Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ironhide sat back and ex-vented through his denta, air whistling through the gaps in a long, slowly lowering note. In the chair on the other side of the desk, Bumblebee fidgeted, looking, well, pretty appropriately apprehensive considering everything he’d just said. “Well, you’re definitely right about one thing.” he said, laying his hands flat on his desk. “Magnus would never approve a direct rescue operation if our enemy is as powerful as you claim they are.”

Bumblebee nodded vigorously, and Ironhide lifted a hand to rub his forehelm. “You’re also right that I cannot, in good conscience, leave a mech in a situation like that. Especially a friend.”

“So you’ll help?” Bumblebee sat up straighter, doorwings high and hopeful, and Ironhide sighed heavily.

“Give me three hours to round up a team. We’ll want backup standing by to lay false trails, and an aerial or two to do the actual transiting once we get him out of there.”

“Thank you!” Bumblebee shot to his pedes, and Ironhide was sure he would’ve been tackled in a hug had he not still been sitting behind a desk almost as tall as Bumblebee. The mini raced out of his office- literally raced, now he had tire marks to buff out of his floor again- and Ironhide buried his face in his hands as he groaned. Just this morning he’d thought that things were going so smoothly, too.

---

They left the caves Magnus had founded New Iacon in three and a half hours after Bumblebee left his office, and the scout pulled forward to lead the way despite being less than half the size of the rest of the team. He’d told them the bare minimum, that they were running an extraction op for a mech Bee found on patrol, but nobody had pushed for any further information than that, which was a welcome change of pace. Bee eventually had to transform back to root mode as the road became too steep for his altmode, and Ironhide signaled the rest of the team to do the same and huddle up.

“Alright, Bee and I’ll be doing the extraction ourselves, but we’ll need a pair of mechs standing by to cause a distraction if needed, and the rest to head about three miles that way.” he pointed down the slope of the mountain, towards the forest. “We’ll likely be coming in hot, so on my signal everyone needs to be ready to move. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.” came a chorus of voices, and Ironhide pointed at the twin speedsters.

“You two will be our distractions-in-waiting.”

Sideswipe smirked, and Sunstreaker inspected his fingers with a calculated air of boredom. “And if you don’t need a distraction?”

“Then you two get home safe, and make sure you’re not followed.” he ordered, leveling a finger at each of them in turn. “The last thing we need is these bastards trying to re-abduct our mech.”

The twins nodded dutifully, and Ironhide turned to the others to see them nodding as well. “Alright. Autobots, roll out!” he made a sweeping gesture with his hands, and the team split. Once they’d all vanished, he turned to Bumblebee and inclined his helm the way they’d been headed. “Us included.”

“I just hope we’re not too late.” Bumblebee fretted.

“We won’t be.” Ironhide assured him, though he worried about the same thing. Bumblebee led him further up the mountain, along a narrow path marred not only by the usual weapon gouges and scorch marks from the mountain-dwelling tessons but also by something much more powerful. There were spots where the very metal of the mountain seemed to have melted, places bearing clear indents that could only have come from tessons being pressed into the sheer wall, stretches gouged by the passing of something which left tracks unlike any Ironhide had ever seen.

::It’s just ahead.:: Bumblebee commed him as they approached a ridge half again Ironhide’s height. ::This is where I hid when I was gathering intel for the op.:: Bumblebee scrambled easily up the craggy ridge, clinging to the uneven metal as he peered over the edge. ::They’re with him now. He looks really bad.::

Ironhide gritted his denta and reached up to get a solid grip on the ledge. He couldn’t afford to be blindsided when they went in for the extraction. Bumblebee had blatantly avoided describing their target’s condition beyond evident injuries, and now he had no choice but to look and see for himself. He hauled himself up just high enough to get his optics over the edge, and nearly went tumbling down the mountain as he recoiled. It was one thing to hear that Optimus was missing his limbs from the middle joint down, and wholly another to see it in person.

And that wasn’t even touching on how he was strung up by wires run around his joints, how his armour was covered in silvery streaks and paint transfers as dark as the smaller of his captors. From this angle he couldn’t tell for sure, but he was fairly certain Optimus had been stripped of most of his ventral armour as well from the way he was shuddering as his larger captor’s honest to primus tentacles stroked his frame. Somehow though, worst of all was the way his friend and leader hung so limply in his restraints, as if all the fight had gone out of him. Ironhide dropped less than gracefully to the base of the ledge and turned to sink down against it, purging that thread from his processor. Optimus Prime didn’t give up. He didn’t submit, didn’t break, didn’t take a beating lying down.

::Ironhide, systems check.:: Bumblebee commed him, and on pure habit he ran one. He reactivated his stalled vents, and a massive gust of hot air rushed from them. It wasn’t until Bumblebee laid a small hand on his arm that he realized he was shaking. ::I’m so sorry. I would’ve warned you but...:: he trailed off, field heavy with regret, and Ironhide remembered Bumblebee’s admission that he’d run a covert surveillance op on his own to obtain all the necessary intel for this. For deca-cycles, he’d slipped out again and again in order to understand the schedule of Optimus’s captors. He’d certainly seen much, much worse than this.

::When we get back, you’re talking to Mirage about this.:: he underlaid his comm with subglyphs of authority and concern, and Bumblebee’s narrow shoulders shook with muffled laughter.

::I think Optimus is going to need therapy more than me.::

::Don’t make me order you.:: Ironhide threatened, and Bumblebee grinned. It was strained, but honestly that was better than the alternative. Bumblebee snapping in the field was a problem he absolutely did not need right now.

It was another few minutes before Bumblebee scaled the ridge again and commed him an all-clear, and Ironhide was grateful for the chance to collect himself. Optimus was a prisoner, he had been horribly mistreated, and now he needed a rescue. They could do this. They had to be able to do this. ::Let’s move.::

Scaling the ledge to get over it was easier than scaling it to hide and observe had been, and Ironhide charged the building with an energon blade already activating in his grip. Bee wasn’t tall enough to slice the lines suspending Optimus from the ceiling, or big enough to catch and hold him once he was cut free. Ironhide wasn’t ideally sized either, but like slag would he have pawned this off on some other mech. Optimus was a leader to all of them, but the Prime was his friend.

::Got him.:: he commed the team at large as soon as Optimus dropped into his arms with a low groan. ::He’s in a bad way.::

::Distraction time?:: one of the twins asked, and before Ironhide could answer Bee jumped into the conversation.

::Yes, soon as you can.::

Optimus’s field was hot against Ironhide’s plating as they left the building through the massive hole in the wall, his frame hotter, and his optics flickered worryingly. “Don’t worry, Prime.” he muttered as Bee helped him down a particularly steep bit of slope. “We’ve gotcha.”

Optimus made an inarticulate noise that seemed almost to bypass his vocaliser completely, frame twitching towards Ironhide’s, and Ironhide held him tighter. Just a few miles and he could load Optimus onto aerial transit to be brought back to New Iacon. And then no tesson or corrupted mech would ever, ever touch him again. Ironhide would make sure of it.