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“This one is yours.”
The groundbridge lever creaked in Ratchet's fist. It was old and rickety. Replacing it had been on Ratchet's agenda, but the mad scramble for relics and keys and threads of survival had kept him busy. As it groaned for mercy in his grip, something hot wormed through his tanks, preceded by prickly ice. It was dread, squirming inside him, searching for the perfect place to burst out. It struck quick enough that he could have purged. He feared if he opened his mouth, he would vacate his insides.
Optimus was watching the vortex spiral when Ratchet managed to turn and look at him. Since Smokescreen had evacuated, leaving only medic and Prime, his face had lost the facade. He looked somber, vanquished, tired. Optimus was never meant to look like this, it was not what he stood for, he did not give up, he would never wear defeat. His very existence was a promise that the world could not come to an end.
Ratchet swallowed the cannonball sized lump in his throat. “What about you?” It was almost accusatory.
“I will ensure the Decepticons cannot follow.”
How many eons of tears and sparkache could rise in Ratchet at once? How much suffering could he possibly endure in a single moment?
Anger raised its head to defend him from the onslaught. From every wound the last millenia dealt, every hurt he had taken for the Autobots. For Optimus. After all of his pain, Optimus had the audacity to do this to him. Every sacrifice down the drain, it brought him right here, like they were for nothing.
Fighting to keep his voice level, even as he seethed, he rebutted: “I will do that.”
Him responding this way was no surprise to his Prime, it seemed. When Optimus looked at him, found his optics, the rage shot out of him, rendered nonexistent by that haunting expression. Ratchet would rather perish than see Optimus look at him that way. It made hot magma roll down his face. His vision was blurred, but he could still see his Prime approach.
Ratchet genuinely resisted when Optimus took his wrist firmly in one servo, his other around his waist. It was not an embrace. Ratchet was being dragged, kicking and flailing towards the bridge. Through his frantic tears, he had no idea where he was landing blows, but he knew he was leaving dents. “Stop, Optimus, let me go!” He demanded.
“Be strong for me, Old Friend.” The soft agony in the Prime’s voice made him tremble.
“Optimus, please, please don’t do this. Let me. Primus, please, let me do it.” Ratchet begged. “Please, please… I can’t do this without you.” They landed just short of the portal, and the medic was pleading in a mantra, digging his heels into the concrete, gripping at whatever armor he could latch onto. He was spun around to face his captor.
“You can, and you will, for me.” Optimus told him. He shushed Ratchet’s pleas with a hand against his cheek. He wiped away what he could. “I wish I had allowed myself to love you, even for a short while. Having you in my arms for only this moment makes every damage worth it.”
He kissed Ratchet, his farewell, his apology, his acceptance. Oh, to have more time.
“Please.” His dearest medic said one last time as they parted.
The last he heard of his medic’s voice was a scream as he lifted and threw him through the bridge.
Ratchet heard the portal vanish behind him, and it was done. His world had ended. His fingertips carved into the earth beneath him, coolant tears poisoning the soil, his entire frame shaking. He wept there, collapsed in the dirt, under a map of stars and trees.
This was worse than the death he had been ready to accept. He would have burnt and melted for eons if it meant Optimus would live. And now he was here.
How could Optimus do this? Leave him like this, knowing what could have existed between them, what he could have had? How could he abandon Ratchet like this? He was plenty old enough to call it a wrap and sign off. He had lived long enough. So why was he the one left here?
After everything he had done, his blood and effort given, his life whittled away, Optimus dared to ask more of him. Optimus dared to ask him to carry on the flame, pick up the pieces in his absence.
“I fragging hate you,” Ratchet sobbed into the ground. “Don’t do this to me, Primus, please…”
The dagger in his circuitry twisted when a hated memory resurfaced, one that haunted him for many reasons. A time that he had faced a death that offered him no reprieve from his many regrets, one that he had brought upon himself. A time that he had deserved to be folded like a lawn chair, deserved to have his aft handed to him, because Allspark how had he been so foolish?
Ratchet had thought Megatron would snap his arm in half, it was all too easy for him to catch Ratchet’s fist and twist. But instead he gave Ratchet a crater in his chassis to let out the sickly green concoction he had falsely named Synthen. It was not true synthetic energon, and it did not make him any more useful to his team.
Megatron held him upright by his wrist, inspecting the green ick on his sharp knuckles that had just been deep in Ratchet’s functions. “You have been busy, haven’t you, Ratchet? You gave my ranks quite the scare, but your experiment impaired your decision making, it seems. You could not possibly believe you could singlehandedly destroy me.”
It sounded so stupid now.
“For all of your genius, you have a history of poor decisions.”
“-Makes two of us…” Ratchet hissed through clenched dentae.
“Yes, I have made mistakes.” Megatron conceded. “I recall a detrimental one of yours, however.”
The medic shook his helm, knowing what was coming, knowing exactly what had sprung to the warlord’s mind. He wanted to swipe at the grip holding him off the ground, wanted to sever critical energon lines, but his free servo was clutching his wound, though the pressure was hardly enough to halt the bleeding.
“Yes, yes yes. A lifetime ago, before you were this old, rundown scrapheap, you made a grave mistake. What did I offer you? What did I ask of you?”
“You thought-… You thought you could make a traitor of me. You thought I could align myself with a sadistic tyrant.”
“You never did take to me. A superiority complex you have not outgrown. As much as you loathed me, as jealous as you were that Orion was drawn to me,” Ratchet scowled and kicked at him in protest, “You respected me, deep down. Your values aligned with my movement. You believed that aggressive proaction was what could fix our world, our society. You’ve lived long enough to see what soft little archivists failed to achieve.”
Not an hour ago, Ratchet had called Optimus just that. Soft. He felt like glass, hanging here at Megatron’s mercy, his resolve clear to see straight through. His last moments with Optimus were spent demeaning him.
“We watched what the neverending cycle of ‘peace’ did- not a damn thing. You were in agreement with my movement. You wanted the corruption to be crushed, you are a healer, you wanted to see our world nursed back to health. And I, with open arms, offered you the key.”
Ratchet scoffed.
“How far could you have grown with my resources, Decepticon engineering, my army of experts at your beck and call? Your genius and talent, scaffolding Cybertron’s rebirth. Perhaps, with you on the right side, we would not be here. One small change could have shifted the course of our destinies. Maybe all of this could have been over before Cybertron died. Maybe our suffering could have been prevented. Optimus may have listened to you, Ratchet. There is a version of events where we toppled the destructive powers together.” Megatron laughed, shaking his helm. “I laid every bit of this out for you. I offered you the highest honors in my ranks. But what did you do?”
“Told you where to shove it.”
“You chose to curl up in Optimus’ lap and waste your potential. You chose to be a docile little lapdog, begging for attention, begging for his approval. A trained animal for the higher class’ puppet.”
“I’m not…” Ratchet’s vision was getting patchy. What was he denying?
“And look at you now, your resources squandering, your movement fractured, relying on faulty chemical enhancement. You’ve already lost faith in your leader. You’ve accepted defeat. This was your last ditch effort, the last of who you are bleeding out onto this filthy planet’s dirt. You were meant for more than this.”
“Never… Optimus will end your rule.”
“How could he, without you playing housekeeper? Do you honestly believe he could have achieved anything without pets like you to prop him up?”
“You’re projecting.”
“With you gone, Optimus has nothing left, he has lost every worthwhile asset.” Megatron finally released him, and he crumbled, gasping. He squeezed his optics shut, sensing the warlord stepping over him like a mere crack in the concrete. “Such a waste. Such a shame. Collect your samples, Knock Out. Imagine what dearest Ratchet’s contributions will do for our troops.”
The tyrant was gone, his medic fetching syringes to take clean samples straight from Ratchet’s systems, and the adequate containers to transport.
“Optimus,” Ratchet whispered. “I’ve been a fool.”
The last of their moments together, once again, consisted of Ratchet shouting at Optimus, furious with the destruction of the Omega Lock. Once again, Ratchet was left to wallow in his regret. And a broken, shattered spark. Optimus left him with the cruelest of goodbyes, even in the wake of another one of Ratchet’s breakdowns.
Ratchet had truly lost everything.