Rating: K
Universe: TF:Prime [postwar]
Characters: Ratchet, OC [Persephone]
Pairings: past Optimus Prime/Ratchet
Warnings: past mechpreg [budding], SPOILERS FOR PREDACONS RISING

All my friends are writing postwar domestic fluff to ward off feels from Predacons Rising, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. It worked for a start, but then I thought of things that gave me even more feels and this happened.

Incidentally, Persephone is a fan of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. [Do not ask me why, it just happened that way XD;;]

before the sun rises let's head out to greet our coming tomorrows

we have no regrets in our resolve

—oh i know what i'm supposed to do!

CHAPTER ONE

The datanet screen flickered, and something outside rumbled in the distance. It took Ratchet a moment to realise that it wasn't the storm steadily bearing down on Protihex, but the much closer racket of the school shuttle taking flight again.

He waited three minutes, distractedly rereading the same few lines of text over and over again. One of his colleagues' patients had taken a turn for the worse over the afternoon shift, and the nurses currently looking after the ward were scrambling to find a compound that would slow down the rate of solder attrition in the mech's damaged brain module. Ratchet had requested and been sent a copy of the patient's files, and thus far he'd spent the majority of his first free shift in weeks throwing his considerable experience behind the diagnostic effort.

Not that they'd gotten anywhere yet.

The medical chat window pinged, and a new file popped up in his inbox. He opened it up, and was halfway through skimming the updates when the apartment door folded open and his daughter trotted in. He watched her through half-shuttered optics as she dumped her personal datapad on the bookshelf by the door and sloped over to the energon dispenser, pouring herself a cube of her sparkling mid-grade – and, he noticed with a disapproving frown, skimping on the nutrient supplements that helped boost her mineral absorption.

To be fair, they made even good high-grade taste like metallic sludge. He huffed through his lateral vents and decided that he'd let it go, just this once.

"Welcome back," he said, minimising the workscreen and setting the computer on standby. "How was your day?"

Persephone, all of a quarter-vorn old and knee-high to a heavy standard, turned slowly and gave him a lopsided smile. Her EM field went slippery and elusive against his, her hands sliding behind her back, her optics meeting his gaze for a split second before skittering off to stare at a fixed point on the wall somewhere behind him. "Um. Fun, mostly."

Evidently she'd been getting into trouble again.

Ratchet, who had never exactly been good at toeing the line himself, supposed he could sympathise. According to her tutors she was a largely well-behaved and very intelligent student with an unfortunate propensity towards picking arguments with things she disagreed with, which when combined with the more rigid tutors was often interpreted as backchat. Like Ratchet himself, she tended to polarize people.

"I got your report card in my inbox this morning," he continued, leaning back in his chair and stretching his old joints before he – very gingerly – got up. Persephone's expression shifted rapidly between apprehension and excitement in the way only a sparkling could. She wanted to know, he could tell, her frame and field rigid with curiosity, but pure nerves kept her from asking after the results. You just wait until you get to university exams, he thought, you'll really know the meaning of anxiety then.

"So what'd I get?" she asked once it became clear he was waiting for her reaction, so buoyed up with anticipation she was hopping from pede to pede in place, her optics round as saucers. "Come oooon, I wanna know what they said about me!"

Ratchet retrieved the datapad he'd sent the tutors' comments to and powered it up, delaying until Persephone was nearly vibrating on the spot. "See for yourself," he said, lowering the screen to her level. "Well done."

Her optics flickered, on and off as she reset them. A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth, her field swelling with sweet victory. She clenched her tiny fists and pumped them, then scampered around the datapad and attached herself limpetlike to Ratchet's forearm.

"Good work," he repeated, pushing his pride through his field and wrapping it around her like a blanket. "You've done very well."

She warbled something into his plating, wriggling jubilantly. Prior experience told him he had no chance at prying her off before she was ready to let go, and truth be told he didn't really want that in any case. She'd earned a cuddle or two.

He took another look at the grades. Five out of her six classes were hovering between 95% and 98%, with citations for class participation and high-level thought. Four of those tutors praised her imagination and communication skills, two of them her tenacity in search of answers. The sixth class, math, gave her a score of 91%, the tone of the tutor's comments one of grudging allowance. Ratchet had met that tutor a few times; he was Persephone's biggest detractor, a painstakingly fair mech, although he did like things to be just so. Persephone, who picked things up on the fly and liked to try things out without seeking permission to do so first, was bound to lock horns with him every so often.

Eventually Persephone peeled herself off and skittered back to the energon dispenser, her field whirling with sunny delight. "Dad, can I have some of the fizzy stuff? Just to celebrate, y'know?" She turned a pleading grin his way, optics wide and innocent. The automatic 'no' on his glossa melted and died.

"I suppose you've earned it," he said, shaking his helm in an effort to hold onto the last shreds of his authoritative-parent façade though he was fairly sure the silly smile on his face must have given him away. "There's a few rust sticks left in the snack cupboard; you may as well have one of those while you're at it."

Persephone squeed; there was no other word for it. Ratchet pushed himself to his feet again, watching carefully to make sure she only took one.

Thunder rattled the windows, static charge crawling along the lightning rods affixed to the balcony. Cybertronian storms came with little true water; the clouds were black and smoglike, carrying heat and conductive particles high above the surface, and massive. The meteorologists had forecast this one to last for the entire night cycle – hence why Ratchet was having to work from home.

Not that that was such a bother. Persephone came ambling around the leg of the worktable, still not quite tall enough to see over its edge, with a cup of energon and a rust stick slowly dissolving in it. She made a beeline for the windows, flopping down into the nest of cushions she'd made by the corner. Once she was there, she took a long draught from her cup, and pinned him with a scrutinizing gaze.

Ratchet let her look for a moment, flaring question through his field. "Can I help you?"

She made a noncommittal chirp, shrugging somewhat discomfitedly. "Maybe? It depends."

"On what?" He leaned back against the table, not sure he liked that look on her face. "I take it it's not homework-related."

She considered him for a long moment, the excitement slowly fading from her field. He recognised the longwave flickers that replaced it – the internal conflict of a mech trying to figure out how to tackle a problem with no obvious solution.

Eventually, her expression settled into slow determination. "How come I don't have a sire?"

Ratchet blinked. That hadn't been what he was expecting.

"What makes you ask that?"

Now the words came out in a flood. "Well, 'cause Greave's parents told him he was gonna have a little brother soon, so Tutor got us all to talk about our families, and… I'm the only one in the class who doesn't have a sire." She shrugged awkwardly, her optics downcast. "It's a stupid question, I know," she mumbled, "but, um… I just wanna know why? Please?"

"It's not a silly question." Ratchet found his bearings, offering his field as support as he crossed the space between them and knelt by her cushion nest. "Does not having a sire bother you?"

Reassured, Persephone lifted her helm and gave him a brilliant grin. "Nah, 'cause you're the best carrier ever! I was just wondering why, that's all. Tutor was really surprised, when I said I didn't have one. He asked if they'd died, or left us, or something, but I don't remember ever having a sire at all. Is that true, Dad?"

He nodded, only halfway surprised that she remembered that long ago with such accuracy. "More or less, yes. There are two ways people can make sparklings – you'd be familiar with the first, which is when two mechs merge their sparks to create a newspark together. That's called kindling, and it's how all your classmates came into the world. The second method is similar, but it requires only one mech. It's called budding, and it's what I did to create you. It's very dangerous, so your teacher's surprise is only to be expected."

Persephone blinked up at him, her optics bright.

"How come you made me that way, then?"

Ratchet vented deeply, his thoughts turning as they so often did to the terrible vorns before he'd had her. "Because the mech I wanted to make you with died in the war."

Persephone stared at him, her little mouth dropping open. She was silent for a long minute, before her jaw snapped shut and her expression firmed in almost comical determination. "You must have really wanted me."

Ratchet couldn't help the laugh. "Yes, I certainly did."

He bent down, offering her his arms. She chirred happily, throwing herself into his embrace and pulling herself up to lean against his shoulder, her optics half-shuttered and her vocaliser screeping quietly. Ratchet vented a quick puff of air, wrapping his field around hers and pulling tight, security and safety for the center of his entire world.

"Dad?" she asked, clutching at his collar fairing the way she'd done when she was a newborn, a long time ago. "Will you tell me about him?"

The old pain lanced through Ratchet's spark, though dulled a little by time and her love. He picked up the datapad and flicked through its table of contents to distract himself, and balanced her weight a little better in the crook of his elbow.

Lightning flickered outside. He counted three seconds before the rumble of thunder shook the windows in their frames. Persephone shifted in his arms, her frame thrumming with eager energy. She'd never been afraid of the storms – she'd never been afraid of anything, to be fair, always greeting every new thing with a squeal of delight and an exploratory poke. That worried Ratchet: what would happen when she finally met something dangerous? He wasn't naïve enough to think for a second that he would be able to protect her for her entire life, the war had stripped any such idealisms from his worldview, but Primus, she was his daughter. There had to be something he could do.

"This storm's going to be a bad one," he said at last. "Do you have any homework that needs to be submitted today?"

She made a face. "History quiz. Dates of the Ceasefire Accord, Treaty of Polyhex. Stuff I already know."

"Then it'll be hardly any work, won't it?" Ratchet carried her over to her terminal, waking the screen up and setting her down on the soft mesh cushion in front of it. The baby crystal he'd given her for Mid-Vorn glimmered beside the datanet modem, reflecting both the warm yellow of the solar light panels and the flickering storm outside. "I'll make you a deal. If you get it finished and sent in before the electricity gets shut off, we'll take some snacks into the berthroom and I'll tell you about the mech that might have been your sire, had things turned out a little differently."

Persephone's frown melted away. She twisted around to face him, the cushion rustling underneath her, and met his gaze with bright amber optics. "Deal!"