How Can I Cope Without You Here?

Part Three - The Vision

A speech. They want him to write a speech. And present it. In front of the increasingly large population of Cybertron. At the ceremony for a statue of his conjunx, a mech he still cries for every night.

"Ratchet," Arcee says. "Come on. You were the closest person to Optimus. Nobody else knew him like you did."

"Fine," Ratchet shakes his head. "How many cycles do I have to write it?"

Arcee's faceplate visibly drops. "...until tonight."

"What?!" Ratchet stares in disbelief at her. "You managed to hold off on asking me until now?!"

She shifts. "We already had the date for the opening ceremony, and the speech wasn't added until hours ago!"

Ratchet puts his head in his hands.

"But," she says, "I'm sure you'll be okay, Ratch. You've always known what to say."

Then she pats his arm and walks out.

Ratchet gets to work.
__________

Everything Ratchet writes seems terrible. Either too cheesy or too boring, something that just sound right or a detail so intimate that Ratchet doesn't necessarily want to share.

A knock on his door. "Ratchet?" It's Knockout.

Ratchet grumbles, deleting another draft of the speech. "Come in."

The red mech enters his dark berthroom, buffer in hand.

"What's that for?" Ratchet asks, frowning. "I don't need buffed."

"I think you do. You need to look nice for the ceremony, don't you?"

"I suppose," Ratchet says, pushing aside the datapad, "the entire population will be there, after all."

Knockout switches on the lights, and peers at the ambulance's face. "The paint is deteriorating under your optics."

Shedding lubricant as much as I have tends to do that, he wants to say. But he bites his golossa.

"Well, I'll fix that up later. Let's just focus on buffing you up," Knockout says, sitting on a chair next to Ratchet. He grabs his arm, slowly pushing the medical tool over the graying paint. It leaves the paint looking pristine in its wake, and Ratchet finally realizes how much he's been neglecting his health with Optimus gone.

"See? I told you," the red car says.

Ratchet is silent for the rest of the cosmetic session.
________

Nightfall soon arrives, and Ratchet has no more than two and a half words written on his new draft. Arcee comes to pick him up, and even though he has nothing planned to say, he goes with her.

Many mechs already gather at the base of the statue. It is covered by a large sheet of cloth, but Ratchet knew Optimus well enough to know exactly what it will look like.

It is a statue that is planned to accompany thirteen others, the rest of the Primes, but this is the first one. It is only fit for the hero of Cybertron to have a statue made first.

It isn't long before a grand announcement is made, and the cloth surrounding the statue is slowly pulled down. It is made of smooth bronze that glimmers in the soft glow of the stars. The crowd cheers wildly at the marvel of art, and Ratchet's optics trace each inch of the Prime, holding his gaze on the stoic face. He feels the lubricant well up in his optics, and immediately shoves it down, looking away from the Prime and at the shiny marble floor beneath his pedes.

And to Ratchet's astonishment, he sees the one thing he's been longing for staring —smirking— right back at him. His conjunx's face shows on the pitch black marvel, face holding a rare smile aimed straight at him. Then the image fades, Ratchet's mouth still hanging open in astonishment.

His spark aches, his helm spins, and the medic runs several diagnostic scans on himself to make sure he is not falling into insanity from grief. But there is nothing wrong. Ratchet simply shakes his head, Optimus's image still on his processor.

"And now we would like to thank Optimus Prime's conjunx and bonded, Chief Medical Officer Ratchet."

Low murmurs of sympathy waft throughout the crowd as Ratchet makes his way to the small podium. He steps up onto it, and meets the gaze of each of his former comrades, trying to reassure himself. They nod him on.

"Many of you knew Optimus Prime: a brave warrior who would, and has, sacrificed everything for the fate of Cybertron. The Last of the Primes. Some knew him better than others..." he again glanced at the rest of Team Prime. "...but nobody had known Optimus as intimately as I had," he glances at Arcee, who'd said the same thing. "because I knew the mech beneath the worn armour and wise faceplates, the weaponry and the Matrix of Leadership. I knew Orion Pax. An archivist, happily working in the Iacon Hall of Records."

Ratchet knew it was selfish, but sometimes, on missions when Optimus had been captured, injured or otherwise, he wished it had stayed that way. Wished Orion had never become Optimus. Again, it was selfish. But Ratchet couldn't bring himself to regret such wishes.

"And, Primus, I never would've thought we would end up here. Optimus making the ultimate sacrifice for the future of Cybertron, something which never should've been endangered in the first place—" Ratchet didn't know where he was going with this. Words seemed to just spew from his vocalizer. "—but we must all take a moment to appreciate that. Optimus Prime was my everything," Ratchet said, beginning to choke up. His optics watered and his vocalizer fritzed. "And I can only hope that you have the decency to carry the flame of his spark into the generations he gave his life for."

Then he left the podium, and the crowd, hustling back to the apartment building and failing to hear the reaction of the crowd.

______________
Ratchet awakes with his circuits overworked and crackling. His entire body is taunt as he slowly remembers the disturbance.

Another attack on the accounts of post traumatic stress disorder. Him standing helpless as Optimus flies himself into the Well. Ratchet had been crying, he guesses, as he rubs his optics and they come back smeared with blue lubricant.

He stands up, old joints creaking and rumbling without a loving conjunx to work out their kinks and stress points. He walks over to the nightstand, where a forgotten Energon cube sits, abandoned by the mirror.

His optical gaze meets that of the mirror, and he sees how worn he truly is. Dimmed optics, disgustingly dim spark, and just the overall look of depression and grief he feels by simply staring at himself.

Optimus appears again! Ratchet knows he isn't hallucinating, or at least he doesn't think he is. This time the Prime looks sad, sympathetic, and seems as if he wants desperately to pull Ratchet into his arms and never let go.

Ratchet feels precisely the same way. He wants to say something, but the fluids drain from his mouth and his vocalizer is unresponsive.

Then, the image is gone, returning to either Ratchet's grieving mind or to the corpse lying in the Well of the Allsparks.