The reader and Ratchet were sparkmates. When Cemetery Wind found the Autobots, Ratchet held them off so the others could escape. After seeing how Leasfoot was taken down, the Autobots believe Ratchet is gone.

Finally the Autobots aren't targets and Earth isn't in danger (for now). Unfortunately this gives (Y/D) spends her day thinking about Ratchet and missing him to the point she believes she's Imagining he's alive, but he's alive, and Ratchet has to prove it to her.

(Y/D) POV
I don't know what I dislike more; Cemetery Wind hunting us, the TRF hunting is — but we were hiding with Cade in a junkyard, or how there's more time to think about other things like my sparkmate, Ratchet. I tried to get assigned lots of tasks to keep busy, but you could say Prime has us on a little vacation while talking to world leaders about how Cybertron is now part of Earth before we begin rebuilding our home.

I sit by a tree on a hill, watching the sunset. Something Ratchet and I did every day while hiding from the humans. We would probably have fine this more often if we could have gotten away from the city while working with the humans.
It's hard not to think about that might.

Flashback
"It's a nice sunset tonight," Ratchet comments as we all lay on the ground, watching the sunset. We finally got the others to see what Ratchet and I love about Earth's sunsets.
It's quiet for a good ten minutes until I hear the sound of several engines.
"Do you guys hear that?" I ask, worried.
We all stand up and scan the surrounding area.
"Scrap, they found us!" Hound exclaims.
"They see us and will follow us," Ratchet points out, "go, I will hold them off."
"Then I'm staying with you!" I insist.
"No, you're going with the others," Ratchet demands, before looking at the others, "you four promise me you'll protect (Y/D), PROMISE ME!'
They all promised before trying to get me to leave. Hound had to carry me away.
"RATCHET!" I scream while trying to break free from Hound's hold, but he's too strong for me. I stare at my sparkmate until my optics are blurry with tears.
End of flashback

Crosshairs POV
I've watched (Y/D) the last few days. It's clear with how quiet things are; with no distraction, she's thinking about Ratchet. Even though there were five of us, I don't think we could have fought them off. More of us would have been killed. I'm not telling (Y/D) this; not something to tell cybertronians who've lost their sparkmate.
"I hate there's not much we can do to help her," Bumblebee says.
"No one likes this, Bee. Come on, let's see if we can cheer her up a little."

We both hate how she's crying as we get closer to her. We sit on either side of her and hug her.
"Shh, it's ok, you know Ratchet wouldn't want you spending every waking minute crying," Bee tells her.
"I-I dream about him a-and how h-he suffered the s-sane f-fate.."
(Y/D) couldn't finish before crying. I hug her close to me, receiving a displeased look from Bee. I worry if she's feeling pain in her spark. It's already hard enough to comfort her, but there's nothing we can do about spark pain from losing a sparkmate.
It takes ten minutes before (Y/D) to calm down.

We go to a building that's basically our home on Earth. We're so used to finding places to sleep than sleeping on rusted cars; it's been an adjustment having a shelter that is like a Cybertronian home. We each have a room. There's a living room with a 70" T.V. though that's more like a 20' to us, we deal with it. Hound was able to make a remote for our hands. Our Energon supply — both real and synthetic — is kept in the makeshift medbay. We decided not to bother with an Energon bar or a room like the humans' kitchen. Amazingly, we found enough material to build this home.

I have (Y/D) sit on the couch — something else I still can't believe we had made in our size— and get a couple of Energon cubes before sitting next to her and turning on the T.V. I'm happy (Y/D) took the Energon; I worry she's been neglecting herself.
"You know Ratchet wouldn't like seeing you like this. I know it's hard, but try for Ratchet."
(Y/D) hugs me and cries.
What else can I do?

After the past few hours and how upset she is, I made sure (Y/D) went into recharge. I worry she's going to have nightmares about the night we left Ratchet or Ratchet dying the way Ledfoot did. The problem is she'd flip if I sleep with her.
Please let her sleep all night, Primus.