To Have a Spark
A Prime and His Way
"Do not regret what you have done."
-Miyamoto Musashi; The Book of Five Rings
Renalt had slept a dreamless sleep; the first in several months. It was the kind of sleep he preferred, over the nightmare-ridden things he used to call nights in the past year. He likened it to his own brief shard of oblivion, the quiet nothings over the harsh realities of the world around him. He woke, wishing he hadn't woken up at all. He wanted that oblivion again, but he knew it wasn't to come. Not while he was here, wherever 'here' was.
He wouldn't even think of the strange dreams he'd had the night before either. They were disturbing things, with characters his own imagination couldn't begin to come up with. Giant robots, horrific storms that were somehow plausible weather conditions and utterly insane impossibilities out of Alice's Wonderland.
None of it made sense. 'What did, any more?' he reflected.
The dark-skinned human sat up, noting his immediate condition first. He felt fine, a little hungry. His bed wasn't a medical gurney. Rather, it seemed to be a slab of...something. Metal, plastic and something not quite soft, yet not rigid either. And whatever this was, it was huge. Renalt crawled, exploring what he'd been lying on during sleep. It was a bed, to be sure, but... He shook his head. No human needed something of this size.
Creeping to an edge, Renalt took a breath and slid over the edge. The drop was a bit harrowing – making Renalt that much more thankful that he had learned how to take a fall, how to take a roll correctly. Once down on the floor, the boy used what navigation techniques he knew to discern where he was. In all honesty, the whole place smelled more like an auto shop than it did a hospital ward. And you should know, shouldn't you? A little voice sneered in the back of his head. He ignored it, found a wall and pressed on. Trailing was the best option when a cane wasn't present, so Renalt took to it. The room he circled was, frankly, enormous. Sparse, but enormous. It had what was apparently a bed, and something that was either a desk or a shelf. Yet it was all to proportions that spat in the face of logic.
He found the door to this room open and ventured beyond its boundaries.
Renalt's bare feet made almost no sound against the concrete floor as he proceeded down the passage he found himself in. It didn't have the acoustics of a typical room, but those that denoted a hallway or corridor.
It wasn't long before voices began to filter through the air. He listened, trailing closer. It was nearly an instinct to first go toward a sound than away from it and it wasn't long at all before the corridor opened out into a room more massive than the apparent bedroom had been. Voices greeted him, along with another sound. It was a sound like no other, yet completely ordinary. Footsteps. Unlike human footsteps though, these thundered as they landed. Sounds like that only came from truly titanic feet. Yet again, Renalt couldn't think of any logic behind it all. So he listened.
"...responsibility is my own, Ratchet. I made the decision and I must follow through with it," a voice echoed. It sounded hollow, like it came through a communications device. The one apparently called "Ratchet" answered, none too happily.
"And what about my duty as a medic, Optimus? How many lines are you going to cross? If we fail here, you heard Agent Fowler!"
Silence.
"I thought so. If you won't come clean, I will. We're Autobots, for Primus' sake."
The communications device clicked, shutting off as Renalt deduced. He took a few breaths, finding them a little shaky. Who wouldn't be nervous, hearing the sound of footsteps large enough to essentially squash someone? Renalt screwed up his courage and squared off from the wall. He was in no-man's-land now – cane-less, and now, without a wall to guide him. The words he'd heard drifted through his mind. Renalt decided to take his exploration a step further.
"Who's Ratchet? Or rather, which one?" His voice echoed a little, giving him a vague idea of the size of this room.
"I am Ratchet. Who – Oh, it's you. You're awake," the medic responded in a friendly, if detached, manner. He turned from his work station and walked toward the human. Close enough, the Autobot went down on a knee. Ratchet noted the little "-isms", observing the human before him. The youth didn't seek anything out by sight, naturally. Yet there were little quirks – he didn't quite turn his head to face who he spoke to. Rather, when his head turned, it was as if he was aiming his ears at a sound. His hands fidgeted a little, as if he expected that he should be holding something.
"What are you moving in? Is that a...?" asked Renalt.
"Machine? No. I'm not a machine and I'm not human either."
"Don't pull my leg, Sightie. Just because I can't see doesn't mean I'm an idiot," Renalt rolled his eyes. He didn't like being patronised. "Above" him, Ratchet ground his dentae, calming a usual come-back filled with snark. He had to remember...this wasn't the same encounter with Jack, Miko and Rafael.
"I'm not pulling anyone's leg. And why would you try to insult my optics? Now, what can I do to prove that I am not trying to play a joke on you?"
"I hope you're not patronising me."
"Why would I? You are an intelligent life-form."
"I think you've been on the sci-fi a little hard, Bruv," Renalt shook his head. He liked science fiction as much as any nerdy fan, but this was beginning to sound ridiculous.
"I won't dignify that with a response. I will ask again...Renalt, is it?...How will you accept that I'm telling you the truth? I am not human – not even organic, Primus forbid."
"I don't know. If your eyes didn't work, what would you do?"
The question took Ratchet by surprise. Neatly as a frigate "crossing the T", the medic found himself unable to answer a reasonable question. For a moment, the two remained in silence, unsure of what to make of the other. That moment ended when Ratchet gave a huff and his left hand swept up Renalt like a doll. Renalt squirmed at first, utterly at a loss. He settled down upon feeling a finger wrap securely around him.
"...What are you, if not an animatronic? Or...some experimental robot?"
"I am an Autobot."
Renalt's expression became nearly deadpan. "You're not messing with me, are you?"
"I'm not 'messing with' anyone. Now, you'll be coming with me so I can perform a diagnostic on you. After that stupid move you pulled..."
Renalt's expression hardened. "I have a right to - "
"Do what? Throw away your existence? I'm a medic. I save lives, not end them. Just what were you thinking up there, anyway?" Ratchet's low growl cut him off. He didn't let Renalt go when he reached his work station. Rather, the medic scanned the human, handling his equipment one tool at a time.
"I made an oath," Curtly.
"Yes, you did. And he's here, so you don't need to go through with that outlandish oath of yours."
"Did you do that to him? Turn him into...whatever it was?"
"No, I didn't. I'm not even from this dirt-ball of a planet, thank you very much," Ratchet's finger squeezed gently, discouraging any squirming.
"So who did? What is he? What are you?"
Ratchet was silent until he was satisfied with the results of his scan. Mumbling in the way only a physician could – some things were universal after all, weren't they? – the Autobot finally decided to give the human in his hand an answer. An answer. He didn't answer everything.
"I, human, am from a distant planet called Cybertron. My associates are from the same – Arcee, Bumblebee, Bulkhead...and others. Yes, I am very much alive and no, I'm not a machine. I'm a sentient robotic life-form who had to watch his entire planet go dark during a war."
Renalt digested that, whispering half to himself. "You're an alien. So. We're not alone after all...Leonard was right. I owe him a drink..."
"Hm?"
"Leonard...and I. We once made a bet whether or not we were alone. Whether aliens existed," The boy almost-laughed.
"Heh. No, you're not alone."
"So...What's this Cybertron like? Why are you metallic?" Renalt found his curiosity engaging him again, warring fiercely with the suicidal shadow in his mind that reminded him 'Leonard isn't here'. The question's hidden face wasn't missed on Ratchet. Cracking a faint smile, the medic decided against releasing Renalt just yet.
"It was...beautiful. I could speak all cycle of it. The cities shone like little stars that decorated Cybertron's surface. The whole planet thrummed with the heartbeat of Primus himself. If you listened, you could hear the ground sing with each pedfall...er...footstep." Ratchet frowned. "But...it isn't that way now, Renalt. It doesn't sing any more. The ground doesn't pulse with life."
"Why not?"
"Cybertron is dark, Renalt. It went dark ages ago...war took it. War took its heartbeat. Its spark."
Renalt was silent at that, trying to imagine the idea of an entire planet – which meant a myriad of species, of cultures, centuries, perhaps millennia of history – dead. Gone. The thought was shadowed over soon enough, bringing a seemingly unrelated question out of nowhere.
"Why did you take Len's name?"
Ratchet froze. Letting out a low vent, equivalent to a deep sigh, the medic brought his hand up to face-level. Renalt may not be able to see him, but it was the principle of the thing. The dignity of facing who you spoke to, whether or not they could see you in return.
"This is not easy to answer. However, I wasn't the one who told you what you heard. My leader, Optimus Prime, did so. He feared for your existence...We all saw you up there, on our cliff...next to Cliffjumper's memorial. Someone had already been buried up there..."
"What right - " Renalt began, finding an unusual fury in the core of himself. Yet again, he was cut off, not by a rumbling command, but by a fingertip against his chin.
"Ep-yep-yep. Please, just listen. I...I don't think I could repeat what I have to explain to you. Now. I've already told you that yes, I'm an alien. So is Optimus, my leader, and every other Autobot you'll encounter within this base. Our planet is dead from...aeons of civil war. We are what's left of that war. Cybertronians naturally live quite the long time compared to you humans, but there are things even we don't understand. We face one of those things now, with you here. You humans have such short life spans...Why would you want to end it? What is so painful that you can no longer face it? And what in the All-Spark makes you think you are alone? I'm a medic, Renalt. I'm supposed to be able to answer these questions. I'm supposed to preserve life, not end it. Loss is never easy or painless. We know this as well as you do. So why, Renalt Carwyn Haakon, is your judgement so clouded that you do not see ahead?" By the end, Ratchet's voice had risen to a kind of deep-yet-high, keening wail.
"I don't take oaths lightly. I don't take...anything lightly," the youth began. Reverently, a hand moved up to his face, a finger stroking the gold earring in his right ear. "Len was all I had after Dad left. After Lakehaven... He was the only able-body that didn't seem afraid, or...repulsed. He wasn't irrationally afraid that if I touched him, somehow he'd go blind. He wasn't an idiot either; he knew how I thought. Why I am the way I am. And then he went off to Asia. And then he died." Tears, unwelcome as they were, fell in earnest.
"You lost your world as we lost our world. I don't expect you to not be angry with us, Renalt. But do you understand? None of us could let you do that to yourself. You were extinguishing your own spark," Ratchet put down another tool he'd intended on using and brought his other hand up, effectively cupping Renalt in his gentle grasp.
"Len was my...spark. Why did you...What did you do to me?" Even as the question came out, Renalt tasted the word 'spark', rolling it around in his brain. Spark. Soul? Or something else altogether?
"We cleansed you of that...poison you infected yourself with."
"The dreams..." His eyes widened.
Ratchet's voice broke. "Those were not dreams. Did you meet giant metallic beings in your head?"
"So that was..."
"Yes. My leader, Optimus Prime. We believed we had no other choice. Time wasn't on our side, Renalt, and we wanted to save your life. We couldn't ask you...so we attempted to find out."
Renalt fell silent. He let the tears fall, let Ratchet observe him. He let the medic watch as the human began to shake with the enormity of it all. Someone had actually been inside his head, knew his memories. His deepest feelings, his fears, his shortcomings. All of it. For a moment, he wondered if this was what it was like to kneel at the feet of the gods he worshipped so fervently.
"Do the gods find favour or disapproval?" The question was, much like any he'd asked before, a loaded one. It was filled with layers of meaning, some of them lost on the medic.
"We are not Gods, Renalt. Just Cybertronians who want to help you. We see potential in every human we've encountered," Ratchet found a peculiar warmth in his faceplates at being called a God.
"Every life has the capacity for change," Optimus Prime's deep voice rumbled through the base. Somehow, his voice overpowered the sound of his own transformation, startling Ratchet. The medic glared helplessly up at his leader. Yes, he had let the secret out, only somehow the medic didn't think Renalt so dull as to not have figured it out himself.
The Prime came to stand in front of his medic and take a knee, that he might be more at eye-level with the weeping human in Ratchet's hands.
"Transformation is vital to survival, Renalt. I feared for your life. I still do," Gently.
"You took his name."
"Yes..." the Prime's guilt cracked through his voice.
"You were in my head."
"Yes." Hide nothing. Resolve to truth.
"Do you do that to everyone?"
"No. You are unusual, the first for us."
"You took the choice away."
"Yes. And no. You were not compelled to do as I asked."
"You were in my head. You took his name."
"I can deny nothing, Renalt. I am not ashamed to admit that I wished to save your life. I am...ashamed of the method used to do it. I felt there was no other alternative," the Prime's voice remained steady, yet held a note of contrition. With a silent, beckoning nod from Ratchet, the others quietly surrounded their Prime in mute support.
"You lied to me." The accusation resounded clear through the base without the need to scream. It resounded in the silence with the force of a storm and the sound of a whisper.