"We always forget that we're not in charge; in reality, it is fate that controls us."
★☆★☆★☆★☆★
The young woman whimpers in her sleep, unconsciously curling in on herself to best relieve her pain. Her hair falls over her face, hiding the turmoil that rests in her expression.
Ratchet vents, standing once again from his seat across from her hospital bed as he seeks another syringe. It's been a week since she was last conscious—even though it was brief—and a further ten days since Egypt. By all accounts, she should be dead; his scanners told him as such and her vitals had proven her demise. But he's grateful that life still thrives within her, despite her constant pain.
His servo delicately picks up one of the remaining syringes of painkillers from the bedside and walks over to Toby's side. He doesn't like this, he can't stand the amount of pain she's in. Her systems carry an alarming amount of energeon that should be poisoning her, but instead, her body is accepting it, though the process is slow. And her prosthetics... he can't even begin to understand. The metal limbs had gone from clumsily made and cumbersome, to perfectly molded and sleek—she might as well have been born with them.
With all too much practice, he injects the fluids into the woman's IV line, not so much as a tremble in his servos. As he turns to find his seat, he stops, optics locked on her shivering form. Another vent leaves his derma, and pulls her blanket over her shoulders, gently brushing the hair away from her face.
Her cheeks are pale, and her lips lack the manic grin she always wears. Creases mark the space between her brows, formed from the constant scowl that now dampens her typically bright expression. It's worrying how cold and clammy she is, despite the warmth of the room, and beads of sweat always roll down her forehead.
Ratchet frowns, running his thumb over her cheek. Something's wrong. She wasn't breathing so shallowly a moment ago.
His scanners start beeping rapidly in warning, making him fumble in panic to check them. Red flashes on the sides, indicating the urgency of the matter. The readings make his intake drop open in disbelief, widened optics filling with small pools of coolant. There has to be a mistake. How is that even possible?
He has no idea how to even attempt to fix it, the issue far exceeding his own knowledge. All he can do is try desperately to withhold a cry of anger and pain as his charge starts having a fit, spasming on her bed. After everything, this is how she must go?
The screen in his servo displays her vitals, her smiling profile in the top right-hand corner, oblivious to everything wrong. A heart rate monitor has nothing but irregular spikes as her heart beats fast enough to be heard. Her blood pressure is higher than anything on record, and her DNA is corroding.
What on Earth is he going to say to the team? How can he look young Aquarius in the optics and tell him that his mother is never going to wake again?
His thoughts halt immediately the second the woman stops jerking about, his spark clenched in fear. But her heart is still beating, albeit a little outpaced, and her blood pressure drops back to normal. The only thing that terrifies him is the corroded areas of her DNA—they're being filled in by CNA. He has no clue how the process is occurring, nor what is compelling it to happen, but he prays. For the first time in years, he prays with all of his spark to Primus that she lives.
While she is in pain, she can't quite feel it, trapped in an endless loop of spiraling memories. Her environment shifts constantly, leaving her little time to comprehend anything before it changes again.
YOU ARE READING
Twisted Cogs | | Bayverse | | Book 2
Fanfiction| |"Don't you listen?! This will never be over!"| | | |"I love you beyond the reaches of reality, darling."| | Two years after the Battle of Mission City, Toby Hills has finally found her place in the world. The twenty-one year old woman spends her...
