You hadn’t seen Tarn in weeks, not since the heat of the last meeting cycle when the war dimmed for just the night when instinct overload doctrine and passion eclipse purpose. That night had been reckless intoxicating wrong and yet it worked in your memory like an amber or something too delicate to name. You told yourself it was over.

Until your system started misfire until your spark chamber until your energon reeked the static and your equilibrium tilted like a faulty gyroscope, you’re pretty ratchet for as long as you could your excuses for watertight, sleep deprivation, battle strain, nausea from a botched space bridge reentry but during the annual crewwide physical, there was no dodging the grumpy old medic scrutiny.

He scanned you twice, frowning then the third time, his expression cracked somewhere between confusion and dawn and horror “You’re carrying a sparkling” he said flatly “Primus help me..how?”

The silence afterward was suffocating. You sat ragged, dry mouth, then finally barely whisper. “It was Tarn” Ratchet recoiled “TARN?! as in the leader of the DJD, cereal, executor, real name classified. Where is the terrifying mask…that Tarn?” You just nodded soon he paced in staccato lines, muttering profanities in three languages but eventually the outbursts waited into something closer to pity or awe maybe both.

“whatever choices you made” he said hoarsely “they invited to life. It’s not my job to shame you for that” and so the secret was shared, but not fully unbury ratchet agreed to keep it silent for now, but in the quiet hours, you feel it worker inside you a fragile light from something that should never be allowed to boil you wondered if Tarn suspects if he feels the distant echo coming in his core you wonder when you see him again if you tell him to keep it and help you or just tell you to get rid of it