Chapter 15

Tale of a Lost Arm

The gang finally made it back to Rivet's garage around midnight. After the race, all four had to go out to grab a bite, hit some shops, and eventually agreed to come back. Though Clank and Kit were the primary reason why the group decided to end their shopping spree at midnight. Fear the lombaxes would spend all their winnings in one night and cause bankruptcy. Rivet and Ratchet insisted they were being silly, but seeing the bills eventually caused the pair to awkwardly agree with their robot companions. Now finally back in the safety of their home, they came in laughing and poking at each other.

"Okay, that…" Rivet paused with her hands spread out for a dramatic effect. "Was a fun apology, I mean you never even been in this part of my dimension, how'd you know where to find some of this time?" She tore into their to-go bags to fish out some knew specially modified pistols to fit their small hands.

"Eh, I got a knack for knowing where these things are," Ratchet laughed as he popped his fingers and then shoulders. "So, with that apology accepted, can we count this a date now?"

"Hm," Rivet put a finger to her chin, sarcastically thinking. "Yea, I think you got enough brownie points with that apology shopping spree to change my mind about the races. Call it a date. Well done," she laughed and elbowed Ratchet with her robot arm.

He yelped a bit and cut her a sly smirk, "That's not fair, elbowing me with your metal arm. That hurts!"

"Naw, did I hurt the big hero's wittle feelings?" she cupped her cheeks to fake dread. "I'm so sorry!" Rivet slapped her knee and laughed. Suddenly hands grabbed her and hauled her stomach over Ratchets' shoulder as the male lombax smirked at her.

"Aw, did I surprise the big-time rebel?" He laughed as her metal hand whacked at his head to get him to put her down. "Hey hey, only fair!"

"Okay, that is enough you two!" Clank yelled out while getting the groceries messily discarded on the floor. "You two spent a hefty price on this stuff tonight, try not to break them already." He sighed and shook his head in disbelief. "You guys are way too wound up tonight."

Putting Rivet back on her feet, both smirked at each other and walked apart. Rivet stretched her arms, popping her shoulders while heading into her nearby closet.

"Yea, I'm gonna hit the bricks now," she came out shortly after wearing a loose black tank top that fell off her shoulders and silky blue sweats. Ratchet looked at her shoulders and blushed a bit, forcing himself to look away and give a disgruntled laugh.

"Looks like you don't waste any time," Ratchet gave a thumbs up while heading up to the office. Rivet's metal hand caught his wrist, surprising him as he turned to face the female lombax. "What's wrong?"

"Um, why don't… you sleep on the couch?" Rivet awkwardly offered with eyes darting all over the place, unable to meet his own. She released his wrist and rubbed her hands together, trying to get comfortable but was clearly nervous. "I—I wouldn't mind, it's also much cooler in here, you might be more comfortable, plus the bathroom is closer, I could always get you water, and um…"

Ratchet listened to her ramble as he glanced over to the blue couch tucked away in the corner. It was close to Rivet's bed. Odd, he titled his head a bit, he could've sworn the sofa had been further back against the wall than its current location. He looked back to Rivet, who kept listing off the reasons why he should not sleep in the office tonight.

"Sure, see no reason why not," he chuckled which caused the female to raise her ears and tail in surprise at his swift agreement.

"Oh, um," she firmly put crossed her arms and gave a victorious smile. "Glad you finally saw reason!" Rivet laughed as if she had won a long-time battle while running to jump on her bed. The rebel waved goodnight to Clank and Kit who left the room to go next door to enjoy some silence. Patting the spot next to her as she gestured for the male to join her.

Ratchet still didn't change out of his current wear but did discard his shoes and socks. Once on the bed next to her, he sweatdropped a bit nervous. Eyes glancing to Rivet's black shirt falling off her right shoulder, it was a sight that interested him in ways he rather not say. Till the sight of well-healed scars that hinted amputation came into his sight. They were thin and harder to see when compared to his own 'amputation' scar on his chest. But there were so many, like a bunch of scribbles against paper. Rivet noticed where his eyes went and sighed.

"You're… probably thinking about this," she rubbed her robotic shoulder joint.

"Oh, uh… n—no sorry, I was just…" he looked away, tail tucking between his legs nervously. Not wanting to upset the female lombax. Rivet placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder to soothe him.

"It's okay, I wouldn't mind sharing if you… want to hear."

"Only if you want to."

"I think it'd be nice to share, get some of the baggage off my shoulders." Raising her organic arm, she tinkered with the yellow shoulder joint. Some loud clipping sounds came out until steam busted out from between the metal seams and slid off. Rivet held the newly removed prosthetic right arm, watching Ratchet with numbed eyes.

"It was… a lot harder to adjust than you think," she gently put the arm on her nightstand and allowed Ratchet to have a clear view of the place where her organic arm once sat. Even half of her right shoulder was gone. "The damage was a lot worse than I previously thought, went all the way up to the shoulder."

Ratchet slowly reached a hand out to her, shaking a bit, until Rivet caught his wrist. Smiling, she gently removed his glove to expose his yellow fingers and carefully trimmed nails. With nothing to pad down the feeling, the male lombax allowed the female to guide his exposed hand onto the nub of her missing right limb. Shock shot through him the second his fingertips grazed off the bumpy scarred surface of where her flesh received the surgery for amputation. His hair slowly started to rise; his artificial heart began to thrum like a professional boxer slugging his ribcage with precise jabs.

Rivet sadly looked to Ratchet's horrified expression and back to his hand on the spot that still felt spikes of phantom pain. "The metal arm has been a great help, comes in handy a lot, but still nothing like the real thing." She ran her organic hand over Ratchets' shoulder, her grip gentle and tender.

"I'm sorry I've been so overprotective of you lately," she gave a forced chuckle to tone down the rising seriousness of the topic at hand. "Just… the thought of you possibly having to endure this, it… breaks my heart. In ways, I never thought possible. Um…" Rivet started to get shy and tongue-tied, eyes darting away from Ratchet. "I know it sounds stupid, but…"

Ratchet slowly slid his free hand over his chest, feeling the spot his shirt hid well. With his left hand rubbing Rivet's nub, he mirrored the motion with his right hand over his chest. As if internally comparing the two. Guilt started to weigh heavier on him by the second, water threatening to gather at the rim of his eyelid. He turned his head to hide it, pretending to look at a specific spot on the floor as if it were interesting.

"You don't have to apologize for nothing," he whispered out. Rivet slowly slid her one hand over the top of his right that clutched his chest. The surprise came to her when he didn't pull away. "How did you manage to recover? To maintain your confidence?" Ratchet asked below a whisper, ears flattening against his neck. "How… did you manage to stay so strong?"

"It's not like I had much of a choice, you know?" She massaged his hand, smiling sadly at him. "But you want to know, it kind of went like this."

~Flashback: Several Years Back~

Rivets' ship crashed into the soil of Sargasso, scaring all nearby Morts as they rushed to the fallen craft. They noticed before impact the ship was not flying straight and had been dipping and rolling, obviously showing a problem with the pilot. They opened the glass and saw a banged up and burnt Rivet hunched over the flight controls, only her left hand grasping the controls.

"Hey guys," Rivet whispered through a pain-filled smile. They all frantically dragged her out of the cockpit, filling her ears with questions of what happened. But she herself barely had enough sense to stay awake. Her arm… she couldn't feel her right arm, not since the red laser that hailed down over her back at the emperor's tower. All she could remember was fire, the giant warbot staring down at her with those evil red eyes, and fear fueling her urge to run. Barely able to get away, she wondered why the warbot had ceased fire, but that didn't matter, what freaked her out the most while getting back into the ship… was she couldn't feel her arm.

"Dear, you just hang in there and try to stay awake," One Mort motherly reassured her as the whole gang off look-alike fluffy goblins dragged her into their warehouse. Many had to rearrange a table to accommodate Rivet's taller height and laid her down on it. They pulled a sheet over her for good measures as they quickly examined her arm.

As an oxygen mask was placed over Rivet's mouth, another Mort gave out a nervous gasp. The others whipped their heads at him as he moved the Lombax's right arm. The whole limb was limp like jelly, all the bones had been entirely crushed. Pieces could be felt beneath her skin like broken glass. Doubling with her usual white fur being charred black, the arm could be announced dead upon first observation.

"What do we do?" One Mort cried out.

"We gotta do something, but we ain't doctors!" Another argued.

"Calling the nearest doctor," a female Mort yelled while she grabbed a radio.

It didn't take more than fifteen minutes until Rivet heard the door slide open and then closed. The frantic steps running towards the entrance informed the rebel another had come into the room. From the heavy-sounding steps rattling the room, she concluded this was a much larger individual compared to the Morts mouse-like sounds. She tried to raise her head to see, but a big shadowy hand stopped her. It covers her eyes, preventing any attempt to see the stranger.

"This… Lombax… has lost all sense of nerve endings in the arm," came a strange strained sounding female voice. It made Rivet tilt her head in confusion, but the hand that was big enough to cover her whole face kept her pressed against the pillow. "I'm not sure if it can be saved, the damage is too severe."

"Please," the Morts pleaded in sheer distress. "You have to do something!"

The said doctor gruffly sighed and shuffled around a bit, "I'll do my best."

That was all Rivet could hear before she slowly drifted in darkness. Time seemed to fly in only seconds till she was awoken, greeted by the Morts. But immediately she could tell something was wrong, some looked relieved, others appeared to be nervous, but all carried a sense of sadness.

"Rivet, honey, can you hear us?"

"Y—yea, though feels like I got ran over by one of the emperor's intergalactic trucks…" she groaned while trying to sit up, but a weird feeling of imbalance caused her to fall back against the bed. Odd, she tried to move her dominant right hand to hold her up, but it didn't respond. Using her left, she was able to clumsily push herself up into a sitting position. "What… happened while I was out?"

"Rivet," the motherly Mort came as gently as she could, holding Rivet's right shoulder. Which felt off as Mort's hand seemed to slide down a bit like she didn't have enough shoulder to grab onto. "We tried everything, but the only way to save your life… was to…" she sighed and gently looked to Rivet's right arm. "Please, forgive us…"

Slowly following Mort's eyes, numb struck when she saw an empty space where her right arm should've been. Rivet didn't know how to react, just stared for several long seconds before her brain was able to register what they were talking about. No, this could not be, maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her. She tried to clench her right fist, but she felt nothing, not even the muscles in the outer part of her right shoulder contract to make a fist. There was nothing there, not even a stump.

She rammed her left hand over the free space of her right side, the emptiness proving the Morts' words were true. "No… this… I don't understand."

"You would've died if we tried to save the arm, it was dead the second you got here. Nothing could have saved it, even we could see that." Another Mort sadly added in with his head bowed in sheer grief. "The doctor suggested skin transplantation if we wanted to try, but… there was just no way, we didn't have the time. We had to go through with amputation."

Their explanations slowly faded from earshot as Rivet still frantically felt around her shortened shoulder joint, as if the searching would locate her arm and prove they were just pulling a cruel joke. But she knew the Morts would never do that. There was nothing there, the bandages encircling her chest and ribs proved that much. It was done, her arm… was indeed gone. Nothing could bring it back.

"Please, don't apologize or explain, this… wasn't your fault." She answered while letting her left hand sink back down to the bed. Eyes hallow and staring at the sheets. "Thanks for saving my life…" Her ears lowered further as brought her knees up to her chest. "Can I just… have a moment?"

"Of course, sweetie, come get us the second you need anything."

"Thank you."

Many days came rolling back after that grim morning. Once the pain medication wore off, Rivet was nearly bedridden for a week for being in so much pain. After she adjusted to the situation, she slowly willed herself to start doing small things. Like opening the door with her left arm after disengaging the auto-function. But the act was so foreign to her she eventually turned the auto-detection back on.

She sat on the couch in her garage, the lights dimmed to nearly dark, as it had been for gosh knows how long. Tools lay scattered all over the place with several arm-shaped contraptions discarded on the workbench. All rejected. Rivet's attire was a tank top and loose black sweatpants. She couldn't stomach wearing a shirt with sleeves, seeing the right sleeve socket hang there loosely from having no arm to fit through made her nauseous. Oil and food-stained all over her clothes as she sat on the couch, caring very little about her messy and unkempt appearance. Not like she had to present herself to anyone, only the Morts saw her on a regular basis.

Rivet tried to reach for the remote to turn on the TV, but she gritted her teeth when seeing the device was on the right side. Moving her entire body so her left arm had room to snatch it up, she flicked the computers on to live SARGASSO NEWS to see what was going on the outside. She didn't really have a clue how many days she's been cooped up in the garage, probably weeks… months maybe? Not that she cared now.

It was the same, just some muggings here and there, rain in the forecast, nothing worth excitement. Rivet grunted and offlined the computers before getting up at the sound of her door getting knocked on. A Mort was standing on the other side, her ears dipped in sadness as she held a plate of cookies in her hand.

"Sweetheart, you haven't been out of this garage in almost a month…" the motherly brown-furred Mort tried her best to comfort the one-armed Lombax. "Trudy misses you, we all do, is there not anything we can do?"

Thankfully taking the plate, Rivet stepped aside to let Mort in. "S—sorry about worrying everyone, there's just a lot on my mind." She returned to the couch to begin picking at the cookies. Chocolate chip, her favorite, she smiled a little bit when the chocolate flavors exploded her taste buds with much-needed sweetness. "Mmm, these are good, thank you."

"Rivet, what have you been doing in here for so many days?"

"Just, Okay fine," she put the plate down and got up, annoyance bristling her fur as she went over to a nearby cabinet. Yanked the top drawer open and pulled out three different metal prosthetics folded together to fit in her one fist. "I've been slaving away day and night to fix these damn things, but none of it works!" She threw the arms down, even kicking one for good measure, and stomped over to the table to sit down. Needing to be away from the Mort as she pressed her face into her one good palm.

"Rivet…"

"How can I do the stuff I once did without my arm?" She slammed her fist onto the table. "We have a galaxy to win back and this happened, how!" Rivet punched the wooden surface again, cracking it with the second round. "It's like the galaxy just loves watching me suffer, I always lose against the Emperor, now his damn warbot took my arm, it's a guaranteed end to my cause!"

"Rivet," The Mort rushed over and caught her left shoulder. "Dear, listen to me, you are more than this injury. Don't let it stop you."

"But this injury IS capable of stopping me if I can't fix any of the arms. None of them can respond to my brains' signals through my own nervous system. How can I fight with one arm?"

"Don't give up, you never quit a project. This one is more important than ever, don't quit. You can't afford to."

Feeling her anger begin to dissipate, the female lombax looked towards the Mort and finally found the will to smile.

"You're right, I'm sorry… just…" she quickly got up and went to retrieve one of the discarded arms. "Yea, I need to keep trying. Might take a while and knowing me and my short patience. Hopefully won't burn out."

"You won't, and if you do, we'll be right here to help ya!" The Mort smiled as she gestured Rivet to follow her out the door. "We're having dinner, so come on, time to have a break and leave the house for a bit."

Smiling a little with renewed vigor, Rivet followed her adopted parent out the door to join them for a much-needed family dinner.

~End of Flashback~

"So, I dedicated myself to two months of physical therapy to re-strengthen the muscles I had left in my right side. Focused on fixing the arm, then after many trial and error, finally did it!" Rivet smiled at Ratchet as he continued to mull over her injuries.

Ratchet was at a loss for words, unable to respond to the story just told. "You never told me this before, how painful it was."

"Well… I… noticed you were having a hard time," she purposefully left Clank's involvement out in case the male lombax had coached his friend not to say anything. "So, thought maybe telling you about my situation would help you, I don't know, open up a bit? Not feel so trapped."

Immediately Ratchet pulled away, much to Rivets' surprise, as the male lombax kept his back to her. Hand to his chest, he began to stutter. "Open up? What do you mean? Trapped?" his hand clenched his chest so hard it almost tore the shirt fabric.

"I—I just noticed you seemed a bit stressed and tired all the time, nothing more," she quickly reached her good hand out and caught his shoulder. The contact seemed to loosen his grip a bit, but not much. "I wasn't trying to scare you or anything…" Then her eyes sadly looked to the ground. "Ratchet, I don't like seeing you in this much pain…" she wrapped her one arm around his waist and pulled him towards her till she was spooning him. "Please talk to me."

Ratchet felt her one arm anchored around his waist; a strong grip that refused to let go. Emotionally to. Everything that has been happening began to hit him all at once. With a tear threatening to spill, he looked back to Rivet's amputation wounds. They were all nicely healed, almost like she just wasn't born with an arm. But the story of her trumping the obstacles brought a strange new emotion into his mind. One of weight and power, he wasn't sure how to describe it.

"Rivet…" he slowly turned around to face her, his hand drifting towards the hem of his collar. Starting to pull it down, a small beeping sound rang in his ears. It jarred him out of his trance, and he stepped away from the female lombax, one finger raised in the air. "S—sorry one second, got a call, I'll be right back."

Sighing in frustration, Rivet put her metal arm back on. "Alright, just hurry up, please. We're having a moment here, and the mushy stuff is not something I'm really into."

"Promise, five minutes."

"I'll be keeping track this time."

Laughing to himself, he darted out of the room and into the hallway. Pulling out the tracker, he saw a small yellow blip appear on the radar. His target was on the move, and judging from the location on the map, he was moving through the Former Nefarious city? Ratchet felt the familiar surge of anger creep upon him. No, he can't do this now, his eyes darted back to Rivet who was lying down in her bed. His hand crept to his chest, then something crossed his mind.

'If you don't cooperate… she'll pay the price.' Came his memory of that gosh-awful static-filled voice.

Anger exploded in his mind, tears beginning to pour as his mind flashed intrusive thoughts. All what-if scenarios involving Rivet covered in injuries and missing another limb. The thought did something, almost as if he heard a metaphorical snap crack across his brain. Ratchet reared up and rammed his fist into the wall, making a giant hole. Pain scorched his knuckles like a hot iron, but this didn't halt his growing rage. His teeth bit down so hard he swore he felt blood trickle from his tongue.

His pupils shifted to savage slits as he quickly came back into the room. Rivet noticed his arrival and gave a baffled head tilt.

"Finish your talk on the phone?"

Ratchet quickly swapped his killer-face with a happy mascot like one. "Oh, it was just a wrong number," he laughed and removed his jacket and got into his boxer shorts. "Yea, I'm a little tired, let's talk about this tomorrow."

Rivet frowned but could only sigh as she reached over and flicked off the light. Her ear twitched as she felt the familiar urge to reach out to Ratchet. "Hey um, Ratch…"

"Yea?" he called over from the couch, nails digging into the pillow as he struggled to contain his rage.

"Thank you for coming, I really did miss you…" she whispered before closing her eyes and falling to sleep. A small smile creaking across her cheeks.

Tears poured down Ratchet's cheeks as his lips pulled back, showing his fangs. His thoughts growing darker and darker the longer Rivet's words hurt him. He couldn't deny the feelings, he loved her… and all of this was getting in the way. He had enough.

"I missed you too," he whispered just before Rivet went to sleep. He didn't even bother to wipe his tears as he weakly looked over to the female lombax.

'Forgive me…' his mind weakly thought as he dragged himself from the bed and got his gear. Sneaking out the back and vanishing into the night.