Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Your noble sacrafice for the greater good, it said, at the edge of his periphery, at the edge of his spark, has proven you worthy in the eyes of Primus. Orion recognized him, even with the short time spent together—the deep vocador of Alpha trion's resonated in him. It—he—was what pushed him to finally dismantle the lie they lived in.

Arise, he bellowed, from all around Orion—

Optimus Prime.

There were a few things that Bee has been up to now that the war was settled:

     » Showing the new mechs around.

     » Try to get an auto-graph from the past high guards. (Higher chance of success now that they weren't enemies.)

     » Try to give Optimus and Megatron their own space, but also get in there when they're being too awkward.

It wasn't much, but Bee has busy enough.

Between guiding and watching others set off for Kaon to rebuild what was left, Bee hadn't had much time for himself lately. Not that he minded—Peace, as it turned out, came with its own kind of work.

(That he much preferred, though it was honestly much more taxing than just stabbing and kicking anybody trying to kill him, wether that be a Decipticon or a Quintesson.)

So after what had been two stellar-cycles into this whole new reality, Bee has found himself leisurely walking outside. The chatter of passing by bots, the faint hum of the energon lines pulsing beneath his pedes—It all filled that muted stillness the war left behind, unburdened with the fear and uncertainty, slowly thriving again.

He had just finish making his daily rounds when he caught sight of a familiar silver and red figure, walking away briskly along the blue lines of the streams.

Bee gasps, loud.

"Starscream!" he called out.

For some reason, Starscream started to speed up—

"Hey—HEY! wait up!" Bee called, waving as he broke into a sprint to catch up.

Starscream didn't turn around, and for a klik, it seemed like he was going to bolt up to the sky and fly before Bee managed to catch his wrist.

"Oh for the love of—" Starscream shook him off in an instant, glaring down at Bee with what must have been the heat of a thousand suns.

Bee beamed up at him with what rivaled a million of them.

"I have been looking everywhere for you!" Bee said.

Starscream briskly looked away with a scoff, walking on ahead, muttering something about Soundwave warning him about the bumbly yellow bafoon or something of that sort, ignoring Bee even as he picked up the pace right beside him—

"You really disappeared, if it weren't for Meg saying that you're still here, I would have thought you ditched us—"

Starscream halted, Bee skidded a pede or two and turned to face him.

A disgruntled expression rested on Starscream's face, as he echoed back right at him;

"Meg?"

Bee smiled, "Yeah! He said you're still work—"

"Meg?!"

"Yeah!" Bee said again, "He said you're still—"

"Stop, please just—what is it for you to leave me alone?"

An oppertunity has laid before his very optics, and Bee snatched it right up.

"An auto-glyph!" He proudly answered, getting the datapad out, already signed with Soundwave's and Shockwave's own signatures.

Starscream, amazingly, looked even more disgruntled, and in utter disblief. Glancing at the data-pad and up at Bee, "Why, would you want such a thing after mega-cycles of me trying to kill you?!"

"Cause you're the high-guard—"

"That hasn't been my position for centuries now—"

"And you didn't kill me so—"

"I will right now—"

"Please!" Bee cut in with desperation, he just lacked Starscream's glyph, and it was the last thing he needed before his collection is completed. He had all of the previous data-pads racking up the history of the trio, alongside Megatronus prime, and it would complete it. It was the last thing he could actively search and get. "Just a skribble, or a drawing, or even your designation!"

Starscream, had froze. He looked at Bee for a moment,as if deciding if he should humor him or not, but his posture had relaxed, as if in giving in defeat, which Bee had hoped it was.

"You really want my auto-glyph?" Starscream asked, doubt lacing his tone.

"Yes!" Bee pushed the data-pad to him.

And to his utter giddiness, Starscream shut his mouth to a thin line that tried to force itself into a frown, but Bee noticed the faintest of color on his cheek-plates.

Starscream reached out to take the data-pad from Bee's servos, when his optics flicked toward the glowing edge of the energon stream. His wings twitched, and the faintest frown crossed his face.

"Wait," he said sharply.

Bee blinked, "huh?"

Starscream took a pede-step closer to the energon flowing stream, his gaze narrowing, his frown deeping. "I saw something."

Bee followed his line of sight, his smile fading at the tone of the other. Instinct honed over time was enough for him to trust this wasn't just a fluke, even if it was Starscream.

Amid the slow, luminous current of flowing energon, something metallic glinted beneath the blue surface. At first, it looked like a chunk of old plating or a piece of wreckage thrown in, but the shape was too defined. Too still.

"Is that—" Bee's vocador caught as he squinted, "Oh—Scrap! that's a bot!"

The data-pad slipped from his servos, clattering uselessly to the ground as he sprinted forward. He skidded down near the flow, crouching near the edge.

"Hey!" he called out, "Hey dude—oh Primus—"

It was a bot.

Almost gray, but they held on to the edge, fighting back against the current of the energon to stay afloat—

Bee reached out first, but Starscream was faster.

He was beside Bee in an instant, and had grabbed the fore-arm of the mech, and as soon as he had—the mech let go of holding on. The current surged, as if powered by something—splashing up in shimmering arcs as Starscream braced his pedes against the ground, vents flaring with straint. The mech's weight was heavier than expected, dragging him down with the stream flow.

"Don't just stand there!" Starscream snarled, "Help!"

Bee snapped out of it instantly, reaching to hug Starscream's waist tightly from the back.

"WHAT IN PRIMUS'S NAME ARE YOU—OOF!"

Bee had pulled them back with all of his strength, hauling Starscream—and the mech—back. The energon splashed around them as they hit the ground with a wet clang, sending a spray of droplets scattering around them. Starscream groaned with some muffled pain, probably because he had hit his helm, Bee did hear a clang.

"Warn a mech before you do something," Starscream hissed in his arms.

Bee frowned, "You just told me to help though."

Starscream turned his helm to retort, but stopped, instead turning his helm slowly to what was in front of them.

There, laying motionless, energon pooling beneath him, with faint light tracing through cracked seams in his broken frame—

Was none other than Optimus Prime.

Elita has seen her fair share of ghosts.

Those that haunted living mechs, those who were ghosts of their shell, and—

Well, this was an entirely new sort of ghost.

"So, just to confirm it again," she said, to a mildly stressed looking Ratchet, "that who you just treated was Optimus?"

Ratchet looked at her, before sighing, "Elita, I am just as confused as you are."

"Are you sure it's not any other mech who just has similair colors, looks like him, and—"

"Has the same coding? the same frame? same face-plate?" Ratchet listed, narrowing his optics at her, "Please, Elita, I know it sounds insane," he said, stressing the word, "but everything from the data-base, it's Optimus's code."

But that was—

"Impossible," She said.

Because Optimus couldn't have been injured, couldn't have been floating in a river of energon with a gaping hole in his frame, couldn't have been here, in the medical berth, stitched together, because she has just seen him.

She has just excused herself from their conversation when Bee had called in a panic—

Telling her, that he found Optimus half-dead—

It was impossible.

And yet, there he was.

On the medical berth, colors dull from his blue and red, an arm missing, frame stapled with quick work to cover the worst of the damage. His vents cycled shallowly, each intake ragged, labored. The monitors by the berth flickered with inconsistent readings, as though it knew something was wrong.

Elita stood frozen at the foot of the berth, staring.

The wide nasal ridge, the unfamiliar scar on the bottom of his chin on a familiar face-plate, the burnt plate at the edges of his shoulder, before it met the new plate of the metal cover up where his missing arm would be. Her optics had fixed on where the hollow space would have been, would have taken up most of his upper left half.

A wound, wide and charred, right through his frame—

And she knew that wound.

She saw it, everyone had.

(When D-16—No, Megatron, had shot Orion Pax.

…Orion…

Orion.

Orion—)

Elita's vent stuttered, her servos tightened into fists at her side.

"…Elita," Ratchet called out carefully, noticing her expression, noticing that she had realized something, "What is it?"

She didn't answer, she stepped closer to the med slab, optics wide, glaze flicking over from the quick fix up to the lines of the faceplate—smoother, if not for the remnants of darkening and dying spilled energon, for the scars, but it was younger, unmarred by the creases of the burden Optimus carried now. His frame was leaner, closer to her height.

This wasn't Optimus Prime.

It was before he was Optimus Prime.

This was—

"Orion Pax," She breathed.

The ghost of the past laid on the berth right in front of her.

"Ratchet," she whispered to the frozen mech beside her, "this isn't Optimus."

Ratchet frowned, "Elita—"

"It's Orion."

He blinked, "I—yes, I suppose he technically could be—"

Elita groaned.

"Look, is it really the same Optimus? Look at this!" She gestured toward the marred plating, to the missing piece of him, "That was where Megatron had shot him—shot Orion Pax."

Ratchet stared, disbelief flickering on his face-plate. "That's…" he started, and then stopped, stuck.

(Elita couldn't blame him.

She didn't know what the frag was going on either, what it could mean, who this was despite how blaringly clear it was. Just—

Just how was this possible?

What was this? some sick joke?)

The med-bay doors slid open with a soft hiss. Both of them turned, the only other mech authorized to enter was none other than a higher up than them, and that only meant two—

The newly made high-lord protector, or…

Optimus Prime.

Both options, at their current predicment, wasn't ideal. Still, Elita both tensed and relaxed to see that it was Optimus who stepped through.

"Ratchet, Elita," he greeted them, a warm expression on his face but voice weighted, "I stumbled into Bee, and—"

He stopped.

His gaze fell on the berth between the two of them, on the still frame lying upon it.

On himself.

For a long, unberable moment, there was only silence.

Elita would have jumped to explain right away, but—what was there to say? how could she explain this? Ratchet said nothing. Only the sounds of the monitor beeping in the background, syncing the beats of two sparks, identically mirrored, and the same.

(It would have been better, Elita thought, it would have been easier to explain if this was just a husk of a frame, a greyed out shell—

but it came back bleeding, alive, and with a spark.)

Optimus took a slow pede-step, his expression didn't change, but Elita could feel the unease radiating from him. His pauldrons squared tight, optic ridges furrowed in the slightest.

"That…" he said quietly, optics staring in bewilderment, "…is me?"

Elita knew what to say to that, at least. "No, Optimus," she said softly, shaking her helm, "That's… Orion Pax."

The unseen ghost of his past seemed to hang in the air between them, the memory of a younger him, before the war, before the primacy, before the betrayel—

Optimus optics didn't look away.

Because on the berth, Orion Pax's optics flickered open. Dim, confused pale blues that fell onto Optimus, a ragged, raspy voice called out;

"…Dee…?"

For the first time in many cycles, Elita saw him speechless.

Chapter Text

Ratchet had went through quite a lot in his life-cycle.

He had lived through the deep of the mines, and the rise of a new Prime, through countless emergencies, and full-scale battlefields. Through war, and through budging peace.

But nothing, nothing, can be compared to the last few joors.

The mech—or 'Orion', as Elita had decided—had jolted awake after bearing his gains.

None of that seemingly gentle, confused, hurt, left in him when he first rose. It was sudden, fast, and panicked.

(Which shouldn't have been possible, Ratchet was sure he had induced medical-stasis.)

His frame had seized, systems flaring, a motion of fight or flight, and before Ratchet could even say a single word, the mech on his berth slab had ripped the energon cables out of his frame and swung blindly.

Ratchet, the closest, got the blunt of it.

(The clang vividly reminded him of the way his wrench would echo off of the Prime's frame when he'd smack him out of his stupidity, perhaps, this was karma coming for him from Primus all along.)

Optimus had wrenched him out of the way before the mech could launch himself at him, and in a quick pink blurr, Elita held the patient back down.

She slammed her weight into the mech's shoulder plate, forcing him down despite his wild thrashing.

"Easy!" Ratchet shouted, servo cradling his aching helm. "Your frame is still near shut-down—"

He didn't hold still.

"HOLD HIM STILL!"

"Orion! Stop!"

"W-ho—Elita?—"

"Yes! Just, Stop it, you're hurt!—"

He held still under her stare.

Ratchet watched, as Elita-1 tightened her grip around his—one—arm, squeezing.

The mech—

…

'Orion' listened to her, staring at her, as if she was a ghost.

Elita-1 didn't look away from him, not for a klik, but took a step back. For Ratchet to step closer, holding the fallen cables to reattach again.

She held him, wether for comfort, or to keep him from lashing out and punching Ratchet again, Ratchet wasn't sure.

Still—

When Ratchet hooked a cable, 'Orion' glanced at him, and the hitch of his vents was clear as day, as he spotted more than Ratchet. His optics landing on the tallest figure, behind Ratchet, who's stare burned more than a thousand suns.

"Why do you look like me?" Vocalizer crackled, static, "Who are you?"

Ratchet doesn't freeze.

But he hesitated, when the pause lengthened.

When Elita tensed.

Optimus was silent for a moment.

A moment too long.

"…I'm Optimus Prime."

'Orion' stared.

His optics flickered violently, a stutter of blue hues, fighting to focus. He swayed, despite in Elita's hold, frame trembling as if the very sound of the name had gutted him.

"…Prime…?" he rasped.

Then his helm dropped—optics glitching as the smallest reserved energy in his frame burnt. A tremor ran through his whole frame, the last dregs of energy sparking out in a painful sputter.

Ratchet clicked the cables back on quickly, slamming the console to channel before his patient dropped into a stasis. Elita held him, face tight with concern as she lowered him back against the berth. Sharing that look over Ratchet shoulder, to Optimus.

The mech's—Orion, 'Orion', whatever—words rang between them in the silence.

Elita might be sure on her theory that this was Orion, but—there was no way, there was no logical explanation as to what connected him and Optimus.

Now, in the med-bay's strange quiet, Ratchet stared at the mech on the berth. Just like Elita, just like Optimus. He managed to tear his optics off of the mech, glancing at the monitor.

Ratchet rubbed his forehelm. "He's stable—for now," he muttered, "But that doesn't tell me what in the pit he is."

Elita looked up at him, glaring, and He saw Optimus tense in the corner of his optics, still, Ratchet continued—

"I've run his coding twice, his spark signature matches yours, his frame build matches yours, it is the same as when you were…" he paused, the same when he was a miner, but Ratchet pushed on, "But—but he is missing everything from the Matrix bonding onward. He's…not a prime, It's like—"

He ex-vented sharply.

"—Like a poor copy of you spat out and was dumped into the stream."

Elita shifted her weight, "Ratchet, a copy?"

"Yes, because what else could he be?" Ratchet said.

Elita glared, "Orion—"

"—Is dead."

It wasn't Ratchet who said that.

They both turned to Optimus, who still stood stiff, staring at the mech on the berth. Watching him with an expression that Ratchet… couldn't read. For all the mega-cycles he had worked beside Optimus, his friend, his closest friend, this was… a first in a long while. But he knew Optimus wasn't exactly thrilled over what was happening. Optimus simply watched the mech on the berth, watched him exist.

Optimus stepped froward.

His voice was steady, too steady.

"He is missing a cog."

Ratchet froze. "Optimus, we don't know who—what—he is! You can't possibly give him a cog, at least, not yet!"

"No son or daughter of Cybertron is born without a cog," Optimus said, "you said he has a spark signature right? as long as he has a spark, then, he is still one of us."

Primus, Ratchet thought, trust Optimus to cling to compassion to the most illogical things.

Elita's gaze softened—barely. Ratchet's didn't, he scrubbed his faceplate, irration and worry blending into the bitter taste he knew too well.

"Optimus," he said, picking each word like he was stepping around a minefield, one he knew too well around Optimus, "even if he has a spark signature—which matches yours, impossibily—he is not whole. He's incomplete. His systems are running on emergency bypasses, and half-coded frameworks. He shouldn't have been concscious, let alone punch me."

Optimus remained unshaken. "Yet, he just did."

"That's not the point—"

"It is," Optimus countered, "Not the punching—ah well, part of it. He punched you, he opened his optics, he is alive."

"Were you not the one who just said Orion was dead?!" Ratchet argued.

"Yes," Optimus said, "But whatever his origin, whoever he may have been—or may become—he is a cybertonian in need. That is all."

Optimus smiled at him, blue optics shining, soft, "That's why you're still helping him, right?"

Ratchet froze, then glanced away.

Elita let out a soft ex-vent. "Ratchet… You know he's right." She looked from one mech to the other, "We don't deny any mech of their right."

Ratchet wanted to argue. Primus knew he should, this was wrong, this could be a trick. They all had gone through the war, with the Decepticons, the Quintessons, they should know that this might be something—but every line of code he had ran, every scan he had preformed. It all pointed to the impossible, to a truth uglier than any simple explanation.

'Orion' is as the same as Optimus.

Not a Prime.

But their sparks…

He was real.

And if he truly was Orion pax-—

Then someone, somehow, had ripped a piece of the past into the present.

He looked at Optimus, really looked at him. The stiffness in the Prime's frame. The way his optics refused to leave the mech on the berth. Like he was memorizing, tracing a visage of the past. Without the Matrix's blessing, a ghost with warm plating, and Orion's optics.

Ratchet ex-vented, long and heavy.

"Optimus…" He began, "What do you want to do with him?"

'Orion' had gained a cog.

Optimus had left after giving it to Ratchet, as he was still busy with… Megatron. Elita following after, duty bound, but had urged Ratchet to comm her if 'Orion' woke again.

Ratchet had ensured that the cog wouldn't disturb his frame, still, the upgrade had nearly shortcut the energon power transfer. But he managed to keep it at bay.

And ensured that 'Orion' wouldn't wake from stasis for a while.

Ratchet needed to find him an arm, before he lets him wake. It would help with the stabilaztion, and the cog transformation would be complete.

And the only mech Ratchet trusted with limb fabrication on short notice was—

"Wheeljack!" Ratchet called out, the workshop door sliding open for him.

(Wheeljack was the closest.

No other reason.)

Sparks showered from a hunched figure, ducked behind metal, something hissed, before it paused. Ratchet took a few pede-steps closer, before Wheeljack raised his helm, the scorch marks on his mask obvious from where he stood.

Wheeljack turned, optics bright with excitement. "Ratchet! you're just in time!!"

Ratchet's relaxed a little, before remembering what he was here for.

"I was just calibrating the stabilizing gyro for the—Ratchet? you look like you had to deal with Megatron."

Oh, Ratchet wished he had.

Or maybe this was actually a better alternative to that.

Bah.

Ratchet simply cut to the chase, "I need an arm."

Wheeljack blinked, "An arm?"

Ratchet pushed past him, heading straight for a cleared workstation. "For a patient—"

"Oh! the Optimus looking one?"

Ratchet shot him a sharp look, Wheeljack simply waved his servo to explain, "Optimus already told me, he even asked me the same thing."

Of course he did.

Ratchet spared a glance to see what it was Wheeljack was working on, and in fact, it was an identical built limb, of… Orion pax. The same exhaust vent on the shoulder, the padded metal. It was grey in color, still yet not attached but, even if Ratchet didn't believe it… he doesn't doubt that it would be the same red and blue, once it is connected with Orio—….the mech.

"So, he is a match?" Wheeljack asked, voice low.

Ratchet pinched his nasal ridge. He was starting to feel the good ol' helm ache he used to have during the war. "Spark, frame, code. Everything but the Primacy. Missing the Matrix, missing an arm—missing sense!"

Wheeljack simply continued to work, but he was listening, as he always did. "You really treatin' him like a patient, not a paradox?"

Ratchet shot him another look.

"You want me to let a spark die just because his existence is wrong?"

Wheeljack's helm dipped, "No, Wouldn't expect anything less from you."

Ratchet looked away to hide the rising heat in his faceplate, "Don't get sentimental, I have enough problems."

Wheeljack simply shrugged, unbothered by Ratchet's dismissal, humming a tone under his vents.

Ratchet busied his servos in the nearest tray of tools, pretending very hard that Wheeljack's words hadn't warmed him. Wheeljack, thankfully—or unthankfully, depending on how one viewed it—pretended not to notice.

"So," Wheeljack said casually, slotting a joint piece into place with practiced ease. "Optimus brought me the schematics himself, can't exactly show me what his pre-Prime form was but, he gave me an old medic file and told me to upgrade it from there… the old miner data-pad, without the cog, but it isn't—"

"—A real medic file?" Ratchet murmured, corner of his intakes rising.

To think that Optimus kept that data-pad…

"Yeah," Wheeljack nodded.

"It was one I made long ago for him," Ratchet explained, staring at nothing, remembering the old, "back when he used to… get hurt a lot, not a lot of medics were willing to take him in with his trouble, so he asked me to help, even though I'm—I was a miner like him too."

"Heh, I still remember when you'd patch me up!" Wheeljack quipped, sounding far too happy.

"You both were menaces!" Ratchet huffed, but there was no true heat to it, "especially him, he wouldn't even ask for my help at times because he thought a 'a good recharge' would make him feel better!"

Wheeljack laughed, the sound got Ratchet staring, "Sounds familair!"

Ratchet groaned, "Don't you start."

Wheeljack simply shot him a crinkled optics look, and Ratchet could tell he was grinning under his mask, "Just saying! Even as Optimus, he just throws himself into the big scrap!"

"Tch," Ratchet clicked his glossa, fumbling with the tools in his servos. "Always pushing himself harder than any sane mech would."

he paused, optics drifting momentarily, remembering. Orion pax, bright optics, annoyance, lowest on the ranks…trusted that Ratchet would fix him up. The memory came clearer than ever before, was it because of the familair face on his medic-berth?

"You went quiet on me, doc."

Ratchet swiveled towards him, "Doc?!"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, doc—"

"Doc?!"

"Doc!"

"Why are you calling me that?!"

"The wreckers do!"

Ratchet glared at him with half the force it deserved, "do not call me that, You've been spending too much time with the wreckers."

Wheeljack simply hummed in agreement.

"Never enough time with you, tho."

Ratchet stalled, just for a fraction of a click. Wheeljack didn't even pause on his work, like saying that was just, natural for him.

But before he could say anything, a message in his HUD popped up—

DES: ELITA-1 | COM | 00:02

:: Ratchet ::

:: He is missing ::

…Frag.