Archive of Our Own

Every time was worse than the time before, and every time Ratchet swore he wouldn't be talked into acting as a guinea pig for Wheeljack's experimental high grade ever again. The experiments never went well, although Ratchet supposed that at the very least, nothing had exploded.

Given the current sorry state of his processor, on the other hand, he couldn't swear to the total lack of things blowing up. He hurt too badly for that, and none of his subroutines were running up to par. Half of them weren't booting up the way they should have been, leaving him more or less temporarily paralyzed and at half-power until the corrupted boot sequence finished.

At this point, Ratchet was almost ready to throw his whole-hearted support behind Sideswipe's illegal still, because at least Sideswipe didn't try to convince him that one more shot was necessary for proper scientific progress to be made. Ratchet was fairly sure on that final point, although most of the previous night’s memory files were unreadable.

Regardless of how well or poorly his systems had handled Wheeljack's latest concoction, the previous evening was largely irrelevant. There was a schedule that had to be maintained, and Ratchet was fairly sure he was late for his shift in the medibay. He pinged Teletraan-I's chronometer without onlining his optics, just to be sure.

The AI informed him - rather smugly, he felt - that he was overdue, and also that Hoist had pinged him several times already without getting a reply. As the final point of indignity, Ratchet was more or less sure that his systems were on the verge of overheating.

"I hate you," Ratchet said out loud, not sure whether he was speaking to Wheeljack, Hoist, or himself, and the rather dead sense as his words failed to echo back at him finally kicked an assessment of his surroundings into gear.

It was also possible that the very amused chuckle from somewhere above and behind his head had something to do with his newfound situational awareness. He couldn't identify the owner of the voice, until it actually spoke. "But that's not what you said last night."

Ratchet had even less desire to online his optics now that he could feel someone wrapped around him. "Sideswipe," he said cautiously, a sinking feeling winding its way through his systems.

There was no way any part of this could be construed as anything good, even if it did explain the excessive warmth. He clamped down on the question of What Did We Do, because now that more of his systems were coming online, he could feel the aftermath. He knew exactly what he had done with Sideswipe - the generalities, if not the details.

The sinking feeling wasn’t just caused by an ill-advised one night stand. No, the problem was that Sideswipe had been chasing him for weeks now, with Sunstreaker lurking bizarrely in the background, like some sort of self-designated chaperone. Ratchet didn’t know what, exactly, Sideswipe was after – he wouldn’t come out and just say it.

Genuinely finding Sideswipe fun and attractive only made things worse; Ratchet had no desire to be just another conquest. Determined to regain some shred of dignity, he onlined his optics to confront the error in judgment he'd perpetrated the night before and found himself face to face with Sunstreaker.

"Morning, sunshine," Sunstreaker said, nothing light-hearted about his tone at all.

Ratchet wondered briefly if he might be experiencing a particularly bad dream, and belatedly realized that while Sideswipe was pressed up against his back, he had his arms wrapped firmly around Sunstreaker.

"Uh," he said, vaguely pleased that there was no static in his voice at all, and whatever else he might have said was interrupted by his motor relays pinging his central processor to let him know they were online. Ratchet would later deny that he reacted by panicking, but his first flurry of motion ended with all three of them  in a heap on the floor, and his second fetched him up on the other side of the room, clinging to the wall for balance as his tanks heaved unpleasantly.

"Hey, you okay?" Sideswipe approached almost hesitantly. Ratchet waved him off, staring fixedly at a spot on the wall until he had his equilibrium back. His boot sequence informed him that it had errors and should be reinitialized. Ratchet dismissed the error messages and turned around slowly. They were in his quarters, the usually messy space even more disorganized than usual.

Sideswipe was hovering just out of arm's reach, one hand half-raised, while Sunstreaker had moved to stand behind his brother. Both of them were very obviously not between him and the door.

"I..." He had no idea what to say.

"Come on," Sideswipe said, sharing a flickering half-glance with his brother, and it struck Ratchet that Sideswipe's body language was halfway between soothing and coaxing, a very near approximation of how Ratchet would have approached a nervous mech in unfamiliar territory.

Something besides confusion finally took hold, and Ratchet found himself awash in indignation. He didn’t need to be handled. "I..." he said again, and no more words materialized.

"Sideswipe," Sunstreaker said, a clear note of warning in his voice.

"I have to go," Ratchet said, choosing to deal with the situation by not dealing with it. He did not bolt for the door. He had enough of a semblance of composure to simply walk, a little more quickly than normal, until the door closed behind him before breaking into a run. The quickened pace only lasted a few steps, though; the corridors weren’t the place to be sprinting unless there was an emergency.

“Your experiment slagged my memory files,” he sent to Wheeljack in a bid to find something else to focus on until he could calm down.

Yeah, mine too, Wheeljack sent back. Kinda surprising, because according to my notes, it didn’t do much else.

“Notes?”

I always take notes, Wheeljack sent back, sounding faintly offended. In the name of science.

“Of course you do.” Gyroscopic sensors still not quite properly calibrated, Ratchet staggered into the washracks. “You might want to add impaired judgment to your notes,” he couldn’t help sending caustically.

Aw, what did you do after you left? And you looked so sober. Wheeljack sounded amused, for which Ratchet was vaguely tempted to hunt him down and feed him his own arm.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he sent back, already regretting the previous comment. Wheeljack wasn’t likely to let it go.

Is something wrong? Wheeljack sent, an overlay of contrition in the transmission.

“No, I just… no.” Ratchet let the solvent flow over his plating. “You might want to consider that batch for interrogation purposes,” he added, not entirely joking, and closed the channel.

The vague hope that he'd hallucinated the entire encounter was dashed by the paint transfers, yellow and white and black and a few slivers of red. They flaked off easily, swirling down the drain like so much detritus, and Ratchet edged his way back out of the washracks and toward the medibay.

He'd sworn he wouldn't let things get this far. He'd sworn that he wouldn't get involved, wouldn't become emotionally compromised. It was hard enough that he knew the names of everyone on board, that he counted many of the mechs on the Ark as friends; he'd already lost the detachment that had allowed him to keep his sanity throughout the very long years spent at war. He hadn't wanted to slide deeper into the morass of entanglement and emotion, because he couldn't do his job if he became too attached to the mechs on the repair berths.

Worse, of all the mechs on board, the two he saw most often in pieces in front of him were Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. Flashes of memory came, the edges of unreadable files - Sideswipe's hand on his hip, an open port under Sunstreaker's plating, someone's mouth sliding over his fingers. Ratchet shook his head to clear it - not that that ever worked, - and stalked through the medibay doors.

"Ah," Hoist said, giving him an unreadable look. "There you are."

"Sorry," Ratchet said. He wasn't above apologizing if there was a reason for it.

"I've taken care of the appointment with Skids," Hoist said. "Jazz's visor still needs to be recalibrated, Windcharger's magnetic generator is fritzing, and Red Alert has another scan of his logic circuits this afternoon."

Ratchet was aware of the day's scheduled visits, but he nodded thanks anyway. Hoist left, uncharacteristically but understandably irritable, just as Windcharger came through the door. Ratchet plastered something resembling a smile on his face and lost it as a laser scalpel sailed past his head to stick to Windcharger's plating.

"Fritzing, he says," Ratchet muttered, and Windcharger shrugged.

Ratchet pointed at one of the repair berths and collected his equipment. Maybe if he pretended the previous night had never happened, the incident would just fade away. And maybe the Decepticons just needed a hug.

On the other hand, he had several very good reasons arguing for dealing with the entire situation later, one of which was currently stuck to the berth in front of him. "What did you do to yourself?" he demanded, and the day went on.

Jazz's visor wasn't cooperating by the time the end of Ratchet's shift rolled around. He'd spent the entirety of it inside the medibay, opting to poke at the inventory when he had a free moment rather than slip down the corridor for a few minutes to socialize with whoever was around, but now he had a legitimate reason not to leave.

"What's that?" First Aid asked, peering over his shoulder.

"Jazz," Ratchet replied, the visor hooked up to Teletraan-I and stubbornly refusing to give him the appropriate results.  The visor was, in theory, a sophisticated piece of equipment that started with its performance as an HUD and went on from there.

At the moment, all Ratchet could get out of it was what he might have gotten from a pretty piece of well-shaped glass.

First Aid reached around him and pressed the side of the visor. It obediently flickered to life, displaying that it was not only in perfect working order, but that the upgrades hadn't created any unexpected glitches.

"Scrap," Ratchet muttered, staring at the readouts. Jazz, looking oddly naked without the visor, wandered over from where he'd been waiting impatiently.  Not that most mechs would have been able to read Jazz's body language well enough to see the jittery signs of stress, but Ratchet knew him better than most. "Here," he said, and tossed the visor at Jazz.

Just as the delicate piece of equipment left his hands, Ratchet knew he shouldn't have thrown it. Part of Jazz's almost supernatural hand-optic coordination came from modifications to the visor that he wasn't wearing. Jazz, however, caught it smoothly and slid it into place over his bare optics.  An almost indefinable tension melted away and he grinned.

"I owe you one," he said.

"No, you don't," Ratchet growled, and Jazz shrugged cheerfully.

"Either way, we're just in time." Jazz gestured for Ratchet to precede him down the hallway, and he bit back a curse.

Ratchet had managed to forget about the staff meeting scheduled for that evening, and the processor ache he'd managed to shove to the back of his mind was now returning with a vengeance. He supposed he'd brought it on himself, but honestly, Wheeljack had terrible timing.

The meeting wasn't anything as formal as it would have been back on Cybertron, or in the earlier days of the war. Even in the time just before they'd gone out in the Ark to clear a path through the asteroid belt, there would have been an element of proper protocol. Now, however, it was just a handful of mechs gathered in an office, perched on chairs or desks, even leaning against the wall.

Ratchet listened with half his attention as Optimus Prime delivered a brief summary of the information gathered over the past several days, culminating with expectations of incipient Decepticon activity.

"They're always planning something," Jazz put in, smiling, and the rest of the mechs present chuckled.

Ratchet forced a smile; Decepticon plans usually meant Autobot casualties, and there was no future in sight that was anything more than a smaller and smaller population – hardly a moment for humor. Sometimes he thought the war would continue until the last Autobot and the last Decepticon killed each other, bringing the entire multi-million year fiasco to a sad, sputtering finale.

In the end, Ratchet concluded that his bad mood was putting a pessimistic spin on his interpretation of the usefulness of the meeting - read: none - and debated the merits of heading to the common room to refuel versus simply going back to his quarters. A quick ping to his internal systems resolved that issue - his fuel levels were well within acceptable limits, which meant that Wheeljack's high grade was at least good for something besides scrambling memories.

In what Ratchet considered to be the first thing that had gone right all day, his quarters were empty when he reached them. He leaned against the door after it closed with a sense of relief, and tried to remember exactly how the previous night had gotten so out of control.

Try as he might, Ratchet couldn't bring up any more of the corrupted memory files. The last readable file was of sitting opposite Wheeljack, looking dubiously at a violently orange beaker, and asking if Wheeljack was sure it wasn't some kind of corrosive.

"Oh ye of little faith," Wheeljack had said, and drained his own beaker. "Stings a bit," he'd added, and Ratchet had told him that that wasn't a sign of processable fuel before letting the offensively colored liquid slide over his tongue.

It actually hadn't tasted bad at all, he remembered thinking, and then the glitched file started spitting back errors.

The alarm klaxons came as an almost welcome distraction, the brief flash of near-relief at something to take his mind off the previous night immediately smothered by a sense of shame that he could take potential danger to his fellow Autobots so lightly.

Emotional reactions aside, Ratchet was on his feet and moving right back toward the medibay he'd just left; his standing orders were to report there when an alarm went off, unless specifically directed otherwise. Today, those directions came in the form of a crisp message from Optimus.

Ratchet changed course and made for the Ark's main entrance, combat subroutines activating to redistribute energy and suppress non-essentials. He barely glanced at Sideswipe and Sunstreaker standing near the front of the assembled group as Optimus gave the familiar order to transform and roll out.

An experimental solar power station didn't seem like the usual target for Decepticon activity; human technology hadn't gotten nearly as far in that area as either Autobot or Decepticon, what with the humans' low rates of energy conversion efficiency, and it was a poor choice for refining energon. The next question Ratchet – and he wasn’t the only one – had was what the Decepticons thought they were doing with a solar power station in the middle of the night.

"What are they even doing here?" Ratchet muttered to Trailbreaker, who had also been stationed more or less at the rear of the group. The Decepticons hadn't yet noticed the Autobots' near-silent arrival, although if the twins kept fidgeting up near the front they were going to attract unwanted attention. Only the surrounding vegetation - aided by judicious application of some of Hound's holograms – and the fact that it was pitch dark kept the Autobot convoy from detection.

Trailbreaker shrugged, optics focused forward. The Decepticons had laid out a perimeter around the power station, with Starscream perched near the peak of the tower. Infra-red vision showed Skywarp and Thundercracker pacing back and forth outside, completing the complement of visible Decepticons.  Megatron, somewhat to Ratchet's surprise, was nowhere to be seen.

The humans manning the solar tower were still inside it, which was why the Autobots hadn't charged forward. The decision not to put innocent lives in danger had been made a long time ago, and it was directing their actions now.

"Sideswipe, Sunstreaker," Optimus Prime said quietly. "Create the distraction."

Sideswipe grinned broadly and high-fived his brother; Sunstreaker submitted to it with a long-suffering expression, inspecting his hand afterwards for scratched paint. "Rolling out," he said, dropping into vehicle mode. Sideswipe followed, roaring out from under cover with a clearly gleeful rev of his powerful engines.

Sunstreaker was just barely behind him, overtaking his brother almost immediately. The two of them gave every sign of indulging in some friendly - or perhaps not-so-friendly, as Sunstreaker attempted to ram Sideswipe into a particularly large tree - competition.  Blaster fire, courtesy of Skywarp, sent them both into an ungainly tumble, transforming back into root mode with identical looks of dismay. Floodlights around the solar tower flicked on, bathing the area in over-bright light and sharply defined shadows.

"Decepticons, surrender!" Sideswipe demanded, clambering to his feet with what was supposed to be a very unconvincing show of bravado. "We're on to you!"

"That's right!" Sunstreaker was again just behind his brother, planting both of his feet aggressively.  Thundercracker touched down behind them, and Sunstreaker flinched visibly, playing up the effect for show.

"I don't think so," Thundercracker said. "I think you just stumbled onto something while playing some sort of game."

"So we get to shoot 'em, right, TC?" Skywarp landed opposite Thundercracker, his weapons charged.

"No one shoots anyone until I say so!" Starscream vaulted downwards to complete the circle around the Autobot twins, in a move that would have neatly penned in most pairs. The twins weren't most pairs.

"Yeah, right," Sideswipe scoffed, shifting to stand back to back with Sunstreaker. "Three Seekers and two of us? I think you're outnumbered."

"If you think there are only the three of us here, you're dumber than you look," Starscream said. Despite his words, no other Decepticons materialized.

"Let the squishies go," Sunstreaker said, managing to sound mostly bored with an undercurrent of insecurity.

"They're staying right where they are," Starscream said.

Back behind the front line, Ratchet fidgeted. The other Decepticons who were no doubt present should have been drawn out by the twins' precipitous arrival. That no one else appeared to be there was starting to make him nervous. He glanced around, but none of the other Autobots appeared to be on edge. Optimus caught his optics, making a little motion with his hand that meant Calm down, everything is under control.

Ratchet returned his attention to the scenario playing out in front of him. When Soundwave stepped out of what had to be a massive hole in the back of the tower, surrounded by his cassettes, Ratchet was actually glad.

"Plotting against Megatron, now, are we?" Sideswipe taunted. "And we thought Soundwave was such a good little soldier."

"Soundwave, loyal." The carrier's monotone voice was right within its usual range, nearly drowned out by Starscream's inevitable screeching monologue on how Megatron was bungling leadership of the Decepticons. Right on cue, Sunstreaker lost patience and started firing.

Ravage dodged the first shot, but the second caught Rumble - or was it Frenzy? - right in the chest. The cassette dropped like a stone, and his near-identical twin darted forward with a cry of rage. Sideswipe, reacting quickly, started taking potshots at anything that moved. Skywarp simply teleported to one side to avoid them, while Starscream transformed and launched himself upward.

Seemingly unable to resist, Sideswipe flung himself onto Starscream's back, gripping at delicate bits of kibble with punishingly strong hands.  Starscream lived up to his name, shrieking at Sideswipe to get off, and Thundercracker launched himself into the sky after his trine leader. The rest of the Decepticons on the ground converged on Sunstreaker, which was the Autobot cue to move.

"Autobots, move out," Optimus Prime commanded, but just before Hound's holograms faded, Thundercracker displayed his primary talent.

An audio-shattering sonic boom crashed over the solar tower, powerful enough to shake the ground and throw the troops off-balance. Later, Ratchet would remember an odd hum coming from Soundwave, but at the time, he was just as dazed as the rest of his companions. A crash that would have seemed loud at any other time heralded Sideswipe's rapid reintroduction to the ground, the noise having finally dislodged him from Starscream's wings. The sound broke the tentative paralysis gripping the battlefield.

"I said, Autobots, move out!" Optimus Prime roared, his deep voice cutting through the residual echoes of Thundercracker's weapon. The shaken Autobots charged forward, but whatever the Decepticons had come for, they were leaving the field. Soundwave cradled his damaged cassette with one arm, the rest of his cassettes docked in his chest, and grasped Thundercracker's wrist with the other as the Decepticons took to the skies.

A few Autobots managed parting shots, none of which connected. Optimus stared after their retreating foes, visibly frustrated, before turning to his troops. "Check the humans for damage," he said via the commline, apparently unsure whose audials were still functioning.

None of the humans who'd been in the tower were still online; what few of them there were had been terminated before the Autobots had arrived.

"The technology?" Optimus asked, accepting the news with an air of resignation.

"Negative," Jazz answered. "I have no idea what the Cons wanted in here."

"There must be something," Prowl objected.

"Gather the data and return to the Ark," Optimus instructed.

The convoy returning to the Ark was restless, with most of the Autobots unable or unwilling to maintain proper formation in the face of not having had a proper fight.  The aftereffects of Thundercracker's painful sonic weapon aside, most of them had nervous energy to burn and showed it off by brief stints of racing ahead or off to the side of the convoy. Optimus let it go, except for the single instance in which Tracks got so far ahead as to be out of sight, at which point he sharply reminded the convoy to remain together.

The rest of the drive was more or less uneventful, although Ratchet wasn't looking forward to repairing damaged audials upon their return. It was fiddly work, and he was tired. Ahead of him, Prowl and Optimus were engaged in speculation on what, exactly, the Decepticons had been trying to achieve, and whether or not they'd missed something.

"I've got the schematics right here," Prowl said irritably, settling back into his position in the convoy after having chased Tracks down. "There's nothing special about them."

"They must have had some objective," Optimus returned.

"I know that as well as you do," Prowl said, and Ratchet stopped paying attention. Whatever it was the Decepticons had been after, he was sure there would be fallout to handle.

"Slagging Decepticons," he muttered, and Sideswipe gave him a sympathetic rumble.

Or at least Ratchet thought he did; his own audials had failed at some point between the sonic boom and the start of the drive back home. First Aid was going to get hands-on experience with finicky little components - his first. Ratchet wasn't looking forward to that, either, but it wasn't like he didn't think his protégé couldn't handle it.

The sun was barely edging above the horizon when the convoy rolled back into the Ark's hangar, sore and disappointed.

* * *

Sunstreaker transformed back into root mode as soon as he was inside the Ark, its orange walls both comfortingly familiar and horrifically grating on the optics. He heard Optimus calling a short list of officers back to his office to analyze the recent skirmish; it had left a bad taste in all their mouths.

"I've got twigs in my feet," he said to Sideswipe, somewhat accusingly.

"How is that my fault?" his brother returned, still in alt mode. A leafy branch was shoved under his hood, the green flora smashed up against his windshield. Sunstreaker reached over and yanked it out, prompting a wince.  "Ow!"

"You shoved me into a tree," Sunstreaker said.

"You started it." Sideswipe, finally switching back to root mode, grinned.

"I did not." They were more than halfway to the washracks by now, Sunstreaker determined to get the organic crud off his plating and Sideswipe doing what he did best, which was to annoy his brother.

"Take some responsibility, Sunny." Sideswipe palmed the door open and gestured for Sunstreaker to precede him.

"Don't call me Sunny." There were bits of organic vegetation everywhere; Sunstreaker unhappily resigned himself to untold hours removing the detritus of the battle that hadn't been.

"So about yesterday," Sideswipe said, changing the subject abruptly.

"Yesterday was your idea." Solvent cascaded over Sunstreaker, getting rid of the worst of the grime.

"It was not, and that's not the point." Sideswipe twisted under the flow, pulling leaves out from the most unlikely crevices.

"And the point is?"

"This is not going according to plan," Sideswipe said.

"Oh, this morning told you that, did it." How Sunstreaker had gotten a rock wedged under his chestplate, he had no idea.

"We have to fix it," Sideswipe had somehow gotten right up into Sunstreaker's personal space without him noticing.

Sunstreaker sighed, ex-venting overheated air that he was entirely sure was laden with sticky organic particles. "Maybe you should let Ratchet make the next move."

"What is this you?" Sideswipe reached behind him and pulled vegetation out of the hard-to-reach bits around his back. "We're in this together. Besides, Ratchet made the first move."

Sunstreaker replied by scraping stubbornly clinging mud off of Sideswipe's shoulders, focusing on the base of his mounted cannon. The worst grime always accumulated there, and Sideswipe almost never cleaned it out properly.  Sunstreaker detached the cannon for more thorough detailing of the area, ignoring the look Sideswipe was twisting around to give him.

Truth to be told, Sunstreaker wasn't exactly sure how he'd gotten into the situation in which he now found himself. No, scratch that, he knew what had happened. Sideswipe had nearly died, and Sunstreaker had had to watch it happen in slow motion, and he'd come to a rather uncomfortable realization.

It had occurred to Sunstreaker, while watching Sideswipe almost fade, that he should probably explicitly tell his brother that he was an important part of Sunstreaker's life, instead of just expecting that he knew. It was just that they'd been fighting together for so long that Sunstreaker hadn't thought words would ever be necessary. His attempts at clearer communication had not gone well.

Sideswipe, reassuringly alive, was currently relaxing under Sunstreaker's hands, optics only half-lit and engine quieting down into a soft rumble as Sunstreaker expertly cleaned around the edges of his brother's plating.  “You’ve got some torn wiring,” Sunstreaker said, when a previously unnoticed gash down Sideswipe’s side started sparking under the stream of solvent.

Sideswipe tried to turn around enough to peer at the minor injury. “Ah, it’ll patch itself. Leave it alone.”

Sunstreaker shrugged; Sideswipe’s self-repair systems would fix the wires and the plating above it whether or not he got someone to look at it. “Your call.”

"Your turn," Sideswipe said, and started in on the joints Sunstreaker couldn't reach on his own. It was a familiar ritual, one they'd performed so often that Sunstreaker knew Sideswipe's root mode almost as well as he knew his own, but one that had been all but abandoned in the wake of Sideswipe's most recent near-death experience.

"Thanks," Sunstreaker said, and Sideswipe paused.

"You've never said that before," he said, surprise evident in his voice.

"That doesn't mean you can stop," Sunstreaker returned, and Sideswipe's fingers started moving again.

In his lifelong bid to never make any situation easy for anyone ever, Sideswipe had somehow combined the breakdown of the twin-relationship status quo with his nascent pursuit of Ratchet, and for Sunstreaker to repair the one meant that he was pulled into helping with the other.

"Twins are a package deal, Sunny," Sideswipe said, and Sunstreaker shook his head.

"Stop pretending you can read my thoughts," he said. "Neither of us has telepathic mods."

"Who needs telepathic mods," Sideswipe said. "I know you better than that."

"Ha," Sunstreaker said, because for a while it had seemed like they didn't know each other at all, and also because Sideswipe's hands across his back were working previously stressed circuits into a wordless calm.

"You're done," Sideswipe said, and Sunstreaker turned to see his brother reattaching his shoulder cannon.

"Where are you going?" Sunstreaker asked, and Sideswipe shrugged.

"Monitor duty. I'm supposed to assist Red Alert." Sideswipe grimaced. Sunstreaker didn't blame him; Red Alert was bound to be more paranoid than usual after the inexplicable Decepticon behavior. Taking into account the fact that the entire complement of the response team pulling an all-nighter wasn't going to get any of them out of their scheduled duty shifts just made the prospect of the day worse.

"Have fun with it," Sunstreaker said dubiously, and Sideswipe smacked him in the shoulder. "Hey, watch the finish."

"I just touched up the finish," Sideswipe said, and then danced out of reach of retaliation. He kept right on going, capering almost absurdly down the hall.

Sunstreaker shook his head. He had his own shift to look forward to, although he had a little more time before it started. Before he could question what he was doing, he started walking toward the medibay. Ratchet was glaring at a shelf of tools as if it had offended him when Sunstreaker walked in.

"Uh, hi," Sunstreaker said, when Ratchet didn't respond to the door opening.

"I'm missing a wrench," Ratchet said.

Sunstreaker blinked. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but that hadn't been it. "Uh," he said again.

"What can I do for you, Sunstreaker?" Ratchet finally turned to face him, expression too perfectly composed and bearing almost painfully polite.

"I wanted to apologize for yesterday," Sunstreaker said, although he didn’t think he was actually at fault. He wasn’t entirely sure what had gone wrong, but Sideswipe wanted things to work out, which meant – or so he told himself – that Sunstreaker wanted it by default.

"Apologize," Ratchet said, voice and expression still unreadable. "For what?"

"Fine, be like that," Sunstreaker snapped, temper flaring at Ratchet's dismissal of his attempt to be polite, and turned to leave. A beaker sailed past his head to smash against the closed door.

"You don't get to be angry," Ratchet hissed from behind him, and Sunstreaker blinked.

"Excuse me?" he said, now starting to feel the slow burn of actual anger instead of irritation.

"What exactly did you think you were doing?" Ratchet stalked toward him.

Sunstreaker had never seen the medic's sheer mass as intimidating before, and he refused to start now, but he still ran through three ways to drop Ratchet minus his weapons without thinking. "What did I think I was doing? You came on to Sideswipe!"

Ratchet paused, some of the aggression leaching out of his frame, and muttered something that sounded a lot like "I was afraid of that."

"Is there something you'd like to share?" Sunstreaker asked, because he was beginning to think they were having two entirely different conversations. "Because I'm not your charity case, and I'm not going to be with someone who only wants me for my brother. Whatever you were after last night, it won’t happen again."

Watching another mech's jaw literally drop as the tension on the hinges suddenly slackened was something Sunstreaker hadn't seen in years. "I have no idea what you're talking about," Ratchet said finally, after several moments of working said jaw.

"Well, what are you talking about?" Sunstreaker asked, irritation having drained away. Watching Ratchet trying to speak had been far too amusing.

"I thought I was having a conversation about last night," Ratchet said waspishly. "Was I wrong?"

"No," Sunstreaker said. "Let me spell it out for you. You came into the rec room and went straight for Sideswipe."  Ratchet was staring at Sunstreaker as if he weren't entirely sure whether or not he wanted to hear what Sunstreaker was saying. "Just in case it wasn't entirely clear yesterday, Sideswipe and I are a package deal. It's both of us or neither, but I'm not going to put up with you if you're only interested in him."

"Did I give you that impression?" Ratchet asked after a moment of staring at Sunstreaker almost curiously.

Because of that look, Sunstreaker thought about it. "No," he said slowly; Ratchet hadn't acted as if he'd been aware anyone else was even in the room once he'd seen Sideswipe, until... "Not after Sideswipe pointed out that I was there."

"Ah," Ratchet said, as if a puzzle had been solved. Sunstreaker glared impatiently. He'd come down before his shift to offer an apology that he didn't feel he'd had to offer, and somehow the conversation had gotten out of control.

"Ah, what?" Sunstreaker asked.

"I should really talk to you both at the same time," Ratchet hedged.

"Talk to us both about what?" asked Sideswipe from just inside the door, with what was either remarkably brilliant or remarkably poor timing. Sunstreaker hadn’t even heard him coming.

"What are you doing here?" Sunstreaker asked. "You're supposed to be helping Red Alert."

"Yeah, about that." Sideswipe raised one arm and pointed at the sparking gash. "He said this was going to interfere with his very delicate equipment and I should go tape it shut."

Ratchet ex-vented. "That'll take less time than all the audials I get to fix. Get on the table."

For the first time, Sunstreaker noticed a small cluster of mechs at the other end of the medibay, all carefully not watching the byplay near the door. "Why didn't you tell me they were there?" he hissed, embarrassed and feeling betrayed that Ratchet had just let him keep talking.

"Thundercracker's sonic boom took out their audials," Ratchet explained. "They can't hear." He pointed at his own head. "First Aid repaired mine, but I'd rather do the work on everyone else. I'm not sure he's up to it yet."

"He fixed yours," Sideswipe pointed out, overriding Sunstreaker's protests that they'd still had an audience.

"Patients don't talk," Ratchet said, poking at the defective wiring with what looked like more force than necessary. Sideswipe winced. Ratchet frowned and pushed some of the wiring aside. "Exactly how far did you fall?"

"You said patients don't talk," Sideswipe said.

"Shut up and answer the question."

Sunstreaker knew that the next phrase out of Sideswipe's mouth would be that he couldn't do both, which would only serve to derail the conversation even further. "Less of a fall, more like Screamer threw him at the ground."

"There's a cracked strut that needs welding. Stay put." Ratchet strode toward the back of the room.

"You know, that takes a lot longer for your self-repair systems to fix," Sunstreaker said.

"It doesn't really hurt," Sideswipe said, trying to look at the injury again. "Really, I thought it was just the wires."

"I should tell him to just leave it," Sunstreaker said.

"You want me to suffer?" Sideswipe gave him his best imploring kicked-youngling look.

"You just said it didn't hurt," Sunstreaker said.

"Oh, right." Sideswipe kicked his legs back and forth idly, staring at something indeterminate in front of him. “So about this conversation we’re all supposed to have,” he started.

"I want you to go off-line while I weld it," Ratchet said, returning with an arc welder in one hand. "So you won't be tempted to move," he added, forestalling Sideswipe's question.

"Yay," Sideswipe said unenthusiastically, and pulled his legs up onto the repair berth. "How late is this going to make me?” he asked, as if it had just occurred to him. “Because Red Alert is going to count this as late, even though he sent me here to begin with."

"The more you talk, the later you'll be," Ratchet said, and Sideswipe ex-vented dramatically before powering down obediently. Ratchet pushed aside the damaged wiring and started on the strut, movements precise.

"So what did you want to talk to us both about?" Sunstreaker asked, moving to stand on the other side of the berth.

"Not now," Ratchet said. "After the end of your shift."

Sunstreaker folded his arms across his chest and glared. Ratchet, completely unaffected by the glare, kept working. "Are you going to be finished any time soon? I'd like to know how late I'm going to be for my shift."

“You know you don’t actually have to stay until I’m finished,” Ratchet said.

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

"Just about done now." Ratchet set the welder aside and started taping up the wires. He finished by spraying a sealant patch over the damaged area and tapping Sideswipe's temple. "Okay, Sideswipe, boot up."

Since Sunstreaker had never known his brother to boot up efficiently outside of a combat situation, he sat back and smirked at Sideswipe's total non-response. Ratchet, on the other hand, wasn't amused in the slightest.

"I have other things to do," he growled at Sunstreaker. "You get him up." He paused and then finished in a markedly less aggressive tone. "I'll see you both after your shifts."

"Yeah, yeah." Sunstreaker stared at Sideswipe for a few minutes, briefly weighing the amusement value of letting his brother sleep through his shift against the aggravation value of missing out on his own recharge time while Sideswipe didn't. Both sides of the equation, however, were moot; they all had work that needed to get done. "Now, Sideswipe."

Despite Sunstreaker's best efforts, Sideswipe stubbornly refused to reboot, and Sunstreaker slowly began to worry. When dropping his brother on the floor did nothing, he started to panic.

"Uh, Ratchet?"

"Why are you pushing my patient off his berth?" Ratchet snapped, already glaring at him. "If you crack that weld, Sunstreaker, I will make you redo it."

"He's still offline," Sunstreaker said, crouched next to his brother. "That shouldn't be happening. We're designed to boot up quickly in potentially hazardous situations, and this counts."

"Calm down," Ratchet said, motioning to Hound to stay where he was and hurrying across the medibay.

"I am calm!" Sunstreaker snapped, lifting Sideswipe back onto the berth.

"Then back off," Ratchet said, and Sunstreaker obeyed just barely enough to stay within arm's reach. "You're hovering," Ratchet said, not at all helpfully, and Sunstreaker moved back another fraction of an inch.

The next few moments dragged up all the horror Sunstreaker had felt after Skywarp had cracked open Sideswipe's spark chamber, amplified by the fact that he couldn't actually see anything wrong. There was nothing for Ratchet to fix.

"He's in stasis lock," Ratchet said finally, apparently unaffected by the fact that Sideswipe was broken.

"Why? Was there internal damage that you missed?" Sunstreaker, without realizing it, had lunged forward, gripping the side of the repair berth hard enough to leave dents.

"No." Ratchet frowned. "There's something else wrong." Obviously, Sunstreaker didn't need to point out, or Ratchet would have been able to pull Sideswipe out of the stasis lock.

"It's those slagging Seekers again," Sunstreaker hissed, aware that he was reacting irrationally and not caring.

"You don't know that." Ratchet had started hooking Sideswipe into Teletraan-I to monitor his vital signs. Sunstreaker watched them all appear on the relevant screen, frowning. "Out," Ratchet said.

"But -" Sunstreaker started.

"Out," Ratchet repeated. "I can’t work with you hovering, and you've got a shift to report to."

Sunstreaker glared, but ultimately he left the medibay.

* * *

It was the bad day that just wouldn't end; Ratchet stared at Sideswipe's unresponsive form and had no idea what to do. Sideswipe just would not come out of stasis lock, and short of hacking directly into his brain module, Ratchet was nearly out of ideas.

He'd forgotten entirely that Sideswipe was supposed to report back to Red Alert until the security chief pinged the medibay demanding to know where his temporary assistant was.

By that time, Ratchet had set some diagnostic programs running and gone back to repairing audials. He'd gotten both Hound and Brawn repaired, leaving Tracks as the final victim of Thundercracker's sonic boom, by the time he had to explain to Red Alert that Sideswipe wasn't going anywhere under his own power.

"What do you mean, stasis lock?" Red Alert demanded, and the conversation went downhill from there.

Tracks' audials had been replaced by the time Sideswipe's diagnostics finished, not that any of them told Ratchet anything, but at that point he had a whole new set of problems. The corrupted boot of the morning before was starting to glitch his motor relays beyond his CPU's ability to compensate, and his HUD had flashed a recommendation three times now that he reboot to correct the errors.

"I don't have time for this," he muttered, dismissing the latest alert, and the medibay door slid open to make his day even worse. "Bumblebee?" Ratchet asked. The minibot was slung over Cliffjumper's shoulder, unmoving. "What did you do to him?"

"I didn't do anything!" Cliffjumper protested. "He didn't answer his door, and when I opened it, I just found him."

"On the berth."

Expecting to find unreported battle damage from the fight that hadn't been, Ratchet was surprised to find that Bumblebee's hardware was in perfect working order. There was nothing physically wrong with him. He was simply unconscious.

"Well?" Cliffjumper demanded, having apparently spent the entire time Ratchet had been looking at Bumblebee hovering by the door.

"Stasis lock," Ratchet said, the words spilling out of his mouth in surprise. There was no damage that should have put either Bumblebee or Sideswipe into basic survival mode, but Bumblebee couldn't be roused any more than Sideswipe.

"One is chance," Cliffjumper said, clenching a hand into a fist and examining it intently. "Twice is coincidence."

Ratchet didn't need to finish the platitude; two fighters who'd been in their most recent response team were incapacitated. He activated his inter-Autobot radio. "Optimus? We may have a situation."

The brief conversation led to a head count; Optimus demanded that the entire complement of the Ark check in via the inter-Autobot radio.  Every mech sounded off except Prowl.

"I'll go knock on his door, Prime," Ratchet said. Prowl's quarters and his office weren't terribly far from the medibay and he would be able to determine more rapidly than anyone else whether or not Prowl was also in inexplicable stasis lock.

"I'll go." Optimus sounded weary, even over the radio, and looked even wearier when he carried Prowl into the medibay.

"Just like the others," Ratchet said under Optimus' gaze. The Autobot leader made no accusations, but Ratchet couldn't help but feel them all the same. "Stasis lock."

"Find out why," Optimus told him.

"I'll need to access brain modules," Ratchet said. "Everything else has come back clean, and I need to check the CPU."

Optimus hesitated for a long moment; accessing a Transformer's brain module was a serious breach of privacy, only permissible if there was no other choice. "Do it," he said finally.

"Understood," Ratchet replied. “I could use Perceptor’s help.” At Optimus’ impatient nod, he sent off a ping to the Ark’s resident software expert.

"Are there any patterns?" Optimus asked, looming over Prowl as they both waited for Perceptor to arrive. Ratchet hadn't expected him to still be there, and flinched slightly.

"Patterns?" he asked, distracted by yet another alert telling him to reboot to correct impending errors.

"If this is a Decepticon attack, we need to know how to ward it off," Optimus said.

"Aside from all three of them belonging to the solar power station response team?" Ratchet asked.

Optimus regarded him with a level look.

"Sorry." Ratchet rubbed a hand over his optics. "Sideswipe went offline so I could perform a delicate internal weld and didn't come back online. Cliffjumper brought Bumblebee in. You brought Prowl. Ah, sorry, Prime, I'm babbling. Short on recharge."

"Prowl was on his recharge berth," Optimus said. "I believe he shut down voluntarily."

Ratchet blinked. "Cliffjumper," he sent. "Where did you say you found Bumblebee?"

On his recharge berth, Cliffjumper sent back, sounding puzzled. Why?

"That makes an obvious pattern," Ratchet said to the sound of the doors sliding open to admit Perceptor. Ratchet was in the middle of explaining the situation when his audials caught Optimus ordering Cliffjumper to report to the medibay.

"You can't ask him to shut down just to test a theory," Ratchet said, while Perceptor blinked at them both.

"On the contrary," Optimus rumbled, at which point Cliffjumper walked through the doors. "Cliffjumper, I have a request to make."

"Anything," Cliffjumper replied, an answer that didn't change even after Ratchet explained the potential link between voluntary shutdown and stasis lock popping up among response team members. Perceptor’s verbose support of the idea might have had something to do with that, but Ratchet rather thought it was Optimus and his expectant look that made up Cliffjumper’s mind.

"Okay, then." Ratchet pointed at a random repair berth, conceding defeat. "Up here, please."

Cliffjumper hopped up on the berth, all contained energy and restless motion, and arranged himself. "Now?"

"Not yet." Ratchet attached monitoring leads to Cliffjumper, including one directly into the interface port at the back of Cliffjumper's skull to monitor his CPU. "Now," he said once the various displays had activated, and watched the light fade out of Cliffjumper's optics.

Nothing set off any immediate alarm bells, but Cliffjumper remained unresponsive. Perceptor made a “hmm” noise and started the process to access Cliffjumper’s CPU.

"I think you have your pattern, Prime," Ratchet said.

"Until this has been resolved, no one on the response team can shut down." Optimus didn't look particularly enthusiastic about that prospect.

"Energon will only go so far in staving off the need to recharge," Ratchet said, not that Optimus needed to be told.

"Then both of you will have to work quickly," Optimus returned.

"Great." Ratchet stared at his leader's retreating back and called for more assistance.

Unfortunately for Wheeljack, Sunstreaker nearly bowled him over stalking into the medibay.

“I told you to leave,” Ratchet said. Sunstreaker made a rude gesture and planted himself firmly inside the medibay doors.  Wheeljack gave Sunstreaker a wide berth on his way to joining Perceptor, and Ratchet gave it up as a fight not worth pursuing. Whatever his duty shift had been, Sunstreaker wasn’t going to finish it.

"If there's nothing physically wrong, we should check their operating code," Wheeljack said, giving Sunstreaker a very dubious look.

“The operating code is my current level of focus,” Perceptor said. “I would, however, appreciate an additional set of optics for the purpose of comparison.”

"Start with -" Ratchet glanced toward Sunstreaker, who had migrated over to Sideswipe in between giving the two of them very dark looks. "Start with Bumblebee," he said.

"Is there something wrong with your vocalizer?" Wheeljack asked, tapping into Bumblebee's brain.

"I don't think so. Why?" Ratchet looked up from his display. His vocalizer wasn't one of the glitching systems.

"There's some static," Wheeljack said. "In the lower register. I heard it from Sunstreaker, too."

"I'll check it later," Ratchet said, as his entire left arm locked up. He tried shaking it, but for a long agonizing second, it refused to move. The alert was becoming more insistent, resisting dismissal until he forced it closed.

Wheeljack's fins flashed brightly once in a non-reply as he gave Ratchet an odd look. "Is there something else going on I should know about?" he asked quietly.

"I am the victim of very poor timing," Ratchet began, at which remark Wheeljack's fins flashed amusement. The humor drained out of his expression as Ratchet continued to explain.

* * *

Sunstreaker watched from Sideswipe's berth, one hand resting almost casually on his brother's forearm. Whatever it was the Decepticons had done, the Seekers were behind it. The Seekers, and Soundwave, and Sunstreaker had no idea why they weren't organizing a raiding party in revenge.

"Any one of the Seekers could tell us what they did," he said softly to Sideswipe. "Just a matter of the right kind of persuasion."

Sideswipe's silence could have been interpreted as tacit approval.

"Or Soundwave," Sunstreaker continued, rubbing little circles on Sideswipe's plating with his thumb. "Grab one of his cassettes, he'd talk. As much as he ever does."

A heavy hand descended on Sunstreaker's shoulder, and he reacted without thinking, throwing the mech into the nearest wall. It was only after Ratchet hit the ground that Sunstreaker recognized his assailant.

"Uh, sorry about that," he said, pulling Ratchet to his feet.

"I shouldn’t have snuck up on you," Ratchet said, and Sunstreaker shrugged. He was running on high alert, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t tell the difference between friend and foe. “We’re going to fix this,” Ratchet continued.

“I guess,” Sunstreaker said after a moment, when it became clear that Ratchet was waiting for some kind of response. He just wasn’t sure what to say.

“I’ll, um.” Ratchet flexed one hand, looking very much like there was something he wanted to say, and then gave Sunstreaker a poor imitation of a reassuring smile instead. “It’ll just take a little time, that’s all.” He returned to the pair of mechs going through minibot software.

"I'm not programmed for patience," Sunstreaker said, quietly enough that he was fairly sure no one hear him, and tapped his fingers on the berth. "And I'm not watching this happen all over again."

Not that he was going to do Sideswipe any good without some sort of plan; running screaming at the Decepticons was all very well and good, but at the end of the day it probably wouldn't get him anywhere but dead, what with his total lack of backup.

Sunstreaker stared at Sideswipe, considering what might be the best approach toward kidnapping a Seeker. He concluded that which Seeker it was would have an effect on his plans, at which point he had to start all over again, because Skywarp and his teleportation were a lost cause and no one in their right mind wanted to get anywhere near Starscream when his vocalizer was still working, and Thundercracker was never outside without at least one of the other two.

Sunstreaker was trying to decide whether Soundwave was a better potential target - probably not, given those infuriating cassettes - when a minor commotion on the other side of the medibay caught his attention.

"What do you mean, forced reboot?" Wheeljack said, fins flashing a distressed red. Perceptor, paying no explicit attention to either of them, appeared to be focusing even harder on Cliffjumper’s code.

Ratchet's mouth was compressed into a thin line as he glared at something Sunstreaker couldn't see. "Boot errors from yesterday morning -"

"Thirty-six hours and you couldn't find time for a reboot," Wheeljack interrupted.

"I'm busy," Ratchet said. "I have things to do."

"Yeah, well, you being busy means we now have a major problem." Wheeljack's fins were still flashing red as Sunstreaker approached silently from behind.

"I am aware of that," Ratchet said, and glanced over at Sunstreaker. "What is it? Is Sideswipe worse?"

"If you shut down, he's never going to get fixed," Sunstreaker said. It wasn't what he'd intended to say, but the words had just come out.

"I'm not the only chance Sideswipe and the others have," Ratchet said gently, using the same tone of voice Sunstreaker had heard only when things were at their worst, the same tone he'd used when he'd explained that Sideswipe was one cracked spark chamber away from permanent deactivation.

"Perceptor and I aren’t nothing, you know," Wheeljack said cheerfully, fins now flashing a calming blue.

"That’s supposed to be reassuring?" Sunstreaker wasn’t about to assault the engineer, but he wasn’t above trying to intimidate him either, until Ratchet drew him aside.

"We're going to have that conversation," he said. "You, your brother, and I."

Sunstreaker glanced over to make sure Wheeljack wasn't paying attention; the engineer appeared as completely focused on Bumblebee's core code as Perceptor still was on Cliffjumper’s. "I..." he started, and then couldn't finish the sentence.

"It's going to be fine," Ratchet said. Sunstreaker wanted to believe him, but the medic was sliding down the wall and into a forced reboot cycle.  Sunstreaker eased him down carefully, and looked up at Wheeljack.

"Right," Wheeljack said, still giving Sunstreaker a very dubious look.  Sunstreaker clamped down on his initial reactions, and between the two of them, they managed to lift Ratchet onto an open repair berth. Wheeljack hooked in the various monitoring cables, optics flicking back and forth between the screens.

"Right." Sunstreaker figured he had two choices, at this point. Wait for the virus to offline him, or go Seeker-hunting and take at least one of them with him.

“The matter is well in hand,” Perceptor said, which wasn’t reassuring at all, and was also a complete and total fabrication.

"Whatever." Sunstreaker bent over Ratchet, searching for any sign of life. He didn't see any, which made it all the more surprising when Ratchet's optics suddenly lit.  Sunstreaker did not shriek or flinch; he simply made a sound indicating that assistance was necessary, or so he would later claim.

"Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated," Ratchet said drily. "Have we found a solution, then?"

"Solution? You've been offline for less than five minutes! What do you expect anyone to do in five frickin' minutes?" Sunstreaker realized he was still uncomfortably close to Ratchet and pulled back, allowing the medic to sit up.

"Well, this is unexpected." Perceptor looked at Ratchet, at the monitoring screens, and back at Ratchet. “According to our previous hypothesis, your reboot subroutines should have been disabled.”  

"At least one of our assumptions is wrong," Ratchet agreed, detaching the leads from under his plating.

"I still think it's a software virus," Wheeljack said.

“I begin to concur,” Perceptor said, and the two of them withdrew.

"I don't think they’re wrong," Ratchet said, yanking out the last lead and silencing the alarm that followed. Neither Wheeljack nor Perceptor looked up from their urgently whispered conversation.

"I told you we'd have that talk," Ratchet said, but his voice was trembling slightly.

"You had no idea," Sunstreaker said, making no effort to keep either the accusation or the relief out of his voice. "You still have no idea."

"Not so much," Ratchet admitted. "But I think we have a better chance now." He clambered off the medical berth and made his way over to the other two, leaving Sunstreaker to his own devices.

Sunstreaker stared at them for a moment, deeply absorbed in Bumblebee's prone form, and then looked back at Sideswipe. Did the monitors show a change? Not as far as he could tell, but Sunstreaker was more and more convinced that he could see Sideswipe visibly deteriorate.

"Not letting this go," he said quietly, and pulled a stool over to Sideswipe's berth. Seeker-smashing would take a bit of planning, although not quite as much as sneaking out of the base unseen.

Under the guise of monitoring his brother more closely, Sunstreaker hooked himself into Teletraan-I and started searching for the best way out. He was therefore in the perfect position to see mechs who hadn't been part of the solar power plant response team brought into the medibay with the same symptoms, and listen to the hushed voices discussing words like contagion and epidemic.

As far as Sunstreaker was concerned, that just made the situation more hopeless. With one final touch and a whisper of good luck to his brother, he quietly left the medibay.

* * *

Ratchet stared at the code. "There," he said. They hadn't had to run a line-by-line analysis after all; a diagnostic meant to catch low-level conflicts had turned up a minor discrepancy in regulating alt-mode engine speed, and a nasty little virus had been hiding in what was normally a perfectly harmless tachometer.

"Wait," Wheeljack said, and Perceptor plugged the diagnostic cable into the port at the back of Ratchet’s head. A search for the same code found the virus, dormant, waiting for the right trigger.

Perceptor narrowed his eyes at the display, once again completely absorbed in it.

"Great. So we know what activates it," Ratchet said. Looking at his own code was deeply unsettling. Off to the side, he could see First Aid trying to fit Jetfire onto one of the berths. "But not what transmits it or how to counteract it."

"Maybe we need a fresh perspective," Wheeljack said. "And while we're on the subject, that static in your vocalizer is really bothering me."

"I keep telling you, I don't know what you're talking about. Any errors should have been cleared with the reboot." Ratchet disconnected the cable and drummed his fingers on the nearest flat surface.

"There it is again." Wheeljack reached for the cable.

"What are you doing?" Ratchet made a grab for it, but Wheeljack held it back.

"Plugging it back in so I can take a look at your voice protocols," Wheeljack said.

"We have more important things to do," Ratchet told him, snapping the port closed.

"And I keep telling you we need a fresh perspective. The best way for it is to look at a new problem." Ratchet was sure Wheeljack was grinning under the mask, even if he couldn't prove it.

"You stay out of my code."

"Fine, I'll use Sunstreaker."

That was overly optimistic, Ratchet thought, even before he looked around to see that Sunstreaker was no longer hovering over Sideswipe. "No, you won't."

"You're right. It's a terrible idea - hey, where'd he go?"

"Somewhere not good," Ratchet said. "You stay here and keep working with Perceptor. I'll go make sure Sunstreaker isn't doing anything inadvisable."

"Sunstreaker can take care of himself, you know," Wheeljack said, giving him an odd look.

"That's not the point," Ratchet said, and the door slid shut on Wheeljack's continuing protests. The likelihood that Sunstreaker was going to do something incredibly stupid wasn't exactly low, but Ratchet wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It wasn't easy to assume that Sunstreaker wasn't up to no good when Ratchet found him at what was supposed to be a sealed exit below the Ark, carefully keying in a code that he wasn't supposed to know.

"Where do you think you're going?" Ratchet asked.

Sunstreaker stilled, a counterpoint to the door sliding smoothly open. "I'm going to murder those slagging Seekers," he said.

"You're not going to do anything of the sort," Ratchet said.

"What other choice do I have?" Sunstreaker spat. "Stay here and wait to die?"

"We've isolated the cause," Ratchet said.

"Isolated, but not negated, or cured." Sunstreaker put a hand on the wall, still facing the darkness of the rocky tunnel below the floor. "And a fifth of us still comatose. That's not going to happen to me."

"No, it isn't," Ratchet said gently. "But I don't have to tell you what will happen to you if you try to take on the Seekers alone."

"And what do you care?" Sunstreaker asked, bitterness in his voice. "That's what this conversation of yours is all about, right? You don't care about me. And Sideswipe..." He faltered.

"No!" A stinging pain suddenly erupted in his hand, and Ratchet looked to the side to see that he'd hit the wall hard enough to dent it. He lowered his arm, carefully uncurling the fingers. "No," he said, more calmly than he felt. "That's... that's not it."

"Oh?" Sunstreaker challenged, apparently unfazed by the now-damaged wall. "Then what is it?"

"I can't be involved with you or with Sideswipe again," Ratchet said, the words hard to get out; at some point, Sunstreaker had begun exerting the same pull on him that Sideswipe did. “If that’s even what you really want,” he added waspishly, frustration driving the accusation.

"Twins too much for you?" Sunstreaker gave him a challenging stare, just another form of self-defense through aggression.

Ratchet laughed, a little, the sound choked off as soon as it bubbled out of his vocalizer. "I can't even begin to list the reasons," he said, and he expected anger out of Sunstreaker. Instead, his hand was lifted and examined for damage.

"Why don't you try to start," Sunstreaker said, optics fixed intently on Ratchet's finger joints.

His hand couldn't be withdrawn without actually causing injury; Sunstreaker was holding it in such a way as to keep it firmly in place.  Ratchet blinked a few times; apparently the twins really were after something more than a one-night stand. "It's inappropriate to get involved with a patient," he said finally. "The medical ethics board -"

"No longer exists," Sunstreaker interrupted. "Besides, we've all been your patients, so unless you're trying to convince me that you're going to spend the rest of your life with no partner..."

"Just because the board doesn't exist," Ratchet began.

"You're changing the subject." Sunstreaker appeared to have completed his examination of Ratchet's hand, but he wasn't letting go.

"What other reason do you need?" Ratchet asked.

"One that isn't a pile of scrap," Sunstreaker said. "And if you're worried about sparing my feelings, don't. Everyone knows I don't actually have any."

"That's ridiculous," Ratchet said, and Sunstreaker gripped his hand more tightly.

"You're changing the subject again," he said.

"You want the truth?" Ratchet threw up his hands, or tried. One of them was still trapped. "Fine. Here's the truth. I think that getting attached to you and your brother will drive me over the edge, because one of these days, you're not going to come back, and I don't think I can handle that."

"Huh." Sunstreaker's grip slackened until it was barely there, just the merest whisper of a touch. "You're a coward, then."

"So what if I am?" Ratchet snapped, stung. "If that's how I keep as many people alive as I can, then so be it."

"You know, me and Sideswipe, we're really good at what we do," Sunstreaker said, in what appeared to be a total non sequitur.

"So?" Ratchet asked. For some reason, even though his hand was now more or less free, he still couldn't remove it.

"So of all the mechs here, we're most likely to survive whatever the Decepticons throw at us."

"You two make a habit of throwing yourselves into the middle of the most ridiculous situations!" Ratchet said as sharply as he could. "I've put the two of you back together more times than I can count!"

"Exactly," Sunstreaker said.

"Exactly, what?"

"And we're still here," Sunstreaker said smugly, with all the arrogance and confidence of a relatively young warbuild.

Ratchet couldn't help it; he started laughing, clinging desperately to the hand still encircling his.

"What?" Sunstreaker asked, suspicion lacing his voice.

"You," Ratchet managed. "You were about to go out, alone, to hunt down three of Megatron's most capable soldiers, yank them from the middle of his army, and you're telling me how you're definitely going to survive."

"Well," Sunstreaker said, now looking faintly offended. "I'm just that good."

"Get back inside the Ark, you idiot," Ratchet said, bringing his free hand up to cuff Sunstreaker upside the head.

"Watch the finish," Sunstreaker grumped, but when Ratchet tugged him away from the open door, he went readily enough. Without someone standing close enough to the proximity sensors, the door slid shut and locked.

Instead of following Ratchet to the medibay, Sunstreaker muttered something about his previously abandoned shift and left before they reached the main corridors. Ratchet watched him walk off, wondering if Sunstreaker was going off Seeker-hunting after all, but he’d done what he could. He’d gotten nearly to the medibay when Wheeljack darted out into the corridor and grabbed his shoulders.

“I’ve got it!” he said, fins flashing brightly.

“You’ve deactivated the virus?” Ratchet said. 

“What? No. I figured out how it’s spread.” Wheeljack’s hands moved animatedly. “It’s tied to the analog sound demodulator.”

“Of course it is,” Ratchet said, but Wheeljack was still talking.

“Soundwaves,” he said. “Our verbal communication is configured to have extra waves, so the audio decoder gets a program hidden inside. I told you your vocalizer was fragged up.”

“And that helps us how?” Ratchet asked, letting Wheeljack push him into the medibay.

“Better handle on how it operates,” Wheeljack said. “Guess we’ll have some new defense protocols to develop when we’re all finished here.”

“Hn,” Ratchet said, not quite able to share Wheeljack’s enthusiasm for a finely-crafted piece of destructive software with an admittedly creative delivery method.

“A potential countermeasure is compiling,” Perceptor said, looking up as the door slid shut behind Ratchet and Wheeljack, and the repair efforts went on.

The fourth attempt to neutralize the virus ended up the most successful, with Smokescreen coming online as the first Autobot test. “What am I doing here?” he asked, and once Ratchet was sure he could power down and back up again, the countermeasure was approved for the rest of those the virus had incapacitated.

“Okay, how late am I?” Sideswipe asked, blinking up at Ratchet, the last to be revived.

“You missed your shift,” Ratchet said.

“You… Red Alert is going to kill me.” Sideswipe sat up mournfully, shoulders drooping. “You said it was a minor repair.”

“It’s kind of a funny story,” Ratchet said. “I’m sure your brother wants to tell it to you.”

Optics narrowed, Sideswipe climbed off the repair berth.

“The repair code will have to be manually uploaded into each of the affected Autobots,” Perceptor pointed out.

“Why don’t you bring your brother back here,” Ratchet amended, and Sideswipe raised an optic ridge.

“Oh, there’s a story here, all right,” he said. “I’m not sure I agree with the funny part.”

“Just go collect Sunstreaker,” Ratchet said. “He’ll explain.”

By the time the repair code had been installed in the remaining Ark complement, Ratchet was sore and exhausted. Wheeljack and Perceptor weren’t much better off, but at least they were sure everyone’s code was clean.

After setting up sessions to update security protocols, Ratchet gratefully quit the medibay and made for his quarters. The only thing he wanted was recharge – it had been long enough that he couldn’t shake the fatigue even with sufficient energon. He apparently wasn’t going to get it, because both Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were lounging in the hallway outside his door.

 “You know, it’s not really fair for you to tell us you can’t get involved,” Sideswipe said, before Ratchet could ask just how long they’d been lurking in the hallway. Probably not that long, given the hour, but he still wasn’t sure exactly what to think of the two of them just sitting there waiting, and then he registered exactly what it was that Sideswipe had said.

“What?” Ratchet stopped walking. The corridor was empty on both sides, except for the three of them, but he still didn’t want to talk. His processor caught up with his audials. “Ah. You’ve been talking to Sunstreaker.”

“You’re the one who started things,” Sunstreaker said, as Sideswipe nodded.

“I, uh,” Ratchet said, and decided that arguing was going to take energy he didn’t have. “Do you both want to come in.”  It wasn’t really a question, but both twins answered politely as they followed him through the door.

“You look terrible,” Sunstreaker said bluntly once the door was closed, apparently having exhausted his store of courtesy.

“I’ve had a very long day,” Ratchet said. More like a long several days masquerading as a single shift. “You wanted to talk, so talk.”

“We’ve kind of said our piece.” Sideswipe had wandered over to his other side, so that Ratchet couldn’t look at both of them simultaneously. “You did start things.”

“I’m not allowed to change my mind?” Ratchet said, trying to surreptitiously angle himself to put both twins in his field of vision.

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker exchanged unhappy looks. “That’s not it,” Sunstreaker said finally.

“Look, if you say no, then you say no, and we respect it,” Sideswipe said. “But I thought – we thought – we were having a good time. I just want… were you just playing with me? With us?”

He looked miserable, plating clamped down tightly and shoulders hunched inwards, and the sight made something inside Ratchet twist. It was too late not to get attached, but maybe not too late to salvage something out of this mess.

“I was overcharged,” Ratchet said, the syllables running into each other. “I made a mistake, and I’m sorry.”

The brief silence that followed was broken by an almost audible smile from Sideswipe before Sunstreaker spoke. “You,” he said, pointing. “You were not.”

Ratchet shrugged uncomfortably. “Wheeljack,” he said by way of explanation. “The latest experiment was not a success.”

“Well,” Sideswipe said meditatively. “That does explain why you kept giggling.”

“I did not,” Ratchet returned, faintly horrified.

“You’ll never know,” Sideswipe said, and there was a note of suppressed glee in his voice.

“You’re both enjoying this far too much,” Ratchet said, and gave up on trying to watch them both. He sat down on his berth with a sense of relief to at least be off his feet.

“Of course I am. You get drunk and the first thing you do is come looking for Sideswipe. And me.” Sunstreaker smirked. “You’ve got good taste.”

“You’re hopeless,” Ratchet muttered. “It’s not polite to take advantage of an overcharged mech,” he said, somewhat louder.

“Advantage? Who’s taking advantage of who here?” Sideswipe was grinning openly. At Ratchet’s arched optic ridge, the grin vanished. “You know we wouldn’t have, if we’d known, right?” he said, at least a little contritely.

“The point,” Ratchet said, because the conversation was getting away from him, “is that –“

“Is that you did what you wanted,” Sideswipe interrupted. “And it was what I wanted. And what Sunny wanted.”

“And what I want right now,” Ratchet said, “is to recharge voluntarily instead of going through the nightmare that is ISS.” The identical baffled looks on both twins’ faces made him laugh a little. “We’ll take tomorrow as it comes.”

“So that’s not a no, then.” Sideswipe eyed him. “You. Me. Sunny. We’re going to have a thing.”

“A thing, yes, as you so eloquently put it,” Ratchet said. He wasn’t entirely certain the resulting grin on Sideswipe’s face didn’t contain at least a trace of evil intent, and there was no doubt at all about the answering smile from Sunstreaker, but for the first time in a long time, he felt that there was hope for something besides the war.