Smoke rises in plumes above a battlefield. Bodies lie in endless, twisted droves, energon pouring from lacerations and broken limbs. It soaks the ground in pools and streams, the swirls of coolant that mix with it adding a pungent scent that so many eons of war has lead even you to associate with death. Every time you look, the contorted frames pile even higher, press ever closer. You are the only life left here.
You and one other. A wicked smile full of sharpened dentae looms down at you, mocking. Chuckling. Hatred rushes through your veins, yet your blades do not come when you will for them—you cannot move at all. Fear ices your spark.
“Where are they?” the words die in your voicebox, and you aren't sure if they made it out. “Where is Optimus?”
The chuckling grows to laughter. Megatron's helm is thrown back, his servos spread in wicked mirth. His whole frame shakes with it, his field pressing like chains all around you. Oh, how he laughs. Emotions bubble inside you too fast to identify; you want to shout, to cry, to slash at him again and again and again until he shuts up, until he's more broken than the husks that now nearly block out the sky, their black and empty optics meeting your gaze whenever you look away from the tyrant before you. You will kill him for what he's done. There may be no one left to save, but he deserves it, and you know only his cold spark will quell your rage.
And yet still you cannot move. The entrapping field has turned to real chains, and you're helpless as the laughter finally stops and a clawed digit scrapes beneath your chin.
“My dearest medic,” that mocking voice speaks. “You and I will be spending quite a bit of time together.”
You snarl at him, field spiking with hatred that you can only hope masks your panic. He only grins. “You are so entertaining, Doctor. Why kill you now when I could keep you as my little pet? After all, with your beloved leader gone, a precious little lapdog like you will need a new master."
You try not to tremble, try not to acknowledge the confirmation of your fear. That is what he wants. You can't give him that satisfaction, not even when it burns you from the inside and your spark feels as though it will tear in two——
“Of course, I will need to keep you restrained.” A claw hooks under one of your bindings, tugging just enough to make you have to hold back a flinch. “Your Prime never did keep you in line very well. Such a poorly trained pet. How tragic that he doomed you to live in chains.”
You can no longer stop the trembling, so strong is the flood inside you. The hatred, the grief, the fear. Megatron's optics bore into you, his grin so wide it almost splits his face. That wicked satisfaction is so palpable you can taste it, nauseatingly sweet as a purged beryllium cocktail. He presses closer and you cannot even back away, not even as the bodies finally pile high enough to block out the light, all but that evil red glow, two smelting pits that have already swallowed everything you will ever love. The world is red, red, red red red and you close your optics and Megatron's face is there, laughing in the darkness, and he reaches for you, and you fall——
Ratchet’s dreams normally consisted of memories, whether accurate or distorted, they were recognizable. If they consisted of better times in his life, nostalgia felt heavy when he awoke. If they consisted of worse times in his life, he felt a dulled weight of pain. Both were a part of his past, he knew and accepted that in the same way he reminisced while awake. Although they might alter his starting mood of the next ‘day,’ it was rarely difficult to recover. He was accustomed to them.
Dreams assembled from possibilities were the exceptions, and with their infrequent visits came an uncommon level of distress. The past could haunt him, but not inflict more than he could endure upon him, because it had already passed. The future, on the other hand, could always be the new beginning or the end of everything he had left. All that could happen was far more terrifying than all that had happened.
He preferred not to dream at all, for those periods efficiently provided recharge, and did not influence his mindset when he awoke.
This one, however, did more than inspire a ‘mood.’ The sickening grief, the absolute terror, the unhinged rage he felt from the amplified, yet plausible potentiality, left his armor flared. His combat protocols were active on his HUD the moment his optics onlined. Within seconds, he tested both blade transformations of his servos to assure himself that, although many aspects of him were wearing out, his melee defenses were not among them.
The surgical tools folded back into trembling hands as he rose, shifting his legs until he was seated on his berth. Ratchet rested his face in his palms, venting heavily as he attempted to remove the familiar scents of countless dead, but it was only in his mind, and could not be removed by filtering. Battle analysis and adrenaline codes were slowly selected and disactivated, providing a trivial distraction as he attempted to calm himself.
All the thoughts and emotions and future possibilities responsible for a nightmare such as this, were the basis for the reckless urges he fell victim to from time to time. At their strongest, his morality faltered, allowing for self experimentation, allowing for the desire to kill, allowing him to weigh lives instead of focusing only on saving them.
He hated it. He hated the causes of it. He hated what it had done to him. He hated that he could not seem to fix this, or himself. And most of all, he hated that he was not strong enough to remove the head of the one tyrant who would never be satisfied.
Ratchet was not certain how long he remained hunched over, holding his own helm. He did not check, and he did not care. All his focus channeled solely into trying not to come apart at the seams. He had kept his pieces together before, he would now, and he would continue to when it happened again. He had to.
