A/N: So I've been mulling over this thought for a while. And I have decided to write this prequel to A Spark of Hope. The Ratchet I present there ended up having a unique backstory for the character I thought. So I figured, what the heck? Why not give it a shot!

Be gentle, this is my first origin story. You really don't have to have read what I've written of "A Spark of Hope" so far to follow as this is literal centuries before that. But if you like it, hopefully you'll want to check it out as well!

Also, the caste system will work a BIT differently since I'm adding younglings to this. Just a heads up. Namely, how one becomes part of a caste or can become part of one is changed.

And a big thanks to my beta, sidekicks-anonymous, for her work on this chapter!

SOME WARNINGS: The prologue will contain child abuse, violence, and VERY dark themes, as well as involve a Juvenile Detention center. And it will be talked about throughout the fic. This is just fair warning because Ratchet's beginnings are not pretty.

PAIRINGS: OCxOC (Siren and Mixplate), IronhidexChromia

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Transformers, that's Hasbro/Takara. I do however make claim to the OCs in this fic.

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PROLOGUE
A Broken Childhood

Ratchet could taste his own Energon as he hit the ground.

He was six vorns old, barely at the age where a youngling started proper schooling. But unlike most, the bullies he was facing now weren't at school. They were at home. The sharp kick he got next rattled his body. He let out a sharp cry. His sire didn't care though; he never seemed to care. Between the high grade and his temper, Stonefist was a brutal mech when angry.

Cold blue optics bore down on him, and a large black hand reached down to haul the white youngling off the ground. Carrier didn't help either as she stood in the kitchen in their small, disgustingly dirty apartment, treating herself to her own batch of high grade. Ratchet's only comfort was that he could hear his three-vorn-old brother, First Aid, screaming for their sire to stop. He wished Aid wouldn't, though, Ratchet knew if he kept that up, he'd be next.

"Aid, don't!" Ratchet spat out. "Stop!"

Stonefist smirked, almost in an amused manner as he turned to the younger of his creations. Ratchet felt himself drop to the ground, feeling powerless. "You know what your fragged-up excuse for a brother did, don't you? He stole from me!" He snapped. "Stealing is illegal!"

"I was hungry! It was just one Energon Cube, sire!" Ratchet shouted back, trying to take the attention off of First Aid.

Stonefist turned his head, a scowl on his face. "You know we can't afford for you to NOT ration! What do I look like you pit spawn? A credit factory!? Do you want your carrier to starve!?" Ratchet flinched at the amount of anger in his sire's voice. "You need to learn some slagging principals! I didn't bring you into this world for you to take advantage of me!"

Ratchet backed up slowly as his sire again turned on him. His optics welling up with coolant, and fear. But at least, he figured, little First Aid would be spared a beating today. "Teacher says I'm underfed, she's been worried about me." Ratchet tried to argue, his voice becoming smaller and more fearful. "Please sire, just a little more. Aid's barely-"

SLAP!

Ratchet cried in pain as his head hit the ground, sharp and hard. His processor was on the fritz, and he could hear his carrier frantically chastising his sire in response. "You fragging idiot! Don't kill them! Do you want to go to the stockade!? This is the fifth time this vorn we're going to have to take him in to the hospital if he hit that hard enough!" Her voice was shrill and angry.

Never once did she express concern for the fact that her youngling is laying on the floor, with Energon flowing out of a helm wound. Only concern for the trouble that they could get in if someone found out.

Eventually, they abandoned them.

It took Ratchet and First Aid two weeks to come to this conclusion. It wasn't the first time they'd disappeared for several days, so at first, they thought it was no different. That was, until Enforcers came to their door, looking for their sire in regards to a murder. At that point, Ratchet knew he was gone - and never coming back. First Aid was too young to really know the full ramifications of what happened, but at eight vorns old now, Ratchet did.

Luckily, the first foster home they were placed in ended up being a good one. Ratchet, however, was having none of it. People had already labeled him an angry youngling, and who could blame him? He'd spent the past eight years being treated like garbage. Suffering daily beatings, barely getting enough Energon to keep his systems working, sleeping on the floor... He hated it. He hated it, and what's more, he hated his creators for ever having him in the first place.

In his first foster home, he acted out this anger in a violent manner. At first, the foster creators were understanding, trying to help him quell it. The first few things he broke, he was sent to his berth room for. But as he became increasingly angry, and violent, his foster creators became overwhelmed. Eventually, after three months in the home, they called his case worker and asked that she take Ratchet to a different home.

First Aid didn't want to leave him, and Ratchet didn't want to leave First Aid. But with the harsh Caste System in place, his social worker was extremely cold on the subject. First Aid's getting adopted by the couple, she told Ratchet. They're part of a high caste, and if they took his brother away, Ratchet would have ruined his chances at a better life. Ratchet cries coolant again, uncontrollable this time.

First Aid was the only family he ever cared about. And now, he wouldn't see him again. Not until they were adults, at least, but that last part was something he had no way of knowing.

First Aid was lucky, he figured. Most people in the high caste's wouldn't dare take in someone from the slums. But in hindsight, Ratchet would think back on that home, and realize he was the one who blew it. Unlike the other high caste members, they were good, kind people. People that would give First Aid a life that Ratchet could have only dreamed about.

As for Ratchet, he'd spend the next 4 vorns bouncing from one home to the other. Most of them in the poor sectors, and rarely as nice as the one that he'd been first sent to.

He picked every fight he could get himself into. Short kids, big kids, violent ones, timid ones. Ratchet's anger only grew the more homes he was kicked out of. But he didn't fully understand the consequences of what he was doing, not until he got into a fight with the biological mechling of a high caste family he'd been placed with.

He'd never been so scared in his life.

The court had found giving a sentenc very easy. Ratchet had beaten the mechling above his caste- he hadn't hurt him bad, but he was still asking for it. Caste meant everything, and Ratchet had not only blown it with that family, but with any hope of another family. Because the sentencing itself is very clear: Ratchet was to spend his last six vorns as a youngling in a Youth Detention Facility. Never to be allowed out on early parole, and his rights to be adopted terminated until he is eighteen vorns.

Ratchet knew his chances of being adopted as an adult were beyond slim and none.

The facility was even more brutal than the home Ratchet was created in. The younglings were bigger, crueler, and even more violent than Ratchet. On his first night there, Ratchet spent his night in the medical bay because his "cell-mate" had not taken too kindly to him. It's on that same night that Ratchet decided this was not the life he wanted to live when he got out of the facility.

The thought of becoming as violent and territorial as the older younglings petrified him. He wanted to be a good mech, a mech that people would like. One that would ultimately have friends, something that he was sorely missing in life.

So he spent the next six vorns there keeping his helm down. He watched day in and day out as younglings came and went. For some, "going" meant having their offlined protoform taken back to wherever they came from, social services or otherwise.

When he was fourteen vorns old, he was forced to watch as two inmates beat the ten-vorn old in the cell across from him to death. He never found out exactly what the child did, the stories all differed depending on who he asked. But the true fear came to him when a social worker and a coroner arrived. "We should figure out what do with the remains of this one. His frame seems healthy." The coroner noted darkly.

"Well, that's up to the council to decide. But he IS healthy." The social worker quipped. "Personally, given he was the youngling of a miner... And he has no kin, fictive or otherwise, hey should strip him down for spare parts. I'm sure someone of more value to society could use them."

Ratchet trembled quietly in his cell, fear running into overdrive. Would this be how they discussed his remains if he died in this place? Did younglings without families really mean so little to the council that they would cannibalize what was left of them? He felt powerless to stop it, and even more determined to make it out of there alive and turn his life around. He had to...he didn't want to become a violent criminal, and he didn't want to be spare parts, either.

In that moment, all Ratchet can do though is pray to Primus he will get through it.

He made it to eighteen vorns.

When he was released from the Juvenile Detention Center, he was no longer a ward of Iacon. He was now on his own, a fully grown mech who has received a hand-me-down adult frame, installed by a prison medic. He's even more scared when they lead him outside the gates, and dump everything he owned in two large "garbage bags" on either side of him.

Unlike other younglings released on that day, he had no loved one waiting for him. He didn't even have the by-now-familiar face of his social worker there to greet him. Now that he was an adult, the council deemed he was his own problem, and it was his job to find himself a place to belong - and a caste to belong in. The thought terrified him, but none-the-less, he knew he had to do it.

He walked for some time, not yet having gotten his license for an alt mode. People stared at him on the streets of Iacon as he simply searched for somewhere, anywhere to rest his head for a while. Finally he found a deserted building, deep in the slums, where it appeared that no one was currently staying. He entered, ignoring the notice of eviction. There's still some furniture inside, which meant he couldn't stay there long, but for now desperate times called for desperate measures.

So, just for the night, he curled up into a ball on top of a dirty, dust-covered berth. And as his optics offlined, he couldn't help but wonder, and worry, what would become of him.

...

A/N: I decided to make the prologue snapshots of his life pre-release because the story really begins from here. So it seemed like it would be weird to spend chapters and chapters getting to the actual plot of the story. I hope you enjoyed this first chapter!