Abyss
Darkness.
Heavy– thick. Full of empty promises of pain and ecstacy. Full of the knowledge that he desired, and yet feared.
Light. Patterns.
His eyes were open. The light was dancing around him in a multicolored pattern that he almost recognized. He'd seen it before, hadn't he?
Many times, the answer surfaced within moments. He was safe– or relatively so while the light held him. Once the it had finished, everything would be all right. Pain would be gone. The world would be upside right once more.
Sound.
He was awake. The soft hum of a machine soothed him, while the rise and fall of voices punctuated the intensity of the hum.
Patterns.
Had he forgotten how to understand the language again? How to speak it? Was he alone again in his own mind, forced to listen to things he couldn't possibly understand?
He couldn't bear that loneliness again.
The hunger for contact, the longing to know he wasn't abandoned in this abyss between who he once was and who he had become– that uncertainty would break him more certainly than the realization that he was blinded, deafened, and unable to move as nimbly as he had in days gone by.
"... stress fracture is healing, as are the muscular tears. It is his mental state that I worry about." The voice was nearby, but muffled by the light.
"And it is your mind that I worry about, old friend. You should be resting."
"I'm fine, Optimus." Ratchet's voice was soft, but still could be heard above the light. "I only need a little more time."
"Out of all of us, you took his death most personally. I have seen it eating at you. His sacrifice prevented a great many deaths, but sometimes you cannot save them all."
"I understand that I can't." Ratchet replied, sounding very weary, as though he'd already argued this before. "However, if there's even the slightest hope–"
"At what cost? You said yourself that there is a more than likely possibility that this is just the remnants of memory. A ghost in the system."
"That..." Ratchet sighed, "Remains to be seen. Humans do not have the technology to find this sort of change."
"Do we?"
There was a long silence, broken only by the fading hum of the scanner.
"Ratchet. Do not destroy yourself. You should rest soon." The last sounded more like an order than a suggestion. "Simmons is bringing the woman here tomorrow. Perhaps she will be able to answer a few questions."
The woman?
"Considering that she probably witnessed something, I should think so." There were a few sounds that he couldn't quite hear, couldn't quite understand. "See the pattern of scarring on the hand? It's familiar, but nothing like anything I've seen in an organic creature before now."
"Familiar?" The voice started to fade into the distance again, as his eyes closed. "Can you explain..."
The world fell into the quiet darkness once more.