Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Ow,” Drift said as he booted up. His frame was one giant sore spot, the energon in his lines pulsing in beat to the throb. It felt like he’d been run over but that didn’t make much sense; the race had gone near textbook, and the track medic had given him a clean bill of health after the photo shoot had finished.

“Finally awake, are you?” A voice said off to his left. Drift online his optics and gingerly sat up.

The room he was in was, well, ‘shabby’ was almost too kind to call it. The walls were a grungy grey with streaks of acid etching the corners. Cabinets lined the wall, most without doors, and the supplies within looked just as well worn as the medical drip stand next to his berth. It was like a medical center out of a B-vid except Drift had a feeling it wasn’t purposely done up for the aesthetic.

A mech stepped from a sink half hidden in the corner, busy wiping his hand clean. Half of his chevron looked like it had been snapped off and his pale paint didn’t look much better.

“About time. Was starting to debate if selling your parts was more worth it than keeping you together.”

“Um,” Drift said because really what did one say to that after awakening in a horror vid. “Thank you for not doing that?” He settled on after a moment of careful consideration.

The medic(?) grunted, coming to a stop next to Drift’s berth and running a quick scan. Whatever he’d found must of been good because he deftly removed the IV and coiled it.

“What happened to me?” Drift asked as the medic finished putting the drip up. He remembered the post-race party and, while fuzzy, the after-party, but it was after that things were a bit of a blank.

His memory core helpfully provided a staticky scene of his coworkers talking about going to the Dead End. At least that explained where he was but not why he’d been injured enough medical services had been required. And why said medical services were being provided by this mech and not his personal on-call medic.

Where were his coworkers anyway? A quick glance around revealed only other patients in stasis.

“Don’t know, don’t care. Just pay up and get out already. I need that slab.”

“Of course,” Drift said and reached into his subspace, not caring how much the bill was because of how eager he was to leave. “Huh.” He checked his other subspace pocket and then his other, other one when that one turned out to be empty too. “Oh no.”

“‘Oh no’ what?”

“It appears I’ve misplaced my credit chip.”

The medic snorted. “Of course. Stupid enough to come slum and then dumb enough to get mugged. I should have let you bleed out.”

A hot flush of shame coursed through Drift. It hadn’t been his idea to flirt on the edges of the Dead End but he remembered he’d done nothing to dissuade his coworkers when they’d suggested it. Being overcharged and going with the flow wasn’t an excuse.

“I’m sorry about this,” Drift said, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll come back with your credits.” If he didn’t die trying to leave. At least he wouldn’t be overcharged this time.

“Like I’m going to believe that slag. If you can’t pay than I’m taking my parts back. This isn’t a charity.” The medic’s right hand transformed into a circular saw and Drift started to get real worried. “Though there are other ways to pay if ya don’t got the creds.” The blatant up-and-down and leer that followed spoke of just what he meant.

Well, interfacing with a strange medic wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he’d done. And if it meant he wouldn’t be chopped up, he’d deal with whatever consequences this led to.

Chapter Text

“Come with me, old friend,” Dai Atlas said, one of Ratchet’s hands clasped in both of his. “Come with us on the Exodus. This war is not ours to fight.”

“I can’t just leave when I can help repair the injured.” Ratchet took his hand back to pace the small space that allowed it. “How can I just up and go? Leave all of this behind? I have to do something!”

Dai Atlas sighed. “I know the burden of duty that compels you to stay. I, too, feel it, the need to help where I can. But that time has passed. We cannot help by staying here. The Autobots and the Decepticons both are far too entrenched in their war. They will only bring further destruction and death to Cybertron.”

Ratchet knew that. Had known that ever since the destruction of the Senate, the bombings of Vos. But still, he felt compelled to stay, to heal like he had been forged to do. Those caught in the crossfire would need every medic they could get.

“There is still time to decide,” Dai Atlas said into the silence of Ratchet’s indecision. “I will not force you to rush your choice.”

Ratchet watched him leave, spark in turmoil. The Autobots had contacted him already, using his past with Orion Pax, now Prime, to try and recruit him. He should take them up on their offer - safe neutral camps were becoming fewer and farther between. It was only a matter of time before joining one side or the other would be unavoidable.

What was there for him here if he stayed? Nothing.

(There was nothing left for him on Cybertron. Only the smoldering ruins of his clinic, his many fractured friendships, and Pharma — no.

No.

There was nothing.)

What difference could one medic make?

So Ratchet left. And there wasn’t a moment he didn‘t regret it.

Their migration across the stars brought them to Theophany where they set down tentative roots that swiftly grew in secrecy. Metrotitan continued his sleep as they built on top of him. New Crystal City flourished in peace with every inhabitant’s need met.

Millennia passed.

Life went on.

Not a day went by that Ratchet did not regret.

From what Ratchet overheard later, Wing had nearly taken the hospital’s front doors off in his haste. Burdened with a badly injured mech, he’d barreled through the glass doors and yelled for aid until the distraught receptionist produced a gurney.

Ratchet hadn’t even noticed that the patient under his hands was not from the city. Too busy taping leaking lines and bypassing crushed organs to look at who he had under his hands.

(It felt good to fix again. The last time he had someone on his operating table was when an overeager apprentice had stepped on a sword and managed to slice the back of both his calves open. That had been hundreds of years ago.)

It was only afterward when all the critical repairs were finished and he could leave the remaining work to his assistants that Ratchet realized he’d been working on a foreigner, a Decepticon.

A jolt of fear went through him. Had their secret city been discovered? After all these years avoiding the war, had it finally found them? He scrubbed his hands clean with more force than strictly necessary, thoughts in turmoil.

Ratchet had always known deep in his spark that New Crystal City would be found eventually. Dai Atlas had contingency plans for it, though it had been well over a thousand years since the city had run any emergency drills. That would most likely change now. Even if the Decepticon was only a lone scout, he could have shot off an emergency location beacon before, presumably, his ship had crashed. More Decepticons could be on the way.

Prepare for the worst but hope for the best, eh? If only Ratchet knew what the best situation was in this case.

“What’s happening? What...what’s going on?”

The following conversation went about as well as Ratchet thought it would. The Decepticon didn’t want to hear about New Crystal City; he forced his way through the gathering around his hospital berth and all the way outside before his wounds caught up to him. Wing dragged him back and Ratchet knocked the Decepticon out to avoid a repeat performance.

It was a few days later as Ratchet was making sure the new parts were integrating correctly that the Decepticon woke again.

“Try not to rip your welds open this time because I won’t seal them again,” Ratchet said.

“Tch, that’s what all medics say.” He tried to sit up only for Ratchet to ruthlessly push him supine. The Decepticon growled his engine. Ratchet was thoroughly unimpressed.

“If you want your frame to fall apart on you, then be my guest, kid. Your entire upper body is connected more by welds than solid connector points right now, and if you don’t stay still and let them integrate entire plates are going to snap right off the moment you try and transform.”

Ratchet prepared for arguments but the Decepticon merely squinted at him. Ratchet stared right back - he hadn’t cowered before the board of directors, he damn well wouldn’t cower from an injured patient.

“Ratchet?”

“Yes?”

“No, I mean. Ratchet. You’re that medic. From the Dead End.”

Ratchet had repaired hundreds of mechs in his free clinic. He wouldn’t be surprised if many of the surviving ones had joined the Decepticons when it had exploded. But this one’s face was vaguely familiar, and if he imagined those optics to be yellow instead of red...

“...kid?”

(His clinic, so long ago, reassuring the shivering mech on his table.

“You’re special - I can tell.”

Ratchet never saw him again.

Until now.)

“You look...different,” the Decepticon, Drift his memory supplied, said with a leer.

In a rare moment of vanity, Ratchet had transcanned an alt that better fit the aesthetics of his new home. He was still an ambulance but instead of the hard boxy lines he’d sported before, his silhouette was smooth and curved with tastefully placed kibble. His paint was also of higher quality and more vibrant, and his wax, while not the highest grade, was leagues better than when he was fixing Dead Enders.

“Yes, well, you aren’t exactly sporting the same look either,” Ratchet said, as equally unimpressed by his patient’s roving optics.

“What are you doing in this dump?” Drift asked.

Ratchet snorted. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is getting you out of my hospital so that someone else can deal with you.”

“Oh yes, because you certainly need all the space you can get,” Drift said with a pointed look at the other berths, all unoccupied.

Ratchet snorted again. “Don’t be cute, kid.”

“Sorry,“ he said, not sounding sorry at all. “Can’t help it. It’s how I was sparked.”

Drift frowned then. It was all sharp edges.

“Come with me.”

“What?”

“I’m getting out of here, and you should come with me. You’re wasted here. You could do so much more than pounding out dents for cowards. The war needs to end, and the only way that’ll happen is if we go out there and make it happen.”

“You’re forgetting that I’m one of those mechs that ran and hid.” Ratchet rubbed his face, weary down to his struts. Softly, he continued, “Two mechs can’t make a difference, kid.”

“You made a difference to me —“ Drift cut off so abruptly feedback squealed from his mouth.

Ratchet had wanted to make a difference. He thought he’d been making a difference with his free clinic but apparently not the right kind. A part of his spark still cried for change, but Ratchet ruthlessly crushed the hope that tried to unfurl in it. He’d made his choice already. It was too late to change it.

“No, Drift. And that’s final.”

That wasn’t the end of it because of course it wasn’t. Drift brought it up whenever they were in the same room. Which happened a lot since Wing had promised to let Drift go if he managed to defeat him in a spar. That wasn’t going to happen; the myriad of dents Drift sported at the end of their sessions attested to that. But still, Drift went at it with gusto.

Ratchet had a sinking feeling that even if Drift managed to beat Wing, the Decepticon wouldn’t be allowed to leave. Too dangerous, Dai Atlas would say. Pointing it out to Drift would be useless and cruel.

Ratchet kept his mouth shut but curiosity and guilt got the better of him one after-spar session. “Tell me, kid…what’s happening with the war?”

“What isn’t happening.” Drift poked at the dent Ratchet was working on, and Ratchet smacked his hand away with an irritated grunt. “Decepticons attack fuel rich places, Autobots counter attack, a lot of mechs die, sometimes worlds explode. Rinse, repeat for centuries.”

“Worlds? Entire worlds…?” Ratchet could hardly envision it. When had the fighting left Cybertron? How could the fighting have gotten so bad that planets had been destroyed?

“It wasn’t always like that,” Drift said, his voice growing quieter as he continued. “I joined to stop mechs from being like me, living on dredges, looked down on just because we’d been cast aside by the government. So many good mechs died in the Dead End.”

He trailed off, lost in thought or memory.

“I don’t know when the revolution changed from stopping the corruption to what it is now,” Drift continued, his voice barely a murmur. “When did I become what I hated the most?”

Drift was uncommonly quiet for the rest of the check-up, didn’t even part with his customary leer, and Ratchet was too distracted himself to really notice. His thoughts were racing over what Drift had shared and the things that he didn’t say but were implied.

There was no use in obsessing over the past. It couldn’t be changed. He couldn’t have done anything to stop it, Ratchet reminded himself. But still…

What if he could have?

He didn’t get much recharge that night.

Then there were the slavers and Lockdown and the knights that had gone with Drift to fight them off. Ratchet had invited himself onboard the skiff they’d taken to the ambush point, and had pointedly refused to meet Drift’s stare on the tense ride over.

Ratchet paced the skiff’s bridge, agitated as he watched the fight unfold. He’d picked up some self-defense over the centuries but knew he’d be in the way if he tried to help fight. He’d be here when it was over to help the wounded.

The fight was brutal. Ratchet had seen news footage of battlegrounds between the bots and cons but only after the worst of the fighting had been done. He hadn’t realized just how messy it was.

Then Wing was stabbed, and Ratchet found himself dodging under fists and swords and blaster fire to get to him. His surroundings were a chaotic blur as he fought his own battle against death. The spark chamber in his hands fizzled with leaking energy but the spark itself hadn’t been cleaved in two, only nicked. Ratchet’s hands burned as he welded the injury back together.

“Cybertronians! For Crystal City!”

The battle was over soon after.

Wing’s Great Sword looked like it had always belonged on Drift’s back.

(“You should go, Ratchet,” Wing said after Ratchet had shooed Drift away from his berth-side vigil.

“What?”

“You’re not happy here. You’ve never been happy here.” Wing looked out the window overlooking the city. “Everyone here chose to reject the war to keep our culture alive. But not you. I don’t mean this unkindly, Ratchet,” Wing hurried over Ratchet’s objections. “I’m not judging you for your actions or trying to shame you into leaving. Just, please, consider your own happiness for once.”

Ratchet hadn‘t been able to say anything to that.)

Ratchet stood uneasy, every joint in his frame locked in indecision as he watched Drift say his goodbyes. If he followed Drift, it felt like everything he’d done and everything he hadn’t would all be for waste. One mech couldn’t make a difference, he reminded himself.

Drift began up the ramp of the space skimmer, Wing’s Great Sword gleaming in the artificial light, and Ratchet realized with sudden clarity that one mech couldn‘t make a difference in something as grand as war. But if one mech changed another for the better with their words or deeds who went on to do it too, the same action repeating over and over, well, didn’t that make a difference?

As if sensing his epiphany, Drift stopped and turned back, caught Ratchet’s gaze, and cocked his head. “You coming or what?”

Something a lot like hope burst through Ratchet’s spark.

Dai Atlas merely nodded when duty made Ratchet turn to him, asking for permission and forgiveness in one.

Ratchet got on the ship. And everything that came after, he didn’t regret one bit.