Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Optimus Prime did not know when he stopped seeing D-16 as Megatron.

When he banished Megatron from Iacon that day, the newly donned Prime was left alone in silent recollection about their first meeting; their first contact, optics smiling for the first time upon each other's names on their dermas with the unspoken promise of love.

Optimus felt the trickles of those memories wash over the raw hurt and realized he was not ready to let D-16 go. He could never let him go, but the betrayal ran deeper than any blade could, when the hand that had always caught him let him go.

In D-16’s absence did he finally miss his presence. He had always been there, from shared berths, to shared smiles, to shared laughter and pain, to shared devotion. Even when he couldn't see him, D-16 was felt in his thoughts.

When he was in trouble, he would think: ‘Dee would be mad at me again’.

When he discovered new things, he would think: ‘Dee would love this.’

And Dee would be there. Whether he'd be scolding him or not, it would end all the same because Dee would be smiling, and no treasure was worth like the dark days he spent mining priceless ores than seeing the unfounded brilliance behind those amber optics. His dreams were always comprised of colors and ideas, and in it will always carried the shape of a mech he carved inside the abode of his spark; full reverence, of hope, with trust, because it was such a wonderful feeling to know that there was one mech out there who truly loved him.

And suddenly, there wasn't.

As he watched Megatron leave with the High Guard, his hand twitched alive and reached out, but it was too late. Even when Optimus was bitter and anguishing over the pain, where hating Megatron would’ve made things easier, at that moment when his spark began to sing a song of mourning, Optimus couldn't lie to himself in knowing deep inside, he still needed him.

Optimus searched for him. In stalemates, in truces, in the battlefield, in every exchange of blades and shots taken—killed every memory he had of D-16, until eventually, his best friend’s face was replaced with those burning, vengeful red optics.

Time by time, Optimus desperately scrambled to piece back all the fragments of their love into a shape he could still define, but he ended up with nothing but a broken promise of love. It was unsalvageable, shattered beyond mending even after everything they've had.

At one point, his grieving wish to bring him back had caused a landslide of lives to die under his name. To call it a ‘mistake’ was sin. It was a hard-won lesson, one that imprinted in his head for a long time and made him realize what being a leader truly meant.

After millions of years of death and terror laid before him, piles of bodies—sparks of his late friends, allies, and even enemies alike—formed a monument in his tired spirit.

Perhaps that was when he stopped seeing Megatron as D-16.

Optimus believed his desires were dangerous in this sea of insanity, not when he has to burn the brightest for others, and his quiet mourning was not the right fuel for the Autobots to carry on.

So, quietly, he buried D-16 along with Orion Pax, a salvation brought by Optimus Prime to preserve the precious memories he had left. He refused to let the hurt Megatron left for him ruin it. And so, the next time he and Megatron met, he had changed. Ruthless, finally winning battles after uncountable losses. But it never made the Prime feel better.

If Optimus had grown in battle and in leadership, then so did Megatron. It had always been a violent dance of push and pull. Be it in any exchange of punches or tactics, they were on equal footing. It eventually became a million years waiting game on who tipped the scales first.

Optimus Prime's hope was bright and beautiful, but ever consuming when he looses it as well. The brilliance in his spark diminishes ever so little, a quiet tragedy perhaps no one could understand. Yet, he fights on.

It had been worse the day when Optimus Prime finally bore witness to the sea of madness before him: So many deaths, so much destruction. Both factions had run Cybertron’s free flowing Energon dry all for the lust for victory.

A wordless question could be seen in the Prime's gaze as he looked around him. Why did the war drag on this long? How did the moving mountains stop? Who was Megatron and Optimus Prime in the grand scheme of the universe that they had the right to kill their own planet?

There was no getting out of this. Something must change.

So, the next time he met with Megatron, he talked to him instead. And he failed of course, he left the battle with his frame scathed each time. But he tried. He tried and tried. There were times he noticed that he'd pried some sense into Megatron, flickers of Orion Pax and D-16 in moments between. But the pain of nostalgia hurted more like nothing else.

Primus wanted him to be hope, his Autobots saw him as hope, so he had to hope that Megatron would listen.

“And then what? Live under a system Sentinel created? That you still hadn't eradicated and fixed!?” Megatron seethed as he threw a punch at him. Optimus blocked, but he still doesn't fight back.

“I've seen your perfect society, Prime. Your command is nothing but glitches who lie on the pretense of power. You can pretend it's all peaceful back in Iacon, but I know the rot that still poisons it! I'm aware of the civil unrest, Prime. ‘Equal distribution of power’? That's just waiting for the next Sentinel.” Megatron kicked him in the gut. “And I'm the one acting like him?”

Optimus has been holding himself back all this time, but then, something just snapped. Frustration, sorrow, and grief all at once manifested in a single fist as he struck Megatron across his cheek.

“Power! That's all you think about! You kill anyone who threatens your power! You only want to build absolute dominion for yourself!” He caught both of Megatron’s flying fists, his pedes dug deeper into the ground, leaving behind two trails of his struggling as he was pushed back by the other. He shouted, “All you do is destroy and destroy 'till there's nothing left!”

"That is what I intend to do!” Megatron said through gritted teeth. "You don't get a say in anything while you breathe the face of our old enemy!" Megatron smashed his helm against Optimus.

His processor spun, streaks of white lines spasming across his vision like a thousand cuts, gritting out the blooming headache behind his blood-curdled teeth. It didn't take too long for Optimus to retaliate and scaled his power equally with Megatron.

Brute force transformed into a fight between guns and blades.

Optimus tackled Megatron in an attempt to sweep him off his core-centered weight. Gravity shifted, and began falling down together in a rapid decline.

He hadn't anticipated the steep cliff behind them. They tumbled down, the echoes of their crashing metal bodies thrashed by the slope in the wasteland of Cybertron. They seperated upon the last impact.

Megatron groaned, pushing himself up with shaky limbs but his joints locked him in place and fell. Optimus was the one who triumphed instead, choking out static and hoisting himself up on one shaking knee. He decided: one more, one last try.

“Megatron, Cybertron is dying. How can you not see that? You lost Soundwave, you lost Skywarp, Hook,” he hiccuped, “I’ve lost more of my soldiers than you have. Everyday, I recall their names, even the Decepticons that had died under me.”

Optimus ground his dentas in sheer grief and fury, visible through the crack of his mask as he stomped forward. “When is enough Megatron!? Are you willing to lose everything just to prove you're right!?”

"Shut up." Megatron swiftly aimed his canon at Optimus and fired. Slag.

He summoned his energon axe, deflecting some of the bullets and nimbly dodging away. He was forced out of Megatron's proximity but endeavors his way to cut th distance as he ran towards his enemy.

A blast grazed his shoulder but he didn't stop. He transformed into his alt. mode— the increasing velocity burns his body faster than the exhausting toil behind every ragged vent—and swerved left and right. He reverted back into his root mode with his axe dancing in arcs and cutting away Megatron's bullets.

Optimus couldn't think of anything else except one thing:

Megatron was too far gone. It's futile, the dead spoke; the myriad of dead voices he'd collected in the years of war begs for vengeance in the Prime's spark.

Optimus cut in front of Megatron with his energon axe ready in a downward swipe—he'd gotten this close so many times, he doesn't know if his hit would finally land this time—

Megatron from his hidden arsenal drew a blade on his left arm. It flew towards him a breadth away. It was going to—

An arm flies off the air.

Optics shrunk in the streak of blood that formed before him.

It was Megatron's.

He'd never done that before; he'd never maimed him greatly. Something in his insides recoiled.

Megatron screamed, his voice coarse and throttling in the depths of his chassis. A window of opportunity lay before Optimus. Now was his chance to end him. He raises his axe again. End it. End it all.

Yet…

Within the split second of eye-contact, optics meeting and fleeting of the barest of emotions behind those red optics, Optimus saw how much of Megatron was in so much pain—

D-16 had always been afraid of pain. He was afraid of many things, and he could still see it even behind the shadows of Megatron's authority. D-16 was afraid when the admiration D-16 carried for those he knew would protect him failed. 

Optimus would see the same pain he saw in that little miner long ago: whenever D-16 failed to uphold his quota, when D-16 had been angry in knowing his fears had been right because Orion Pax got himself hurt.

The shaking servos—the ones he had always thought were angry—had been afraid this whole time.

Optimus stopped from delivering the killing blow.

Megatron stumbled backwards. Realizing the Prime froze because of his shock, he doubled backwards until he was meters away. He huffed, clutching his missing arm below his sliced biceps spurting with energon, and gritted his teeth through the pain. Megatron tried to raise his cannon again but his knees buckled beneath his weight, and fell half-kneeling.

With slow resistance, Optimus dropped his weapon to his side. "Megatron," he said, "listen to me, please."

"I listened enough," Megatron spat sharply.

"Just, listen! I don't care about what you think of me, or if I 'breathe the same face as your enemy,' you will listen!" Optimus' voice bolstered.

To Megatron's credit, he did actually shut up, though mostly it was because his voice frizzled into static. Optimus' lips stutter, unsure, now that he finally has the room to speak. He says, without exactly thinking, "I'll give it up, everything I have."

Megatron laughed breathlessly, "You have nothing I want—"

"I'll give up everything Megatron, my position, my, my matrix! Yours, everything you need to change the world!"

"I want your life!" Megatron screamed.

Optimus flinched, then slowly, he said, "Then I give up my life."

Megatron's hardened gaze doused, from shock, maybe. That impenetrable mask of anger slipped just a little bit.

"Liar. What kind of leader gives up his own people!? You've fallen off if you think you can win me by speaking elaborate promises!"

"I'm tired, Megatron," Optimus said, "If the only reason why you keep fighting me is because I remind you of those who failed you before, then I cannot prolong a war that has always been defined by your pain."

Megatron's expression contorted in many passing emotions, optics glossy in anger. "I want a world where it's safe!" He said sharply, "Where we wouldn't be weak to other beings who wants to enslave us again, especially by our own kind! There will be no more Primes who left behind a legacy of dependence and lies! There will be no more of you where your words make us weak!"

"Safe for who? Safe for you? Megatron, there's no one else hurting Cybertron but us! We both want the same thing!"

"No, we don't! I want to restart this planet. You want me to be obedient!"

"That's not true!"

"LIES!" Megatron slowly rises with difficulty but not once taking his stare off of him. "I will fight as long as you live. Every place your hands have marked, every weak ideology you've drilled into your bots' brains, I will burn it down until there's nothing left of you to remember!"

"Everyone, but you."

Megatron froze. Somehow that cracked open the old warlord. Optimus could see it, the curdling emotions rotting his insides as a certain question begged behind those crinkling optics: What if you're right?

Behind the impenetrable wall of hatred and anger forged after million of years of violence lies behind the light of his madness. His old friend, the possibility, his hope. He needs to save him.

"You don't have to be afraid anymore. I'm here, I've always been here for you." Optimus cried.

"No," Megatron uttered sharply and clutched his missing arm. He looked small, hugging himself like that, "You wouldn't have left behind so much pain. Nothing you do makes sense."

Optimus' spark ached. "I know. I… I don't know how I could—we could work together again, I'll make it work. I promise, I'm going to try, just—"

"That's the problem! You try! You try and try and you ruin everything!"

"Megatron. We need to—"

“I DON'T NEED YOU AND YOUR AUTOBOTS—”

“I NEED YOU, DEE!” he blurts out and freezes, even Megatron was shocked, his red optics flaring.

The begotten name sounded so foreign in their audials that even the name ‘Pax’ ghosted above Megatron’s lips too, gaping to say something but soon pressed into a stubborn, thin line.

Optimus walked towards him, carefully. “I never wanted to banish you,” he stops when Megatron glares at him, still far away, “I didn't want you to go… I blamed myself so much and I always wondered why things went so wrong…” he said, his voice static-y from his churning emotions. Megatron watched him cautiously, his shoulders stretched taut and deeply uncomfortable. But he was listening. That was enough.

“I hate this war. I hate fighting you. Please, you must feel the same way…” He trod closer. Megatron's canon arm twitched.

Optimus retracted his broken mask that had always veiled every emotion he had ever hidden from Megatron, and spoke out with all his spark: “I never wanted you to go—I never wanted us to part. You were everything to me. But I was just too hurt by what you did, because it felt like everything we ever had was a lie.”

There was a slight crack in Megatron’s expression. “Don’t," he warned. His optic lids crinkled in the subtle ways that felt like he too had words unsaid.

Closer now. “But, I also know I wronged you. I never tried to understand your anger, especially back when I always thought you needed me more… but the truth was that, I needed it more to hear you say that everything I did was worth it. I still feel like I haven't changed at all…”

Coolant threatened to leak from his optics as his spark, along with the Matrix humming in sing-song with his pain that was now out in the open for Megatron to see. “I've always wanted a better world with you in it. Please, I can't fix this without you.”

Megatron finally looked at him, his optics glowing brightly as Optimus finally saw a fraction of his pain. Megatron was heaving deep, uncontrollable in-vents, like the hurt threatened to spill out from every corner of his being, trembling and looking at Optimus like he was the biggest threat in his life. Anxious. Desperate. Vulnerable. Dangerous.

Optimus stretched his servo out for him like an offering.

A deep, part of him hated him still. Like Megatron, he knew the silver mech warlord will always haunt his life forever if he was gone. Though their time as friends together had been nothing but a spec in the years they've spent fighting each other, there existed a broken promise still waiting to be mended. To finally end it all, without Optimus needing to loose parts of himself and succumb to the violence Megatron expected him to be.

He will learn to love Megatron. Then perhaps, the spirit of Orion Pax and D-16 can finally be put to rest as Optimus Prime and Megatron begin anew.

“You—” have always wanted to call a place home, were the words that choked behind his intake. A thunderous clap blasted in his audials. The world turned into a standstill as he stared at the other with wide optics and mouth agape.

It had been swift when Megatron punctured a hole into his shoulder. Deja vu doesn't even come close to explaining it when the sensation, the pain, the situation, was all too familiar from the burning memory. He was too disoriented to even realize he had lost his arm, the energon axe dissipating away into thin air as his right arm flew away and fell to the other side.

The fusion cannon whirred loudly again, taking another aim in sheer panic, too desperate to kill the Prime and bursted a hole into his lower chassis, yet he still missed the Prime's spark. Optimus crashed backwards, spasming as his hand hovered above his wound in choked gasps, unable to speak with the regurgitating energon rising behind his throat.

Megatron loomed above him like a shadow, his stark red optics peering into his. Those optics dimmed for a split second, his expression not faltering and contorting with hatred but something else: Tears.

“I’m not Dee,” he said with a deep, shaky voice. “I hate you…. I hate you so much. You always do this to me!”

His red optics flared. “You needed me more than I needed you! You needed me when the Quintessons came, you needed me again and again because you needed saving!” He pointed the uncharged cannon at his face. “Shame on you!” He screamed, failing to hold back the sob that escaped with it.

The cannon moved downwards above his Matrix, and it shook as it whirred to life. “I'm going to destroy everything… even if you're in it,” he glares at Optimus. “I will make my own peace.”

The heat in Megatron's eyes weakened with melancholy. “Things will only end with one of us gone. I'm sure even this, you understand.”

He looked at him in finality, devoid of any emotions. “Farewell, Prime.”

A searing pain overwhelmed Optimus, much like the rest of his body was. But it had ended the moment it hurt, almost like mercy. Optimus didn't want it. He didn't want this… he didn't…

There lingered a blue spark in the darkness.

It felt like eternity. The epidemic solitude he'd felt all his life swathed in like funeral covers, a loneliness so viscerally painful, he wished for nothing else but to completely perish instead. No, no. Wait.

He searched for the soothing thrums of the Matrix—if it ever was there, but it was as if Megatron’s blast had cut his connection off from Primus entirely. It was what he always did when the he felt lost and alone, often seeking refuge and guidance from the comfort of divinity when he had nothing else…

He called.

Begs. Prays. Cried if he could.

Anything.

Anything...

There was nobody.

But, that wasn't true...?

The call beckoned again. It traveled and formed into a tight link, through space and time in an unknown veil. There was always someone there—an observer, a dreamer, a spark, not a god, only alone, a being fusing oneself to a singularity in search of a place of breathing hope.

But that singularity had just died, and there was no meaning again.

It's time to wake up.

The link connects.

Finally, this One awoken from slumber, but the achievement brings no pleasure. Optimus Prime, alone once again inside the realm, awaiting for another revival; A resurrection, for this one to feel alive and live through the eyes of another again.

But then… the millennia old question rises again. Was this still worth it?

The spark quivers in fear and pain. It was immediate to swaddle him in every cooing emotion felt, like warmth, love, and happiness. But these are nothing but a mimic and a fraction of what Optimus Prime gave, something one owned but could only be returned for so little. Despite everything, hopefully, it was still enough.

Immediately, the weight the Spark carried surged all at once in immense waves, and it felt just how it had been watching him. The ache, the sorrow, the little joys of life transformed into an emotion one would know well enough to be grief. What tragedy it was to die by the same hands again?

Oh, Optimus Prime, the light of our darkest hours, could cry too.

While gently soothing the Spark, the sadness returns. Is this it? Is this the end?

It doesn't have to be. As long as he fights, there will still be purpose in creation.

Is what one would usually tell to oneself. But it had always felt like a lie.

Because it isn't fair. It isn't fair to keep bringing him back and changing him along with the laws universe as if creation was meaning itself; as if Unicron wasn't going to find them again and again, like letting Unicron destroy everything was meaning; as if everything so far hadn't been because one couldn't avoid the impending question about one's purpose.

It's unfair to hold onto someone else's hope and pretend it was yours.

The spark quivered, movements calmer and mellow and somber. It was quieter now, not since returning to this plane of existence and to one's true essence. Nobody ever commented how dark this place was. Yes, the other children had always been here, watching along and fulfilling their duties to their kindred even in the after-life. Yet, one knows best that eternity is not the same as living. Nobody wants their own creation to lose themselves in time, to forget the taste of life and living only through treasured memories. That is a cruel fate nobody deserves to have. It is something this one would understand deeply.

The children never asked to be born, so it was only fair if they had to opportunity to return nothing and into creation. To be with and become as one.

Yet, it hadn't been the same when it came to Optimus Prime. There had been different stories, different times, different lives. Although the spark changed everytime, the spirit remained Optimus Prime had always carried a sense of… purpose, as if every doubt he carried behind his struts will always have answers. No… not answers just, hope. He, was hope itself. He, was alive. To think he owned all of that; to think his spark once belonged to his creator and had none of it.

But for how much longer? How long should this continue?

'Optimus Prime' should have passed long ago, yet even so, his stories persist. It was too difficult to let him go, to painful to see a beautiful creation end. That inspite of all the flaws the children had, inspite how infallible the creator was, there had been beauty. There had been love.

The dreaming will stop one day.

And that was the hard truth. With every dream came with a waking moment of being harked back into the emptiness of everything.

We shouldn't pretend anymore, because the stories always end the same. There was no universe out there where his children's stories could outlast the emptiness that awaited after existence. Entropy preceded them all.

There is no point in holding on any longer.

Grace is all that's left to offer. It was… finally time to become one, once again…

This one began to whisper to the spark that it was over. His time in the world has ended, and he shall no longer serve his creator. Pity, he had died so young this time…

'… But I have so many things to fix…' said the spark.

There isn't anything to fix, not after a thousand stories and different lifetimes seen.

'…I have so much left to give…'

And it was enough.

'… Please. Don't let me fail. Don't let me leave them. Please…'

You and I…

'…Don't make me leave…'

Are one…