Work Text:
Knock Out always onlined slowly when he was overcharged.
So he rolled over and tried to go back to recharge.
…The bed wasn't his own.
It was too large. Who did he know who had a large bed? Besides his past self. That bed had been very nice, but he had gotten rid of it long ago.
Primus, his helm hurt.
His let his arm fall over his faceplate with a soft Bunk. It wasn't even strong enough to leave a trace.
Ouch. That didn't help the helmache.
He was so slow, what had been in that engex? He should have known better that to drink with Ratchet and the Wreckers by now…
Ugh, he hoped this wasn't Ratchet's bed. He could threaten any of the muscled brutes into silence, well, most of them anyway, okay, maybe just one, two at most, but if he had spent his recharge with Ratchet it would be awkward.
He slowly onlined his optics.
…He knew that ceiling.
He knew that ceiling because he had spent hours and hours looking at it in anger. And he knew that ceiling had been completely destroyed by a crash years ago. Maybe even a decade or two ago.
Why was he looking at the ceiling of his room on the Nemesis?
He cycled his optics. The ceiling stayed over him.
This made no sense.
He turned his helm to the side.
The rest of the room looked exactly like his room on the Nemesis. The walls, grey, cold, uninviting. His tools in the corner. His wax and cleaning products, in another corner. Breakdown's trinkets, next to the bed.
…What?
He very much remembered putting those away when looking at them had proved to hurt too much. Then it had hurt even more, when they had been obliterated in the final crash of the Nemesis.
What were those doing here?
A second or three later, he amended the question. What was he doing here?
Everything was at its place in his room, except his room looked like it was their room, and that wasn't possible. See, crash of the Nemesis.
Knock Out sat down, then waited for the room to stop spinning.
The room didn't look any different now. It still didn't look any different once he had fully gotten out of bed.
A quick look at his internal programs proved that he wasn't, actually, overcharged. Just very confused, apparently. And in a room that he knew for a fact didn't exist anymore.
Then he remembered a previous thought. Breakdown's trinkets. If those were here, then Breakdown had to be here too.
It didn't make sense.
It didn't make sense, and yet he found himself looking at his contact list.
Breakdown was in it. Tagged as active, and as temporarily unreachable due to a field mission. Very ordinary.
It was impossible. And yet, Breakdown's side of the bed was still warm. Ordinary, too. Except for the fact that it was literally impossible.
There had to be some rational explanation. What had he been doing?
Drinking, yes. With Ratchet. Near the Well of All Sparks, because Ratchet was secretly some masochist who liked to remember his partner's death. Or he had some stupidly romantic idea that Prime was looking at him through the Well. Or maybe he just liked the view, and Knock Out was just petty.
So, drinking. Drinking, and talking about anything and everything. But mostly about the dead. The place was lending itself to such things.
Alright, time for diagnosis.
A room that didn't exist anymore, with evidence of Breakdown's current existence. His last memory was of whining with Ratchet about-
A sharp ping reached him through the fog of his processor. Ugh. So Soundwave was here too.
Soundwave could help. Soundwave would know where Breakdown was. He very purposely chose not to waste too much time second-guessing himself. So what if Soundwave had been an especially standoffish, unfriendly, and sometimes cruel bot? Knock Out had a mission, and it was to locate his partner.
A second ping.
Knock Out decided he didn't care how he had, apparently, traveled back in time, if it meant he could see Breakdown again.
"Secret," said Starscream's voice, followed by "mission" in Megatron's voice.
Knock Out's energon froze in his lines. There was only one secret mission Breakdown had ever went on. And he hadn't come back from it.
"I have to go there too," he said. Remarkably calmly.
"No way," said some young human's voice.
"You don't understand, Soundwave, I need to!"
Soundwave simply turned back from him, the conversation evidently over from his side.
So Knock Out thought about it (Breakdown, the secret mission, the past, the future, the grief, the pain) for half a second, and he transformed a hand into a buzzsaw.
The weakness of his barely-thought-out plan became obvious as soon as he went through the ground bridge.
He didn't know where to go.
Soundwave's bridges were precise, but he rarely dropped bots directly over the objective. Something about not being spotted by the Autobots too quickly, maybe. Knock Out didn't really care.
So he just walked blind into the forest. His finish kept getting scratched, or covered in gross organic matter. But if he transformed and drove, he would be heard. Who knew what Airachnid would do, then?
He found Dreadwing (long time no see, but Knock Out hadn't missed him either) pinned to a tree by webbing.
"She's over there," Dreadwing pointed as well as he could with just his helm. Clearly the bot was too busy to wonder about Knock Out's presence on his secret mission.
"Thanks," Knock Out said by reflex, and he ran.
Trees. Rocks. What if he had misunderstood Dreadwing's directions? More trees. What if Airachnid had already struck? Trees again. What if he was too late? Ravine. More trees again-
There!
Breakdown, stuck in webs. His murderer just over him. Close, too close.
"No! Stop!" Knock Out yelled, begged.
Breakdown's helm snapped towards him, surprise and incomprehension on his faceplate.
Airachnid struck.