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Deadlock had never felt quite this bad. Though, perhaps feeling bad wasn’t really the way to put it. Feeling bad implied that he was still feeling something, and that was an activity that his frame seemed to have providentially discontinued. Mostly, he just felt like shutting down, and sometimes, he did, for a little while. He knew because each time he saw the horizon, above the jagged reach of debris and corpses, the sun was a little lower. Someone had hit him close to the spark with something heavy and automatic, like a bolter, pitting his chest with a spray of leaking damage. He could still see their optics as they hit their mark: vicious blue in searing pride.
He still walked, for as long as he could, but there was nothing to expect to find. The battlefield had gone quiet, and the sky was clear. And surely, Turmoil had taken a headcount already and gleefully declared that they should hit warp immediately. Nobody would be coming back for him.
He stumbled on a bit of kibble, and as he fell, he thought he saw something waving in the dying light on the horizon: a flap of tent, something else still standing in the aftermath. How a tent might have been placed directly in the middle of the battlefield, Deadlock had no idea. Some people were just idiots.
When he stood, he could not feel his feet much, but he could see it again, more clearly. The squat, rectangular frame of a tent, a Decepticon tent, from the insignia flying high. A Decepticon medical tent… and that was odd… considering that the Decepticons – the Decepticons involved in this battle: Turmoil, Gale, Rubble and the like – usually believed that anyone worth their welds would survive in the first place.
It was like a mirage, and Deadlock stumbled closer. It didn’t disappear.
Before he could get far, his frame seemed to decide it had had enough. He’d gotten to see the tent, and wasn’t that treat enough for him. His body buckled and collapsed. He managed to send out a ping on the emergency frequency. If anyone was in that tent, they would come to him.
The horizon was just a pink line when he came online next, and the air swept through the remains with a chill. His body felt warmer, though, and there were voices above him. Someone was barking instructions.
“–cutting it fragging close!”
Two people were moving him on a stretcher, and he looked up at the dark sky, until it disappeared under the flap of a tent. It was warmer without the wind. They set him down and began work. One of the mechs was obviously a medic, from the way his hands moved in Deadlock’s chest. The other…
“That’s not a soldering iron, give me the soldering iron. It’s the one that looks like a pen. To your right! for frag’s sake,” the medic reached for something and looked down into his chest again, and Deadlock thought he saw a sliver of mean blue.
“I’m doing my best.”
“You’re a terrible nurse. I should have brought the medibots… Don’t sulk, I need that clip– it’s the size of your thumb. Primus, you’re–”
After a quiet moment of pleasant squelching, the questionably trained nurse said, “Appreciate the restraint,” and the medic just grunted.
He shifted positions, and now, Deadlock definitely saw blue, a blue visor over a white mask. He reached for the gun that he kept holstered at his hip, but he couldn’t feel it there. The “nurse” was being instructed to administer something through a tube attached to his arm, and he tried to take it and crush it.
“Look at him,” said the brightly colored nurse, “even in death.”
“He’s not dead yet.”
They worked on him for a while, and he saw their hands trading tools and wicked blue visors glaring down. Warm energon pumped into his lines, and his spark stopped slacking on beats. His ventilations stopped bubbling, and they seemed to come even without his effort, as if something compelled his exhausted frame to act for him.
“Get the pump.” The medic pointed to something. The pump landed next to him and it rumbled. A line went into his chest and swallowed a pink arc. Almost instantly, his spark felt lighter.
“Good.”
“We’re running out of processed,” the nurse said in surprise.
“He’s gonna take a lot.”
They worked more. Deadlock felt– well, he felt, which, while not necessarily welcome, was undeniably, medically an improvement. In the sudden peace, he was aware again of the pain in his upper right jaw, which had started several megacycles ago and never went away.
The medic sealed up his chest. “Okay.” He leaned back for a moment, and the nurse hovered. “Spark’s stable. Can you get ahold of Turmoil?” Deadlock almost laughed. Turmoil was probably already out for drinks with the rest of the crew. He could see their pink and welded forms crushing against the bar.
“Yeah, I just got him. He’s still in the system. Says he’ll send a shuttle if he starts to pull through.”
“Tell him he can send that shuttle now.”
The nurse nodded, and the medic looked down. “I can see the light in your optics. You’re a lucky bastard.” A hand rested on the side of his helm, and Deadlock had the sudden urge to spit on him.
“S–suck…” the rest dropped off, because… probably because of whatever had gone into his arm.
The medic moved away then, down to his lower frame, to what sounded like cutting and welding – and rounds of quiet cursing. He couldn’t tell because the parts kept going numb. A medic that bothered to patch in… that was quality care.
“Give him another bag.”
The nurse attached a pink drip to the line on his arm, and Deadlock watched it hungrily. It trickled painfully slow. They put a blanket over his midriff.
After a while, he became more aware. He shifted onto his elbows, jostling the lines that dropped off of the cot, running from his frame.
“Welcome back,” the red and white medic – the medic – glanced up from his calf, where he was attended by his… Deadlock had to look a little longer to make it register – his atrociously flame colored nurse.
Deadlock had never seen a military field-nurse in flaming red and orange, but evidently, this was what it was like. He had the same blue visor and white mask as the medic, but both of them fit as if there were a faceplate underneath. It was unnerving.
“Looking alive,” said the nurse.
Deadlock looked around. The tent was only a few alts across, and poorly equipped, just a crate and the supplies by the bed. A yellow briefcase stood oddly beside the supply box.
“Who are you?” The question almost summoned itself.
“We’re medics,” and the orange mech gestured to the purple badge on his chest, as if Deadlock had asked. It was the Decepticon badge… if slightly lopsided, crooked to one side.
“I’m a medic,” said the medic. “This is my assistant, Flare.”
“Yeah, I’m a nurse,” said Flare, bracing himself as if this were exciting and new.
“And you…?”
“Spanner,” said the medic.
Deadlock eyed him. Definitely an ambulance. He hadn’t seen one of those in a while. “Who do you work for?”
The medic did not miss a beat. “Gale sent us down, to pick up stragglers. That’s why we’re a little short on supplies.”
Deadlock looked around again, at the barren tent and the conspicuous lack of other cots or other mechs on the floor. “Little short on stragglers.”
“Little short on survivors,” snapped the medic– ostensibly Spanner.
Deadlock didn’t know Gale… not well. Not well enough to know whether or not she was likely to send down a recovery medical team. And then allow them to treat only him. He supposed he ought not to look too much into it, though. He would find out eventually anyway.
“Thank you,” always best to be polite to medics. He looked at the monitor beside the cot – oddly high tech for such a spartan operation.
“Sure thing. Your spark is still under a lot of strain, but you’re out of the danger zone, and you should make a full recovery at this point – as much as you can,” he was referring to Deadlock’s persisting spark damage, a holdover from another life. “Turmoil’s still not out of the system. He said he’d send a shuttle back once we were sure you were going to make it.” Deadlock tried not to smile at the thought. Turmoil getting the bad news.
“He is a great leader,” he heard himself say, with perhaps too much cheer or solemnity.
“What a guy,” said the nurse, immediately, and leaned in to adjust the blanket, which had slipped down. “How are you feeling?”
Deadlock had never been asked this on the battlefield before. He stared. He felt awful, of course; he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t. “Miserable. Move your hand.”
Flare turned to the medic, “He’s so dark and moody.” Something about it seemed unflattering.
“Do you mind if I shoot your nurse?” he growled, reaching for his gun, but the medic shifted his knee and he yelped when a sharp pain shot up his leg.
“I need him, otherwise I would have done it myself by now.”
The nurse scoffed. Then he said, to Deadlock, “We took your gun.”
Deadlock looked instantly at him.
“You can have it back after the surgery,” said the medic. “If you’re good.” Deadlock didn’t know what to say to this, so he said nothing.
There was a little while filled with the clicking of tools and Deadlock watching the orange nurse and the working ambulance. Even in the shoddy light that hung from the tent, he looked good. All smooth curves and hard angles, chunky in the right places. Nice and glossy.
“Where does a mech get a finish like that in the middle of a war?”
“Flare.” The medic ignored him. “Flare.”
“Hmn?”
“There’s a little, silver case in the supply crate. Bring it to me.” He finished up with Deadlock’s leg and walked back to the head of the table. “You’re going to hate this.” A deft hand took his cheek guard, roughly.
He let it tip him back; he had an extra weapon in his subspace. “How can you be so sure?”
The nurse set the case down beside him and popped it open. “Instruments of torture,” he observed mildly.
“Instruments of dental work,” snapped the medic, and Deadlock cringed, drawing away from his hand. He looked around the empty tent.
“Be the first time I ever had battlefield dental work, doc.” He swung his leg over the side of the cot, but the nurse put it back on, and the medic was forcing him back down.
“Well, congratulations,” the medic snapped. “This will be your first. When you talk it reeks of rust,” Deadlock closed his mouth, “I can see the problem from here, and we have plenty of time for nonessential procedures while we wait for the shuttle. R– Flare, sit on him, gently.”
Deadlock was going to do something heroic and vicious, like get up, but once Flare had hands on his arms, there was nothing he could do. Spanner weighed on his forehelm with a hand, and he’d barely had time to envision the two of them revealing their Autobot badges and proceeding to cut out his tongue and stuff it down his throat when Spanner was pulling the drill back out of his mouth and declaring, “You’re gonna need a new set at some point, but I’ll fill it for now and it’ll hold.” He wrinkled his nose at the acrid taste of the anti-rust that went on before the fill.
“Good,” said Spanner.
Deadlock leaned over and spat on the floor, and Flare seemed to find this cause for great excitement. When he rolled over, Spanner unceremoniously shoved a piece of absorbent into his mouth and said, “Here, use this.”
Then, he disappeared, blessedly, and Deadlock spat out the mesh and said to Flare, “Your boss should have his chips checked.”
“Don’t I know it.” He leaned over, so that Deadlock had to shove him away. “How are you feeling? Better?”
It was the same question. “Like trash,” Deadlock snarled.
“Ahh,” he almost cheered. Then he said, as if he felt he ought to qualify his merriment, “That’s great.”
Spanner returned, and Deadlock shrank away from his hands this time. “Have you had updates for seam lock recently?”
Seam lock had been eradicated before the war, “I doubt it’s making a comeback,” he spat. There was something in Spanner’s hand that looked unfortunately like a nanite injector, and Deadlock wanted the shuttle to land right now, directly on top of the tent, crushing them both.
“Well, you never know.” Before he could protest, or even decide what was happening, the medic jabbed him. “Just in case someone unearths it in the next ten to twenty or thirteen vorns.”
Deadlock stared at him, and Flare seemed to find it appropriate to add, “Yeah, just in case.”
They were mad.
“I’m giving you cosmic rust, delamination and cross-wire, too. I’ve updated all of your systems to the current standard.”
“I have the current standard,” Deadlock managed.
Spanner looked down, cold nothing in that blue band. “Then you probably won’t develop a reaction.”
“I don’t understand?” He didn’t.
“Say something mean,” said Flare.
“What?”
And now, Spanner was looking at him and Deadlock very desperately wanted not to make optic contact. If he’d had to guess at what was going on in that deranged red and white bombshell, he wanted to be so uninformed that he flubbed it. It didn't matter anyway, though, because Spanner seemed unable to restrain himself, reaching abruptly and gruffly for his frame. “I’m going to fix his tire pressure.”
“Don’t you think you should give it a rest?” Flare watched him proceed toward the storage, mystified.
“Yeah, I think we should give it a rest,” said Deadlock.
“I’m the doctor,” snapped Spanner.
This seemed to satisfy Flare, and he turned cheerfully to Deadlock again while he helped pin him down. “On a scale of one to ten, what would you rate me?”
Deadlock said nothing because he hoped that the question would find itself inappropriate and fizzle out.
“I need you to tell me this.”
Spanner was busy with his tires. “He could do with a better finish too… might keep the rust at bay.” Deadlock received a withering look, even through the visor. “Since he can’t seem to do it himself.”
He couldn’t see what Spanner was doing past Flare. “Your medical service?” he asked.
“No, my frame.” He seemed put out, but Deadlock couldn’t tell beyond the mask. “I’ll make it easy: in your honest opinion, would you hit it or no? Like if we weren’t friends and we met in a bar.”
“No,” said Deadlock, craning to see anything else in the room. Spanner was on the return with a small cannister in his hand. They weren’t seriously going to put a finish on him? He’d be the laughing stock of the ship if he returned from the battlefield looking like he’d come from the spa. What kind of a circus tent was this?
“Okay.” Flare was trying to get his attention again, and Spanner was trying to get Flare to help him with the finish. “But would you hit it if you could see my face?”
“No,” said Deadlock.
“Okay… but if you–”
“Take the rag, put it on the mech.” Spanner shoved a cloth into Flare’s visor.
“He’s not my conjunx!” snapped Flare.
Oh, they were really going to do it. It was at that moment, just as the nearest rag approached his cheek guard, in a beautiful, glorious blessing from above, that a message arrived for Deadlock.
Heard you're online, requesting location.
Deadlock sent it. “They’re here!” They both let him scramble up. He stumbled out of the tent, into the wonderfully chilly dark windy night, just in time to see the lights of the shuttle on approach.
When he turned they were standing together, in their matching masks, and there was something about them that way that almost seemed familiar, although he knew he’d never met them before – he would have remembered. “My guns?”
Spanner grunted, as if he disapproved – as if he had any right to. He disappeared into the tent as the shuttle touched down. Formalities were short once he had his weapons back, and just as quickly, he was on his way back to Turmoil’s ship, through the upper atmosphere and out into warp. They didn’t stop to pick up anyone else.
Turmoil greeted him under the dark steel dome of the landing bay, looking glum. And he looked even glummer when he saw Deadlock’s whole, undamaged form, standing upright on his own two pedes. “I really thought you’d had it,” was all he said.
Deadlock beamed at him. He almost went in for a hug, but he wanted to keep his repairs. “Not to worry, Gale has extremely thorough medics. I’m sure I’ll be fighting fit for vorns to come.” He patted Turmoil and shook him roughly on the shoulder and he thought maybe Turmoil sniffled a little in anger.
As he made his way back to his quarters he almost felt grateful toward Spanner and Flare, or he would have if it hadn’t been for their appalling and downright disturbing bedside manner. And their weird little tent. But it was over now. And now, he could rest well in the knowledge that he was on a warship traveling at unprecedented speeds through outer space and they were on a little, crummy planet, already of no consequence anymore, lightyears and lightyears behind him.