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It had been one year since Optimus Prime and a small team of his choosing abandoned Cybertron.
No matter how many times Ultra Magnus attempted to convince him that what he was doing wasn’t abandoning, that was all he understood it to be. Metroplex had died for them to run like cowards, and now they were thrown into the vast universe with no course in sight. They could only pray that the Nemesis had been destroyed in the explosion that had cast them out.
There were only four of them on the ship, so their energon reserves had barely diminished. They had no reason to waste energon until they decided on a destination. And frankly, none of them were ready to do that yet.
Because choosing a new home would make it real. It would mean Cybertron was gone.
The Ark was large enough to provide everything they needed for at least the next hundred years. The small team seemed more than content to take a couple of those years to process the fact that they had been fighting for millions of years just for both sides to lose the very thing they were fighting over.
Optimus was simultaneously grateful and resentful for the time. Optimus Prime has not existed in peacetime. His servos itched in anxiety, waiting for a strike that wasn’t coming. So what does a commander with no battle do? He writes.
Optimus had spent almost the entire last year writing. Writing reports, writing messages, writing wills. Cataloging, organizing. He all but felt like an archivist again. But soon enough, he’d run out of things to write. And then, all he’d have left would be his guilt. His shame, his failure to stoop in.
He was lying in his berth, unable to recharge. He’d never been so well rested in this body. He hated it.
Surrendering the idea of recharge, the Prime rose and exited his quarters. The hallway's lights were dimmed to give the illusion of the Cybertronian night cycle, which only served to make the ache worse. When they left it, Cybertron was shrouded in eternal darkness. There was no night or day.
Optimus tried not to dwell. Tried to live the day-by-day now, planning ahead rather than looking behind him. The past was a ghastly thing—but any archivist worth his metal knew that, and looked anyway.
Optimus Prime often had to remind himself that he wasn’t an archivist anymore.
At first, he had no destination in mind. All he did was wander the darkened halls, guided by memory and touch. The ship was large enough for a hundred mechs, just in case Optimus and his crew came across stragglers or other Autobots who would join their Prime on his Ark. As a result, the space felt empty. No cheery drunks or rambunctious soldiers graced the quarters, no commanders gave orders, no one was forced to huddle together in cramped tents because they couldn't make it off the battlefield that eve. There was an absence of life, no matter how grim its outlook. The ship’s metal was tinged yellow to stand out in case any Cybertronian in need of rescue happened to spot it, but so far they had collected no fellow wanderers. The four of them were completely alone, in a universe where Cybertronians were supposedly spread like a plague.
His wandering eventually began leading him towards the deck. There, he could distract himself with Teletraan I and their analysis of the light-years surrounding them. It might’ve been just enough to lull him into recharge. If only he had made it that far.
The observation deck was a harrowing place. The entire team seemed to avoid it, taking great care to ignore its existence. After all, staring into a sky you don’t recognize can be as agonizing as a sword to the spark. Optimus was no different. As Orion, he was fascinated by the stories surrounding Cybertron’s constellations. A bot could’ve pointed to any star, and Pax would have been able to regale them with a grand tale of the planet’s past or myths.
To even glance at stars he didn’t recognize filled him with painful nostalgia. He found it best to stop seeing them all together.
But someone else felt differently.
He would’ve recognized his old friend anywhere, even from behind, back-lit by a scattering of galaxies. The Prime paused, spotting Ratchet sitting unmoving at the bench in the center of the deck. Optimus had never seen Ratchet even spare a glance at the observation deck, let alone enter and sit in it. He had imagined his old friend felt the same way he did; the sight of stars not of our world was too much for a refugee to bear. But Ratchet wasn’t lost, or making any move to leave, like he’d only stopped in for a short moment. He just sat, staring into skies unknown to him.
Optimus couldn’t help changing course. He had always been drawn to the medic, since long before he was a medic, and much longer than the war had been fought. They were romantic partners for barely a page, a paragraph of their history together; that did not stop the Prime from yearning with every vent he took. The desire to reach out and hold Ratchet was always palpable, yet he resisted. It used to be that Optimus was meant to love every mech equally—but there weren’t many mechs left to love. Now, he feared that his love would make the doctor a target.
And he had taken enough from him already.
He wasn’t making an attempt to hide his steps, so he assumed Ratchet heard him. He just didn’t react. When he reached the arched entrance, he stalled, placing a servo on the threshold before passing through. For what felt like eternity, all was silent.
“Can you name any of them?”
A whisper in the dark that Optimus almost didn’t catch nearly brought him to his knees. Persisting, he tore his optics from Ratchet’s backstruts and looked out at the worlds beyond.
It took him several minutes to search, and several more to collect himself enough to answer.
“No.”
He saw Ratchet’s shoulders sag and heard a long-suffering sigh. He held the doorway a little tighter and glanced away from the viewing glass. The room was heavy—painful. If it were possible, you could have cut the sorrow with a blade.
“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to sit down and be depressed with me instead of behind me?”
The doctor shuffled to the left as he spoke, allowing more room on the bench. His movements were sluggish, like he, too, had been unable to recharge in a long while. Hesitating for only a moment, the Prime walked forward and rounded the bench; he attempted to avoid looking at Ratchet’s face, failing spectacularly. His optics were dim and cloudy, and streaks of long-removed tears adorned his cheeks. He also made a point not to turn his helm from the view in front of him, and let his servos (which held the bench on both sides of him) tense. His dermas were taut in neither a frown nor a smile, but shook nonetheless. He looked tired. He looked pensive.
He looked guilty.
Optimus sat, tearing his gaze to the flood of lights before him. To his knowledge, they were in the Gpii System, known for its metalwork and for its nebula. The Red Rectangle Nebula. Vibrant clouds of red gas ejected from their collapsing star at differing rates, creating parallel steps of light. It made dying look like a beautiful thing.
He wished that Cybertron’s death had been beautiful. That it hadn’t gone quietly into the night—announced to the universe only by the ceasing of its what was once believed to be eternal warfare.
He wished other worlds would mourn as they did, but he knew they wouldn’t.
They must have sat in silence for an hour, the pull of recharge not strong enough to outweigh the ache of melancholy. It was painful, yes, but it was meant to be. If it wasn’t, the Prime had already been lost to the tide of emotionlessness.
“Is it wrong to be too tired to be angry, right now?”
He turned to the doctor, who continued his search for meaning in the X of the nebula.
“No, old friend,” he responded, “I don’t think so.”
Ratchet shook his helm in disbelief, staving off Optimus’ permission. At some point, the lids of his optics had begun to flutter, betraying the doctor's exhaustion.
“You should rest, Ratchet.”
“Oh, puh-lease. You’re such a hypocrite,” he grumbled unseriously, reclining back in the bench. “And you’ll be returning to your quarters to recharge right after I leave, of course?”
He was beginning to believe his doctor knew him too well.
He huffed at Optimus’ silent answer. His expression, which had shifted into a soft smile for a brief moment in his jest, returned to its frown.
“Let me stay with this for a while longer, old friend,” Ratchet said, forcing his optics to stay open. “Let me forget my anger.”
Oh.
“Ratchet—”
“Don’t,” he interrupted with a shudder, realizing he had revealed too much.
“I don’t need you to tell me it’s not my fault, I know it isn’t. I just—” he let out a shaky vent.
“I just need to hurt right now. To know that rage isn’t—isn’t all I have left.”
Optimus almost couldn’t resist the urge to grab his medic and pull him into a crushing hug. His servos twitched before he grasped the need to stop them. He couldn’t bear the look on Ratchet’s face: guilty and lost and suffering. He fought so hard, gave up so much. He shouldn’t have to suffer a burden of his own making as well.
He didn’t hug his medic, but he couldn’t stop his servo from resting on top of his. Ratchet flinched for a moment before his processor caught up with him, understanding who was touching him. His war reflexes remain at work. Then Optimus heard another sigh, much shakier than the last.
“We did everything we could,” he whispered, fresh tears sliding down his face as he watched a star not his own die.
“We did everything we could.”
Optimus couldn’t look at him. He wouldn’t survive it. So instead they sat in silence, grieving for everything and everyone long dead, lit by a sea of unfamiliar stars. Instead, he intertwined his digits with Ratchet’s and held on like it was his last tether to the planet he’d called home.
With time, leaning against Optimus’ shoulder, the medic fell into the lulls of recharge.
Right before he went under, as his optics dimmed even further, he couldn’t stop the request from leaving his dermas.
“Please blame me,” he whispered, both praying and afraid he heard.
He felt one of Ratchet’s digits hook around his own, and a slow shake of his helm against his mesh. An acknowledgment, and a refusal. Optimus’ vent caught in his chest.
He slipped away soon after, the gentle humming of his engine suggesting the final streaks of tears had colored his face. Optimus wiped them away, as gingerly as possible, then returned to his inaudible torment. He took care not to move, to allow Ratchet to rest without the weight of a dead world on his shoulders.
He didn’t remember when his empty servo had reached over and begun stroking the doctor’s helm, but he continued to do it for several hours, reveling in the peace of the moment.
The stars remained. Optimus could have started to learn them if he had wanted to. He decided against it.
He would wait for the return of his stars. Of their stars.
So he just sat amongst dying celestial bodies, blaming himself for not believing Cybertron’s death was as beautiful as this single moment—aimlessly wandering the universe with his medic in his arms, stopping only for the guilt the mourning brings.
Ratchet woke in his quarters, alone. He never saw Optimus in the observation deck again.