if you pray to god for rain, don't you complain about the lightning

[asafepairofhands]

Who: Ratchet and YOU and also whoever else wants to set up threads in here
What: Ratchet's limping around on crutches, feel free to put yourself in the line of fire
Where: Red Alert's clinic
When: A little while after Drift is conscious
Warnings: YELLING? yelling probably


Well, it had been a few days and nobody had nearly died again so Ratchet starts to let himself relax a little.

Not much, mind--Drift and Nautica are still bedridden, if not critical, and there are people in and out all the time. This is completely ignoring the fact that Pharma and Tarn are wandering around out there somewhere, probably terrorizing the general populace or maiming things or doing whatever else psychotic killers do in their clearly abundant free time. Ratchet has no such luxury, and he works, maintaining the patients he already has on top of trying to handle anyone else who comes in the door. He's just not necessarily pleasant about it.

Comments

[asafepairofhands]

Ratchet bites down slowly on his tongue for a moment, dragging air into his vents before he lets it out in a warm, shaky rush. This gets easier every time he does it, somehow. Parts of it, anyway.

"Might as well, since he's here," Ratchet says, his voice oddly colorless. "His name's Pharma. Autobot medic. We went to school together." He stops briefly, optics sliding away. "He was stationed at Delphi, on Messatine. DJD territory. We found out he'd been killing patients to harvest organs for the DJD in exchange for them not murdering everyone inside wholesale, but eventually he figured he'd get caught and cooked a virus. Tried to kill everybody on the planet with it, only a few were left when Drift and Pipes and I showed up." Ratchet's optics stray to Drift's berth again, his mouth a thin line and his expression unreadable.

"We all caught it, I went after Pharma to get the antidote and knocked him most of the way off the roof, and he tried to shoot me to death. Drift somehow managed to haul the three-quarters rusted mess of himself up the ladder after us and chopped Pharma's hands off at the wrists right before he fired, let him fall. So I took them."

His optics flick back to Bee, a sort of brittle humor edging his mouth.

"So, what have you been up to?"

[taselikeabee]

Not once, but twice Bee tries to open his mouth to say something. Only he finds he can't. Not right away. This sort of tale... That's the kind of thing that people read in comic books on Earth. Yet this is their life. They are living this every day and the level of what is crazy and what isn't... Bee isn't sure what he is more surprised about: the fact he can accept this or the fact Ratchet is retelling this tale far too nonchalantly.

"I don't know if I should laugh or groan right now. You took the hands."

That's what's really funny, truth to be told. It's not that salvaging is uncommon. Ratchet's delivery just makes Bee rub his neck with a little grin.

"You guys must get into the strangest stuff out there in deep space. I wonder if I'm not just a little jealous," he admits with a sigh. "Sounds like your friend is shifty, though. Do we need to be careful about him?"

[asafepairofhands]

"What part of 'he tried to shoot me to death' was ambiguous and opaque?" Ratchet asks, shaking his head.

"That's not even all of it. He was on Luna-1, with Tyrest. Not sure how much of that story you got, but he helped try to kill half of pretty much everybody. He murdered another Autobot medic right in front of me and left the corpse for me to try and fix." That makes Ratchet falter, the memory of First Aid's shrill, angry, frightened voice in his audial and Ambulon's plating cooling steadily under his stolen hands. He shakes it off after a moment, but his optics are still dim.

"He's killed hundreds of innocent people for next to no reason. You absolutely need to be careful."

[taselikeabee]

"Still..." Bee replies, then shakes his head. He doesn't know anything about what happened on Luna-1. Rodimus hadn't explained that when they met up. What Bumblebee wants is more details on this because it sounds pretty important. No one had known where Tyrest had hidden himself away to, right? Then to hear that the guy had turned to murdering?

It's pretty unsettling. Even more so for Bee is the fact that something in Ratchet wavers. Bee can see it, but doesn't bring it up. Not quite yet.

"Sounds like you've had a rough year, Ratchet. If you need to talk..."

Well. Bee is here.

[asafepairofhands]

Ratchet's optics widen, then soften slightly.

"Seems like you have enough of your own problems to deal with," he says, slightly wry, but his voice warms. "Same goes for you too, though. My door's always open, you know that. And--thanks."

[taselikeabee]

"Not really. Not now," Bumblebee replies with a little bit of a somber tone. "Any problems that I could have had are out of my hands."

Since whoever is left has inherited them. Starscream, perhaps. Megatron to a degree. Hell, even Optimus Prime. Everything that Bumblebee has tried to do and all of the issues that he's been trying to deal with fall on them. He just needs to sort himself out.

"You're still going to have to fill me in on everything. Rodimus, bless him, won't give me an un-Rodimus version of events."