A/N: Second-person for convenience of pronouns. w00t.

Optimus Prime.

His name had been burned into your memory long ago.

On your first day at the Hall of Records, you dug up some records from the day when the High Council bestowed the title of Prime upon him, and listened to the recordings of the speech he made before them, letting the power of his voice and his cause wash over you. Everyone knew the red-and-blue titan was great, of course; why else would he be a Prime right now? But you'd joined the fray in fire and flame, and hadn't stopped to think about the meaning of everything until he told you. Then and there, that's where he became your hero.

Your hero, slowly dying before your eyes right now.

Not the metaphorical kind of dying, you thought to yourself, trying to fill in the silence with the sound of the voice in your head. He'd been an extraordinary bot, through and through. He'd just doomed Cybertron with the destruction of the Omega Lock, yes, but there were reasons for that, and you knew he'd made the right choice. The only problem he had right now was the fact that the entire Autobot base had been blown up with him inside. You didn't want to think too hard about what would have happened if you hadn't snagged that phase shifter earlier.

So yeah, your hero, literally dying from being blown up by a laser or crushed by a building or both, it didn't matter, the only other sound in the caverns besides the rambling in your head was some forlorn whispering sound coming from somewhere in his broken body and Primus, what was a rookie like you supposed to do?

Before you completely devolved into silent hysteria, though, he came to and asked how he got to this cavern. So, you explained. There was the GroundBridging, and the immediately running back, and the first-hand witnessing of the base getting blown to smithereens (again, good thing you had that phase shifter), and the skedaddling of the two of you out of there...

It briefly occurred to you that you'd disobeyed his orders to evacuate the base, but it didn't matter now. You could not abandon your leader, not then, not now, not ever. You looked to him, searching for his thoughts in his expression, but he was too weak to indicate any sort of response to your actions. He needed help, fast, but the two of you were in a cavern too deep for anyone to find...

At this point, you suddenly realized that the life of the one you'd looked up to for so long now rested in your hands.

You couldn't let him down now.

He'd muttered something about "no hope" before you left to look for help, but he was hurt right now. Probably disoriented. You were under his command when you GroundBridged out of base, but now he was under your protection, and you couldn't afford to let words spoken in delirium keep you from what you had to do.

As you emerged from the rocks into the wreckage of the base, your mind wandered off to your earlier days of being an Autobot.

While you weren't very impressed with the job you were landed with after your Elite Guard training, you did have to appreciate the constant influx of data from other parts of Cybertron that the Hall of Records provided. Reports of victories, of losses, of new heroes, of lost heroes...all of them came here; all were there for your viewing pleasure. And with your job as security detail for Alpha Trion, who looked for all the world like a boring old codger, you were definitely going to browse through them.

The clerks in the Hall of Records seemed to pay special attention to the bits of data that carried the name of Optimus Prime. Battles that he participated in, words that he spoke...all were filed away with a sort of reverance that no other group of information received. Probably since he rose from their ranks, you thought. They all aspired to be like him, as did you.

The battling drew ever closer, and in anticipation of the oncoming opportunity to show your mettle, you looked deeper and deeper into the archives for inspiration and encouragement. You even turned to the old geezer for support, which turned out to be a better idea than you could possibly have imagined, as it turned out he was an invaluable source of wisdom, and had once been the mentor of the Optimus Prime you so admired.

And the battle came, and you...weren't quite in it that time, but soon after, you ended up somewhere you never even imagined you'd be: fighting right by the side of Optimus Prime! Bearer of the Matrix, last of the Primes...he was just as noble and capable as you had imagined. And now you were really part of his crew.

Things couldn't have gone better, you'd thought. Now you had the ultimate chance to prove your worth!

And you tried. You were still trying now.

You drew your thoughts back to the present. After searching in every nook and cranny, you'd found nothing useful, so you retreated back to the caverns. Upon seeing Optimus again, you almost winced. It was hard to reconcile the image you had of him in your mind with the battered wreck lying before you now.

Wait, no! Not a battered wreck. Optimus Prime. Just with a couple more dings and dents than usual. You'd get him fixed up...somehow...

The answer to your unasked question came quickly. Optimus stirred, and weakly whispered a few words that sparked your memory. "The Forge...of Solus...Prime..."

It took a couple of seconds, but you made the connections. "Wait...if you had the Forge, you could fix yourself up! Power of the Primes!" you enthusiastically responded, before standing up again. "Optimus, hang on just a little longer..."

The only answer you got was his faint wheezing. That would have to do.

As you sneaked around the Decepticon base, you indulged a little in patting yourself on the back. Phase shifter plus Smokescreen equals super stealth skills, you thought with a grin. You found the Forge without a hitch, and managed to lug it back to the cavern without a single 'con noticing you. You could hardly contain your excitement as you kneeled beside your leader again.

"Optimus! I have the Forge! You can use it to repair yourself!" you said, only for your cheer to be dampened by the grave expression in his optics.

"...That...is not the reason...I had you retrieve the Forge..."

The Forge's limited remaining energy was to be used to repair the Omega Lock, to save their planet and everyone who considered it home...not to save the spark of one Autobot. You weren't happy to hear this at all, though you still had to admire how selfless he was, even on the brink of death.

The question of the preservation of a Prime would have a different answer.

You saw his mouth moving to form words, and you heard his voice carrying the words to your audio receptors, but there was something of a disconnect after that. Those utterances connected together in the wrong ways, forming ideas that couldn't possibly be. New Prime. Standing before him.

Smokescreen. A Prime.

Yeah...Smokescreen...the bot who charged in first and asked questions later, the bot who spoke of destiny and greatness even as he blundered through life, who would probably spend a few moments goofing around on the throne of a tyrant after overthrowing him, who would have been relegated to stacking crates over leadership any other day. The new Prime. You would have laughed if not for your reverence for the Prime who still watched you now.

Words stumbled their way out of your mouth to convey your doubts to him, but in his optics, there didn't seem to be another choice. This was it. May the love of Primus see them through.

The two of you fell back into uneasy silence, and you tried to absorb the idea of being a Prime, trepidation building in your spark the longer you thought. Take on the Matrix...charge into action...could you do that? Would the Matrix give you what you needed? Would the others listen to you? Perhaps fate would be on your side this day...could you possibly make the turnabout...bring down the citadel...save the day?

Optimus...he was rasping something...half of a broken conversation with someone unseen. Alpha Trion?

Oh, Primus, he was going offline.

Time grew shorter, and you watched the light, the life in Optimus's optics flicker and dim. And then all that was left of him was the Matrix, ready for a new holder.

For you. The new Prime.

...

No.

This isn't how the story is supposed to end.

The story of the data clerk who rose up from the ranks of a white-collar caste to become the catalyst for a new age, the Autobot leader who led his people in a war against the evil forces of the Decepticons, the last Prime...this wasn't how it should have gone, dying in a dark cavern far away from home, with only a mere rookie by his side to hear his last words.

With an uneasy feeling in your spark, you looked to the Forge of Solus Prime beside you.

If you took on the Matrix, there was a pretty good chance that you'd get everyone killed. You couldn't shoulder the responsibility of being a Prime yet, you knew it. There was only one bot you knew who could. But the fate of your home and your friends...that was all right for you, wasn't it?

With some difficulty, you dragged the Forge to Optimus's hand. Immediately, the inner workings of the hammer began whirring to life, spilling light across the walls. The power of the Forge traveled up his arm and spread across his body, repairing, rearranging...reviving...

In the brief moments that followed, you saw his optics flicker back to life, and smiled. He'd...probably be angry about you disobeying his commands this time, but you hoped he'd understand. Maybe today wouldn't be the day you make him proud, but someday you would. And he'd be there to see it.

There was a name that you were thinking of as the blast of energy hit.

Optimus Prime...