Chapter Text
To Have a Spark
Spark, Luminous
"Ugh, you just want to die for the guy. That's leadership. Or brainwashing, or something."
"No... that's Optimus Prime."
--Crosshairs and Drift; Transformers IV: Age of Extinction
He fell for an eternity. For aeons, Optimus Prime observed the carvings and rough indentations along the Well's interior. These carvings were old, older than him. Older than history as he knew it. The Well itself thrummed, roiling with the cascading waves it sent forth across the planet. Down here, the Prime felt the churning brew as it bubbled up from the heart of someplace he'd only reached once before.
Back then of course, the Well hadn't been a great cauldron of energy, active with the awakening of a God.
“I am your Prime!” Here, the words tore through the atmosphere, echoing off of the rounded walls.
Optimus slowed down and sped up at the same time. Somehow, he simply floated in this roiling well and sliced through it all like a seasoned diver racing through water. His roaring voice beat back the questions, the doubt that assailed him. It chased away the foul wonder as to why he'd chosen to walk into that boy's mind the night they'd met.
It didn't matter why. What mattered was that it had to be done. The Prime had sworn to never see a human casualty in this age-old, damnable war. He'd sworn and yet, here lay a casualty. Or was this from another war that didn't involve him at all? Prime flew on, tossed this way and that in the roiling waves erupting from the source of the Well. His hands curled, holding the Quill and the human close to himself. Unbidden, a memory threaded through his processor.
“What's this?” Renalt had asked him about his spark, feeling that living, thrumming warmth. He'd asked, and then he'd called it 'safe'.
The Prime's spark flared, fluttered, then blazed in time with his optics. That odd churning grew from something barely there to an almost frightening boil. The Matrix shivered and for a moment, Optimus had to glance down at himself to make sure he'd remained closed up.
Further down, they went. Optimus had forgotten just how deep the Well of All Sparks truly ran. Still, he refused to slow down or turn back. Again, the words came out of his mouth.
“I am your Prime! You accepted as much.”
Another eternity. Another sensation of something flaring into existence and dying, then dragging itself back to life again. The deeper they went, the wilder things got. Those roiling waves became geysers, foaming currents with nowhere to go but up. The air such as it was, became thick, almost like a choking miasma without actually sucking the life out of anyone who took it in. Or was he now in some watery sea, dense with gravity? Electricity crackled along the walls. The temperature began to rise. The smell of energon was rich here, almost pervasive. The blood of a God ran through here, pumping steadily in time with that roiling storm making its way up the Well and out across the planet.
They were close.
=s=
The planet itself rolled under those near-convulsive waves that rippled across the landscape. With it, came odd sensations and things growing, erupting out of the metallic ground. Crystals grew, veins of bright blue forming in the planet's cracks and fissures. The Well of All Sparks churned, boiling over with the energy. The golden markings Optimus had put down on the Well's perimeter pulsed in time with each rippling wave, seeming to throw the energy back on itself, doubling it. Strengthening it. For brief instances, the beings present could partially see through the ground, as if metallic earth had become a foggy glass.
“Optimus!” Ratchet's cry was drowned out by the cacophony of sound and energy. The Autobots looked on in terror, watching their Prime take his charge and dive into the maelstrom of the Well.
“He's absolutely insane!”
“Prime?”
No one could tell who said what in the midst of this unusual chaos. Miko, Jack and Raf held onto their respective guardians as the pulsing waves took everyone to the ground. Ultra Magnus couldn't keep his weapon trained on Megatron any longer, so he took up protecting June and Fowler. As it was, Megatron was in no position to do anything.
The warlord lay on the ground, stiff with pain. The Dark Energon shard within him screamed and in some twisted way, Megatron half-prayed that his former self, D-16, might be spared from this hell.
=s=
His feet touched bottom. He knew the steel here like a child knew their mother, their father, their ancestors. It was home like nothing else could be. Yet, he knew he'd leave it again for interminable years. In some sense, he wanted to leave it again, to see an end to the War, to walk Cybertron's surface like he used to. The atmosphere here was thick, pervasive with the smell of rarefied energon. Optimus Prime stopped, standing still for a moment. His optics closed and for that moment, he fancied that he could breathe, that he could in fact, smell the lifeblood of his God, his Creator. That he could taste it, feel it running through his own veins as surely as it pulsed through this space he stood in. Energy crackled here, electrifying what he might call the air. Air? Water? He couldn't tell.
Somewhere in the depths of his voice, the Prime began to whisper ancient litanies he had learned combing through the records at Iacon. Songs, hymns and stories echoed faintly from his voice as he began to walk again. History weaved through his processor as he voiced it. The environment responded, growing heavier with each word. The environment grew heavier, and with it, the Prime felt an unease. Clutching Renalt's human body close to himself, Optimus frowned. He felt the faint chill of natural death competing with that twisting, churning, foreign warmth, that fire within that kept asking for a spark that wasn't there.
The Prime stopped walking when, and only when, he was within sight of the great spherical face of Primus Himself. It was here that he fell silent, memories racing through his mind. His first journey here had been in the midst of a war, just as now. His first journey here had been directly after someone had been slain – after Megatron had shot Halogen in cold blood – and now, as then, he was here much in the same way. Except it was all somehow different. He wasn't here alone.
He didn't intend on leaving here alone.
“I need him,” his voice echoed and didn't echo.
The Prime dropped to his knees and with a reluctant slowness, laid his precious cargo upon the floor in front of himself. An offering? He wasn't sure. His head bowed and for a long moment, the mech sat in silence, wondering to himself what he ought to do now. He knew why he was here. And yet, something in him hesitated to ask – this wasn't a Cybertronian. This was a foreign-born organic, from the world that had coalesced around Unicron the Unmaker. For a brief second, he was Orion Pax again, wondering just how angry Primus might be at such a prospect.
He spoke again, somehow dragging some faint echo of confidence into his voice.
“Please. I need him.”
The environment answered back in its peculiar way. Primus would speak when He knew it right to speak. The air, such as it was, thickened all the more, to the point that it slowly lifted the human body off of the floor. Geyser-like fountains of energy emerged from all angles, turning the human body this way and that as if thousands of hands held him, examined him. A moment later, something pulled, somehow gently yet definitively tearing the necklace that had long since fused to Renalt's human flesh off of his body. It left a bloodless, yet bloody, mark of its absence behind.
A new instinct flared within. Optimus dared to reach out, grasping Renalt's body. Did this environment have to turn him inside-out and upside-down like that? It didn't feel necessary, but the Prime froze as a sharp little needling pierced through his mind. Who was he to question how things were done here? This wasn't a Cybertronian. The Prime let go and lowered his hand again.
“I need him,” Upon saying it for the third time, his voice was a cracking whisper. This wasn't the quiet, thundering surety of a Prime. This was the hesitant inexperience of a naïve data clerk.
Something that was instinct, or intuition, or outside of himself altogether responded. It needed no words, merely threaded the question in like he was questioning himself. After all, this instinct/intuition stated the obvious: He had his team. Others who had known him for so much longer. Others who knew him, perhaps so much better than this organic thing.
“Is it not enough that he gave me the means to come here in the first place?”
That instinct/intuition responded again as the Prime plucked the Quill from that crease in his arm. For a moment, he simply held the artefact, noting its feathery filament, its little decorative cogs and its forever sharpened end. Without a word, Optimus Prime sat back on his knees, straightened his back and simply opened himself up for his God to see. If Primus asked, Primus got the answer.
“As I lifted a burden from his shoulders, so he lifted one from mine... One I... did not realise I was weary of carrying alone.”
It was a burden he'd elected to carry the day Halogen had called him a Prime. The instinct/intuition wondered, he could have refused it. Couldn't he? Optimus shook his head – there wasn't any way of refusing that call. As unworthy of it as he had been, still was, he couldn't just walk away.
And, as much of a stranger as the human had been when they'd met... He could have simply walked away. Right?
“What should I have done then?”
His own memories flooded again through his processor, backing up the Prime's own question. If he hadn't reached out that night, what might have transpired differently? He thought of the fall of Omega One. True, the Prime hadn't been alone. Smokescreen had been with him, had pulled him from the wreckage. Prime wondered if that alone might have stopped him from death, from the Matrix finding a new bearer.
Would any of it have made a difference? Another flood of memories assailed the Prime then, of those nights talking with Renalt, of teaching one another. His mind flew through them all, up through the day Soundwave and Laserbeak had taken Renalt, to the code, to finding the boy's body on the ground.
They had all forgotten him in their victory acquiring the Quill.
The silent accusation tore through Optimus' mind.
“That is why I am here! I... He died for this,” Metallic fingers stroked the Quill's filaments. Placing it on the ground beside the youth's body, Optimus fell into a moment of silence. Yet in that silence, something else began to speak.
It did not speak in words. It spoke in the churning, electrified storm that engulfed the Well. It spoke in echoing whispers of song, of a shattered-glass mirage of memory. It spoke in the soundless fall of a Prime's tears. Optimus Prime held nothing back, could hold nothing back, from the eye of his God and he hoped he was heard. The stoic, unflappable Autobot leader's shell crumbled away completely. His back bent, his head bowed. Optics blazed as a hand picked up the Quill again. Prime wasn't entirely aware of doing that, wasn't entirely aware of his hand moving as if of its own accord. His chest remained splayed open, the Matrix visible to the eye of Primus. When the Prime finally did speak again, he half-talked to himself. Prayed. Chattered idly. Chanted. He did all and none of that as his hand manipulated the Quill.
His touch was perpetually gentle. Optimus hadn't the words to explain why, he just knew to place the Quill where he did. Its tip drew slowly, carefully across the silvery place decorating Renalt's chest, over where a human heart should have been.
“You died for me. Now live for me, as I will live for you.”
Instinct flared. Electricity crackled. Energy buzzed and the air thickened yet more than it had already. More questions came at him through that intuition/instinct. It was a voice that wasn't his own, yet somehow was. Echoes of a song flittered by his audial receptors and for a moment, the Prime listened. He wanted to hear Renalt sing again.
“I am... I do not think I can let him go. He has no spark.”
The Quill drew on in his hand. Optimus moved with the skill of a master archivist, one who knew the written word perhaps better than most. Cybertronian glyphs emerged in gold atop the silver, half-rearranging into what any human eye might call circuitry. The silvery substance had thickened, to a consistency akin to mortar. As such, the Prime's engravings remained unaltered. Nothing faded away or swirled out of focus.
“I accept that the damage is greater this time. Must I accept a casualty I'd sworn to never allow to happen?”
His hand slowly spiraled inward, engraving the Quill more deeply into the silver as he went. As the centre was reached, the Prime froze. He trembled. The Matrix shuddered. A new sound joined the silent cacophony around him. It whispered and it roared all at once. It sank into his being, somehow comforting and frightening at the same time.
“What has it to give?”
“I do not understand,” Prime almost shook as he heard the voice of Primus speak. Heard it. Felt it.
“It has no spark. It led you to give life?”
“Yes. He learned something, and gave me that knowledge. Which led me...”
“To the Third's artefact.”
“Indeed,” Optimus cared not that his optics shed tears still. This wasn't the time or place to wear the mantle of the stoic military leader. This wasn't the place for stiff formality.
“Create what is called for.”
“I do not understand,” Optimus dared to lift his head up; confusion colouring his inflection.
“Create what is called for. It asks a spark.”
“Is... Is that not Your domain alone, Creator?” His optics widened. He wasn't a God. Creating life itself wasn't something he could do, or perhaps, had the right to do.
“Do you forget who you are?” the words came back somehow in two tones at once: Stern admonishment and gentle warmth.
“I do not. And I do. I am... confused,” Optimus responded in the only way he could. Yes, in the darkest, most secret recesses of his memory, he knew exactly who and what he was. At the same time, he knew too, that he was just a data clerk from the Iacon Hall of Records who worked on the eighteenth floor, third console from the northwest corner.
Silence passed for about two minutes. Or was it a million years? Optimus Prime felt like he was just crawling out of the Well of All Sparks again, not even knowing he had a name yet. Simultaneously, he felt like he was ageing by the day, feeling his life rush by in a matter of seconds. The conflicting sensations churned and twisted upon one another until he sat suspended somewhere outside of himself. Logically, the Prime knew he had gone nowhere from his place. And logically, he knew that meant absolutely nothing at all down here.
“Life for life, light for light. When Sparked, you carried nothing like your counterparts. This is why you carried nothing. They bore. You did not. And yet, you bore the greatest weight of them all. Life for life. Light for light.”
“I remember his words... Primus?”
“Do you speak his words or did he speak yours?”
The Prime heard himself answer, yet didn't hear himself say anything at all. The thick atmosphere and its geyser-like fountains intensified in their energetic power. Electricity thundered, almost deafening the Prime as he sat there. A low, painfully deep rumble began somewhere below and above him. In a protective reflex, Optimus bent, as if to curl over the human body he'd brought here with him. His chassis clanged against the floor – he was still wide open.
Seconds later, the environment itself lifted him, dangling the Prime in midair. It brought the human body alongside him and both now hung suspended at the gateway of the sphere Optimus thought of as Primus' own face. The Quill fell from Optimus Prime's hand as he felt an odd, limp numbness engulf him.
“Speak, Optimus Prime. Speak.”
It was at once a commandment and a covenant. An order but not. A promise but not. The words tumbled and echoed as they danced with the roiling atmosphere. Down here, pure energy swirled, rushed and fumed as if this place was power itself. It took him a minute to get his own body to obey him, but Optimus Prime found a strange kind of determination. Cybertron was waking, healing from infection and the ravages of war, recovering because of information passed to him by a foreign organic. That same organic had almost walked into death when they had met – Optimus Prime had pulled him from that as surely as he had pulled the Prime from his own death.
A new sensation ran through him. His spark flared painfully, flickering and dancing so violently that it shook the Matrix. It almost sang with this new feeling. The Prime let out a low groan. Something metallic snapped as if a lightning bolt struck at his feet. The necklace crumbled to dust, yet as its dust fell, it seemed to vanish as if poured into somewhere the Prime couldn't rightly see. His groan escalated into a roaring howl – something briefly made him wonder if it was possible for sparks to shatter and reform themselves. Another moment passed and he managed to silently question how – he had yet to retrieve the All-Spark.
Then again, this was Primus.
“Optimus Prime. Speak.”
He had to speak. Through the storms, through this strange new pain, he had to speak. At first, the words came out in Cybertronian, in dialects that were and were not his own. It felt somehow soothing to speak his native tongue again but the Prime felt a pang of regret – Renalt had loved hearing him speak Cybertronian, even if the lad couldn't understand a whit of it.
That sensation came again and with it, something seemed to tear. Optimus Prime thought he felt something run down his front. Energon, blood, tears, he couldn't tell what. Cybertronian switched seamlessly to English.
“Creator... Primus. How? The All-Spark is not here.”
Optimus didn't get a response of words at that. Another wave of that searing, tearing pain rippled through the titan's massive body. Dozens of what felt like hands made of water and electricity turned him upside-down, inside-out and back again. The very metal of his chassis ached with it all.
“Speak.”
“As you once said your words to me, I say them to you. Blood for blood, life for life. Brother to brother, I am yours in life and death.”
Optimus Prime waited a beat. He spoke again.
“I will speak my own words to you. Spark to Spark. Steel to steel. In the name of the All-Spark... I am yours. And you are mine. I am your Prime!”
The words whispered and roared at once, tearing from his voice like a phoenix rising from its nest of burning cinnamon and myrrh. The Matrix shuddered with him in a convulsive, twisting snarl of light, metal, energon and something else that couldn't be given words.
When that sensation finally let him go, Optimus dropped almost unceremoniously to the floor. He lay in a heap, giving himself a moment to pull himself together. In a moment of morbid curiosity, the Prime wondered what his spark now looked like and in that moment, he peered at himself as he sat up. He caught the faintest glimpse of a spark that looked unchanged.
And then he saw the glittering bit of gold and crystal upon the floor.
For all the world, it looked like a minuscule, incomplete duplicate of the Matrix Prime himself bore. It lay with its 'handles' only partially complete and a hollow ring where, upon his own Matrix, that sphere of crystal stood. Another name whispered through the environment as Optimus carefully, reverently, picked this incomplete thing up in one hand. His other hand sought out Renalt; a finger brushing a lock of hair away from the youth's still face.
Gawain.
The name was unfamiliar to him. Peering upward to the face of Primus, the mech waited. He learned the ancient Earth lore in a matter of minutes as something in his processor churned – as Primus saw his memories, heard the stories Optimus and Renalt told one another.
“A warrior of ancient human lore... Why name him?”
It became clear in the next second. As Gawain's own strength had depended upon the Sun, a price like it was to be paid. A trust in a new Sun had to be forged.
“I am reluctant. I cannot expect him to carry such a burden. His shoulders are too small; he is too young!” His voice rose into a plea. Could he do that?
The image of Leonard Iscalia flashed by the Prime's optics. He remembered with an all-too-vivid clarity speaking with the long-dead soldier. He remembered the door to nowhere, and the choice Renalt had faced – the choice that could still be made. He could let Renalt go right here and now.
He could let the boy go, let him have his peace.
Or he could call Renalt back to him.
=s=
Far above, on Cybertron's surface, no one could hear one another speak. Yet they heard each other perfectly through what was at once the roaring cacophony of the erupting Well of All Sparks and a silence so complete it was akin to being inside one's own tomb. The ground warmed, then cooled, then warmed again. It seemed, for a moment, to grow transparent, like foggy glass so, for that moment, Autobot, Decepticon and human alike could see down into the Well. One of them, and few were sure which one, managed to voice the question.
“How do we have these? Don't you need that All-Spark thing?”
And in turn, someone else, a Cybertronian, answered back. Still, none of them could be sure who it was through the silence/noise of it all. It was an answer that came in few words, with the inflection of someone none of them knew.
EarthSpark. Of the place called Earth, born from Chaos yet not of Chaos, it brings you Spark.
“Are they...?” Another of them spoke, hesitantly to be sure.
A Spark is a Spark. Distant, yet still it burns.
As the planet roiled in these waves of power, three Autobots embraced their charges, protecting them through the churning motion. A kind of serenity washed over them – A Spark was a Spark. Sparks, even theirs, came from the same source.
=s=
Optimus Prime wept again. He could walk away. He could let Renalt go, let him reunite with Leonard. But the mech wondered, what would happen then? Some unsure part of himself cried against it. He had become close to the humans, but to this one in particular. Ratchet had warned him, had he not? Still, they all had taken the humans on in their own ways. Arcee and Jack. Bulkhead and Miko. Bumblebee and Rafael.
And now, Optimus Prime and Renalt.
It was sure to make the war that much harder to fight. And if one lost the other, survival wasn't a guarantee. Still, the Prime let the memories wash over him. It was worth it. He was worth it.
Metallic hands moved, cradling the youth's body against himself like he'd done so often before. The Prime didn't care that his chassis remained wide open – part of him wanted Renalt to feel the warmth of his spark unfettered by steel, and the sure, solid strength of the Matrix. He wanted his charge to feel it, to know it, to understand it. To come back to it. The mech's hands adjusted just so, only to let his chassis close up as Primus spoke to him once again.
“Share the burden. Learn. Understand. And carry.”
“His Leonard said something like that...” Optimus allowed himself to muse, allowed his thoughts to be heard.
The voice of Primus Himself reverted to Cybertronian, imparting something to the Prime that he understood as something to reveal at a later time. And something to reveal only in the most secret moments. This wasn't something for any except a mech and his charge. Optimus Prime bowed his head, speaking litanies to his God one last time. And as he held Renalt close, the Prime let himself sink for a moment into the embrace of Primus.
When the time came, there were no further words to speak. Instinct flared – Cybertron was waking, was healing. Patience was the key while other obstacles had to be overcome. Optimus Prime understood patience on an intimate scale. He could do that. In the meantime, he flew, rising up through the Well again and leaving the Quill behind.
It was an offering to his God. It was a relic he didn't wish to keep. It wasn't his, anyway.
=s=
On the surface, both bots and humans clung to each other, or tried to cling to the ground itself. Finally, the rolling ripples began to slow down. The Well gave a final great roar, sending up a plume of light, foggy mist and electricity. With it, came the Prime.
He landed not far from his group, nearly right in front of Ratchet. The others inched a little closer, but remained at a distance that allowed the Prime to place his cargo on the ground before himself.
“Optimus?” His name was a question on all of their voices.
“I must work carefully,” came the grave reply.
Optimus knelt low, almost appearing to curl in on the ground. His optics peered, as if investigating something incredibly tiny before he straightened back up. The Well of All Sparks faded into quietude; the planet gradually silencing from the chaotic, rippling storms. As the silence settled over the landscape, the Well released a final object from its depths. It rolled over the Well's edge, stopping as it hit the Prime's right knee. The thing was, to a Cybertronian, infuriatingly tiny. To a human, it was about two inches in diameter. A glass-like, almost crystalline shell glittered up at them all.
From within, a spark flickered.
It was a faint, struggling, feeble little thing shot with blue and gold and a tiny streak of red. It seemed to be surrounded by a grey haze within its crystalline containment. For a short while, even Optimus Prime didn't dare lay a hand on it. When that moment passed, metallic fingers took it up and held it as if the faintest twitch might shatter it into oblivion.
“Is it...?” Miko, Jack and Raf crept closer to the Prime. Behind them, June and Fowler stared at the thing resting in the Prime's hand. He didn't know how to answer the half-formed question.
“I will need a human hand,” Optimus eyed the humans present.
“I'll help, Prime,” Fowler spoke then. However, he was met with a narrowed optic.
“Not you. He fears you,” came the stern rebuttal. Fowler frowned, glancing at June.
“Agent Fowler...he's right. I'll do it.”
“Can we help?” June smiled as the children took a step closer.
“Your company will be needed later. You may not wish to witness what will come. It is likely to be...distressing. The road ahead is a long one. Are you prepared? Nurse Darby, I will hold him still,” Optimus didn't mince his words. Fact was, the process ahead wasn't going to be a storybook miracle.
No one moved. With a silent nod, June Darby donned a pair of gloves, unwilling as the medical professional she was, to endanger the tiny thing in Prime's hand. Optimus let out a slightly shaken ex-vent and bent down over his charge. As June held the crystalline sphere, Prime splayed a hand across Renalt's body in such a way that his fingers covered each shoulder but gave full access to the space between. June held her breath as her hands lowered, carefully aiming for that central point in the silver. A finger straightened, securing the sphere into the silver.
Her hands lifted away and moments later, the Prime himself placed the other, half-finished object over Renalt's chest. It fit in such a way that the half-Matrix lay socketed around and over the crystalline sphere. The whole contrivance appeared as though one could take off the half-Matrix whilst leaving the sphere in its place. From here, that peculiar churning warmth flared up again.
And the Prime's own Matrix answered back.
“Renault Carwyn Haakon, I am your Prime. Trust me as your Prime. Cantor Pax, I name you. I call you to me now!”
His hand adjusted. Fingers covered over the feeble little spark and in a single, almost ruthless move, the Prime pushed downward, stopping short of a full crushing blow. A great flame from within the Prime erupted forth and shot downward, meeting a smaller, dimmer counterpart as it rose from below.
“Ratchet, what's happening?!” Jack hollered against the rushing of the fire.
“He's igniting the spark! Sparks emerging too soon, or improperly from the Well require help to ignite. At one time, they were deemed 'defective' and merely destroyed immediately,” the medic kept his explanation down to the bare bones. They didn't need to know certain things. As it was, Ratchet suspected the spark itself. It had a familiar resonance...
No one saw Knock-Out shudder. Or Ultra Magnus wince. Bulkhead, Arcee and Bumblebee crouched behind their charges, almost looming protectively over them. They knew questions were coming. And they knew those questions had to be answered soon enough.
Beyond them, Megatron howled in a kind of answering agony – where a spark fought to ignite, his own Dark Energon shard screamed its death-wish through the warlord's body. Beyond the warlord, a flickering split-self stood back with a strange, hesitant look of hope on his silver face.
No one heard D-16 whisper encouragement.
=s=
He existed in a world of fire. For a while, Renalt thought he was back underground, consumed by the Matrix's burning flame, screaming to hold Optimus Prime to this life. It was another sound, another sensation that told him he wasn't there. That this was another fire altogether. A hand splayed atop him, crushing downward, then lifting, then coming down again.
A rush of air blew into his throat, then back out again. In, then out. It felt forced, as if the hand above him was doing what his own body should do. So he tried, and in that attempt, a newborn-like cry left his throat.
“Shh, hush, Renault. I have you. You can do this. Breathe with me,” Prime's rumble remained steady. How, he had no idea.
Beneath his hands, the human's eyes had opened wide, glittering with fear. He didn't understand much beyond the sound of the voice above him. Memories, identity, it all burned away in a wash of fire, blood and molten metal. His body trembled violently, quaking at the sensations running through him. Around him. Renalt held onto that voice as the sensations grew more intense. Something akin to strength roared through him, passing between himself and the Cybertronian above him.
“Trust me, Cantor Pax.”
“Who are you?” The words came, yet he didn't hear himself say them.
“I am Optimus Prime. Orion Pax. I am your Prime.”
“Who am I?”
“You are Renault Carwyn Haakon. You are Cantor Pax. You are my charge.”
“Am I lost?”
“Not any longer. I found you.”
They fell silent. Something beyond words came between them as the fires burned. Renalt felt a shivering flare; the spark that now sat within him answering, beginning to burn. He didn't know where the sound came from, but the sound of a new being's cry echoed in this place. Everything felt incredibly new, and ancient all at once, followed by another awareness.
A trust bloomed. It was the trust of something small and weak in the presence of something mighty. Yet that mighty thing held him without malice, without intent to harm. It enclosed around him, soothing away the fires. It exuded coolness and a warmth. It produced a whispering wind and the sound of a distant star exploding into life. Renalt felt something rush under his skin, as if he could feel the blood in his own veins run. It ran with something new, something that his body both loathed and desperately needed.
Darkness descended upon him.
=s=
Ancient protocols awoke within him. He'd forgotten entirely about them for centuries, thousands of years as the war had overtaken the planet. Ratchet wept as those protocols flared to life. The medic was at the Prime's side in an instant, optics watching critically as Optimus lifted his charge against himself. Barely a look passed between medic and Prime as thin tubes snaked forth, shimmering in a pale blue. From the Prime's chassis, one of those tiny tubes linked with the almost-Matrix he'd newly placed upon Renalt's body. A second one joined, connecting to the medic. Ratchet shuddered briefly as his own protocols adjusted, filtering for human blood rather than the energon they were used to.
“How much dilution will he need, Ratchet?” Optimus' tone was something new. It was both unsure as a new parent, and steady as it always was.
“Start him gently, Optimus. A little at a time,” One hand found the Prime's shoulder in an assuring grasp. Energon met blood by the drop as both flowed, reintroduced to the human in their care.
At their knees, June Darby shed a silent tear. She was a mother and in the strangest, most unusual way in her life, she watched a literal rebirth.
“Jack, get my bag.”
“Mom?” Jack glanced up at the two Cybertronians. He shivered and was again glad that he knew his place was with Arcee.
A moment later, the boy retrieved his mother's bag. She rifled through the little thing, mentally checking off everything she thought the bots might ask her for. However, she froze at the sound of a Cybertronian equivalent of a gasp. The Prime whispered down at the human in his grasp. Ratchet's feed line slowly disconnected, leaving only the Prime and Renalt attached to one another.
Renalt's eyes fluttered open.
“Hello, Renault,” Optimus' gentle whisper was the first thing Renalt heard in the waking world.