For so much of his life, these things had just fallen away in a natural feeling disinterest. He was so focused on everything else, on leading the Autobots, on stopping Megatron, on protecting other species, that most of his personal life had been tossed to the wayside, and he never regretted it. It didn't feel like a sacrifice at the time. He didn't consciously think of losing those aspect of himself as any sort of price - just a natural evolution of who he was going to be.

It had just felt reasonable and practical, and he was okay being the way he was because it got the job done. He would start thinking about that later, when the war was over.

But even though he's now been given this terrible shock, he finds himself thinking of it as something that should be natural, and that there must be something wrong with him for it to not feel that way anymore. Before now, he has never imagined himself as being a person who had those things, because he didn't even want it, really.

But now. But now...

Ratchet's last words hurt in a way, and it shows in his optics. Not the hurt of a slight or an insult, but of a truth that he's been ignoring. He's never thought of himself in terms of whether or not he was happy, or sad. Only how prepared he was to move forward. To the younger aspect of him, the intensity of his disconnect is chilling.

"I have been who I am for so long, I forgot the existance of other possibilities," he says softly, his optics dull and lingering in the ground. "I had no need for it, before. I had no desire."

'No personal desires' sums up a lot of it really.