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The prison was dark and cold and empty.
Rung didn't know what had happened to the others but they weren't incarcerated with him. He understood the effectiveness of separating prisoners and it made him uneasy; he wondered if they had all been separated or if it was only himself that had been removed from the others. Rung alone had little tactical value, except that he was a part of Rodimus' crew and thus Rodimus would desire his comfort and release, and might exchange something of value to secure these desires.
Days passed.
Rung sat in the darkness, conserving his energy, knees drawn up to his chest, dozing. He waited. Rescue was a likely scenario. Execution seemed unlikely; although they had been captured while trespassing in well-marked organic territory, there had been no talk of death during their capture, only indignation and open dislike. Prolonged incarceration was a punishment favoured by short-lived organics. Rung got comfortable.
He was a patient person, but he did get bored without stimulation. Inactivity grated. He paced the length and breadth of his cell to familiarize himself with it, should he come to need familiarity. He concluded that he did not have the materials or knowledge necessary to mount an escape from this place. Instead, he listened to his guards on the other side of the door who did not know he could translate their language, and he waited.
The organics didn't understand how frequently Rung required sustenance. He found himself growing hungry, then shutting down non-essential systems. Then he had trouble boosting his systems out of stasis one day.
"I'm very hungry," he told the guard through the small window in the door. They could speak neo-cybex, he knew they could. "I can't survive on these rations. None of us can." Larger, more complex bots were probably worse off than Rung at this point if they were being treated similarly.
The guard made no response, but Rung's rations increased in volume and frequency. He thanked the guard, who still gave no response. They did not seem malicious; neither were they overly solicitous.
Two weeks later, the door opened and several guards entered, dragging something between them. The cell was dimly lit, but Rung could make out the flat planes of Cybertronian armour and the brief crescent of an audial when the guards dropped their burden.
"Someone said you were a doctor. This one is fading. We would prefer to have all of you alive for trial. Fix him."
"I'm not a medical doctor," Rung said, "Please, he needs someone with more skill."
"You're all we've got. Do what you can," said the guard. They closed the door and Rung scrambled across the floor to the unmoving pile of right angles. He crouched, hands skimming the other.
"Oh," he murmured and bit his lip. "Whirl."
Of course. Someone bigger and more complex and injured in the inevitable, preceding battle. Rung found the helicopter's helm and cradled it in both hands. Whirl's plating was cold, too cold. He didn't react to Rung's handling.
"Whirl!" he barked. The helicopter stirred, sluggish, and there was a soft pop and fizzle as his optic lamp sputtered to life.
"...hey."
"I was afraid you were in stasis lock."
"...I'm okay."
"You're not okay, you're half dead!"
Whirl gazed up at him, optic dimming. "...just rest...ing."
"You're dying of starvation."
"...damn."
Rung rummaged in his radial compartment. "All I have is candy."
"Candy's good," said Whirl and there was a rasp as he opened his nutritional intake. Rung snapped the energon stick in half and slipped a piece into Whirl's rudimentary mouth. He waited, stroking Whirl's throat in an effort to stimulate a peristaltic response in his intake sensors. It didn't work exactly as he hoped. Whirl retched and a thin dribble of energon-purple vomit spattered from his intake.
"Not good," Whirl managed.
"Oh, dear. It's probably too refined," said Rung. He put the other half of the candy stick away. "I'll be right back."
"...not going... anywhere," Whirl whispered.
Rung tapped on the door to get the guards' attention. "My friend is very hungry. Can I have something to feed him, please?"
The guard eyed him, grunted in response, then nodded.
"Thank you."
Rung waited until the guard returned, holding four cubes of energon, and thanked him again.
"Okay, Whirl," he said softly and sat down beside the starving bot. If Whirl's body was rejecting the heavily refined candy, then he was probably in the mid-stages of system failure and unable to process food properly. He needed raw energon but this was all they had. It would have to suffice.
Rung broke off a corner of the cube. He crumbled it between his fingers, gathering a handful of pieces, then fed one to Whirl and waited. Whirl swallowed, mechanically, with some difficulty, optic dimming with the effort. Then he shivered and threw up again.
"...don't waste it," he rasped, and tried to turn away from Rung's hands.
"I'm not," Rung snapped. For the first time in his life, he was stronger than Whirl and he held the helicopter firmly in place. Whirl said nothing and shuttered his optic. "I'm not wasting it," Rung said more gently. Whirl shifted slightly.
"...not hungry," he said. "Cold." He nudged against Rung's hand.
Rung spread his palms against Whirl's helm, hoping to transfer even a smidgen of heat. "I know. I'm sorry. We've got to get some food into you. And keep it there."
Rung bit his lip. What Whirl needed was an energon drip and a thermal blanket, neither of which Rung was equipped to give him. But perhaps he could improvise.
He took a bite of the cube, sucking at the morsel, mixing it with his oral lubricant to initiate digestion until it was jelly. Then he leaned over, tipped Whirl's head back and pressed his mouth against the tiny rectangular intake, pushing the tidbit in with his tongue. He massaged the helicopter's throat until Whirl swallowed and waited. Whirl made a small, pained noise but he did not throw up.
Heartened, Rung took another bite, chewed and transferred it to Whirl. Whirl swallowed. On the fourth bite, Rung found Whirl's thin, mesh tongue probing past his lips. Rung stroked his neck soothingly. "Slow down," he cautioned. "There's more."
Whirl unshuttered his optic. "...more?"
"Be patient," said Rung. "Your system is still at minimal functionality and we don't want to over-burden it. There's more coming. In the meantime, let's see if I can't warm you up a little..."
Rung maneuvered himself in behind Whirl, pulling the warrior's shoulders back against his chest. He drew his chest plating back enough to expose his spark in a narrow strip of light and warmth. Whirl shifted closer.
It wasn't a perfect solution. Whirl's own armour was so dense and heat resistant that he had to partially transform his back plating aside to benefit from Rung's improvised heat source. Rung had to lean over Whirl's shoulder to feed him. It was awkward and not completely comfortable.
But it worked. Rung fed Whirl small quantities of energon at increasing frequency over the course of several days. Whirl barely stirred during the time. He devoured the food readily, then lapsed into recharge, pressing himself back against Rung's warmth. But Rung could hear his systems working now, and after five days, Whirl was more alert, and sitting up on his own.
Rung closed his thoracic plating. "Welcome back," he said, crouched in front of Whirl.
"Takes more'n 'at to kill me," said the warrior. He was still weak and dizzy but his optic was brighter and his gaze sharper.
"Apparently," said Rung. "What happened to the others?"
Whirl shook his head. "Haven't seen 'em. Thought you lot had taken off without me but I guess not."
"No, never," said Rung. Whirl glanced up at Rung's tone.
"Come on doc, wouldn't you like to get your Tuesday-Friday mornings back?"
"Not at the cost of losing a friend." He shifted to look Whirl in the optic. "I was afraid you really were going to die..."
"Quit it," Whirl mumbled.
"...and you would have been so mad to go so quietly." Rung touched his helm with kind fingers.
Whirl chuckled. "Furious. Overwhelmingly, surmountingly furious!" He butted his helm against Rung's. "Don't let Rodimus eulogize me. He doesn't know half the scrap I've done. Ultra Magnus! Now he knows. He keeps a list," said Whirl with pride.
There was a dull chime from Whirl's chest. "Frikkin' warnings. I know my energy level is low."
"Let's try a tiny piece of solid food, okay?"
"Bring it on."
Whirl managed to keep the morsel down; Rung gave him another. He seemed uncertain after that and they decided to wait. Rung noticed two of the guards watching them through the slit in the cell door. Whirl ignored them, but Rung caught their conversation.
"Didn't know they took mates," said one. "It's weird seeing machines with that kind of emotion."
"Man, did you see them kissing? Poor things must've missed each other a lot."
The guard rolled its shoulders. "Yeah." It sounded uncomfortable.
"You figure they, you know, do more than just kiss in there?"
"I don't really care if they do. What do you care? Some kind of fetish?"
"No, no! It's like you said; it's weird thinking they actually care about each other. They're machines, right? So..." The guard's voice trailed off and its companion eyed it for a moment, then glanced at Rung, who approached the window cautiously, masking his attention as coincidental.
"Hungry?" asked the guard, the one who had seemed uncomfortable.
"Yes, please," said Rung.
"How's your friend?" Rung glanced back at Whirl, who had nodded off, half-curled around himself against the wall.
"Alive," he said. The guard nodded in response and passed him two cubes of energon.
"Is he going to stay like that?"
"Alive? Yes, I hope so."
"No; quiet. Asleep."
Rung paused. "He doesn't have much of a choice. His body is more complex than mine. He needs to eat more food, more frequently."
"He's starving, then."
"Yes."
The guard sighed. "We didn't know. What's he need to be fully functional?"
"Four cubes a day, just for himself." Rung didn't think it was pertinent to mention that on four cubes a day, Whirl would have enough energy to manufacture armaments.
"If we give him less, he won't be able to make bullets, will he?"
Drat. "Correct."
The guard made a noise that might have been a chuckle. "Worth a try, wasn't it?"
Rung shrugged. "He's a warrior. It would wound his ego if we didn't try to escape."
"I can respect that."
Three days later, when the guard brought their rations, it asked Rung for his name and he gave it. He declined to give Whirl's name, since it wasn't his place to do so, nor did he want the guard doing a search of intergalactic records and discovering Whirl's lurid history.
"All right, Rung. So what is he to you?"
"A friend," said Rung.
"Okay," said the guard, sounding unconvinced.
That night, the guard gave them a shiny thermal blanket, one large enough to cover them both when Rung unfurled it. Whirl, although he was no longer in imminent danger of offlining, still struggled to hold his heat between meals and Rung was pleased to see the blanket.
They spent the next few nights cuddled together beneath the sheet. With a minor transformation of his gleno-humeral joint, Whirl was able to stretch out on his side, Rung snug against his back, chestplates opened to heat the cozy space.
"I'm bored," Whirl muttered.
"Me too. Recharge."
"Can't. Too bored." He shifted, rubbing the back of one thigh against Rung's knee. "Rewind said you've seen, like, scraploads of history. Tell me about something exciting."
Rung thought for a moment. "Okay. Where's your info port?" He probed around Whirl's audials without success.
"Nope, down here." Whirl guided Rung's fingers beneath his cockpit. "Lost the old ones when they took off my head," he explained, nonchalant. Rung spooled out his own transfer cable and jacked in. "Both ways," said Whirl and passed his cable back to Rung. "Wow, those are some serious firewalls. I'm impressed."
"Those protect my patients," said Rung. He gently guided Whirl's consciousness to his open archives. "Here's a list of dates you might find exciting."
Minutes passed as Whirl browsed Rung's archives. "Rewind wasn't kidding. You've been everywhere. How come you never did anything?"
"I did my job," said Rung, optics shuttered. He couldn't go into full recharge during interface- his protocols wouldn't allow it for security reasons- but he could doze.
"Yeah, but there was all this crazy-" Whirl stopped. "Hey, that's-" He cut his voice off, though Rung registered the recognition in his processor. Rung said nothing but Whirl must have realized he couldn't hide so much candid surprise while he was linked up to another bot. "That's me."
"Where?" asked Rung.
Whirl hesitated, then guided Rung's consciousness through the static memory to focus on a single bot in the background of a street scene. "There. That... was... me."
Rung found himself smiling. He couldn't think of a thing to say that his consciousness wasn't communicating to Whirls' already, so he simply examined the record.
"Handsome, yeah?" Whirl prodded.
"Look at that ridiculous paint job," Rung teased.
"Like you'd know fashion, wearing the same colours since the day you were forged."
"I know better than to mess with perfection."
Whirl's mirth bubbled through their connection. Rung was still looking, contemplating the young bot in the memory file.
"You look very content," he said at last.
"That's my shop, down the street there."
Rung shifted his focus. "Not the best location."
"But the rent was cheap."
"You lived above?"
A flicker of affirmative and a rush of fond warmth. "Will you show me?" Rung asked. "Show me the good parts?"
Whirl hesitated for a long time, wavering, debating, closing Rung's file, then re-opening it, then closing it again. "Okay."
It was full of natural light. The studio above the tiny shop was flooded with it and it felt like triumph in Whirl's memory, over-flowing with energy and promise. It was a perfect place and it was all his. Whirl- the current Whirl, incapable of handling the tools kept in neat cases before him with any semblance of dexterity- sat down slowly at the desk. He stretched his legs out beneath it, sticking his pedal stabilizers into a little furrow where the floor met the wall.
"Wish I died here," he said, wistful, honest. Rung put his incorporeal hands on Whirl's equally unreal shoulders and didn't reply. He stood and soaked in the calm, the surety of Whirl's memory, and the powerful, jealous love he felt all around him for this place, this time. A fraction of a sliver of a life; vivid, treasured and wholly untouched by later guilt and hate and self-loathing.
"Thank you," Rung murmured. Only now, awash in light and boundless love, did he truly realize what he had asked of Whirl, and what Whirl had deigned to share with him.
"Glad you... yeah." Glad you asked. Glad you like it. Glad you're not dead. Glad I'm not dead. Glad I can remember. Whirl shook himself, mentally and physically. "Come on. Show me something cool. I've been here before. Show me something new."
The light faded around them and Rung drew him on to something else, something frantic and unique and exciting. Rung was dimly aware that the guards were watching them and switched on his microphone, recording their hushed conversation for later review. They pointed to the cables draped between the two bots and the one that Rung spoke to turned away.
"Give them some privacy, for heaven's sake."