[TFP] One More Again
Feb. 26th, 2015 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22a/n: After re-watching TFP, I was in the mood for some angsty-fluff and thus this fic was born. It was also heavily inspired by The Covenant of Primus though it should still make sense even if you hadn't read it. Self-betaed as well.
Title: One More Again
Universe: TFP, post-Predacons Rising
Characters: RatchetxOptimus, Alpha Trion, background others
Rating: T
Warnings: canonical character death mentioned, possibly triggery scene later, angst and fluff
Description: It was always meant to end this way.
Inspired by “One More Day,” VAST
He returns to the Well again and again.
He half-expects Optimus to emerge from it any day now. To climb from the depths with a smile on his face and welcome in his field.
Primus has mercy after all, he'll say, and he'll fold Ratchet in his arms and promise to stay this time. To stop making all these stupid sacrifices.
Or even better.
He'll emerge as Orion Pax, a fresh spark all over again. He'll have a second chance and Ratchet will be content to be mentor and friend. Just to see him alive again. To see his face.
They won't have to join the others. They can go elsewhere, away from the pressures of being Prime and the expectations of a planet.
It's an empty dream but one Ratchet has over and over again.
What would he give, he wonders to see Orion one more time. To hear Optimus' voice.
There is no cure for this grief.
He returns everyday, knowing it's not healthy and doing so anyway. He inches closer and closer to the rim of the Well, peering into the depths, lit unto infinity.
“It was always meant to end this way.”
The voice is unexpected. Ratchet whirls, spark pumping with alarm, but he recognizes the mech upon sight.
Alpha Trion looks at him with optics that have seen everything. His expression is serene, his hands folded behind his back, and his tone suggesting that Ratchet's sorrow is unwarranted.
“It is the cycle, Ratchet,” he says. “The Well gives and it reclaims. That is the way of things.”
Ratchet starts to shake. “I know who he was,” he says, his armor clamping tight to his frame in response to his rising displeasure. “I know the games you played with his spark. He was always the best of you.”
“Yes, he was.”
“Then you can fix this.”
Alpha Trion flinches, barely visible, but it is there. He shakes his helm. “No, I cannot. And even if I could, I wouldn't. The choice has always been his.”
A choice given when there is no other option? Not much of a choice.
Ratchet sneers and stomps closer to the ancient mech. “I think you are a liar and a coward,” he snarls. “Optimus always bears your burdens, all of yours, and you let him!”
Alpha Trion looks down at Ratchet with pity in his optics. “You would not understand.”
“Don't patronize me!” Ratchet's hands slash through the air. “You only sit back and watch and record, but you never act. You are the one who doesn't understand.” His vents heave and Ratchet can't get them under control. “Crawl back to your hole, Trion. The Age of the Primes is over!”
That is one of the legacies that Optimus left that Ratchet can fully support. No more Primes. No more single mechs bearing all the burdens and the sacrifice. No more!
Alpha Trion shakes his helm again, his optics a dim, dim blue. “My dear medic, he could have never been yours anyway.”
Fury, unlike anything Ratchet has ever felt, strikes him to the very spark. And it is cold, colder than the Earth's North Pole.
And Alpha Trion repeats, “It was always meant to end this way.”
Ratchet works his jaw but he has no words that are polite. “Frag you,” he hisses and altmodes, leaving both the Well and Alpha Trion behind.
He can no longer find consolation there.
0o0o0
Decades later, it is cited as an accident. A strap is too loose. A bolt is stripped. A key safety measure is forgotten. He's in the wrong place at the wrong time. And one of the oldest mechs still functioning just doesn't move as fast as he used to. His reaction time is dulled without the war to keep it sharp.
An observer might even note, later, that perhaps the medic hadn't bothered to put forth the effort. No one is sure. And those that dare ask, cannot.
Because by the time the materials are moved aside and the wreckage cleared, Ratchet is surely beyond saving. His spark chamber is cracked and his electropulses are so weak as to be undetectable. Energon stains the newly paved road beneath him.
He is rushed to the nearest medcenter where his successor steadies his ventilations and preps a room for surgery.
In a distant tower, the last Prime observes and records, his infamous Quill moving faster than he can process.
0o0o0
He is not a frame nor a spark. He has no diagnostics. He is not surrounded by darkness or light, not heat or cold.
He simply is.
Ratchet, once tired to his very struts, vents relief with vents he no longer has.
In the silence and sound, he walks without pedes. He passes familiar faces and memories long gone. For a moment, he's distracted by Perceptor who babbles an excited stream of jargon that Ratchet still doesn't understand.
He doesn't know how long he is there with Perceptor because time does not exist in this place that is not real either.
Something draws him away, a calling without a voice, and Ratchet goes to it without second thought.
And he wants to weep because there he is, Optimus and Orion both at once, at joyous peace. He's there in the center, the sun which every star revolves. Ratchet wraps himself in all that is Optimus-Orion, feeling at last that he has found his way home.
“What took you so long?” Optimus asks.
Ratchet half-laughs and half-cries because what else could he expect from Optimus? “It's your fault,” he says, “leaving without me. I couldn't leave the others. What would those kids do without me?”
What he doesn't say is how hard it was without Optimus. But he doesn't have to say it because here Optimus already knows.
“Something is stirring,” Optimus says, and there's a ghostly flicker of his hands on Ratchet's plating, perhaps a memory echo. “I may return.”
“And leave me behind?”
Orion smiles at him, sad and joyful all at once. “You were not staying,” he says.
And Ratchet onlines to a dull white ceiling, the distinct staccato of monitoring equipment, and an ache in his frame that suggests many hours spent in surgery. He cycles his optics, runs a diagnostic, and comes to a sobering conclusion.
He is alive.
Apparently, he had trained his successor far too well.
0o0o0
They tell him to take it easy. He can't go anywhere without tripping on an employee or a friend and solitude is no longer an option. It's frustrating, despite how much Ratchet understands their motivations.
It was not a suicide attempt, he tells them. But Arcee looks at Bulkhead and Bumblebee shakes his helm, and none of them believe him.
Knock Out scoffs into his wrist, muttering something about “taking one to know one” and Smokescreen just puts his hands up and walks away.
Ultra Magnus flat out tells Ratchet that he is important, he is needed, and such actions are unfair to them all. Lingering in his tone is the grief that binds them, the reminder that they've all lost a part of themselves and Ratchet isn't the only one grieving.
And Wheeljack is apparently the only one without any duties because more often than not, he's following Ratchet around, badgering him with energon and snark and making a nuisance of himself.
It's almost enough, Ratchet thinks when he finds a moment of peace by hiding in a supply closet. It's almost enough to help him forget about the dream.
Almost.
0o0o0
There's a ruckus in the hallway and Ratchet growls as he pushes to his pedes, stomping out of his office with the rage of a predacon. He's told them time and again about racing in the corridors and he's not patching up another dented speedster.
Not again Smokescreen!
He storms through the door, mouth open to chastise, but there are no racers out here, just groups of Cybertronians chattering excitedly to each other.
“What's going on?” he demands, grabbing the nearest mech who just happens to be Knock Out, probably his designated babysitter for the evening.
Knock Out brushes off Ratchet's hand and frowns at the nonexistent scratch. “It's the Well,” he says, peering closer at his arm. “It's working again.”
Ratchet's spark throbs hope at him, no matter how hard he tries to push it down. “You mean...?”
“New mechs are emerging. It started a breem ago,” the mech beside Knock Out says, and he's bouncing up and down on his pedes with excitement.
“It's a good sign,” Knock Out says, finally satisfied that his paint has not been compromised. “Cybertron's healing. Maybe Primus has forgiven us.”
Ratchet backs away a step, and then two. His spark is racing, his vents aflutter. He doesn't know what to think, is afraid to hope, but that doesn't stop him from whirling on a heelstrut and snapping into altmode. He puts metal to the pedal, careening down the halls to the startled shouts of mechs scrambling to get out of his way.
It rakes him an hour at top speed to get to the Well and the closer he gets, the more his spark whirls and tugs at him. There's a feeling curling within him, one so close to that dream, and he wants to believe in it, but remembers the disappointment all too well.
By the time he arrives there's a crowd of mechs and femmes, old and new alike. The Well isn't producing as many as it had millennia past, but that mechs are emerging at all is something to celebrate.
Ratchet pushes through the masses, searching for a familiar face or field. His scanners work in overdrive, touching upon every new mech he can, hoping for a spark of something.
He gets to the Well. Mechs are still emerging, but none of them are Optimus or Orion Pax. None of them are familiar frames. And now the tide has slowed to a trickle. Perhaps it is not meant to be a continuing process anymore, but stages. A part of Ratchet sets this observation aside, something to bring to the other scientists later.
Much, much later.
Because he's still searching, still looking, and he can't see the one mech he wants to see. The Well is supposed to produce new mechs, not grant deceased ones new life. But he's Optimus, he's Thirteen.
He isn't bound by the laws of the average mech.
“It was always meant to end this way.”
Ratchet shakes his helm, hands drawing into fists. His engine growls. No. Alpha Trion cannot have been right.
“It was not just a dream.”
“Of course it wasn't,” Ratchet retorts, vocalizer spitting static. “I'm not old and senile. It was...”
He cut off mid-sentence, optics spiraling wide. His processor catches up with his outrage and Ratchet whirls around, spark thrumming an excited pulse in his chassis. He drinks in the sight of the mech a mere pace behind, tall and gangly and base chrome, but one can't mistake the smile in his optics. There are highlights of red and blue, but not so distinct that someone would immediately name him Optimus Prime.
Ratchet knows this has to be him though. He would always know.
“Or--”
A finger presses to his lips with a smile. “Call me Roller,” he says, with a twinkle in his optics. “We can keep who I really am between us for now, yes?”
Ratchet chokes back a sob. “Of course.” His hands lift with the intent to embrace but he hesitates. “You're... really here?”
And Orion – Roller – takes his hands before Ratchet can withdraw them and pulls Ratchet into his arms. “I am.”
“And you're staying?”
“I will do my best to try.”
It is the best promise Orion can give. Ratchet presses his helm to the larger mech's chest, feels and hears the familiar sparkpulse of his dearest friend and partner, his most cherished one.
“Welcome back,” he says.
Orion rumbles around him, arms tightening by a fraction. “It's good to be home,” he says.
Yes, Ratchet thinks, it certainly is.
****
a/n: Soft spot for this pairing, I have. RatchetxOptimus is my fluffy pairing and OptimusXMegatron is my angsty pairing for this series. Heh.
Feedback, as always, is welcome and appreciated.
Title: One More Again
Universe: TFP, post-Predacons Rising
Characters: RatchetxOptimus, Alpha Trion, background others
Rating: T
Warnings: canonical character death mentioned, possibly triggery scene later, angst and fluff
Description: It was always meant to end this way.
Inspired by “One More Day,” VAST
He returns to the Well again and again.
He half-expects Optimus to emerge from it any day now. To climb from the depths with a smile on his face and welcome in his field.
Primus has mercy after all, he'll say, and he'll fold Ratchet in his arms and promise to stay this time. To stop making all these stupid sacrifices.
Or even better.
He'll emerge as Orion Pax, a fresh spark all over again. He'll have a second chance and Ratchet will be content to be mentor and friend. Just to see him alive again. To see his face.
They won't have to join the others. They can go elsewhere, away from the pressures of being Prime and the expectations of a planet.
It's an empty dream but one Ratchet has over and over again.
What would he give, he wonders to see Orion one more time. To hear Optimus' voice.
There is no cure for this grief.
He returns everyday, knowing it's not healthy and doing so anyway. He inches closer and closer to the rim of the Well, peering into the depths, lit unto infinity.
“It was always meant to end this way.”
The voice is unexpected. Ratchet whirls, spark pumping with alarm, but he recognizes the mech upon sight.
Alpha Trion looks at him with optics that have seen everything. His expression is serene, his hands folded behind his back, and his tone suggesting that Ratchet's sorrow is unwarranted.
“It is the cycle, Ratchet,” he says. “The Well gives and it reclaims. That is the way of things.”
Ratchet starts to shake. “I know who he was,” he says, his armor clamping tight to his frame in response to his rising displeasure. “I know the games you played with his spark. He was always the best of you.”
“Yes, he was.”
“Then you can fix this.”
Alpha Trion flinches, barely visible, but it is there. He shakes his helm. “No, I cannot. And even if I could, I wouldn't. The choice has always been his.”
A choice given when there is no other option? Not much of a choice.
Ratchet sneers and stomps closer to the ancient mech. “I think you are a liar and a coward,” he snarls. “Optimus always bears your burdens, all of yours, and you let him!”
Alpha Trion looks down at Ratchet with pity in his optics. “You would not understand.”
“Don't patronize me!” Ratchet's hands slash through the air. “You only sit back and watch and record, but you never act. You are the one who doesn't understand.” His vents heave and Ratchet can't get them under control. “Crawl back to your hole, Trion. The Age of the Primes is over!”
That is one of the legacies that Optimus left that Ratchet can fully support. No more Primes. No more single mechs bearing all the burdens and the sacrifice. No more!
Alpha Trion shakes his helm again, his optics a dim, dim blue. “My dear medic, he could have never been yours anyway.”
Fury, unlike anything Ratchet has ever felt, strikes him to the very spark. And it is cold, colder than the Earth's North Pole.
And Alpha Trion repeats, “It was always meant to end this way.”
Ratchet works his jaw but he has no words that are polite. “Frag you,” he hisses and altmodes, leaving both the Well and Alpha Trion behind.
He can no longer find consolation there.
Decades later, it is cited as an accident. A strap is too loose. A bolt is stripped. A key safety measure is forgotten. He's in the wrong place at the wrong time. And one of the oldest mechs still functioning just doesn't move as fast as he used to. His reaction time is dulled without the war to keep it sharp.
An observer might even note, later, that perhaps the medic hadn't bothered to put forth the effort. No one is sure. And those that dare ask, cannot.
Because by the time the materials are moved aside and the wreckage cleared, Ratchet is surely beyond saving. His spark chamber is cracked and his electropulses are so weak as to be undetectable. Energon stains the newly paved road beneath him.
He is rushed to the nearest medcenter where his successor steadies his ventilations and preps a room for surgery.
In a distant tower, the last Prime observes and records, his infamous Quill moving faster than he can process.
He is not a frame nor a spark. He has no diagnostics. He is not surrounded by darkness or light, not heat or cold.
He simply is.
Ratchet, once tired to his very struts, vents relief with vents he no longer has.
In the silence and sound, he walks without pedes. He passes familiar faces and memories long gone. For a moment, he's distracted by Perceptor who babbles an excited stream of jargon that Ratchet still doesn't understand.
He doesn't know how long he is there with Perceptor because time does not exist in this place that is not real either.
Something draws him away, a calling without a voice, and Ratchet goes to it without second thought.
And he wants to weep because there he is, Optimus and Orion both at once, at joyous peace. He's there in the center, the sun which every star revolves. Ratchet wraps himself in all that is Optimus-Orion, feeling at last that he has found his way home.
“What took you so long?” Optimus asks.
Ratchet half-laughs and half-cries because what else could he expect from Optimus? “It's your fault,” he says, “leaving without me. I couldn't leave the others. What would those kids do without me?”
What he doesn't say is how hard it was without Optimus. But he doesn't have to say it because here Optimus already knows.
“Something is stirring,” Optimus says, and there's a ghostly flicker of his hands on Ratchet's plating, perhaps a memory echo. “I may return.”
“And leave me behind?”
Orion smiles at him, sad and joyful all at once. “You were not staying,” he says.
And Ratchet onlines to a dull white ceiling, the distinct staccato of monitoring equipment, and an ache in his frame that suggests many hours spent in surgery. He cycles his optics, runs a diagnostic, and comes to a sobering conclusion.
He is alive.
Apparently, he had trained his successor far too well.
They tell him to take it easy. He can't go anywhere without tripping on an employee or a friend and solitude is no longer an option. It's frustrating, despite how much Ratchet understands their motivations.
It was not a suicide attempt, he tells them. But Arcee looks at Bulkhead and Bumblebee shakes his helm, and none of them believe him.
Knock Out scoffs into his wrist, muttering something about “taking one to know one” and Smokescreen just puts his hands up and walks away.
Ultra Magnus flat out tells Ratchet that he is important, he is needed, and such actions are unfair to them all. Lingering in his tone is the grief that binds them, the reminder that they've all lost a part of themselves and Ratchet isn't the only one grieving.
And Wheeljack is apparently the only one without any duties because more often than not, he's following Ratchet around, badgering him with energon and snark and making a nuisance of himself.
It's almost enough, Ratchet thinks when he finds a moment of peace by hiding in a supply closet. It's almost enough to help him forget about the dream.
Almost.
There's a ruckus in the hallway and Ratchet growls as he pushes to his pedes, stomping out of his office with the rage of a predacon. He's told them time and again about racing in the corridors and he's not patching up another dented speedster.
Not again Smokescreen!
He storms through the door, mouth open to chastise, but there are no racers out here, just groups of Cybertronians chattering excitedly to each other.
“What's going on?” he demands, grabbing the nearest mech who just happens to be Knock Out, probably his designated babysitter for the evening.
Knock Out brushes off Ratchet's hand and frowns at the nonexistent scratch. “It's the Well,” he says, peering closer at his arm. “It's working again.”
Ratchet's spark throbs hope at him, no matter how hard he tries to push it down. “You mean...?”
“New mechs are emerging. It started a breem ago,” the mech beside Knock Out says, and he's bouncing up and down on his pedes with excitement.
“It's a good sign,” Knock Out says, finally satisfied that his paint has not been compromised. “Cybertron's healing. Maybe Primus has forgiven us.”
Ratchet backs away a step, and then two. His spark is racing, his vents aflutter. He doesn't know what to think, is afraid to hope, but that doesn't stop him from whirling on a heelstrut and snapping into altmode. He puts metal to the pedal, careening down the halls to the startled shouts of mechs scrambling to get out of his way.
It rakes him an hour at top speed to get to the Well and the closer he gets, the more his spark whirls and tugs at him. There's a feeling curling within him, one so close to that dream, and he wants to believe in it, but remembers the disappointment all too well.
By the time he arrives there's a crowd of mechs and femmes, old and new alike. The Well isn't producing as many as it had millennia past, but that mechs are emerging at all is something to celebrate.
Ratchet pushes through the masses, searching for a familiar face or field. His scanners work in overdrive, touching upon every new mech he can, hoping for a spark of something.
He gets to the Well. Mechs are still emerging, but none of them are Optimus or Orion Pax. None of them are familiar frames. And now the tide has slowed to a trickle. Perhaps it is not meant to be a continuing process anymore, but stages. A part of Ratchet sets this observation aside, something to bring to the other scientists later.
Much, much later.
Because he's still searching, still looking, and he can't see the one mech he wants to see. The Well is supposed to produce new mechs, not grant deceased ones new life. But he's Optimus, he's Thirteen.
He isn't bound by the laws of the average mech.
“It was always meant to end this way.”
Ratchet shakes his helm, hands drawing into fists. His engine growls. No. Alpha Trion cannot have been right.
“It was not just a dream.”
“Of course it wasn't,” Ratchet retorts, vocalizer spitting static. “I'm not old and senile. It was...”
He cut off mid-sentence, optics spiraling wide. His processor catches up with his outrage and Ratchet whirls around, spark thrumming an excited pulse in his chassis. He drinks in the sight of the mech a mere pace behind, tall and gangly and base chrome, but one can't mistake the smile in his optics. There are highlights of red and blue, but not so distinct that someone would immediately name him Optimus Prime.
Ratchet knows this has to be him though. He would always know.
“Or--”
A finger presses to his lips with a smile. “Call me Roller,” he says, with a twinkle in his optics. “We can keep who I really am between us for now, yes?”
Ratchet chokes back a sob. “Of course.” His hands lift with the intent to embrace but he hesitates. “You're... really here?”
And Orion – Roller – takes his hands before Ratchet can withdraw them and pulls Ratchet into his arms. “I am.”
“And you're staying?”
“I will do my best to try.”
It is the best promise Orion can give. Ratchet presses his helm to the larger mech's chest, feels and hears the familiar sparkpulse of his dearest friend and partner, his most cherished one.
“Welcome back,” he says.
Orion rumbles around him, arms tightening by a fraction. “It's good to be home,” he says.
Yes, Ratchet thinks, it certainly is.
a/n: Soft spot for this pairing, I have. RatchetxOptimus is my fluffy pairing and OptimusXMegatron is my angsty pairing for this series. Heh.
Feedback, as always, is welcome and appreciated.
