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Ratchet was not a dissenter of the Autobot regime, but sometimes he thought he could be.
He considered himself lucky that he enjoyed his function for the most part, and didn’t feel forced to take on a role he didn’t want, but at the same time, he watched the slow fall of society when it came to less privileged mecha.
When Ultra Prime took the place of the previous Magnus as Ultra Magnus, things got better, for a while. Ultra Magnus’ no-nonsense approach to politics meant slightly less corruption, and better conditions for most mecha, but not all. The underbellies of Cybertron’s cities continued to rot.
Though he worked as a surgeon in Iacon by day, Ratchet found himself literally moonlighting as a back-alley doctor in Rodion by night.
Rodion, where dissent festered, and beneath the industrial smog, the days below Cybertron’s distant sun felt no different than the nights.
One of the core tenets of The Medic’s Codex was I will aid all Cybertronians, regardless of history, status, beliefs, or alt mode; and Ratchet had no shortage of patients in the back alleys of Rodion. He kept his practice there small, discreet, with no sign over the door, nor any indication that it was a medical clinic at all. It was a lot of basic first aid, which was always good practice. There was no shortage of booster junkies that needed fuselages rewired, or jets who needed thruster adjustments and afterburners cleaned out.
Irony and tragedy went hand in hand, as mecha who rarely had enough fuel also were the ones whose fuel spilled onto his operating table.
His reputation spread by whispers, but he always answered with a different name, keeping his identity a secret. He didn’t need to get mixed up in Decepticon rumblings.
But like thunder growling in the distance, it was not something he could outrun.
Then came the warframe.
He approached from a back alley, silhouetted by the dim neon of the street behind him. He was smaller than most warframes, but still far larger than Ratchet, with piercing red optics and large claws. His helm finials framed his face in a pointed crown, and he had detached one of his rotors, leaning on the blade for support. Were Ratchet bolder, he would have scolded the mech for doing so, let alone lean on the thing! Then again. Perhaps he should have been bolder.
“Are you the mechanic?” His voice wasn’t deep, more like a growl, and Ratchet noted the way he held his side, plating torn and scraped open.
“Yeah, that’s one of the things they call me,” Ratchet answered. “Come in, I’ll get ya patched up. Acid rain’s probably startin’ soon, and you shouldn’t be out there.”
Ratchet could feel the weight of his pedes along the ground with each step. He towered over Ratchet, who tried not to look intimidated. Warframes needed medical care just as well as civilians did.
It was a quick welding fix, and the stranger offered some shanix as compensation, which Ratchet refused. He couldn’t take payment, when he did far less than enough.
He left the way he came, quietly and without question.
The stranger returned again a few nights later, this time his chassis was riddled with holes.
Ratchet knew what would cause those, but he did not ask. He did not want to be told the answer.
Sometimes it was better not to ask. Better not to know.
They whispered exchanges in the dark about nothing. Just words to fill the void, rather than actual conversation. Speaking of who you were, what you were up to, or where you were going was foolish. One never knew who was watching, or who was listening.
Some nights there were no words to fill the void.
Ratchet sat in silence as he rewired the stranger’s entire arm, with nothing between them but the sounds of their engines and the occasional crackling of electrical sparks, interrupted by the snip of wire cutters, or the spray of sealant.
There were times where Ratchet sat and worked, digits dripping with energon, sitting atop a stool while his patient sat on the floor. There were times where the stranger arrived with his claws stained pink or blue, armor scraped and battered with scuff marks from paint, rotor blades dripping energon. Whose, Ratchet did not want to know.
There was even a night when the stranger did not make it through the door, and instead collapsed in the alley, deprived of fuel and in need of a jumpstart. Upon Ratchet’s jumpstarting, he bolted upright, ready to attack on reflex, drawing his rotor blades.
He held them at the base of Ratchet’s helm, his entire frame taut and coiled, a band about to snap, ready to cleave his helm off with hardly any effort.
Perhaps in that moment time stopped.
Ratchet’s optics glowed a faint blue in the dark, splashing light across deadly blades and claws through the shadow.
The stranger loomed over him, engine rumbling, fangs bared.
Somewhere in the distance, there was a cacophony of explosions, and the sound of sirens.
The battlecry of enforcers.
“Are you done?” Ratchet asked finally, crossing his arms.
"I uh…" the mech cycled his optics in a blink, then lowered his blades. "Sorry. Things have been—"
Ratchet raised a servo to stop him. "Don't tell me."
The less they knew about each other, the better.
“No, I want to tell you—”
Ratchet kept his voice even, leveling his words at the stranger like a blade. “Stop.”
The warframe paused, his plating sinking as he returned his blades to his back, then shook himself off. “Then come with me.”
“We both know I’m not going to do that,” came the simple answer.
“Please. You’ll repair anyone, right? They could use good bots like you—”
Ratchet sighed, shaking his helm. “That’s a weird thing to say after holding your blades to my intake, but I understand. Look, I’m a medic. I refuse to stoke the fuel of those fires. I knew Cybertron needed to change long before there was smoke in the sky, but—”
“But nothing! You’re a good bot!” the stranger protested.
“You don’t know that.”
The stranger stood, raising up to his full height. Until now, the silences between them were quiet, serene, if a bit awkward. They were spaces filled with nothing but each other. Nothing but the magnetism of their fields, the sounds of their engines. Now, the silence between them was a crescendo, deafening as it swelled. It was the crackle of fire, and the roar of a blaze. The sounds of explosions, and the roar of spaceship engines.
He stared at Ratchet as he would from the other side of a battlefield.
“Yes I do.”