Title: This Is How It Has To Be

Rating: T

Universe: TF:Prime

Prompt: theropodtheroblogs said: Optimus/Ratchet, or Megatron/Optimus if you prefer, and song is Set Fire To The Third Bar, by Snow Patrol.

What came, in the end, was depressing as all hell. I am so sorry.

He was an archivist still where it counted, in processor and coding. He seldom dealt in images, but today he seemed unable to think in any other terms.

They haunted his thought queues, stood behind his optics when he shuttered them, accusing stares and memories that had been corrupted somewhere between being lived. He saw energon, and red human blood, spilled in the black ash of Cybertron's wasted landscape, wrecked frames and tiny broken bodies, the intense wrongness of it all enough to turn his fuel tanks and threaten to send him to his knees, retching. The determination on the faces of the children as they dared Megatron to kill them, determined to die rather than give the Decepticons any advantage.

Earth, turning silver and bleak, alive and yet so very dead under his optics.

And Ratchet, his optics wide and distraught, hands reaching out in a silent plea: Optimus, we needed that…

He hefted the Star Saber, its weight in his servos oppressive. Its function was guarding, the protection of those weaker than oneself, and yet again he was going to use it to destroy.

A choked breath, cooling fans trying to keep him together, to stop the attack before it started. He wanted – he wanted so much, knew he deserved none of it but if it wasn't his own behalf on which he wanted, did it still count? He wanted peace, an end to the war that tore them all apart anew each day. He wanted a way to keep the children from ever seeing battle again, to be sure he would never have to lean on shoulders of flesh and bone, to know that none of them would ever have to kill ever again.

He wanted Ratchet – Primus, he wanted Ratchet so much. But the wide optics, the expression of shocked betrayal that he just could not seem to forget. It was all he could do to watch the Ground Bridge take him, away to safety as if anywhere on this planet was safe to them now.

"I never thought it would end like this."

"Neither did I, old friend."

But Ratchet was gone, and he was alone. Where to, now?

He turned to the Ground Bridge controls as if in a daze, proximity scanners registering each and every component of the old base but spark unable to recognise them. He closed the portal, sealing his own fate, knowing that there was no escape except for straight up, into the belly of the Nemesis, into Megatron's claws. Would it be better to live or die? He didn't know, anymore.

He raised the Star Saber, wrote his intent into every line of his frame. He couldn't bring it down, couldn't back out. Frozen, a statue at the controls, clinging to a selfish hope.

I have condemned us all to death.

He could run. He could fire it up, program new coordinates, escape into the Terran wilderness. Prolong the inevitable.

But he was Optimus Prime. General, war criminal, destroyer of the Omega Lock, the one to finally seal the writ on Cybertron's doom.

Forgive me, Ratchet. I love you.

And somewhere, back in the dark recesses of his archives, a voice.

"I'll be waiting for you."