Chapter Text
It’s no big deal.
This is no big deal.
This is fine.
...It wasn’t. It wasn’t fine by any stretch of his processor. First Aid stared at the rocks trapping his legs and the shrapnel lodged up and down the left side of his body, his audials still ringing from the explosion that had sent them ripping through his armor. He felt disembodied, detached from the damage he was observing, even as his sensors began to flash a hundred different warnings behind his eyes.
None of them registered with him.
His optics settled on the particularly vicious shard of metal impaling his leg at the juncture between his hip and thigh. He reached for it, servos trembling as they closed around the metal and gave an experimental tug. It refused to yield, but the effort sent a ripple of pain through him that had him gasping and collapsing back against the canyon wall he’d been thrown into. First Aid shuttered his optics as he retreated into himself, riding out the wave.
Primus did it hurt, but the agony grounded him somewhat. Which was just as well, because he was the only medic in the field. He couldn’t afford to succumb to the numbing distance of shock. First things first, assess the damage. Treat the damage. Find a way to rejoin his teammates, or more likely, retreat.
Where were his teammates? What had become of them? First Aid opened his optics, trying to focus them. The world still spun, too hazy for him to concentrate, but the scenery around him was unfamiliar. He tried to parse a reason for this from the overloaded wreck of his processor while urgent warnings clustered and called for his attention.
He’d been close to the blast site. The closest of all his teammates. First Aid grimaced as the pieces slowly came together. He was surrounded by rubble. Trapped by it. It was likely the blast had collapsed part of the canyon around him, reshaping the geography and hiding him from view. Pushing his blown out audials to their maximum sensitivity, First Aid picked up the faint sounds of battle. He strained to listen, trying to separate individual voices from the static bursts that peppered his hearing, but it only earned him a splitting headache. Letting his head slump forward, First Aid shut off his external auditory sensors and tried to concentrate on his own injuries again.
The list flashed across his vision, red and strident now.
Femoral cable punctured. Secondary fuel lines severed mid torso. Concussed processor. Various sensors in the left leg wiring offline. Systems going into shock. Critical energon loss imminent.
First Aid swore softly.
I am so fragged.
His fans whirred rapidly, and his injuries were a pulsing mass of heat and pain, but he could feel a creeping chill beginning in his extremities. Well, the extremities he could still sense. His hip burned where the metal shard still impaled it. The slightest twist of his torso sent jolts through the wiring that pulled involuntary moans from his lips. But below the spike, his leg felt dead. There was no way to auto-repair that kind of injury in the field. First Aid quelled the edge of panic that threatened to overwhelm him.
He would treat the injuries he could. He would stem the energon loss. He would have faith in his teammates to find him and retrieve him from the field. He would survive this. With a shuddering exhale, First Aid steeled himself to begin operating.
A shadow fell across his field of view.
First Aid’s head jerked up, optics fixing on the tall, lithe Decepticon who stood not twenty paces from him. Visceral fear surged through his lines, sending his spark stuttering with trepidation. First Aid tried to scramble backwards, but his shoulders only slammed against the stone wall behind him, and the screech of metal scraping against rock echoed the internal scream of his systems protesting the sudden movement.
The other mech did not move, just tilted their head and watched his struggle with a curiously blank face. No. A screen, First Aid realized. They had no face. This was no drone, no Vehicon. This was one of Megatron’s own. Tears sprang to his eyes, painting his cheeks wet beneath his visor and faceplate as the futility of his escape settled like a suffocating weight in his chassis.
And then they moved.
First Aid jolted again, helm banging against stone, everything in him shrieking alarm. He might have made a sound. He didn’t know. His audials were still shut off. But oh, the Decepticon moved with such lethal grace. His tread was delicate and measured, and in nanokliks, he was right there, looming over the rubble of what First Aid was increasingly certain would be his grave. He flinched as the mech reached for him, slender fingers like daggers in his vision…
They brushed his face, trailing lightly down his helm and faceplate. First Aid whimpered, spark stuttering in his chest again. This strange gentleness was the absolute last thing he’d expected. Another rush of tears flooded his optics. Was this to be a game? Something crueler, more protracted than a quick offline? The Decepticon’s movements hinted at deadly efficiency, but their intentions were impossible to read. Oh, but what other intention could they have? First Aid was an Autobot medic, and mercy towards the enemy faction was not in a Decepticon’s wiring. This much, he knew.
He switched his audials back on. The feedback wasn’t quite as warped, though his sensors still hummed and spat static. His voice sounded tinny as he spoke.
“Please. Please just make it quick.”
The Decepticon did not answer, just lowered their face closer so that First Aid could see himself reflected in the broad glass pane. The Decepticon’s fingers still caressed his face, so terribly, deceitfully tender. First Aid’s fans spun faster, a whine pitching from his engines as his internal cables coiled around themselves in apprehension. He felt another hand brush down his chassis, fingers skipping over the bits of shrapnel embedded there. A sudden twinge as a fragment was plucked from his plating, followed by a small gush of energon. The other mech tilted their head again, attention caught by this new trickle of blue. And there was so much blue… puddling between his thighs, running in rivulets from rends in his metal, smearing under the Decepticon’s touch.
He felt a little lightheaded.
“Please…”
The word buzzed on his tongue, a softer entreaty this time. He reached for the hand on his face, peeling the elongated digits away with his own, smaller fingers. He still half expected them to plunge into the lines in his throat, or perhaps through his chest to snuff his spark, but they came away easily in his grip and remained there a few solid beats before the Decepticon withdrew them. They promptly fanned across his ruined leg, spidery but still gentle as they dipped into ruptured seams. First Aid couldn’t feel their progress, but he bit his lip in consternation as the other mech proceeded to remove shard after shard of metal from his frame. It was only when he saw the telltale spark of charge on their fingertips that he realized what they were doing, and the revelation floored him.
They were treating him. Cauterizing the narrower energon lines one by one to stem his fluid loss. First Aid’s processor stalled as he struggled to make sense of this turn of events. There was no logic to it. He might as well be dreaming. If he weren’t already bleeding out, he’d consider pinching himself. As if sensing his bewilderment, the Decepticon made a very faint sound of amusement, but did not stop their work. They continued, meticulously extracting shrapnel and sealing the wounds left behind.
It galvanized First Aid to action. Here he was, a genuine medibot, and he was acting as helpless as a newly forged sparkling. Chastising himself for his lack of initiative, First Aid swapped out his right hand for a welding torch and began tending to the larger gashes.
The familiar routine soothed his frayed nerves. Though he wasn’t used to working on himself, it was easy to lose himself in the process. The smell of hot metal quickly rose to greet him. First Aid let himself focus on the golden, feathery spray of sparks that followed each weld. They weren’t quite as clean as usual- he couldn’t keep his servos as steady as he did in the medbay --but they would suffice.
A tapping against his hip brought him back from his meditative state. First Aid glanced up, startled to find the Decepticon’s face close to his again. They tapped his hip again, then rasped a questioning finger against the spike still jammed through it.
Yes… that needed to come out. Energon bubbled around it, draining steadily from the wound. But he’d avoided removing it until now, knowing the moment it came loose, his severed femoral cable would pump energon out of his body at an alarming rate. He wasn’t sure he had the capacity to work as quickly and surely as the procedure required. If he had another medical mech with him, he’d feel more confident about tackling it. But there was no one else. It was only himself.
Well, himself and his strange Decepticon shadow, who was currently waiting patiently for… what? His permission? First Aid looked down at the shard. At the Decepticon’s fingers, now resting at its base, soaked blue and slick with First Aid’s fluids. It was surreal. Everything felt so surreal. He felt himself begin to detach again, to waver as his systems numbed.
First Aid blinked hard and reached for the metal jutting from his hip. A sharp twist, and agony flared through his body again. A cry fell from his lips, but he hung on, followed that line of fire to his core and resisted the frost hazing his thoughts. He would finish this.
At that moment, the Decepticon moved. Their fingers curled around the shard, pulling it swiftly and effortlessly from his body. First Aid cried out again, hunching forward as his vision peppered black. He acted more on instinct than reason as he separated the plating above his bleeding line and pinched the cut closed. Blades sprung from the tips of his other hand, quickly slicing into the mesh of his leg and cutting a shallow, superficial swath free. He transferred it to the open cable and began to wrap it around, but his fingers were slippery with energon, and he fumbled. A frustrated moan escaped him as another gush of blue fountained over his hands.
Slender fingers slid into his paneling, pinching the line shut again. First Aid vented wearily, but no longer found himself particularly alarmed by the other mech’s interventions. Grabbing the mesh more firmly, he wrapped it again, this time tying it off successfully. He swapped back for the welding torch, adjusting the flame to its most delicate setting as he carefully melded the mesh patch to the cable. He waited to see if it would hold, bleary optics searching for a new energon drip or the bulge of an impending rupture, but the patch job was solid. First Aid slumped, switching his mods back in for his regular hands. The paneling on his hip and thigh was still open, but he couldn’t bring himself to close it again, or to staunch the mild bleeding that still remained. He was so tired… His whole body hurt, and he just wanted to curl up and recharge for a decacycle.
The Decepticon was doing something else. First Aid’s optics had begun to shutter again, but he forced them open and squinted up at the other mech through his visor. What he saw didn’t immediately make sense. The Decepticon’s fingers were sliding into their own chest paneling, searching. For what, First Aid did not have the energy to contemplate. Then the Decepticon hummed, and a narrow cable emerged. They lowered it to First Aid’s chassis.
“Please?”
His own voice, parroted back to him, but pitched differently. Like a question.
First Aid stared. Then, wordlessly, he opened the fuel port on his chassis.
This is all wrong, he thought as the Decepticon hooked in and began transfusing energon. First Aid shuddered and sighed as heat flooded his lines, swirling with his own, cooler fluids. His body temperature had dropped a few degrees from the energon loss. The new warmth blossoming in his chest was a comfort, but it made the rest of him feel colder in contrast. He rubbed his palms over the tops of his thighs absentmindedly, willing the influx of fuel to circulate through his limbs faster.
The Decepticon hovered close by, close enough for First Aid to feel the warmth radiating from their plates. Their spidery hands were occupied with a new task as they methodically cleared the rubble still piled on his legs. First Aid watched them work with dull interest, no longer feeling the same sense of alarm he had earlier. If they’d wanted to offline him, or even harm him, they would have done it by now. But just the opposite seemed true.
Why?
Very little made sense. The cable hooked into his chest, the Decepticon on the other end of it. But his processor was in no state to generate an answer. His optics wavered, and First Aid closed them. Exhaustion lured him away from murk of consciousness.
Hands slipped under his knees and lower back, lifting him. A moment later, he found himself settled in the Decepticon’s lap, boxed in place by the mech’s arms. First Aid pushed against them weakly, unnerved and confused by this sudden change of milieu. The Decepticon held fast, ignoring his feeble protests. One of their hands drifted up to stroke his helm and face again. It traced soothing, repetitive patterns. Giving up, First Aid settled against them and let them do as they pleased. He could hear the whir of the other mech’s systems, feel the faintest whisper of a spark beat pulsing under their armor. When the mech flared their plates, sending a wave of heat rolling across First Aid’s frame, First Aid curled a little closer. All the while, the cable in his chest continued to transfuse energon to him.
He’d almost drifted offline when he felt the Decepticon finally disengage. Uncoupling the cable, they shifted him from their lap back onto the ground. First Aid blinked up at them as they rose, silent and graceful. The Decepticon watched him for a few kliks longer, then, inclining their head, they turned and walked away. Thirty paces out, they crouched, sprang into the air, and shifted. First Aid felt the blast of their engines as the jet zoomed away, nose tilted in a steep vertical ascent. Then they were over the canyon wall and beyond his vision.
In their absence, First Aid felt a profound chill. He wrapped his arms around himself to recapture some semblance of the peace he’d managed to find. But it dissipated despite his best efforts, leaving him battered and strangely brittle.
He was still online when his teammates found him. Weary, but unable to quite slip away. He returned their questions indistinctly, only confirming that he was stable as they helped him to the ground bridge. And fortunately, whatever else they wanted to ask, they left it until after he’d had a chance to recharge.