Rest in Peace, Optimus...

Ratchet was in no mood. He had said goodbye to his closest friend, and now he wanted to lay in his berth. He wished that nothing would happen.

But then a SpaceBridge opened.

And who would step out but Rafael.

Ratchet stared at Raf for several long moments. The human was fine, taking in Cybertron's toxic air as if it was Earth's. The medic slowly stood, expecting to clean up splattered organs and pieces of human boy-child. But Raf was staring at him with bright blue eyes. Raf had brown eyes on Earth.

"Rafael?" He frowned at the child. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought I'd visit."

The GroundBridge closed and Ratchet sighed in relief. Had Miko assumed she was some kind of super-human...

Then Ratchet's attention turned back to Raf. Raf plus Cybertron's air does not equal explosive human?

"Why are you not exploding?"

"Oh, that. Well, I cut my finger the other day..." Raf held up a Band-Aid and Ratchet immediately shied away from the disgusting thing, but then he saw what had required his attention.

Purple blood.

Red plus blue equals purple.

Ratchet frowned. "Looks like...Energon."

"And blood," Raf finished as he looked at the Band-Aid. "So I did some research."

This is why he liked Raf, Ratchet thought as he settled on his berth. Raf sat on the floor.

"You lost a sparkling. Several thousand years later, I'm found in a field."

Ratchet frowned. While Raf might have been able to connect the dots, Ratchet could not. He just stared at the little human. First, he runs into Ratchet's MedBay. Then he doesn't explode. Now he has purple blood and is somehow connected to Glyph?

Raf pulled a newspaper article out of his backpack and held it up for Ratchet to scan. The picture was circled in red, so Ratchet focused on that. It was a picture of a Cybertronian pod with the phrase Protect and Serve, the Autobot motto at the time, etched into it by someone's frantic servo.

Ratchet's frantic servo.

He looked at Raf and his optics dimmed. "All this time, I mourned a child that I thought I had lost, and he was under my care."

Raf smiled slightly at him, blinking when Ratchet scooped him up.

"It all makes sense. Your Amalgami coding must have been activated and you took on the appearance of the top predator: Humans." Ratchet held him against his chest. "You can stay here...and learn how to use your coding..."

Raf looked up at him. "Ratchet, you'd know I'd love to. But I have my own family now, still, remember? I can't just leave them, but I can stop by every so often..."

Ratchet nodded a bit, sighing as he set the human child back down. "I'll open a Bridge for you to go back home...how did you even get here?"

Raf tapped his head as he walked to the spiralling vortex that was to take him back to Earth. "My sire taught me how to build a SpaceBridge from scratch."

Ratchet watched him, smiling weakly as the Bridge closed, and while he found out his son had not perished, he felt emptier than he had before.

He walked to the window and watched the Star Saber where it was buried in the ground in front of the Well. Red and blue ribbons fluttered slightly and Ratchet's spark pulsed for his leader, for his son, for his family.

"Primus why!?" He shoved away from the window and went back to his desk to break something and rebuild it.

Time heals all wounds, Ratchet...

He ignored the whispers, but some part of him was soothed by Optimus' favorite phrase.

This was kinda rushed because, for one, I'm sick, and might be staying home tomorrow DX Also, I feel like I'm lagging in the story-posting department. I'm sorry there's been nothing new for a long time, but I've been busy sneezing my brain cells out and popping a capsule every 4 hours. (I got the whole deal, by the way: Runny/stuffy nose, sore throat, upset tummy, headaches... So cyber-hugs is a must 3)

Hope you like it and hope it satisfies you, Lazy Chipmunk.

Still interested in story ideas!