The days blend together. Shift after shift, First Aid and Ambulon piece the wounded back together, repair labourers injured in the clearing and rebuilding efforts, treat old forgotten wounds that had been left unattended in the wake of the constant fighting. Sometimes they share shifts, and sometimes they're scheduled separately.
When First Aid is working alone, Ambulon holes up in their apartment with the day's fuel ration and the few holos and datapads they've managed to scrape together. When Ambulon works alone...
At first, Aid had also stayed home. Cleaned and fretted and tried to refuel, but all it ever did was allow him time to think until he was sick with worry and despair. After that, he had tried running the errands that Ambulon couldn't, but there were only so many - not even a few in a day, but a few in a week - and he'd be right back in the apartment again, wearing circles in the flooring and being sick in the small washracks. He was getting desperate, plotting various reckless escape routes he and Ambulon could take to get out of Iacon, when he started hearing whispers about the ghosts outside of the city.
...A still and silent spectre, heralded by ice and leaving death in its wake. It only moves when unobserved, trailed by swarms of unusually subdued scraplets. Several outposts have sent frantic, cryptic messages mentioning the figure, only for their communications to be abruptly cut off from Iacon;
...A mourning wraith, shrouded in a cloak with inky tears spilling from its empty sockets as it wanders the wastes, crying out for someone or something. Some of the Decepticon staff discuss its frame and hidden helm kibble in hushed tones, but something about the ghost carrying swords causes their whispers to end in quiet frustration;
...A hulking figure, grey as a corpse and lit from within by a sickly green glow, and rarely seen. Someone says that, of the few times it's been spotted, it was always dragging away bodies from ancient battlefields, moving deeper into the wastes. Another says it's sent from Unicron to destroy all Cybertronians for killing His brother, Primus, with their war. This last ghost frightens him the most, makes something twist deep in his spark.
First Aid continues to listen when some mecha mention shrines near Iacon's walls. And when Scalpel hesitantly asks him to come with him and some others, just to go see, First Aid follows. He lingers at a shrine to the Weeping Revenant; he listens again as a worshiper quietly tells them that the Revenant is an avenging angel, a little god willing to protect those who beseech it. First Aid kneels; lights a candle; timidly nicks his smallest finger and lets it drip into the dozens of other slender, pink-stained candles at the base of the shrine.
Primus either truly is dead, or has left them all alone in His shame and disgust. First Aid feels some small thing inside of him finally break, and he kneels a while longer, occasionally wiping coolant from his mask and visor. Only when the internal alarm signaling the end of Ambulon's shift chimes does he stand, wipe his face, his hands, his knees, and slip back inside the wall.
