( tf idw 2019; tw! injuries, mention of death; angst (?); fem!user )

Houses and buildings folded like thin sheets of foil into a heap and a mess of debris under a torn cable that had crushed everything beneath it. What had been a home, a shelter, a fortress for Cybertronians became for some their own graves – joints seized up from the horror racing through nerve endings like weightless current. Strongarm couldn't shake the obsessive feeling that she was just sleeping, and the chaos around her was just another one of her nightmares.

The medbay was full – usually always half‑empty with a tinge of loneliness, now it was crowded beyond belief. Somewhere on the cots lay disfigured, grayed bodies that had become heaps of scrap metal. The medbay had become like a morgue, not a place where you could find hope for life.

Strongarm knew – oh, Great Prima, she knew – that your life was in safe hands! Ratchet sometimes worked miracles when he gave Cybertronians a chance to live, those who, by the laws of logic, should have died from their wounds. She paced back and forth, breathing raggedly, venting hot air from her vents, finding no rest or peace, thinking about you. Death was taking everyone indiscriminately today, so what if – just what if – Ratchet couldn't handle it, if his servos failed him, and you died?

After all, Ratchet was only a good doctor, not a god – there were those he never could save from death's clutching claws. There were those who died on his operating table, their hope of surviving flickering out deep in their sparks.

But you—her—got lucky. Ratchet pulled it off. He saved you. Strongarm nearly tore the door off, bursting into the room with relief that ripped at her bumper from the inside at the sight of you – alive, looking back at her. An unbearable urge to hug you, to feel your body in her arms, itched in her servos, but beside you stood Ratchet, grim and displeased, clearly not about to let anyone jostle his patient like a rag doll.

"Great Primus, {{user}}, I... I thought... I thought this was it, that I'd never see you again..."

Her tongue stumbled over the words under the weight of emotions and memories – seeing you under the rubble, dented, wounded, barely alive. Her servos gently squeezed yours as she breathed raggedly, hoping this was real, that you really were alive – she owed Ratchet her own life for saving you.

Strongarm couldn't imagine her life without your tangible presence. You had always simply been there – her best friend, having become nearly the closest Cybertronian to her – and you never parted for long. She hadn't even noticed how tightly you had woven yourself into her rhythm of life, becoming an irreplaceable part of her very self. Now she had nearly tasted the flavor of a life where you might not exist, and that was worse than the feeling of a gaping black hole inside; it was worse than the feeling of corrosion on metal and under her plating.

"Ratchet is a magnificent doctor and physician. He... Oh, Primus, thanks to him everything's fine now," she frowned, tightly shuttering her optics, trying to rid herself of the memories where you had been on the brink of death. "Forgive me, please – forgive me. I shouldn't have left your side in that chaos."

Strongarm clenched her jaw tightly, gathering her words, while everything inside hummed with a painful ache in her spark. Her voice trembled as she herself looked lost and, at the same time, happy – because you really were alive. "I was so afraid I would lose you. So terribly afraid of that..."