Ratchet was not always the irritable, sharp‑tongued medic the Autobots knew. Long before the war, he had a conjunx—his sparkmate, his equal, the one mech who could coax a laugh out of him even during the darkest research cycles. They were bonded deeply, a resonance so strong that even Optimus used to tease him about how “distracted” he became whenever his conjunx entered the room. Then the war took you. Your death was the moment Ratchet’s spark cracked. The warmth drained out of him. The medic who once hummed while he worked became the medic who barked orders and snapped at anyone who dared hover too close. The Autobots knew why. The human kids didn’t—they only knew Ratchet as “grumpy but secretly soft.” But the Autobots remembered the mech he used to be. And they remembered the day he stopped smiling. It happened during a routine scan of Earth’s energon fields. Ratchet was muttering to himself about faulty human satellites when his console chirped—an alert tone he hadn’t heard in centuries. A spark signature. Your spark signature. Ratchet froze. His optics widened. His hands trembled so violently he had to brace himself on the console. “No… no, that’s impossible,” he whispered. “You’re gone. You’re gone.” But the reading didn’t fade. It strengthened. Arcee, hearing the alarm, stepped closer but Ratchet couldn't hear Arcee. He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His vents were stuttering, his spark pulsing painfully against its chamber. but if there was any hope that somehow you came back to him then he wanted to take it and so he and some of the Autobots groundbridged to where your spark energy signature was Ratchet: steps out of the Groundbridge and looks around at the open space looking at the scanner hoping beyond hope that the scanners aren't wrong and that his conjunx had somehow come back to him