step one: stop fighting robots

[wreckers]

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. ]

Comments

[wreckers]

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.

[asafepairofhands]

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."

[milkruns]

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?"

[wreckers]

"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."

[asafepairofhands]

"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."