Chapter Text
With access to the Autobot’s ground bridge she started hiking. It had always been a hobby but now she could travel anywhere she wanted. Ratchet had accompanied her once or twice, letting her drive till they were far enough out in the wilderness that he could transform and simply walk along beside her. He rarely tagged along now that Optimus was dead however; preferring to stay alone at the base at just wait for her request for the ground bridge.
She felt weird about going off on her own, but knowing she could immediately contact the medic should anything go wrong helped put her at ease. The area she picked for the day was in the pacific northwest, deep within the mountainous forests. It was an area she had hiked a few times before, marvelling at the redwood trees and easily she was able to move along the ground with such little cover. It was severely unpopulated, aside from a lack of humans she barely saw any wildlife either. A few birds and maybe a squirrel or two, but for the most part it was deeply quiet and lonely.
That day though, is when things started getting interesting. It was slightly overcast, not that it made much of a difference beneath the dense covering of trees. She had taken the path of a dry creek bed, walking along the old water smoothed rocks with no destination in mind. She was just going till she felt tired and then would call Ratchet like normal. Except this time, something drove her to keep walking.
She heard a distant scraping noise. Sharp but muffled scrabbling followed by prolonged silence before it started again. She had never heard anything quite like it and decided to investigate. When she finally stepped out of the creek bed and up onto the banks she finally saw what she had been looking for. A brief flash of red underneath the dark shadows of looming trees gave visage to the almost imperceptible scraping. She couldn’t tell what it was, but she pressed on forwards, leaving the river behind her.
The little clearing she came across was not at all what she had expected. How she had the inopportune luck to find it, she would never know. The trees had been roughly cleared on jagged edges and stacked up into a terrible effigy pile. A pit had been dug right down in the middle of the rough clearing with little mounds surrounding the area that reminded her of the sweet potato planting she used to do. In the middle of it though, the worst part, was that cherry red con who had kidnapped her almost a year ago.
She knew he had been missing, captured on The Nemesis at one point but now considered missing in action. He was wanted, in general, for war crimes but also because he was a doctor of a species with so few doctors left. No one expected him to leave, with the way things were headed she knew it was likely he was going to be pardoned of his crimes so he could get to work taking care of the injured and sick that were returning to cybertron. Ratchet couldn’t do it alone (which, after the death of a partner like Optimus, no one expected him to), so most of the job was falling on the hands of scouts and generals with first aid experience.
June didn’t know many of the details other than it was getting to be a dire situation, and Ratchet seemed to be more tired than ever.
Knock Out was on his hands and knees, face close to the ground and heaving as though he would vomit. He patted the top of one of the mounds, compacting the soil down tightly into a perfect little cone. He then turned, digging a new little hole into the soft earth as he wheezed. She watched with rapt attention, understanding that she knew nothing of whatever he was doing. After a moment she decided to sit down in a nearby bush and keep surveillance for a while, he seemed distracted enough he wouldn’t notice her.
The hole he dug was fairly shallow, just a scrape or two of his hands deep. He patted the sides of it to make sure they were flat and smooth. His chest split and he whined a deeply painful moan, light spilled from inside himself as he reached one of those long clawed hands within his chest and dug around. The strange chug-scraping noise started up, his engine and vents taxing themselves to the limit.
Eventually he pulled out a little speck of light between two fingers and gave it a good look over as the noise died down again and his chest closed. The light was twisting and turning in his claws, inspecting and prodding it from every angle before putting it into the little hole he had dug like a seed. He lovingly covered it up with dirt, pressing his face close to it like she had seen with the other one, whispering something soft to the little mound before turning and scraping up a new hole, looking nauseous all the while.
She watched him do this several times, each time investigating the little light and then so gently placing it into the dirt. Most of them were fine but a few caused him a pained expression after the investigation and she watched with horror as he gently crushed them in his hands, treating the evaporating speck of light with so much care as it fizzled into nothing. By the end of it she counted roughly thirty mounds, and Knock Out looked absolutely exhausted.
She had no idea what he had actually just done, but she had her fair amount of guesses. Defragmentation was a possible idea, she knew machines had to clean themselves somehow, and physically removing any illness was her initial idea of what he was doing. But the care he was treating them with, she couldn’t figure out any reason that he would be doing that if it were illness. As time went on she realized she knew better.
She didn’t know how to come to terms with the fact she knew she just watched an alien give birth, nor what she should actually do about it. But clearly she knew there was no other explanation for what she had just seen. Ratchet had given her a very brief idea of what happens to their children as they gestate simply to point out the differences in their biological structures. She didn’t realize that when he said they come from the ground that means someone must have put them in the ground in the first place.
Knock Out laid on his side, gently running his hands over his chest as if to soothe himself. June assumed this likely wasn’t something he was supposed to have done alone, but it’s not like there was any other ‘cons around to help him. After a while he seemed to fall asleep there, rumbling gently among his little mounds. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, making a mental note of where this was. June slowly crept from the bush and headed back to the river bed, it was getting late anyway.
--
Ratchet greeted her as unenthusiastically as always, and she opened her mouth to tell him what she had seen before stopping herself. The ‘con wasn’t hurting anyone, and they hadn’t had any reports of strange activity in the area. He surely wasn’t doing anything too bad, and she knew better than most how hard it was to be a single mother. She gave Ratchet a gentle smile and went on home, deciding that she would return to the area at a later date.
--
Next week she asked Ratchet to bring her to the same location. She had an excuse prepared about how she just really liked the area and how it spoke to her, but he didn’t ask. She decided to save it for another day. As she stepped through the portal.
The air was foggy and dense with humidity. It was cold, and she found herself wishing she had brought a thicker jacket. The trees rustled quietly, but still there was no sign of animals in the general vicinity. The oppressive loneliness grew around her as she hiked. She wondered briefly if this was some sort of subconscious protection Knock Out was able to project to ward off intruders from the area. She figured she would ask Ratchet more about it later if he was looking up to some small talk.
She stepped out of the river bed and took the short trek to the clearing she had seen before, glad that she remembered where it was. Knock Out was gone for the time being, likely doing whatever it was that robots do when they’re not nest-sitting.
She stood next to the same bush she had last time, eyeing the clearing closely for changes. A few of the mounds had been noticeably smashed down, and her heart hurt for whatever reason that had to have taken place. Most of them seemed exactly the same as they had been before though, haphazard little half-spheres poking up out of the ground. The area in the middle looked compacted and worn, and she suspected this is where Knock Out had been either sleeping or spending most of his time. After all, it’s where he had fallen asleep the last time she had seen him.
She listened diligently for a few good moments and did not hear the gentle thundering of giant footsteps that accompanied the bots even at their quietest. June decided to sneak forwards a little more to get a closer look, stopping every few paces to listen again. She entered the ring of mounds and found that it was surprisingly warm, each one emitting a small bit of heat that combined made the whole area quite comfortable.
She left as quickly and carefully as she came.
--
Ratchet didn’t have much information for her on the specifics of their child gestation. They were planted in the ground and absorbed minerals from the soil. He kept iterating about sentio metallico and the need to have radiation from the moon, but June admittedly understood next to nothing about what he was talking about and he was well aware. She left with very little more information, but thanked him anyway. He seemed to be in a slightly better mood after getting to talk about something he was interested in and she was glad.
--
Some carefully planted questions over the next few days got her a little bit more information. They didn’t take that long to gestate in the ground, only a matter of weeks. And apparently even though the number planted was usually high, the survival rate was extremely low. Ratchet was starting to get curious about why she was asking so much and June had to make a quick excuse about wanting to know how they were going to repopulate Cybertron. With the rest of the team gone, he’s the only one she had to ask.
The response she was given wasn’t what she had expected. They needed partners to do it that way. The way she had been describing. Most of the time they relied on the Well, and since Optimus’s death, the Well had been rekindled, lighting sparks in hot spots all across Cybertron.
He looked so haunted when he explained this to her, she dropped it immediately even though it was the information she wanted the most.
--
The next time she visited the mounds there was a significant change. Over half of them had been smashed, and Knock Out lay prone in the middle. June wasn’t in the habit of guessing how Cybertronians felt but he looked...bad. She didn’t know very much about him at all. But the fact he liked to take care of himself was one of the few things she had picked up from their brief interaction before.
He did not look like a mech that had been taking care of himself. He was scratched and covered in dirt, the high polish he once sported was worn down to a sheer dull finish and completely gone in some places. Somehow, she guessed, the worst part of it was his color itself looked off. She knew they got painted on their exteriors but still had a certain amount of chromatophores natural to their plating that could shift and change color as needed. She knew that allowed them a certain degree of camouflage and the ability to change form easier. It’s what allowed the deep rich hues that they naturally sported, much nicer than regular car metal and one of the easiest ways to guess who was a cybertronian in their alt modes.
Knock Out’s color did not look great in that sense. It was almost ashen, the rich crimson red she remembered dulled down to nearly a dusty rose. She felt she had to help him, somehow. Living like this, however it was, clearly wasn’t doing him any favors. No cover, no protection from the elements, exposed as he was? Was he even eating? She couldn’t remember if there were any energon deposits in the area, most of them centering more around the southwest.
She stepped from behind her bush with the intent of going to him but he sat up with a groan, rubbing the back of his head with one of his very sharp clawed hands. She froze, terrified of him seeing her even though she was just headed down there to help him. She didn’t even know what she would have done, but she was a nurse and a mother herself and the need to make sure that he and his children made it through this was overwhelming, even through her fear.
He dug around in his wrist wires for a few moments before tugging sharply on something like one would a lawnmower ripcord. He hissed audibly through his teeth as energon started to flow freely from the point of contact onto the mounds where it was absorbed. June was horrified, gasping slightly at the shock.
He make a sort of whirring noise, turning his head to her slightly to let her know that he had in fact heard her. He made no effort to move though, and he let the glowing blue liquid seep into the different mounds, feeding them one at a time. After half had been fed he cleared his throat, an odd action for a robot, and told her that she could come out. After all he already knew she was there.
She made no effort to move till he cast an exhausted look in her direction. Recognition flashed in his eyes as he realized he knew her, kidnapped her and her not-boyfriend at one point. He chuckled at this, knowing she was no threat to him and kept feeding.
She stepped up lightly, feeling the waves of heat coming off the mounds much more intensely than the last time she was here. He made no effort to move her, which she found odd. Eventually he spoke up as he stilled the dripping from his wrist, all the children fed. He knew she was alone, and thus was no more a threat to him or the sparklings than a bird might be. She nodded slowly, not entirely understanding but greatly relieved he wasn’t hostile.
He had no reason to be hostile. The war was over, any threats of violence, or actual harm, against her would just draw unneeded attention to him and his brood. He just wanted to raise them in peace, that’s all. She told him he’s a wanted criminal. He said that every one of them is a criminal, they were all at war after all. Criminality just depends on who won in the end.
She told him that there were sick and injured on Cybertron. That there were Cybertronians who needed his help as a doctor. That he would likely be pardoned if he offered his aid.
He told her he was a cosmetic surgeon, and that the Decepticons had run out of true doctors a long time ago. She didn’t know what to do with that information. He could still help. He let out a hollow and deeply unhappy laugh. He couldn’t help. It would be several weeks before he could leave, provided any of his children survived this planet.
They minerals weren’t right. The soil was rich and full of good things, but not the right things, and not the right amounts. The sun cast radiation on them, but not nearly enough, even with the trees cleared out of the way. He didn’t think any of them would make it. But if they did, if they did, he would help them.
She told him he looked like shit. He gave her his first genuine laugh. He had been looking for food. There was no food here. Feeding the kids was making him sick. He showed her his wrist with the rip cord. Showed her where the energon came from. Told her he may starve before they hatch.
She immediately decided that wasn’t going to happen. He laughed again, a genuine fondness for her and her tenacity. He told her it would likely be fine, especially if they kept dying off as quickly as they had been. Then he could leave and go hunt energon properly instead of eating mildly enriched nickel deposits and copper veins.
She asked if she could tell Ratchet and for once true fear crossed his visage. Under no circumstances would he want that to happen. Truly, he had no control over it and if she did decide to tell him there was ultimately nothing Knock Out could do about it. He got as close as she suspected he ever would to begging her not to. He could work it out on his own. It would be fine.
She guessed he was right, ultimately, but she didn’t like it. There was nothing stopping her other than the fact he truly did not want her to, and that he also had not been causing any trouble here. She asked him why the mounds were smashed, he told her the children in them had died. It was to be expected, not even on Cybertron did a whole batch ever live. He didn't expect any of them to live here.
She left after their conversation had drawn to a close, telling him she would return relatively soon. He shrugged, waving her goodbye surprisingly friendly.
--
Ratchet absolutely did not keep track of how much energon they had stored in the base. Maybe at one point he would have cared, but there were such bigger problems at hand that a large cache of energon that only he was getting into for food was hardly worth looking after.
June found sneaking out small portions at a time actually surprisingly easy. What was more difficult was getting them out to Knock Out. The amount she could hold and the amount the average cybertronian drank were drastically different. She knew even a little bit would help though, and took what she could without making a noticeable difference. She figured that technically stealing goods from Autobots to help out an ex-Decepticon wouldn’t look very good on her if she was found out.
--
Knock Out was gone again when she brought the energon a few days later. She was extremely pleased to see a small pile of the unprocessed blue crystals laying near the tree effigy he had made from clearing out the area. Looks like he had some luck after all. She counted the remaining mounds and to her relief, there were still the same amount left. She left the cubes next to his little pile and returned home.
--
Ratchet actually seemed a little better when she returned. They had a nice conversation about her hike and she told him about some mushrooms she saw.
He said he would like to join her sometime soon. He said he missed it. He missed a lot of things. She was glad, truly, but also terrified.
She felt herself fall sick with worry as she went home for the evening.
--
At home, Jack presented her with a scholarship to a very nice college he would be attending in the fall. It was governmental. Full ride. She decided she would ask Fowler about it later, as she had her suspicions. She was proud regardless, and kissed her son on the forehead. She would miss him.
She told him to worry about the rest of highschool first. He still had a month left. She couldn’t believe how fast time flew by.
--
She went back and forth over the next few weeks. She would go other places as well, to try and make sure Ratchet didn’t think she just only liked going to the pacific northwest in that specific spot. Plus she did like the other sights, and it reminded her why she liked doing this in the first place.
Knock Out was getting worse. He was sick, actively. Half starved and too stubborn to find or build some sort of shelter to live under he exposed himself to the chilly air. If he was there when she visited he was always huddled up with his brood, leeching their warmth. She brought him food, not enough to make him healthy by a long shot, but enough that he was grateful for it. She saw him gnaw and gag on the raw crystals, trying to scrape at least something from them.
Bulkhead had taught her a long time ago about their refining process, and the fact they technically didn’t have to refine them. It was just so hard to eat the unrefined crystals that turning them into a liquid was the ideal way to consume them by far. Plus it drew out impurities and toxins that would be harmful to their systems.
Knock Out had no such equipment and beat the crystals on a rock, shattering them till he could pick up the flakes and try to gleam something from them. June could tell it was undignified and embarrassing for him to do so she didn’t comment on it. The state of his finish was humiliating enough, she wouldn’t add more pain to it.
They carried on like this for several weeks.
--
Knock Out only spoke of Breakdown once. June had formed opinions about him based on Bulkhead’s stories, but the soft sad tone Knock Out said he missed him changed her mind a little. She had asked who was the Sire and got the answer she suspected. She didn’t know they were bonded though, apparently very few did. He said Breakdown would have wanted them and that it was a shame he hadn’t even known Knock Out was sparked. They always intended Breakdown to carry, for him to brood, for him to protect the nest. After the war. After things were ok.
--
Ratchet was not there when she went back to the Autobot’s base a few days later. It worried her slightly, but she knew how to activate the groundbridge from seeing Raf do it, and let herself go through. She had Ratchet’s comms and could call for a pick up, she was sure. If nothing else and worse came to worse she could call Fowler and ask for ride home in his helicopter. Maybe she would ask him anyway.
She crested the curve of the clearing to see Ratchet. She clasped her hand over her mouth so as not to make a single sound. He hadn’t been looking at the mounds, of which there were only three left. Instead he was kneeled over Knock Out who was laying on the ground streaked with pale splashes of energon.
Ratchet’s hands were searching over his frame, pausing in places to take pressure readings. He turned to June as if he had known she was there the whole time and surprisingly calmly asked her how long he had been out here.
She told him five weeks, and that the babies were going to be ready soon, maybe ready now.
Knock Out gasped on the ground, his frame shuddering and plates flaring as he slowly brought himself back online. He made no effort to get up and Ratchet placed a heavy foot in the middle of his chest, keeping him there.
June could hear his systems struggling from where she was and knew he wouldn’t be putting up a fight. Knock Out spoke in Neocybex, begging for something and trying to plead with Ratchet. The older doctor simply nodded, taking his foot off the sports car. Knock Out didnt stop begging, rolling to his side to stare pale eyes through Ratchet.
Ratchet however made his way over to the three mounds left, taking a good look at them before digging his hands into one and pulling the dirt away. June yelled, rushing in from her place to try and stop him but halted as soon as ratchet pulled out a tiny white blob. He cleaned it off, brushing away dirt and debris and then gently handed it to Knock Out who had crawled his way over.
The little thing made noises at him while Ratchet unearthed the other two. June could only liken it to a mix of early default computer bings mixed with gentle kitten cooing. She didn’t know what she expected them to look like, human babies maybe, but they were all basically just blobs with little nubs on them. Two were porcelain white, one was a deep burnt orange, much smaller than the other two. Ratchet mentioned offhandedly that one should have cooked a little longer, but it would be alright.
They would have to do something about this. June got the impression that successfully raising Cybertronian children like Knock Out had was some sort of feat based on how Ratchet was reacting. There was a respect there she had not seen from the doctor.
--
They all returned to the Autobot’s base. Knock Out was placed in the medical ward with several IVs and a good pair of stasis cuffs. He fell asleep halfway through Ratchet reading him his rights. The babies pooled themselves up against his neck, chittering and warbling softly at each other.
Ratchet eventually fed them while Knock Out slept, taking the little things one by one to his wrist where they latched onto wires and drank from him. He told June they were drinking more than they should have. They had likely been just as starved as Knock Out.
--
By the next day they already looked more like June was expecting. They had little faces and strong little arms with claws that they used to cling to each other. Ratchet didn’t want her getting close, they were sweltering hot and had the tendency to grab. He didn’t want them burning her.
Knock Out also looked much better. His plating was still awful from weeks in the wild, but his normal deep color was back, and his eyes lit up attentively as he made little chirps to his children. He did not fuss about the stasis cuffs, taking what June said earlier about the potential pardon to heart.
--
Ultra Magnus came later in the day trailed by two bots June had never seen before. While Ultra Magnus entered the medbay to talk with the captive, the other two were left outside. They were both black and white, one looked as though he lived with a perpetual stick up his ass and the other just seemed like a normal guy. They had only a rough grasp on english, apparently not been on Earth enough to truly download a language basis from the internet, just as much as they could gleam from browsing. They communicated fine with June, but she knew there was something more going on when Ultra Magnus stepped out of the medbay. All four of them, Ratchet included, discussed in hushed Neocybex about what would happen. June wished to know desperately, but kept herself in check. It wasn’t her place, no matter how much she wanted it to be.
They left soon after, whole trip taking less than twenty minutes. Ratchet explained to her that when Knock Out was deemed healthy he would go to trial for war crimes. He would be pardoned of war crimes. Then he’ll be expected to work as a doctor. June asked about the children. Ratchet told her they were unprecedented. Children hadn’t been a thing for...years. The fact that they could be born on Earth even with the differences in climate was a huge discovery.
June asked what would happen to them. Ratchet looked at her confusedly, telling her that they would stay with Knock Out, of course. She let out a sigh of relief, glad they wouldn’t be taken.
--
Knock Out stayed there for two weeks. The children grew fast, eventually little spots of plating starting to show on their little soft bodies by the time he said goodbye to June. She wouldn’t say there were friends, not quite, but they were pleasant enough to one another that she did regret seeing him go. He was escorted through the space bridge by the two matching bots she had seen earlier, his kids clinging to his armor seams like little lumps. They coo'd as she waved goodbye.
--
On her next hike, Ratchet came with her.