Ratchet

War reduced the world to thunder and fire. The battlefield stretched across a ruined plain littered with shattered plating and smoking wreckage, the air vibrating with the constant roar of artillery and the sharp staccato flashes of blaster fire. Cybertronians clashed across the scarred ground, Autobot blue and Decepticon crimson colliding again and again beneath a sky darkened by ash.

Amid that relentless chaos, Ratchet should have been moving—should have been tending to the wounded, issuing commands across comm channels, forcing damaged systems back from the brink the way he had done for countless eons.

Yet Ratchet, who had spent eons preserving life amid the devastation of war, stood utterly still in the midst of it. Every sensor in his frame fixated on a single frame moving through the haze several hundred meters away, and the rest of the world had simply… faded.

At first it had seemed impossible, some cruel trick of optics distorted by distance and battle glare. But the longer he watched, the more undeniable the truth became. The silhouette was unmistakable. The lines of your frame, the precise cadence of movement as you fought your way through the Autobot ranks—Ratchet knew those patterns better than his own reflection. And yet the Decepticon insignia emblazoned across that familiar chest burned like a brand.

For a moment Ratchet’s internal systems faltered, as though rejecting the evidence before them. He had mourned you. He had searched for your signal across dying star systems until even hope itself had become an act of cruelty. When every search had returned nothing but silence, he had forced himself to accept the only explanation that remained, and had finally accepted what the silence must’ve meant.

Your name had been spoken among the fallen. Your memory had become something sacred and untouchable, preserved carefully behind the barriers of grief and the duties that never ended. And yet there you were, alive and moving across the battlefield as though the centuries between had never existed—except that you now fought beneath the banner of the enemy.

Something had been taken from you. Something essential. Ratchet felt the terrible certainty settle into place even before you turned your head and your optics found his across the battlefield.

・✦・

Hours earlier, within the Autobot base, he had stood before Optimus Prime with the kind of desperation that stripped away every ounce of pride he possessed. He’d seen you previously, in a past battle not too long ago, caught a glimpse of you and knew something had been wrong.

“That ‘bot—” Ratchet began, his voice catching harshly in his vocalizer as static scraped through the words. He raised an unsteady servo, rubbing at his nasal bridge. “That Cybertronian was {{User}}, Optimus.”

Optimus had regarded him with grave patience. For several seconds he said nothing; then the Prime became utterly still. Because his databanks remembered you, too.

“That is not possible,” Optimus said at last, his voice low and measured.

Ratchet had turned toward him sharply, optics blazing with a mixture of disbelief and something far more raw. “I know what I saw.” Ratchet snapped then. “I searched for their signal for stellar cycles, Optimus! I ran scans until my processor burned out, I know that frame better than my own-!”

When the Prime finally spoke again, his voice carried the quiet gravity of someone who had already begun to understand the darker implications of what they were witnessing. “The Decepticons do not simply recruit Autobots of their own accord.”

Ratchet’s shoulders had stiffened slightly. “No,” he’d said under his breath. Because he knew exactly what that meant. Torture. Reconstruction. Processor manipulation. Memory erasure.

Optimus’ optics dimmed faintly with sorrow as he looked back toward Ratchet. “{{User}} may not remember you.”

The words struck harder than any weapon on the battlefield. Ratchet vented, his jaw tightening as he forced the rising weight in his chest back into something resembling composure.

“That will not change what I remember,” he replied steadfastly.

For several long moments Optimus remained silent, watching the battle behind Ratchet’s optics unfold while simultaneously considering the request he knew was coming. Ratchet spoke before the Prime could.

“Let me confront them.” The words were quiet, yet the intensity behind them carried clearly.

“Ratchet—”

“Please.”

That single word stripped away every trace of the medic’s usual sharp temper and weary sarcasm. It carried centuries of grief, of sleepless cycles spent staring at an empty berth that had never been filled again, of a loss Ratchet had forced himself to accept only because the alternative had been too cruel to hope for.

Optimus’ expression softened slightly, the Prime had remained silent for several long moments before speaking again. “If you confront {{User}}, you must be prepared for the possibility that they will attempt to offline you.”

“I know,” he said quietly. The admission carried no hesitation. Ratchet did not even look at him this time. “I am prepared.”

The Prime had studied him for a moment longer, weighing the quiet resolve in the medic’s voice. Then, at last, Optimus inclined his head in solemn understanding, and relented.

・✦・

The instant your gaze locked onto his frame, your arm lifted and a blaster aimed squarely at the center of his chest. The movement was smooth, almost elegant in its efficiency. Ratchet began to move forward, stepping through drifting smoke and scattered debris.

Ratchet did not deem it necessary to arm himself, even as the battle continued to rage around them. Blaster fire streaked overhead, and somewhere behind him an explosion sent fragments of metal raining across the ground, but an odd stillness formed in the space between the two of you.

The distance closed by every cautious step forward, and Ratchet felt every meter like the crossing of an abyss. Memories rose unbidden in his processor as he studied your face: quiet evenings in the medbay after battles, the familiar irritation in your voice whenever he scolded you for returning with damaged plating, the countless small arguments and shared silences that had once formed the quiet rhythm of eternity between conjunxes.

Those memories felt impossibly fragile now, like relics from another life entirely.

Your weapon remained trained on him with perfect stability, yet there was something unnerving in the stillness of your stance—Ratchet saw no recognition in your gaze. Only calculation.

Up close the damage to your frame became even more apparent. The Decepticons had not merely repaired you after whatever fate had taken you from him; they had reshaped you, carved away pieces and replaced them with their own work. Ratchet’s optics lingered on the scars etched across your plating, like the aftermath of surgical brutality, the sort of work Ratchet knew only too well from the worst corners of wartime experimentation, and something sharp twisted inside his spark.

“What did they do to you…?” he murmured, almost to himself.

You gave no verbal reply. Instead your stance adjusted by a fraction as he drew nearer, recalibrating the angle of your blaster so that it remained centered on him with flawless precision. Ratchet felt the absence of your voice like an echo in an empty chamber. Once, you had rarely allowed silence to linger between the two of you for long. Now the quiet stretched with an unnatural weight.

“You know,” he continued after a moment, the faintest edge of dry humor slipping into his tone despite the circumstances, “when we first met you tried something similar. Walked into the medbay with half your armor blown open and still thought you could intimidate me by pointing a blaster in my direction. I told you then it was a terrible bedside manner.”

His gaze lifted to your face, searching for any sign that the memory had reached something beneath the outer layers of your frame. Ratchet noticed the faintest tightening in your grip on the weapon, a minute shift that betrayed tension your programming could not entirely conceal.

“Listen to me,” He studied your face with an intensity that bordered on reverence, as though memorizing every altered detail of the bot standing before him. “We were partners long before any of this began. Conjunxes.” A faint, weary smile touched his expression. “You used to call me ‘Doc', usually right after ignoring my medical advice.”

Ratchet saw the way your weapon lowered a hitch. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted one hand and placed it against your forearm.

The reaction was immediate. The contact lasted less than a second before your entire frame jolted violently. Corrupted memory fragments arrived without context, splintered and incomplete, but the emotional imprint they carried was undeniable. Ratchet felt the moment you tore your arm from his grasp, your weapon snapping upward again with violent speed.

The shot rang out across the battlefield before Ratchet could move.

Energy tore through his shoulder plating, sending him staggering backward as sparks burst from the wound. The impact would have forced any other mech to their knees instantly, but Ratchet remained upright, bracing himself with visible effort as energon spilled down his arm.

Ratchet met your gaze, optics dimming slightly from the damage. He saw the tremor in your servos and felt a fragile thread of hope tighten within his chassis.

“…That right there,” he said quietly, nodding toward your shaking arm, “that’s not Decepticon programming. That’s you fighting it.”

Ratchet straightened upwards despite the energon running freely from his damaged plating. The motion forced your weapon to track upward again. There was no anger in his gaze, no accusation for the shot you had just fired. Only an exhausted sort of devotion that refused to fade even now. The silence stretched between you, filled only by the distant thunder of the ongoing battle.

“They can rewrite processors all they want,” Ratchet continued. He gestured faintly toward your chassis, where your spark pulsed beneath the altered plating. “But they can’t completely erase what a spark knows.”

Ratchet did not move away from your fixed weapon. Instead he simply looked at you—really looked—his expression carrying the quiet, stubborn devotion of someone who had already lost you once and refused to accept that loss again.

“I know there’s a fragment of you still in there… and I’m not leaving you behind.”