Work Text:
Time is weird. Even from a linear, subjective viewpoint, it can seem to speed up or slow down according to one’s state of mind. For Glitch, as the Decepticon who had swooped down out of apparently nowhere nanokliks before raised one of a matched pair of swords to strike at her partner, it slowed until she might as well have been moving through tar as her processor accelerated even further, assessing the situation and computing the best course of action. Which would have been more useful if the ‘Con’s other sword hadn’t been pinning her to a wall. That hurt.
It had all happened so fast. A couple of cycles before, she and Bumblebee had been returning home from a date – an outdoor screening of a classic sci-fi comedy– having chosen to walk and discuss the vid on the way, in relative privacy. Then a flicker of movement had caught her optic, and she had instinctively stopped and stepped in front of Bee, which was why she was the one with a sharp piece of metal through her chest and he was still free, aiming his stingers at their assailant. Too slowly. She could see it as clearly as she had Men in Black earlier that evening. Even Bee’s battle-grade stingers wouldn’t halt the sword’s downward trajectory, and the impact would kill him almost instantly. Not an option.
What options did she have? Her left arm was completely unresponsive, so her EMP generator was off the table. Right magnet – no, there was too much circuitry damage. She couldn’t create a strong enough field without burning out too many components. The pain in her chest, too intense to be tuned out, made it impossible for her to form a complete sentence, let alone actually say it, in time, so diplomacy was contra-indicated. Could she free herself from the wall and knock the Decepticon – a female clone of Starscream with a rather nice purple and turquoise colour scheme – out of the way? Yes, but it was risky.
Two choices, then. She ran a quick comparative analysis. Option A: do nothing. Probability of own survival: slim but nonzero; dependent on medical attention being received and lack of further injury. Probability of partner’s survival: effectively nil. Option B: use own weight to remove self from wall and displace attacker. Probability of own survival: reduced, but still nonzero. Probability of partner’s survival: fair to good, depending on attacker’s combat ability. Conclusion: Option B superior.
She wasted no time before putting theory into practice, pushing away from the wall with her right stabilising servo and leaning forward as far as she could, deliberately impaling herself further on the sword. It was blessedly sharp, allowing her chestplate to reach the crossguard – which very much was not – and thus giving her the leverage she needed to detach herself and the blade, falling forwards and sending the ‘Con sprawling as the tiny Autobot crashed into her legs. Her inessential energy expended, all Glitch could do from then on was roll onto her back and lie there, spreadeagled, gazing at now-familiar stars and drinking in the sound of her Bee alive and still fighting.
***
We’re slagged, Bumblebee thought. Again. The moment Glitch was hit, he readied his stingers for a counterattack, but more in the hope of going down swinging than because he thought they’d do any good. He recognised the Decepticon – the female Starscream, the smart one who’d cuffed Bulkhead back in the mine, evaded even Lockdown and blasted Prime out of the sky on his second test flight with his jetpack. Maybe his now-battle-grade weapons would do some good that time around, but he didn’t need Glitch to tell him she’d probably offline him anyway, given how close that sword was. (How had she even got hold of those?)
Then she staggered sideways and fell, the sword falling harmlessly away with her, tackled down by the ‘bot she’d just stabbed. The ‘Con started to struggle to her servos right away; the field-tech didn’t. Which was why Bumblebee’s realisation that he wasn’t about to join the Well of All Sparks was almost immediately followed by rage, and for a few nanokliks he literally saw red.
The clone wasn’t used to fighting Autobots who fired first, and it showed. Rather than use her cannons against the furious mech as he stung her again and again, she retreated, even abandoning her swords as she took to the skies once more. Bumblebee was about to call Prime and let him know she was on the loose when he saw Glitch properly for the first time since the fight had begun. She was still alive, her bronze shell as bright as ever and her dark blue optics still open, but that fragging sword was still stuck through her and the wound was sparking a lot. Cradling her with one arm, he called the other doc-‘bot. “Ratchet, it’s Bumblebee. Glitch is hurt. It’s really bad. I don’t know how she’s still online. She needs help, right now.” He was aware he sounded panicky, but that was how he felt.
“Slow down a bit, kid.” Ratchet’s engine was already audible; he must have transformed the moment he heard his padawan needed him. “Where are you?” Bumblebee told him, and Ratchet gave him an ETA. “How bad are we talking here?”
“A ‘Con’s sword right through her chest. I can’t see any Energon, but there’s a lot of sparks.”
“OK, I can handle that. If she’s awake, keep her calm and try and take her mind off what’s happening. She’s a good medibot, so that won’t be easy, but you might as well try. And whatever you do, don’t touch that sword ‘til I get there. It’s scrambling her circuits, but it’s also completing them. I’ll be as quick as I can.” He would be, Bumblebee knew. The traffic was pretty light at that time of night and it sounded as though the doc-‘bot had his siren on.
“Ratchet’s on his way,” Bumblebee assured Glitch once he’d hung up. “He’ll fix you up, no problem. Slag, he fixed me after Sari stabbed me in the chest and blasted me with Allspark energy. Just – hang on ‘til he gets here, OK?”
“I’ll give it my best shot.” Glitch’s voice was little more than a whisper, but it was still the same one that had drawn him to her in the first place, before they even had names. Future-Wasp had just insulted him and future-Bulkhead in the space of two sentences, and a soft, silvery voice from behind him had spoken up, telling the bully that that wasn’t kind. The gentleness and – there was no other word for it – love in that voice had left him speechless even before he turned to see a slender bronze fembot with a smile even more beautiful than the rest of her face. Wasp hadn’t been affected by it; he’d rudely told her to stay out of this, princess. Her only response had been a hurt look in her optics that Bumblebee had never wanted to see again. It was so wrong on her.
He hadn’t mentioned that to her or anyone else, of course, not at the time. The Elite Guard had to come first, as did her dreams of becoming a field-tech, even if she ever looked at him twice. It had been the most pleasant surprise of his life to discover, centuries later, that she felt the same way. So strongly that she was ready to give up her spark for him.
“Why’d you do a stupid thing like that?” he asked, forgetting Ratchet’s advice. He couldn’t think of anything else to talk about. “You’re supposed to be the smart one.”
“It was logical,” was all she would – could? – say.
“Don’t go there. Don’t you dare go there.” The second Star Trek vid had been chosen for the previous movie night at the Plant, and if ‘bots could cry, the whole team would have been in floods by the end. (Elita had cried, but everyone had pretended not to notice.) By unanimous consent, they had watched the third one straight afterwards; it wasn’t as good, but “Your name is Jim” had drawn resounding cheers from the entire assembly. Prime had somehow managed to exercise some control at that point, leaving the next vid for another time. That gave Bumblebee an idea. “You’ve got to stay alive. You haven’t seen the fourth one yet. That’s supposed to be the best.”
“Saving the whales.” Glitch managed a smile. She’d done her homework already, then. “I’m not planning on dying. I’ve got too much left to learn, and to do.”
Bumblebee was sorely tempted to say that he wanted them both to learn about being conjunxes, but realised in time that that was a bad idea. Big decisions like that shouldn’t be made under stress – and one person almost sparking out in the other’s arms was a definition of stress. Though it was what he wanted, eventually. More times than he could remember in the months they’d been together, when she was rambling about something or other or working in her lab or on Moth or just laughing at one of his jokes, he’d caught himself thinking I could listen to her, watch her, forever. And sometimes, when he was beating her at a video game or telling a story or generally messing about, he thought she felt the same way. But he was just mature enough to know that they were too young to make a commitment that could last millions of years. (The Bumblebee who first crashed on Earth wouldn’t have known that.) Assuming she even lived through the night.
He cast about for another topic of conversation, and found one not too far off, only tangentially related to recent events. “Hey, has anyone told you about when Prime first got that jetpack?”
“No. But I’d like to hear it.” She listened attentively, laughing in all the right places, as Bumblebee told her about their CO’s first, disastrous flight, Sari knowing how to fix the jetpack just by touching it (irritating Ratchet), Boss-‘Bot’s pure joy when they finally got it to work – and his annoyance when he returned after his run-in with the female Starscream, dripping wet. (She was trying to keep her optics on him even more than usual, he couldn’t help but notice. Looking at him as long as possible? No, he couldn’t think like that.)
Just as he finished the story, Ratchet arrived, transforming even before he’d finished braking. He must have had his siren and lights on (blues and twos, it was apparently called in England) the whole way. The moment she saw him, Glitch seemed to flip into field-tech mode – even though, in that case, she was also the patient. But she kept quiet while the senior medibot made his own assessment of her condition.
“What have you been doing to yourself?” Ratchet shook his head as he scanned his padawan, her sparkbeat appearing on his windscreen. Even Bumblebee could tell it wasn’t right. Each pulse was a little smaller than the one before, the shape seemed off, and the intervals between beats weren’t quite regular. His own spark hummed with fear as he realised again that she was dying.
“A Decepticon did the initial damage,” she told her mentor. “The female Starscream. I had to make it worse to protect Bee.” Her tone was neutral, clinical. As though she were discussing a stranger.
“’Course you did,” Ratchet sighed. “You were lucky not to damage your spark or cut an Energon line. As it is, once this sword’s out I’m going to have to work fast, and I’ll need you to work with me. Can you use your mods?”
“Not the ones in my left arm. Right-arm ones, low power only.”
“That’ll do. Just activate them when I say. I’ll guide your servo. Now, first things first – the sword needs to come out, and it’ll hurt. I can’t use an EMP so close to your spark, but I can put you out for a cycle or two-,”
“No!” Glitch actually shied away from her teacher, clinging to Bumblebee, for a few moments before she got hold of herself. “No, I’ll be fine. Just get on with it.” Both males knew she hated having her processor messed about with, even by someone she trusted. That was why she had dealt so harshly with a ‘Con hypnotist on her first proper mission. Ratchet gave in, telling Bumblebee to lay her down on the ground and hold her shoulders while he pulled the blade out.
Bumblebee was never sure afterwards which was worse – the scraping sound of metal on metal as the sword was extracted, or the scream Glitch tried so hard to hold back, her dentas actually leaving marks below her mouth. Both seemed to go on for megacycles, not nanokliks. But they were over eventually, and Ratchet became a living whirlwind, using tool after tool – including Glitch’s magnet and scalpel – to try to stabilise his patient, her sparkbeat stubbornly growing weaker and less regular.
“Bee…” Glitch’s voice was barely audible as her servo found her partner’s. “I’m scared.” He knew – they all knew – that she was often scared, though she had found better coping mechanisms for what humans called clinical anxiety since moving to Earth. But she rarely admitted it.
“You don’t have to be,” Bumblebee tried to reassure her. “Ratchet’s got your backplate, same as always. And I’m right here with you. We won’t let you go anywhere.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” she reminded him. “But thank you.”
“I know,” he confessed. “I’m scared, too. I don’t want to lose you.” Not so soon after Prowl, not ever. “We can be scared together. Does that help?”
“A bit.” Not enough. Calm her down, Ratchet mouthed, out of her sightline. I know it’s hard, but it might save her life.
Calm her down, when she had circuitry damage so bad Ratchet looked as though he wished they still had the Allspark Key. (Bumblebee hadn’t seen the doc-‘bot so frantic since their first real day on Earth, when Prowl was on the repair table.) That was a tall order for a small mech. But Bee had had a processor-wave. Glitch’s perennial musical obsession, and a karaoke night staple. Hamilton.
“There’s nothing like summer in the city,” he began, earning himself an odd look from Ratchet, “someone in a rush next to someone looking pretty. Excuse me, miss, I know it’s not funny but your perfume smells like your daddy’s got money. Why you slummin’ in the city in your fancy heels? You searchin’ for an urchin who can give you ideals?”
“Burr, you disgust me.” Angelica’s next line, right on cue. Glitch had ceded that part to Elita decacycles before, but still knew it by spark.
“Ah, so you’ve discussed me.” Bumblebee found himself grinning in spite of the grim situation. “I’m a trust fund, baby, you can trust me.”
He’d chosen well; “The Schuyler Sisters” was one of Angelica’s big numbers, and the most fun to sing. As Glitch launched into the next verse, her voice grew a little louder with each line, and her sparkbeat began to stabilise.
I’ve been reading “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine,
So men say that I’m intense or I’m insane,
You want a revolution? I want a revelation,
So listen to my declaration…
As the song drew to an end, Bumblebee decided to steer the impromptu recital away from “Farmer Refuted” (a good duet, but too intricate to cope with at that time of night) and towards Eliza’s showcase, “Helpless” – though he started in the middle of the previous number. “1780, a winter’s ball and the Schuyler sisters are the envy of all. Yo, if you can marry a sister, you’re rich, son.”
“Is it a question of if, Burr, or which one?” Glitch’s familiar mischievous grin eased Bumblebee’s spark as she went along with his plan. She’d be all right. Ratchet was still working on her, but nobody who could hit those high notes could be on the edge of the Well, surely.
“Boy, you got me helpless…” Gazing into her partner’s optics, Glitch seemed to mean the words even more than usual. So did he. “I look into your eyes and the sky’s the limit; I’m helpless…”
Bumblebee would swear he heard Ratchet humming along by the end of the half-solo, half-duet. The doc-‘bot certainly waited until it was over to say, “OK, you’re stable enough for transport now, but I’m going to have to finish this off at the Plant. And I’d prefer it if you weren’t conscious for the journey.” He was careful to present sedation as an option, not an order she would feel obliged to follow.
“All right.” Glitch seemed able to put up with anaesthesia when there was a good chance she’d wake up again, but Bumblebee’s fuel tank turned a couple of somersaults when Ratchet’s EMP hit her and she went limp in his arms. He gently loaded her into the back of Ratchet’s vehicle mode, then transformed and drove off after the ambulance, heading back home at last.
***
Optimus hated feeling helpless. He always had, even before Archa-7, though that had made things much worse. In every crisis, he needed to be doing something, even if that ended up being something as stupid as tackling a Decepticon by himself. Technically, waiting behind at the Plant as a point of contact for his scattered team was doing something, but that wasn’t how it felt.
He was starting to understand why Bumblebee hated monitor duty so much.
The panicking young mech had called the whole team, not just Ratchet, by mistake, so they all knew what had happened. Ratchet had left the building before Bumblebee could get three sentences out, and Elita and Jazz had gone Decepticon-hunting the moment they had a last known location. They’d needed someone to coordinate everybot else and keep an eye on the scanners, and Optimus was more conspicuous than Elita and not trained in stealth like Jazz, so that job had fallen to him. He was doing his best to put up with it, and not think too much about the reason for the state of emergency.
Easier said than done. Ratchet had reported that Glitch was stable, but stable covered a multitude of sins – anything from fixed to hanging on by a wire. He’d also identified the attacker – the female Starscream clone (known as Slipstream, according to Elita, who as Blackarachnia had had access to Decepticon communications up until the transwarp explosion that had sent her to a distant planet). Not her again. Oh well; with a cyber-ninja and a very annoyed ex-‘Con on her tail fin, she might not escape that time.
Just then, Ratchet and Bumblebee drove straight into the Plant, the ambulance’s lights still flashing and the little yellow car practically tailgating it. Optimus stayed out of sight as Bumblebee transformed and lifted Glitch (unconscious and looking even smaller than usual) out of the back of Ratchet’s vehicle mode, racing off towards the med-bay with her even before Ratchet switched back to robot mode to follow him. Bumblebee was clearly upset and agitated, and Ratchet was as tense as Optimus had ever seen him; best to leave them be.
In theory, they should be used to injuries by then. Apart from Ratchet, every one of the original team, including Prowl and even Sari, had ended up on the repair table at some point. Heck, Optimus himself had died at the end of their first battle with Starscream, and only Sari and the Allspark had saved him. But it seemed different that time. Probably because it was Glitch’s turn. Optimus knew intellectually that she was a competent fighter with multiple ‘Con captures to her name, both joint and solo, but he couldn’t help but feel protective of her.
He wasn’t the only one. She and Bumblebee were a formidable combination in the field, communicating almost telepathically, always covering one another’s backs. They could be almost too defensive of each other at times; it had been more than a little unsettling, the previous decacycle, when Glitch had crushed a squad of hijacked police drones that dared to go near her Bee, and he had returned the favour with enthusiasm. But, by and large, they were living proof that romantic relationships within a team weren’t always as bad an idea as the official guidelines claimed. Even if he tended to enable her about as much as she grounded him. They were one of the best-suited couples he knew, and the rest of the team had a secret betting pool running on when they would actually get bonded and which one would ask first.
Glitch’s presence was good for all of them, Optimus reflected. She brought out a softer, gentler side to Ratchet that not even Sari could usually unlock. The cynical veteran had been sighted smiling and even laughing with his young padawan while they were working on their ship or on some other project, and Optimus had overheard (and tried to forget) him comforting her after what had sounded like a panic attack. Jazz was always hard to read, but Optimus thought he liked having her as a pupil – one who was less of a servoful than the Jet twins – and having just enough of a reminder of his lost friend Prowl, whose bodyform, sometimes-solitary nature and fascination with the world around them she shared. And as well as their regular, rambling conversations about everything under any sun, and the sorely needed joy she had brought to the battle-weary team, Optimus was enjoying watching her grow and flourish away from demanding, restrictive Cybertron society. Watching her gain confidence as well as skills, learning to stop pretending to be somebot she wasn’t and just be herself, to take off the invisible mask she wore around strangers when she was with her team. He’d had to learn a fair bit himself – to be patient when she just couldn’t find the words she wanted, much to her own frustration, to interpret her more unusual speech patterns, that she tended to find somewhere to hide – often under the repair table – when she got overwhelmed, and more. But her contributions to the team were worth the effort. And she brought Elita back. That alone would have earned his undying gratitude.
Speak of the spider… Elita chose that moment to scuttle in, still in arachnid mode, a cocooned Slipstream clamped firmly between her mandibles. The clone was still moving; for once, Optimus wished the techno-organic still had her cybervenom. Ratchet and Glitch had managed to reconstruct her front legs, returning her downloading power, but the organs that produced and carried the venom hadn’t grown back yet. She didn’t seem to have needed it, though. Slipstream looked rather the worse for wear. Optimus recognised electrical burns from Bumblebee’s stingers, puncture wounds from Elita’s inbuilt weapons and scorch marks that pointed to Dinobot involvement. Swoop, most likely. The Dinobots had a… complicated… relationship with “Spider-Lady”, but “Cycle-Lady” was under their protection as well.
Elita carried her captive down to the Plant’s makeshift holding cells, once Soundwave’s lab, then returned, back in biped mode. “Any news?”
“Ratchet brought her in not long ago. He and Bumblebee took her straight to med-bay. I didn’t want to get in their way, but I think her chances are good. By the way, have you told Jazz he can stand down?” Optimus hadn’t heard from the cyber-ninja since he left, but that wasn’t unusual.
“I forgot. I’m still getting the hang of being part of a team.” Even as Blackarachnia, she had always had her own agenda, and had abandoned the bickering Decepticons as soon as it suited her.
“You’re getting better,” Optimus assured her. “You should’ve seen what Prowl was like when he first joined us. It wasn’t until our first battle with Starscream that he actually started working with us, not just alongside.” Smiling slightly at the memory, Optimus called Jazz to let him know Slipstream was in custody and Glitch was back at the Plant, but still being treated.
The cyber-ninja joined them shortly afterwards, having collected Slipstream’s swords (Megatron’s spares, taken from the wreck of the Nemesis, Elita thought) and the three (two and a half?) ‘bots waited together in concerned silence for what felt like megacycles, or perhaps solar-cycles, until Ratchet returned. At first, when Optimus heard his mentor’s slow, deliberate servo-steps in the corridor his processor jumped to the worst conclusions, as Glitch had once let slip hers often did. Was she dead, dying, crippled for life? Was it his fault, for not taking better care of one of his mechs? Should he have insisted that she take her shield with her? (Though who took combat mods on a date?) But when Ratchet actually appeared in the doorway, he was smiling – not much, but enough.
“She’s going to be all right.” The verbal confirmation calmed Optimus’ humming spark and racing mind even further. “Physically, at least. It was touch and go for a while, but she’ll make a full recovery, if she can be persuaded to take it easy for the next decacycle or two. I swear, that kid thinks light duties means fixing the lighting circuits.” Optimus knew exactly what he meant. He’d had to order her to get some stasis more than once.
“Bumblebee?” Jazz asked.
“For someone whose girlfriend nearly sparked out in front of him saving his life, he’s fine. I’m pretty sure he pulled her back from the edge of the Well of All Sparks by himself at least once. They’re both in stasis; they needed it, ‘specially her.”
“Can we see her?” Elita was still having difficulty trusting, let alone cooperating with, most of the team, but not Glitch. The field-tech had saved her life, given her sanctuary and offered to stand up for her as and when Sentinel found out she was back on Earth; she had earned not just the ex-Decepticon’s trust, but her affection as well.
“If you’re quiet.” Ratchet led the way back to the med-bay, where Glitch was still on the repair table, her optics still closed, but her sparkbeat on the monitor strong and steady. She was going to be fine. Optimus couldn’t see the injury, because Bumblebee was in the way. He was curled up next to her on the table, his head on her chestplate, over the spark that had so nearly been extinguished forever. It would have been without him, Optimus suspected. The next couple of decacycles weren’t going to be easy; the smaller mech had no real off switch, in or out of the field, and persuading her to slow down would be a challenge. And as he knew all too well, the experiences of that night were likely to linger in the processors and sparks of both young ‘bots. They’d both need a friendly audial at times. But they’d have the rest of the team around them, and while they stuck together, none of them would ever be truly helpless.