Work Text:
Today was a pretty calm day, Smokescreen decided. Well, as calm as any day could be in the middle of a war. But, he digresses.
Smokescreen had been playing a three-way game of Lobbing with Bumblebee and Bulkhead, when a blur of red armor barrels into him, leaving Smokescreen no time to react.
The blur, that Smokescreen now realizes is Knockout, sneers at him with a sadistic smile before raising his saw to Smokescreen's chest. As the blade rips apart his armor, Smokescreen tries to scream for the others, but his pleas are drowned out by the saw.
When the pain becomes too much, Smokescreen squeezes his optics shut to try and distance himself from it all. When suddenly, the weight of Knockout pinning him down, and the pain from the saw is gone.
Smokescreen cautiously opens his optics to see the main room of the base and a pissed off Arcee in front of him. No Knockout to be seen.
“Well?” Arcee snaps at him when she sees he's looking at her again.
“Sorry?” Is all Smokescreen can offer her with a slight shrug.
‘What did I do this time to piss her off like this?’ Smokescreen wonders to himself.
“You could have gotten yourself killed! And all you can think to say is a barely believable sorry?!”
Smokescreen tries to listen as Arcee rants at him for being irresponsible but it's hard when he notices Ratchet is staring at him like a cyber-hawk, or whatever the Earth equivalent is, from the otherside of the room.
Noticing that Arcee has finally stopped shouting at him, Smokescreen offers the most sincere apology he can give,
“I really am sorry, Arcee. But, next time, I won't mess up, I promise.”
“Next time?” Dread pools in Smokescreen’s spark at the sudden change in Arcee’s tone. One moment she's pissed off and yelling at him, and in the next, it feels like the temperature in the room dropped 40⁰.
“There will never be a next time, Smokescreen.”
A graying corpse flashes across Smokescreen’s vision but he ignores it in favor of the hurt in his spark. He hopes his optics aren't wet with coolant.
“You have been given chance after chance to prove yourself, and the only thing you succeeded in proving, is that you are a cowardly, failure.”
With that, Arcee stalks away, leaving Smokescreen alone with Ratchet.
‘He probably thinks the same’ Smokescreen’s mind whispers pitifully.
Instead of the harsh reality of agreement from Ratchet, all Smokescreen hears is a quiet, distant sounding,
“Come on. Let's get you checked out.”
As Smokescreen follows Ratchet to the medbay, he can't help but wonder if this is just a courtesy before they throw him off team prime for good.
Forcing himself to focus on the present, Smokescreen sits on the berth Ratchet directs him to without fuss.
Ratchet turns away from him for a moment before asking Smokescreen a question he was sure to never forget, even in death.
“Do you blame yourself?”
The cold, emotionless question crashes over Smokescreen like a tidal wave, pooling unease around him.
A simple, “what?” Is all Smokescreen replies as his body reacts with a panic his processor can't put a memory to.
“Well, it's quite common in this situation for a patient to feel a kind of, guilt.”
Ratchet still won't turn around and look at him, and it makes Smokescreen’s panic grow more and more the longer he can't see the medic's face.
“What situation?”
That question is the only thing keeping Smokescreen from breaking down against the surmounting panic.
Ratchet(?) takes a second to answer, which leaves Smokescreen’s processor crying out in agony as blurry images of a graying corpse flash across his optics.
A sense of failure claws Smokescreen’s spark into a twisted hold, when finally the medic answers his question.
However, the berth Smokescreen had been sitting on suddenly vanishes from underneath him, leaving Smokescreen to crash to the floor with a shout.
When he lands, Smokescreen feels something wet on his right hand and pulls it up to look.
Smokescreen wanted to purge.
There, splattered across his hand was blood, and on the ground where his hand had hit, were the three bodies of Jack, Miko, and, Raf.
When he looks up at Ratchet again, coolant spills down his cheeks as panic and fear cloud every thought he has
The once bright walls of Autobot Outpost Omega One, were now nothing but ashen rubble, the entire base destroyed.
Ratchet himself has a giant hole in his chest where his spark should be. And as he spoke to Smokescreen again, energon spewed from his mouth, splattering across Smokescreen’s chest.
“The ‘accident’. ”
Ratchet’s voice sounds wrong as those two words spew from his energon stained mouth, but Smokescreen can't bring himself to care as he looks out at the carnage of his base. But most importantly, his team.
Bulkhead is a few feet away from him, his arm reached out as if trying to grasp safety. His head is no where to be found.
Next, Smokescreen’s optics find Arcee. She had been torn in half from the rubble, and bled out slowly. Smokescreen can still see the remnants of coolant tears on her face.
Smokescreen wants to look away, or run. But he's frozen where he is and next, his optics find Bumblebee. The scout’s door wings are torn off and the places where his T-cog and voice-box should be are all bloody. Tortured before given the grace of death.
Painfully dragging his optics away from Bumblebee, Smokescreen let's out a sob when he sees the last body.
There, laying on a rubble pile, is his leader, Optimus Prime. The mech’s armor is already almost fully gray, and the matrix lay smashed near his chest. But Smokescreen can still see some light in Optimus’ optics.
Hearing the sob, Optimus’ optics drift towards Smokescreen. Overwhelmed, Smokescreen stands abruptly and starts backing away, still sobbing.
“Smokescreen…” The Prime’s dying voice calls out to him, but it only leaves Smokescreen more terrified.
Optimus continues on, his dying voice no less quieter, the further Smokescreen backs away, seemingly only louder.
“Now, our species is truly lost, because of you.”
<><><>
Smokescreen bolts up from the floor with a gasp. The nightmare still clinging to his spark and processor like glue. He tries to take a breath, and slow his racing spark, but the second Smokescreen tries to breathe, he staggers and collapses into panicked sobs.
The words and images of his nightmare swirl too fast around his processor for Smokescreen to even think of calming down.
What has he done?
<><><>
Ratchet was working the late hours of the Earth night away at the newly built console in the new Autobot base.
He would have been recharging already, but suddenly moving to a new base meant there were lots of files to recover and sort through. Not to mention he had to update the medical logs to account for the newest members of Team Prime and Optimus’ new, upgraded frame.
Taking a moment to roll out his stiff shoulders, Ratchet glanced down out his arm when the small data pad he had installed there began beeping rapidly.
‘Strange,’ Ratchet thought to himself as he tapped on the alert to read what it was urgently saying.
‘Everyone should be recharging by no-’
Ratchet's train of thought and work were suddenly cut off as he bolted from the main room of Hanger E to the back end of the building where the individual living quarters were.
‘Why in the pits is his temperature reading so high?! He hasn't been injured. No illnesses as of late. Fueling sufficiently… WHY?!’
Ratchet's thoughts race by in a blur as he neared the youngest Autobot’s private quarters, wondering what could have possibly happened to Smokescreen to raise his temperature levels to near lethal.
Foregoing politeness, and respect for Smokescreen’s space, Ratchet threw open the door, trying to reach the distressed bot as quickly as possible.
As song as the door was open, Ratchet immediately discovered what was wrong with the poor rookie. There curled into the farthest corner of the room was, a shaking, crying, and hyperventilating Smokescreen, who hadn't even noticed Ratchet yet.
‘A nightmare then.’ Ratchet’s medical coding supplied grimly as he stepped closer to the terrified rookie. ‘And a very bad one at that.’
“Smokescreen,” Ratchet calls out to the younger bot, gently but firmly.
The medic receives no response. Not that he had been expecting one but one could hope
Ratchet is a little lost on what to do. Sure, he's dealt with nightmares before, the weeks following Typer Pax proved that. But the problem here was, that Ratchet didn't know what exactly would help Smokescreen. This was the first time he has ever seen Smokescreen after the events of a nightmare, and he didn't know which calming techniques would work or would make it all worse.
Seeing as Smokescreen was still hyperventilating, Ratchet went for a grounding technique.
Slowly, and making sure to keep his hands in sight, Ratchet reached out to Smokescreen and pulled him from the corner and into his arms, before tightening his hold on the poor bot. In response, Smokescreen flinched but didn't back away or start panicking more. Ratchet took that as a good thing
“Smokescreen, it's Ratchet. I need you to breathe for me, little spark”
“C-cant” Smokescreen’s quiet, shaky voice whispered, as if he was afraid that was the wrong answer.
Ratchet's spark clenched at how broken Smokescreen’s voice sounded. Cocky as he was, Smokescreen was still a youngling, only a little bit older then Bumblebee , but without the same support the scout had.
“Yes, you can, sweet spark. Just follow my lead. In for 4 … hold for 4 … out for 4… and hold for 4.”
Smokescreen tried to follow along with Ratchet's slow, rhythmic counting but he couldn't. Ratchet didn't seem to mind though. He just kept holding Smokescreen, praying him when he caught a breath, and encouraging him further when he didn't. It was… nice having someone care so much.
After Smokescreen finally got his breathing under control and he no longer was hyperventilating, Ratchet asked Smokescreen a question he was hoping not to face.
“Do you want to talk about it, or write it down?”
Ratchet, ever the clever medic, knew that if a bot didn't want to talk about something, they would bottle it up and not heal from it. So he gave them the choice to write about it instead so that bots don't have to carry burdens alone. It was one fo the many things Smokescreen respected about the mech.
Sighing, Smokescreen shifted himself from Ratchet's hold, but stayed close enough so Ratchet could hold his servo to provide comfort. Smokescreen took a second to prepare before he began the twisted tale that was the nightmare he'd just had.
<><><>
“That sounds truly awful Smokescreen, and I am sorry you think that way about everything,” Ratchet stated after Smokescreen finished speaking.
“Hey, it's pretty true though. I rejected becoming a prime and if the forget hadn't fixed Optimus, I would have doomed our race to death without a prime to lead them.” Coolant gathered at the corners of Smokescreen’s optics at the harsh statement he knew was true.
“You're Not the one that rejected becoming a prime. You are the one who saved the last of the Primes and kept the flames of hope alive by yourself. That is not something that should be overlooked.”
Smokescreen began to protest when Ratchet held up the hand currently not holding Smokescreen’s.
“Aht- Aht- Aht-. Let me speak.”
Seeing that Smokescreen wasn't going to speak up again, Ratchet continued,
“Yes, you have made mistakes. But you have learned from all of them and made up for them four times over. You are a valuable asset to this team, and you should never doubt the fact that you always have a spot here with us, no matter what.”
Ratchet sighed before continuing on, “I apologize for ever making you doubt your place in this team, but know that I will help you see that you belong in whatever way you need me to, alright little spark?”
At Smokescreen’s small nod, Ratchet pulled him into another tight embrace.
And for the first time in a while, Smokescreen’s spark didn't feel so heavy anymore