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Peru was a quiet, peaceful contrast to the dense cityscape that the Autobots had grown accustomed to. Yet, Optimus could not recharge. There was so much to process. He refused to leave Bumblebee’s side. Physically, at least. Mentally, he was lost in his own subroutines, sorting his newly acquired knowledge into the appropriate folders for ease of future recall. His processor queued up some of his latest memory chunks with which to do the same. He paused when he opened his master memory file and scanned through the folders, his spark sinking when he got to the one simply marked “E.”
Optimus closed his optics. He opened the folder, then the first chunk. His senses were immediately taken over by the corresponding data streams from the memory. He let the chunks automatically play out one after the other.
His only focus was her.
Her infectious smile. Her sonorous laugh. Her embrace, tight as a sparkling clinging to her carrier’s neck. Her servo in his, warm and gentle. Her helm on his chassis, listening to the thrumming spark that had belonged to her long before she merged her own with it. His servo rested on her waist, securing her against him. The warmth of her purring engine vanished. He had fallen into recharge.
The next memory began before he could process the twisting of his spark.
She was there, leading him by his servo to the center of her unit’s common room. No war.
He heard himself speak.
“‘Lita, I-“
“It’s okay, I’ll show you!”
And show him, she did. She showed him how to loosen his struts. She showed him how to act on feeling, not thought. She showed him how to follow and compliment her movements. She showed him how to dance.
She showed him how to live.
Now…now, as the memory faded, Optimus only had the energy to survive. In this permanent survival mode of his, his audio receptors remained finely tuned to outside stimuli even when he dove into subroutines and memory chunks. He caught the sound of footsteps. Soft. They pulled him out before the next chunk could play. It was the female human, walking idly as she studied her paper datapad. He looked away, unalarmed, but she had already noticed him watching her and stopped walking. Subtly, the mech felt her gaze pierce him straight to his core.
Elena saw him.
“You look really tired, Optimus.”
In a better time, he would have laughed. She was always so…matter-of-fact. His optics shifted to her. Slowly, as if she thought a sudden move might spook him, she closed her odd datapad. He saw her glance at Bumblebee.
“You wanna talk about it?” she offered.
One of his audio fins twitched slightly. He looked at his scout. At her. Away again, with a slow shake of his helm. She resumed walking. He expected her to leave. She came right up beside the servo he was resting on the ground next to him. He heard her shifting. Suddenly, there was a small warmth atop the back of his servo. He looked down.
It was her servo.
Elena had sat next to him and was using her other servo to flip through her datapad. His vents hitched. She glanced up at him, but she didn’t talk to him. She hardly paid attention to him. She was simply…there.
She saw him.