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Ratchet knew from experience that providing medical attention remotely made everything more difficult.
But dealing with Starscream, an unhinged sociopathic murderer, now contending with mood swings and chemical imbalances whilst living among a bunch of idiots and criminals in a sunken wreck at the bottom of the ocean, was proving to be nigh-impossible. Distance irrelevant.
Or maybe he should be thankful for the distance. Ratchet could imagine that if they’d had to have some of these conversations with Starscream in person, one would be dead by now.
"Starscream: purged. Attempted to blame evidence on Ravage."
Ratchet had been taking his morning fuel when the message came through. Put off his meal, he pinged back an acknowledgment to Soundwave and went back to his work.
Half an hour later, another came through.
“Jus stepped in Screamer’s fragging puke again!!!1 thought u were fixing him?”
Ratchet dismissed the message and concentrated on his work more intently.
Another twenty minutes passed.
“Scream has bin hurling in the washracks all mornin n wont get out n I gotta go bad but he wont unlock the door n I got alerts popping up all over the place n -“
Ratchet didn’t read the rest of the message, leaning back with a sigh.
He didn’t need a Decepticon pinging him each and every time Starscream’s tanks violently rejected his fuel, but that he had such diligent network of tattletales telling on Starscream every moment of the day at least helped him realise how often it was happening. And it was too damn much.
“Stick to lower graded energon." He sent to Starscream’s comm frequency. “If you’re unsure of a cube’s charge level, test before you consume.”
The reply was prompt and typically curt. "I am capable of fuelling myself. Coddle your own idiot faction."
Ratchet shuttered his optics, summoned his patience, and managed to compose a calm, professional message without a single curse word or insult. “If you keep purging fuel the protoform will be weak and malformed."
"I am not purging."
Ratchet’s denta ground together. "Yes you are. Stop blaming it on the cat."
Starscream blocked his comm frequency.
Ratchet stared at the ‘Frequency Unavailable’ message blinking up at him and decided to take a more positive outlook on the situation. He had received two whole responses from Starscream before getting blocked this time. That was an improvement.
Ratchet was going to take what small victories he could.
Starscream always unblocked him. Eventually. Normally to ask a carefully constructed question, worded vaguely and indifferently so Ratchet (who was apparently a complete idiot if Starscream’s assumptions were to be believed) couldn’t possibly figure out who it was being asked for.
“Interfacing wouldn’t interfere with a developing protoform?” Starscream commed him late one night. Very late. Far too late. Too late for Ratchet to pretend he didn’t know why Starscream was asking it in the middle of the night.
Half asleep, part of Ratchet wanted to ignore it out of spite and leave the selfish, demanding brat stewing in his own frustration till morning.
But he just wasn’t cruel enough. Not even to Starscream.
“No. But make sure you’re on top if he’s a heavy mech.”
His kindness was rewarded with a long ranting message involving the phrase ‘How dare you’ rather frequently. Likely because he’d had the audacity to assume (correctly) that Starscream was about to clang someone.
Ratchet didn’t bother to read it all. Primus help whoever he was sleeping with. Braver mech than him that was for sure.
"You're overdue your first trimester scan." Ratchet messaged him after a few months, working off of guesswork and unreliable gossip from the other Decepticons to determine how far along Starscream would be by now. "I will send you coordinates for a meeting point where I can give you a check up."
Unsurprisingly, Starscream messaged back with, “You expect me to walk into such an obvious trap?"
Ratchet rolled his optics. He probably should make an attempt to reassure Starscream that he had no ulterior motives and impress on him the importance of scanning for the protoform and ensuring it was developing as normal.
Instead, he wrote. “It wouldn't be the first time."
Starscream blocked his comm frequency again. Ratchet supposed he'd been asking for it this time.
Several more weeks passed, and so far the only information Ratchet had was that which Starscream deigned to tell him. And it wasn’t a lot. In fact, it was less than nothing. Lies mostly.
“Hook will deal with it.” Starscream would write.
“I don’t know wat the heck I’m doing.” Hook would then contradict. Ratchet was more inclined to believe Hook.
Ratchet had none of Starscream's medical history, none of his stats, no indication of when the new-spark may have been conceived and so far, any attempt at asking after the identity of the sire was met with explicitly violent threats.
He asked, constantly, to see Starscream's existing medical files, to have Hook perform a scan for him and send it via comm, but Starscream's unerring paranoia and blunt stupidity blocked him at every turn. The answer was typically, ‘no’, ‘no,’, ‘no’, ‘no’, and ‘why are you so obsessed with me?’
Ratchet understood the reluctance. They were enemies, yes. But in what reality could someone weaponise a gestation scan?!
So, he had to secure information through other means.
"There should already be one on file." Ratchet typed out, sitting tensely in the quiet of his office, instructing via the comm.
"theres loads of scans" Skywarp messaged back. "wats this tank suposed to look like anyways?"
Ratchet pinched the bridge of his nose. "It will be labelled; Reproductive Hardware."
"oh u wanna pic of his pussy?”
Before Ratchet could react, dozens of image files came flooding through the comm. Ratchet deleted them all in a flustered rush. He could guess what they contained from the file titles; ‘Academy-graduation-Screamer-dancing-on-tables-no-panel.’
“I need a medical scan of his gestation systems. I am not interested in his valve array." Ratchet could feel another headache coming on.
"Wats the difference????"
Ratchet shuttered his optics. It was going to be a long evening.
"It's going to be soon." He had begun to resort to sending ominous messages. If he couldn't reason with Starscream, maybe could frighten him into compliance instead. It wasn’t strictly ethical behaviour, but Starscream killed people so of the two of them he still held the moral high ground.
"How do you know it hasn't already happened?”
Ha! Ratchet would know the exact second Starscream went into an emergence because two dozen Decepticon idiots would start spamming his comm in blind panic. But he didn’t point that out to Starscream.
“I know it hasn’t because none of your Constructions have messaged me asking how to sew a torn valve back together."
He was blocked again, but it was a bi-weekly occurrence at this point so Ratchet didn't let it get to him.
Seekers didn't gestate their new-sparks for long due to the strain carrying put on their frames, and by grace of having a cockpit for storage they could afford to spark small, vulnerable sparklings. It kept them fast and agile, but it also meant they didn't spend a lot of time sparked.
So Ratchet didn’t have a lot of time to prepare.
Which meant Starscream didn't have a lot of time, full stop.
Maybe even less than Ratchet feared he did, if he'd been dishonest about certain... details.
"I don't care who the sire is," Ratchet wrote, exasperated, feeling like the tired parent of a secretive, defensive teenager. "I just need their frame type."
"This is an invasion of privacy." Starscream wrote back. "You've no right to ask these questions of me and you'll be lucky if I don't report you to the medical board."
“What medical board?” Ratchet muttered under his breath. They were all dead!
To Starscream, he wrote, “If you don't tell me, I'll just have to guess and plan accordingly.”
"Guess to your spark's content, you sad old hack. If you're really so bored you've nothing else to do but gossip over your betters." Wrote Starscream, with the arrogance of someone who had no idea how predictable and obvious they were all the damn time.
Ratchet resisted the temptation to bite back for a full three minutes.
But then did it anyway.
"I know it's Megatron,” He sent.
Starscream blocked him.
Ratchet smirked. And that was as good as proof.