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Jazz never expected to make it home.
Nobody had, really. No matter the side, no matter what their leaders claimed, most Cybertronians had come to terms with the fact their home planet was nothing more than a wasteland, destroyed by their own endless battles. Some of them were enraged, others were at peace with the fact, but it was one not many denied. Talks centering Cybertron were about what to do with it ‘if’ it were to be revitalised, a lone hope in the sea of devastation they all found themselves surrounded by. Jazz had quiet moments with Optimus, some of the few they could steal since his friend became Prime, where they would discuss a future both of them knew, deep down, they could never achieve. It was something he talked about with others, but Jazz had known Optimus for so long, that their conversations always felt meaningful, and Jazz allowed himself to believe whatever he said, even if it was just for a moment. He’d dream, sometimes, of that future. Where bots laid down their weapons, and he could play music for everyone in peace, without the threat of warfare looming over his helm. Optimus would be there, too. Sometimes, he would revert to Orion, able to enjoy his work as an archivist once more, slipping into the pages of history, relieved to no longer be an icon of worship. Other times, he was still Optimus Prime, taking a knee to speak to a new generation of Cybertronians who ran around his pedes and asked for stories of his conquests during the war, and Optimus would correct them and instill into them that war was not something to be revelled in, though a gentle smile would remain on his faceplate throughout all of it.
Even when he was separated from Optimus and the rest of the autobots, left trying to find his way back to his friends in a galaxy that seemed determined to hide them away, Jazz always held onto that hope, because it was all that kept him going. In moments his teammates fell into pessimism, Jazz was always there to lift their spirits, keep them going, fighting another day. And even when he was all alone, Jazz would reassure himself. He had become an expert at ignoring the pit that formed in his spark whenever he repeated to himself that one day, he’d find his way home. He couldn’t afford to do anything but hope, no matter how hard life made it. He had to make it back to his closest friend. He had to see Optimus again
And, eventually, that hope led Jazz back to Cybertron. He hadn’t believed it at first, when he’d met up with some of his fellow cybertronians after so many years, a group of neutrals who were excitedly heading home, having received a broadcast that Cybertron had been revived. Jazz still struggled to comprehend it, even when he saw the faces of his old friends inviting everyone back, claiming the planet was alive again, and the war was over. The war was over. It had to be a trick. The decepticons had to have engineered some crude replicas of his fellow autobots, baiting their species into returning, so they could do… Primus only knows what. But Jazz hadn’t let his optimism run dry. He began to make his way back, anticipation blooming in his spark the more he heard about his planet’s revitalisation. Sure enough, he found Cybertron whole again, energon gushing from its crevices, enough to fuel the population for lifetimes.
But even seeing his friends after so long, watching as bots who would have gouged each other’s sparks out worked together to rebuild the desolate cities that spanned the planet, watching as life bloomed on Cybertron again for the first time in millions of years, Jazz knew he wasn’t really home.
Because Optimus was dead.
They used other terms, of course. “Ascended”, Some said. Others claimed he was still watching from the well of allsparks, keeping an optic on his home. Conspiracy theorists claimed he was being kept from the public’s view, as was Megatron, and both were plotting something dastardly behind the scenes. But Jazz wasn’t fond of those explanations, because there was no point in embellishing the cold hard truth. Optimus was dead. Optimus had died before Jazz ever got to see him again.
The cool night air bit into the softer metal of Jazz’s faceplate as he made his way down the streets of Iacon. It was quieter than it used to be, before the war. But that was to be expected, with how much of the population had been wiped out in its wake. It still felt alive, though. A few lights in buildings far above, the occasional frame moving in a window, sounds of muffled conversation, the occasional laugh from bots who still couldn’t quite believe their luck. He walked a steady pace instead of using his alt mode, in no particular hurry. It was the peace Jazz had always dreamed of. Even in the seedier parts of the city, like where Jazz found himself now, it was still far less dangerous than it had been, even before the war. Where violent enforcers once roamed the streets, punishing anyone they believed had stepped out of line, now bots were free to live, and be themselves. Just like those dreams he always used to have, devoid of one key aspect.
He’d been so excited to see Optimus again. After exchanging armor-crushing hugs with as many of his friends as he could get his servos on, Jazz had asked where the boss himself was, wanting to congratulate his friend on the victory at last. Their expressions had shifted, and all of a sudden, nobody’s optics could meet Jazz’s visor. There were muttered apologies and sympathies as Optimus's sacrifice was explained, and his last words were recited back to Jazz. He couldn’t keep being optimistic, then. He couldn't smile his way through everything anymore. Of course he couldn’t. Neither could anyone else. He’d knelt near the well of allsparks, where a statue of his closest friend had been constructed in his honor, at the very spot where Optimus had taken the leap.
Jazz mourned, for a while. His planet was alive, and there were news of new bots springing up from small hotspots all across the land, but it didn’t feel right, not without Optimus. It was all he had fought for, and he didn’t even get to see it in the end. But it felt wrong to grieve for so long. Selfish, even. Optimus had fought so hard to bring peace to their planet, and Jazz wasn’t even taking his time to appreciate it and help foster a new civilization, built on trust instead of corruption. It was rude of Jazz to wallow in his misery, instead of working to build up his friend’s dream. So he threw himself into any project he could, lending a servo to those who needed, or even just an audial to anyone who found themselves upset, being there for everybody, as much as he could. It was exhausting, but it was a relieving kind of exhaustion, he thought. Iit left him no time to think too much about Optimus. Because if he thought about Optimus for too long, he started to feel sad again, and Jazz hated it. He didn’t want to forget his Prime, his Pax, his oldest friend, and he wouldn’t. Jazz just didn’t have the time or the energy to grieve. That was fine, he told himself. He was fine.
His pace slowed as he approached a more well-lit area in the maze of alleyways, a few stools out front and a scrawled sign that indicated it was a bar. It was eerily quiet, no music echoing from inside, only the soft clinks of glasses and occasional shifting of chairs. Jazz knew who would be in there.
The main reason Jazz refused to grieve was because he refused to turn out like Ratchet.
Ratchet was the one constant in his life, who he’d known almost as long as he’d known Orion. The latter often jokingly referred to the two as his moral compass, with Jazz encouraging him to be optimistic while Ratchet couldn’t help but view everything through a negative lens. Jazz knew Ratchet cherished Optimus just as much as he did, even as the war drew on, and he became jaded, watching bot after bot go offline, no matter how hard he worked to save them. He was Jazz’s opposite, in many ways, but that didn’t mean Jazz had ever disliked him. Ratchet was one of the bots he valued most, whose opinion he cherished, even when it came off as harsh. He’d been looking forward to seeing him, too, when he reunited with Optimus.
But a part of Ratchet had died with his Prime. The bot Jazz saw when he returned was certainly his Ratchet physically, if a bit more aged and dented, the years and lack of energon having been unkind to his frame. He still grumbled at his teammates yet patched them up nonetheless, still picked fights with anybody who dared question him, still soothed those who were upset in his own, quiet way. But he wasn’t all there anymore. Where there had once been curiosity in his optics, which had given way to rage after eons of conflict, there was now nothing. No spark behind his words, his emotions. Like his pistons were firing on their own to pilot an empty husk. Jazz quickly learned just how hard Ratchet had taken the loss. It had taken half of the team to hold him back from throwing himself into the well after Optimus, and nobody had managed to calm his spark-tearing cries that continued until his voicebox gave out. And after all of it, something in Ratchet had just been lost. Everybody noticed it, but nobody knew quite what to say. They hadn’t known Optimus the way Ratchet had.
Apart from Jazz, of course. He could tell they looked to him to try to bring life back into his old friend, to bond over their memories of Optimus, or do something. Anything to bring their medic back. But Jazz didn’t know what to do, because he didn’t know Ratchet anymore either. The years apart had changed them both, but more glaringly, they no longer had their middle ground. Their Optimus. There had always been Jazz, Optimus, and Ratchet. Sometimes, just Jazz and Optimus, others, just Optimus and Ratchet. But never, in all of their millions of years, had it been just Ratchet and Jazz. Neither of them quite knew what to say to each other anymore.
Jazz still wanted to help, despite it all, but Ratchet was nothing if not stubborn. So when he’d gotten a comm earlier in the night from one of the new bars that had popped up in Iacon, requesting he pick up a Ratchet who had downed far too much high-grade and was far past the point of being able to get himself home, Jazz accepted. It wasn’t the first time an incident had occurred. Jazz knew Bumblebee was usually the one sent to collect Ratchet from the bar after his increasingly-frequent binges, but he along with any of the others who’d fought alongside Optimus in his final years were busy with a mission on earth. Perhaps they’d simply gone there to get a break from the depressing state of their Medic. It wasn’t the kindest thing to do, but Jazz couldn’t say he blamed them.
Especially not as he stepped into the bar and saw the sorry state Ratchet was in. Even in the low lighting that rendered his white-and-red plating various shades of blue, Jazz could tell his paint job was dented, scuffed and uncared for. Ratchet sat slumped at the bar, helm between his crossed arms, unmoving. Nobody else was in the establishment, spare the bartender behind the counter. Though Jazz wasn’t quite sure Swerve ever got any sort of license for such a job.
“Here to steal my best customer, eh?” He made a crude attempt at a joke, nodding to Jazz as he stepped up to the counter.
Some bots coped with humor, too, Jazz reminded himself. Even if Swerve’s joke was far from funny. “Hey, you called me. Nobody to blame but yourself,” Jazz replied, attempting a smile as he made his way further inside.
It was a small place, rough around the edges, though far from uninhabitable. Nobody had quite expected Swerve’s swift change of career paths upon his return to Cybertron, claiming he had always dreamed of being a bartender, moving into an abandoned nook, hidden away in Iacon. It was no Maccadam’s, but it was quiet (spare the bartender) and free from drama and the typical bar brawls that, even in a new age of peace, cybertronians still seemed to enjoy. Ratchet was the only one hanging around so late at night, though, the rest of the tables devoid of any quiet conversation between exhausted bots.
“Sorry about that. I tried Bumblebee, then Bulkhead, then I just went down the list of bots He mutters about.” Swerve shrugged, polishing a glass in his servos.
“They’re on a mission to earth,” Jazz explained. He’d found himself heading with them quite often, to see just what Optimus had loved about the planet. And, Primus, he understood exactly why his old friend had become so attached to it. The small humans he met, the world of culture they’d created, the liveliness that existed in everything they did- he hated himself for admitting it, but Jazz found he was more at peace on Earth than Cybertron, a lot of the time. He couldn’t be there all the time, though. There were bots on Cybertron who might need him. That was the reason Ratchet stayed behind, too, despite how much he seemed to care for the few earth children his team had picked up along the way.
“Oh, I’d love to go to earth. Ratchet’s always muttering about that too, but Ultra Magnus says I ‘don’t have the qualifications’ and he’s ‘doing me a favour by letting me run this place already’.” Jazz knew Swerve was rolling his optics behind his visor, because he often did the same when faced with Ultra Magnuses rules, too.
“I’ll see if I can get a word in on your behalf.” Jazz had no intention of following up on the promise. He didn’t dislike Swerve, but he didn’t know how much talking organic humans could take before their soft heads exploded, and wasn’t too keen on finding out. Jazz turned to watch Ratchet, unsure how to approach the mech before him. He was no stranger to carrying bots back after a crazy night out, having done it with Ratchet and Orion many times, all those years ago. But those nights were filled with laughter and youthful, foolish decisions, a far cry from the melancholy that seeped off Ratchet’s presence. His EM field was loose against his frame, nauseatingly dull and devoid of any emotion, as if Ratchet was half dead. Jazz wasn’t exactly sure how to approach him, or if Ratchet was even aware of his surroundings.
“It’s an awful thing, isn’t it?” Swerve filled the silence, as he often did. “Y’know, what… Happened. I mean, it was always kind of obvious he and Optimus had a thing, you know? Of course you do, you’re like, their best buddies. Or, just his best buddy, now.” Swerve realized what he’d said and gazed intently at the glass he was still polishing, clearing his intake. “But… You and Optimus had something similar, right? And look at you! All this war, and you’re still… you. You’re the Jazz we all know and love. And he’s…”
Jazz quirked an optical ridge as Swerve jerked his helm in Ratchet’s direction. “Don’t worry about him hearing. This many drinks in, he’s off in his own little world. I mean it’s not like I’d oppose another loyal customer. Ratchet’s practically keeping me in business! Another bot like him and I could open another… Heh.” He trailed off with an awkward laugh when Jazz didn’t crack a smile at him, his joke once again falling flat. Swerve's shoulder plates slumped as he gave up the act, still cleaning the same glass, staring at it very intently. “...This is the third time he’s been here this week, Jazz. He drinks more every time.”
“And you let him?” Jazz asked.
“It’s not that simple. Ratchet’s everybody’s pal, no matter what he says. He’s an aft, sure, but he’s earned that right. When he comes in here, and he’s hurting… I just want to help him feel better somehow. Even if that just means forgetting for a night. I even give him my non-watered-down stuff.”
Jazz watched Swerve carefully. It was clear he was trying to show how he cared for Ratchet in his own way. Everyone was. Even a few decepticons had tried to help the doctor escape the nothingness that had swallowed him whole. But nobody knew quite what to say to comfort him, not even Jazz. Without Optimus around, he barely recognized the bot slumped before him.
“...Thanks, Swerve.” Jazz eventually nodded, before reaching out, shaking Ratchet’s shoulder plating lightly to rouse him. The medic flinched, engines sputtering as he tried to rouse himself more. A low groan left Ratchet, the scent of high-grade thick in the air that left his vents. “A sure sign of going over your limits,” A younger Ratchet would’ve informed him. “If you drink enough high-grade to the point it seeps into mechanisms around the cooling fans, you’re in for a terrible morning when you come to your senses.” Ratchet had always been a hypocrite.
“C’mon, pal. Let’s get you home.” Jazz spoke softly as Ratchet whirled his helm around, trying his best not to meet his optics. They were too dull, lacking the fire that used to drive him on. And Jazz was certain they hadn’t had that green tint before they got split up. He was alive, at least, Jazz tried to reassure himself. He was alive, unlike-
“Optimus…”
Hearing Ratchet mumble that name, Jazz couldn’t stop himself from freezing for a second. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard anybody sound so distraught. Not even in the middle of their worst battles had Ratchet ever let himself go like this. He could have half of his own hardware spilling out a gash in his side and would still be barking orders across the medbay, working on everybody else before sparing a moment for himself. Jazz didn’t recognize the mech before him anymore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to help.
“Here, let me help you up.” Jazz knelt down, throwing one of Ratchet’s arms over his shoulder. Ratchet’s frame burned hot from the amount of engex cycling through his systems, causing Jazz’s optical ridges to furrow further. “Some fresh night air will do you good, doc.” He decided as he stood back up, dragging Ratchet up with him. The latter groaned, mumbling something incomprehensible as he dropped his latest cube of high-grade on the countertop, the few drops remaining splattering on the table. Swerve had started cleaning it before Jazz even got a chance to apologise on his friend’s behalf, desperate for anything that would take his attention away from the grim scene before him.
Ratchet leaned most of his weight on Jazz as they stumbled out the door. Jazz was far from weak, and had no trouble supporting the slightly larger bot, but there was something so crushing about having to help Ratchet along, watching how his old friend could barely put one pede in front of the other, shaking like dislodged panelling rattling against an engine. It wasn’t just the physical weight pulling him down, but the emotional toll, too. In the corner of his optics, Jazz could see Ratchet scrunching up his faceplate, fighting back the urge to cry. It was hard to watch, so Jazz opted to turn his helm away, focusing instead on keeping his own steps steady so as to not accidentally trip the bumbling doctor. Another emotion had bloomed in his spark, too, one Jazz was desperate to ignore. Pity and guilt were commonplace when Jazz hung around Ratchet for too long, but more recently, something else had begun to grow, and he hated it. Because he shouldn’t be mad at Ratchet. Everybody had their own ways of coping, Jazz reminded himself again. Swerve made bad jokes, Bumblebee threw himself into guiding his team in Optimus's honor, Jazz tried to help any bot he could, and Ratchet… stagnated.
Optimus would’ve hated to see it, Jazz found himself thinking as the heat radiating off Ratchet’s frame grew harder to bear. All he wanted to achieve was happiness for everyone. That was the entire reason behind his sacrifice in the first place. Naturally, not everybody would be pleased with his actions, but Ratchet? Prime’s best friend, alongside himself? If Optimus could see the state he had let himself fall into, the corpse-like routine he’d begun to follow… Jazz could understand if Ratchet was sad, hell, so was everyone. But behaving like this, against everything their best friend had stood for? It was just wrong. Primus forgive him, it was a mockery. Jazz felt sick, thinking these things about his oldest living friend, but Ratchet wasn’t Ratchet anymore. He was a stupefied copy, whatever had been left behind after Optimus had joined the well and seemingly taken a part of Ratchet’s spark with him. In a way, that made him madder. Ratchet was meant to be there with him. Mourn alongside him. Jazz had been so relieved to find him alive when he learned about Optimus, but the longer he spent in his company, the more it dawned on Jazz that he was just wasting away far slower than Optims was. He was a corpse with a beating spark. Jazz gritted his dentae, trying to free such awful thoughts from his processor. Before Cybertron had fallen, in earlier years of the war, Megatron had branded Jazz a traitor, a mole in his Prime’s ranks. An attempt to get under his plating, he had no doubt, but the comment always resurfaced in his processor whenever Jazz was upset. He had never once doubted his own loyalty. But how Ratchet was acting went against everything Optimus had fought for. How could a bot who loved Optimus as much as Jazz did betray him in such a way?
He felt Ratchet’s plating clench against his side, turning to see what had alerted him. His audials, droopy with overcharge not a moment before, pricked straight up, and a look of dreaded anticipation adorned his faceplate. Jazz recognized what the problem was before he even heard the telltale engine backfires signifying an imminent purge of fuel, and lowered Ratchet to the ground on the side of the tight alleyway they’d found themself in, keeping a servo on his back kibble, praying it was enough to keep him steady on his servos and knee guards. Each retch that left Ratchet’s intake as his engines stalled and misfired made Jazz’s spark feel a little tighter in his chassis. Jazz had always known him to be better at handling his high-grade than any bot he’d come across since, so watching him drink himself so sick just solidified the fact he’d lost the bot he once knew. But he rubbed Ratchet’s back nonetheless, trying his best to ease what he could.
Nothing left Ratchet’s intake but choked whines, and eventually he gave up, flopping on his side with a dry sob, unable to keep the tears from his optics anymore. Jazz didn’t know what to do as he lay there, occasionally letting out a few more painful-sounding sobs, as if it hurt even to let out his grief. Jazz had never been convinced on the existence of an afterlife, but he prayed wherever it was, Optimus wasn’t there to see what one of his oldest friends had turned into. It was becoming a struggle to keep the frustration off his faceplate, and Jazz hated himself for it.
After what felt like a lifetime of uncomfortable silence, Ratchet finally spoke up, finally saying more than just the singular word Jazz had heard from him that day.
“Why?” He rasped, dragging the upper part of his frame to rest on his forearms, looking up at Jazz. “Why did you have to go? Why did you leave us?”
The anger roiled in Jazz’s spark. He’d gone to all these lengths for Ratchet, over and over, trying his best to help as Ratchet rotted away. He’d collected Ratchet from the bar that night without so much as a complaint, he’d rubbed his back a moment ago, for frag’s sake- and all his friend had to say to him was ask why he left? Jazz had spent so long trying to find his way back to them, never giving up even when he was sure they were all dead, and Ratchet was asking him why, as if he ever had a choice. Jazz tried to be kind. Everyone mourned in different ways, he told himself for the hundredth time that night. But no matter how kind he tried to be, Jazz wouldn’t be a pushover.
“Are you kidding, man?! It wasn’t my fault I got separated.” He kept his tone low, not wanting any prying audials that may be nearby to overhear, but the frustration in his voice was unmistakable. “Do you have any idea how hard I tried to get home?”
“No, no,” Ratchet sobbed. Not in denial, as if Jazz had misunderstood the question. “He found his way back to us, eventually. But you- what did I do so wrong? Why were you so desperate to get away?”
Jazz finally let himself look Ratchet in the optic, only to find Ratchet wasn’t returning his gaze. Not really. He seemed to be looking through Jazz, not truly focused on anything. As if he was seeing something else in Jazz’s place. It began to dawn on him that maybe Ratchet wasn’t aware of who he was talking to.
“You didn’t even stick around to see him one final time. He was your best friend, and you… didn’t care. Did you ever care?”
Ratchet thought he was talking to Optimus. The realization hit Jazz as if the full weight of the Ark had landed on his chassis. He was so drunk, so distraught, that his processor couldn’t make sense of who stood in front of him anymore. Jazz wondered if he hadn’t simply been mumbling his Prime’s name in mourning when he spoke inside the bar, but was instead addressing the bot who he thought had come to collect him. Jazz squinted his optics, tears of his own threatening to escape them. This night couldn’t get any worse. “Ratchet…” He began, attempting to correct his lost friend.
“Don’t you ‘Ratchet’ me.” He spat, a sudden venom in his words. “All those years, all those times you promised me you’d make it through, that we’d get to the end of all of this, see life come to our planet again. You told me you loved me, that you love him, and everyone. And I was a fool to believe you. You killed yourself over and over again, but still found your way home to us. Promising you’d change.” Ratchet drew in a ragged vent before continuing. “And the moment we had done it. The moment Cybertron was alive again, and the war was over, you… you… Was it all some big joke?!”
Ratchet keeled over again, his rage seeming to dislodge something in his system as he heaved again, finally bringing up some of the energon in his systems. Jazz returned to rubbing his back before he even realized what he was doing, noting with dread that there was certainly a green tinge to the regurgitated energon, one that shouldn’t be in anything their species consumed. He would bring it up to Ratchet later, when he wasn’t so sick.
“There we go. That oughta make you feel better.” Jazz soothed, a cool servo rubbing circles on Ratchet’s back. He had forgotten the anger in his voice from moments ago. The rage still bubbled inside him, but something had shifted that he didn’t have time to unpack.
Ratchet fell to one side again, thankfully avoiding the fresh puddle of energon that hadn’t quite reached his fuel lines. Despite Jazz’s words, he looked sicker than ever. His faceplate, once set with a square jaw, was hollow and shrunken, the wrinkles across the metal more prominent than ever before. Ratchet’s engine backfired as he tried to compose himself, sounding almost like the hiccups Jazz had seen the humans break into whenever they laughed too hard, or ate too fast.
“Did you hate me that much, Optimus?” He eventually spoke again, voice no longer filled with rage. It was small, quiet, like nothing Jazz had heard from Ratchet before. “There had to be ways to save you. If we had taken the time- if you had held on just that little bit longer- we could’ve worked something out. Were you that desperate to be rid of us? Of me?”
Jazz listened, something shifting even further inside of him. These things he was saying about Optimus were horrible. But Jazz knew they weren’t wrong. The part of him that still wanted to argue in his Prime’s favor stayed silent as something else urged him to listen to all of his friend’s woes.
“You left me. I could forgive you for that. It wasn’t- It wasn’t anything I’m not used to.” Ratchet hiccuped. “But you left all of them, too. And you left Jazz.”
Jazz's audials rang. He had to have misheard Ratchet. But the medic continued on.
“Do you know how long he waited to see you? How much he went through to get back to us? Do you know how it felt to tell him you didn’t wait for him? That you were gone? He loved you, Optimus. He loved you like I did. And the worst part- the worst part is I can’t help him.”
Jazz didn’t recall crying, but tears dripped from behind his visor nonetheless.
“He’s trying so hard to act like it’s all okay. In your honor. He’s pushing through, day after day, helping everyone he can. But you and I- we know him. We know how he gets when something’s troubling him, you know? It’s deeper than that. It’s something else entirely. And I can’t do anything. I can’t fill the hole you left. He’s going to work his spark offline, and then I’ll lose him too. And it’s all your fault. Were you truly that tired of us?”
Jazz just watched, his processor spinning. This entire time- Ratchet hadn’t been wallowing in self pity. He hadn’t just been mourning Optimus. He’d been mourning Jazz while he was still alive, exactly the same way Jazz was with him.
He’s going to work his spark offline. Jazz hadn’t remembered when his frame had grown so fatigued, but it crashed over him all at once with Ratchet’s words. He was exhausted, worked down to the pistons. He couldn’t even remember the last time he recharged, which was something Jazz knew he would scold anyone else for admitting. He huffed. He was just as much of a sad, lonely hypocrite as Ratchet.
And it was all Optimus Prime’s fault.
The realization dawned on him, and Jazz’s muddled processor cleared almost immediately, that one thought sticking with him. His grief had spent so long unaddressed, folding in on itself until it formed a black hole in his chassis, only now free to dance through the rest of his frame, and it was Optimus's fault. The sad remnants of his oldest friend curled in on himself that lay before Jazz, that was Optimus’s fault. The tension that had settled in the joints and the sparks of everyone Jazz knew. It was all Optimus’s fault.
Ratchet had never been the selfish one, Jazz realized as he, too, lurched forward- not to purge, rather too overcome with emotion to keep himself upright,though a servo covered his intake all the same. The rage boiled over in his chassis and flooded his fuel lines, muddling with the grief and the fear and the exhaustion, but Jazz realized it had never been directed at Ratchet.
He was mad at Optimus. He had always been mad at Optimus, but he was too deep in his own denial to see it. Ratchet was right- he had left them all the minute he got the opportunity. Optimus Prime, the strongest bot Jazz had ever known, had taken such a cowardly way out, and left everyone else to pick up the pieces in his wake. Jazz had loved Optimus more than anything, and Optimus hadn’t even thought to say goodbye to him. He’d left Jazz just as broken as Ratchet. Everybody mourned in different ways, he’d kept telling himself, but he’d forgotten one crucial detail. Right then, they were all mourning the same bot. And that wasn’t a task one could get through alone.
“Ratchet…” Jazz managed to whisper, his servos wandering over the crumpled frame of his oldest friend. He’d been such an idiot, Jazz scolded himself, blaming poor Ratchet as the true target of his anger had slipped into the well with nothing more than one last inspirational speech. “Ratchet, Ratchet…” He scooped up the last thing he could love, meeting Ratchet’s optics. He still seemed to stare straight through Jazz, but that didn’t change the fact that, no matter how little of him remained, Ratchet was alive. And Jazz needed him, just like he needed Jazz. He was alive, and he was there, and Jazz couldn’t believe just how horrible he’d been. He rocked back and forth slowly, Ratchet held in his arms. He was still so cold from the night air, the chill of his faceplate pressing against the feverish warmth of Ratchet’s helm, more and more tears falling from behind his visor as he finally let the grief he had tried so hard to bury wash over him in waves, each worse than the last. All he could do was hold his Ratchet tight, and while he still seemed unaware of Jazz’s presence, he also continued to cry, the two’s tears intermingling.
They would never see Optimus again. Never get flashed those soft smiles where ghosts of Orion peeked through, never spend late nights with cubes of energon in their servos, discussing their pasts together. Jazz would never get to fight alongside him again, knowing he’d make it home, so long as he had Optimus at his side and Ratchet ready to fix them both up. He never even got to say goodbye. He’d been just a little bit too late, and Optimus had been just a little bit too selfish to hang on a little bit longer. They could’ve found another way. They could’ve had Optimus with them to rebuild the planet. But he just…
Megatron had been right all along. No loyal bot would ever resent their leader so deeply for doing what was, at the end of the day, the right thing. Megatron had simply decided he was a traitor a few million years too early. Maybe he was laughing to himself, wherever he’d hidden away.
But… That would label Ratchet a traitor too, he thought as the medic’s frame trembled against his own. And no matter how much of himself Ratchet lost, Jazz was certain he would never even start to think of doubting Optimus’s word. He didn’t know anymore. The temporary clarity in his processor had clouded over with more confusion and despair than he’d ever felt before, and Jazz found himself not faring much better than his dangerously overcharged friend.
He couldn’t lose Ratchet as well. Jazz buried his helm in the collar of Ratchet’s neck, where the cabling met the plating of his chassis. His burning hot armor no longer felt irritating, instead bringing comfort to Jazz’s freezing cold frame. He couldn’t keep running from his grief if he wanted to keep Ratchet alive, too, even if the pain of that grief was worse than any wound he’d experienced in the line of battle. Jazz didn’t know who he’d have left if he didn’t have Ratchet. His last piece of Optimus. They were the only ones left who understood each other.
It took a while for Jazz to pull himself together, even if only slightly. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he took Ratchet’s faceplate in his servos, wiping away the remnants of high-grade and whatever else he’d purged up with an opposable digit. Despite his outburst at ‘Optimus’ before, Ratchet still closed his optics and leaned into the touch, which made Jazz’s already tattered spark tear some more. He had no clue how he was going to get Ratchet- or himself- home. He doubted Ratchet could drive in his current state, let alone transform, and the mechanics of slinging such a despaired, overcharged bot atop his own alt mode raised more problems than it did answers. But Jazz didn’t feel like moving much, either. Not right then.
Instead, he shakily produced a small cube of energon from his subspace. Nothing particularly fancy, just something to hopefully stop Ratchet from trembling so much. “Drink this up. It’ll make you feel a bit better, hopefully. Might make your inevitable hangover a bit more bearable, too.” Jazz’s voice was hoarse, but he still managed to find a bit of humor in his own words, huffing in amusement as he held the cube to Ratchet’s lips, not trusting his medic’s unsteady servos.
Ratchet took small sips, not wanting to guzzle it down simply to purge it back up again. His vents hummed as he sighed, relaxing into Jazz’s arms some more. “Even when I’m angry with you, you always turn it back around into fretting over me, don’t you?” He croaked, voicebox still staticy.
He still thought he was talking to Optimus, Jazz realized. Yet at the same time, he wasn’t about to break the illusion. Primus knew he was desperate for one last conversation with Optimus, too. He’d quite like to give his old friend a good punch in the faceplate. It wouldn’t last for long, anyway. When Ratchet sobered up, Jazz could tell him what transpired, and apologise for the way he’d been acting, and tell Ratchet just how much he still cared about him, even without Optimus there to bring them together. But right then, in the dark of the alleyway, with his oldest and, despite it all, closest friend cradled in his arms, Jazz reasoned it wouldn’t hurt to pretend for a little longer.
So that’s what he did. Ratchet’s sobs slowly filtered out as Jazz rocked him in his arms, but neither of them felt much better about anything, because there was no way they could bring Optimus back. To yell at him, firstly, and scold him, and perhaps give him a few well deserved knocks for leaving them on their own without him, but no matter how much anger bubbled beneath Jazz’s plating, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stay mad at his Prime forever. He wanted Optimus to be able laugh with them without the weight of war heavy on their backs, to walk through Cybertron and teach the youth about their past with that sparkle he always got in his optics when he was passionate about something, and just have him be there with Jazz and Ratchet to watch as their planet slowly came back to life after so many years, peace cementing itself more and more with each passing day.
Optimus had made the sacrifice, the inspirational speech, and had been immortalized in the optics of all those who knew him and the generations to come. But it was Ratchet who saved their planet. Ratchet had deciphered the synthetic energon formula, Ratchet had gotten his servos on the pieces of it that Shockwave was missing, Ratchet had alerted the rest of the team of the location of the Nemesis after fighting off a predacon and evading Megatron’s recapture, all on his own. Jazz hadn’t heard it from Ratchet himself, of course. The others had told him just how crucial his friend’s role had been in the revival of the planet, after such a dream had been snatched from him over and over. Ratchet never mentioned it. Such was life, Jazz’s engine rumbled defeatedly, that the driving force behind everyone getting the ability to return home was left to rot, burying himself one bottle of high-grade at a time. He held Ratchet closer, letting the latter rest his helm in the crook of Jazz’s neck cables with a shaky sigh as Jazz stroked over his dented, neglected plating. Optimus was able to escape it all by diving back into the well from whence he came, statues and speeches left in his honor, while Cybertron’s true savior rotted away in an unlicensed bar, drinking himself stupid night after night.
He wanted to make it stop. Jazz was sure he could find a way, eventually. Maybe even sharing a few drinks over their misery would help keep Ratchet from slowly killing himself, and the conversation would keep Jazz from doing the same. They’d both survived so much worse, blown to smithereens time and time again only to come back with just as much strength to keep on fighting. Perhaps they should’ve been expecting to crash so hard as soon as the need to fight ceased, and they were left with nothing but eons of grief, having lost the one bot they could share it with.
But they had each other, now. Jazz was certain a fraction of who Ratchet used to be was hidden away somewhere, and he wanted nothing more than to see him again. The old friend who’d give him a rap on the back of his helm with his knuckles when Jazz said something a bit too cheeky, or stifled a laugh when Jazz made a comment about whomever had made the mistake of getting on their bad side that week, or examine Jazz after an injury with a gentleness that betrayed his disappointed grumbles, those old servos patching him up time and time again. He thought now of all the interactions they’d had, the quiet moments they’d shared without Optimus that he’d forgotten about in his grief. There had to be something he could do to make things okay again, but Jazz wasn’t sure what it was.
“What do we do now?” Ratchet spoke again, frame jolting as he hiccuped again. “What do you expect us to do without you? Where do we… Where do we go from here?”
Jazz had often wished he could know what Optimus thought, inherit even a fraction of his ability to lead, have even a glance at the wisdom the primes placed in his processor. Even after so many years, his old friend could still surprise him sometimes. But Jazz didn’t need to know his Prime’s every thought to determine what to say to the broken husk of the bot that lay in his arms, too feverish from the high-grade he drowned himself in to determine living from dead. He could speak from the spark, and know Optimus would say the exact same thing.
“I don’t know.”