#and lookie here folks it’s don’it

[rust-bearer]

First Aid Month- Prompt 1 - Rust/Spark

Nightmares become indistinguishable from reality, at times. And when he wakes, he wonders if this too is just some horrible dream.

Maybe he’s asleep or maybe he’s awake right now; he can’t tell, as he looks out at the bodies before him. They’re all infected with that same Red Rust, that same horrible spark of unlife. First Aid knows that Pharma made it. He knows, and Ambulon knew too. But they still hadn’t been able to stop it.

Ambulon died first. First Aid had wailed and begged. He’d screamed for help as loud as he could; he’d apologized, for everything. He’d begged Primus, for anyone to help him. It didn’t matter. Ambulon still died.

First Aid knows he’s alone in this medical bay. He knows, because he’d timed it all to the second. The very instant the sparks of everyone in the first set of rows would fade out, inevitably destroyed by a plague that First Aid cannot stop. Not with Pharma dead, not with Ambulon dead. First Aid smiles bitterly, and he wonders if it was all worth it. Ratchet- Ratchet, who had played the briefest role as First Aid’s CMO- had gotten his hands, in the end. The ship got their victory.

And then the Rust came back. First Aid leans in, as though the body in front of him can hear his secret.

“I begged them to save him,” First Aid whispers. “After Topturn shot him. After Gygex helped ‘remove the Decepticon’. They wouldn’t even let me get close. They said they were doing this for me, after all.” First Aid’s optics crinkle as he smiles, warmly and comforting. “A few months in the brig. They’d been drinking; they hadn’t meant to do it. It was an accident.”

Of course there’s no cure. That’s the whole point. Pharma’s Red Rust might have died on Delphi, but it was easy to resurrect, to bring back to life with a terrible purpose. To set it on everyone he’d known. Ambulon had died first, and so everyone else followed.

The rest of the medbay is going to die soon too. The rest of the ship has already followed. First Aid had promised to watch over them, and as the last spark sputters out in the darkness, he knows that there’s only one thing left for him to do.

He reaches down into his chassis, and with bloody hands, he pulls, and pulls, and pulls-