Chapter Text
Ever since the battle of Mission City, he had been noticing some issues. But nothing was ever so bad as to require help or cause problems for him other than occasionally getting someone to look over and laugh awkwardly. Ironhide considered it acceptable, since he didn't feel any different compared to how he'd felt before; he still got some weird looks, but it wasn't unbearable in the grand scheme of things. He'd gotten weird looks before. A giant, sort of antisocial Topkick with giant weaponry, a bad eye, and a worse attitude tended to do that most of the time. But then Chromia had come to earth with her sisters Arcee and Elita-1 and for a brief bit of time he was actually quite happy and the looks went away.
…Then after the battle in Cairo, he's actually starting to notice it more; as if whatever it was had returned with a vengeance. He's getting more weird looks too, even from Chromia, who suddenly doesn't seem to see it as a cute little quirk. And now he'd distinctly aware that something's wrong, rather than just presuming it's the case.
At first she'd smiled, laughed, called him funny and was alright with it, but now it's like it wears on her. Like whatever it is he's doing — he himself isn't even sure, since he knows what he wants to do — is annoying, and she can't help but correct him. He isn't trying to be funny, and he's not trying to be difficult, and it feels like she's treating him like a kid, as if he doesn't know any better and has to be corrected or spoken over.
Which brings him to right now, trying to speak to his leader, but suddenly aware that it's happening again. He's lost track of how much it happens, how frequently it seems to come on, and the intensity with which it occurs; none of that matters anyways. Right now, what matters is the fact it again feels like the words all got stuck somewhere in his throat and he can barely choke out their leader's name.
"Prime…" his head kind of hurts, despite only saying one word.
Glancing up out of the corner of his optic, he sees that weird look again. It's pity or something like that, and the sight of it makes his stomach kind of hurt when he thinks about it. He's never experienced pity, he's never known the care of another, and it's something he prided himself on for a long, long time. Too dogged to die, to stubborn to give up, and made out of enough replacement parts to build a small army; he's pushed on anyways. And here he is, suddenly reaching up to hold his head and trying to fight off a migraine he's already got just from trying to remember his leader's name. Pitiful, and pathetic to boot. But he's a little bit scared, and if he wasn't still priding himself on being the infallible, steadfast one, he'd actually come out and say it.
"Yes?" Prime asks, looking back at him and hiding the pity, steeling his gaze. "What's happening Ironhide? Do you need anything?"
Does he? Ironhide actually has to pause and think about it. He does. He needs something so badly he's clawing and grabbing and clinging to whatever it is he thinks that he does; and what he thinks he needs is something he can't even begin to describe. How embarrassing is that? A giant war-machine needs to be coddled like a child, and he can't even bring himself to say it.
"No… don't anything."
No, I don't need anything. He tries to say. His voice cracks and strains, and he puts too much emphasis on the word don't. Even though he knows exactly what he wants to say, he's struggling to just get those words out, and he has to pause between the syllables of the word anything, turning it into any-thing. Speaking is hard now, and his words are choppy and unusually paced, and the emphasis is put on all the wrong ones. Even though he thought English was inferior to Cybertronic for a long time, it was still a language, and as such, deserved respect. The humans were respectful of those among them who preferred Cybertronic despite not being able to hear or understand it, why shouldn't he be respectful of their languages too?
That expression comes back, and Ironhide grits his teeth.
"You don't have to try and avoid speaking, if that's what you're worried about. Ironhide, I enjoy hearing you talk, and I value what you have to say."
He wants to rage at that because it's like Prime thinks he's just being difficult. Ratchet had thought he was being difficult too. After a check up in the med bay, right after the battle in Cairo, where Chromia had insisted he join her because Ratchet would happily see both of them at once, and she was undergoing a surgery on the leg that got the worst of it, the medic got annoyed with him. So far the only times it's ever happened before had been when he'd been intentionally avoiding the med bay because it was a waste of time when he could be working with his weaponry. That was different though, it was him intentionally avoiding care because he could go without. All he'd done then was just asking a question.
"I don't know what your goal is," Ratchet said, hunched over and working on Chromia's left leg, "it's not funny, if that's what you're trying to do."
Ironhide frowns, standing off to the side, watching him work on her in silence. He's not trying to be funny. He asked a question. He asked if she'd ever walk again, that's not funny. And Ratchet trying to insist it was felt like a slap in the face. Like her potentially permanent disability may be humorous. To be honest, he didn't get it. How could an injury get repaired and then keep causing problems for years, potentially decades after the fact?
At first he thought it happened to humans because they were smaller and weaker, and an inferior species who just hadn't discovered how to properly treat anything. But Will had told him sometimes people just get unlucky, and everything goes right, but they end up disabled anyways. He hates that answer.
Then Chromia looks over at him and she smiles and even though she's only smiling because she finds it funny too, it's still a bit of a relief. She's happy to see him, happy to hear him speak. It's fine. He can stand being mistaken for being funny as long as it means she isn't upset or hurting — since they can't afford to put her under and use the EMP for fear it'll mess her up more.
"Well, how about you ask me again, properly this time."
"Can…she walk soon?" Ironhide asks, suddenly aware that that's not exactly what he wants to say. He wants to ask if she'll be able to walk again, and if so, will it be soon. That's it. That's all he wants to say, and he knows that's not what he's actually said.
It feels like the words are stuck somewhere in his head, right around halfway between his processor and his mouth.
"Okay," Ratchet shakes his head and rolls his eyes, grunting and huffing out air, "still trying to be a comedian I see. You're not any better at it than the twins are, either."
He gives Chromia a look, a desperate one, nervous and feeling some weird twisting and turning in the pit of his tanks. Like a human may use the whole "butterflies in your stomach" phrase; so uncomfortable in comparison to the stress he'd lived under before. She just smiles at him and laughs softly, a hand covering her mouth, but it suddenly isn't quite as nice anymore. Chromia's laughing and smiling and under the impression he's trying to be funny when it's the last thing on his mind. He isn't trying to be funny, he isn't trying to lighten the mood, he's worried about her and he wants to know if she'll be alright or if it's too late for her leg to be saved.
"Hide' honey," she says softly, reaching out and offering a smaller hand to his. "I'll be alright, up and about before you know it."
Ratchet nodded gruffly as he solders one of the wires inside her shin back together, managing to get it fitted well enough for her to be able to flex her foot a little. "Mhm. She'll live. It's fine."
It's a relief and he's so glad she's already got some iota of foot muscle control back, even if it seems like she's not really thinking of the movement when she does it. She'll walk again, and she'll be okay, and thank Primus for that.
"Good…good. Thank… Ratchet." He squeezes one hand into a tight, tight ball, and he again, grits his teeth. Once more it's not what he wanted to say at all. He wanted to say "Good. Thank you Ratchet." Maybe even actually say thank you so much, to properly show his appreciation for the medic's dedication to the work he does and mechs he sees. But it's like the simpler words are the ones that stick the worst.
He can sputter and choke out a name, but he's got to break it into chunks, and trying to say a multisyllabic word is like a tongue twister all of a sudden. Even just Ratchet's name, or his own too probably, though he'd never referred to himself in the third person enough to have checked in advance. Why is this happening? None of the other mechs had issues with words like he was having right now, and it meant it couldn't be a virus or some sort of transmissible issue that'd run rampant through the base.
Maybe that's a relief, since it means nobody else is at risk of suddenly becoming too tongue-tied to speak. He couldn't begin to imagine the impact of it if it happened to Prime, and their leader was suddenly left unable to speak at all — not to mention his speeches. As funny as it may be to watch him fumble through one, if it was anything like whatever's happening to him, it wouldn't be funny to Prime at all. And laughing would just make him uncomfortable and upset.
It'd be bad, he decides unilaterally, for Prime if it happened to him, because it would ruin his speech-giving capabilities and he prides himself on them.
Ironhide refuses to look over, but he can still spot the glance that Ratchet and Chromia share out of the corner of his eye. They look like they're torn between pitying him or laughing, and he hates it. Ratchet looks annoyed, but like he's simultaneously annoyed and unsure if it's even real in the first place. He's not doing it on purpose, but it's real and it's happening and it's kind of terrifying.
"Yeah yeah," Ratchet says, waving a hand idly, "you're welcome or whatever."
He dislikes the casual callousness with which Ratchet says that, it makes him feel like he's being brushed off. Like some of those horrible — no offense, of course — doctor reality shows that Lennox's wife watches, where a patient's brushed off and it comes back to bite them all because it's bad. But he feels fine otherwise, just like he's too tired to think straight or make much sense. Maybe his head smarts a touch, but it again could just be exhaustion blurring the lines between discomfort and pain.
But he's fine.
Surely he's fine.
He's walked off worse damage than this and been alright. Ironhide's been shot, stabbed, and blown up enough times to actually put GMC out of business; he's always walked it off before. Besides, the battle in Cairo had been bad, but not so bad that they had to do anything except sit on their haunches and lick their wounds. And the Decepticons were probably doing the same thing themselves, back at their base, especially considering the fact Starscream had to remind Megatron that sometimes the cowards survive. It made sense, but not coming from him.
Starscream had never been exceptionally cowardly, despite what everyone else seemed to think about him; the seeker may have seemed like a young, inexperienced upstart, but he did see potential there. The seeker had been loyal, often to a fault, to his betters, such as himself or Megatron, even if he now thought himself above the organic lifeforms that a younger him may have liked to study and know. Sometimes Ironhide wondered where he went, the real Starscream, before brushing it off as a useless pipe dream.
The kind he'd have had back in Praxus growing up as a reckless Thetacon, before he figured out how the world worked.
"Right!" He replies. "I… uh—"
He's never been short for words or left fumbling like a helpless new-forged before, and it's uncomfortable to him. Chromia smiles and takes his larger hand in hers, brushing over the back of his hand with delicate fingers. "Darling, it's alright. Go rest. You look tired. This might go on a good while more."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. You've had a big day, just like the rest of us. There were a lot of explosions, and you got a bit beaned by the human air force, I'm sure."
"…Okay." He nods once, suddenly aware of how awkwardly he has to divide the word into syllables. Like he's saying oh-kay, instead.
It's not normal. It's not right.
In fact, Prime is still giving him that look, and he's so mad he wants to get flippant and angry, to tell Prime that's not oh-kay actually at all. That he's not really trying to avoid speaking to him, or to anyone else, but what the hell else can he do when suddenly everyone thinks he's playing a joke on them or being disrespectful. He'd tried to talk to the twins at one point, some time between the return from Eygpt and now, and they had laughed. Ironhide doesn't even remember doing anything particularly funny either, just talking to them like he had before, though with less order-giving, and instead casual conversation.
His brow-line twitches, and he feels that uncomfortable pain beginning to return, and now it feels like it's centralizing right behind his bad eye.
"Whatever."
Ironhide turns and stomps off, suddenly feeling like a petulant child. He's barely an inch away from crossing his arms and stomping his feet, like he was throwing some sort of temper tantrum. Though it was incredibly disrespectful to him, to act like he was just being difficult on purpose, when right now, he's more aware than anything that something is wrong. It has been wrong ever since Cairo, maybe even longer.
He hears Prime call for him over his shoulder, but oddly enough, he's not compelled to turn around or indulge his leader. That's never happened to him before, not with Megatron, and not with Optimus; there's a first time for everything though apparently.
Honestly, he's not even sure where he's going other than away. But he knows that he has to get away, before he gets mad, before he starts yelling about it and hoping that somehow someone will notice he's different, will see the distress and will finally take him seriously. Again, he's reminded of those shows that Will's wife likes, and he wonders if perhaps the military man has learned anything from them. Even if he can't diagnose anything himself, maybe there's been an episode or a plotline or something he can latch onto. Something where he can point and say this is happening to me. And they'll notice and they'll care and he can finally get repaired instead of laughed at.
So he makes his way towards the human's rec room — break room — and crouches down, peering inside, and rumbling his engines to be heard over the crime simulator game. That's something he's never figured out either.
He can see Sam on the floor, sitting cross-legged and watching Lennox breaking the speed limit and hitting as many pedestrians as he possibly can. Will looks thoroughly engrossed in running over random passerby right out front of the game's mini streetside market, and then hopping out of the car to throw fruit at them. When he runs his engine, Will just about leaps off the sofa and three feet in the air the second he spots the giant truck outside the doorway, but he knows something must be happening. So he hands the controller off to Epps, gets up and collects himself, before coming over to greet him with a pat to the ankle joint. He wishes the man didn't do that, and he knows the man should know better, considering how that joint could so effortlessly crush his hand into a fine red paste.
"Hey big guy," Will flashes a grin and looks up, craning his neck to meet Ironhide's gaze, "what's up?"
"Something… wrong."
That makes Will immediately tense up, and his brows go upward in concern, and for some reason that human element makes him worry too. It means something is wrong and for the first time in a long time, a human had taken it seriously it first. For all of their advanced machinery, heightened senses, and additional capabilities, they had not been the first to notice, and he was still not sure what it was in the first place. But Will was more approachable now, than Ratchet or Prime were, because he was willing to give him the time of day and not immediately brush him off for the poor grammar it felt like he couldn't help.
"When you say wrong… how wrong? What feels wrong?"
"Can't talk… good." He mumbles, gesturing to his throat with a hand and huffing. "Feels… like words… trapped. Can't get out… not right."
Will's expression darkens further, if such a thing was possible.
And immediately he is gripped by fear because humans only did that when something was very wrong, even if their perception of wrong was different from a Cybertronian's. A bit too high-strung, a bit too prone to worry and stress than they were and often overreacting. But now he's suddenly wondering if perhaps, he and his ilk were just prone to underreacting, and this was a genuine crisis that he had willingly ignored. He's never done it before, but there's a first time for everything.
"You feel like you can't talk like you used to? Is it because your throat hurts too much to talk a lot? Work with me buddy."
Ironhide gestures, though it's nothing that means anything, instead just hapless hand motions as he tries to express how… not physical it feels. It isn't like he's got something caught in his throat, but instead like he needs to actually pause and think and remember his own name and how to say it. He doesn't usually refer to himself in the third person, in fact he's not sure when the last time he ever had was, but it's multisyllabic, and as such, he'd probably have to do it the same way he did Prime's name, breaking it into chunks and requiring a rest between each one. Like his own name exhausted him to say.
"Take… effort — and…" where's his train of thought going? What does he mean? "Hard…"
Then Sam is peeking out of the doorway and he's thinking oh great, now Bumblebee's going to know. Not that he has anything against the Camero, or against the boy; but Sam is kind of a blabbermouth, and if it wasn't for his voice box issue, Bumblebee would be too. He knew enough about the young mech to know that right away. Weirdly enough Sam is giving him the same sort of concerned, knowing look — knowing, more knowing than even Will had been able to give.
"That sounds like uhhh… like my grandma." Sam scratches the underside of his chin, leaning towards the door to join the conversation. "She had a hard time remembering words and speaking before the dementia really set in."
It sure makes him stop, and Will stops too, turning to look back at the kid. Dementia was a human thing, associated with age — and he was not that old — and usually a precursor to the end of one's life. Besides, they were giant metal aliens, and they were built to take a beating and shrug it off and ask what was next. Not sit in a little white room in a care home or something like the elderly did… except maybe Sentinel Prime.
"What? No." His throat feels tight, like it's suddenly clamping down and he can't really breathe correctly. "Just slow. Not… not dementia."
Sam furrows his brows, shifts his position, tucks in his legs and gestures to Ironhide with a hand. "No, no, grandma sounded a little bit like that, but different. She could say a lot at once but it didn't really mean anything to anyone except her."
It means it's some sort of problem for real then, if he's similar to Sam's grandmother in that regard. Because dementia is almost like a death sentence, and it's not something they have.
"If…have," that's not what he means! He wants to ask if he has it, or if he could even get confirmation of it. "What then?"
Where does he go?
What does he do?
If he has this… precursor condition, then what? He's not really himself anymore, and he's suddenly a giant liability to his team. If it progresses he's screwed and so are they, and it's a horrible thing to think when there are people out there with it who he'd never say this to or think this about but — but it's him! He's supposed to be better than anything any planet or species throws at him; he's been bombed and blown to bits and here he is suddenly staring down the barrel of a condition instead of a gun. It doesn't feel real and he is hoping it isn't.
"Mom and dad took care of finding her a speech pathologist," Sam adds, getting up and coming out to pat his leg, "I was like… nine so I was too young to know her, but I could ask for her contact information."
Does he want that?
Would confirmation make it better or worse? If he's given a straight answer, he'll have an answer and he won't feel so much like he's going insane inside his own head over his inability to recall words or names or say full sentences, but then he'll have confirmation and he'll know something is wrong. Or maybe he'll get lucky and they'll waltz in, decide he's just having a bad day, give him an opioid — they probably will not do that — and leave and he'll magically recover somehow. Ironhide's distinctly aware that that one is a wild pipe dream and is probably never going to happen in his lifetime, but for once he'd like to pretend.
"…Thanks." He finally decides on, nodding.
It's better than trying to say, "I'd like that" and running the risk of it turning into "I like", or something that feels equally like Annabelle's first attempts at language. A toddler's meaningless babbling which may have sounded like a real word but meant nothing to anyone except the toddler themself… maybe not even them.
"Anytime big guy." Sam said with a nod and another pat to his leg.
He's still not too keen on the idea of another person, a person he doesn't know, coming into the base and poking and prodding and theorizing about his wellbeing. Ironhide barely likes it when Ratchet does that, and he knows Ratchet, and has for a very long time. But some random human that he didn't know? What good was it for him to let some random person poke around in his processor and do Primus only knows what to him while he's under?
"And besides," Sam adds hastily, like he's aware Ironhide dislikes the idea, "dad picked her because he wanted the best of the best for his mom. If he didn't trust her, he wouldn't have picked her in the first place."
"Right."
For all intents and purposes, Will looks a little bit lost, like he's not entirely sure what's happening anymore, but he still looks like he's tuned into the conversation. It's sort of touching, even if Ironhide's not actually used to it happening to him. He's never been someone anyone's wanted to care about like that, and he's still unsure if he deserves it. As a war machine, he's never needed it before, and he's done just fine without it; though now that he knows what it feels like, selfishly he doesn't want to give it up.
But… he's better than that. He's used to far worse, and so he closes his eyes, huffs out a breath of air, and forces the tightness in his chest to relax by force. Let the crushing wave of desire pass over and through him and disappear out the back, before he suddenly decides that he wants to be more than a war machine. He lets it go and opens his eyes back up.
"How about I ask for her details, and I pass them on to you so you can figure out what you want to do after that?"
Ironhide nods silently. "Right. Yes… please."
Sam smiles and nods again, giving him another pat, something he's learned is a sign of respect in its own strange way among humans. Sure, Sam did it to Mojo, his rat-mutt, but he meant it out of a strange respect to the dog as well, like he did when he was patting another human's shoulders, or Ironhide's own hood. He's not the only one who does it too, since Ironhide's spotted Lennox and Epps doing it, sharing touches amongst themselves, especially when they thought nobody was looking. Neither was all too willing to show weakness or vulnerability with anyone else, or look weak in front of a crowd. Sam himself wasn't so afraid of that, and perhaps that was braver, not clamming up or trying to hide his true feelings.
Then he changes his mind a little bit, because as brave as it must have been for the boy, he himself is not like that. He's not built for simple domesticity or soft touches. Ironhide was forged for war, and no amount of getting patted on the head would change that.
For the rest of the day, Ironhide stays near the rec room, unable to venture inside due to his size, but unwilling to stray too far from the oddly supportive fleshies he's come to care about, halfway against his will. Something about the fact that they're taking him more seriously than Ratchet ever had was oddly heartwarming, as they put it; it made him feel like he wasn't just a tool to use and discard, even though it had been his purpose up until that point. He'd never just been him, as a mech, with a life and a meaning outside of warfare, and yet here he is, relying on the kindness of the species he's helping to protect in order to find out what's wrong with him — and the fact Sam has offered is confirmation to him, that something very much is wrong with him.
Wrong in a way that not even Ratchet could identify, or in a way he even believed in. How cruel was that? Their medic couldn't even perceive something being wrong, and as such, didn't believe it existed and therefore treated the whole thing like a joke. And it wasn't. He hadn't tried to be funny; he didn't want people to laugh at him when he talked because they assumed he was playing a joke on them. He just… he just wanted people to take him seriously again, actually, and if it took being diagnosed with something then he just had to suck it up.
Otherwise, the laughter wouldn't stop, nor would the quiet implication he was screwing around.
The sound of a bit-crunched car crush echoes out from the rec room, and he doesn't pay too much attention to it. Ironhide's never understood it himself, the idea of a game where the entire point is to commit crimes, or to create chaos and destroy things. Not that he'd ever been a perfect person who hasn't done anything wrong ever in his entire life. He's just never understood the idea of simulating crime for fun, rather than doing crime to just survive another day. It was how he could ensure he got something to eat, and it was just how Praxus was during the time of the Thetacons, not like he liked it.
"What do you want us to do big fella?" Will asks, glancing out of the doorway and pointing at the screen.
It actually makes him pause.
They're asking him and he's not sure what to say. Not because he's too offput by being included, even if it makes no sense to him at all, but instead because he has no idea what to do or say. Humans liked to include others in their nonsensical games or activities, he's known it as long as he's known them. But… he simply doesn't know what he can suggest that would be fun or enjoyable to do in game. He's got no idea at all. The game's useless and nothing to him, unplayable slop, really. It's not something he'd play on his own, nor something he has any real desire to watch anyone else play.
"Do… whatever." He shrugs, waving a hand, and once again breaking the word whatever into multiple syllables and pausing between them.
"Well, we want you to be included, obviously." Will replies, so casually that for a moment, Ironhide doesn't doubt his place in the man's life.
"…Right."