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Shadows of Tomorrow	By : Breech_Loader Category: Transformers > Transformers: Animated > Het - M/F Views: 1756 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 16
- 17
- 18
~~~

Shadows of Tomorrow

Co-Written by Harley Quinn hyenaholic and Froggy22651

~~~

Harley: Well, it’s been a Merry Christmas, and now it’s Boxing Day and I have to put this up in a hurry because I’m going out. I hope you’re all as happy as I am!

Froggy: You’re ever happy?

Harley: No need to start. Just a quick mention – we’ve skipped the actual breaking out of Barricade. Don’t worry; you’ll find out anything important that happened.

~~~

Chapter Seventeen: Discs

Hotwire looked down at Barricade, laid out on the table and doped up on a Cybertronian painkiller program. He was functioning well enough. From her professional assessment, physically Barricade was going to be just fine. Nothing had been badly damaged, though certain wires and armour had been disconnected and moved. She glanced around quickly, and upon determining the room was empty, stroked his cheek lightly. Physical recovery was a simple matter. But emotionally... well, emotional problems weren’t something she was good at working out.

The battle to save Barricade from the humans had gone surprisingly smoothly. Just as Optimus had planned, the Autobots struck at the human heavy weaponry and penetrated their defences in short order, disarming soldiers as they went. Judging from what Prime had told her afterwards, there were no human fatalities at all. The remnants of Sector Seven were going to be sore with the Cybertronians for the attack, but it wasn't likely to lead to any sustained hostilities. For the Autobots, everything went well. For Barricade, though...

Hotwire turned her back on Barricade and walked over to some of the medical instruments, selecting one that looked almost identical to a dozen others. Rage flushed through her mind at the very memory of seeing Barricade brought in. Prime hadn't allowed her to go with him to help. Obviously he didn't trust her. And he was probably right not to. She'd watched as Barricade had been brought in, trembling violently in pain, and her imagination, poor as it was, had positioned him on a dissecting table under humans. She hadn't heard a lot of what Prime had said; she'd almost switched out and gone berserk with anger. But it was going to be okay. It had to be okay, because she simply wasn't going to allow it to turn out any other way.

That was when she heard a soft moan and a stirring from Barricade. The painkiller program she had installed in him must have run its cycle, and the Decepticon was waking up.

Hotwire cursed. Painkiller Programs weren't supposed to run that fast, and if you used too many of them you'd end up overloading somebody's system. It would be several hours before she could put in another. Barricade must have been in more pain than she'd anticipated - even with the bond. She moved over to his side and took his hand, "Barricade?" she checked, looking into his face.

Barricade shifted slightly, sluggishly on the table, seeming to be confused or unsure of where he was. Then his optics snapped on and burned a bright red. The Decepticon cried out in fear and anger and lashed out blindly in front of himself.

Hotwire didn't have time to dodge, despite her usual turn of speed. She was knocked flying, and skidded to a stop, slamming against a wall. She watched as Barricade sat up on the table slowly, and it occurred to her that now was not a good time to be a neutral medic. On the other hand, there was never a good time to be horribly slaughtered...

She stood up as calmly as possible - her left shoulder was aching with a particularly agonising vengeance now - and tried to calm her mind. This was not something she had much practice at, "Barricade," she called out, "Barricade, it's me, Hotwire. I told you I'd get you out somehow." She just hoped he would listen to her.

Through the bond, Hotwire could feel torment from Barricade and little else. It was like his higher mental functions were shut down or subverted by a raw wave of fury. The Decepticon stepped off the table shakily, and then sent it flying with a swing of his fist. Turning to the next closest breakable object, Barricade smashed a series of monitors and computer equipment with a roar. The much larger robot continued his mindless thrashing about, taking out his pain and frustrating on the environment around him, beating on the wall, breaking medical equipment.

Hotwire pounced on him, grabbing his wrist with one hand and forcing him to face her. He lifted one fist to strike at her, and with a single smooth movement, she pushed back her visor, not even flinching as she looked into his red optics, "Barricade, look at me!" she shouted at him, and as he hesitated for a moment, she repeated the words far more softly, "Look at me," she told him, "I'm here."

That stopped Barricade in his tracks. The Decepticon blinked and stared at Hotwire for a long moment before stumbling back, leaning against the wall, still shaking, "Hotwire,” he said, "You... you came back for me."

"I said I would," Hotwire replied, "Well, it wasn't exactly me, but Autobots aren’t terribly difficult to persuade, and besides Prime wouldn't let me come," she approached him with caution, "But seriously, you didn't actually think I was going to leave you to human devices?"

"If you were smart you would have,” Barricade rasped. He stared down at her, and the hint of a tired smile appeared. "For once though, I'm glad you did something foolish. You convinced the Autobots to help me?"

"Yes, that's about the shape of it," Hotwire started to pick up some of the things Barricade had knocked over, "I feel what you feel. It's something of a first for me. Apparently people – and humans - usually call it empathy," she set the table upright again, "You should lie down again. I haven't finished checking you yet."

Barricade reluctantly obeyed Hotwire's wish, picking the table back up and setting it straight before laying down on it again. After his time in the human base, he'd be happy to never lie on a steel table again, "If I didn't find the idea of Autobots being conned into helping me so amusing, I think I'd rather be dissected,” he mused.

"Humph, well thank you for your... gratitude," Hotwire said, picking un a medical device and pressing it to places on Barricade's chest, "Hmmm... mm-hmmm... a-ha!" she apparently found what she was looking for, and carefully removed a couple of Barricade's armour plates, "They're allowing me to look after you, too. This could hurt," she added as she reached in and started reattaching wires, "The humans seem to have been messing with a lot of circuits that are important to your memories - in other words, they were trying to work out how to emulate your data banks, as far as I can tell. Have you got any missing data files?" she checked.

"No. I managed to protect my memory banks from the scientists,” he answered, "They were rather clumsy and stupid for engineers."

Hotwire nodded, tapping various places inside Barricade's armour, "How do you feel right now?" she asked him, even though it was a silly question for a bond-mate to ask their partner, "Does it hurt when I do this?" she added, poking various places inside him.

Barricade flinched and squirmed on the table, crying out, "Yes!" Gaining control of his motor functions again, he added, "To answer your question, I feel like an angry mob has been beating me for hours."

"Hmmm..." Hotwire closed him up, "Most of your body is okay but there are a lot of places where wires have been dislodged, and I'm worried about you, which doesn't usually happen. It could be a couple of days - longer, even, before you're fully functional. I'm afraid that during that period you'll have to put up with the fact that this is an Autobot base and there are Autobots in it, swaggering around like the unbearable Sparks-of-glitches they are." She said nothing about the emotional kickback Barricade might get from the torture he'd been through, mostly because it wasn't really something she could treat. But she knew it was going to exist.

Barricade didn't mention it either. He had no need to. Hotwire could feel how deep the scars left by the helplessness and pain were through their bond. And he could feel that she could feel them. He had been at the mercy of a species he had considered weak and inferior, and the shame of that would rest on his mind for a long, long time.

Hotwire leant forward and kissed Barricade on the forehead gently, stroking his cheek as she did so, "Barricade," she told him, "I'm here, whatever happens next. I'm here, and I'll be here," something occurred to her, "And Frenzy's here as well. So that's okay too."

"Hmmm..." Barricade uttered, shutting his optics down and savouring the moment of peace and safety. Sure, he was still surrounded by the enemy, but Autobots were more misguided and predictable than humans. And Hotwire was now beside him, "I presume you've got an escape plan in motion?" he asked softly.

"Well... no, not until you're capable of being moved," Hotwire answered. She turned back to the mess Barricade had made. There were a number of CDs all over the floor. One of them had her psyche evaluation on it and looked identical to the other hundred discs lying around it, "Blast," she said, picking them up and stacking them. She'd have to go through them later, "What were you thinking when you made this mess?" she asked Barricade.

"I wasn't,” he answered simply. Barricade wasn't entirely capable of thought when he awoke. He was simply letting loose all the fear, pain, and rage that had built up within him from his captivity. It was a kind of release.

"Hmmm..." Hotwire took his hand and looked at the discs in her other hand. Not only did one of them have her psyche evaluation, one of them had the painkiller program. Some of the discs were broken too. She shook her head. She'd worked without painkillers before. But never on somebody she actually cared about.

"Then wait until you can rewrite the program before working on me,” he spoke, picking up the general impression of her thoughts through the bond, "I'm not dying."

"I'll sort through them," Hotwire returned. "It's likely that the program's fine anyway. You should try and get some rest. I'll be right..." she looked around, "In the next room, sorting through discs. Okay?"

Barricade reached up and pointed to his head and then hers, "We're never really alone,” he reminded her, "That's what kept me sane."

Hotwire almost smiled, but then she frowned, and flipped her visor back down, “Sometimes it’s better to be alone,” she said, looking... sad.

“What do you mean?” Barricade took her hand.

“Nobody can hurt you,” Hotwire concluded, looking down, and then, after a moment added, “And you can’t hurt anybody else...”

“Hotwire...” Barricade said quietly, “I would never, ever let anybody hurt you.”

A very small smile twitched on Hotwire's round face, but there was disbelief there too. Not distrust. But Hotwire had seen the world at its most petty and cruel, from both sides and the middle. It was a kind offer, but one that was hard for her to take seriously.

She disentangled her hand from Barricade’s, gathered up the rest of the discs and stepped out of the room quietly, hoping everything was going to start not going quite so badly. Both her concern, and the fact that she didn't usually feel concern were easy to read in her mind.

~~~

Ratchet looked into the surgery's adjoining room, where Hotwire was sorting through about a hundred compact discs. The surgery itself looked as if a small war had just gone off - several computers had been smashed and there were spare parts all over the floor. This seemed to be explained by the fact that Barricade was now online. He was just lying on the table, staring at the ceiling. Ratchet had heard the noise and come to investigate. Things seemed to be going well, at the moment. He stepped into the surgery quietly, and picked a couple of the discs off the floor.

Barricade's vacant gaze suddenly snapped into focus and faced the Autobot medic. Propping himself up on an elbow, the recovering Decepticon asked in a menacing growl, "What are you doing here?"

"I heard a great deal of noise," Ratchet responded calmly, "So I came to investigate. Also, it's been quite some time since I've seen Hotwire at work. I wondered if she'd be using her less ethical practices still. I see you're as grateful as I anticipated."

"Not nearly as grateful as I want to be,” Barricade snapped back, thinking of the times that he and Ratchet had tried to kill each other, "So... you were the idiot who cast Hotwire out. A very big mistake."

"She was dangerous to both Autobots and Decepticons," Ratchet replied, "If she hadn't met with Decepticon standards, I think Megatron would have done far more than merely expel her from his classes on wholesale slaughter. And besides," he raised an optic ridge at the aggressive Decepticon, "If she was still an Autobot, you would have tried to kill her."

"Of course. It's what I do,” the Decepticon rumbled without remorse, glaring at Ratchet angrily. Slowly, he sat up on the table, watching the other robot as if expecting an attack, "You are seeing a very, very rare exception to that rule."

"Yes, because even you are aware that if you pull a violent attack in your condition, in the middle of our base, you're unlikely to survive," Ratchet glared back at Barricade, "I suppose expecting you to change was a little premature," he continued to glare, "Although why you maintain a vendetta against us when Megatron is dead and the AllSpark is destroyed is beyond me. Even Hotwire seems to have worked out it's pointless to keep up the war."

"This war is far from over,” Barricade rumbled, keeping his optics firmly locked onto Ratchet, watching his every move, "It was never only about the Allspark, and with it no longer a factor, victory is even more essential for us." The tension in the air was thick enough to be cut by a blunt piece of metal.

Ratchet just shook his head, "Us?" he asked Barricade, "Where are your comrades when you need them? You and Frenzy are the only Decepticons on Earth. Nobody has come back for you. That's just how important you are to the Decepticon cause."

"It comes with the job. I can accept it,” Barricade snapped back, but even as he said it, he knew it to be a lie. He had been wondering when Decepticon reinforcements would arrive, and the idea of being left behind was that of betrayal. Then again, space was big. Really big. He had to be patient.

"As you wish," Ratchet replied patiently, "Either way, you're welcome to, as humans say, get a clue at any time," the medic nodded almost smugly and walked out of the surgery, looking at the discs, then hesitated in the door, "Oh, and I'd advise you against throwing any more of those little tantrums. After all, the equipment you demolished is rather difficult to get hold of."

Barricade grinned in a not-so-friendly way. "That makes me feel better already,” he spoke to the enemy medic, watching him leave.

"Well, it is being used to repair you," Ratchet pointed out, before leaving Barricade alone. He glanced in on Hotwire, who was still frowning over a pile of discs, but let her be. After all, she seemed to have completed going through them.

Barricade stared at the door for several moments after Ratchet had left before finally letting his focus shift to the ceiling again, waiting for Hotwire to return.

Several minutes passed, before she came back in again, looking worried and still clutching the handfuls of discs, "I think I've lost one of my discs," she said, sounding concerned and dropping all the compact discs on the side, "And I found the painkiller program anyway."

"I had a rather unpleasant visitor while you were gone,” Barricade spoke, taking mental note of the disc that Hotwire had misplaced, "Your old mentor came to remind me who was in charge."

"Humph," Hotwire smiled wryly, "Is it still him, or does Prime call the shots now?" she stepped over to Barricade, "Feeling any better?" she asked him, looking into his red optics.

Barricade looked back into her own optics, barely perceptively nodding his head in reply, "Slightly better than I did,” he told her, "What was on the disc you lost?"

"Nothing important," Hotwire lied, realising even as she said this that lying to Barricade was pointless now, "Just some personal information," she added.

Barricade frowned. Through the bond, he knew that whatever was on the disc was vitally important, but actually drawing the information from Hotwire's mind was not simple. It felt more like it was something on the edge of his memory, but he couldn't quite recall it. He was also able to tell that it was something Hotwire wanted to keep private, something that she thought he'd dislike her for, but it only made him more curious, "Hotwire, we've bonded. I know you're hiding something,” he told the neutral medic bluntly. He knew that she knew that it was bothering him to be aware of something being hidden from him, especially after all that had happened between them.

Hotwire sat down, still frowning, and looked around. She stood up, closed the door of the surgery, and then sat down again, "The disc has my psych evaluation on it," she said finally, "I removed it from the... the place," the asylum, Barricade picked up from her mind, "Where I was evaluated. But I kept it anyway. It's rather... personal," she frowned again, "I could have lost anything else, but no, it has to be my stuff."

The fact that Hotwire had been put in an asylum didn't bother Barricade amymore and wasn't a particularly big surprise now. He'd seen hints of it in her memories before and had considered it trivial information. The past didn't matter nearly as much as the present did, "It couldn't have gone far,” he assured her, standing up carefully.

"Wait, you're not bothered?" Hotwire asked him, "You did catch the part about me being in an open asylum, right? And that doesn't bother you?"

"Should it bother me?" he asked her in return, holding her electric blue gaze, "Unless it's possible that you could lose control of your mental functions and kill me during a recharge cycle, I don't see it as a problem."

Hotwire just shrugged, "I'm not actually psychopathic," she said simply, "You'd notice if I was. On the other hand, I have tried to kill you already, so maybe..."

Barricade, and the back of his head, remembered that little incident clearly, "I'll just assume that it was a freak accident,” he replied, "We all have our glitchy days."

Hotwire shrugged again, “That’s nice of you,” she said with a smile, “If a little too trusting...”

~~~

Harley: What next? Something important, doubtless.
- 16
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- 18
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Shadows of Tomorrow