Some Things Are Best Left Buried

He couldn't tell if this was worse than the Incident in the repair bay. At the very least, it was just as bad. The fear was there, oh, it was, cold fire coursing through every circuit in his body, a whisper in his mind that screamed run whenever their conversation paused.

He didn't know why he was afraid. There had to be a reason for it, he just couldn't remember what it was.

It sounded simple. Someone would talk to him. Ask him questions. He'd answer. That was all. And yet he felt like he balanced on the precipice of a bottomless pit where the slightest misstep would doom him.

He'd been questioned. It had started with confirming the scraps of his origins that were known - being buried amongst the dead, abandoned, forgotten, the eternity in the ruins ended by curious purple optics and gentle hands, quick to touch, quick to intrude, quick to help. He'd mentioned the glaive, that he'd had it for as long as he could remember, he'd even woken up with the thing clutched tight in his hands (he could vividly remember the moment he'd woken up in the darkness, surrounded by rock on every side, immobile, paralyzed, trembling, everything trembling, as his world shook and shuddered and rumbled high above him, cold, so cold, pain in his head, his chest, everywhere, hands locked in a vice grip around smooth metal like his life depended on it and all he knew was I don't want to die I'm scared please don't let me die) and that he wanted - no, he needed it back, to protect the Autobots, protect himself.

"From what?" the therapist (he couldn't remember her name, she'd introduced herself at the start of the session, but he couldn't remember her name) asked.

"Being hurt," he replied.

He didn't know if he'd given the right answer.

They'd taken his weapons from him because he'd attacked Starlock (surrounded, enemies all around, I have to protect everyone, if they can move they can hurt us, if they touch me they'll tear me to pieces, keep fighting can't let them get past me) and it wasn't important that he hadn't meant to. He'd done it, and that had to be dealt with.

"I was scared the drones would hurt someone if I stopped," he explained, trying to translate the torrent of emotion (fear) and flashes of the scene replaying in his head into spoken words. "There we so many of them. They surrounded me. I don't like being surrounded. So - I fought them. And when she ran at me, I saw movement, and - I thought she was one of them, attacking me, and I swung."

The therapist asked how he'd felt when he found out what he'd done.

"Bad," he said. "Still bad. You're a terrible guardian if you hurt what you're trying to guard. I want to make amends but - I can't if I'm unarmed. And it's complicated now. I want to protect her but - each time she's around... it's tense. It's too much sometimes - the touching, the following - did you know, I actually asked her if she'd been assigned to watch me, and she said no. She just said that she likes to be around me and that I make her feel safe - but I hurt her. I hurt her and I can't protect her. She shouldn't feel safe around me."

They talked more, touching several topics - his vocal desire to be a protector (and the fact that he was upset and miserable because he wasn't able to protect anyone), his belief that he was only good for fighting ( "Do you think you're only good for warfare?" "Yes." "Why?" "I was made that way." "Do you think that defines you?" "..." "Do you know if you're an MTO?" "I don't remember."), the damage to his memory banks (the data was more or less unretrievable, and he would probably never recall anything more than disjointed echoes and fragments of what had been lost), his strong aversion to medics and repair bays ("I was tied up and she kept touching me and poking and poking and poking and I didn't know what she was doing and she didn't care that I was afraid she just kept TOUCHING ME -"), and if he thought that a repeat of the incident during the drone attack might occur ("Now that I know it happened once I can try to figure out ways to make sure it'll never happen again.")

And the final question of the session...

"Do you think you might be a danger to others?"

He gave her a steady look.

"Yeah. We all are. Everyone is. Everyone has the ability - capability - to hurt others. What differs is why they do it, and what it takes for them to do it." He frowned. Did he just ruin his chances of getting back onto the active duty lists? "If I said 'no, I'm not a danger to others', I'd be lying. Because I was built to fight. So, yeah, I'm dangerous, but - only to whatever's trying to hurt what I'm trying to protect. I need to be dangerous to them, or I can't stop them."

He still didn't know if he'd given any right answers. He was vaguely under the impression that there were no right or wrong answers in a therapy session, but in his case, there were. The "right" answers were the ones that would get him cleared for duty, and the "wrong" answers were the one that'd keep him from it.

What was a soldier without a battlefield, what was a guardian without a ward?

He left the therapist's office feeling even more afraid than he'd felt during the session.