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When Optimus—his Optimus—walked through the ground bridge, it was like Ratchet could live again. His spark wasn’t in pieces, and his mind cleared. He saw the light at the end of the tunnel, literally. His every circuit ached; Megatron’s hits weren’t easy to take by any means, but it was the best ache. It was an ache that meant Optimus was home.
The first time Ratchet called the base home was in front of Optimus. He hid his joy well, but Optimus always did a poor job at hiding his smiles from the doctor.
The Prime clutched at his shoulder, doing nothing to disguise the disgust at the sight of his emblem. Ratchet couldn’t help but step forward, to grasp his arm, to hold him. Optimus glanced up; this close, the doctor could see his optics quivering. He doesn’t remember anything, Ratchet thought. Whatever they made him do, he doesn’t remember.
“Optimus, it has truly been our darkest hour. But know this: from every indication, your spark never ceased being that—of an Autobot.”
It did little to ease the tension in the Prime’s shoulders. But the slight sag was enough for the medic as the others began their approach with smiling faces. Ratchet let go before his grip got painful, stepping back and looking away. The emblem faded from his vision as he turned, moving towards his medical station. The Autobots had had a tough battle. He could see a limp in Bulkhead’s gait, and one of Arcee’s wings was bent and sparking. Ratchet himself had a bit of a caved-in chest from the backhand he had gotten when trying to prevent Megatron from reaching Jack as he appointed Orion Prime once again. The thought of the Key, flowing into him—not just returning his memories and abilities but overtaking Orion Pax too—Ratchet didn’t want to think about it. He wished he’d never seen it.
He’d seen it once before: seen the Prime emerge where his dear friend had once stood. Once almost tore him apart; twice was the Primes being cruel.
There was a simplicity to their lives at the base. Survive the day, and you’re doing pretty good. Not to say their days were routine—they were anything but with the Decepticons venting down their necks, but it was the five (now eight) of them against the world, and those were the only lives Ratchet had to care about. And for the last few days, there were only seven.
Every day of Optimus’ absence left him more and more hopeless. He could try to rationalize it—his leader was gone, and they were adrift—but deep down he knew that wasn’t why.
He reached his sorry excuse for a medical station and tucked himself inside, out of view of the rest of the team. Finding his way to the cot in the center of the room, he placed both of his servos along its edge and leaned against it, optics closed and venting heavy. He tried to ignore the fact that his servos shook for the first time in millennia. He tried to ignore the racing of his processor, too, but that was a harder task.
The doctor was intelligent in his creativity. His mind could stretch to the farthest places in search of solutions, could connect the most distant of dots. From nothing but primitive human equipment, he had almost created synthetic energon, a feat no scientist on Cybertron with all the resources and support of the world had achieved.
Orion Pax, alone, with nothing but his memories of Iacon in the hands of Megatron, didn’t leave much to the imagination. His mind was always his greatest weapon—the warlord knew that. But Orion was naive, kind in a way the Prime wasn’t anymore. He believed in mechs, no matter their circumstances. Ratchet could practically hear Megatron asking Orion, “Won’t you help me find our enemies?” in a sultry voice, and Pax beaming at him, nodding, desperate to prove his worth to the budding politician. Orion was more brilliant than Ratchet had ever been. In time, he would have found the base for him. And if he ever remembered who he was after Megatron had blown them to pieces? Primus, Optimus never would have forgiven himself.
Ratchet pressed more of his weight into the cot, trying to shake the images away. In the end, Orion’s natural goodness had brought them back to him—he had dissected Megatron’s words and found what lay underneath. With his memories of the event gone, only the Decepticons knew what the well-meaning archivist had done for them. And despite the certainty that Optimus would pick and pull at his processor until it bled, trying to pry the knowledge from it, the doctor had a feeling he would be unsuccessful.
But he had come back. In the end, Orion had returned to them. And the gravity of Ratchet’s relief due to that could hold them all on this Earth a little longer.
However, simmering deep in him was a rage he could not tame. It choked him, silencing and separating him from his leader. Jack, tapping the Key against the railing, ignorant of its power and responsibility, kept flashing in his mind. Optimus hadn’t even told the boy—and of course, hadn’t told Ratchet. When he had made the Autobots aware of the Key’s meaning, he had left something so unimaginably important out.
The Key wasn’t just used to return knowledge to a Prime. It could also be used to choose a new one. And in Ratchet’s mind, that is what Optimus had intended. He didn’t think he would lose his memories and need to be reminded.
Optimus believed he was going to die down there. In the dark and cold, away from him.
Ratchet’s digits began to tear into the berth.
“Old friend?”
Ratchet swerved, catching the red and blue mass in front of him. The room, the base, was darker. How long had he been standing there? How long had Optimus?
“Y-yes, Optimus? Something you need?” Ratchet asked, terse, releasing the cot from his grasp.
“It can wait, if—”
“No, no, it’s fine, please.”
They stood there for a moment in awkward silence. The Prime moved his gaze to the ground, shifting his weight from pede to pede. He was subconsiously rubbing his digits up and down his other servo’s digits, a nervous habit that Ratchet hadn’t seen in years. He couldn’t tell where Optimus’ shame originated from, but it was clear as he cleared his throat.
“If we don’t have the supplies, please don’t trouble yourself—but I would—” he paused, reaching up to his left paludron while taking care not to touch the brand, “I would very much like these removed,” he said in a low voice, tinted with emotion.
Ratchet stared for a moment before responding. “O-of course. Come here, sit down.”
He did, moving across the room and lifting himself onto the berth. In the time Ratchet had taken to reach for his toolkit, he was already fidgeting. He looked anywhere but at the other mech in the room as Ratchet set up, pulling out what he would need to melt and reshape the brand. He would offer a painkiller if he thought Optimus would accept, but he knew his leader. This was too little pain to justify the use of their limited patches, in his mind. If the Prime could take his mechs' pain from them and feel it himself, he would. But if that was impossible, he’ll take just a little extra so they won’t have to feel it later.
Klink, klink, klink of metal on metal, of the future of Cybertron against a railing.
The work was simple enough, easy to undo. He’d made this change many times, with hundreds of mechs pushing their sparks and minds to the brink to earn the right to bear a new shield. This was different, though, no matter how hard Ratchet attempted to convince himself otherwise. This shield, on this metal, felt like someone's bad idea of a sick joke. When he grabbed his heating torch and brushed his digits over the brand, he felt an almost imperceptible shiver. He wasn’t the only one who thought this image on red metal was wrong.
The process was slow. The Prime didn’t wince, but every once in a while, his optics would flick to Ratchet’s servos like he was expecting more pain to arrive. But the doctor kept his touch light, and his leaders’ suffering slight. Optimus didn’t speak, but then again, neither did Ratchet, silence weighing the air down. The quiet hum of the heater filled the space instead. Optimus still wasn’t meeting his optics.
The Decepticon symbol melted away, leaving the doctor with a fresh canvas. Setting the heater down, he picked up a graver. His servo guided his processor, the motion so practiced he wouldn’t have had to look to see it done. But he did look—using his other arm to hold the Prime steady as the Autobot shield began to take shape. Line after line, the metal began cooling as one shoulder was weighed down by the right brand once again.
Ratchet put his tools down to look his handiwork over. He stared, and must’ve kept staring—but suddenly the rage in him was rising and his servos once again began to shake.
“Ratchet?” the Prime asked, in the same soft, worried, and damned tone he always did.
The doctor took one glance at the door to make sure it was closed, that the others wouldn’t see, and punched him in the arm. Hard. Optimus flinched.
“Ratchet, what—”
He hit him again. And again. And again.
Optimus turned into the flurry of blows, attempting to grab Ratchet’s servos and hold them steady; Ratchet just kept hitting the new targets. Something wet slid down his face, and at some point, his grunts had turned into something more guttural. Noticing this, the Prime stopped and just let the barrage continue. Ratchet needed no permission, pounding away at Optimus’ front windows.
“You—idiot—” Ratchet said in between punches.
“How—could you—do that?”
He had started screaming earlier. He couldn’t be bothered to remember when.
“How could you—how could you—”
He was hyperventilating. He knew it, knew that this wasn’t doing anything, that he was just lashing out. But the Doctor of Doom’s rage had boiled over, and he was nothing if not a mech with a lot of rage to lash out with. His servos, his greatest tool, were used to assault rather than mend his oldest friend and confidant. Primus, he was pathetic. At some point, the attack slowed, his anger mellowed by a circuit-crushing exhaustion.
“How could you do that…” he whispered into Optimus’ chest, where he had somehow been collected once his fists had collapsed against the Prime’s windows. At some point, the Prime had taken his shoulders—not quite a hug, but as close to one as Ratchet had gotten in years. His frame shook with an unchecked force, even the strength of a Prime unable to still him. Realizing this, one of Optimus’ servos moved to cover one of Ratchet’s. The servo trembled in his grasp, but he held on anyway. Ratchet sobbed, tired and confused and furious. He moved the servo not held by the Prime towards the new brand, clutching the Autobot sigil like a lifeline. He turned his face into his windows, trying to hide his tears from the mech that made them.
Optimus didn’t say a word. He didn’t defend himself or comfort Ratchet. Just held on like the world would end if he let go.
With one final pitiful hit, servo still covered by Optimus’ own, his rage had left him. All that was left was the fear. He had refused to admit just how afraid he was—refused to admit that every day Optimus wasn’t by his side, his terror grew. His servos shook with it as a human boy did more to save his leader than he ever could have. And there, in Optimus’ arms, he felt it all crashing over him like a tidal wave. The terror, the fury, the pure grief as he mourned a mech who wasn’t dead for the second time.
Ratchet’s sobs grew from quiet to deafening. He hadn’t let the tears fall when his leader was gone. Now that he was here, holding him, Ratchet’s grip on his emotions faltered. He shook with the force of heaving cries. Every part of him trembled.
He didn’t know how long he’d been there. How much of Optimus’ time he’d taken, or where the rest of the team was. But there was now time when he didn’t have to know—where his mind didn’t have to be in a state of constant awareness, watching over everyone and everything. They were all safe, in this moment. They were all home.
Optimus never moved.
When Ratchet returned to his senses, returned to his anger and fury, he shoved himself out of the Prime’s grasp. He said nothing as he pressed against the back wall, far away from the berth and out of Optimus’s reach. He drove his digits to his optics, wiping stray tears away. His energon was boiling, a heat born of the embers of his wrath.
The silence drew on for a while. Optimus made no move to leave, nor approach. Ratchet kept his optics off him, choosing to instead stare at the door like it had offended him. He couldn’t help but think about how many times the Prime had been so close to being ripped asunder, about the thousands of close calls and hundreds of miracles. Never once had he given the key to another. Not one time. He had never given up like this.
“Ratchet.”
The difference between a request and a command was always clear in Optimus’ voice. This was a request, one which he would take no offence at being denied.
Ratchet never did deny him anything. He met Optimus’ gaze. He wore the smallest frown, just a tiny pull of the corner of his dermas. His face was slack, optics half-closed, heavy with exhaustion. Nothing was hidden then, no physical or metaphorical mask to guard him. It was just him, Ratchet, and the blanket understanding that neither of them wished to believe.
There was no other way.
“I can’t forgive you,” he said. No matter the reason, the way Ratchet found out that Optimus was planning to die down there would be seared in his memory for the rest of time. It wasn’t just wrong; it was a level of cruelty Ratchet had assumed was reserved for their enemies.
Klink, klink, klink.
His frown shifted, the smallest smile adorning his face, even as his optics darkened at his medic’s words. He said nothing to challenge them; he let them hang in the air, powerful as an oath. Optimus was many things, a fool not among them. He knew that Ratchet’s forgiveness was hard-won and that this time he might just have to accept a loss. He nodded, his digits digging into each other in his lap. His silence only served to enrage the medic further.
“Say something, damn it!”
“What would you like—”
“No, not… don’t try and tell me what I want to hear, just please—” Ratchet’s shoulders sagged, the tears returning to spill over his cheeks, “—say something. Give me any reason to forgive you.”
Optimus stared at him like he was a puzzle to be solved with a time limit, a ticking clock racing down as he searched for the missing pieces. His small smile faded when he didn’t find what he was looking for.
“There—”
A pause.
“You would have—”
Another pause.
“I—”
He hung his helm with a sigh, unable to translate the words he had to say from his mind to his voice. His digits were clutching each other so hard that Ratchet was getting nervous they would draw energon. The minutes felt like hours as they dragged on.
“I had to save you all,” he settled on, turning towards the door. His optics said that wasn’t everything, that there was so much more he needed to say, but he just couldn’t find the words. “I had to.”
“You could have done that and still told me.”
“You would never have let me go.”
“No, I wouldn’t have. Because we would have figured something else out.”
“There was no time.”
“There is never time!” Ratchet shouted, throwing his servos in the air. “But I refuse to believe we couldn’t’ve found another solution that didn’t involve killing yourself!”
The accusation stilled the air in the room. But it was the truth, wasn’t it? Optimus Prime had gone to the center of the Earth to die, without telling a soul. And no matter how much his optics whirled into pinpricks and filled with a guilt that Ratchet could feel in his own spark, the doctor couldn’t forget that.
“Were you really going to leave me like that?” Ratchet whispered, shaking his helm slowly, and his face grew wetter. “Without so much as a goodbye?”
The Prime physically reached for him, then, intake opening but never making a sound. If Ratchet fooled himself, he might have seen his optics shine with unshed liquid. His servo shook as it hovered, frozen in outreach. Finally, he seemed to understand that there was nothing he could say that would change what he had done, and let his servo and face drop. He leaned down with his optics to the floor, refusing to meet Ratchet’s gaze.
The medic gasped softly, lost in the flood of his emotions, and collapsed against the wall behind him. He slid down and down until he was sitting on the floor with his helm in his servos, trying to vent again. He heard Optimus shift as though to reach down and collect him, but he stopped before even making it off the berth.
Ratchet was drowning—a sensation that was supposed to be foreign to Cybertronians, but June had explained well enough that the doctor knew that's what this was. He had been alone before. He’d been alone months, even years, waiting for Optimus to wake up from a coma or recover from whatever Ratchet had saved him from. But he had always at least had the comfort of confidence in his work, knowing that the Prime would eventually return to him from the brink of death.
Without that confidence, would Ratchet even want to fight to come up for air? To rise from the currents of suffering just to meet a universe without him in it?
Before he could find an answer, Optimus was in front of him, kneeling. Ratchet didn’t know when his sobs had become choking gasps or when his digits had dug so deep into his own plating that he felt pain, but it became apparent as the Prime took both his servos in his own to prevent the medic from damaging himself. Now the Prime was looking him in the optic, squeezing to bring Ratchet back to the world—the real world where Optimus was still very much alive.
“Y-you—you were—”
“I’m here, Ratchet. I came back to you,” he muttered, bringing Ratchet’s servos to his chest. The thrumming of his spark rippled through the overly sensitive mesh. “I came back.”
“Y-you can’t keep doing this to me, I’m—I’m too old for this scrap,” Ratchet hiccuped, staring his Prime down with blurring vision. “My spark can’t take it.”
“I am so sorry for the pain I have caused you, old friend. But I cannot promise anything when it comes to you and the team's safety,” he said, his words laced in sorrow and regret. “But I—I should have informed you of the possible outcome of the mission from the start. That I was wrong for, and I am so very sorry.”
Ratchet knew that was all true. He knew Optimus would always put them first, over his own life and limb; the thought didn’t comfort him. And he knew, above all else, that Optimus truly was sorry. But that didn’t stop the tremors wracking his frame or the rapid beating of his spark. He couldn’t ground himself, so he relied on the texture of the Prime’s servos over his as he ran his thumb over the metal in a soothing motion.
“I can’t forgive you,” he repeated, absent.
“I know. I will not ask you to. I can only offer explanation, not justification.”
Ratchet hunched forward, burying his face in the crook of the Prime’s neck cables as he heaved. Optimus barely shifted, turning just so into the medic's helm and holding him above water. He didn’t let go of Ratchet’s servos, holding on tighter and tighter until the pressure almost hurt.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, so light that Ratchet almost couldn’t hear him over his wails. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
He kept repeating himself as the doctor kept crying, treading the waves in a raging ocean. Optimus held on, refusing to lose him to the current, whispering apologies into his audials like they were prayers. They stayed on the floor of the medbay for what felt like hours, still as the dead. Eventually, Ratchet’s exhaustion and pain caught up with him, as he winced against Optimus’s plating.
“You’re injured,” Optimus said, the first words other than sorry he had spoken in an age.
“N-nothing that won’t heal on its own,” he replied, voice hoarse and shaky from the whirlwind of emotions he had let loose.
“You’re certain? Wounds inflicted by Megatron are nothing to sneer at.”
“You know I know that,” Ratchet scoffed, rolling his optics. “I scanned myself three times when we got back. It’ll just sting for a while.”
“Okay.”
Optimus pulled back, just enough to separate the two of them, and released one of the medic’s servos to cup his face, searching for anything more.
“I’ll be fine, Optimus,” he lied.
“I know,” The Prime lied back.
The medic took his servos back and brushed the remaining tears from his optics. Optimus stepped back, still kneeling but giving Ratchet space. Ratchet sighed, letting his arms collapse beside him and clunking his helm against the wall. Telegraphing each move, the Prime shifted to sit beside him, one knee up with his servos folded neatly in his lap. Both of them had cried all they had left to cry, and said all they had left to say.
“I-I know we have our rules,” Ratchet said after a stint of silence. “But could you stay tonight? I-it doesn’t have to be in either of our berthrooms, it can be right here if—”
“Of course, old friend.”
Ratchet tilted his head, watching the Prime watch him. “Thank you.”
He nodded, straightening his legs and getting more comfortable. It seemed they weren’t going anywhere. Ratchet did the same, stretching out and sending a command to shut the lights off in the medbay. A part of him wanted to keep fighting, to bully the truth out of the Prime with every ounce of will he had. But most of him was tired—the kind of tired that was different than a lack-of-recharge tired. Optimus picked at his digits and did not look at the medic. Ratchet used his HUD to lock the medbay, an action he rarely took. But tonight, Optimus was with him—exactly where he wasn’t supposed to be.
But Ratchet didn’t think he could recharge that night without him there.
After a few moments of quiet shifting and optics dimming, Ratchet felt two digits fall atop his—gentle and warm. The Prime fell into recharge soon after, undoubtedly exhausted from the last week’s events. The medic was lulled by the rumbling of his engine.
It was only after he was almost asleep that he realized he hadn’t yet mended the other brand. That Optimus Prime wore both the Autobot and Decepticon badges. A part of him wanted to wake him up, to fix it immediately.
But the other part won out—the part that wanted to sleep with his Prime by his side, digits connected, before the inevitable distance between them grew further. Ratchet wanted to hold on; he wanted to feel the Prime’s life in his own servos for no other reason than to confirm he was still there.
And so for that one night, he did. Knowing that when he woke, he would fix him. Like he always did.