Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hound found himself suddenly awake, and with a strong feeling that something just wasn't right.

The Berthroom was dark, but through the gap in the curtains he could see that the sky was slowly growing pale. It was too early - even for Hound, whose favourite time of day was that little space of time between the sun almost rising and the day truly beginning - so it wasn't that he'd overslept.

Something else was wrong. If he didn't figure out what, he'd never get back to sleep, and Ratchet would scold him for neglecting his needs again.

And so Hound dragged himself from his comfortable berth with its dozen-or-so blankets, checked that his two oversized knives were still in his subspace (as if they'd go anywhere else) and made his way outside to quell whatever problem woke him up in the first place.

Hound's home wasn't too far from town, but it was far enough to be considered inconvenient by some. Hound enjoyed nature and also his privacy. The terrain of the dense forests weren't very traversable to most, but Hound knew them like the back of his servo. It's why the first thing he noticed was that there was a faraway but unmistakeable Cybertronic EM Field further into the forest.

Every living creature, even Mechanimals, have EM Fields, but they are never the easiest to discern from one another unless their species is the same as your own. Even for Hound, who felt like he had been given a personal window into everybody's business and couldn't find the 'Off' button, trying to tell the difference between an angry turborat and a particularly large scraplet through the sensation of their EM Field alone was practically impossible.

Hound memorised new fields whenever he came across them, but this one didn't belong to anyone he knew. He set off towards it at once; The forest was dangerous if you didn't know it, and as he made his way closer, he could feel the waves of terror that had ensnared the owner of that Field. He pushed his sensors out a little further, as if it would get him there any sooner.

He'd become so caught up in following the direction of the EM Field that he almost didn't realise that it was right in front of him. This deep into the forest, there were so many scents that the smell of energon and lifemetal had been buried underneath, and there didn't seem to be a visible source.

Then, from underneath a bush, there was a faint, golden flicker from a pair of optics. Then the bush rustled, as if moved by something other than the cold wind.

The tiniest little face Hound had ever seen poked their way out, and his spark could have broken.

It was a Sparkling.

Small, a fluorescent blue under the thick layer of mud that coated their frame. Their optics were dim and frightened, there was a scrape on their cheek that had smeared energon all across their faceplate.

They let out the quietest little whirr, like a tiny verbal question-mark. Hound was reaching for them before he could figure out why and-

Oh Primus, they were so cold. Frag- He didn't have anything to keep them warm- He didn't have a cockpit or a docking station, or even a blanket- why didn't he get a blanket he had so many on his berth-!

The Sparkling squirmed and beeped, desperately trying to wriggle closer. Hound swallowed his guilt and held them closer to his chest. His plates were warm, that would work. He just had to get home. He could do that. He already knew the quickest way while avoiding the worst of the terrain.

Get home, grab his nicest, most softest blanket, and then...

Ratchet's medical office was quiet and warm and the overhead lights were dim. Hound could have relaxed, but the quietest little beep or wavering of EM Field from the Sparkling was sending his stress levels through the roof. He felt so twitchy. The Sparkling had been carefully sat on the counter, their lower half still covered by the now mud-covered blanket.

"They're in their third frame-stage, from the looks of it. Healthy sparkrate, their weight is a little low, but not anything to worry about." Ratchet placed down the frame-scanner and yawned. The sun's rays were beginning to peek over the horizon. "It's a good thing you found them when you did; any longer out there and something else would have found them first."

The Sparkling cheeped at his words. Ratchet let out a quiet hmm as he gently lifted the Sparkling's helm, tilting it back to expose their throat.

"What is it, Ratchet?" Hound asked, Hovering over the medic's shoulder as he moved and examined their neckplates.

"I suspected something like this when I heard only beeping. Their vocaliser is gone."

Hound could see it too - where the neckplates had been parted just enough to see inside. There was an empty, scratched-up space in front of their intake tube where their vocaliser should've been. Ratchet looked at Hound, and Hound expression must have shown his horror because suddenly there was a servo on his shoulder.

"Hey. This isn't something that was caused by their time in the forest. The damage has scarred-over, Hound." Ratchet assured him, but a part of him still felt sick. The Sparkling let out a few blips and held their tiny servos out to be held again. Hound sat them in the crook of his arm and felt marginally better.

"You're probably so hungry..." Hound murmured to them. The sparkling had captured one of his hands and was chewing longways on his pointer digit. He glanced at their faceplate, then the rest of them; The blanket had wiped off the worst of it, but mud was still all over them, and getting dirt and grit and tiny rocks stuck in their joints would be terrible.

"...And you also need a Bath."

The Sparkling's blunt little teeth released him and they cheeped excessively at that idea. Hound felt somewhat relieved; energy to protest meant that their fuel levels weren't dangerously low. For now, at least.

Hound felt a nudge against his servo. He turned to see Ratchet holding a tiny empty cube and a datapad.

"This is for their fuel intake, and this is a datapad on the basics of sparkling care. your caretaking protocols will activate soon, but they'll be primarily instinctual instead of being nice and handing you a new data-library."

"Oh, thank you." Hound subspaced the datapad then squinted at the half-size cube with suspicion. "...Is that a shot glass?"

Ratchet glanced down at it himself. Turned it around in the dimmed light of the office for a moment.

"...It's multi-purpose."

By the time Hound (once again) reached home, the sun had truly risen. Ah, frag it, who cared. He was definitely going to sleep after this. Consistent Schedules be damned, they both needed it.

Hound's plan on how to bathe the Sparkling quickly grew holes. Now that the sparkling's stress levels were coming down from redline, they were growing increasingly more clingy. Hound placed them down on the side of the bath - just long enough to unhook the showerhead and stick in the bathplug - and the poor thing started tearing up and begging to be held again.

Hound supposed that it wouldn't hurt for them both to sit in the tub. Primus knows he needed a bath too after his search in the forest.

The sparkling was content while sat in Hounds lap, but quickly became agitated and squirmy as they were soaped-up and rinsed-off from helm-nubs to pede-tips in the only soap Hound had on servo (on account of its near-lack of scent). Hound gave himself enough of a wash to get rid of the obvious mud stuck to his frame, then scooped up the Sparkling before they could start climbing up his chassis for physical contact. In the time between drying the Sparkling in the fluffiest towel he possessed and using his free servo to arrange some of his blankets into a bitlet-sized nest, the sparkling finally relaxed enough to start drifting off.

He swaddled them up in their nest, tossed their towel in the laundry, grabbed another towel for himself so that he could be an acceptable level of damp, then crawled into the other side of the bed so that he could finally just. Breathe.

Whenever they woke up, he'd try feeding them. He had the (not) shot glass to measure it, and if they couldn't drink the standard energon from the dispenser, he could always go hunting. It wasn't clear how long they'd been out there, and it wouldn't have surprised him if they had resorted to eating a mechanimal or two to stay alive. He did the same - though much more extensively - before he found his mentor. Regular energon still didn't taste quite right because of it.

But for now, they were fine. And he was fine. He could sleep.

He was gone.

No foul play, no nefarious plot, Soundwave was just...gone.

He hadn't gone exploring in the old, dusty crawlspaces, or dozed off in some quiet corner. The only possible lead was a rusty, Sparkling-sized gap in a poorly-maintained fence in the gardens. Tiny footprints in the earth had quickly disappeared on the other side. That was all they had. There was nothing else to find.

Flying over the forest wouldn't let them spot him from above. moving on the ground below was nigh impossible due to the terrain.

They searched to no avail. All of them had, especially Soundwave's Caretaker, who only returned to the stronghold once the sun began to breach the horizon. He'd been searching the entire night, and when he returned, gave no order except for "Keep looking", then he shut himself away in his quarters.

None of them disobeyed the order, but it felt like a hopeless endeavour. Even if they kept searching, what were the chances that something else - or pits, someone else - found Soundwave first?

They didn't want to tell Lord Megatron that there was no hope. They were beginning to suspect that he already knew. If they didn't say it out loud, then it wouldn't become "real".

Chapter Text

It didn't surprise Hound that, when he awoke later in the afternoon, his Sparkling had escaped their slapdash nest and had snuggled under the blankets and into the warm space between his chassis and his arm, where they could soak up the warmth from his ex-vents.

And also - based on the lingering sting of hounds sensornet - so that they could chew on him again.

The force of their bite was certainly...Impressive, for their size. Hound swore he could feel the thinner plating on the inside of his forearm bending from the pressure. Focusing his optics just enough to see them, Hound could discern various other bitemarks down the length of his forearm plating at varying depths. Fortunately, none of them had managed to tear through to his protoform. He was "Unusually dense", according to Ratchet.

He let out a quiet huff. He couldn't bring himself to be annoyed, they were just hungry. Instead, he shifted his arm just enough to let his Sparkling know he was now awake and they let out a series of high pitched cheeps as they bit down harder. Okay, ow, yes, their bite-force WAS denting him actually.

"Ah- That's enough, now," Hound gently scolded, reaching over with his free servo to gently pull them off. "Let's go sort out the fuel situation."

They let out another upset little cheep, tiny claws trying to hook onto his frame. Hound cradled them against his chestplate and they managed to find a hold. Now they were secure, they quieted down by a fraction.

They were still cold, despite having soaked up his body heat like a sponge. It was a little worrying.

Hound rubbed the static from his optics as he entered the main room of the house, which was also his kitchen. In all honesty, he didn't use it much outside of occasionally remembering that he actually needed fuel to survive and taking some to-go from the dispenser of midgrade in the corner. He really wasn't equipped to handle a sparkling at this very moment; they required much more than just plain, room temp energon - they needed specific minerals to properly grow.

They were something that he could start gathering today; if his chronometer was still correct, the town market would have several different kinds and would continue to be open for several hours. Cybertronians were naturally inclined to eat things that were beneficial to their frames, so even with his sparkling's lack of vocal communication, Hound was sure they could figure something out. Perhaps Nightbeat could lend a servo.

At the very least he didn't have to buy a table and chair; he already had both in his tiny kitchen. He fished the small glass from his subspace and stuck it under the dispenser until it was filled, then sat down. His Sparkling sat perched in his lap and stared at up the little cube with interest. Hound held it down to their height so they could get a proper look.

"Is it any good for you?" He asked. His Sparkling leaned closer to it, sniffed the cube with an expression that started as confusion and quickly became a grimace. They leant back against Hound's chest and shook their little head. It appeared that Hound's suspicions were correct; crystal-refined energon wasn't going to work for them anymore.

"That's alright, Sweetspark." Hound drank the Small cube himself, then placed it on the table. "We can get you an alternative. If you only eat Mechanimals, I can hunt for them easily."

They pointed up at him and let out a trilling noise, then pointed at Hound's previously chewed arm. Hound moved it to be within their reach.

He watched as they turned it over to the underside again and began to sink their suddenly sharp little teeth into a previous bite mark; the one near his wrist joint, where the plate was the thinnest.

Hound winced, but Ratchet wasn't kidding when he said that Caretaker protocols were all instinct and no explanation; He made no effort to stop them, only steadying their balance when their fangs finally pierced through and the alert of a fuel line being severed popped up on his HUD. He barely felt the sting, just felt the pull of energon from his lines as his Sparkling let out a happy little chirrup.

Hound didn't know much about sparkling fuel habits, but he knew that after the newspark stage and the first-frame stage, they stopped feeding on their creator's frame-energy and instead switched to regular fuel. He wondered where his Sparkling had been that has meant that they fuelled like this instead; Perhaps somewhere with severely-inadequate fuel sources - where their creators had to consume it first and then let them siphon it off in order for them to not get sick.

Linefuel contained many minerals and nanites that a sparkling wouldn't be able to find in such a scarce environment, so as far as Hound was concerned, this method of refueling made perfect sense for a fuel-insecure sparkling.

A small part of Hound - a part that wasn't focused intensely on trying to figure out if any nearby area met the requirements of fuel-scarce - wondered why he wasn't at all alarmed that his caretaker instincts were okay with him being eaten. After concluding that nowhere nearby meet these requirements in the slightest (and shelving his concern for later), Hound carefully but firmly unhooked his Sparkling from his wrist as the pull of energon slowed and a warning alert for 'continuous energon loss' popped up on his HUD. His repair nanites were quick to stop the flow of energon, leaving only the tiny punctures as evidence.

His Sparkling's once thin and coiled-in EM Field was now radiating their content. Their frame was finally warm. Hound could feel the quiet crackles of their purr against his chassis as they practically dozed off in his lap. He picked them up, readjusting them as their helm flopped to the side.

Standing up, Hound gyroscope lagged for a moment; He wasn't sure just how much of his energon they'd siphoned exactly, But it was definitely much more than that tiny little cube that was supposed to be their daily intake. He shuffled his Sparkling so that he had a servo free, then filled up a fullsized cube for himself. The contents of said cube disappeared much faster than it usually did. He barely got the chance to taste it.

...That was weird. Huh.

He glanced at the fuel level of the dispenser and made himself a second cube. And then a third, because the irritating, blinking [LOW FUEL!!] indicator on his HUD finally disappeared and he wanted it to stay that way.

He should probably look up on sparkling eating habits; The datapad was still in his subspace. He hadn't read it yet. He really should, but if he tried to read it now, he'd completely lose track of time.

He left both of the empty cubes on the counter next to the sink, then walked across the main room and out the front door.

The warm afternoon sun was lovely, but it was awfully bright. His sparkling hid their faceplate in their arms in an attempt to block it out. Hound's spare servo was forced to act as an improvised sun visor as they passed through a series of small clearings.

Nightbeat lived on the edge of town - not entirely out of the forest, he was on the outskirts where the trees had eventually thinned. Hound would be there in no time at all.

Sitting on Nightbeat's sofa did little to ease his nervousness. The warmed cube of energon he'd been handed not long after arriving had been left to go cold on the low table infront of them both. His sparkling continued to nap, curled happily up between his arm and chassis and blissfully ignorant of their new caretaker's anxious ramblings.

Nightbeat, Hound's mentor-slash-caretaker, who always had near-infinite patience for him, simply sat and let him get it all out.

"-And I know that I'm just- I'm really not prepared to take care of a Sparkling, but I just keep thinking about why they could've ended up there- and how I somehow knew they were there, and what would've happened if I ignored that feeling and just went back to sleep-"

"-And now they're safe with you, so you don't wanna hand them to someone else." Nightbeat's response helped to snap Hound out of his output loop.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's- I can find them in the woods," Hound tried to keep his sentences straightforward, but it was easier said than done, "If they ever got lost there again, I'd find them. Nobody in town can just do that."

"I understand how you feel completely." Nightbeat shuffled closer, enough for Hound to lean his frame against him. "...When I first found you, I just wanted you to be safe no matter what. And a part of me knew I wouldn't know that for sure if I placed you in someone else's servos."

"It's...really scary." Hound eased up as Nightbeat pressed against him too, an arm wrapped around Hound's shoulder to cuddle him closer.

"-And that's why you won't be on your own in all this. I'll help out, and Ratchet will too." Nightbeat reassured him. "Have you spoken to anyone else about this yet? Jazz? Prowl? Optimus?"

"Uh, no. Not yet."

Nightbeat sighed and pat Hound's shoulder as he separated the hug. "Then that's our secondary goal of today. Op is a sap; he'll get sad if he finds out you took in a sparkling all on your own and didn't tell anyone."

"...But I told you and Ratchet."

"By 'anyone', I meant 'him'."

"Oh."

Nightbeat reached over to the table for Hound's warmed cube, slipping it wordlessly into his mentee's free hand. Hound sipped it; doing so was easier than explaining that he'd already eaten today and that anything more would clearly be overindulgence. As he continued to drink, Nightbeat's expression slowly became...off.

"Hound," He asked, tone somewhat stiff, "What happened to your arm?"

"Hm?" Hound swallowed the last of his energon so that he could speak. "What arm?"

Nightbeat looked incredulous. "What arm-?! Hound, you're covered in bite marks!"

Hound glanced down at the bitemarks; They'd been covered up by his sparkling's frame when he'd come in and then by the side of his chassis once he'd sat down, but holding up a cube with the same arm as the marks made them very easy to spot. He supposed there were quite a few of them.

"It was the sparkling's doing. I'm fine, I promise." He insisted. Nightbeat appeared to be entirely unconvinced by his words. Infact, he seemed almost more concerned now.

"They didn't pierce a line doing that, right?" He pressed, carefully taking Hound's cube and repositioning his arm in order to examine the deeper marks. Hound tried not to look away; it was an admission of guilt on it's own.

"...My plating is very sturdy. They're fine."

There was a short moment of silence between them. Hound's sparkling continued to quietly purr.

"...You don't answer questions with an answer like that unless the answer is something I don't wanna hear." Was Nightbeat's reply. "How much did they manage to drink?"

"Um," Hound tried to think, "More than I thought they could?"

"And you've got Caretaker protocols on?"

"...I think so."

Nightbeat's following sigh was one that Hound was very familiar with; drawn out and strut-deep.

It was the kind of sigh he'd make when he'd receive a new request for his detective services from someone he really didn't want to work for. Oftentimes, it was because what they were asking of him wasn't sleuthing, but a request for Nightbeat to excessively stalk their friends, coworkers, partners, relatives, etcetera. Other times, it was because he'd peered at the surface of a relatively simple case for only a few kliks and realised that the 'small patch of rust on the wall' someone else had jotted down was instead a 'rotting tunnel leading straight to the pits' that he wouldn't be able to solve alone. Hound didn't quite understand the metaphor that was being referred to there, but that wasn't at all important. What was important was that the sigh was towards him.

Hound was now being dragged into the kitchen, where he knew Nightbeat liked to kept the emergency first-aid kit.

He wished he could turn his sensors off, just so he could be in denial about how his Mentor was feeling right now. The waves of concern were slowly turning angry.

"Please don't be mad at them, I didn't stop them; it's my fault." Hound quietly pleaded as Nightbeat began to look for something specific in the kit. He ended up pulling out a tube of salve that Hound was familiar with. It was what you'd use on surface-level plate damage to speed up recovery time.

As the salve was rubbed and smeared into the deeper, more painful marks, he tried to focus on anything else; The pale-green paint they'd chosen together for the kitchen walls, the gradually-quieting purring against his chassis, the clean and dustless countertop. Nightbeat ignored the bite on Hound's wrist where his Sparkling had actually managed to pierce him. Every other mark was now treated. His arm faintly tingled now.

"...It's not their fault, and it's not your fault either. I'm annoyed that this is something you couldn't've been prepared for." Nightbeat half-muttered. "I want to look at their teeth; I just have this feeling."

Hound just nodded and headed back to the main room. He was less tense, but only marginally. All the stress from the rambling and the probing was enough to have caused his Sparkling to stir against his side. They blinked in confusion, but focused on Hound when they realised he was still holding them. They let out a very specific set of notes, which Hound concluded was meant for him.

"Good afternoon to you too." Hound replied, setting them down on the sofa so they could sit up and look around properly. They tensed at the sound of a cupboard closing in the next room and scooted closer to Hound with unease.

"It's alright, that was Nightbeat. He's my mentor." He assured them as Nightbeat entered the main room. "He's very safe, I promise."

Hound watched as Nightbeat ignored the sofa and instead sat on the floor. It was an attempt to not tower over the sparkling, but they still squirmed as if expecting him to pounce. Hound gently pet their helm; one of their tiny servos came up to grasp it.

"Hey there, kid, I'm Nightbeat." his voice was soft, "You're not in any trouble, but I want to make sure you're not hurt."

His sparkling let out a whir - An acknowledgment of words over a confirmation or decline. Their other servo raised to their intake and they made another quiet noise that could be read as pained.

"Yeah, your teeth must ache; Hound's super tough, even us big bots couldn't bite through him like you can."

Nightbeat very gently coaxed them into opening their intake, making the occasional hmm as he examined their teeth. From what Hound could see, they were mostly flat, but when they opened their intake wider, Two long, hollow fangs unhinged from the roof of their intake to latch onto the bottom edge of their teeth. Hound had never seen a mod like it before.

"...A built-in siphoning apparatus." Nightbeat noted, nudging their intake closed. "It looks like linefuel is the only fueltype you're made to process, huh?"

Hound's sparkling let out a guilty-sounding warble, as if unsure whether to move closer or further away from them both. Hound decided for them by scooping them up onto his lap to be cuddled. They hid their face from view, EM Field coiling tightly in shame.

"Oh, sweetspark..." Hound curled around them, nuzzling the top of their helm as tiny claws kept him close. "Your fuel requirements aren't a problem at all; you can have as much of my linefuel as you want!"

The feelings that radiated from his sparkling were a combination that Hound recognised from himself - when he'd been living amongst 'civilised' mechas but unable to consume their energon. He was treated 'lesser' for eating mechanimals, but he couldn't do anything about it. Hound's transition to crystal-refined energon took him vorns and he'd hated every second of it. Even now, too much of it in his tanks made him feel sick.

Unlike his own situation, this wasn't something his sparkling could be weaned off of. Wherever they'd been before had to have had bots similar to them, right? Was their shame taught, like his? Was it learned from viewing others? They were still so small, they needed to eat. Hound couldn't let them starve, he couldn't.

The dip in the sofa was the only prewarning Hound was given before Nightbeat was giving him a one-armed hug, the quarter-full cube nudging its way into his servo.

"In order to give linefuel, you gotta have some to spare." one of Hound's servos took it, while the other gently pet the matte blue helm still pressed into his chest. "That means no more skipping refuels. I mean it."

Hound glanced at his HUD, fuel capacity almost at halfway, and decided that it was worth it for his sparkling.