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Knock Out had been left standing by the ground-bridge waiting for Breakdown for much longer than his sanity allowed. Even when it had been Dreadwing—who had walked through that damning green vortex alone, and who had placed a hand sorrowfully on Knock Out’s shoulder, nodding sorrowfully, whispering a by-the-book apology, and walking away—he still stood in the doorframe.
He still stood in the doorframe when the Vehicon on duty had grown awkward in his presence and left his shift early. He stood by the door until the rest of the crew and officers had powered down, and until Knock Out himself wanted to fall asleep where he stood, but he couldn’t because he said he’d wait up for Breakdown to come back. And he still stood by the door, even though all of him knew that Breakdown wasn’t coming back, because he still wanted to hold on to the little shred of worthless hope.
Knock Out stood by the door until Megatron told him to stop sulking and ordered him back to the medical bay. He walked back down the corridors that suddenly seemed empty, and then he sat there in the silence of their—his—room. His back hit the door, and he slid down to the cold metal floor, and he sat there. He sat there, his knees pulled up to his chassis, and he cried.
For the first time in much longer than he would ever care to admit, Knock Out cried. Wet, wretched, wrecked sobs full of pain and grief and emotions he as a Decepticon had sworn to cast aside. He cried until his vents forgot how to intake and circulate air, he cried until his whole frame shook, and he cried until the pain reached in and clawed apart his spark.
And for the first time in his whole life, Knock Out was slapped with the unnerving thought that he was really, truly alone. All his life he’d had someone to call—to bail him out of trouble, to pick him up from a bar late at night, to help him home when one of his back alley street races left him battered in the gutter. And then he’d met Breakdown in some washed up Decepticon medbay.
They were assigned to each other from what had been both of their first mission. Knock Out was the only medic in the unit—probably in the whole infantry—and Breakdown had been assigned to be a bodyguard, an assistant, and anything else Knock Out needed.
Knock Out had been close to infuriation. A bodyguard? An assistant? He didn’t need one of those, he was a doctor, not a general. The commanding officers can shove it up their tailpipes for all it mattered to him, he wasn’t some sparkling, and he could take care of himself. The bruiser he had been assigned probably could tell his actuator from his pede; he was big and clumsy, and most certainly out of place in an operating room.
But when he’d very nearly been shot off his tires driving out across a battlefield for some emergency first aid, those glowing orange optics had never looked so beautiful. They had been inseparable since. Always together, never one without the other, the only source of love in that unholy war.
Inseparable, ha. How ironic that word was now.
The cabinet of high-grade in the office had quickly become Knock Out’s best friend. Bottles of high-grade energon they had acquired over the long years, both cheap and luxury brands had never mattered. It had been a way to slowly escape for a while. But once his digit had taken the cap off the first bottle, it was all over. The overcharges and constant stupors were all he had left.
He had forgotten all about his loss, all about how Breakdown wasn’t coming back. He let it all wash out with the next day’s hangover. The next night’s stupor brought back all the euphoria of the past, and the morning after let it all die away.
Until one day. That day.
Knock Out had moved on, he had accepted it. He knew Breakdown had left him, he was gone, and they had had a beautiful life together, and that was the end of that. He was getting used to being alone.
And then that damn signal beeped, and Breakdown’s profile came on the screen. That shred of hope reemerged in Knock Out’s spark, and he almost fainted. Breakdown, who had been dead for weeks was suddenly alive. Who gave a damn if the signal was a little off, it was Breakdown.
Only it wasn’t. It wasn’t Breakdown at all.
It was some monstrosity, some freak of science created by those sick bastards at M.E.C.H. They couldn’t even let Breakdown rest in peace, they had to cut him open again and shove some half-dead human inside. They had turned the one thing Knock Out loved in that fucked up world, and turned him into some mad scientist’s field day.
That wasn’t even the worst part.
No, the worst part was that this “Silas” had become Breakdown. Every smile he drew up, every word he spoke, he did it through Breakdown’s lips—the lips that Knock Out had spent eons pressing against his own. Every time he blinked, every time he looked around a room, he did it through Breakdown’s eyes—the eyes that Knock Out had spent eons getting lost in.
Knock Out watched with a happiness that seemed disturbing even to himself as Megatron threw Silas at his feet. He smiled sadistically, and suddenly it was all worth it. All those days wasted in drunken gluttony mourning uselessly, they were suddenly all worth it. Every second he had spent grieving were paid off tenfold as he dragged Silas kicking and screaming back to his lab.
Some new kind of ecstasy warped through Knock Out as he watched Silas squirm helplessly—like a worm on a hook—on that lab table. For the first couple days, he just let Silas scream, just let him yell, wail, and curse. It was a backwards symphony, where the discord was beautiful. It was merciful, Knock Out kept telling himself, it was merciful to just let Silas keep burning himself out.
It wasn’t until he hit the bottom of the bottle of one of the stronger high-grades, that he began to see the twisted cruelty. He was the one suffering, not Silas. Silas was tormenting himself, and Knock Out was just there to listen. Why should he just have to sit there and listen to that horrible shrieking? Why shouldn’t he get what he deserves? After all, Silas doesn’t love the body he’s in, he never worshipped it, he never listened to its spark beating at night. It wasn’t his.
Knock Out leaned on the doorframe, one hand loosely wrapped around the neck of a half empty bottle of high-grade, the other pressed to the metal wall to keep himself steady. The lab in front of him was a spiraling blur, but he saw what he needed. That blue form tied down to the table, a science project in the shape of his former Conjunx Endura.
“Heyy!”
The figure on the table stirred.
“Hheeyy!” Knock Out slurred again, taking another long swig from the bottle.
Those damn eyes looked at him again, “y-you…what—“
“No! You don’t get to talk with that mouth,” Knock Out made his was over to the table, his steps wavering from a mix of intoxication and newly resurfaced grief. He picked a large muzzle off a cart, shoving the bit into Silas’ mouth until it hit the back of his throat. The flattened cone of the muzzle adhered magnetically to Silas’ faceplate with quiet clink, “it’s bad enough that you get to get to live in his body.”
Silas squirmed beneath the muzzle, his grunts and idle threats muffled by the metal restraining his mouth, and his eyes followed Knock Out’s drunken swagger across the room. There was a quiet movement of delicate metal tools against one another, and then Knock Out was walking back towards the table tugging a small cart behind him.
Knock Out took another long drink from the bottle of high-grade, and almost missed the cart altogether when he moved to set the bottle down, “do you have someone you love? A significant other, a sibling? Kids, maybe?”
Knock Out’s hand lingered for a long time over some kind of small circular saw. The tips of his digits brushed against the blade, and then he immediately pulled his hand back, like he’d been shocked or stuck with a part of the serrated blades. Silas grunted some sort of answer that had been distorted by the bit in his mouth, but the other mech hadn’t been listening anyway.
Finally, he picked up a simple scalpel with a drawn comfort. The handle curved into Knock Out’s hand like it was made for that one moment, and his fore-digit rested perfectly along the blunt side of the blade. A drop of light from the dimmed overhead lamps caught the end of the scalpel and sluiced down the blade until it dripped down off the tip.
Knock Out spun on a heel to face Silas, his arms lax by his sides, the scalpel tapping delicately on his thigh as he approached the table. His brilliant optics were suddenly rimmed with tears, standing out a translucent blue against his white faceplate. Knock out stepped up to the table like a proud gladiator to the ring, his chin held high and any trepidations forcibly swallowed down and hidden away. And when the first tear began to slowly roll his cheek, he paid it no mind and kept his expression barren and unreadable.
When he spoke, all the grief that had been slowly building up inside him suddenly boiled over into a drunken hatred, “I had someone I loved once.”
Knock Out brought the scalpel up to Silas’ eye, holding the blade loosely so that it made a whining, scraping, noise as it trailed down his face and neck. The tip of the knife slowed to a stop, finally coming to rest at the point where the neck cables disappeared into the massive chassis with a quiet clink.
He leaned in until he was barely an inch from Silas’ audial. Knock Out’s voice was more of a feral hissing low in his throat—something that wasn’t a voice at all, but lividity concentrated into words, “And you butchered him.”
The scalpel pressed into the metal hard and fast. In the moment, Knock Out had abandoned all his usual surgical precision, and let the blade drive itself in like the teeth of some wild animal. Energon welled up in spurts, gushing out of the severed cables and splattering across Knock Out’s front. The blue liquid ran down Knock Out’s immaculate paint until it pooled on the floor around him.
Silas screamed behind the bit and muzzle, and Knock Out looked up at him with a genuine smile on his face. Even as his hands forced the scalpel deeper into what had been Breakdown’s neck, he kept smiling. And he was still smiling madly when he wrenched the scalped out a few moments later.
Knock Out laughed maniacally, “At least they did a good job of hooking up your pain receptors!”
His hand snagged the corner of the cart and he tugged it closer. Knock Out had finally returned to his element, the mad doctor from the rumors had resurfaced himself. It was all coming back to him, like a fast high from cheap drugs. And when Knock Out grabbed the high-grade off the tray and chugged down the remainder of the bottle, the euphoria spread.
“I would disable those for you,” he slurred, raising the empty bottle in the air above his head by the neck, “but I’m not allowed to operate unless I’m sober.”
His arm went slack, and the bottle shattered against where the bend of Silas’ elbow stuck out over the edge of the table. Knock Out looked down at the jagged edge of what used to be the neck of the bottle, and somehow seemed pleased with it. He turned his attention back to Silas—who was staring at Knock Out, his one good eye wide with fear—and twirled the scalpel around between his digits.
Knock Out sighed, leaning wantonly along the edge of the table, one hand down at his side holding the broken remains of the bottle, and the other still in the air with the scalpel, “and just between us: I haven’t been sober in weeks.”
He let loose another crazed laugh, somehow finding humor in the situation, and threw the remainder of the bottle over his shoulder. It shattered against a wall and the shards rolled out across the floor. Knock Out stopped twirling the scalpel, but inadvertently grabbed the blade instead of the handle.
“Oh…” he whispered as if it was nothing, and moved his scalpel to his other hand.
A stream of energon had begun to trickle down his arm, and for a moment, he couldn’t look away from it. It didn’t even hurt. Like a pincushion, Knock Out stabbed the scalpel into Silas’s thigh while he looked at his hand.
Eventually ruling that the wound didn’t affect his current activities, Knock Out wrapped his hand around the handle of the scalpel and pulled the blade through the metal of Silas’ leg. He hit an artery at some point, because energon began pouring down the side of the table and joined the already existent pool.
Knock Out’s gaze was focused blankly on the scalpel, and when he had decided that he was no longer content with gouging Silas’ thigh, he twisted the knife out of the subject’s leg. The blade had embedded itself in a thick layer of mesh and veins, and Knock Out lost his balance pulling the scalpel free. His pedes—already slick from standing in pools of spilt energon—slipped out from under him, and he fell onto the floor, landing in a lukewarm puddle.
Under any other circumstance, preserving his paint job would have taken top priority. Now, however, Knock Out took a deep breath and looked himself over. The bright blue of the energon clashed in contrast with the equally bright red of his paint, although somehow neither that nor being covered in someone else’s spilled bodily fluids seemed to bother him.
He wiped the back of his hand under his eyes, wiping away the tears that he hadn’t acknowledged until now. His hand left a smear of energon across his faceplate—that, again, he seemed indifferent to—as he reached up for Silas’ hand. Knock Out didn’t mind that Silas’ hand stayed limp when he grabbed it (he wasn’t expecting the help up anyway), and he pulled himself back onto his feet, eyes finding a new target on Silas.
The seam from where M.E.C.H. had cut Breakdown open was still there, made more evident by having recently been reopened and hastily resealed. It pulled him in like a magnet. The scalpel slipped from Knock Out’s hand; the end with the blade hit the floor first and a large part of the tip broke off, sliding across the floor and under another table. His hand had transformed into his saw, and he aimed it at Silas’ chest. He lowered the table so he was looming over Silas, the height difference provided the perfect leverage to cut open a chassis.
When Knock Out leaned in to cut open his subject’s breastplate, he made the mistake of looking at those eyes. His saw hesitated, and something in is throat tightened that reminded him that he had been crying this whole time. A smile almost tugged at the corners of his mouth—but not a sadistic smile like he had been wearing. A real smile, one that he hadn’t used since Breakdown had died.
Breakdown always had expressive eyes. Knock Out had always used his body language to communicate a point, but Breakdown could convey an entire conversation with his eyes. Even when his paranoias threatened to send him into a panic attack, or when they’d make love to one another his eyes carried his message when his voice couldn’t. Sometimes, even, they’d carry a whole now message altogether. Knock Out loved his eyes, they had always been Breakdown’s best feature—two miniature suns, each with their own hearts of gold.
But then he remembered who had ruined those suns, how M.E.C.H. had carved one of them out and thrown it away. He remembered how they had silenced the energy in Breakdown’s eyes, and how they’d taken those hearts of gold within and tarnished them beyond any hope of returning them to their former luster.
Knock Out’s saw screamed against the metal of Silas’ chassis, and he couldn’t hold back another wailing laugh. This was revenge, right? This is what it felt like to get justice for the one you love? He couldn’t kill a specimen as special as Silas, but certainly even inflicting this much pain was adequate. He owed Breakdown that much. If not, then surely he owed it to himself to at least find closure.
The metal beneath his blade gave in and Knock pulled his saw out, transforming it back into his hand and reaching for something to pry the two plates apart. He neglected the proper medical tool and reached instead for a crowbar leaning against some nearby crates. Forcing the end into the roughly cut opening, he leaned on the bar like dead weight. With a deeply satisfying creak, the chassis opened like a book.
Knock Out looked down into the open cavity, and was almost sick. The crow bar fell away at his side, his voice quiet and broken when he finally spoke, “you people couldn’t even leave that, could you?”
He stared down at what had been Breakdown’s spark chamber. Once, the space had been filled with a beautiful, glowing spark, a hundred different shades of orange and yellow, swimming and sparkling within one another—something that was so full of love and life. Now, it had been carved out and replaced with a grotesque mass of wires and tubes, pumping artificial life into something that didn't deserve it.
Silas—the real one—looked up at Knock Out, his pallid skin marred by countless scars that still had yet to heal. His eyes were glassed over by the pain his human body was receiving from his artificial one, and he already looked less than alive.
Though the mouth on his other body had been silenced, by opening the chassis, he was given another chance to speak, “why are you doing this? Why not just kill me?”
“Kill you?” Knock Out wanted to laugh, but the will to do so had left him. The grief was catching up with him again, and he reached over for a bottle of high-grade that wasn’t there, “someone like you shouldn’t get off that easily. You don’t deserve it.”
“You’re drunk, doctor. You’re letting your emotions get the better of you,” it was like an interrogation now. The whole even had been flipped upside down, Silas had regained enough of his composure to begin pretending like he was in charge again.
“What if I am?” Knock Out snapped, “no one on this ship gives a damn! Not for me, not for Breakdown …and certainly not for you! Breakdown was free—he got out of this stupid war—until you dug him up and brought him back to this flying scrapheap!”
Silas scoffed at him. He had no right to laugh though, his attempt at playing the Pathos card was starting to fail, “If anything, you should be grateful to M.E.C.H. for giving him new life—”
The furious red had returned to Knock Out’s optics, Silas’ remark had left him outraged, “Why should I be grateful to you?! After you ripped him open like some kind of science project? I can accept that Airachnid killed Breakdown, but you people couldn’t even let him rest in peace—you had to go and turn him into some kind of zombie!”
“Yes, but only to—”
Knock Out lunged at Silas’ chassis, one hand reaching inside and grabbing the human Silas’ by the head. He could kill him right now, he could squeeze his head until it popped and not a soul in the world would care. It would be the perfect justice, and a small part of Knock Out relished in the thought of squeezing the life out of that little parasite for all the trouble he’d caused. Breakdown’s memory could finally rest, he could finally be at peace and there wouldn’t be some half-dead body thief using his corpse.
“The only thing stopping me from ending that pathetic life of yours is that I don’t want your filthy insides all over Breakdown,” Knock Out hissed through clenched dentae, his grip squeezing ever so slightly to make his point clearer, “but do not think for a second that I don’t want to.”
He let go of Silas’ head and stepped back from the table. A migraine was beginning to spread up the back of his helm, and he could feel the last of the high-grade wearing off. He pulled the muzzle off Silas’ mouth and pulled the bit out of the back of his throat, carelessly dropping them on the floor in the pools of energon, before slamming shut the pieces of Silas’ opened chassis.
Knock Out turned his back to Silas and walked towards the door, but was stopped by a question. Silas had gone back to talking through those lips, watching Knock Out walk out with those eyes, and—after all that had happened—he dared address him with that face.
“How did it feel, doctor? Torturing the body of the one you loved?”
Knock Out didn’t even turn to face him; his hand came to rest on the edge of the doorframe, and his fingers gripped the wall. His eyes stung and his shoulders hunched in decisively, as if he hadn’t yet decided if he was going to cry or not.
Nevertheless, he took in a weary breath and stood up straight, gaze firmly fixed straight ahead, refusing to look back. The rage was beginning to drain from his voice, but he could still muster up some, “that’s not the body of the one I love. That’s just some dead thing you humans found in a field.”