Archive of Our Own ^beta

When stray dogs finally catch you in the alley

You don’t consider their point of view

But when the wounds are healed

And the scars are shiny

Sometimes then you do

 - As Many Candles As Possible by The Mountain Goats

“Ratchet, stay for a minute. I need to talk to you about something.” Optimus laid a hand on Ratchet’s shoulder to hold him back as the others left the briefing room. He looked guilty. Ratchet started running through the possibilities - more MTOs? Did they want him to help the engineers develop chemical weapons? Had a friend of theirs just died? Who was stationed off-base at this point -

Jazz closed the door to the briefing room. Ratchet looked around. Prowl, Jazz and Optimus. So this was probably some special ops slag.

“A highly valued Decepticon asset defected last week,” Jazz said. “He wants to join the Autobots in a non-combat role.”

“Claims to have defected. I’m still not convinced.” Prowl crossed his arms. Ratchet got the impression that he’d missed out on a very long argument, which Prowl had lost.

“We’re asking you to keep an eye on him,” Jazz said. “Don’t provide him with any military intelligence, don’t allow him to wander unsupervised, don’t allow him access to the consoles.”

Ratchet pointed out that he had work to do, besides babysitting a potential spy. “Besides, if they’re a highly valued asset, I doubt they’re trained as a medical assistant. What are they even supposed to do?”

Everybody got shifty.

“We’d…offered him a role as your bodyguard,” Jazz said.

Ratchet set his jaw. “Optimus, I have told you I will not take another bodyguard.”

The Decepticons were trying to kill him. Ratchet could understand the logic in it. Killing or capturing the enemy’s chief medical officer would certainly be a strategic blow, at least temporarily. Wouldn’t matter much long-term, there were plenty of surgeons who could take his place.

Ratchet didn’t want to die, but he was not going to watch another trainee throw themselves on a grenade for him. He and Optimus had argued. Ratchet had been pulled from field assignments. He still wasn’t going to take a bodyguard.

Optimus spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I know. But your concern was with bodyguards dying and, if nothing else, I can promise you that won’t be an issue here.”

Ratchet looked past Optimus to stare at Prowl, who was radiating more loathing than a neutron star made of pure loathing. Prowl would give him a straight answer. “Who is it?” he asked.

“It’s Deadlock.”

They’d left Deadlock in the brig, presumably at Prowl’s insistence. He didn’t seem very offended by the accommodations; he was napping on the floor with his legs propped up on the berth when they arrived to fetch him.

Prowl swung the door open and Ratchet stepped through. He took a moment to school his face into something neutral before Deadlock woke up and noticed him staring. It had been centuries since they’d last crossed paths. Deadlock looked worse than ever and still stubbornly alive, despite it all.

Deadlock was one of Megatron’s favorite weapons. One of his monsters. He wasn’t a member of the Warriors Elite - he wasn’t invulnerable and he wasn’t capable of flattening an artillery charge. He was a rumor, a shadow. If Megatron wanted you killed, it didn’t matter where you hid.

But more importantly to the reputation that filled the nightmares of the Autobot rank and file: you could kill Deadlock, but that wouldn’t stop him. Every injury, no matter how fatal it ought to have been, healed.

Deadlock had a scar for each time he should have gone to the afterspark. Early in the war it had given him a roguish charm - the slit across his throat, the starburst over his left optic, the stab wound over his spark. Now the effect was more that of an old cyberfox who’d been savaged in a series of blackmarket pitfights. The scars were layered, grotesque, asymmetrical. Ratchet was pretty sure they followed him from frame to frame, that Deadlock had been trying and unfailing to outrun them.

There was a glimmer of red as Deadlock’s optics lit. He saw Ratchet. He smiled, all teeth. “Hello Doc. Did they talk you into this crazy scheme?”

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” Ratchet said.

Deadlock shrugged at him. “And yet, here you are.” He planted his hands on either side of his head and rolled himself to his feet, dusting off imaginary grit from his plating. “Glad to see you again, Doc Ratchet.”

There was a reason why Jazz and Optimus had pulled for Ratchet to take on the role of Deadlock’s minder. Another thing that kept the rumor mill spinning on the airwaves. If Megatron wanted you dead, Deadlock would find you and eliminate you. Except Ratchet.

Deadlock had once cornered Ratchet during a raid and informed him that he’d been ordered to see to his execution. “Oh, he orders at least once a month,” Deadlock had said breezily, “don’t worry about it.” Then he’d told Ratchet that he should probably get to an escape pod before Decepticon reinforcements arrived.

Intelligence gleaned from The Big Conversation and other Decepticon media transmissions backed this up. Cons seemed to treat it as one big joke, counterpart to the DJD desperately trying to get Megatron’s approval to execute Starscream. Megatron would order Ratchet’s assassination, Deadlock would refuse. Any other soldier might have been court-martialed for the brazenness of his defiance, but Deadlock had been Megatron’s loyal weapon. In everything but this.

Ratchet didn’t know why. The most salacious rumor went that Deadlock and he were in the midst of a furtive cross-faction romance. Well, romance wasn’t exactly the word they used on The Big Conversation. Absolute nonsense, obviously.

Ratchet’s best theory was that Deadlock felt like he owed Ratchet a debt from the time Ratchet saved his life in Dead End. But it seemed like they should have evened that favor out the first time Deadlock saved his life.

So while none of them could trust that Deadlock was genuine in his defection - and Ratchet thought it was pretty far fetched that he’d developed a conscience this late into the war - even Prowl had to admit that Deadlock didn’t pose much of a threat to Ratchet.

Ratchet pointed at Deadlock. “You aren’t my bodyguard. I’m your babysitter. You will stay close to me, you’ll do as I say and you’ll do your best not to get underfoot. In exchange, you don’t have to sit in the brig until the war ends.”

“Ouch. You all have trust issues. Pretty sure when the Cons send a spy they pick someone a little less…high profile, you know?” Deadlock shrugged innocently, then offered Ratchet his hand. “It’s a deal, sir.”

Ratchet rolled his optics. “Don’t call me sir.”

“It’s a deal, then, Doc.”

Ratchet took his hand, and pretended not to notice when Deadlock tried to squeeze the life out of it as they exchanged a very business-like handshake. “Come on, let’s go before Prowl changes his mind.” Not that Ratchet cared if Deadlock was stuck down in the brig until the war ended, but after they’d wasted so much time getting him to agree to this it’d be annoying.

“You can’t tell me to do nothing, Doc, I’m going to go insane,” Deadlock whined.

Ratchet snapped his fingers again and pointed to the chair in the corner of the room, where Deadlock was supposed to be sitting. “You’ve been sitting there for less than ten minutes, I don’t want to hear any complaining yet. I’m trying to focus.”

He switched his HUD to overlay the current patient’s imaging scan over his visuals and swapped out his scalpel for a pair of forceps.

“I could hand you things!” Deadlock suggested.

“I’ve got a drone for that,” Ratchet said.

“I would be better at handing you things than a drone is,” Deadlock said.

“Mm-hmm, because it’s gonna make my patients real comfortable to see Deadlock looming over them with a tray full of scalpels.”

Deadlock sighed theatrically. “Fine. But I’m bored.”

Ratchet put another crate on the table and then put his hands on his hips. “There, you happy?”

Deadlock looked over the assorted crates of bolts and other small parts. “Is there a reason they send you to these all mixed up?”

“Yeah, it’s less work for the mortuary personnel that way.” Ratchet didn’t expect he’d be able to unsettle Deadlock with the information that a lot of his spare parts came from dead bodies. That was probably true on both sides of the war. “Just sort them like I showed you.”

“This is going to take forever,” Deadlock complained.

“Hey Doc, what do you want me to do next?” Deadlock asked as Ratchet walked back into his office.

Ratchet looked over the trays of small parts, neatly sorted out into several smaller trays on his desk. Well, frag. He’d been hoping that distraction would last at least a few more hours.

“We could go to lunch,” Deadlock suggested.

Ratchet checked his chrono. Damn, more time had passed while he’d been in surgery than he’d thought. “We’ll not be going anywhere. I’ve got strict orders to keep you from wandering around the ship. We’ll eat in here. Come on, let’s put these away in the stockroom first.”

Once the parts had been put away and Ratchet had called one of the other medics to fetch his lunch from the commissary - simple enough to request enough for two instead of just for himself. The medics were used to Ratchet taking lunch in his office, when he remembered to eat. They were always harassing him to eat...Ratchet was going to have to go through his personnel and see which of them were comfortable working in the same room as Deadlock. He could shift around his staff assignments somewhat, but if Deadlock was going to be there all the time it’d be difficult to schedule.

“So, is this what you do all the time? No offense, but I’d imagined the life of the chief medical officer would be a bit more…exciting,” Deadlock said.

“Some days are quiet, some days aren’t. Chief medical officer is mostly a role that lands you a lot of paperwork,” Ratchet said. He didn’t bother to mention that Optimus had grounded him from field visits; none of Deadlock’s business.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, while Ratchet tried to think of how to broach the topic. “You defected.”

Deadlock froze. “I did.”

“You know, it’s not like you had to join the Autobots. Plenty of folks just run. You could be gallivanting around the galaxy doing whatever the frag you wanted right now.”

Deadlock smiled. “Well, maybe I wanted to make people angry.”

“Is that the reason?” Ratchet asked.

“If you don’t trust me not to lie to you, why do you bother to ask questions?” Deadlock asked. “You know your spies already interrogated me, you could just ask them. They probably have tapes you could listen to.”

Ratchet didn’t figure it was any more likely that Deadlock had told Prowl and Jazz the truth. If Deadlock didn’t want to talk about it…well, sometimes war broke people. Deadlock had always seemed unaffected by what he was doing but everybody had a breaking point.

And Ratchet didn’t really need to hear Deadlock’s sob story.

It had been a long day and Ratchet didn’t really need to hear any more of Deadlock’s complaining.

“I can’t believe you sleep only one room down from the medibay. Why not just sleep in the medibay, at that point?” Deadlock said. He’d gotten all excited when Ratchet announced it was time to leave for the day, so Ratchet had felt it was probably best to warn him they wouldn’t be traveling far.

“I’ve done that too,” Ratchet said. “There’s a folding berth in my office, but we wouldn’t both fit.”

Wait. Ratchet paused for a moment and thought about the layout of the berthroom that he, very occasionally, made it back to sleep in.

“Ratchet, how are you planning on watching me and stopping me from escaping to do dastardly espionage activities while you’re asleep?” Deadlock asked innocently. He crossed his ankles and smirked, because he was a fiend from hell.

“I could always walk you down to the brig,” Ratchet threatened. “You could get a very restful night’s sleep down there.”

Deadlock made a face. “Or we could think of a better idea…oh! You could handcuff me to the berth, that would definitely work. Surely one of you has to have some handcuffs around from the good old days of being Sentinel’s space cops.”

“There’s only one berth in my room, you’d probably be more comfortable in the brig,” Ratchet said. He most certainly did have a pair of handcuffs - several of them, because Prowl had dropped off a box of equipment this morning “in case you have any trouble”. Ratchet had immediately shoved the box behind another box in the storeroom where Deadlock was less likely to notice it and start heckling him.

But Deadlock was probably right…if Ratchet went to sleep in the room with Deadlock, unrestrained, and then Deadlock went out and shot Prowl in the face he’d feel pretty guilty. At least a little guilty.

Just because Deadlock seemed like a shit actor who couldn’t have successfully played the part of a double agent didn’t mean he was.

“I could sleep on the floor, that’d be fine,” Deadlock was saying. “Or we could share the berth. That might be easiest, I know these military bases tend to be a bit spartan, not many good places to hook a pair of handcuffs to…probably simplest to just put one cuff on me and one cuff on you and then you’ll know for sure I haven’t gone anywhere.” He smiled, seemingly quite pleased with himself at the suggestion.

Ratchet sighed. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. But if you wiggle around in the night I am carrying you down to the brig myself.”

Ratchet woke up to his chrono alarm blaring in the dark room. It nearly scared the spark out of him, Ratchet hadn’t slept in until his chrono alarm went off in centuries. Normally he was up and finding busywork to do a couple hours into his rest shift.

There was a heavy weight draped over his side, which Ratchet didn’t recognize as Deadlock until he’d gotten his alarm turned off and lay in the darkness for a few minutes, sorting out his memories of the day before. Deadlock was pressed up against his back, one leg hooked over Ratchet’s and his cuffed hand draped over Ratchet’s chest. He was still soundly asleep, fans whistling gently in response to the heat of their bodies pressed together.

Ratchet thought about all the work it was going to take to find tasks for his newest and least useful recruit. This was going to be a very long day.

At least he felt less exhausted than usual.

“Stay on the berth!” Ratchet yelled, as he tried to hold down one of his patients. The infantry bot thrashed under his arms, which was making it very difficult to administer a dose of the antagonist for the hallucinogen he’d been dosed with. Ratchet’s other patient had rolled off the berth entirely and was staggering towards the door.

The other medics were in the surgical suite working on the minibot scout who’d been riding along with the other two and had gotten a face full of shrapnel when the canister exploded.

Deadlock, who’d been mopping up some of the fuel spilled when the casualties had come in, looked up at the commotion. He met Ratchet’s optics. Then he hooked the wheeled mop bucket with his ankle and kicked it in the direction of the fleeing patient.

The bucket took the bot out at the knees and they flailed towards the ground. Deadlock hoisted them up over his shoulder, still holding the mop in his other hand, and carried them back over to the berth. When he laid the patient down on the berth he smiled at them and the patient finally grew still. Probably in terror, but it was effective.

When Ratchet finally got the first patient treated and made his way over to the other berth, Deadlock stepped back with an apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” he said.

Ratchet snorted. “Don’t be. You’ve got good reflexes.”

“I need an assistant for this surgery,” Ratchet announced.

Deadlock looked up from the shelf he was organizing. He looked around the empty stockroom. “Do you need me to run and get someone? I think most of the medics are down on that evac mission from Ibivis. Some of the assistants are on call - ”

“It’s a simple fuel pump swap, you can stand in,” Ratchet said. “Get yourself to the decam room and scrub down and I’ll demo what we’re doing.”

Ratchet pretended he didn’t notice as Deadlock excited the decam and waved over one of the medical drones for a fist bump. He was not smiling. He wondered when Deadlock had taught them how to do that.

Ratchet didn’t need to handcuff himself to Deadlock anymore. He knew that Deadlock wasn’t going to cut and run in the night, whatever Prowl thought. But Deadlock kept picking up the cuffs at the end of their shift and snapping the one cuff to his wrist himself and…Ratchet just hadn’t figured out how to bring up the subject.

He could have gotten a second berth for his quarters, though it would have taken up most of the remaining space. There were spares down in the requisitions room. Deadlock hadn’t suggested it and Ratchet kept making excuses. Each night they’d settle down onto the berth in the dark, Deadlock pressed up against Ratchet’s back, cuffed hand wrapped around him like a hug.

Ratchet would never have admitted it to anyone, not even Optimus. But he felt safe with Deadlock at his back, in a way he hadn’t felt since the war started.

Usually, they didn’t talk much in the dark. They were both too exhausted; Ratchet’s shifts went longer than his other medics. When they were short and needed coverage, he couldn’t justify pulling someone in from their rest shift if he was already on his feet. He offered that Deadlock could take a quick rest on the berth in his office. Deadlock always turned him down.

But nothing had gone wrong that night, Ratchet didn’t have that mind-numbing exhaustion to help drag him offline. He had a question bothering him instead.

“Deadlock?” he kept his voice quiet, not sure if the other mech was already asleep.

Deadlock grumbled, “What?”

“How did you die?”

Deadlock didn’t say what Ratchet was expecting, a smarmy retort like “which time?” or “clearly I haven’t since, as you can see, I’m not dead.” He leaned his helm against the back of Ratchet’s neck in silence for a long moment and then said, “It was after you saved me. A few years later. Me and a friend were caught for petty theft by the police. Things escalated and they shot him. I went for their gun and they shot me too.”

Deadlock had guessed the thing Ratchet had wondered most - if he’d already known he was immortal the day he’d overdosed and Ratchet had saved his life. Apparently not.

Ratchet squeezed Deadlock’s hand. “I’m sorry.” He was tempted to say more, but there was so much he wasn’t saying…

“It was a long time ago.” Deadlock said. “Didn’t even hurt when he shot me; it was a headshot, straight through the optic. As ways of dying go, that one’s not half bad.”

“I meant sorry about your friend,” Ratchet lied. He was sorry for that mech, some anonymous Dead Ender, presumably. He was sorry for everything else too, but Deadlock wouldn’t want his pity.

Deadlock said: “His name was Gasket.”

Ratchet stared into the darkness ahead of him and wondered what expression was on Deadlock’s face. Deadlock was too good at lying with his voice, it was impossible to tell when he was upset.

Ratchet asked, “What was Gasket like?”

The wreckage of the shuttle was a twisted hulk on the horizon, smoke rising in heaving waves. Ratchet looked to Hound, who’d been managing the response crew on the ground. “Is there any chance of more survivors who haven’t been found yet?”

Hound shifted his gaze, which had been fixed on Deadlock, back to Ratchet. “We’ll see what search and rescue comes back with, but I’m not hopeful. The blast caught the impulse engine, most of the survivors we’ve found were the flightcrew; the bulkhead between the cockpit and the rest of the ship shielded them somewhat.”

“I’m sure you’ve done all you could,” Ratchet said. “Where am I needed?”

Ratchet had expected he’d have to coordinate response for this emergency from up on the station, like he’d been doing for years, but with Deadlock at his side, Optimus had finally caved. He was trying not to seem too excited about being on solid ground again; there were people dead.

“Medics are over there, they’re trying to get patients loaded for evac. This is Decepticon-controlled territory, we might not have much time.”

Ratchet nodded his understanding, then waved Deadlock along after him as they headed down the slope. Stabilizing patients for a ground-to-space flight was tough work, and worse with a time limit. There were seven casualties and four medics down there - Ratchet was trying to remember the name of the field commander for search and rescue when Deadlock shoved him to the ground.

A minute later, Ratchet recognized the sharp sound of a Pathblaster firing. Deadlock grunted, then threw himself down on top of Ratchet, drawing the laser pistol Ratchet had holstered at his hip and bracing it against Ratchet’s shoulders. He fired three times and then cursed. The pathblaster fired again and blew a huge cloud of dirt over them. Deadlock cursed again, pushed himself to his knees and fired the pistol again.

Everything was quiet except for the ringing in Ratchet’s audials. He rolled over and sat up, looking around as the dust cleared. Hound and the others were running towards them, the medics at the bottom of the slope had abandoned their charges to bolt for cover when the Deceptions started firing, Deadlock was -

“Deadlock!” Ratchet threw himself over the mech, splayed out on the dirt in a pool of fuel. The pathblaster must have just caught his side, but where it had hit the plating had been seared into a molten mess. Ratchet looked at the damage and knew that, with any other patient, he’d be about to lose them.

Deadlock was gasping, fangs bared in a snarl of pain. “Ratchet,” he said.

Ratchet grabbed for Deadlock’s uninjured hand. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay, Deadlock.”

“I’ve died before, I know what it feels like,” Deadlock gasped. “Get. Your. Aft. Off-planet.”

And, damn it, Ratchet didn’t want to go, but now Deadlock had to be evaced too, and Ratchet couldn’t trust anyone else here to handle it.

Deadlock woke up on the shuttle only a few minutes later, while Ratchet was welding the surgical patch over his side.

“Ratchet, there’s no need to fuss,” were the first words he said. “I’ll heal.”

“I’m not going to not treat you just because you’ll heal on your own. Not after you just saved my life,” Ratchet said. “Now shut up and rest.”

Dying must have been tiring, because Deadlock - who’d never been in the habit of napping or following Ratchet’s orders to shut up - actually did. It wasn’t until they were back on the station and Deadlock had been installed safely on the berth in Ratchet’s office that Deadlock spoke again.

“I told you you needed a bodyguard,” he said, smugly.

“Bodyguard doesn’t mean you should shove yourself in front of guns when people are shooting at me,” Ratchet said.

“I mean, it definitely does. Why would I not do that, Ratchet? Better me than you.”

“I don’t understand why you care,” Ratchet said.

Deadlock smiled and shook his head. “See, that’s the kind of bullshit self-esteem that gets people thinking ‘if I don’t throw myself in front of this guy, he’s going to get himself shot.’ Ratchet, have you considered that I like you?”

“Plenty of people like me, that doesn’t mean they’re lining up to die for me.”

“I’ve died for a lot worse reasons,” Deadlock said. “I mean, I would have done that on day one, if there’s somehow been an assassin in the medibay. But nowadays I…I like you, okay? I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

Ratchet thought for a long moment. If he blew that comment off, Deadlock would probably act like it was a joke. But he couldn’t - there was just too much he was holding over Deadlock. He took Deadlock’s hand, rubbed his fingers over the scarred fingers in a soothing motion.

“I like you too,” he said. “But I can’t. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be ethical.”

Deadlock stared at him, optics bright. “What? What, no. You shouldn’t like me, Ratchet. You’re way out of my league. You have ethics and principles…you should have standards too.” He pulled his hand away, let it trace out the scar the pathblaster had left in his side.

“Deadlock, I don’t want to sound like a Decepticon sympathizer, but you do understand that I’m not some innocent caught up in this war, right? I didn’t even join the Autobots over principles, I ended up here because I wanted to keep my friends safe. You wanted justice. You wanted justice and change and Megatron and Decepticon high command weaponized that.”

Deadlock laughed, harsh and desperate. “You think I wanted justice? I wanted vengeance, Ratchet. I wanted every Senator dead and a chance to stomp on their sparks and that’s what the Decepticons offered me. Don’t act like I’m some bleeding spark who turned away from the war because they cared about right and wrong, Doc.”

“Then why are you here?” Ratchet asked.

“I’m here because I wanted to save myself, Doc. I’m here because I was scared as fuck and I ran to the only place I didn’t think they could drag me back from. Figured even if the Autobots wouldn’t take me as a recruit, they’d keep me as a prisoner rather than let Megatron have me back.” Deadlock clamped his hand hard over his side, digging his fingertips into his plating. He looked sick. Ratchet felt bad for asking, because he’d suspected the answer might be something like this.

After all, Megatron had shown no compunctions about experimenting on his Warriors Elite to make the Phase Sixers.

“So he was going to let them take you apart,” he said, trying not to let the fury show in his voice.

“Shockwave,” Deadlock said. “He said that, if Megatron allowed it, he’d figure out to make a million immortal warriors. Megatron apologized to me, you know? He said he was very sorry, but it was for the good of the cause…I’d always thought he would - ”

“You’d thought he would protect you and then he didn’t,” Ratchet said. “You were loyal. He wasn’t. Why isn’t that a good reason to leave?”

“Because I spent three million years saying everything I did was worth it for the Decepticon cause. And then I realized that I didn’t give a damn about the cause, I didn’t give a damn about the war. I just wanted to be free.”

Deadlock fastened the cuff over his left wrist and offered the other end to Ratchet.

Ratchet shook his head. “That’s not necessary. I could get you another berth, you know.”

“Are you kicking me out of your berth?” Deadlock asked.

“I feel like I’m taking advantage of you, so I’m telling you the truth. You don’t need the cuffs, I trust you. And you can sleep wherever you want.”

“And what if I want to share with you?” Deadlock asked. “Will that make you…uncomfortable, after what I said today?”

“Not unless you stab me with your damned shoulder fins again.”

Things had been weird, since Deadlock had confessed to Ratchet. Since Deadlock had died for Ratchet. It had been a lot for one day.

Ratchet knew that he should just talk to him, but he’d never talked about any of this with anyone before…knowing that Deadlock would understand somehow didn’t make it easier.

Ratchet was back to his perennial exile on the station, banned from planetside deployment. Other than that and the impending horrible possibility that he’d have to talk about his feelings sometime, things were okay.

Deadlock was working on befriending more of the medical assistants and it seemed to be working. He’d convinced Ratchet to take him to the shooting range in their off hours a couple time. They’d even gotten permission from Optimus and Jazz - while Prowl was away on a mission - to start eating in the commissary with the rest of the crew. Saving Ratchet’s life seemed to have boosted Deadlock’s relative esteem in the eyes of the other Autobots.

That or it was hard to be completely hostile with a mech who’d helped the medics reattach your arm after you lost it playing hand-grenade tag.

Things had been quiet for too many days in a row, so Ratchet wasn’t surprised to get a call while they were eating in the commissary. A mech from the Diplomatic Corps had returned from a mission in need of medical attention. He’d had some sort of accident while off-station and the medics on whatever backwater planet he’d been on had done a hack job. Understandably, the two medical assistants on duty weren’t feeling up to handling it.

“Don’t worry about it, Hele, we can swap shifts,” Ratchet promised. He patted Deadlock on the shoulder, interrupting an animated conversation on some ancient vid serial the crew had been obsessing over recently. “Duty calls.”

Ratchet briefed him on the situation on their way over, and then they conferenced with the attending medics on the patient before heading in. It had been some sort of surgery to try and adapt the mech to local gravity, but they’d ended up opening up his lifecord, which was ludicrously irresponsible. They were getting weird spark readings from the patient, which meant there was the possibility of contamination from whatever microfauna they had on that planet.

“So, what do you think the first step is, Deadlock?” Ratchet asked, as he powered on the decam chamber.

“Rerun the scans Hele and Salvo ran,” Deadlock said. “Then quiz the patient on what symptoms he’s been having, anything out of the ordinary. Uh, you probably want to administer one of your standard questionnaires.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Ratchet said. “After that we’ll see if his medical readings indicate an emergency, discuss potential treatments with the patient and then proceed accordingly.”

Deadlock whistled and two of the medical drones zipped over. They both offered him a fistbump and then, because Deadlock was a horrible influence on the things, they hovered next to Ratchet expectantly until he followed suit.

“You didn’t have to train them to do that,” Ratchet complained as the little droned bleeped happily and followed them to the examination room.

“It’s good for morale!” Deadlock protested. “The trainees love it. We were talking about making them very tiny hats, just for fun.”

“That would be a great idea,” Ratchet said, rolling his optics. “Very sanitary, in a surgical assistant.” He shook his head to cut off Deadlock’s next protest as he opened the door to the examination room. “So, Dunestreak, what have the nasty aliens done to you?” He asked.

The patient - yellow, mid-size, visor, gun - lifted the gun in their hand and pointed it at Ratchet’s chest. “I dunno, you’d have to ask Dunestreak,” they said. “I don’t have a message from him. I’ve got a message from Lord Megatron though, if you’d like to hear it?”

Deadlock grabbed at Ratchet’s shoulder, but Ratchet held up his arm to stop Deadlock from rushing the room. The last thing they needed was to startle the armed Decepticon intruder. “And what message is that?” Ratchet asked.

“He says keep your hands off what ain’t yours,” they said. They flicked their gaze over to Deadlock and said with a contemptuous sneer, “Megatron has a message to you too, traitor. Heel.”

“If you hurt him I will kill you,” Deadlock said.

“Sure you will,” they said. “But he’ll still be dead, won’t he? And that’ll be a victory the Decepticons can celebrate. Some of us aren’t afraid to die for the cause.”

Things happened very quickly.

Deadlock grabbed Ratchet and tried to pull him back out of the room.

Ratchet slipped out of his grasp and charged at the imposter.

The shot hit him in the chest, shattering his chestplate. Clear shot, straight to the spark. His last thought was: Megatron had sent a professional.

Everything went black before he hit the floor.

Ratchet stifled a gasp as he woke up, his spark still pulling itself back together. The pain was worse than anything he’d ever felt, worse than anything since the first time. He didn’t power on his optics yet, but he could hear the mech gloating.

“Oh, look at you! You’ve gone soft! The great Deadlock, dog of the Decepticons, gone tame after only a few years.” There was the snap of a laser pistol striking frame. Deadlock made a noise that sounded like a sob. He wasn’t dead. Ratchet wasn’t sure if that was ‘wasn’t dead yet’ or ‘wasn’t dead anymore’.

He would worry about the details when there was a Decepticon spy torturing his sparkmate.

Ratchet swallowed his fear, hoped nobody was looking, and powered on his optics. He surveyed the room as best he could without moving his head. Deadlock was propped up against the wall by the door, the Decepticon was leaning over him, one hand gripping his helm. Ratchet had, by good fortune, landed on the floor by the berth. Nobody was looking in his direction.

Ratchet reached up and unholstered the gun that was hidden under the examination berth. They were hidden all over the medibay. Deadlock was paranoid, but he had to admit that this hiding place had been a good plan. It was a sparkcoded gun, only worked if Ratchet was the one holding it. That had been at Prowl’s insistence - he didn’t like the idea of Deadlock knowing where there were deadly weapons in the medibay.

Ratchet primed the gun, then used the berth to drag himself to his feet. This was probably the perfect moment to give a good one-liner. Something to really shock the Decepticon before he shot them.

Ratchet was too fucking mad to think of one.

He walked up to the Decepticon, put the gun to the back of they helm and fired. They crumpled and Ratchet kicked their frame out of the way to get to Deadlock.

Deadlock was venting in whistling gasps, a hole through his neck explaining the lack of backtalk. The mech clearly hadn’t been saving ammunition for later. Ratchet dropped the gun and unfolded his integrated kit to get a blocker for the pain. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Ratchet said. “I’ve got you.”

Deadlock stared at him, fans kicking up to a furious scream for a moment before he fainted.

Ratchet glanced down at his chest and the twin scars over his spark. Yeah, maybe that was a bit of a shock.

Really, it was for the best that Deadlock was unconscious; it gave Ratchet time to control the narrative.

He got Deadlock settled on a berth and stabilized, then started cleaning up. He fitted himself with a new chestplate - actually his spare, which he had in his office for when he got unacceptably gross during surgery and needed to swap out so he could polish it. His fuel on the floor and the broken glass went into the biohazard bin, to be incinerated. Ratchet stopped into the decam to clean any fuel off himself. He figured he could explain that as needing to clean off before operating on Deadlock if anyone asked.

Nobody asked. Ratchet told them that Deadlock had distracted the Decepticon; that they’d assumed Ratchet was harmless until he shot them with the concealed gun. Mnemology grumbled that there was nothing for them to do since the brain module was blown up, but nobody seemed suspicious. Everyone accepted Ratchet’s theory that Dunestreak had been the victim of a Relinquishment Clinic style bodyswap and that the real Dunestreak was probably dead.

Ratchet didn’t think that the security team would have been near as willing to accept that theory from Deadlock. It was a good thing that he’d been around to handle it.

The medical assistants came back, full of horrified apologies. The rest of the off-shift medics followed them, fussing over Ratchet and crowding the space with chatter. Ratchet didn’t get a chance to treat Deadlock; the other medics seemed to think he was traumatized and incapable of doing a simple patch-job. He’d done harder surgeries while actually traumatized. But he’d been lucky that nobody had questioned his story so far, he didn’t want to push it.

He knew when Deadlock woke up by the horrible ruckus and people yelling. Ratchet got to his feet. Over the noise, he heard Hele shout: “Ratchet is fine!”

Everything quieted down for a moment, and Ratchet pushed past his assiduously overprotective assistant to get to the surgical suite. It looked like a classical painting, frozen midframe. Absolute chaos. Two medics were trying to hold Deadlock down and there was a third lying on the floor with his hands over his face. The medical drones looked like they’d been trying to pull the medics back. Obviously Deadlock had been trying to get out of the berth. He looked over at Ratchet and licked his lips nervously.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

And this is why Ratchet should have stayed with him. He stared at Deadlock, willing him to keep his mouth shut. “I was just playing dead so I could get a jump on the guy. I’m fine.”

Deadlock looked him over. “I thought playing dead was my trick.”

Ratchet smiled. “I told you I didn’t need a bodyguard.”

Deadlock stammered indignantly and everyone smiled. Tension diffused, Ratchet asked if Deadlock was ready to be moved to their quarters yet and out of the medibay. “Because I, for one, really need some peace and quiet and a nap after all that excitement. No offense or anything to all of you. I’m just getting too old for this nonsense.”

In their quarters, they sat on the berth with the lights on. Deadlock ran his hands over Ratchet’s chestplate, not quite touching. He frowned at Ratchet.

“I didn’t imagine it, did I?”

Ratchet shook his head. “No, I’m just lucky he was a good shot. The glass doesn’t hold the scars. Here, let me - ” he lifted off the catches and lowered his chestplate so Deadlock could see.

Deadlock looked from the scars, to Ratchet’s face, then back again. “When was the first time you died?” he asked.

“Do you remember the Decepticon raid on the Sistex embassy?” Ratchet waited for Deadlock’s nod before continuing. “They had two trainees guarding me, at one point. I got stupid and made a break for it. They panicked, one of them shot me.” Ratchet shrugged. “I don’t know who was more startled when I woke up: me or them.”

“So that’s why you killed the guards,” Deadlock said. “I’d thought it seemed out of character.”

“Everyone had already heard of you and what you could do,” Ratchet said. “I panicked.”

“And then you never told anyone.”

“Well, it’s an easy secret to keep as long as you don’t let yourself get killed all over the fucking place,” Ratchet said. “Or…it was an easy secret to keep. Until you came here.”

Deadlock rubbed absently at one the patch over his neck. It’d heal clean, the wounds hadn’t killed him this time. It wouldn’t matter much, because there was already a scar under that patch. “It’s harder than you think, not dying,” Deadlock said.

And yeah, it probably was when your commander knew you couldn’t die and didn’t care what happened to you, short of death. “I’m not blaming you,” Ratchet said. “I’m trying to apologize for not telling you sooner.”

“So you saying it wouldn’t be right to be with me…did you mean because you’re my supervisor? Or did you mean because you hadn’t told me you were immortal.”

“Well, command’s gonna care more about the first reason. But I’d meant the second.”

Deadlock shook his head. “I thought you were letting me down easy because - ” He lifted his arms in demonstration, as if to gesture to all of himself. “Because I’m hideous. Or because I’m horrifying. Either way.”

“You’re neither of those things,” Ratchet said. “I like the scars.”

Deadlock snorted. “Sure you do.”

“You’re here. You lived long enough to be here,” Ratchet said. He reached out, waited a moment for Deadlock to lean his face into Ratchet’s hand so he could sooth his thumb over the scar beneath Deadlock’s left optic. “How could I hate them when they kept you alive?”

“I’ve always felt drawn to you,” Deadlock confessed. “I didn’t know why. I thought maybe it was a crush…sometimes it felt like a curse, I just couldn’t stop thinking about you. And then it turns out we’re the only ones?”

“There could be more,” Ratchet said. “Most people haven’t died yet, so there’s really no way to know.”

“Oh, shove off.” Deadlock turned his head a little to kiss the inside of Ratchet’s wrist. He watched Ratchet out of the corner of his eyes as he did it, smirking as Ratchet shivered. “I think it’s a sign. We were meant to have this.”

“I don’t believe in signs,” Ratchet protested.

Deadlock smiled wider, full of menace. “Give me a few hours, I’ll make you believe in signs.”

“I’m thinking of changing my name,” Deadlock said. “I want to be Drift again.”

“It was a good name,” Ratchet said. “It makes it feel like this is permanent, like you’re never going back.”

“I’m never going back,” Drift said. He leaned his head back against Ratchet’s chest, placed a gentle kiss over Ratchet’s scar, over Ratchet’s spark. “This is permanent.”