((My writer's muse is cruel. I can only think of ideas when I'm undergoing emotional suffering.

I do not own the Transformers, but they seem to own me. O.O ))

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In the relative peace and quiet of the medbay aboard the Nemesis, Hook cleaned his surgical tools and pondered.

Sometimes it was circuit-racking to be the only truly skilled medic aboard a ship full of warriors. Any form of injury was his duty to attend to. He knew how important his role was, and did his best to make sure that he was functional enough to perform it. In combat, he kept himself in the mostly safe (compared to the rest of the battlefield, that is...) back lines, unless he was needed to form Devastator. Outside of combat, he mostly kept to himself in the Constructicon lair, away from the anger and wrath that ran among the other Decepticons.

But still, deep down in that cold and arrogant spark of his, he was concerned for the others, his gestalt-brothers in particular.

Behind his stoic frostiness, he cared (as much as he hated to admit it) for his fellow Decepticons. Every time they returned to base damaged and battered from fights, he would repair them with his usual condescending briskness and send them on their way, moving on to his next patient without missing a beat.

And behind his concealing red visor, he would always admonish them with a silent glare. He knew how close several of the other Decepticons had come to offlining in the past. Outwardly he would scold them and tell them not to be such glitch-headed slag heaps and actually be a little more careful, but inwardly he feared for their safety.

For all he knew, there would eventually come a day when a raiding party came back one mech short... an incident where he would be unable to save a dying spark... a mech whose systems had been damaged beyond repair...

Hook shivered from the mere prospect of it.

There were times when he wanted to relax and fool around like the rest of his gestalt instead of being the uptight stickler that he was. But no... he took it upon himself to straighten his delinquent "brothers" out when they crossed the line and fix them up when they got themselves slagged. Sometimes he didn't know why he even bothered with them.

Still, they needed him, they relied on him even. After all, if they managed to keep themselves in a constant state of such disarray and disrepair, who else would whip them back into shape when things got serious?

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((Yeah... think I've drained this idea dry...

I really like writing stuff that deals with characterization and psychology - unfortunately, I've never actually gone as far as to share what I've written on it. So yeah, if any of you made it to the end notes, mind leaving a review? I'm kind of desperate to know if I got Hook IC, he never really received much spotlight in the cartoon so I didn't have much to work with...

I'll shut up now. XD ))