Chapter Text
"It is a true “Dual Purpose Breed” and should be bred as such – to be a working retriever, on land and in water." - History of the Labrador Retriever, L.R.C.S.C.
☆ It was the sound that drew you out towards the mountains. Your home was isolated, solitary, exactly as you liked it, and after years of listening to the forest, you knew when something was wrong. Didn't belong. The distant, rhythmic sound of rushing winds was not natural, you were absolutely sure. This was not the rasping shiver of the trees, but the rheumic rattle of an intruder made to kneel. You were not afraid as you slipped through the shadows. Only curious.
When you glimpsed it through the trees, it was with a prickle of confusion and anger together, a harsh gleam of metal, sharp angles of machinery. Something that did not belong on your mountain. But the closer you drew, the quieter you moved, the more your anger shifted into the huddled awareness of prey. Whatever this thing was, it was not machinery, or at least not that made by human hands. There is a body among the trees, massive, metallic, and breathing hard.
The longer you stare, the more you understand the shape of it. Broad shoulders and chest, a lax hand still half laid to a narrowed waist, powerful legs, clawed metal paws, it is something like a beast, something like a man, and you find yourself creeping from the cover of the trees as its rough breathing stirs the leaves. The thing's massive head, crowned with horns like a stag beetle, is resting crookedly against its own arm, face mashed to plating, eyes barely cracked open but clearly seeing nothing. There is a hole in its side, leaking something blue between massive fingers too lax now to hold it in.
Closer, watching that softly panting face, getting no reaction at all when you lay your hand to the surprisingly warm plating of its stomach. As if it really were alive.
Your parents always said your curiosity would kill you. No one ever really argued. Not even you.
You dig your fingers into seaming, jam the toe of your boot likewise, hauling yourself up this robotic body that's found itself in your trees, and as you go, you find yourself speaking to it as though it were just another doe trapped by a hunter's cruelty. "There you go, there you go, girl, good girl. Just a little more, I'm almost there. Here we go, not so bad, let me see. Let me see it, pretty baby, don't be scared." The edge of the ragged tear looks sharp and dangerous as you peer between the fingers of that large hand, trying to determine the source of the gently draining blue.
You almost tumble right off of her in shock when that hand moves, shifting to slide away, flopping somewhere behind the thing's back. When you raise your head, she's looking at you, one eye almost half open now, watching with that doe-eyed sort of glaze. The hole is more than big enough for you to crawl into, should you have felt so inclined. "Good girl," you murmur again, in that animal soothing tone, crouching down to study the mess of torn metal, broken tubing, and frayed wire. "Just stay still, girl, you're alright. You're doing so good, it's going to be alright. You're alright." Soft, weak gushes of glowing blue from ruptured tubing, only the most basic of supplies in your possession. Weren't planning a camping trip, after all, nothing with you but a tiny first-aid kit, just bandages and bandaids, really.
With no other ideas, you slip into the cavern of those guts, let your boots settle on softly shifting metallic tubing and oil-wet moorings. You take your bandages and start tearing them to size with your teeth, picking up her own broken pieces, loose in the cavity of this mountainous form, to gather makeshift tourniquet. Not ideal, but hopefully enough. You wrap, twist, hold, until ragged-ended tubing, thick but malleable enough, cinch shut, that rushing loss slowed to a choked drizzle. Tied-off arteries surround you in short order and as you survey your work, you forget to look up.
♤ He tells himself that he does not remember ever being spoken to so softly as his optics glitch and his HUD begs him to take notice of how low his emergon has gotten, how much of himself has soaked into this wretched planet's soil. The little human's voice hums with a gentle cadence, a softening, disarming affection he is too exhausted to hate. The feeling of you inside of him, pedes pressing directly to wires, is starkly uncomfortable, followed closely by stinging, burning pain so bright that for a moment his optics shut down completely. He barely manages to shut down the touch receptors in the area in time to control himself, his entire frame begging to twitch and shudder and whine even as energon leak notifications blinked out of his warning-crowded vision, one by one.
You were fixing him.
He tried to make sense of it, as he laid there panting, tried to understand why you had not even seemed startled to see him there. Humans, by and large, were a twitchy, flighty race that crawled all over the planet like rustmites, gathering in massive packs and running about, squealing and howling, at anything they deemed too big or too strange. But here you were. Tiny, solitary, and determinedly cinching shut his broken energon lines. It was more than his own soldiers would have managed, likely as not, incompetent as the lot was.
When the last of the major damage was, if nothing else, sealed enough for him to rest without fear of simply offlining, he reached into the hole in his chassis and pulled you out.
You dangled there, clothing pinched between two digits, and he studied you. Not writhing, not squealing, not begging in your tiny voice for the big scary warlord to put you down, just... looking. He shakes you slightly, hoping to get some reaction, but you just look at him with those wide, staring eyes. Not afraid, just... taking him in. He moves you closer, trying to make out the details of your small frame, and both your tiny hands come forward to pet down the bridge of his nose.
"Good girl, very good girl." Soft voice, gently coaxing, and he doesn't bother to stifle his rumble of amusement. But even the low rev of his engines sends a sharp bolt of pain through his broken pieces and he sets you down on your pedes, suddenly too exhausted to keep his arm up. He folds both arms carefully, fighting to keep the rest of himself still as he lowers his head, his horns seeming suddenly far, far too heavy. And your hands are on one of his now, gently petting, and he can't make himself care enough to flick you away.
☆ Whatever this thing is, it's hurt very badly, but the old girl doesn't seem like a danger to you. Could have crushed you or thrown you or bitten you into pieces, but had only tugged you free and set you down. You study her, the marks dug into plating, almost like scars. The worn creases into the softer parts around the face. Oddly human, but at the same time, so far from that you cannot will away the bleeding-heart twinge in your chest as she just lays there, trying not to jostle her wound.
"Just rest, big girl, don't move. I'll check on you later, okay? You're gunna be alright, good girl." The plating on those massive hands is incredibly warm under your touch, and you suddenly wish you knew what she was and how hot they run. Can a metal monster catch a fever? There's a harsh hiss of pressure that you could almost imagine was the weary release of a sigh as those giant eyes slide closed. Poor thing.
You turn to head home, running through a list of things you may need in your head. Something much stronger to wrap around those busted up internals, maybe drag in some scrap metal and bring your welder, as small as you are compared to the poor girl, it probably wouldn't hurt much. Definitely a tarp to drag over the hole, falling leaves and general forest debris surely could only cause trouble if it got inside her mechanical insides. And on that note, should probably bring cleaning supplies, take another look inside her, grab anything broken off and loose, or anything that just plainly did not belong. You weren't a vet or a doctor or anything similar, you just knew the basic ideas of some things from your years out here, far beyond the reach of your fellow man. You were good at tending to animals.
For just a heartbeat, you considered your actions. The actual wisdom in your set course. What was that thing? Was it only docile due to its injuries? For a moment, you thought of Mecha Godzilla, leveling cities, scorching skyscrapers to dust. But only for a moment. Stronger was the thought of a wounded doe, bleating softly, with nothing but your hands between her life and death. You pushed through the shrubbery, wondering if your tarp was still tucked under the kitchen sink.