"Hello, Ratchet. It's the middle of the night. We closed some time ago, is everything alright?"
The robotic guardsman outside the Museum of Intergalactic History addresses the hero before him. He's drenched with the rain pouring around them, and Clank isn't with him. It's a bit worrying not to see them together, and Ratchet certainly looks like there's a lot on his mind.
"Yeah, everything's fine. Just wanted to visit some exhibits. Alone, if that's okay."
"But I can't let in guests after hours. You understand, with the Dimensionator theft and all.."
"I just want to see the statues, and I don't want people to gawk and pity me."
The bot doesn't have to press further to know which statues he's looking for. After a quick scan to check that it's not a stranger in a hologuise, he opens the door, and Ratchet shuffles inside.
"There's a grief that can't be spoken,
There's a pain goes on and on."
His feet drag a bit, and the water in his boots makes a trail behind him. He just wants to visit them, even if Clank believes it will only upset him more. He takes the long way around, wasting as much time as he can on his distractions.
"Empty chairs at empty tables,
now my friends are dead and gone."
As he makes his way to his first destination, his first loss, he grips a familiar pocket watch in his hand.
"Here they talked of revolution, here it was they lit the flame."
Entering the Lombax Wing, Ratchet ignores the statue of him and Clank, as well as the display that once housed his race's greatest achievement. He turns toward the late Alister Azimuth, opening the watch to glance at the photo inside. He died a hero, but never should have died.
"Here they sang about tomorrow, and tomorrow never came."
Ratchet wishes with every fiber of his being that they had more time. He misses the stories, the hoverboot lessons, that genuine, old man laugh that took twenty years off his face. He barely knew the man who grew up with his father, and will never know his parents.
"From the table in the corner, they could see a world reborn,
and they rose with voices ringing."
Ratchet could still remember the sheer anger, desperation, and madness in that voice. The explosion that ended it all. His final wish for him to take care of himself.
"And I can hear them now.
The very words that they had sung became their last communion."
Ratchet moves on, closing the watch before he can allow his mind to dwell any more on what could have been.
"On the lonely barricades, at dawn…"
Only one more visit to make. It's getting late, and he doesn't want to worry Clank or Tal too much.
"Oh my friends, my friends, forgive me…
That I live and you are gone."
He was right there. He reached out to them after that damn bubble popped. He wasn't close enough.
"There's a grief that can't be spoken, there's a pain goes on and on."
Cronk and Zephyr's exhibit stands before him. He should have been close enough. The Apogee Space Station is so quiet now. There's no robotic bickering, no soap operas playing, no scolding from Tal to be careful because she's already repaired them once that day. Clank and I are all she's got left.
"Phantom faces at the window, phantom shadows on the floor.
Empty chairs at empty tables, now my friends will meet no more."
He grits his teeth, and that knot of guilt rises in his gut again. He sits on the bench, because it's painful, nauseating, and it takes everything he's got not to cry or scream. I should have been able to stop the Progs, save them. They should all still be alive.
"Oh my friends, my friends…
Don't ask me what your sacrifice was for."
Instead, he could only watch as he slipped into deep space through the hole in the window. He saw the flames engulf the ship. He heard the explosion. He saw them die.
"Empty chairs at empty tables,"
He failed them. Alister, Cronk, and Zephyr. They're gone, and as Ratchet lies on the bench, staring into the ceiling, he can't help but blame himself for it all.
The guardsman from before watches over the young hero undetected, wishing that he could lift the weight from that tired soul.
"Now my friends will sing
No more."