Chapter Text
Every year after the defeat of Tachyon, Ratchet goes to Fastoon. He’s not sure why he started this ritual, but he does know why he keeps doing it. Someone had to tend to the graveyard of his people, or at least those that didn’t make it, and the dead world the left behind. This time was different, it was a few weeks after the defeat of Emperor Nefarious, and Rivet was with him for the journey. All the times before he did it alone, simply because he was the only one left to call it his ancestral homeworld. Rivet’s arrival in his life changed things, and in this case he wasn’t quite sure if that was for the better.
His decision to come here was always personal, a solitary act, even when Talwyn and Clank offered to accompany him he refused. Aphelion falls out of hyperspace and Fastoon’s ghostly and pale surface colors their view. Rivet leans forwards in her seat, instinctively drawn into a sense belonging with this world. But neither of them belong here, not anymore. She asks questions, but his thoughts are elsewhere as he maneuvers them down to the surface.
Ratchet always thought he should feel anger, a deep fury over the scene below him. But he only felt a deep sadness for the alien cityscape, with only a hint of bitterness that kept him from being completely so. Not for life that was stolen from him, but at the evidence of pain and terror around him. His past self wouldn’t have thought or cared about it. He is different now.
Rivet sits besides him in the passenger seat, and at first she was chatty, in vain attempt to lift Ratchet out of his solemn demeanor and to disguise her own discomfort. It was clear to Ratchet that she didn’t at all grasp the volume of devastation that she would soon see. When Aphelion drifts further below the cloud line, she becomes deathly quiet when she sees the shattered grid of collapsed buildings.
From then on, they don’t exchange a word. When they touch down, the plaza near the Court of Azimuth is silent save for the wisp of distant dust devils and sandy winds. The nanophytes that had infested the place were flushed out ever since Ratchet first started visiting. Ratchet knows where to go, and slowly guides Rivet behind him as she looks around, he does not look back to see her reactions. He does not want to experience it vicariously all over again.
They never truly knew the lombaxes, they carried them in their blood yes, but they would never completely understand what their world was like when it was alive. In the first few years after Tachyon’s defeat, Ratchet searched through it, what little clues he found from the wreckage left him uncomfortable. At first it was excused by the need to find spare components for Aphelion, most of her parts were relatively standard, but some were uniquely lombax and correspondingly rare.
Upon looking through the few relatively intact ships he found, he found memorabilia, recordings, even spare clothes. He kept them, not wanting them to be left forgotten, but he had no idea what to do with them at first. They were priceless, that he felt deeply, and could not imagine parting with them.
He keeps walking, towards the court where his father gave his life, For the Lombaxes, for him. He glances back, and notices that Rivet had pulled her goggles down as she gazes around. It does not escape his notice that her tails and ears, typically full of defiant poise, now droop like wilted flowers.
“...he fought for Rivet too.”
Once the volume of possessions became significant, it became clear that something needed to be done out of respect. So he gathered them in the right place, and built a sort of shrine to everything that had been lost. He wasn’t very good at art or making things look pretty, but for the first time in his life he tried the hardest he could to do so. It’s a sculpture of composed of fallen street lights and signs, unsalvageable ship parts, and so on. It was a series of shelves, resting spaces for the keepsakes he had found, and it was all located in the center of the very room that he defeated tachyon.
They both said nothing as they walked up to it, though Ratchet hung back as Rivet walked forward to examine the memorial up close. There were many rusted wrenches and cracked helmets from fallen praetorians, but there were also holo-pictures that managed to be preserved. She leans forwards to examine one up close, briefly pulling her goggles up for a clear view. Ratchet doesn’t need to look, he’s already memorized every face that he found, and so he’s familiar with the pair of faces she sees. It’s a mother and her young kit, and much like Rivet they have white fur, pink noses and round faces, but they have green eyes like Ratchet’s.
While Rivet looks around, Ratchet’s gaze fixates on the centerpiece of the room. Alister’s Wrench, welded right into the center pillar of the monument. Maybe the lombaxes would’ve been disapproving of letting an exile be remembered here, but Ratchet didn’t care. Even though his body lay in peace at the Great Clock, he would honor his godfather here too, if only because he didn’t have anyone else to bridge him with the rest of the lombaxes. His gaze drifts towards Rivet, who was still fixated on the pictures. He knows that she would never have that kind of connection.
“If only you were still here Alister… You would’ve liked her. If you didn’t kill each other on sight first.”
He’s sure that if he squints hard enough, he could still see the simmer of the dimensional rift that Tachyon opened to taunt him with in a slimy offer of surrender, into abandoning his friends and the whole galaxy. Even though years have passed, he can still see though it like it was still there, the city towers of the lombaxes silhouetted by a twilight sky. A part of him wishes it was still there, it would’ve made matters so much easier.
“Rivet.”
She looks up and he sees her eyes are red, at some point she had pulled her goggles back up, and she keeps them up as she looks back to him with a face he can’t quite read. He doesn’t pry. He understands.
He holds out his hand, “The watch?”
On the way over, Ratchet let Rivet examine Alister’s pocket watch, certain it’s the closest she’ll ever get to meeting his dad, or Azimuth for that matter. She pulls it from her pocket, and hands it back to Ratchet.
“Are you sure you want to leave it here?”
“It belongs here now, with everyone else. I have a copy of the picture anyways.”
She says nothing further and watches him take the pocket watch by the chain to hang it on the end of Alister’s wrench. He stands there and looks at the duo inside the watch smiling back at him across time from better days. For a moment, he smiles with them, even if it’s fleeting.
He breaks the silence, “Tachyon offered me to go, back to the lombaxes.”
Her head tilts and her voice comes out softly, “So why didn’t you?”
A short, dry laugh comes from him as he recalls and turns to her, “’Lombaxes don’t run.’ I didn’t want to leave the world I cared about behind. Not to Tachyon.”
She stutters at that admission, “Oh… I though that… That you were afraid...”
“You weren’t wrong, I am afraid. If I go to the lombaxes… Do either of us know if it’s actually better there?”
She crosses her arms defensively and becomes slightly terse, “No. But you got the answers I don’t have, you know what happened to your family. Me? I don’t know, and I’ve wondered my entire life. Are you really trying to make me reconsider?”
He shakes his head before looking back at the makeshift memorial, right at Alister’s wrench, “I’m asking you to consider the consequences. Alister didn’t. And he died in vain for it... chasing the past...”
“I don’t want that to happen to you Rivet.”
Her stance softens as she hears the pain in his voice, “Ratchet… I’m not… It’s not about the past. Not for me.”
“All my life I thought I was abandoned. But now I know that’s not true. Which means there’s some couple out there that grieved over a little girl that is alive in well, and scared that a dictator will hurt them all over again. Don’t ya’ think they should know? I do.”
He nods slowly, “Maybe.”
He turns back to the picture, “Could you give me a moment Rivet?”
“Yeah, I’ll…”
She hesitates as she takes another look at the memorial.
“...I’ll be outside.”
She slowly leaves the room, her footsteps fade away as Ratchet focuses on what he needs to say to his father. Ratchet never really believed in higher powers or the afterlife. But for once, in this place, he entertains the idea.
He makes eye contact with Kaden in the photograph, his familiar cocky smile immortalized forever, “I don’t even know if this is where you really died, Tachyon was probably lying about that. I’m not sure that you’re actually dead, or if just on the other side.”
“All I know is that you’re not here.”
Tachyon’s laughter and teases also haunt his ears still, hinting at answers that would have made this so much easier. But Ratchet did realize one important thing, one answer that his father left him that sat secretly for many years for him to find.
“I was always confused why you left the dimensionator behind, in one piece. Now I think I know. You left if for me, to come home. Even if it isn’t really home to me.”
“After all this time, I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing here dad. Sure, I have everything I ever wanted over here, but...”
In the image Kaden’s eyes shine, his ears perked up in attention, listening to his son.
“But what if they need me? I guess that’s what I’m really scared of dad. That I’ll be sucked in and won’t be able to walk away from that responsibility. Not in clear conscience.”
“And what about Rivet? She knew even less then I did, she hasn’t seen another one of us until she met me. Her mind’s been made up, but isn’t she just setting herself up for disappointment?”
Kaden’s wrench is raised, ready to take on the challenge, ushering his son onward.
Ratchet sighs, “Right, she’s gonna go no matter what. I think I’ll go just for her sake.”
His eyes track back to Alister in the Picture, with a big smile he never saw him have in life.
“And for you Alister, I promised you that day at the clock that we’d find them. And I will. Goodbye Alister.”
He closes the Pocket watch, and puts them to rest.
“Goodbye dad.”
He turns and walks away from the sanctuary, returning to the desolate winds outside.