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Cliffjumper couldn’t stop fidgeting.
Pedes shifting, scraping against the floor; fingers tapping, rubbing at his armor; optics constantly flicking towards the door at the end of the hall and away again.
He couldn’t get the image out of his head.
Torn, twisted, broken yellow plating, oil and energon smeared everywhere
Over three whole cycles since Cliff found his friend, got the other scout back to a field outpost in time to save his life. Another one and a half since they and the rest of their division successfully pulled back to a proper Autobot base, with a medical bay actually worthy of the name. Six joor since the repairs that went beyond ‘keep his spark, fuel pump, and processor functioning’ got underway.
And still, every time Cliffjumper let his focus waver, even for a nanosecond, the memory of finding Bumblebee clawed its way front and center.
So he fidgeted, attention locked onto each miniscule motion and sound.
Until the door to the surgery suite slid open.
Cliffjumper jumped.
It slid shut right away again, preventing him from getting a glimpse - not that there would have been anything to see, anyway, there was still a scrub-down room in-between him and the operating space - but the medic who’d been handling Bee for the past three cycles came through, came down the corridor towards Cliffjumper’s bench.
“Doc?” He asked, wary.
The mech looked up with a frown, which only deepened when he clearly recognized Cliff. “I thought I told you to go get some recharge.”
And let the nightmares work their magic? No thanks. “I did. Some.”
“Hrmph.” Obviously, the medic didn’t buy it, but he didn’t call Cliff out either. “He won’t be coming out of stasis for some time yet.”
“But he’s okay?”
Emotion flickered across the medic’s faceplate, faster than Cliffjumper could name. “Tubing, cables, and armor have all been repaired or replaced. Minor interior damage will need a little more time for his self-repair nanites to handle, but a few cycles of berthrest should take care of that just fine.”
“And- his voicebox?”
For a long moment, the bigger mech hesitated. “...a temporary placeholder. When I get ahold of more sophisticated equipment, I’ll be able to fabricate a better substitute for him.”
Cliffjumper’s spark skipped.
‘Sophisticated’ equipment didn’t exactly make the rounds on the black market, this far into the war. ‘Sophisitcated’ gave the impression Doc-bot would need hospital-grade stuff, and those just flat out didn’t exist anymore.
But- but Iacon still stood. Iacon still had a bunch of things one couldn’t find in any other Autobot bases or ruined cities. Maybe whatever the medic needed could still be found there.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Blue optics weakly flickered, and sparks flew from a hole ripped right into Bee’s neck, and Cliff just went on telling him “It’s okay, you’re gonna be fine, just hold on a bit longer and everything will be fine-”
Frag Megatron to the deepest layers of the Pit.
“Can- can I sit with him?” Cliffjumper asked, his own voice choked.
The medic hesitated again. But he didn’t tell Cliff to go get more recharge, or remind him Bumblebee wouldn’t be waking up any time soon. Instead, he sighed, and pulled out a datapad. A moment later Cliff received a ping, an update to his security clearances: permission to be present in certain areas of the medbay, signed with the doc’s ID glyph.
“Thank you, Ratchet.”
Grumbling, the mech waved him on towards the door. “Don’t get used to it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take my report to Prime...”
Cliffjumper winced even as he hurried away. Everyone and their twin in his division knew Bumblebee had Optimus Prime’s personal favor, whether the big guy acknowledged it or not. Their supervisor tried to cite that as a good excuse to put Bee on one of the outer patrol routes around Tyger Pax, five cycles before.
Instead, the kid argued his way into one of the main routes instead - one of the those they meant to use as a distraction, keeping Decepticon attention away from where the Allspark was actually going in the Prime’s own trailer. “They know I’m close to Optimus,” Bee had said flat out. “I’m the best chance we have at pulling a fast one on the Cons.”
And it worked.
Too well.
Ratchet’s authorization got Cliffjumper through three sets of doors to the recovery room where Bumblebee rested in stasis. He grabbed the chair on the far side of the berth, and brought it around to a spot where he could keep Bee and the door both in his field of vision at once. And there Cliff sat, keeping watch. Waiting for his friend to wake.
Waiting to say I’m sorry.
It should have been me.