Summary: response to the random pairing generatior prompt Ratchet/Jazz/asleep. "Gleaming sensuously even in the harsh lighting of the military warehouse-turned-repair bay a human might think he was asleep." movieverse.

Warnings: none

Belief

Repaired, restored, polished and gleaming sensuously even in the harsh lighting of the military warehouse-turned-repair bay a human might think he was asleep.

Ratchet couldn't.

He would have liked to. To fool himself for even a second that any moment Jazz would online his optics and ask how he got there in some frustratingly impertinent way. Then Ratchet could snarl and berate him for taking on Megatron alone. Then he would list off all the new human inventions that were now oh-so-humiliating options for reformatting if Jazz was ever that stupid again. And then Jazz would ask "But what would you do without me?" and make a perfectly legitimate question regarding his duties and friendship more than slightly lewd and Ratchet would hit him for it.

It wasn't going to happen. Not ever again. They would all have to live without Jazz.

Shuttering his optics, he placed one hand on the shell's chest, over the empty spark chamber.

Ratchet himself had seen too much death and destruction to take comfort in faith. He himself no longer believed in Primus -- in his more over-energized moments, he thought he could make a good case for the existence of Unicron, but no longer for the lighter god -- but he still said the prayer, wishing the dead soul a safe journey to the Matrix and an eternity in their god's light. Not for himself or for his own comfort, and not for Jazz's. Jazz was no longer there to hear the prayer. But this too was a medic's duty.

"I'm sorry," were his last words to Jazz's shell -- the ones he believed, the ones he hoped Jazz, where ever he was now, could hear. I'm sorry I couldn't save you.

fini