rekindleme | How long was I out?

Entry tags:

How long was I out?

Who: Krok, residents of apartment 2-01, Ratchet, other invitees
Where: Building 4 apartment 2-01
When: Backdated to 01 October, mid-morningish.
Summary: Krok finally wakes up from stasis. He feels like death on toast.
Warnings: None as of posting? Clingy robot.

Wakefulness comes slowly, in little bits and pieces. Krok is mostly aware first of light – dim and soft even on his scoured-raw optical circuits, mostly blotted out by the curtains. It's hard to tell quite where he is for a few moments and the disorientation makes his fuel pump twist in a weird and painful way. Immediately on the heels of this revelation comes the fact that he can't really move much, body not quite back under his control and stiff from too long spent still. It's several agonisingly long moments before he can turn his head even a little, just enough that he can see a bookcase on the far wall.

One of his bookcases. In his room, in their hab suite in the strange alien city of Saeng Seong. Krok sighs and sags back into the bed, relieved and a little light-headed. He can't quite recall just how he got here when the last he remembers, Spinister asked him out on a walk–

Oh. Memory flickers back in distorted snatches of dialogue and pictures, slowly coming together out of order. They'd put him to sleep, hadn't they? Anxious, he looks around again, then to the door. He remembers the nightmare – remembers it feeling different from all the other times, wrong; he doesn't remember much else. Did he really sleep? Krok blinks dully at the ceiling. He's sure his chronometer readings are off, looking at the date and time, but…

No, it's too hard to think that critically about anything.

"…Spinister?" he croaks, voice harsh and low from lack of use, as he tries to sit up.

By the time Krok leaves messages for both Diarmuid and Kit – the only friends he can think of immediately who might be worried by his abrupt absence, given how consistently they'd spoken just before – he's had some energon and two checkups and even been allowed to walk himself to the living room. Spinister hovered the entire time in case he stumbled or collapsed, so he'd stubbornly carried on all the way to the sofa, his chair just a few steps too far.

He's paying for it now with aching hips and weak knees, but seated and reading, he doesn't much care. The book is more to pass the time than anything because all Krok can do is keep glancing up at the door, vaguely anxious. He rather hopes the little ones accept his invitation; he actually misses them.

All he can do in the meanwhile is wait. And try to plan out his responses if Misfire or Fulcrum pops up to poke him.

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Ratchet's barely mobile, but he had the benefit of not suffering weeks of crippling anxiety and insomnia before he was knocked into a coma on his side, so he's feeling better than Krok must be. As soon as he's able, he pushes himself out of bed and makes his unsteady way to the Scavengers' rooms, still weak and shaky. It takes him longer than he should, but he makes it, and he's there when Krok wakes up properly.

"Krok." He's at the edge of Krok's berth in an instant when he calls for Spinister, pressing him back down with shaky hands and cycling his vents in relief. "You're all right. How are you feeling?"

Edited 2014-10-15 21:47 (UTC)

Still coming up to speed, Krok's so thrown by Ratchet's appearance at first that all he can think is a loop of not!Spinister while Ratchet gently forces him to lie down again. He's entirely too spent to put up any sort of fight.

"Wh… I'm – Ratchet?" he manages to put together, wincing.

"Relax. You're all right." Ratchet leaves his hand on Krok's shoulder, his optics almost hungry on Krok's face, drinking him in the way he looks now, rested and lucid and waking steadily. "We were both out for a bit. What's the last thing you remember?"

"Clemency," Krok blurts out, voice raw and trembling in spite of Ratchet's reassurances. "It – it happened again. I thought–" He thought it wasn't supposed to this time.

He thought he'd died. He sucks in a sharp breath and fumbles for Ratchet's arm, arm stiff, hand weak.

"D-did I… die?"

"No! No, Krok--"

Ratchet shifts his hand, stroking slowly over the front of Krok's chassis.

"You didn't die. You're all right. You--it was close for a minute, but you're going to be okay. ...I'm sorry."

One broken little sound slips out before Krok can swallow it back down, a sob that's mixed relief and despair. The nightmare really can't be stopped, can it? Not even by stasis. But he's still alive and somehow he's rested.

"Why are you sorry?" he rasps. "It… it worked, right? I think – I feel like it worked. Even if I almost died." He pauses, the significance of it sinking in slowly. "You did say it was close," he adds, awkward. "What – what happened?" Feebly, he tries tugging on Ratchet's arm, as if that will somehow compel the medic to talk faster.

Edited (argh typo) 2014-10-19 02:54 (UTC)

"I--I had to--"

Ratchet clears his vocalizer of static with a taut click. "We... put you under. It was a few minutes, and you seemed to be all right, but you moved. You shouldn't have been able to do that. And I think the stress of the nightmare along with being put into such a low-functioning state on top of your exhaustion was just too much for your spark. It--it flickered, but I, mmm. I popped us both open and jump-started your spark with mine. I didn't have the proper equipment, and it was a bizarre set of circumstances anyway, so that's probably why we were both out for so long, but according to Spinister you've been stable this whole time, so--"

Ratchet breaks off and reaches both hands up, one pressing flat over the front of his chassis and the other rubbing roughly over his face.

"I'm sorry," Ratchet said, his voice strained and his whole chest one huge, radiating ache. "I'm sorry I talked Spinister into putting you at risk like that. I was so sure it'd work--but it didn't. I didn't know what else to do, but it was... irresponsible." He straightens a little and looks Krok in the eye, pain clear in his optics. "I apologize. I put you under even after you asked me not to, even. I had no right to do that."

If Krok is entirely honest, he doesn't really remember asking Ratchet to stop – but then he was so fragmented and worn down that the whole sequence is a muddied blur of indistinct shapes and sounds, something that bothers him no little bit. His recall is usually so much better. He peers up at Ratchet, bemused and a little bit worried.

"What do you mean," he asks slowly, "it didn't work? Did – haven't I slept at all? Is my chronometer just off?" The whole point was to make him sleep, wasn't it? He thinks that's it. So all of this and he couldn't even rest?

"No--no, you recharged properly while you were out, at least according to Spinister. But it didn't fix the nightmares problem, according to Chromedome, and now we can't do the same thing again. I won't risk putting you under like that a second time, so we're back to square one, for the most part, except you're less exhausted for right now."

Ratchet looks exhausted--drained and sad and a little defeated as he reaches up and rubs a hand slowly over his face before pressing it to the front of his windscreen, over his badge. He rubs there absently for a moment before he seems to realize what he's doing and pulls his hand away, the corners of his mouth tightening.

"How are you feeling? Do you hurt anywhere? ...you probably need to refuel, but not before you think you're ready to keep something down."

Krok doesn't answer right away; he's too busy looking at Ratchet. The medic is a mess – hardly looks better than Krok himself feels right now, really. And the motion of his hand draws Krok's eye as it keeps going back to his chest.

Absently, hand trembling with fatigue and drowsiness, Krok also reaches towards Ratchet's chest. He pauses just before contact.

"Why," he asks, voice small and humble, "would you do something like this for… for someone like me?" They don't hate each other and they're even more like friends than Krok can say for a lot of Decepticons, but there's being on good terms and then there's plugging your spark up to someone else's to keep them alive.

"Krok--"

His face is open and surprised into almost-softness as his hands come up to catch Krok's, pressing it gently to his windscreen before he just... holds it, too tired to reconsider the gesture.

"I wasn't going to just--just refuse care, especially not when I was trying to clean up a mess made by a crewmate to begin with. And I promised Spinister you were going to be okay and you were dying, right in front of us. You trusted me--you both did. I couldn't just... not do everything possible to make sure I kept my word."

Ratchet looks away from Krok's face, almost self-conscious now.

"Anyway, I don't know what you mean by 'someone like you' anyway. I ran a clinic for empties before the war really started, when I first became CMO--I've seen and treated far worse, for less."

It's a few seconds before what Ratchet says really sinks in, and still seconds more as Krok parses just what that means. He blinks owlishly, staring at Ratchet as though it's the first time he's ever really seen the medic.

"…That was you?" he asks very softly.

"What? I mean--"

Ratchet looks steadily more uncertain, now, watching Krok's face curiously.

"Well... yeah, I had a few places in the slums where I treated people who couldn't pay. Not sure if I was the only one. ...why?"

Krok starts to shake his head, then stops; his neck hurts too much for it, and when he speaks again, his voice is rougher, optics dim. His hand shakes faintly, actuators trying to fire and failing. He'll have to just let Ratchet keep holding his hand.

"I never went to the clinics myself," he says, now looking at the wall to Ratchet's left. "Never needed them. But I heard… knew why they were there." He glances up for a moment, then off to the other side, then back to Ratchet again. "I knew others who got treatment there. Some of us down there only survived because… because of what you did," he murmurs, humbled. Almost shy. His fingers tighten spasmodically around Ratchet's hand as he tries to will himself to work. "It… it meant a lot to us. That you cared."

"Krok--"

Ratchet looks awkward for a moment before he looks away, shaking his helm a little.

"Didn't do it for thanks," he says, and he knows he sounds gruff but he doesn't know what else to say. "It shouldn't have been necessary, but--I don't know. It needed to be done."

He looks down at Krok's hand in his, aching all over and not sure quite how to feel. He settles on one thing he's sure of and raises his optics to Krok's again.

"I'm glad you're all right."

It isn't about Ratchet expecting thanks, Krok wants to argue. It was a thankless job that few even considered necessary; fewer still were willing to actually do it back then. He wants to shake Ratchet until it sinks in that anybody in Ratchet's position caring about manual classes and burnouts was enough to shake up the worldview of more than a few bots Krok knew back then. But the subject is queer and clumsy, and he's too weak still to do any shaking.

"You too," he finally says with a rattling sigh, moving on grudgingly. "You did all that for someone like me. Could've killed yourself while you were at it." His laugh is short, bitter, and he looks up at the ceiling. "Do you suppose we'd have come back?" he wonders. Chromedome did, after all.

"I, ah. I'm not sure. I sort of--hmm. Forgot, at the time. That people do that here occasionally." Ratchet shifts, looking painfully awkward again before he shakes his helm, shrugging it off. "I didn't remember until Magnus reminded me, after I woke up. And, I'm fine, for the most part. Have a few extra scratches on my spark casing, but no lasting damage.

"Anyway, regardless, of course I did. You're my patient. Bad professional practice, to just let you short out on my floor." Ratchet doesn't look at Krok, too tired and raw to keep defending himself against questions of why. Krok isn't the first one to ask, and he won't be the last, and Ratchet doesn't know how to explain why he gives a damn, like it's something he could turn on and off at a whim.

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