Flash Fiction Fills Take 64 Part Seven

[dracoqueen22]

For Gamercat
Prompt: Optimus/Skyfire, "Never Look Away," Vienna Teng

Fandom: Transformers: G1. Warnings: None

Stumbling upon Optimus Prime staring soulfully out into the night sky was the last thing Skyfire expected when he retreated to the apex of the volcano that the Ark called home. He thought he was the only who came up here, even amongst the other flyers, but there was no mistaking that tall frame and those familiar colors.

He looked like a statue. Something to inspire and admire. He was proud and strong. His gaze focused on the distance.

But mostly… he looked lonely.

Skyfire coughed a ventilation to announce himself and popped his thrusters to complete the rest of his ascent. He might not have been as graceful as Starscream, but he could manage a decent landing without tumbling from the mountaintop.

“Good evening, sir,” Skyfire said with a smile as Optimus turned to acknowledge him. “It’s a beautiful night for stargazing.”

“That it is.” Optimus’ optics brightened, his field reaching for Skyfire with warmth and welcome, without a trace of disappointment in it. “I keep thinking if I look hard enough, I might see Cybertron, despite knowing otherwise.”

Skyfire came to a rest beside the Prime, but then lowered himself to sit. This way, for once, he would have to look up to a mech. “I find myself doing the same,” he admitted. “But no matter how many calculations I’ve done, I am still disappointed.”

“Because it isn’t there?”

“Because we are still too close for me to see the past,” Skyfire said with a little sigh. “If I could go further, if I could travel faster, I might be able to see Cybertron as it was. But I wasn’t in stasis long enough to have that mercy now.”

Optimus inclined his helm in understanding and rested a hand on Skyfire’s shoulder, a chaste touch but one that spoke a wealth of comfort. “Do you ever wish Starscream had not found you?”

“More often than I’d like to admit.” Skyfire’s spark squeezed tightly. He cycled a ventilation to hide the sharp stab of pain in his field. “There is nothing familiar to me here. Not even the echoes of the past.”

Optimus squeezed again and then lowered himself to sit next to Skyfire. Their thighs touched and somehow, that light brush was a source of comfort as well. “And it is a greater pain to see Cybertron as it is now. I am sorry for that, Skyfire.”

He sighed. “You did what you had to do. I can’t blame you for that. The onus is on me to accept that this is my life now.” As unappealing as it might be.

“Even so, you are a stranger in a strange land. I can understand that pain.” Something in Optimus’ vocals darkened, turning to grief. His helm tilted, his gaze shifting to the sky. “Once upon a time, a lowly dockworker named Orion Pax used to do this very same thing we are doing now. Looking above and imagining what else was out in the stars.”

Skyfire smiled a little himself. “It is kind of peaceful, isn’t it?”

“Very much. I can see why you come here so often.”

Skyfire startled and swung a look toward his Prime. “You noticed?” Skyfire often felt he went unnoticed if they didn’t have need of him for their air taxi, so this was a huge surprise. But a welcome one.

“I do pay attention.” Optimus Prime’s battle mask slid open, revealing the gentle smile he had underneath. “I hope you don’t mind that I keep you company.”

Skyfire felt his faceplate heat. He ducked his helm. “No,” he said. “I don’t mind at all.”

For I'm In Love With Dark Fiction Anon
Prompt: Prowl and Optimus Prime, Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Fandom: Transformers IDW, post Combiner Wars. Warnings: None.

Prowl was right.

But then, wasn’t he always?

Optimus did not recharge. And if he did, it was fitfully. Cybertronians did not dream, yet he found his recharge haunted by nightmares. Memory purges. He wasn’t sure, anymore, if they were real or imagined.

Prowl was chief among them.

Where Megatron had once ruled his thoughts, there was now only his former second, his former chief tactician, his former friend.

Optimus tossed and turned.

Prowl’s voice haunted him. Prowl’s laugh, rare though it was. Prowl’s touch, simultaneously reverent and dismissive.

Optimus saw himself as Prowl did, in numbers and calculations, and he feared that was how Prowl had always seen him. Were those special moments calculated, too?

When did he stop trusting Prowl? When did he turn his back on a friend he’d known longer than war? When did he give more weight to Megatron?

Optimus did not recharge. For when he slept, he dreamt of Prowl. His spark ached. The empty core of the Matrix flexed and trembled. He was chastised for his failures, so many. No member of Optimus Maximus haunted him as thoroughly as Prowl did.

Ironhide. Mirage. Sunstreaker. They had their own issues, their own disagreements. They’d come to terms with each other.

Ironhide was there, a never-wavering support. Mirage and Sunstreaker did not know any better.

But Prowl’s accusations were like a thermite fire along his internals. In his recharge, Optimus burned and he regretted.

He stared down at his dented hands, swearing that Prowl’s energon still tainted his knuckles. He felt it, again and again, his fists impacting Prowl’s face. He remembered his own rage. At himself. At Prowl.

I hate you. And then I love you. It’s like I want to throw you off a cliff, and then rush to the bottom to catch you.

Human quote. Human words. They were so apt. They encapsulated everything Optimus felt about Prowl.

Hate. Love. Respect. Disdain.

He tossed and turned. Recharge did not come to him.

Prowl’s smile mingled with a smirk, an energon-soaked sneer.

Optimus regretted. He regretted so very much. An apology would not be enough. He wasn’t sure he ought to give one.

How did we get this far?

Optimus couldn’t hate Prowl anymore than he loathed himself.

He did not recharge.

Perhaps it was for the best.

For jenn-oddballpunk
Prompt:Jazz/Ratchet: Ratchet reacting violently when he sees Jazz fall on the battlefield.

Fandom: Transformers G1. Warnings: battle violence/gore

“Jazz is down. I repeat: Jazz is down!”

Ratchet was on his pedes and roaring across the battlefield before he’d fully processed the report, well aware that he was responding on instinct more than rationality.

He heard, vaguely, Prowl shouting at him. He heard First Aid telling him that he was closer. He heard Hoist mutter something about it being not that serious.

Ratchet heard all three and dismissed them.

He leapt over embankments, ducked to avoid enemy fire, and skidded down into an impact crater. Jazz was on his hands and knees, struggling to rise, energon dripping down from multiple shrapnel wounds. He was shaking his helm, disoriented. How he’d gotten hit, Ratchet didn’t know.

“You fragger,” Ratchet snarled as he slid to a halt beside his lover. “Thought you were faster than that.”

Jazz grinned up at him, energon dribbling from his lip. “So did I.”

A Decepticon appeared on the lip of the crater. Ratchet’s blaster leapt to his hands, and he fired without thinking. He could have been a sniper, if his medical skills weren’t of more use. The Decepticon tumbled down, a smoking hole in his chassis.

Ratchet’s medical coding writhed within him. It was one death of many staining his hands. The day when he stood before Primus would be the most shameful of his entire functioning. If Primus even existed.

“Stay down!” Ratchet barked. “I have to get these patched. Stop trying to move. You’re making it worse.”

Hoist was right. It was survivable. But the growing pool of energon and was that coolant? – frag, it was coolant – beneath Jazz seemed to indicate otherwise to the untrained optic.

“Ya have such a way with words, Ratch,” Jazz said, but at least he obeyed, though whether it was by choice or because his frame wouldn’t sustain him anymore, Ratchet didn’t know.

Prowl was still shouting at him.

Ratchet quietly but firmly turned down the volume. There were other medics. Prime was safe. No one else was critical.

He’d lost enough during the war. He’d be damned if he lost Jazz, too.

“Knew ya loved me,” Jazz said, his vocalizer crackling.

Ratchet didn’t spare him a look, not right now. He was too focused on the shrapnel. “Damn right, I do,” he said. “Now hold still.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

Jazz’s hand reached out, tapping against his shoulder, a bare brush of their fields exchanging affection between them.

That was all that needed to be said.

a/n: Even more flash fics are coming. :)