tenthtimeisthecharm | (no subject)

(no subject)

There is a brief pause filled with audible clicks and thuds, followed by the slightly echoey acoustics that come from someone recording audio in a large room. "Hello hello! You've reached Dr. Velocity! Feel free to leave a message or a video or whatever here, and I'll do my very best to respond promptly! And if it this is about the stickers, Ratchet, I didn't do it! Love and love and love!"

text | voice | video | action

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Velocity made a hushed, almost inaudible noise as she came up to stand beside Ratchet. She tangled all of her hands up together in knots as she leaned a bit to give first him and then the desk the same anxious, helpless look. The kind you felt wound in every inch of circuitry when you were at a memorial ceremony and didn't know whether to talk or hug or cry or laugh and laugh and laugh because the pinched feeling in your spark was going to bubble out whether you wanted it to or not.

But maybe that was just her.

Her finials clicked against each other before opening wider again, almost like the flicking fins of the fish she had been compared to more than once. "Hey..." She said quietly, then hovered for a few moments more, not knowing what to say, just that she should say something. "I know you're the therapist and everything, but..."

She looked back at the desk and started to speak, to move, only to hesitate with her hands curled uselessly in front of her chest. Poised, frozen in mid-motion. Helpless, useless, stupid girl...

A vent in, a vent out.

She then forced a single hand to reach out and lightly ghost her fingertips across his desk as if she were afraid of disturbing the unspoken, unacknowledged bubble of anticipatory grief the entire medibay felt... before she pressed her palm flat to the top of the desk and smoothed her thumb across it in a comforting gesture.

"I- I don't know what'll happen either," she murmured without looking up yet, "but... but I do know one thing. I know he'd hate the idea of us packing him away into a box like delicate porcelain that will never ever be looked at or touched again. He'd throw a fit. He'd want us to chip all the plates having cheap, empty treats and use the teacups to drink high grade and tell stories, good and bad, because- because he's both. Knock Out was here, and he is our friend, and one thing he would never want," she added with a shaky attempt at a smile as she tucked one arm through Ratchet's, "is for anybody not to look at him when they come into the room."

He keeps looking at the desk, not really reacting to anything Velocity says, or really even her presence.

"This length of time usually means the person is gone for good," he says, his tone stiff in a way she hasn't heard before. Ratchet always knew this would happen - if not to Knock Out then to someone else who was an important member of the R2 community - and he thinks it's a tragedy that this time, Breakdown has been left behind and Knock Out has gone back to a world where his beloved is dead.

He doesn't know if this is the first time Velocity has lost a friend in this way, and doesn't really want to ask. At least he knows this isn't catastrophic and fatal desynchronisation now.

"Sure would be nice if people could friggin' give some kinda warning before they decide to disappear," he says with a huff, as even now he struggles to accept any support offered to him. "Maybe I should work out a system that can reshuffle appointments when they do. Primus knows I've done it manually enough times when someone decides to go bye-bye."

What Ratchet said instantly knocked the determined expression off of Velocity's face, with a very audible hitch in her vents. She actually fell back a step before collecting herself as much as she could, but a coolness in her hands drew her gaze down.

Her hand was still on Knock Out's desk.

She stared at it with her mouth parted, optics spiraling and spiraling. Knock Out was gone. Megatron had left. She had left Nautica by coming here. What if-

Her hand shook on the desk, making quiet rattling clicks of metal on metal. "Ratchet," she said in a breathless, almost pleading tone, "he- he'll come back. He wouldn't leave you or Breakdown or-" Her voice caught again. Click, click, click, went her vocalizer, and when she spoke again her voice cracked. "Good things come back. I- I promised Nautica, before the exam. That I wouldn't fail again like the- the other nine times, because... good things don't stay gone. They'll come back to you. So-"

It takes him a moment to realise how Velocity has reacted. He curses internally; Ratchet is so used to the constant loss one way or another, that he didn't realise...

He looks over to her, no pity in his expression, but plenty of sympathy. He remembers his first losses too-- he expects everyone on the ship does. Giving her false hope would be cruel.

"I could be wrong, but I'm not gonna lie to you and say otherwise."

Looking back at the desk, Ratchet takes a step back now that he's stopped all the datapads from sliding to the side and knocking everything over.

"Maybe try not to think of it as leaving, Velocity, because that implies he had some choice in the matter."

Velocity nodded without looking up. She finally allowed her hand to slip away and up to hug her other arm, continuing to look at the desk and empty chair, then over to where Knock Out's chair had often been moved next to Ratchet's desk so the two could chat together while doing paperwork or taking lunch.

"Leaving-" She drew in a shaky vent that didn't do much in the way of cooling her systems or settling her nerves. "It- it implies he can come back, too. It's the start of a journey, sometimes. He could come back with new stories and new paint and settle right back to where he was..."

She kept looking at that spot where his chair often had been, but she wasn't only thinking of Knock Out, now. Of course she wasn't. "I also know he might not," she said quietly. "Very likely won't. I've read all the same mathematical projections and anecdotal statistics available to everybody, and-"

She was quiet for a bit. "I've never had anyone to grieve before," she said quietly. "Not really. Nautica was left behind when I came here, but... before here, I've never had friends or mentors or anyone whose death or disappearance would have changed the trajectory of my life. Knock Out... He doesn't give up. He doesn't let anybody else do it, either. So- so I'll leave his contact in my datapad, and cc him on internal communications. If he comes back... he should know his empty space left behind was towering. That's all."

"Maybe." he says, looking at the desk. "But it's not the first time--"

Ratchet stops. Frowns. "Right. You weren't here yet. Never mind that."

Is it better or worse, when Knock Out died? He's not sure. "He did tease me for bein' all sappy Autobot about it."

Another sigh.

"It's hard, here. Especially when they can come back. You've been lucky in a kinda way, lots of people filter in and out here, and all the stuff that happens on a mission... I mean, I friggin' vaporised three of them myself last time, haha!"

Okay maybe not an appropriate joke, the same way he joked about where parts of his head were both times after he got shot. He falls back on the gallows humour a bit too much.

"Just... don't get too hung up on believing he'll come back. Don't let that hope override any of the good times you two spent together, alright? Send those emails but don't get tense expecting a reply."

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