capitalh | no one mourns the wicked

Who: Optimus Prime and AUTOBOTS
Where: The Autobot campground.
When: The evening/night after the dance off.
What: Orion Pax has been restored to his past and future self. Optimus Prime is NOT HAPPY. Also, very very tired.
Warnings: Injuries, intense robot ass devastation. Angry dad. Angry mom.

Optimus Prime, unlike Orion Pax, leaves no time for argument or complaint. After he's finished dealing with Megatron, he orders the Autobots to roll out, provided assistance to injured comrades where necessary. He takes no assistance for himself.

Which is stupid, because after days of starvation and torture and minus the burst of power from the Matrix he was utilizing just before, he is extremely fucked up. It's less obvious that he's on his last legs than it might be with some bots, but he is very injured and trying hard to pretend that he isn't. He drives back to base by his own means, and doesn't speak but to give the occasional order until they are there.

He wants everyone safe and tended to and organized, and he needs to have a talk with just about everyone on the team, and besides that he needs to catch up with everything he hadn't been paying attention to as Orion Pax...he doesn't see how he could possibly take a rest quite yet, there is too much stuff to do, and if he made it this far he can make it a little bit father.

More than tired, though, he is angry. He's angry at Megatron, angry at some of his team, and angry at himself. He doesn't pause to talk to anyone once they get back to camp, and immediately starts to ineffectually try to organize things with as few words as possible.

[Feel free to tag in as someone at any point in this, including later in the night or the next day. He will probably pass out in the medibay within the hour, though. Either that or Ratchet will get him.]

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Ratchet nods, but his optics narrow slowly.

"What do you mean, 'questioned or challenged'?" he asks. "Questioned or challenged by who?"

He shakes his helm a little, frowning and furrowing his brow. He still felt angry, thinking about it. He didn't know how reasonable any of it was.

"...The conversation I had with Rodimus was unpleasant." He looks into the space in front of him. "He asserted that...I was more concerned with I and Megatron's 'relationship' than with the status of the war."

Ratchet seems to go completely still for a long, suspended moment, looking up at Optimus in something like disbelief.

"He told you he thought what?" he says, his voice deceptively mild.

"I do not know where he got the idea from," Optimus says, glancing away. It unsettled him, and still does, because he has no perspective on how true that is. And how angry he feels at Megatron makes him feel more vulnerable to that sway than he'd like. He still has memories of loving him too close to his spark.

"Perhaps...given the feelings I had still possessed without my memories..."

Maybe it had given Rodimus reason to believe that he no longer warranted his full respect, based on his past affections.

"He had no right--no right--to say something like that to you," Ratchet says, his voice harsh before he controls it carefully, his fingers squeezing tight on Optimus'. He forces himself to loosen his grip after a moment, cycling his vents slowly. Yelling at Optimus certainly wasn't going to help anyone.

"He's wrong," he says flatly. "He's wrong, and he did something incredibly stupid and reckless and irresponsible, and instead of accepting that and apologizing he's lashing out in a petty attempt to shift blame. It's pathetic, and quite frankly even after everything else I expected better of him. But that's not true, Optimus, and he should know it."

"He is still so angry," Optimus says, his voice still low and somber, "over events that no one has control over any longer. I had expected better of him, in my absence. I had expected that he would not make further trouble when things were already so dire. He was quick to show great remorse, but equally quick to turn on me when I did not consider that to be enough."

He vents, slowly.

"He was used to threaten me. Megatron threatened to tear him apart in front of me, when I had...no capability to withstand such threats."

"Optimus..."

Ratchet deflates a little, his optics dimming.

"I'm sorry. That that happened to you. But that doesn't mean Rodimus is right, or that his behavior prior wasn't completely unacceptable."

Optimus keeps hold of Ratchet's fingers, and his expression hardens somewhat, with the vestiges of determined anger. He would have done it, he thinks.

"I would have done what he asked, I think. I would have done it, and Rodimus would have blamed me for that as well."

He shakes his helm, though he is thinking a bit more analytically now. Much of Megatron's plans took a while to fully sink in - the entire thing had felt so out of nowhere, from his perspective at the time.

"Megatron had been intending on forging the Matrix into something he could use. I am not sure what would have happened, bringing such powerful artifacts together."

"...yeah."

Ratchet cycles his vents, looking tired.

"I know you would have. And I don't know what would have happened, and I'm glad it didn't come to that."

Optimus nods very slightly, feeling similarly exhausted. It's the ghost pain of a narrow escape. It was so close to the being the end, if anything had gone differently...more than him and Rodimus could have died.

"Even now, his jealousy haunts him," he says. "Not even...the chance to have it undone, to be seen with fresh optics, was enough to shake Megatron's delusions."

"I know that hurt you, when you couldn't remember," Ratchet says quietly, his lips crimping. "...but yeah. I didn't think you'd be able to convince him, one way or another."

He makes a weary sound, pressing a hand over his optics, allowing some of the thoughts to settle within his processor. All the while, his spark aches.

"And yet..."

And for once, his vocalizer wavers.

"And yet now, more than ever, I feel the pain of his loss. Even till the very end, I pleaded with him. I feel as if I have experienced his betrayal for a second time, but more cruelly than he would have been capable of in the beginning."

"Optimus."

But what is there to say? Ratchet hesitates for a long, pained moment, just staring as Optimus covers his face. Orion... that had been easy, almost. Easier. This... there were no words he could come up with to soothe this. There never had been.

He just reaches out instead, settling a hand on Optimus' shoulder and pressing his lips together, his optics dim and quiet.

Optimus shakes his head a little, finally unconvering his eyes. When he does, his optics are burning lowly. He doesn't look at Ratchet because he can't bring himself too, but he leans into his touch, accepting that wordless show of support.

He knows there isn't much to say. He doesn't have much to say, either. But why this point in their lives, him and Ratcher don't always need words to get by.

Thinks don't feel okay then, but for the first time that day, it feels like they might be eventually.

Ratchet reaches up and squeezes Optimus' shoulder briefly.

"Come on," he says, his voice warm and low. "Lay back down and try to get some recharge. You still need it to heal properly."

Optimus stares back at him for a few moments, before slowly giving his assent with a nod. He gingerly moves towards the interior of the ship. He gives a faint little smile, even as he looks ahead.

"I do remember vowing to be less trouble that way, not long ago," he says, remembering the conversation Ratchet had had with Orion.

"I didn't believe that for a second," Ratchet says warmly. "So don't worry about it. Though I certainly wouldn't complain."

He herds Optimus back into the medibay proper and shuts the door, piling him gently onto a berth and settling back, shaking his helm a little.

"Just try to relax as much as you can. And let me know if you need anything, all right?"

"I will," Optimus says, allowing himself to settle on the berth again, his plating still feeling fragile and strange but otherwise improved over the morning before. "Thank you, Ratchet."

For so many things.

no one mourns the wicked

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