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Optimus Prime had survived so much. The loss of friends, of self, of home. He’d survived war, despite its best efforts.
But even with all he had survived, he wasn’t sure how to survive this.
He had driven as fast as he could, until every strut ached and every wire burned. He had been battling to defend Vauvaire from Decepticon clutches, a battle he realized far too late was a diversion from the real target of Tyger Pax. But he couldn’t leave. He wouldn’t strand the thousands of Autobots fighting there. Elita was at Pax, as were Ratchet, Ironhide, Jazz, and Prowl. He had full faith in them and their ability to keep the Decepticons at bay. He was so focused on his own fight that he had almost forgotten his scout was even at Tyger Pax.
Then, the scrambled comm had come through. He only caught parts, but it was enough to hand off command to Ultra Magnus without a second thought and have him burn his treads to reach Tyger Pax.
: Bee down — Megatron’s doing — Ratchet isn’t sure — :
And then suddenly he was there, barking at soldiers who had done nothing wrong, ordering them to take him to the medicenter where the scout had been taken out. They got him there just in time to watch them race by with him on a gurney, mangled and gutted and broken. Energon didn’t drip onto the ground beside him so much as it poured, creating sickening pools of blue against the white tiling. It was so bad he felt his tanks churn, both in disgust and fear. Ratchet was right there with him, yelling at him, commanding him to live as he raced him into an operating room. Optimus could only stare after them, helpless. He hadn’t seen the medic so visibly scared since the early years of the war. It was after they disappeared that he noticed how the noises of battle had lulled for the moment, and the room was filled with the mechs who were supposed to be fighting it.
“What happened?” he asked the room, unmoving and cold. His generals, his soldiers, stood around him, optics anywhere but him. Some shook. Some cried. But no one answered.
“Answer me!” he shouted, rage boiling over in a way it hadn’t in years. They all jumped. He could only imagine how he looked right then—every bit the wrathful god Megatron told his Decepticons he was. These bots didn’t deserve his outrage, but in truth, he didn’t care. His scout was mangled. His scout could already be dead. The first with the courage to meet his optics was Elita, her own optics wide in disbelief at the display. He marched up to her, tilting his helm up and fixing his general with a glare.
“W-we’re not sure,” she finally forced out, unfamiliarity clouding her vision. “He was scouting the field and disappeared from scanners. W-we think he was interrogated by Megatron, since he was spotted in the area. By the time our soldiers found him—” she drew in a vent, harsh and shaky (she’s his friend too she’s scared too you’re scaring her).
“He tore out his voice box,” she whispered, terrified.
The Prime felt the fury drain from him in an instant, replaced by horror. It must have shown on his face, because pity made its way onto hers. Because he couldn’t have. Because Megatron couldn’t possibly be that cruel, that evil, because once upon a very long time ago he was his friend his confidant his brother and now he had—
Spiraling. You’re spiraling. Is that helping Bumblebee, Prime?
He tried to take in a vent, only for it to shake and catch. His injuries had looked severe, and the way Ratchet looked while his arms were already deep in the scout's chassis had him knowing it was bad. But his voice box? Even in this Primus-awful war, Bumblebee had a joyous voice—the voice of a mech who smiled regardless of how screwed they all were.
He had just spoken with him the night prior, a brief voice call to confirm positioning. Neither of them had even said goodbye.
Suddenly, Elita and Jazz were there, on either side of him, propping him up and moving him to a wayward chair against the wall. He didn’t remember his knees giving out. Mechs were talking to him, but they sounded like they were on the other side of a door, muffled in their concern. His vision was blurring, and he felt like he was overheating because he couldn’t vent but he was venting he was and oh Primus his little one their little one what if—
Jazz pulled back but Elita didn’t, sitting next to him as he shook, vents quick and sharp. He could barely feel her touch. His HUD was flashing warnings at him, but he couldn’t read them. Something hurt somewhere, but he couldn’t tell where. That can’t have been the last time he spoke to him; it was too inconsequential. It didn’t matter, and the final time they spoke needed to matter.
And then he was back in the battle on Eugenesis, pulling a small yellow bitlit out of a shelled forging center. The lone survivor, the miracle. Likely the last living Cybertronian ever to be forged. He screamed and clung to the Prime like he’d die if he let go, so new and already so scared. He clutched that ball of mesh so close to his chest, carrying him out and through a battlefield until he reached the temporary settlement where Ratchet first met and fell in love with him.
First steps and first laughs and first words. First fights and first missions and first battles. They flashed before his optics with a vengeful fervor, leaving him hollow and hunched over. He noticed Elita’s vague silhouette sending everyone else out, her kneeling in front of him, and asking him something. He couldn’t hear her.
He could be gone. There might be no more firsts.
And where the fuck was he? Fucking around in a battle that didn’t matter, that was a Primus-damned distraction, while his little one was maimed?
Bumblebee, so proud to receive his scouting certification, despite Optimus and Ratchet’s nervousness. Him thanking them for letting him do it, for letting him serve. Ratchet ordering Optimus to watch over him, to keep him safe from the worst harm.
Optimus was going to purge.
It should have been him. He was the one Megatron hated, not Bumblebee. Not his miracle.
Elita took both his servos in hers, rubbing her thumbs gently over the mesh. She stopped speaking. She waited for him to calm himself. Patient, caring Elita who’d been there through everything, through every tear and every atrocity.
“I-I’m sorry,” he croaked, unable to meet her gaze.
“You’re forgiven,” she said.
He doesn’t know how long they sat like that. Too long and not long enough. But then the doctors were there and Ratchet was there and he was on his pedes, gauging his partner's reactions.
He looked up at the Prime, his mouth falling open and closing again. His optics stared through him, and his servos shook—still caked in their little one’s energon. He tried a few more times before stepping back, allowing the doctor whose name Optimus didn’t know to speak for him.
“He will live. It will be a very long and hard road, but he will live.”
Optimus went numb.
He heard everything the doctor said after that, processed it as analytically as he could. Broken and unrepairable voice box, a patch fix, months of physical therapy, and agonizing pain. Multiple broken joints and exposed patches of wiring. Cracked optics and crushed digits.
Optimus couldn’t tear his gaze away from Ratchet, who seemed to flinch at every word. His partner’s servos never faltered, yet here they shuttered so badly you could hear them without looking. He looked lost. Hopeless.
He was reaching out, taking one of Ratchet’s servos in his own. He felt the medic tense to pull away, but the Prime squeezed tight, silently begging him to hold on. So Ratchet did, turning to the other doctors. They were not the CMO or Commander of the Autobots in that moment. They were guardians, and their sparkling was hurt. Their servos shook together, and smeared their miracles' energon into the grooves.
He would live. He will live.
They could see him. They were walking, then looking through a protective glass because the infection risks were too great, and both of them had just been on a battlefield. They couldn’t touch him or hold him or take his servo even though he must have been so scared. They could only watch as a machine kept his vents going, and each limb twitched with the weight of metal casts. He looked broken.
Ratchet was crying silently. His servo slipped from the Prime’s.
He would live, but he’d never be him again.
They must have stood there for hours. Ratchet shed enough tears for the both of them, drifting further and further away from the Prime. He vaguely remembered asking one of the doctors when they thought he would wake up, and they wouldn’t answer. They just tilted their heads to the side, optics to the ground; they refused to say what they truly believed. Finally, First Aid arrived, rushed from another front, and after an examination gave them the cold, hard truth.
“It could be hours,” he said, somber as he could be. “It could be years.”
Ratchet wouldn’t meet anyone's optics. Aid tried to take him to wash the energon off his frame. He reached out to take his shoulder, and the doctor slapped it away, fixing him with a look that could send even Optimus running.
The spark monitor beeped intermittently. It was the quietest a room had ever been with Bumblebee in it.
He couldn’t be here.
The Prime excused himself, screwing his optics shut as he moved to his quarters. The Prime was always given one of the few berthrooms in their temporary bases, despite his protests. He typically let other soldiers use it, whoever asked first. It felt wrong, having a place of rest when those fighting for him didn’t.
His digits trembled as he input the code, the door sliding open. He barely held himself together long enough to slip in and allow it to shut behind him. The second it was closed, he screamed, guttural and shaky—slamming his fist into the metal with too much force. He turned and collapsed against the dented door, sliding down it with his servos clutching his helm. The Prime vented desperately, trying to stop what would become never-ending tears before they surfaced.
He didn’t even recognize his digits sliding off his forehelm and interlacing, grasping together against his face. They clenched so hard they stung his knuckles, already raw from the battle with both the Decepticons and the door.
“Please,” he found himself praying, optics closed and spark wide open. “Please, I have asked for so little. He is the last of us; please don’t take him. Please don’t take him too.”
He knew he’d live. The question was whether he’d want to—whether he’d choose to. And Optimus Prime had lived through enough suicides.
“Why, Primus?” he wept. “Why?”
Optimus was tired. Tired of loss and death and of goddamn war. He was needed in every place at once, and wherever he wasn’t, mechs died in droves. He wanted to close his optics and recharge without the faces of those he failed haunting his dreams. He wanted the time to read some poetry.
He wanted his little one in his arms, safe, and as far away from a battlefield as he could get him.
He’d never forgive himself. He knew that from the moment he saw him on the gurney, from the moment he saw the look on Ratchet’s face as he begged him to live. He had sworn, the day he had taken the bundle of yellow into their lives, that he would protect him: the eternal youngest, the last Cybertronian. And he wasn’t there. Not only was he not there, but it was his mistake that had ripped the throat from their miracle. A mistake which had, quite literally, taken its pound of mesh.
A guardian. What a fucking joke.
He had no idea how long he sat there, praying to Primes supposedly his equals. He just knew when the knock came. It was a feeble thing, hesitant and soft. Nothing was attacking, he supposed.
With a deep invent to compose himself, he released his servos and stood. It took him a few moments longer than it should have, but he turned to face the door and reached up to its panel to trigger the release.
Ratchet stood there, empty, still covered in Bumblebee’s energon.
“May I—”
Optimus stepped to the side without a word, offering passage. The berthroom wasn’t horribly small, large enough to move around in without touching the walls or furniture. So when the medic entered, he moved to the opposite side of the berth from the door, wrapping his arms around himself and staring out the small window above the desk. The Prime watched him for a few seconds before closing the door again.
Neither of them said a thing. They just stayed there, Ratchet with his back to Optimus, in weighted silence. Eventually, the Prime rounded the berth and sat down on it, right behind where his partner stood. No words could reach them—no sounds could make sense of their collective suffering. What language could adequately summarize their self-hatred, their loss?
Two hours. They stayed stagnant for two hours, while their little one's blood dripped off his sire’s plating and onto the floor.
He finally stood, slow and loud, reaching for Ratchet’s shoulder. “Please, old friend, let’s—”
“Don’t touch me!”
The medic swerved and slapped his servo away, hard. It was the first time the Prime had gotten a good look at his expression. There was grief and loss and confusion, but most importantly, there was rage.
Rage directed at him.
Oh.
Optimus retreated without offence, pulling his arm to his chest. He averted his optics, hanging his helm.
“You just had to be the better mech, didn’t you?” Ratchet screamed, fury choking his words. “You had to be above his ways. Well, look where that got us! Look where that got Bumblebee!”
Optimus flinched, hunching further into himself.
“Everyone—everyone—knew he couldn’t be reasoned with, but not you. So instead of fucking killing him, like you could have a dozen times, you extend your fucking hand!”
Optimus could’ve stopped what came next. Frankly, should have. But there was something cathartic in Ratchet’s punch, in the force of it that had his cheek stinging and helm thrown to the side. He felt drops of the energon dripping down his faceplates now, too. It felt fitting.
“He is a monster who tears sparklings apart for their loyalty, and you extend your hand,” Ratchet seethed, arm still frozen in the follow-through. He shook with rage, intake opening and shutting as though he was simply too furious to form the words. After a few seconds longer, he yelled and turned his back on him, stomping towards the desk. He took it in both servos and pulled, tossing it to the right where it slammed against the wall. He went for the lamp next to it, but Optimus leapt into action before the medic could hurt himself. He wrapped his arms around his chest and pulled him tight against his chest, back to his front. He curled around him, balling the medic into his frame. Ratchet screamed wordlessly, punching and scratching at the Prime’s arms, trying to get free. Optimus took the pain.
He struggled for a while before his wrath turned to heaving sobs, louder than the Prime had ever heard from him. He held on even tighter after the medic went limp, who took his arms in his servos and held on like his life depended on it. And as he wept, Optimus found himself doing so too. His tears pittered against Ratchet’s frame. His were silent, but he knew Ratchet knew regardless.
“I-I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—” Ratchet gasped out in between cries. “Primus, I’m s-so sorry, this isn’t your f-fault—”
“It is,” Optimus whispered, dermas pressed against his helm. “It’s okay, it is.”
“No, no. No, it isn’t. It’s his. It’s his fault. N-no one else's.”
Optimus went quiet. And by the increased volume of Ratchet’s sobbing, he knew the Prime had believed him—just not the sentiment he wanted him to believe.
“He’ll live,” the Prime found himself muttering, not just to the medic but to himself. “He’ll live, Ratchet, and it’ll be hard but he’ll live. You saved him. Thank Primus for you Ratchet thank Primus—”
“But we’ll never hear him again!” Ratchet wailed, hunching over with the force of his agony. He trembled so bad it began to shake the Prime’s plating. “He’ll never—never hear his own voice again!”
That tore a sob out of the Prime as well, tightening his hold on his beloved medic. He was right, no matter how badly either of them didn’t want him to be. Optimus finally collapsed back onto the berth, dragging Ratchet down with him. The medic shifted in his arms, turning into his chest and curling into him, bawling. The Prime sat there and held him, held him as he cursed Megatron and the Primes and the war and the caste system and himself.
“N-not our little one, please, no!”
The Prime sat there and held him, quiet in his grief. He would reserve his curses for the battlefield, for when he ripped the Lord of the Decepticons apart with his bare hands.
They both sank into the oil bath, silent. Nowadays, bathing was a luxury soldiers couldn’t afford—they were lucky if they got a quick shower in between battles. But after hours of violent grieving and guilt, the Prime commed for one to be drawn, almost entirely for Ratchet’s sake.
The energon had begun to dry. If they waited too long, they might have to scrape it off.
He had carried the medic into the bath and gone into it with him, letting him sit between his legs. Ratchet’s energy had lapsed, and he had gone almost catatonic about an hour prior, vacant. Optimus had just held on, grounding him.
Once they were in the bath, he took scoops of the oil and poured them over the medic’s helm and frame. The black began to stain with neon blue, each servofull adding more and more. Neither mech said a word as they watched the blood swirl in the still liquid. As gently as he could, the Prime began scrubbing at the spots of blue that had already dried. Ratchet screwed his optics shut and whimpered, pushing closer into Optimus’s frame.
The Prime wondered if they looked peaceful from the outside. He wondered if it showed on their faces as much as he thought it did.
He kept going until almost every spot was clear. He took Ratchet’s servos last, wanting to be extra cautious with their sensitivity. He dipped them into the oil, then rubbed circles into the mesh with his digits, attempting to loosen the dried energon in the liquid.
“I’m so sorry.”
The Prime tensed, ready to reject another apology, before recognizing that the medic wasn’t talking about Bumblebee. So entrenched in his task, Optimus hadn’t noticed Ratchet had turned his helm to face him, optics widened in horror. He slackened when he realized to what he was referring, pressing a light kiss to his helm.
“I let you. Please don’t give it another thought.”
“I hit you.”
“You did. You’re forgiven.”
Ratchet took his servos from the Primes and twisted, reaching up to take his face in his palms.
“It wasn’t right.”
“Nothing is right right now,” Optimus sighed, pressing their foreheads together. “But we’ll survive.”
Ratchet just stared for a while, clearly debating whether an argument was worth it before sighing and resting his helm on the Prime’s chest, letting his servos drop. Optimus took them yet again and began running his digits gingerly through the grooves.
“He’ll live,” Ratchet whispered, once it was all gone.
“He’ll live,” Optimus repeated, wrapping his medic in his arms once again.
They stayed there for a bit longer before begrudgingly pulling themselves out and drying off. Then came the agonizing trudge towards the medical suite, where they arrived just in time to be allowed by his bedside for the first time.
It was a quiet affair. Ratchet simply took up a post in a chair at his side, servo atop his forearm, one of the few places not broken. The Prime knew he would not move until he was near his death, or until their sparkling awakened.
Optimus waited at the door, leaning against it. He waited for Ratchet to need him.
Until then, he would wait, and he would plot. He would plot Megatron’s agonizing demise, a sick fantasy he once believed was reserved only for the worst of mechs. But he was quickly learning what a sire’s sparkbreak could do—and it made diplomacy feel like a betrayal.
It was the grief talking, he knew. But he let it talk for a little longer.
After all, there was no other undamaged area to hold onto his little one. So waiting by the door would have to do.