A clatter and crash at the medbay door was Ratchet's first warning. Ironhide's message flashed across his datapad a second later, but by then Ratchet was already remotely sealing all the doors and turning off any operating viewscreens. Out of habit, he filled an injector with dielectric fluid, but he doubted his patient would give him a chance to use it.

Another clatter, something dropping on the floor, and a heavily accented curse. Ratchet vented once, steeled himself for the worst, and came out of his office.

Oh, this was going to be one of the bad ones. How did Jazz always manage to get back to base, let alone make it to the medbay, without anyone noticing? Jazz must have lost more and more control over himself as he moved, slowly watching each of his functions go offline as he gave himself one last command over and over. Return to medbay. Return to medbay.

At least Jazz had dropped his rifle, not because he felt safe but because his shooting hand could no longer grip without three fingers. Jazz leaned against one of the berths, venting in a vain attempt to cool himself, too lost in shock to notice the coolant and energon leaking from his shoulder and pelvic joints. Ratchet scanned the rest of his injuries—blown servos, melted fuses and cracks in his frame's extremities, along with sparking in his audio horns and white noise in his visor. Ratchet guessed that their spymaster was nearly blind and deaf.

Jazz groaned, trying to stand straight and slumping brokenly against the wall, and Ratchet changed his guess. Nearly mute, too, with an strained voice box.

Ready for a desperate knife attack, Ratchet cleared his vent intake.

Startled, Jazz stumbled backward and fell on his aft, creeping along the floor until his back hit the wall. He scrabbled blindly around himself, trying to climb back to his pedes, forgetting in his haze of pain that his right hand was still hanging limp.

"Look at you," Ratchet sighed, coming closer to stand over him. "You're gonna bleed out if you don't settle down."

"Stay back." Jazz vented so fast and deep that his leaking coolant system couldn't keep up, doubly overheating himself. "Stay back. Don't come any closer!"

Ratchet tilted his head, sweeping his gaze over him. Jazz's voice unit scratched with static and his audio horns sparked, meaning he probably heard everything as if he were underwater, including himself. Couple that with his damaged visor and reduced sensory input as his body tried to defend against the waves of pain, and Ratchet was stuck with one very paranoid and panicked bot.

"Do you even know where you are?" Ratchet said.

Kneeling down, he straddled Jazz's hips, using his weight and leverage to pin his legs. Jazz reacted instantly, striking at the mech looming over him, but his servos were sluggish and only at half strength. Ratchet caught his wrists and pushed them up over his head, holding them against the wall. Jazz hissed as his wrist joints ground together, and Ratchet eased his grip very slightly.

"Don't fight me," he warned him, reaching with one hand toward Jazz's visor. "Stay still..."

At feeling Ratchet's touch on his faceplate, Jazz whipped his head back and forth. He knocked his visor off on Ratchet's knuckles, sending it crumbling to the floor. Jazz squeezed his optics shut, bucking his hips once.

"You can't fight me," Ratchet said, stroking his face, running one thumb under his optics. "You never could."

Slowly, as he realized he wasn't being hurt, Jazz's thrashing became very small and tame. The sounds coming from his mouth were equally small, thin as his voice box began to fail. But the hand caressing his faceplate was gentle and familiar, as if he had felt this stroke before. As it touched around his optics, caressing them, his venting came back under control and began to properly cool his systems teetering on the edge of meltdown.

"Good boy," Ratchet assured him. "Open up for me. Come on. You know my voice. Open up."

Shuddering, his chin tilted up, Jazz's optics opened to slits, then wider when no retaliation came. Deep red light bathed his face.

"Lost little Decepticon," Ratchet chuckled. "Remember me yet?"

"R-Ratchet?" Jazz whispered, peering up at him in growing recognition. "Wait. Where...am I back on base? Ratchet, is that...? Oh no—my visor, where's my—"

"It's all right," Ratchet said. "It needs replacing anyway. The door's locked. No one's coming in. You're in medbay. You're safe."

Jazz stared at him a moment longer, his increasingly cloudy processor working through that. Then he relaxed and let his head rest in Ratchet's hand. The glow of his optics colored the space between them, and as often required after these worst missions, Ratchet lightly touched the plating around them, soothing the fear and paranoia back into something resembling Jazz.