[Ratchet draws a slow vent of air in and bites hard at the inside of his lip--Megatron is asking a genuine question, and he deserves a genuine answer. It takes a moment for Ratchet to be able to articulate one.]

I'm not a politician, or a scholar, or a lawyer, or a judge. I'm not in a position to debate legal theory, or the nature of punishment, or the efficacy of executions in deterring future crimes. I'm a medic. I was taught to do no harm, and after four million years in a shooting war I still believe in it, except for a few notable exceptions. If I'm not killing someone in a fight where they're trying to kill me, the only other real acceptable excuse I can come up with for ending a life is if there's nothing else I can do for them. If there's no chance for anything but suffering for them unless I help them in this way. I won't sit here and tell you I haven't been betrayed or angry or hateful or grieved enough to have been tempted before, but you came into my medibay a little while before I showed up here, crippled from the waist down, and I fixed you instead of shooting you in the head. Because that's my job, and it's what I believe in.

I don't know if Tarn can be fixed--I sure as hell know I can't fix him, whatever him being 'fixed' would even mean, though not torturing my friends anymore sounds like a really excellent start. But I don't know--I'm not a hundred percent sure--that there's nothing else that can be done for him. And even if I was, I know how hard going through with something like that can be. I didn't want that for you. [He shrugs a little into his crutches.] That's selfish of me, I guess, but there it is. I don't have a better answer for you than that.