Ratchet || tfp

In the hushed, silent gloom of the medical lab, all seemed calm. The monitors hummed softly with steady readings, the energon stored in the tanks tingled as it cooled... and, in the farthest corner of the room, Ratchet lay on his bunk, surrounded by the silence that only the solitude of night could impose.

But he wasn't sleeping.

Lying down, his wires relaxed and his shoulders slightly hunched, he held in his arms an old but clean pillow that someone—perhaps himself—had wrapped in a blanket the same color as the armor of the Autobot he missed most, Junseo. There was no hologram. No recording played. Only him... and that soft illusion that simulated the warmth of the one who had been absent for cycles.

With a powerful servo motor, he gently traced the outline of the cover, as if he could memorize once again the contours of that chest where he used to rest his head when he thought no one saw him as so vulnerable.

"Of course it's not the same," he muttered to himself, barely audible, as if afraid of breaking the spell.

And yet... she closed her eyes and buried her face in the fabric, inhaling a scent that wasn't there, but that her memory insisted on preserving.