Work Text:
Chromedome died for the hundredth time. For the fifth time. For the seventy-third time. For the one thousandth, three hundredth and—
He was shot down while flying over shuttered factories by a sniper so precise that the bullet pierced through his t-cog and embedded itself in the left optic of his ailing conjunx bundled in the cockpit. And his windshield was splattered in energon. He was screaming because he wasn’t an anti-functionist, he wasn’t. He was screaming because the energon of his conjunx was pooling on his floor and splattered over his windshield. He was screaming because if wanting your conjunx to live was a crime, who wouldn’t be guilty? He was screaming—
Out loud.
Not just in his head this time.
He— she— they— the destitute mechs who went missing, the smuggler jet with the conjunx, the tank who had been innocent but no one had cared, not when she already in the morgue— all screaming, all wailing, all grieving, all howling—
He— she— they— Chromedome. He grasped for self, self-ness, the receding Chromedome-shape of his mind, but he lost it, reached again and he couldn’t recognize his own hand when he closed his fist around it.
Maybe that was when he had started screaming. Out loud this time.
They had had to sedate him.
He was sitting now, on a hard metal chair outside a clinic in the basement of the New Institute. They had to watch him. To see if the sedatives and the mood stabilizers and the coding patches had fixed him for the day. To see if he would keep being a Danger.
He had ‘an aggressive immune system.’ They gave him poison and his frame spat it out.
Trepan visited sometimes. Not as a mentor, but as a doctor. The first time had been when he started screaming out loud. And Trepan had— Trepan had— shivering like a mechanimal in the cold cell of his mind, chained and roiling, drinking poison to the silence of his ruination—
He didn’t want Trepan.
Nothing else worked.
Nothing else worked. He was broken and he was—
The agony faded away.
He saw unfamiliar subroutines tick over his visual display, sorting his emotions for him. Small mercies. He turned inwards and there was silence. He stretched jaggedly and he couldn’t even hear the crack of his struts.
The screaming was still there. He invented and felt the pulsing, feverish lives of millions, pulsing like technomaggots, then he exvented and they were killed and hanged and held and kissed and slaughtered and—
Someone tapped him. Physically. Outside his body and he startled. Plating skidding across the hard metal seats outside a clinic in the basement of the New Institute.
“Chromedome? Chromedome, it’s alright. I’m here to take you to— Can he understand me?”
“He can, yes. Just speak slowly and make your movements obvious. He’s amenable to directions. If you need to get his attention, snap your fingers. Don’t touch him.”
“Alright, thank you. Ahem. Chromedome, my designation is Crossglide. I’m here to take you to your appointment. Is that acceptable?”
“You don’t have to ask him that, really. If something is acceptable. Nowadays even when he’s aware, he’s not fully… present.”
“Oh. I see.”
Chromedome was screaming. Just inside, now. As it should be. Fingers snapped in front of his visor and finally his optical band focused.
There was— there was Crossglide. She was nice colors. The color of the racing stripes on a criminal who killed and ate sparklings, the color of the optics of a jet’s dying conjunx, the color of energon candies a friend had baked before they disappeared—
Her hand looked soft. It did not touch him.
“Chromedome?” She leaned in. She wore a green translucent visor and her mouth was curled up in a smile. Her optics crinkled, “It’s time to go now. Do you need help standing?”
He stood. He took a step and wobbled slightly on his wheeled pedes. Crossglide lifted her arms reflexively to catch him, then purposefully lowered them and stepped away.
“This way, if you plea— This way. Follow me.”
The hallways in the basement of the New Institute were long stretches of fluorescent agony. They were timeless, endless. He could misstep from tile to tile and end up somewhere Different. He could misstep from tile to tile and no one would come looking.
Mechs shouldered past like smoke, sight darting from his hands to where his optics would be if he had not pressed ten needles into memory-addled aches, into bodies laid out in his mind, disemboweled and flayed—
They had not returned his optics. They had wired his blast-proof, needle-proof visor directly into his sensory cortex. They had taken his eyes, yet he saw, he couldn’t stop seeing but—
Only the cameras met his gaze.
Only the cameras met his gaze.
Crossglide’s mouth moved.
Chromedome yearned to answer her. The only sound rumbling in his vocalizer was a scream.
They stopped.
“Thank you, Crossglide. You are relieved.”
Prowl— Prowl stood in the doorway. Polished. Definite. More monument than mech, ledgers inlaid where any other would have warmth. His voice was a thousand orders overlaid.
Chromedome invented, struts tightened to the point of pain. Unfamiliar subroutines flickered once more across his visual display and made his exvent much, much easier.
He was unused to— to this new syrupy quality of his mind. He should worry— should be wary of— chained like a mechanimal in the cold isolation of his mind, shivering and turbid— Prowl had ordered— with Trepan, he had ordered—
“Chromedome, come.”
He poured into Prowl like warm oil upended.
There were hands— soft, present, close— pressing over him. Rhythmic. One traced over his helm, down his backstrut, while the other held his aching hands.
He would have cried if they had not taken his lacrimal reservoirs when they took his optics. He could only shiver and hope that they would not take this too.
“How do you feel, Chromedome?”
“Good.”
Good, yes. He had to be good. Had to be—
“I’m very glad to hear that. Are you ready to return to work?”
The screaming crescendoed, pouring out of him until he was drowning. Energon was pounding in his head but not his, never his, it was the sound of energon dripping off a blade in a dark room, the sound of a wound wrenched open, the sound of—
Coding patch at 87% integrity. Emotional update at 93% integrity.
—of mechs howling in vengeance, in agony, in despair—
He swallowed all his screams and begged, “Yes.”
No. No! NO no no no no NO! no
He couldn’t go back— Couldn’t— He writhed in Prowl’s grip until a hand cupped the back of his neck.
He said no again and the sound faltered a thousand times on his glossa before it emerged as a second “Yes.”
“I’m so glad that I can count on you, Chromedome. Your work is invaluable to the Autobot cause.”
He was screaming.
He was silent.
Prowl pulled away and he twisted forwards, breaking his own struts in search of warmth, he—
He was silent.
The screaming— roiling like a— pulsing technomaggots— eyes, color of a— was led to the morgue.
Dead, grey eyes.
Needles in a corpse’s nape.
He— she— they— it— died for the hundredth time. For the fifth time. For the seventy-third time. For the one thousandth, three hundredth and—