Burned (Transformers Prime)

Chapter Sixteen | Awaken

"Dearly beloved,
If this love only exists in my dreams,
Don't wake me up"

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Ratchet waited patiently as June walked out of the hospital, but the look on her face did no reassure him when it came to Dana's condition. Her face was set in hard lines, and she looked determined as she marched over to the ambulance. The medic feared for the worst, settling back on his tires as a sense of dread washed over him.

Dana is dead.

"Open up." June instructed, the medic obliging silently. The woman climbed into his driver's seat and sat down, staring at the Autobot emblem on his steering wheel, which glowed every time he spoke.

"How . . . How is she?"

"Dr. Jefferson says she's going to make it." June briefly listed the injuries, knowing it would probably drive Ratchet crazy, but she had to know. "Until she wakes up, we won't know the severity of the damage. And there is another thing, something I want to ask you about."

Ratchet tilted his mirror to look at her, confused. "Okay . . . I will do my best to answer."

"Because of the severity of her injuries, the doctor wanted to make sure that she was the only one hurt." June wanted to dodge the question a little, and see if Ratchet would give her the answer first. "She wasn't."

Ratchet became even more confused. "What do you mean? As far as we know, she . . . She was the only one that was hurt." He was reluctant to say it, as if he still couldn't believe it.

June decided to now be blunt. "Dana is pregnant, Ratchet. The fetus is three months old. Do you know if she's had a boyfriend, or an intimate partner, during that time?"

There was a long, stunned pause as Ratchet took in this new information. Dana never mentioned having symptoms that correlated with incubation - or pregnancy, he supposed was the human term for it.

"She never mentioned a boyfriend . . ." He spoke slowly as he tried to remember. "Or any kind of sexual partner."

"What about you?"

His frame jerked in surprise, all mirrors pointed toward the nurse as he sputtered his response. "Nurse Darby, I am most certain that I am not the sire! For one, our size difference makes it impossible for any sort of successful copulation, not to mention an entire species difference! We may be very similar in a lot of ways, but not similar enough to procreate . . . Oh no."

"Oh no? Oh no what?" June demanded, crossing her arms.

Ratchet paused again. "There . . . There was an instance, three months ago, but how that is possible is beyond my comprehension. I showed her my spark, allowed her to touch a part of it-"

"Is 'spark' a euphemism for something else?" The nurse asked suspiciously.

"What? No! No! When I say spark, I mean the equivalent of a very complex, multi-purpose heart." He explained as much as he could in the short time June would allow him to speak, knowing she was becoming very angry, and rather irrational. "It has the potential to create a baby by fusing with the spark of another Cybertronian, which in turn creates a unique being in and of itself. But Dana doesn't have that, she's human."