Work Text:
Scars.
A trait that all beings possess. It was something to be celebrated, it showed the resilience of the bearer, their desire to live, to return back to their loved ones. They brought people closer, made them family, turned strangers to the most important being in one’s life.
Optimus missed his scars.
Why? After everything he that had ripped away from him, why did he have to lose the only reminder he had left of him?
He looked at his pristine frame, unburdened by scars and old injuries, and the reflection of it stared right at him, mocking him with its pureness.
The scars which he had earned in the heat of battle, when rescuing a comrade or fighting to protect the innocent had disappeared. All of them. The thing that had been with him for most of his functioning, gone just like that, as if they were never even there.
Sometimes he could feel phantom pains from where they were supposed to be, reminding him of battles he had won and lost, but had nothing to remember by, because the memory was locked within him and the key lost.
He was ashamed to admit that the scars he missed the most were the ones he had received by his worst enemy and greatest love – Megatron.
Sometimes he would find himself trying to touch a scar that was not there anymore, it made him feel hopeless, like a part of his spark had been stolen from him.
He knew that Megatron’s own frame was covered in such history, or was it?
Had the Unmaker completely changed his frame too, to fit his needs? Did he suffer the same way Optimus did? Trying to and failing to live with the emptiness which those scars left behind? He wished he had a way to answer these questions, but alas, Megatron was not there.
Sometimes he would find a report from deep space, of a world freed from its corrupt governments, slaves saved from a life pain and would think of Megatron. Was that his way of repenting for his actions? He liked to think of it that way. It meant that a small part of the mech he had fallen in love with was still there, becoming bigger every day, trying to return to him.
Maybe there was hope. But until that day.
Optimus would miss his scars.