robothell | step one: stop fighting robots

Entry tags:

step one: stop fighting robots

Who: Verity and OPENish
Where: Autobot Clinic
When: Noooow??
What: The fallout of this
Warnings: Injuries, TBD.

[ Once she shook loose from Arcee, Verity bagged out. She was not inclined to trust anyone let alone someone closely associated with Prowl, on good terms or not, but she trusted Arcee to run interference long enough for her to clear out of there. Running away happened to be one of Verity's talents and one she took immediate advantage of when the opportunity presented itself. ]

Shit - shit.

[ Burning rubber screeched on the metal floor of the clinic followed by a loud crash when a disoriented Verity slammed into a nearby steel utility table; spilling all kinds of equipment onto the floor. The clinic was dark - of course it was, everyone was off getting stupid at that party at the forum. Verity swore louder as she staggered up and waved her arm wildly in front of a motion sensor near the doorframe that brought the lights back on.

I fucked up, was all Verity could think while stumbling through the clinic wildly searching for anything that looked human friendly. ]

Enough people on this rock they should have painkillers or someth- hnng.

[ Verity stopped near a minicon sized gurney. She pulled herself up and once she was sitting felt the full force of what a little scuffle with something rip snorting pissed off and over thirty feet tall did. The plates of her armor retracted back until she was down to her clothes. Stomach rolling as she took rapid shallow breaths close to hyperventilating, pulling her shirt up to find angry red and purple bruising covering her entire right side. She cringed, looking down to see the inflamed mess that was her foot that twisted awkwardly at the ankle.

Winded, Verity collapsed on her back. Leaving her armor in pieces around her on the ground as she tried to steady her breathing. ]

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Ratchet shouting and knocking around the clinic comes in deluded; Verity hears it barely as though her head was half submerged in water. The pain drilling into her temples spikes then subsides when her eyes flutter open. Slowly, very slowly, she pushed herself up on her good side.

"Heey, Ratchet," Her voice cracks dry in her throat as she weakly gives Ratchet a half-wave and a wry lopsided grin, "We have to stop meeting like this."

"You damned, stupid--" Ratchet's vocalizer whines thin and staticky with fright as he stumps over to the side of the gurney and leans hard into his crutches to free up both hands, reaching down to cup the back of her head, his fingertips feather-light. They come away a darker red than before and his belly lurches.

"Lay back down, please," he says, his voice numb and weirdly calm now, his optics pale, pale blue. "I need to get the human kit. Move as little as possible."

"Reckless kid." Verity supplies weakly, arm waving him off before it weakly flops back down on the gurney along with the rest of her. She hisses sharply through her teeth when she does because robot gurneys were in want of padding.

"Ribs." Verity said thinly, hiking up her shirt up and motioning to the dark bruises lashed across her side to Ratchet before he could work himself up into a fit.

Ratchet scoops up the kit and comes back--he doesn't look like he's close to a fit now. He doesn't look like he's close to an anything. His face is blank and smooth as he works almost mechanically, slipping a pad under her head and touching slowly, carefully, checking her for broken bones with delicate fingers, unwilling to use untested diagnostic scanners on her more delicate frame. The frozen look in his optic is far removed from his usual loud rancor as he works, and he barely says anything at all, except to ask questions.

"Broken, or cracked?" he asked, pressing soft fingertips to her side, unwilling to push too hard to check. "Can you tell?"

"Cracked." She rasps with a slight slur in her words and eyes barely dilating or reacting to the light held over her.

Blinking slowly, Verity watches with distant interest as Ratchet shifts back into the cool under fire surgeon that earned him the reputation for being the best of the best.

"Ankles twisted." She bonelessly motioned to the swollen mess she made of her left foot while fighting for consciousness.

"Stay with me, Verity," Ratchet says sharply. "Don't fall asleep." He has next to no idea how he's going to enforce this, but he cups her head and shoulders in one hand and tapes her ribs meticulously, then moves his hand down to touch her shin. His jaw sets as he feels very carefully at her ankle, carefully not looking at her face as he shifts it gently back into alignment then sets her down so he can wrap it into place too.

He draws back once he's done, staring down at her face, the helpless disfocus of her eyes, his tanks churning as he slips a hand under her again to prop her up a little.

"Stay with me."

"I'm not asleep, jerk." Verity somehow managed to sound bullheaded even as her voice was a slurred whisper with her eyes half shut and nothing more than a ragdoll limp in Ratchet's hand.

In outstanding defiance to common sense, licking around the universe with the Wreckers she had someone managed to walk away without being seriously injured. Not even after Garrus-9. Having a long shadow by the name of Ultra Magnus probably had something to do with it, but she had been lucky - it had never been this bad. There was such a disconnected feeling in being in this kind of pain. Her senses dulled while her limbs still burned with residual energy even as she was totally laid out.

And then, miraculously, she was breathing. The sudden pressure alleviated from her lungs as if Ratchet did a shunt filled her chest with burning, wonderful air. Verity gasped and jolted up, doubling over and coughing up a lung.

"Holy shit!"

"Verity!"

Ratchet's hands came around her, propping her head carefully and staring down into her face, touching her jaw with one fingertip as he struggles to brace her, the corners of his mouth crimped.

"Easy."

Verity could not budge an inch with Ratchet's hands around him which steadied out her breathing. Leaning heavily on him, Verity regained some lucidity.

"Ratchet," She smiled weakly before it waned, "Hey."

"Don't," Ratchet says, cupping the back of her head very gingerly, settling one hand against her to hold her still. "Don't do that to me." He's silent for a long moment, just holding her carefully, his thumb settling very lightly over her heartbeat.

"What happened to you?"

"I'm okay." Verity says, more to Ratchet than anything.

Breathing still ragged with shallow breaths as though she speaking through a lungful of boiling water, she still needed more than the emergency care that brought her out of the woods. Stable and intelligible was good enough for the time being.

"I'm okay, Ratchet." Hand over his thumb she can almost feel the heavy beating of her heart through that thick layer of metal against the palm of her hand.

"I just got into a fight." Puncturing that sentence mid-thought hocking up a wad of red flecked spit on the floor. "It's what I do, right? Get into trouble."

"Right," Ratchet says bitterly, but his touch is still incredibly gentle as he touches lightly at her cheek. "'Got into a fight' with who? Who the hell would--"

He freezes, then stares down at her in a kind of sick, lurching understanding.

"You went after Prowl, didn't you? Is that who did this to you?"

"You should see your face." Gaze still a touch unfocused and boneless against him she didn't retract from the physical reassurance as she normally would.

And in despite all of that pulled a sour face and was almost petulant in her response.

"I didn't plan on it."

"Dammit, Verity," Ratchet says, but he just sounds worried and tired. He cradles her as carefully as he dares. "I don't care if you did or not. You're concussed and I don't know how to fix it."

"Not shouting would be a start." Verity groused even though Ratchet was hardly shouting, as she blinked against the lights over head and gingerly touches the temples of her forehead. She wanted to sleep, or throw up. Mostly just not be in this predicament.

"Ibuprofen and an ice pack would also be a step in the right direction."

Edited 2015-05-29 00:02 (UTC)

"I'll... see what I can do." Ratchet settles her down against the slab again and digs until he finds a blanket, then settles her until she's on top of it with it tucked around her and under her head. "Just--don't try to go anywhere for a bit, all right?"

He limps hastily to the back room and digs out his comm, pulling up pretty much the only expert he knows' number.

"June?" he asks into the mic, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant. "I need--I have a-a friend of mine, here. She's injured, and I can't tell how badly. I taped her ribs and her ankle but she hit her head and I--" He stops for a moment, and when he speaks again he sounds as frightened as anyone ever hears him, the liquid in his tanks turning to icy sludge even as he meets her eyes over the vid pickup, his own optics pale and open.

"I need your help. Please. I don't know what to do."

"I'll be right there."

The words are uttered quickly, decisively, and the feed of June's serious face cuts out. She's never seen this Ratchet look so stone cold scared, and the few times she'd seen the Ratchet she knew back home in genuine distress had been telling enough.

Thank god for the combined efforts to get June's clinic stocked and running -- it means she's got a halfway decent first aid kit, even if none of the supplies have that universal grip to them. In the emergency room there was always a comfort in that kind of familiarity. There's a hard edge to the way she moves now that Ratchet's never seen in her before, every word in a tone of firm instruction even as she has him lift and deposit her onto the slab where he'd placed Verity. She's down on a one-kneed crouch at Verity's side in an instant, the heavy case to her first aid kid spread open next to her. She peels back the blanket and her gaze sweeps over Verity's form, taking in the injuries, the tape that almost looks as though a human did it. He's got impressive dexterity, all right.

"You should have called me right away," June says to Ratchet gravely, but her voice lacks the expected chiding tone. She turns her attention back to Verity, her face softening slightly. Ratchet's never mentioned his human friends to June, not really, but she finds she's not surprised to know he has them. And for him to look -- to sound so painfully terrified for her well-being -- June knows she must be someone important indeed.

"My name is June. I'm a nurse. I'm just going to take a quick look at you, all right?" Her voice is steady, certain to introduce herself before she reaches to gently cradling the back of Verity's head in one hand, digging out a battered penlight from her pocket with the other. She taps it on with a thumb and flashes it quickly into Verity's eyes. She doesn't doubt Verity's concussed; it's just a matter of how bad. "I'm a friend of Ratchet's, he called me over. Can you tell me your name?"

A growing disquiet seeps in progressively faster and faster as Verity watched as Ratchet left her side; feeding off his own sense of anxiety compounded with her own latent complications. Her eyes blinked rapidly as she rolled back against the gurney her face half pressed into the metal through the thin blanket. The dizzying exhaustion was like a heavy weight on her shoulders she couldn't stave off with her haywire distress. Verity was a hairs breadth away from passing out until a cool air swept over her as the blankets were ripped off and someone, a human someone, was shining a light in her pinprick dilated pupils.

"Ver-" Verity had her own name half-formed on her lips when she batted away June's hand and wrenched to the side. Head over the gurney she vomited noxious bile onto the floor with her chest heaving, coughing as she rolled on her back again even though her insides burned like it was lined with broken glass.

Complexion clammy, drenched with sweat aggravated by the short shallow breaths she was taking, she was a mess but fought her way through saying her name then her birthday along with some other useless but accurate personal information. Keeping herself talking as she motioned to the wet spot around her temple. Hair matted with dried blood, a minor laceration where she cracked her head against the side of Prowl's driver side window one too many times.

"Ratchet, your friend is scary as hell." She rasped. Even in her condition finding Ratchet deferring to someone else amusing.

Edited 2015-05-29 17:53 (UTC)

Ratchet lurches forward, catching her as she twists and supporting her head and side as she heaves over the edge of the gurney in long, wracking spasms. He helps settle her when she finishes, cool, absent fingertips pushing her damp hair from her face as he looks helplessly down at them both, keeping Verity partway upright with a hand curled around her shoulders and head to prop her up.

"You don't think I'd call some pushover for backup against you, do you?" he says, his mouth barely twitching into a smile as his thumb brushes very gently against her uninjured temple. "June knows what she's doing. You're going to be fine."

Nothing about June wavers as she moves with Verity as she lurches, stopping only when Ratchet catches her. She nods along with Verity as she listens, checking Verity's head for any other injuries with careful hands. She appreciates Ratchet's assistance just as much as his vote of confidence -- she knows she can rely on him right now, if nothing else.

"Scary? That's a new one," June murmurs as she gently brushes some of the matted hair away from Verity's temple. She isn't quite smiling, but there's a faint light of amusement in her eyes. "Ratchet, keep her there, will you? Let's keep her head steady -- yes, like that."

She grabs a few swabs and a disinfectant from her kit, and a cloth she dampens with water. "Verity, you are going to be fine," she confirms as she smooths Verity's hair away from the wound and begins to dab away the matted blood. "You've got a concussion, and it's not pretty, but in the grand scheme of things it's not that bad. This is probably going to sting a little."

June swabs at the wound with gentle pressure, her other hand lightly cupping Verity's face. She's burning to know who's responsible for this -- because she knows an injury of violence when she sees one, and this was no accident -- but that'll come later. "Why don't you tell me how you and Ratchet met?"

"I hitched the wrong ride." Verity groaned with a sense of self-awareness how circumstances that threw her headlong into this war mirrored events that put her on this gurney.

Fighting through lethargy and the sharp smell and biting sting of antiseptic, Verity put the last several years of her life into a nutshell; from life as a wayward kid drifting up and down the southwest to her stint as a regular teenage astrogirl throwing her lot in with the Wreckers (skimming the details of Garrus-9 off the tops). Several times pausing to motion at Ratchet when he, in her words, pulled her ass out of the fire.

Verity fell quiet, her eyes drifting around the room as her head lolled against Ratchet's gentle but firm hold. She started to move against June cleaning the wound on her temple, becoming increasingly irritable with a slur creeping back into the growing incoherence of her word. When she had the room she jerked her arm forward, gripping Ratchet around one of his fingers. Somewhere along the line she connected 'head injury' to a name - Ironfist, and suddenly panic crept in and took hold.

"Ratchet," She was starting to shake with fever and throat bobbing, "If this gets worse...if this gets worse -" Knuckles bone white as she squeezed Ratchet's hand with all the strength left in her, "I need to tell you how to get into the on board smart system in the suit. The matrices I wrote to encrypt it - there's a code for it. To get the data to you."

Edited (grammar disaster ) 2015-05-30 16:53 (UTC)

"Verity..."

Ratchet hesitates for a long moment, looking grave and cradling her just a little more securely. He sees the mute terror in her eyes and connects it, grief and pain pressing a leaden weight down on the tops of his tanks.

"You're going to be okay, Verity," he says, very firmly. "You aren't going to have an aneurysm. You aren't going to die on this table. You are going to be fine." He holds her hand back in a delicate grip, his optics locked on her face. "But if you want to give me the code, I'll take it."

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step one: stop fighting robots

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