Work Text:
Suddenly it's over, and Optimus is left there, in the dust, alone with a city and a bunch of mecha and a newfound divinity that nonetheless only amplifies the hole in his chassis.
Gone. Gone, a crutch he never knew he needed until he is left stumbling. A dance that should go on forever, until he missteps and crushes a pede and then his partner is whisking and whirling away somewhere unreachable. Gone by his own actions, his own fault, his own derma forming those damning words that cast them both into the Pit.
He is supposed to lead. He has never felt so small.
Optimus towers above his peers, but it has nothing on the view of the street as he'd climb the Archives' wall. Or those intances when he would look down from a rooftop, there with the gaping ache, the open wound that has now left him, and just observe.
Now he must shape. Iacon is not his to traverse or explore; it is putty in his servos, to stretch and mould and break and fix. It leaves residue in polish and fresh paint, covering him in foreign proprietary. It, in time, will change him.
Right now, Optimus sits at Ratchet's. There are more Primely medics, he knows, but he's met the mech a few times when he would treat the cogless. The slightly-dingy medical slab is familiar in a way he needs, even though it feels different under his new frame. Part of him wants to ask for the Matrix to be removed, to be bestowed upon someone more worthy than he. He does not. Optimus Prime cannot abandon his people, and anyway he would not ask of another what Primus has asked of him.
For all the viciousness and desperation of that final battle, his frame is left remarkably intact. There is no scar from before, when his best friend killed him and didn't even have the kindness to do it properly. Nothing to justify the pain that still lances through him. His spark is restored and whole again from where is was clipped, half-blasted, but Optimus still gets the sinking feeling that it is not his. Despite his restored form, he feels altogether incomplete. Where is the proof of his life?
One day, on that rooftop on top of the world, D-16 and Orion had taken pebbles and carved one more scratch into each other's frames.
Not a confession, not an ownership. Just an acknowledgment, that they were each there, together. They were and had made each other as much as themselves. Orion Pax and D-16.
Though it had been worn with time, that etching had persisted throughout vorns. A symbol, a testament, and a promise in equal value.
It, too, is gone now.
"Prime?" Ratchet says, snapping him out of his spiral. He suddenly notes the lack of sharp pain, the dull ache that comes with welds and new screws. "I've finished — mostly. Now, your paint job. I can fix it here without much trouble, or I could refer you to Knockout if you want something a little more-"
"That won't be necessary." His voice is commanding now. It fills up ths space of a room, low and demanding. So, though he means for it to come out casual, Ratchet immediately snaps his intake shut at his words. Optimus flinches back.
"Right. Here, then. Do you know your hex codes?" Ratchet is already pulling out a box of swatches as he asks.
Just for a moment, he is Orion again, not yet shattered below the weight of expectations. "No— no. I meant the repaint." It is not a luxury he sees himself having often, the choice to appear flawed. It's only a fleeting slab of stone in an energon explosion, soon to fall and crumble. It protects him all the same.
Ratchet only nods, slowly. Optimus knows that he had often drawn scorn for treating the cogless, what with his skill. Wasted on them, they'd say. And so he, who knows what it is to reject and defy, allows this one tiny rebellion.
Ratchet leaves the room. Optimus stays, alone.
He runs a digit over a scratch left by Megatron. There is no gentleness here; it is only a testament to violence, a promise of hatred. Disturbed, it aches like an old wound.
Optimus does not want to be rid of it.
When they next see each other, it will be as enemies. There is bitterness between them, now. When they'd fought, the taste of energon on his glossa was almost sweet. And so Optimus dreads the day when he knows, he knows he will use one to assuage the other. A neverending cycle.
And so this scratch is a mark. They have changed each other, and the world has followed suit. But, if he thinks back to a simpler time, allows the Matrix to quiet in his chassis…
He remembers a gentle touch, a soft intimacy. Violence is a poor substitute, but then even as Orion, he has done well with what he has. One day soon, he will repaint and allow himself to be moulded in turn. He will limp on, dance alone. But for now-
For now, he has this reminder — a rooftop of a paintjob — and a love in his spark that damnably stays lit.