place she had always felt secure.

Maximus was watching her with something like bewilderment, his body stiff. Cleaver forced some assurance into her field and recovered that step, blades hanging long and stiff at her sides.

"'s'what medics do," she replied. "You're welcome to rest here as long as you'd like. You've earned it."

[Deleted]

Maximus sat in silence, his gaze cast to the floor, and tried to sort out his thoughts.

She had repaired him. He was still healing, the repairs still raw and fresh, but he would survive. His damage had been ugly. He had suffered worse in the past - far worse - but he had not walked away from it under his own power. Vaguely, he recalled how he had staggered here under the escort of another Autobot, the sense of horror he had experienced over his medical files. After that things became indistinct, dark. Cleaver must have put him into stasis to begin the arduous task of repairing the mess.

He looked down at his patched side. Pressed his hand against it. This was no chop shop clinic job, ruined lines spliced back together beneath a crude seam of weld. This was tidy, professional work, the kind he would expect from any war surgeon.

He was an Autobot. Military to the core. Not one of her Neutrals. Perhaps he stood for a war she despised, wanted no part of. She had treated him anyway.

Maximus furrowed his brow. The last time he had been in this room he had not been - he briefly shut his optics - in the best frame of mind. Even now he could not shake off the suspicion and bitter dread it roused in him. The demilitarized zone was an unsprung trap, a threat. He could feel it in ever fibre of his neural net. But he could not ignore the fact that someone had done him a great service here.

He opened his optics and fixed his gaze upon Cleaver. Struggled for words. He'd never been good at talking and the ache in his head was fast becoming blinding, but he knew that this time he needed to make an effort.

"Thank you," he said quietly. He lowered his head. "I... I appreciate that. All of it. You're a good medic. Maybe you could argue I'm biased in saying that because it was me under the scalpel this time. Maybe you'd be right. But I... apologise if I ever implied otherwise."

[Deleted]

"Just my position in the war you were disgruntled about," Cleaver replied. There was no malice in her tone: just a simple statement of fact. She fetched the bin containing his detached weaponry back up. "One has no bearing on the other."

Fortress Maximus was holding himself stiff, though not with the anxious/angry tension that he'd embodied on his last visit. Pain inhibitors were wearing off, and his processor was cataloging, checking and adapting to the new parts and fluids that had been spliced and fed into his body.

The metal where his side had been gored was not a perfect match: not as thick or strong as his armor before. Leftover hull plating from her ship would have been better suited than the smelted and re-fabricated Decepticon footsoldier metal she'd used. It was clean, though, and would keep out detritus whilst his autorepair grew a tougher scar into the patch.

Cleaver rested a hand on the lip of the bin, watching his massive frame. "I don't generally reinstall weaponry, but I understand that a soldier would need to be armed regardless of his fitness to fight. The one turret on your leg was mangled but still seated: mostly just needed straightening out, which I've done." She nodded towards his unarmed leg. "You came with the other embedded in your flank, and I wouldn't dare tread into Ironhide's territory. I can only hope it's cleaned up to his exacting standards."

[Deleted]

Absently, Maximus glanced down. Sure enough, one gun turret was intact, the weapon folded back and properly housed in the heavy armour that served to protect his lower legs. Scarred metal and paint bore testament to the freshness of the repair work that had been done to restore it.

The other turret bay was empty. Maximus narrowed his optics and frowned. Much of the desperate skirmish in the desert was hazy to him, the memories vague and full of fleeting impressions of anger and pain, but he could remember the instant when something had slammed into his side like a blunt knife. He'd felt that through the rage. Not a pleasant moment.

Maximus shook his head. Down one gun, but that was all right. He had lost worse in the past.

With effort, he gathered his mind.

"Ironhide does take his job seriously," said Maximus, without cracking a smile. He drew in air, laid his hands on his knees and straightened against the ache in his side. "Maybe when I get back to base I'll get his opinion on what to do about that gun. I trust his expertise on that sort of..."

The big mech trailed off.

It was though a shadow had fallen over the medical bay. One more memory had quietly arisen, cold and dark.

"Back to base," he breathed. "The base... Optimus. Optimus! His status- what is it? Do you know? Is he-"

He could not finish that thought. Horrified, Maximus stared at Cleaver and silently willed her to answer the question that had frozen him in horror.

[Deleted]

Cleaver instinctively raised a hand in the universal gesture of appeasement, field pulsing calm CALM in heavy waves. She answered as soon as Maximus trailed off, his optics bleached bright with dread. "Alive. He's alive, but I'm not privy to any more than that."

Jazz had told her who the injured Autobot Ratchet had his hands full with was when he'd come to take over as guard from Arcee. The small mech had been on edge, but less curt than the two-wheeler had been. He was lingering out in the Atrium now, waiting to be given permission to come in and see Maximus.

"I comm.ed Arcee to tell her that your condition was stable, and Ratchet hasn't asked for an assist," she went on, moving closer to the seated mech. "That likely means he's got things well in hand, so just... steady. Do you want me to get Jazz in? He might be able to tell you more."

[Deleted]

Alive.

Optimus was still alive.

A heavy weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. Even through the haze Maximus could still remember that terrible moment when the blade had struck his friend across the chest and ripped open his chassis. Things got a bit confused after that, but that instant stood apart in his mind like a dead tree against the sky.

But Optimus had survived it. Maximus felt weak with relief. In a rare unguarded gesture he bent and laid his head in his hands. He sat without moving and let the news sink in. He had not killed his commander with his foolishness. He knew that he had made grievous mistakes in the past that he was paying for now, but at least leading Optimus into death was not one of them. That was a mistake he could not stand.

It had been close though. Too close.

Alive.

Relief was soon overcome with apprehension. Maximus felt his spark clench. Optimus was alive, but what was his condition? Was he stable? That had been a critical injury. Internal Autobot security would reveal few details of his condition to Cleaver. That was official protocol. But Jazz was an officer. He would likely know more.

Maximus needed to know more.

He could sense that Cleaver had moved near. Her field was quiet and calm. Maximus sat for a moment in silence. Then he dragged his hands down his face and leaned back.

"I thought I'd killed him," he said. He swallowed. "I should- speak to Jazz, yeah. Thank you."

[Deleted]

She didn't know what was behind that blunt admission, and only some of the aftermath, but Cleaver could see with perfect clarity how corrosive and deep this guilt ran. It bore heavily on his massive frame, weighing Maximus's shoulders down into an exhausted hunch. The complete antithesis of his bearing the first time she had met him.

Cleaver didn't ask for Jazz to come to them right away, something in the soldier's tone indicating that, though trying to be, he wasn't quite ready to face a status update just yet. Instead, and without thought to her motivations for doing so, the old femme moved the last few steps to stand at Maximus's knee and placed a hand on his shoulder, in front of the towering tred. He seemed to sag a little at the touch, as if the weight of her hand had just pushed him past the limits of his endurance, his shoulder listing towards her overheated frame.

Instinctively and silently, she guided the motion onwards, radiating soothing encouragement and reassurances with a thick baseline that was all carrier protocols. Maximus was large, powerful and had endured great hardship across the spectrum throughout the war. In the privacy of the medbay, he looked like he needed a hug.

[Deleted]

At the first light touch on his shoulder, Maximus stiffened.

It was an involuntary reaction. He had a low tolerance for contact. Always had. Mostly out of habit. Out of centuries of violence, of conflict. Even as the warden he had remained apart from those around him, aloof and stern. Remote. A necessary institution. There was an unforgiving system in place and he stood at the head of it, the living embodiment of the prison's authority.

And after the prison... he did not want to think about that. Once a Delphi technician had come upon him alone and laid a hand on his arm to catch his attention. Only a hasty shout had kept a fist from caving in his chest. Involuntary. Maximus did not take well to intrusion. Even less so these days.

But now...

Cleaver was steady and calm, offering only unspoken kindness. There was no judgment in her manner, no reproach. That would come later, when it was time to return to base and lay out in stark terms what had gone so wrong in the desert. For now, this was simply... compassion. At least, as he understood it. Not a lot of experience with that either.

And he was sore and tired, his mood at low ebb.

His stoicism faltered. Maximus gripped his knees and sighed. He sagged. Surrounded by nothing more than quiet equipment and the lull of an empty medical bay he allowed himself to silently lean into the medic's arm, until the weight on his shoulders lessened a little more.

And...

Something was off.

Not off. Different. Maximus frowned. Cleaver still said nothing, and yet now that she was close he could detect... actually, he did not know what it was that he could detect in the electrical field that all Cybertronians radiated. Hers was different somehow. Intense. Like a burning spark. Like nothing he recognised.

He pulled back a little, and tried to muster the energy to size her up.

"Something is different about you," he said, frowning. "Can't put a finger on it. Something about your spark. Used to see a lot of them. Sparks, I mean. Yours is- odd."

[Deleted]

Scrap.

Cleaver backed up a step, the arm that had been across Maximus's shoulders falling to her a side with a whirr-schluck, returning to base configuration.

She'd assumed that only a medic (or someone who knew to look for the sparkling already) would be able to detect the anomalous readings, subtle as they were. Whilst in the gestation chamber, the sparkling's systems were inactive and scanned as an extension of its carrier's systems. It was only after emergence, disconnected and exposed to outside stimuli that the sparkling would boot up as an individual. Cleaver's spark currently pulsed into its with as much frequency as it did her legs. Manufacturing heat from the fuel-hungry micro-fabrication plant sitting alongside was the only real giveaway of the carriage.

Cleaver had not expected this battered soldier and former prison warden to be able to perceive the irregularity.

The sparkling was a secret in the sense that it was dangerous for the Decepticons to learn that there was self-generation technology on Earth. A DMZ maintained entirely on words would not be any kind of protection. She'd assumed that it was relatively common knowledge amongst the Autobots purely because of Ironhide's broadcasting delight (and Jazz's warnings), so she didn't immediately know how to respond to Maximus.

No sense in hiding it, though.

"I'm a self-gen," she said. "I've had the tech deactivated since Cybertron, but there were some, technical problems" -involving Megatron shaking hands with her internals- "and the protocols were brought back online."

She gestured over the area on her chassis that Ironhide had become obsessed with, and where Maximus's head had previously rested. "You're picking up on the sparkling, or else the manufacturing plant putting the finish on it."

[Deleted]

Maximus had come into close contact with a lot of sparks over his lifespan - mostly through violent means. In the Rig the sparks of the condemned had hung suspended in white-out imprisonment. Through a layer of sealed glass they had radiated the last conscious emotion of their owner, a sentiment trapped forever in stasis. Mostly it was anger. Or misery.

It was a silent echo that prickled against the neural net of any staff member stationed in the Rig. It was said that over time you eventually learned how to tune it out.

Maximus had learned to ignore it.

But this was different.

He was no medic. Spark-generation was a subject as foreign to him as any other form of protoform creation. He had been built and trained for war, and little else. Before that, he had understood the process of melding form and function only as it applied to architecture through mathematical planning and design, the manipulation of materials and space into practical structures.

But even Maximus knew that what Cleaver was describing was rare. Exceptionally rare.

Despite his weariness he leaned back, his hands resting on his knees. The subtle rhythm of her spark that had first caught his notice faded slightly but was still there, too different to ignore.

"I detect a diversion in your spark," he said slowly, his brow furrowed. "It's rerouting to administrate a tertiary system I don't recognise. The manufacturing plant. Then you really are-"

Maximus broke off. His optics widened.

Then he remembered their first encounter, and his expression turned from astonishment to horror.

"I came this close to striking you once," he said. He held up one hand, his fingers held inches apart. "Primus. This close."

[Deleted]

"I remember." Vividly.

Cleaver didn't doubt that he would have. It made her timings skip just to recall it - the massive soldier looming over her, one hand capable of enough destructive force to have killed her instantly if the then-tenuous hold on his temper had given. Maximus had startled himself, then, and abided her request for him to leave before things could escalate any further.

Though sensibly wary, Cleaver didn't fear Maximus now. His horrified expression and queasily sour EM nudged her back into striking distance, silently conveying that she wasn't feeling threatened. She kept her long blades lax at her sides so she wouldn't put a hand on his wrist: she'd not missed her momentary flinch at being touched before.

"You didn't, though." The medic smiled a little, calm. "No harm done."