Chapter Text
Swindle woke slowly, not entirely sure why. His tanks felt full. His tanks felt full?
He was in a tangle of limbs, between two mechs in the dark. They weren't groping so much as grasping, really. Holding. There were two sleepy fields meshing around him, neither quite asleep—contentedness and affection the cleanest emotions of a blended many. What?
“Swin, honey, it's alright, go back to recharge,” an impossibly recognizable voice ordered softly, punctuated by a kiss to the back of his neck that made it crawl. Jazz? There was no reason for Jazz to be cuddling him like a teddy, to be kissing any part of him.
(He wasn't clean. Nobody should be kissing him. Right?)
Swindle looked up, past the bumper he was facing, and met the relaxed, heavily shuttered optics of the Autobot second in command, Prowl of Praxus himself.
“Oh, nightmare,” he mumbled, and tried to access the systems in his pan that would let him actually wake himself up. Stopped short when the systems he went to shake awake were already on. Every indication said he was online for real. Every– Every–
Prowl hummed sympathetically, rubbing his back. “I'm sorry to hear that, love. Do you want to talk about it?”
His vents hitched. What was—he couldn't be here. This couldn't be real. Fever delusions? “I’on’t– I–”
“That's okay,” Jazz—Jazz?—assured. “You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. We're all good, we're all safe.”
Safe? He wouldn't be hallucinating anything this absurd, he didn't think. No, he—he might. Mightn’t he? He always saw weird shit when sick enough.
He didn't think he'd ever so clearly imagined the feeling of a full tank. Not even on purpose.
He didn't have any short term storage telling him why he was here. What happened. No tells of constructed memories. Jazz would have tried harder than that, right? You could usually tell if you were in a constructed scenario if you knew to be looking for it, but that meant the trick was making it natural, for long enough to extract what you wanted.
“Swindle?” Prowl’s voice was hushed, worried. “What's wrong? Do you need space?”
Yeah. He needed space. He needed to be not wherever this was. That was the space he needed. He felt frozen in place, though. “I dunno what's happening. I'm sorry.”
“What's happening?” Jazz asked, levering himself up with one arm, visor brightening slightly. “Swin? Do you need a medic?”
Yes. But he would probably kill a medic. Swindle fought back a fearful whine, looking up at that face. Everywhere else he looked was just Prowl, which wasn't any help. “I—didya rent me? I'm sorry, I don't remember…” It was the only thing that made sense, yet it still didn't. Why would Slick have any dealings with these two? They'd sooner kill him. Why would they of all people be willing to do peaceful business with Oilslick?
And wasn't he rusty? Sick, fragging dying until Slick deigned to stop it? He'd been so mad about the Bot vaccines…
Jazz and Prowl shared a shocked look, an expression of baffled hurt passing between them. Swindle shrunk onto his back. “Where do you think you are, babe?” Jazz asked slowly, pulling away and sitting up. He had to hold himself stock still as Prowl pressed the back of his hand to his forehelm, then over his chest and vents. Checking for a fever? At least to himself, Swindle felt cool. Comfortable temperature.
“I don't know,” he said, repeating himself, wincing. Nothing was making sense. It still felt like a bizarre nightmare.
“What year do you think it is?” Jazz tried, slowly. A common assessment for helm injuries. He'd seen soldiers culled for failing, on campaigns where they couldn't afford it. His helm did hurt. Ached, actually, he realized. That was it. He'd hardly noticed, because it about was the only normal part.
“It's 28286—I think?” Swindle swallowed.
Prowl tensed beside him, and Swindle flinched, although he didn't know what the consequences for answering wrong would be, here. “Administrative call,” he said flatly. “One moment.” He rolled out of berth to standing efficiently, holding a hand to his helm the way some mechs did.
“That is the year,” Jazz muttered. “Swin, can I–” His engine growled frustratedly. “No, you're all turned around, you won't want that.”
Won't want what? Jazz could do whatever he wanted to him—didn’t he know that? How was Swindle supposed to stop him? He clearly hadn't been able to stop him from bringing him here. Even if he expected Swindle to remember why.
“Take Swindle to the medbay,” Prowl ordered suddenly. “Keep him calm, and tune into command channels. This is a non isolated incident. Something unidentified has happened to multiple crew members and confused them to varying degrees. No deaths or directly linked serious injuries.”
“Gotcha.” Jazz turned steely serious, nodding sharply. Fully awake now, all of them. Swindle should have shut the frag up while he tried to figure it out, damn, how stupid was he? When Jazz looked to him, his face went unguardedly concerned again, warm, frowning. “How do you feel, Swin? You think you can walk?”
“There are reports of unexpected violence from subjects of the incident,” Prowl warned, striding towards the door. “Be careful.”
“You got it, Prowler.”
Swindle got to his peds testingly—his frame felt… amazing. He doubted his hips had been in better shape in vorns. It was bizarre. He didn't feel like he'd been just repaired, and he didn't feel like he was adapting into a fresh frame, either. This frame felt lived in, settled. Had he lost time? How much?
“I can walk,” he marveled, then, remembering Prowl’s warning, “and I’m not gonna start any fights.” Not on purpose, at least.
Jazz grabbed his shoulder and squeezed gently—didn’t let go when his hand relaxed. “Good to hear.”
The hallways were busy for the time of cycle, or so Swindle gathered, at least—full of Autobots, most looking harried. If anyone looked at Swindle, it wasn't for long, or with any surprise. Not even Jazz leading him hand-in-hand was any event of note—he knew there was some kind of wide scale emergency going on, but shit, not even a stray widened eye or stumble? His internals shifted queasily.
Swindle felt like he should be digging in his heels—refusing to enter any medbay, even an Autobot medbay. He was contagious. Wasn't he? He would kill people. Wouldn't he? When he looked down at his hand in Jazz’s, it was clean. He was entirely clean. His joints didn't squeal and stab.
They checked into the medbay quietly and quickly, the mech at the desk—Firestar, apparently, looking scattered—marking them present and low priority because—was Swindle experiencing any red alert errors or frame rejection events? They looked to him for that. No, he wasn't, everything was running smooth enough. More than smooth enough. (Why was this frame, certainly his, running so well?) Any pain or discomfort? Him again. A minor headache, only. Confusion, distress, or incongruent memories? Jazz answered for him: yes. Apparently he didn't remember where he was or who he was with; true enough. What Swindle took issue with was that he was supposed to. It was rapidfire, though. He felt like he wouldn't have had time to protest even if he was brave enough to.
“You can—just sit anywhere out of the way,” the receptionist shooed, as he turned to the next Autobot, whose arm was visibly jumping beyond his control.
Jazz marched them over to a chair Swindle thought was probably for an observing party rather than a patient or medic. He got the chair, though; Jazz leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and kicking back one heel. Swindle knew well enough what a mech reacting to a dozen comms a klik looked like. Even without touch, Jazz was all over him—an EM field that clung to him like magnetic sand, worried but bracing. Nudging at Swindle’s armor.
He felt insane. Unmoored. He should be asking questions, getting information—what was he gonna do, interrupt Jazz? Instead he looked around the medbay, what he could see of it that wasn't private rooms or divided off. Mechs arguing, one medic restraining a flailing soldier yelling about Decepticon mind tricks with shocking strength. Swindle’s helm sunk into his shoulders. He wasn't gonna make a fuss—he didn't want to have to be restrained. Nothing good tended to happen, strapped to a berth.
Jazz sighed deeply, and Swindle’s attention snapped back up to him. It was extremely patient and level-headed of him not to immediately demand fifteen explanations, and everyone should have been clapping.
“Do ya—what do you remember?” Jazz asked, a nervous smile on his face looking down at Swindle. The fact he was advertising it as nervous was, frankly, itself remarkable. Swindle could tell—could tell he was scared of the answer.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, for him? Swindle had no fragging idea where to start answering that. He remembered thousands of years. Most of them sucking. From the beginning? He had a few boring but nice enough cycles of courier work before—well. From the most recent, transient end? Rust. Not real, regular, harmful but natural oxide, but the engineered disease Slick was famous for. In every crevice of his frame. Hungry. Destructive as a combiner to a city.
Swindle’s frame had probably been used to kill more people than Jazz’s.
“Okay—okay, I'll try again, rephrase,” Jazz offered, when Swindle took too long to answer. “You—you know the year. Are you missing memories? Blank stretches?”
“Not mostly,” he replied truthfully. There was some haze, of course. Whenever he was incubating a disease for Slick, time flowed like tar. After being dumped in a fresh frame, he was usually missing or glitching on at least a few.
“Okay,” Jazz swallowed. “So—you’ve got replacement memories. That seems to be a trend. Do ya… remember meeting me as Splint? All of that from Krull?”
Swindle knew a Splint, once, and that Splint was a speedboat, so, probably not Jazz. Uh. Emphasis on probably, though. He wouldn't put it past him. Moreover, that Splint was on Lucifer, not Krull, although Swindle did have a brief stint on Krull himself, involving the ruby crystal mines and a glitchy guardminder that almost killed, uh, all of them on the base. “No. Sorry.”
Jazz’s smile strained, his hand twitching as though he wanted to reach out and touch Swindle. What was bizarre was that he didn't. Swindle didn't even preemptively dodge or anything.
Nobody looking at him sideways, or demanding what he was doing, walking around free. Impossibly—impossibly, was he here officially? It wasn't like Autobots never rented him. It happened. But usually, and for many good fragging reasons, it happened quietly, on Neutral planets, neither particularly friendly with Autobots nor with Decepticons. Jörmungandr was a favorite. It still made him worry about getting bagged for treason.
Maybe he'd been traded away. Jazz had called him honey—maybe he was more right about that than he realized. Swindle could be a deliberate disease vector. But how… this looked, seemed, like the Ark. Tons of officers he recognized at least by name, here or in the halls. Not to mention, literally Jazz and Prowl. He could see that plan working for a little outpost, a more careless ship. Could the entire crew have missed it? If you could afford it—anyone with sense always checked to make sure the mechs they shared a berth with were reasonably sanitary.
If he'd actually been packaged nicely with a new cosmic rust strain, the one Slick had been working on—Primus, they were screwed. And consequently, Swindle was screwed.
And still, that didn't explain why he had no memories of it. Why he wouldn't have written orders from Slick to keep him compliant and quiet. Was his disorientation a coincidence with, what, a code bomb that had given everyone else memory gaps too? That would be a significant coincidence. The kind of thing he didn't really believe in.
“Swin? Hey, hon, you with me?” Jazz prompted unsubtly. Swindle blinked, tried to refocus.
Shit—he’d missed something, hadn't he? “Sorry,” he croaked. “You can touch me, if you want, only…” He swallowed nervously, throat dry. “You might wanna test me for contagions first?”
“What?” Jazz asked, frowning. If he had—acquired Swindle in some way, or if the Ark had, whatever, then he wouldn't be happy, not getting his money's worth. Or maybe his deal’s worth. Finder’s fee? (If Swindle knew what kind of unstable the ground was, it'd be easier to walk on.) “Swin, you're not—nobody thinks this is happening because anybody's sick. There's no indication the incident is viral.”
Delightful. “Well, the thing about that is…” He couldn't make the words come out of his mouth. What if they disposed of him? That's what you did with hazmat, usually you shot it into dead space. What if he was wrong and he got himself in deep tar for nothing? There really was no gentle way to break that you might have a deadly plague.
“Swin…” Jazz trailed off, his voice impossibly distraught. Over him? About what? “Would it make you feel better if I got a broad spectrum disease screening kit?”
Yes; Swindle nodded enthusiastically. “If you could…”
“Aight,” Jazz assented. “Sit tight, hon. We can do that while we wait to be seen.”