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]

The abruptness of the his outburst with everything he had let haunt them for the course of 'this kind of' year pouring out hit Verity like a truck, so to speak.

"Ratchet-"

Her throat seized and the name she, the empathy and shock in her voice broke over her lips like glass. Verity takes a wobbling step back, knees shivering witH one leg balanced on a twisted ankle, and her hands drawn up close to her own chest, squeezing them together tight enough that her knuckles were bloodless. It's a miracle she can look him in the eye; she hates when her eyes string. Heart beating against her ribs like a songbird raging against its cage. Taking the wheel over her own difficult to navigate emotions, but when it was someone else. Someone else, she-

-wants everyone to think she's tough and independent, but you wonder sometimes.

Like ice freezing in the hard fissures of these fronts they put, ripping them open wider over time and eroding them away from the inside. She knew that act and the consequences of it better than the back of her hand. She swallows what feels like a mouthful of sand and steps forward again.

"It's okay to be scared."

People have been telling her for years, and it was shame she never bothered to bend an ear in the right direction until now when someone else needed to hear it.

"It's okay to be scared."

Verity didn't apologize - it wasn't her place to, and neither did she press for details. Not yet. Instead she hobbled over and mindful of the gap between Ratchet and the table slowly leaned against his arm. The best she could do in the way of a hug when the one breaking open in front of her was thirty something feet and made of metal.

[asafepairofhands]

Ratchet stares down at her with a helpless, unreadable expression expression on his face and for a truly awful moment his optics flare, bright and hot, light barely spilling from the edges--then he shutters them, and warm air hisses from his vents in a long, shivering gust as he relaxes, deliberately releasing the tension in his limbs, his face easing. He shifts slightly, scooping her up in one hand and almost cradling her.

"You shouldn't be on that leg," he says roughly, but all of the thin, ragged tension is bled from his voice, and his optics are clear when he onlines them again. He just holds her for a long moment.

"I still have scalpel cuts on my spark casing," he says, almost thoughtfully. "But I'm not scared of--of Pharma hurting me, or anything stupid like that. If I cared about that, Tarn would have a new t-cog by now and I wouldn't be hobbling around on these damn things. I guess I'm more afraid of failing. Failing the people at home, failing Drift, failing everyone here. Failing you." He smooths down the back of her neck with his thumb, careful of her head injury. "You scared the hell out of me with that seizure garbage, I'm not kidding. Knock it off."

His mouth tilts a little, lopsided, not quite a smile.

"But... sorry, kid. I know it hasn't exactly been one long party for you, the past five years. You don't need my mess on top of it. It's just--a lot has changed. It's hard to describe, otherwise."

[wreckers]

Verity makes a soft oof sound when Ratchet lifts her off the table single-single-handed. Nothing about being cradled by someone who was comprised almost entirely of hard edges and only somewhat malleable metal was exactly comfortable, but Verity felt more aafe here than anywhere else in the big wide universe. She was just glad the sound and fury of Ratchet's long overdue eruption didn't come with an explosive aftershock.

"Idiot." She breathed out, knocking her forehead gently against the side of Ratchet's arm. "You're the only one with millions of years of experience keeping the wayward misfits and suicidally optimistic alive and together."

Tarn and Pharma, even Prowl, were all just distant names unattached to any more nightmares right now. Verity smiled back and for once, actually relaxed.

"I already died once, remember?" It was true - she and Jimmy were clinically dead for a harrowing six minutes and would have stayed that way without Ratchet's intervention. Her suit was originally designed to insulat her from the hazards of an organic in orbital jump. "Not much else but time and universal apocalypse keeping me out of your hair. Someone has to make sure you don't burn out worrying about all of us."

[asafepairofhands]

"Yes, I remember, and I expressly forbid you to even consider doing it again," Ratchet says severely. "And we've had two of those apocalypses since leaving Luna-1, so I'll count myself lucky you're still around to keep me in line."

He watches her go limp in his grip, watches the tension ease on her face, and it makes him relax further too instead of tensing up, though his grip shifts to hold her a little more securely. He nudges her cheek with his thumb.

"And, I'll worry if I want. Like you could stop me, especially if you're going to go around picking fights with people five times your size and made of much denser and more solid materials."

[wreckers]

"Hmpf. And I'm the one who needs to be watched?" Verity pulls a face - touched when Ratchet held her but as her default setting was prickly she was like a cat pretending it didn't appreciate the affection.

"Put me down - I'm not a little kid that needs a boost every time it has a tantrum." Verity was in higher spirits when she said that, although her argument was somewhat dampened by how she squirmed out of his arms much like an agitated child. And, if she really wanted to think too long about the ludicrous lifespan of Cybertronians, she was a child. At least with Ratchet the age disparity didn't feel like he was talking down to her.

Joints pop as she stretches her arms up after she settles back on the desk, mindful of how she sits on her still healing ankle if just for Ratchet's sake.

"Optimus alluded to as much, but I can always just jack the details from after-action reviews with sloppy encryption. And speaking of worrying..."

Verity looks down at Ratchet's leg - or rather, the lack there of, then back him. Then back at his leg and back at him again. The comment on if and when he would see to his leg's repairs non verbalised but transparent.

[asafepairofhands]

Ratchet releases her and gives her an exceedingly flat look, lips compressing.

"I'll get to it," he says repressively, "when I get to it. I'm fine and functional right now, and it's not like I'm not going to get tired of hobbling around on these damn things eventually." He gestures with one of the crutches, as though he didn't ache under his arms and down his elbows and socket-locked wrists, as though his remaining leg wasn't starting to ache consistently as it took more and more weight as he tried to ease up from the crutches to spare his hands. "It's not like losing a human limb, all right? I'll pop one back on once we can get the time and the resources."

[wreckers]

"No." Verity bites backs with renewed semse of vigor that purpose Ratchet neither anticipate not wanted.

"Phantom pain jolts your joints and burns where it shouldn't; I'm getting sick of the disparities being drawn in the fucking sand like their absolutes when you and I both know what ties humans and Cybertronians together is an unmitigated sense that pain is transient between mind and body."

The way she stands, shaking on a hobbled leg is precarious as it is almost Prime like of jer.

"Physician heal thy self if a saying of ours, too."