((A/N: Whirl has violent command hallucinations (similar to intrusive thoughts/impulses) in this fic, which are presented in second person as in "you should do this." If commands are triggering for you please proceed with caution. This fic will also contain suicidal ideation, mentions of past suicide attempts, and mentions of past medical abuse.))

When Whirl had come out of recharge at the start of the week, he had fully expected to be floating around around in the Allspark by now.

He had never been big on religion, but he had hoped that- whatever the next plane of existence looked like- he would be able to pick fights with Dai Atlas, or at least beat the scrap out of Killmaster a second time. But then tall purple and ghoulish had had to come in and ruin everything. And then the mecha hadn't even cared that he'd ruined everything, which was even worse, and Whirl had had no choice but to defend his honor.

Waking up in the Lost Light's Medbay was... disappointing. And, since Whirl was in the habit of uniformly consolidating all negative emotions into molten frothing rage, that disappointment found a throat and began to squeeze. He was hoping that the first neck he found would belong to his peeping tom, but the frame writhing in his grip was quite distinctly orange, not purple. Disappointing. [[kill them pop their helm off their spine twist them apart]] He eased up his grip, but didn't drop the mecha completely. If he looked like he was intent on killing someone Ratchet might call for a security drone to take him down. Getting his helm shot off by a drone was a lousy offlining compared to the one he'd arranged for that morning, but at that moment he felt desperate enough to deem it an acceptable substitute.

His suicide-by-drone backup plan was thwarted, however, when Ratchet started shouting something about him going back to jail. Whirl didn't want to go back to jail. You couldn't offline your way out of jail. He had tried, back at Garrus-1. Some of his fellow prisoners had even been generous enough to help beat him halfway to oblivion. It hadn't worked. Whirl wondered, bitterly, who a mecha had to kill to get their spark snuffed out in this joint. Apparently, not the one he was currently throttling. Whoever he was squeezing wasn't even important enough to call a security drone in for. He let the mecha drop to the floor.

You try to do the universe a favor and it lands you on a junker full of D-listers.

Whirl found himself being just operational enough to haul himself out of the Medbay. That was good enough for him, which was good enough for Ratchet. Or at least, he didn't try to stop him. Probably knew better than to waste his time. He dragged himself haphazardly down the hallways at an uneven pace, smearing fuel and paint against the walls. His adrenaline was running out and his resolve had been severely dampened, but if he wandered far and wide enough he would inevitably meet someone who hated him enough to try to offline him. There were not many Cybertroniansleft in the galaxy, and Whirl held the dubious honor of being almost equally loathed by his allies and enemies. If he wandered far enough, if the warnings stopped blocking his vision, if he knew the way to an airlock, if he, if he-

He didn't, and Ultra Fragnus found him. Which was great. Which he loved. Nothing better than meeting an old Wreckers pal who you'd last seen when he was called in to beat you out of a tantrum. A tantrum which he'd been throwing because Springer was too good for some awful half death, some protracted imprisonment, from rusting on a medical slab, because Springer would have stopped Impactor. Because no matter how many times he tried to explain, Roadbuster wouldn't understand.

Magnus didn't want him on the crew. Me and you both, buddy, he thought.

"Listen, Fragnus," he snapped in the middle of the enforcer's spiel about proper channels and security measures and beep boop bleep.

"That is not my designation," he responded, predictably derailed by the blatant show of disrespect.

"Uncle Fragnus?"

"Whirl, state your intent." Magnus was clearly not in the mood to play around.

"What I want is to get off this wreck," he stomped his pede on the floor for emphasis. "Drop me off back on Cybertron and I'll be out of your field forever."

"I'm afraid that is not possible," Ultra Magnus exvented. Whirl could tell, even through the stern faceplate, how sincerely he wished it was possible. "The engines have been damaged, and our location is currently unknown."

"Unknown? Mags, tell me you're shoving dross down my intake."

"I am most certainly not."

Whirl let out an extended burst of static frustration, turned and slammed his helm against the wall hard enough to jostle his optic in its bell. "Great."

"You have two choices, Whirl. Either I take you down to the brig and you stay there for the duration, or you agree to my terms and are grantedtentative parole." Whirl slammed his helm again; this time his optic cracked.

"...What terms," he eventually hissed, pained like a punctured actuator.

"You will promise to me that you will not make trouble," he began, in his customarily stern and booming serious voice. Whirl muttered something about trying, which seemed to satisfy him. "You will be placed with a member of the ethics committee to insure your behavior meets the standards of the Autobot code." Whirl gurgled, hoping the noise would sufficiently convey the depths of his resigned disgust. It apparently did, because Magnus moved on. "Finally, you will be required to see an on-board counselor for weekly session." Whirl turned his helm from where it had been resting against the wall, fixed Magnus with a wide, glowing glare.

"Can't wait," he sang. "I've been told my bad attitude comes from having a tiny port. I mean, anyone who's seen my port would know that was slag, but if you give me a cute one I might let 'em take a peek under my canopy."

Ultra Magnus did not rise to his bait, a sure sign that whatever was going on with the ship was, in fact, severely taxing him.

"Someone will be assigned to you." His tone was cold. "Now, let us move on."

Magnus took him to Rodimus, who made him do some song and dance about how sorry he was for the whole Cyclonus thing. Was he still not over that? It had happened forever ago. Then Cyclonus promised to kill him, which was so five hours ago. In any case, the more Whirl thought about self-termination by provocation, the more it began to sour on him. Why end his life with yet another mecha getting one up on him? That wasn't very Wrecker of him. Not that he was, technically, at all a Wrecker anymore.

Whirl made a note to talk Cyclonus out of it sometime. Or kill him. Whichever.

The rest of the cycle had lived up to the promise set by its first half, in that it was processor-numbingly boring interspersed with periods of almost enjoyable violence. Rodimus called a meeting to tell the general populace how utterly fragged they all were, and quite rudely failed to address his extremely valuable advice for upping the coolness of their collective mission. While high command yammered, the mech from the ethics board- his assigned roommate, apparently- introduced himself. Whirl resolved to take every opportunity to inconvenience him. As far as he could tell, that was still a permissible way of taking out his anger on innocent bystanders. Lock him out of the suite, pretend to mishear when he wanted something from him, spill some fuel on his stuff on 'accident.' Acceptable hazing. No real harm. No one would have to be stuffed into a regeneration chamber.

Whirl honestly hadn't expected the sparkeater.

It was remarkable just to see with his own optic that Sparkeaters were, in fact, a thing. An ugly thing, not that he was one to judge. He almost got to shoot it, which was not as fun as actually shooting it, but a lot more fun than missing the fiasco entirely. Of course it was Trailbreaker who had to go and ruin the fun with his shiny bubble trick. Whirl had wanted to see what kind of explosion could take out half of a ship, but no one else seemed to share his scientific curiosity. He followed along with the chase for a while, but Rodimus kept shooting down his offers to shoot the sparkeater up. Some dross about safety and survival and his much better plan.

He got tired of the whole thing pretty quickly once it became apparent that nothing was going to go boom any time soon. At least he had tried to avenge his dear departed roommate of all of ten minutes. That had to be worth something, he thought as he wandered away from the engine room and back to his hab suite.

Whirl's suite no longer had a door. Or at least, not one that functioned. In his haste and during all the excitement, he had knocked a Whirl-sized hole in the steel. He didn't like that very much, and stood in front of the entrance muttering oaths to Primus for a good long while. Without the door his suite was too open, too empty and airy. Bars would feel better. [[scrape your optic out of your helm]] In the end, he pried Animus' berth from the floor and dragged it over to block up the hole. He savored the irritating skreel it made as he slid it across the floor. The prospect of bringing that level of discomfort to his neighbors at every start and end of the cycle cheered his spark considerably.

He settled into a defragmentation cycle that his system alerts told him was long overdue.

When Whirl came back online- for the second time finding himself in that Primus-fracked ship instead of the Allspark- he met consciousness with a snort of static and an aching in his joints. He dozed stubbornly until he heard someone announcing that it was the first designated refueling period of the cycle. He rallied to rouse himself, though he'd rather have thrown himself in the Pit than join the rest of the crew around the major dispensers. Even if he had felt keen on socialising, he had the tendency to scrape-off every mecha he graced with his presence, intentionally or otherwise. He had a bad history and a worse reputation to live down, after all. And while a brawl might be fun, it wouldn't be good. Magnus had been pretty clear about the fact that any future outbursts of violence would get him sent straight to the brig. And then, when they figured out while the frag they were, back to prison for the remainder of his functioning. Which was exactly what that whole ballet with the sweeps' corpses was supposed to fix, but either Primus was without mercy or Unicron found his mess of an existence funny, because that hadn't worked out in the least.

Whirl decided not to dwell on his memories of the bunker, the smell of stale and fresh fuel and the cool dry air. Rodimus had given him a map of the ship when he was 'welcomed aboard,' and he brought it up, scanning for a fuel source that was somewhere small and isolated, unlikely to be a social hub. One of the recreation areas looked promising: a small datapad library, equipped with a dispenser and several seats, located by the munitions stores. He queued up directions to the room as he untangled his limbs and slumped gracelessly off of his slab. He stabbed impatiently at the door's operation panel with a talon, his antennae twitching at the buzz of denial it issued, before remembering the makeshift replacement he had installed the previous cycle. Sliding the berth aside would be too much effort. He grabbed it by an edge and tugged it unceremoniously to the ground, while it made a sound loud enough that several mechen in the hall twitched. Funny. He initiated the directions and thought about oblivion.