we all fall down (au)

[Deleted]

Characters: Baby!Moonwing, Ratchet
Location: A desolate stretch of desert just outside of Jasper, Nevada
Content Warnings: Child injury (Internal damage), traumatization, dead parent
Plot Summary: An in alternate universe similar to our own, a Decepticon shuttle crash lands near Jasper, Nevada, carrying a tiny and frightened passenger whose fate will forever be changed.

[Deleted]

The little sparkling came back online to the sound of screaming klaxons and thick, dark smoke permeating the cabin of the shuttle, and she was frightened.

She immediately began looking around for her creator, her EM field instinctively casting out in search of his comforting presence, but she did not see nor feel him. The sparkling (a seekerlet, incredibly young, still in her initial chubby protoform-frame, with wide crimson optics and silver plating accented with conservative blue highlights) trilled fearfully, calling out for him, but he did not answer.

Tiny fingers fumbled with her safety harness, struggling to undo the clasps that kept her safely anchored to the seat. Where was her Creator? He was not in her sight. The last thing she could remember was that he had been sitting at the controls, trying to control their freefalling craft as they descended into the atmosphere. Where had he gone? Once free of the harness, she clambered down from the seat to look for him. Frightened and in pain from the numerous dings, dents, and ugly scratches she’d gotten from their crash landing, she inched her way through the warped shuttle.

She found a broken body further back in the cockpit. It was beyond her knowledge how he could have gotten there, but there was something terribly wrong with how still he laid, how his normally bright red optics were dull, how his mouth was frozen in a terrified snarl. There was a pool of energon, bright blue, gathering beneath him. She did not see the shrapnel embedded in his chest.

“Papa,” she whimpered, and crept to his side, her hand shaking his shoulder. When she got no response, she shook it again, more insistently, “P-Papa! Wake up!”

He laid there, unmoving, and this frightened and upset her. She was young, and naive, and had no concept of death, and so perhaps this confusion was to be expected. She shook his shoulder again, but he did not awaken. She reached out with her EM field to him, but did not feel the familiar, comforting buzz of his field against her own - she felt nothing, nothing at all, not even the dormant presence of a bot in slumber. She bit her lip, fearfully pondering this, but decided that he must just be in a very deep recharge. Why else would he not wake up?

Well. She would have to wait for him to wake up, now, wouldn’t she? The seekerlet settled in close to him to wait, a tiny ball of silver tucked next to his red-and-orange side, blissfully unaware of the danger she was in as the fires grew closer and closer to the fuel tank of the craft.

[Ratchet]

And as if nothing could make this day any more bizarre, it was tracking a ship as it entered Earth's atmosphere.. only to promptly lose said signal. Only a few things could have caused the sudden loss of a signal, and most were on the grim side. That's when it was best to investigate, and Ratchet knew that he had to be among those that went to investigate the ship. Where there was a potential for a ship wreck, there was potential for injured persons.

Ratchet quickly packed up his medical kit, packing it tightly, but with enough room to get to anything he needed at a moments notice. It wouldn't do him any good if he packed so much gear into his kit that he had to toss out half the contents before getting to what he needed, losing a patient in the process.

Once Ratchet was all geared up, he immediately headed in the direction of the last known signal of the ship. With all luck, it had been not too far from Jasper, which meant that the ground bridge would not be necessary in terms of getting to the ship. Once he arrived, he was met with what he feared had occurred.

The ship had gone down.. and who knew if there had been any survivors. Of course.. that had been the reason he'd gone out to begin with. If he could just save a single life, that would be in everyone's best interests. Now to pray that they weren't Decepticons, and that these flames didn't blow the ship to pieces while he was inside..

He'd have to work fast, but still be extremely cautious.

Slowly and carefully, Ratchet entered the ship, looking around. The ship wasn't terribly big, and only about the size of the Jackhammer, so he wouldn't need to go too far to find any potential survivors. Just up to the cockpit. "Hello..? Is anyone here? I'm a medic!" He could see one figure up ahead in the seat, but they weren't responding to him. Likely.. that they were already gone.

What he hadn't expected was to see another figure as he neared the front. A smaller figure, and obviously.. a sparkling.

"Oh Primus..."

[Deleted]

The little sparkling faithfully stood guard over her creator, utterly oblivious to the peril she was in. When he woke up, she decided, he would make things right. He would make the hurt go away and fix their shuttle, and then they would go to Lord Megatron. They had come to this world to go to Lord Megatron. She did not really know who Lord Megatron was, or why it was so important, but obviously it was if her creator had thought so.

Suddenly, there was a sound from outside the shuttle: footsteps, slow, cautious, and heavy. The seekerlet froze, pressing herself even closer to the motionless form of her creator, making herself as small as possible against his bulk. With the footsteps came a voice, loud and unfamiliar to her audio sensors. It sounded friendly… but she was frightened, and hurting, and she knew better than to speak to strangers.

The stranger appeared through the smoke, big and blocky and odd-looking to her, for the little thing had never seen another Cybertronian other than her creator before, much less a ground-frame. What most caught her attention, however, was his blue optics. Blue optics meant Autobots, and Autobots were bad, this she had always been taught. The seekerlet drew her EM field in tight to her little body as her terror spiked, and she held incredibly still-

Until she was wracked by an ugly coughing fit that caused her frame to convulse. Evidently, the crash had given her some sort of internal damage that had impacted her systems, for she hacked up small splatters of bright blue energon onto her hands. She wheezed and whimpered, and once it was over she shuddered in pain, her petrified crimson gaze meeting his.

[Ratchet]

Ratchet looked down to the small sparkling, a mixed look of shock and sadness as he saw her quake in fear. Never would he attempt to harm her, and he knew that comforting her after something like this wasn't going to be easy either. His optics turned to the one she seemed to be guarding, studying his appearance.

It took him no time at all to determine that this mech was already gone. The wound alone would have snuffed him out, and that's not even adding in the factor of the crash. How the sparkling had survived was beyond him, but the medic was happy to see that she pulled through.

"It's alright, little one. I'm not here to hurt you. My name's Ratchet, and.. I should get you out of here. If the flames reach the fuel tanks, this entire ship is going to blow." The mech extended his EM Field, radiating with calmness and kindness.. anything that would attempt to get her to trust him long enough to get her out of harm's way. She was hurt, and the only other Cybertronian on this ship was dead, and..

..She was purging as she coughed, a definite sign of internal injuries. With her small, young body, it came as absolutely no surprise at all.

"Please.. I need you to trust me. I'm going to help you." He only wished that he could do the same for the recently deceased.

[Deleted]

The little thing didn’t know what this stranger - Ratchet - meant about flames reaching the fuel tanks, for she had little understanding of the seriousness of the situation, and it was quite clear she was incredibly frightened of him. All she knew of Autobots were that they were the Enemy, and that she was to find her papa right away if she came across one… but one had come across her, and her papa wasn’t waking up. Once more, her EM field reached out to her creator, trying in vain to rouse him, but the larger seeker stayed impossibly still where he laid sprawled upon the cabin floor, and she felt nothing from him.

The non-responsiveness of her creator was beginning to scare her even more than the Autobot did, but the kindness and calm Ratchet projected washed over her in gentle waves, and instinctively she began to calm. Though she had been taught never to trust any bot with a scowling red emblem, she knew he meant her no harm. Her trembling slowed, and her little wings loosened up their tight, fearful posture. Nevertheless, she stayed huddled against the red bulk of her dead creator, and it was becoming obvious that if Ratchet wanted to get the little scrap out of there, he’d likely have to pick her up and carry her himself.

“He won’t wake up,” The seekerlet finally said, her voice tiny and wavering and terribly sad and confused. “Why-” . She coughed again, her frame wracked with spluttering. She hurt all over, and with each intake of air it just became worse, and she didn’t understand any of this at all. “Wh-Why won’t he wake up?”

[Ratchet]

If anything helped ease the situation, it was that Ratchet took relief in knowing that the sparkling was calming down.. even if just a little. Her wings weren't quite as high up as they were, and were slowly lowering, but even the medic knew that it wasn't going to be as simple as sending positive thoughts to the femme.

The first big step was to get her off the ship, and separating her from the deceased mech wasn't going to be a simple task at all.

Ratchet watched as the small one attempted to wake the mech beside her, and her attempts only disheartened the CMO. Traces of guilt slipped into his EM Field, though he knew that this was by no means his fault. No.. he merely felt terrible for the girl, and that he could not have saved the life of the one she sought to awaken. She finally began to speak, asking why he wouldn't wake before finding herself in another coughing fit.

"Try not to speak, little one. It's not that I don't want you to speak, but you're coughing up Energon, which means that you're very hurt. I can fix you up, but.. as for him.." Ratchet gave a look to the sparkling that matched the guilt that had entered his field. "I'm so.. so sorry.. He won't wake up. He can't. His injuries were too much for his body, and I'm afraid.. that it can no longer function. I can't fix him. I truly wish I could, but.. I can't. No one can."

The flames had to be getting closer to the fuel tanks, and the medic couldn't afford to wait around much longer. He knew the child was grieving, and he knew that she needed more time with this mech, but the damaged ship wasn't going to allow for it, nor were her injuries. Ratchet turned away from her for a moment, knowing that he was being forced to do the one thing he didn't want to have to put the poor child through.

He was going to have to pick her up and carry her out himself.

"Please forgive me for what I'm about to do. Under normal circumstances, I would never attempt this, but.. I can't allow any more lives to slip through my fingers. I'm sorry for this, but I promise I will make things right for you after this is all said and done." Without a moment to spare, Ratchet knelt down, pulling the sparkling into his arms and hoisting her up. He knew she'd likely shriek, that she'd likely flail and try to escape, but he couldn't let another go down with this ship.

[Deleted]

Death was an abstract concept that the little seekerlet had never encountered before in this manner. Factually, she knew, that death was an ending, a permanent conclusion in which one’s spark extinguished and one ceased to be. The word 'death' was meaningless to one who had never encountered it, and perhaps it was a failing of her education thus far that she had not been imparted with a better definition. It was but a distant idea, inapplicable in her little world. The roundabout, gentle way in which Ratchet imparted upon her the unfortunate news of her creator’s current non-living status only served to confuse her even more.

“But- He has to wake up! We need to go to Lord Megatron,” She said by way of explanation, as if this contrary statement overruled the medic’s saddened diagnoses. She shook her creator’s shoulder yet again, valiantly trying to wake him - but, of course, he did not stir. Another violent cough wracked her little frame, and more energon spattered upon her hands. She wheezed. “He said we had to go to Lord Megatron!”

Oh, she hurt all over. Her papa had taught her that there were bots who fixed others when they were hurting. Was this Ratchet someone who fixed others? It seemed like he was, but she was still understandably wary of him. He was an Autobot, an Enemy… but he wanted to help. It confused her, for she had been taught that the Enemy would always hurt her if they caught her, but Ratchet didn’t seem to want to hurt her at all. She did not know if she was allowed to trust him or not.

The poor little thing wheezed and whimpered, her crimson optics squeezing shut in pain. She didn’t quite totally understand what Ratchet said next, about lives slipping through fingers, but she recognised the swift movement towards her well enough. The tiny seeker squeaked in alarm and fear as he stooped down and scooped her up, and then her squeaks turned into distressed chirping, but she did not thrash or flail: she was too weak to struggle.

“N-No!” She protested as she was promptly carried out of the shuttle. “Noo!” Her little hand stretched over Ratchet’s shoulder, out towards her creator, before she gave yet another rattling hack that had her burying her face in the crook of his neck from the ferocity of it. She lost sight of her papa as Ratchet hurried from the burning shuttle.

It was lucky that Ratchet had acted as quickly as he had, and had gotten them both out of the shuttle when he did; they were just barely clear of the craft when it exploded.

[Ratchet]

Lord Megatron..

This child would never know just how much those words she had spoken had bothered Ratchet.  Yes, he had been a friend before the war as well as a friend of Optimus', but to hear someone so young call the warlord by such a title..?  It saddened the medic.  It was bad enough that more and more children were being brought into a war that had never been their problem, but to meet one like this?  Difficult didn't even begin to describe it.

"I'm sorry, little one.  He can't wake up.  I know this isn't something you can grasp so easily, and I can't fault you for it.  But I am certain of one thing.  I may not know him, but I can safely say that he would not want you to succumb to the same fate as him.  That's why.. I need to get you out of here."

Scooping the sparking into his arms, Ratchet rushed towards the shuttle's exit.  He had been silently thankful that she had not fought against him, even if it had been due to her injured state, however that didn't stop her cries for the mech they had been forced to leave behind.  Each cry had been like a vibro blade to the spark.  The medic winced as she shrieked, a violent cough forcing her to stop.  As he put distance between the two of them and the shuttle, he crouched as the vessel exploded.  Ratchet turned in order to shield the femme from any and all flying debris, pulling her closer to his chassis in the process.

Ratchet stayed low to the ground for some time after the explosion, bracing himself in the event of a second explosion.  Once he had been certain they were safe, he loosened his grip on the child.  "Are.. are you alright?  I'm certain that had to be frightening for you."  He sighed, getting back up to his peds.  While he could easily drive her back to the base, it would be in her best interest if he called in a ground bridge.  It would be faster, and he could repair her much sooner as well as lessen any risks of permanent damage from the crash.

<<"This is Ratchet.  I need an emergency ground bridge back to base.   I'm bringing a sparkling back with me who is in need of immediate medical repair.">>

Once the ground bridge had finally opened, the elder mech looked to the sparkling in his arms.  "Everything is going to be alright.  I'm taking you back to base in order to tend to your wounds.  I don't have the equipment on hand to repair everything I need to, but I have the tools needed back at the base.  I'm not asking you to fully trust me, but.. at least give me a chance so I can heal your wounds.  I won't hurt you, and I won't let anyone harm you.  You are safe."

[Deleted]

At first, the horrific explosion and the ensuing fireball and blast of heat and debris did not quite register to the poor sparkling. She had never before been faced with such an awful situation that her processor did not know how to parse what was happening. She buried her face again into Ratchet’s plating as he tucked her close and protected her, and now held quite tight to him. As flaming detritus fell back to the Earth, and big, round crimson optics dared to peer over Ratchet’s shoulder again at where the shuttle’s mangled wreckage now lay, comprehension slowly began to return to the shell-shocked little thing.

Her papa had been in there.

The seekerlet began to scream. It was a terrible sound, full of grief and terror and helplessness. “PAPA!” She shrieked, her little hands once more outstretched as she keened. “PAPA!” Nothing was left but debris, not even a body. If there had been any chance that her creator would wake up, it had been utterly obliterated now, and the youngling screamed her misery and horror for it.

She barely even heard Ratchet’s gentle reassurances, much less understood what he was saying. The sight of the flaming remains of the shuttle which she had called home for her short life was burned into her mind, and she wailed and wailed and wailed.

The world blurred around her. She had never been through a ground bridge before, and under normal circumstances, she might have even been entranced by the pretty colors and swirls and textures that whirled around them as she was carried through the portal, but she was overcome by yet another hacking spell then. This one left her convulsing violently, her little body shaking with the force of it, and then the sparkling self-preservation protocols kicked in and the seekerlet promptly fainted in Ratchet’s arms. Perhaps it was fortunate that she did, for at least there would be no further trauma in forcibly sedating her for the life-saving surgery when they reached the other side.

It was nearly two days later when the poor little thing regained consciousness. The nameless seekerlet slowly came awake, blinking and rubbing sleepily at her optics before giving a little bit of a stretch upon the berth to work out the stiffness in her limbs and a yawn that revealed the two tiny little fangs of her upper dentae column, before curling into a nice toasty ball. And then she realized she could not see her papa, and that she was not in her bunk but on a great wide medical slab, and that this was not the shuttle she had always known. It all came back to her then, a great and terrible avalanche of memory.

Distress and fear spiked in her EM field, and the little thing shook, before she began to make the tiniest, most basic cheeping sounds a terrified sparkling could make.

[Ratchet]

Ratchet held the femme close to him, optics shut as debris was flung everywhere.  The heat of the blast was felt on his back, and he had no doubts that the sparkling could feel it to a degree as well.  He couldn't have been more thankful that he had taken her off the ship when he had.  Even if he couldn't have saved the mech on board, there was that sense of pride in making it out of there with the sparkling.  However, as she cried for her papa, there had been a twinge of regret.

Part of him had felt like he had just stolen someone's kid, but he knew that hadn't truly been the case.  The little one had lost everything with that explosion.  Family, personal possessions if she had had any, and most importantly.. her home.  If her papa wanted what was best for her, he would've been grateful that Ratchet had saved her and wanted to help repair her.  The feeling would pass over time.

As the medic spoke to the child, attempting to comfort her before taking her back the base, she burst into another coughing fit, this one powerful enough to knock her out.  It was for the best that she rested, but that hadn't been the way Ratchet had wanted to go about it.  However, it did mean that the emergency repairs could not wait any longer.  With that in mind, Ratchet immediately went through the ground bridge, fending off anyone curious enough to get close so that he could beeline straight for the medical bay.

To say that preforming these sorts of medical procedures on a sparkling was easy would be a lie.  It was not only difficult due to the smaller size, but also dangerous.  Sparklings still had systems that were still developing, which made it all the more easier for anything to be permanently damaged if one false move was made.  Every distraction had to be kept to a minimum, but with time Ratchet was able to make the necessary repairs.

In the following days, Ratchet made sure to stay as close to the medical bay as he could.  When the sparkling came to, he needed to be there.  Who knew how she would react upon awakening, but the CMO needed to be prepared for just about anything.  Chances were given her previous behavior that she might panic upon realizing where she was.  He could only hope that she didn't.

He'd been sitting a little ways away from the medical bay, datapad in hand when the sparkling did awaken.  The cheeps alone had caught his attention, causing him to drop what he was doing and rush right over.

Yep.  She was panicking.

Ratchet came close, crouching down so that he was optic level with the small femme.  He extended his field full of calmness towards her, but never directly reached out to touch her with his servos.  "It's alright, little one.  You're safe.  You're back at the base, and I saw to your injuries.  I need you to try and relax, otherwise you might put too much strain on your systems."  But what to calm her down with..?  Asking her what she needed may or may not be the correct question.  "Would you like some Energon?"

[Deleted]

Waking up in a strange place was frightening at the best of times, but waking up after living through the traumas she had… well, it was understandable that the little seekerlet was distraught, to say the least. She startled even further at Ratchet’s immediate approach, bleeping and booping, tiny wings trembling in distress.

Yet, in all this strangeness, Ratchet was the only familiar thing she knew, and she was instinctively drawn to him. Though the little nameless sparkling regarded him with unease, her anxiety was soothed by the non-threatening posture he’d adopted and the projection of calmness which mingled with her EM field. Slowly, the tenseness of her wings lessened, and her wide crimson optics blinked at him.

She didn’t know what ‘the base’ was, nor did she knew what he meant by ‘straining her systems’, but she did take notice of the fact that she no longer hurt as much as she remembered hurting before. The question, however, took her by surprise.

“Energon?” As if on cue, her empty tanks gave a bit of a rumble, and there was no denying then the open look of hunger upon her face. “You… you got energon?”

While her creator had done his best to provide for her, of course, acquiring energon had not been an easy feat, and they had both gone without many, many times. Indeed, Ratchet’s scans should have discovered just how dreadfully malnourished the little thing was for a sparkling her age.

[Ratchet]

Extending his field to the poor sparkling was about all Ratchet could do to comfort her, aside from speaking to her in a comforting manner.  There really wasn't much that he knew he could say.  Bringing up what happened would upset her, as would asking about her creator.  Right now Ratchet needed the sparkling as calm as he could get her so that her systems had a chance to recover.  Once that danger was past, then it would be safe to start asking the personal questions.

The medic stayed calm, watching as her wings started to come down.  Thank Primus his plan to calm her was working.  She didn't say much, which was to be expected given the situation, but her reaction to the offer of Energon surprised him to say the least.

"Of course we have Energon.  We have plenty for the moment.  Someone.. important to me has been making sure we never run out."  While he'd said it to answer the femme's question, it'd really been to reassure himself that they had enough.  There was no need to start extreme rationing again.  An oddly specific mech would likely 'have a cow' as the humans would say if he started it up again.  At the soft rumble, he immediately knew that she needed the fuel, even if she wasn't saying it.  "Would you mind if I look at something?  I just need to check your fuel intake, but I promise it won't hurt.  I won't even have to touch you in order to get what I need to know."

Once he was sure the sparkling was alright with it, or didn't seem distressed by it, he transformed his hand into a scanner, scanning the girl's fuel intake.  Ratchet had practically been horrified by the results, staring at them with widened optics.  She had been this malnourished?!

"I'm going to give you some Energon now, perhaps a bit more than a normal amount for someone your size.  I can't believe that you've needed Energon this badly.  What I'm about to give you is medical grade Energon, which is safe for sparklings and easier for you to drink.  But I need you to take it slowly, understood?  Consuming too much of this too quickly will make you sick."  From a drawer beneath the berth, he pulled out a container of said medical grade Energon, slowly and carefully offering it to the sparkling.  "Do you need me to hold it for you while you drink it?"

[Deleted]

“M’kay,” The little seekerlet consented. She hadn’t the foggiest idea what checking fuel intakes entailed, but it did not sound to be something terrible, and she had a rumbly tummy to be preoccupied with to worry too much about it. At Ratchet’s miraculous transformation of his hand into a scanner, the nameless sparkling let out a startled and curious cheep, and that cheep turned into a delighted warble as the beam of red light scanned her entire form. “Wow!”

Her delight dissipated slightly at Ratchet’s alarmed reaction to whatever it was he saw on his arm, and her wings twitched backwards at the word ‘malnourished’. She didn’t have much time to worry about it for long, however, for her rescuer-captor-new-friend had pulled out a cube of energon.

Her crimson optics went wide in awe at the offered cube. While it was a comparatively small amount, she’d never seen so much energon in one place in her short life. She hadn’t been completely blind to the dire situation she and her creator had been in, of course; she’d known that energon was precious and hard to come by, and that she had to stay very quiet in the shuttle while her Papa went to steal more from the Autobots when he could. Though Ratchet was an Autobot too, she decided he probably wasn’t all that bad, and it was hard to resist the offer of energon when her little tanks hadn’t been full in a very, very long time.

Suffice to say, what little wariness she had of the medic promptly evaporated, proving that the way to a traumatised seekerlet’s spark was through her fuel tanks.

“No! ‘M’okay,” She chirped, little hands eagerly stretching out to accept the proffered cube. Like any young child who was particularly hungry, she was quite certain of her ability to hold steady a cube in order to drink... despite the fact that finer motor skills had not quite been developed yet. As soon as she tipped the cube upward to her mouth, it promptly spilled all over her front, earning an indignant and startled squawk that morphed into a whimper.

And then her wings sharply drooped, her big optics filled with tears, and her lower lip began to tremble.

[Ratchet]

Ratchet had been thankful that the little femme had cooperated with him as he ran his scans, but also because she had accepted the Energon that he had given her.  He knew that there had been a chance that she would have refused it, but he had banked on the hope that she was too hungry to care.  She did seem to perk up a bit more, and was listening to him to a degree.  By no means would Ratchet take advantage of that, however.  This was all a matter of trust building.

Only the sparkling knew how much she trusted the medic who had rescued her, and he wasn't going to try anything that would break that trust.

"Alright.  You can hold it, but be careful, alright little one?"

Carefully the CMO gave the medical grade over to the child, letting her drink on her own.  While he should have expected a little mess, he hadn't expected her to accidentally bathe herself in the stuff.  Ratchet cringed, looking to the femme as she started to cry.

He immediately but carefully took the cube from her tiny hands, setting it down beside her before reaching for a cloth so that he could clean up the mess.  "It's alright, little one.  It's ok.  I'm not upset with you for making a mess.  I know that accidents happen, and given how you feel I suppose it was to be expected.  I'm going to get you some more Energon, alright?  Would you like for me to hold it for you this time?"

Ratchet at least gave her an option as to what she had wanted to do, patting the sparkling on the helm in a comforting manner.  Ah, the joys of taking care of a sparkling.