Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hoist! Hoist, we’ve got a survivor over here!”

The voice was uncomfortably close and almost painfully loud. Despite himself, Splitter unshuttered his optics enough to try and glare at whoever was shouting. His blurry gaze was met with bright blue optics and a hand on his forehead.

“Don’t worry, I’m with the medical corps. We’ll take care of you.”

He’d heard stories about how the Autobot medical corps took care of prisoners and he wanted no part of that. Weakly, he tried to activate his onboard cannons, but all he got for his effort was a series of error messages and a flash of pain as the cannon in his right arm sparked and died.

“Woah, easy friend! I’m a nurse, I’m not going to hurt you!”

“I imagine that’s not as comforting to our friend as you intend it to be.” A second bot, big and green with a soft voice, stepped up next to the one that claimed to be a nurse. Probably the “Hoist” the first one had been yelling at.

“Get away!” He tried to shout, but it came out more of a barely audible gargle.

“Leaving you to die would be a violation of my medical oaths,” the big green one said. Then he came close and crouched down next to him. “My name is Hoist, head of trauma medicine for the Autobots. I am going to give you a light sedative and then we will transport you to Autobot Medical Outpost Delta. You have my word that no harm will come to you.”

He tried to struggle, but as injured as he was, Splitter was no match for a medic’s strength. Or the sedative that was injected into his lines a moment later. He fell offline trying to growl at the pair of Autobots.

Chapter Text

Splitter woke in a small room with a barred window and a door that he assumed was locked. He was resting on a softly padded berth and covered with a thermal sheet. His right arm throbbed with a dull ache and he couldn’t feel anything at all in the part of his abdomen that had been shot up during the battle.

And his bad knee wasn’t hurting him for the first time in at least a vorn. Huh. just to be sure, he bent the joint carefully, and it moved as fluidly as it had when he came off the assembly line.

“The frag? Who wastes resources on a knee?”

“Any medic worth his crosses, as long as he has access to the parts.” Splitter jolted with surprise as the voice came over the intercom. It sounded like the big green medic, but he wasn’t sure. And he didn’t really want to find out. “May I come in and perform a few followup scans?”

“Why bother asking? You’ll just wait til I go to recharge if I say no.” He looked over the room, hoping he could find anything that he could use as a weapon. There was no way he was going to let the Autobot medics use him to test biological weapons or dissect him or anything else he’d been told they loved to do to helpless prisoners.

“I do not know what other facilities policies are, but your consent is important at Outpost Delta. If you do not wish for me to come in, then I will not.”

“Yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it.” He wrapped his fingers around the thermal sheet, hoping it would be enough if he had to delay the medic long enough to run when the door was opened.

“Very well.” The medic sounded tired when he sighed. “Please call us if you require assistance. One of the nurses will require entry in the morning and evening to give you your rations, however.”

“How am I supposed to call you?” Not that he would, but it would be useful to know what not to do.

“You will find the call button built into the right hand side of your berth. A single press will summon one of us to the intercom.”

“Great, thanks. Now leave me alone.”

“As you wish. Good night, friend.”

The intercom fell silent, and Splitter realized a klik later how quiet the room was. He couldn’t even hear the hum of a monitor or the sound of footsteps outside. He turned onto his left, putting his back to the window because that at least had bars to slow down anyone trying to get to him, and pulled his knees up to his chest. That finally made his abdomen twinge from the still-healing repairs, but it was better than the alternatives.

Then he stared at the door and tried very hard not to think about what they were probably going to do to him once he was fully healed.

Chapter Text

“Good morning! May I come in with your fuel?”

Splitter blinked at the too-perky voice that came over the intercom. It was a jarring contrast compared to the medic and the horror show playing out in his processor while he waited for them to inflict their horrors on him. He checked his fuel gauge and sighed. Not recharging had put a huge dent in what they’d given him after his repairs and he really couldn’t get away with not having whatever they were going to give him now. “Yeah. come in, I guess.”

The door slid open a moment later, and the noise of the medbay rushed into the room before the nurse did. After spending such a quiet night, the noise was almost a relief.

“How are you this morning?” The nurse, a tall and slender bot with traditional red and white paint, smiled as they carried in a tray holding a full cube of energon and a data pad.

“Fine,” Splitter replied. He did his best not to stare too hard at the energon, but he had a feeling the nurse noticed anyway.

“You get extra rations until the repairs have finished integrating and then you’ll switch to standard rations with the rest of us afterward.” They handed him the cube, still smiling. It was almost creepy.

He took the cube with his uninjured hand and didn’t reply.

“And I thought you would probably be getting bored by now, so I brought you something to read. It’s not much, just a few romances, but it’s better than nothing, right?”

“You did what?” He wanted to keep whatever cool he had so they didn’t know how scared he really was, but he was too surprised by what the nurse had said to him.

“I… brought you something to read. To pass the time. I know how rough it can be in the isolation rooms.”

“But why? You don’t entertain mechs you’re planning to torture or experiment on!”

“You think we… that we would…” The nurse looked so horrified that he almost felt bad. There was no way they could act well enough to fake that expression. “Oh, sweetspark, no! I don’t know what they told you, but we help people at Outpost Delta.”

“That’s not what they say during training.” Splitter looked away from the nurse.

“Obviously not.” They sighed deeply. Then the nurse lifted the data pad off the tray and held it out. “But, as I said, we do not torture our patients. Not even with boredom.”

Slowly, he reached for the pad. He didn’t know if he believed the nurse or not yet, but they clearly hadn’t been putting on an act for him. That had to count for something, right?

And if his fingers trembled as the closed around the device, the nurse was generous enough not to mention it.

“Thanks, I guess,” Splitter said.

The nurse smiled again.

Chapter Text

Splitter stared across the field at Decepticon Command and the array of Autobot prisoners they were holding. He’d never been part of a prisoner exchange before, but apparently there had been enough mechs of his rank in the Autobot prisons to make it worth Lord Megatron’s time to get the Bots out of theirs. And those Autobots looked a lot happier to be going back than he or the other Decepticon prisoners did.

That said a lot about them really, things that he hadn’t considered before spending so much time at Outpost Delta.

“On my signal, Prime.” Lord Megatron’s voice rumbled across the valley, drowning out the soft sounds of systems in standby or shuffling feet.

“Agreed, Megatron.” Optimus Prime’s voice was just as loud, but it felt gentler somehow.

Frag, he’d really been living with those softsparks too long.

“Take care of yourself, Splitter.” Hoist said, just loudly enough that he could hear. “And remember that we are a comm call away if you ever need our assistance again.”

“Thanks, doc. I’ll remember.” He turned to grin at the medic, but Lord Megaron must have given the signal because he was being pushed forward before he could tell if Hoist had seen it. It felt weird to do it, but he wished that he’d had just a couple kliks longer to say goodbye to the gentle medic.

He didn’t wish for long, though, because as soon as he was behind the Decepticon line, he was being pulled into a wildly cheering group hug. He smiled as his squadmates shouted at him and hugged them back as best he could.

“We thought you were dead!” Havoc, his best friend, wriggled under his arm and hugged him tightly enough to trigger a crush warning. “I never thought I’d see you again!”

“Got picked up by their medics.” He saw optics go wide all around him. “They took good care of me, Havoc. They aren’t what we all got told during training.”

“I’d say I believe it when I see it, but you’re here.” Havoc hugged him again.

“And we ain’t letting him go again!” Tread, the largest member of their squad, wrapped them both in his arms and lifted them off the ground.

Before, he had hated it when Tread mechhandled him, but now it just felt like being home. And it was nice to be home.

Even if he would miss those silly romances Bracket liked to read and share with him over morning rations.