Flashback – From My Right Knee Down – Closed

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“I can probably walk the rest of the way,” said Optimus.

He was, of course, soundly ignored. He supposed he was just going to have to deal with it and resigned himself to tightening his hold around Elita’s shoulders and letting the One take the majority of his weight as they made their way painstakingly toward medical. The casualties had been minimal and, to Optimus’ extreme relief, they had lost no one in the skirmish against Starscream and his small detachment of Seekers, the majority of whom had not, apparently, been expecting so savage a resistance as the Order of Solus. They certainly had not expected Optimus Prime and a small commando unit to rush in and fill the air with anti-aircraft ordinance.

So there would not be yet another flood of injured to Ratchet’s already stock-full medical ward.

Just, apparently, the one.

“I think,” ventured Optimus, again, after about another ten technometers of slow walking, “that you should tell Ratchet what happened. I am not certain myself. I think you had a better vantage point.” He knew, of course, very well what has actually happened. Namely, he’d blocked a mid-grade artillery shell with… well, with his knee mostly. He was a heavy build, so he’d known it wouldn’t kill him and to his credit, he hadn’t lost the leg this time. But it was pretty well mangled. Ratchet would take issue either way. “There was dust,” he added convincingly. “In my optics.”

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Elita One had absolutely no intention of letting go of Optimus until he was safely resting on his aft. She could feel how much of his weight he was reluctantly placing on her, though her servos were up to the task, and knew without a doubt that the instant she let go, he would take one step and fall flat on his face, which would be bad for morale.

"I think," she answered in a much firmer tone, "neither of us are going to medbay just yet. He will only send you to the washracks to get that-" 'That' being the mangled ruin of his leg - "cleaned out before he can do anything with it. We might as well save him the trouble."

Elita was not, to be clear, suggesting this as a way of avoiding the Autobots' rather infamous chief medical officer. She would have been insulted at the very suggestion.

"Nearest washrack," she said, nudging the Prime gently. "Which way?"

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“Take the right corridor,” volunteered Optimus, in no hurry to argue with Elita One’s plan of evading an overworked, under-staffed, highly incendiary Ratchet. Most of the nerve directories in his lower leg were slagged and locked down, which meant he could put weight on the busted limb without feeling it over much, but every few minutes or so, a spark would gutter somewhere in the corroded, shrapnel-ridden hydraulic lines and a crippling jolt of pain would lance up from the ruined structure. He gritted his dentals behind the still closed sheet of his battle mask, face clenching briefly in pain as electricity sparked in his leg again, tensing his frame.

Elita seemed to have an idea where she was going after that, taking the right, then another right to the washracks, passing a handful of mechanoids all of whom looked askance at Optimus who shook his head ‘no, I’m fine, carry on’ because he knew each and every mech in the base was pressed hard for time. The Prime knew he could rely on his first lieutenant to keep things together while he got his leg back together,but part of him cursed, silently and repeatedly that he hadn’t shot down the Seeker who’d taken that last shot before he’d resorted to using his own body as a shield.

“I suppose I might get some flak,” said Optimus, as they entered the empty racks, “for being the only one badly injured in that fight.”

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Elita smiled slightly at Optimus's words, tilting her head down so he couldn't see it. "Perhaps," she allowed, "but not from me. Here, sit for a moment." She helped Optimus lower himself down onto a nearby bench, her own hydraulics sighing in relief as Optimus's weight left her. She straightened, stretched her weary servos a moment, and turned to get the hose off its hook on the wall. "One semi-serious injury," she continued, "and no casualties, for a battle like that, is quite impressive from a statistical standpoint. The refugees got away cleanly, and your Autobots and my Order sisters have another victory to celebrate - not to mention one less thing to worry about." She switched the hose's dial to the type of cleanser that could be sprayed through wounded areas without damaging them further and returned to Optimus, sitting down beside him. "I wish all our battles went so well."

"Now, hold still. This may sting a bit." And with that, Elita One triggered the cleanser and sprayed it directly into the exposed knee joint.

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“Ow!” blurted Optimus, spoiling several hours’ worth of Primely post-battle stoicism and dignity in a single go.

Then, realizing it was too late to go back, he offered the One a rather petulant ‘was-that-really-necessary’ look, which only got him the hose to a higher setting. Down one leg, and short of shooting her, Optimus was not in a position to get the upper hand over Elita One and resigned himself to twitching uncomfortably under her ministrations. The pain, after the initial surprise attack, was not in actually so terrible. Optimus sat still while Elita hosed the worst of the dirt and congealed coolants from the wound, picking occasionally at shrapnel in the mess. It was always morbidly fascinating to watch chemical cleaners sluicing through the hole-riddled ruin of exo-plating, rinsing grit from the proto-metal shine of endo-structures and bare nerve directories.

“Ratchet would be proud,” said Optimus though his battle mask, wiping a streak of dirt from his optics.

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Elita angled the head to spray off a line of ashy grime from the side of his joint well, leaving it clean and bright if stripped of any protective coating of lubricant. "I certainly hope so," she answered lightly. "I'm doing this for his benefit."

Truthfully, she felt sympathy for the mech - she had received enough structural injuries that needed sprayouts that she knew exactly how much it hurt. But Optimus would have been embarrassed by coddling. Embarrassed and probably bewildered, in the 'who are you and what have you done with Elita' sense.

"There," she declared, shutting off the spray. "I think that's good enough. Let it drain out for a bit."

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Optimus sat back, engines cycling down after the brief and reactive rev against the sudden pain. This was not the first time – nor, he suspected, would it be the last – that he lost limbs and parts of limbs to a fight. However, it wasn’t often he got himself part-scrapped while Elita was around to see it. It was only mildly appalling in that way it was always appalling to fail before a mentor in something that mentor had taught you. Optimus might have found it in him to be more embarrassed if centuries of war hadn’t taught him that pratfalls were a commonly occurring staple of all war efforts on both sides.

“The blockade is getting worse,” he said finally, retracting his battle mask. “I fear Megatron’s objective against the Autobots and all perceived allies is becoming more…” murderous? Was that the word? It seemed there was something very different from what a solider did on the battle field against another badge-wearing combatant… and what was happening now. “It’s becoming more brutal. And this from a mech giving no quarter.”

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Elita leaned back against the wall, willing herself not to fiddle with the hose in her hands. "I've noticed," she admitted.

Six attacks on civilian outposts. A building full of dead sparklings. Crushing a supply line bringing fuel and medical supplies to Neutrals. And now this. Elita shook her head slowly, wondering when her helm started feeling so Primus-blast heavy.

"There was no strategy behind this. Nothing he could have gained. It was just - sheer -" She struggled for a word to describe it. "Pettiness. Murderous pettiness." Even that didn't seem to cover or explain what they faced. "I truly don't understand what drives him anymore. The Order hasn't been able to negotiate with him. He spends his own troops' lives attacking targets that have nothing he wants and are no threat to him." She glanced at Optimus, knowing her normal coolness was cracking, in front of her once-student, no less.

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“He does not… control his troops like he used to,” said Optimus quietly. “It’s my belief that simply ‘winning’ is no longer his goal.”

The Prime didn’t move for a moment, optics glowing blue in the slightly dim lights of the wash-racks, their power generators being tamped down again to conserve energy in case of another Decepticon attack. Energy. It was the problem now. Even using alternate fuels and substitute power sources they were always low and the longer the war dragged the more and more that was becoming the crux of everything: energon. The lack of it. Whose fault it was. Where they could get more. Who they could kill to keep what remained. And when he heard that incremental hair-line crack in the calm that was everything that made Elita One Elita One… it was as though some of the darkness settling around the laser core of his spark closed tighter. Like a fist, because this was Elita One and she didn’t scare easy.

He wasn’t so foolish as to think she didn’t scare, but when she did…dread was a knife through the neural circuitry. She was looking at him like she was asking a question and he couldn’t answer it.

“The war is changing. I fear what it might become. We are one inter-planetary incident from being black-listed by the inter-galactic council and I do not rightly blame them.”

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Elita broke optic contact with Optimus, lowered her helm into her hand. "The whole world's gone insane, Optimus," she muttered, digging her fingers into the metal.

Pull yourself together, One.

The One was supposed to be the center of the Order, their strength and foundation. If Elita fell apart, the Order would fall apart, and then what? What of the people of Cybertron? What of Optimus Prime?

It is when the night is darkest... when the universe is at its most insane... that is when we need to be strongest.

Yet even the strongest needed a moment to gather themselves. It was just embarrassing to have one of those moments in front of Optimus. "Well, if the inter-galactic council makes that decision, so be it," she said, blowing out a weary gust of a sigh through her vents. "They haven't stirred to intervene thus far. We've always known we were on our own in this war of ours."

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Optimus stood up. It hurt and Elita probably was going to disapprove but he got up anyway and moved the three steps it took to get from where he sat to where she stood. Pain was familiar to him. He knew it so well, the heat and burn and sudden sickening jag from his damaged knee didn’t disturb him.

He didn’t often look to the Matrix.

This would have surprised some, who might have otherwise assumed that Optimus was guided perpetually by the intervening hand of Primus Himself, but for Optimus prayer had become more complicated – not less so – after he woke up with a weight in his chest like a knot of dark matter. But this time – because he needed it and because Elita One had been there when they walked the veins of the planet to the Core of Cybertron – he let what was usually a shadow in his spark frequencies saturate the airwaves around him, filling the room for that minute alone.

“This is our war,” he said, so quietly it was almost inaudible. “As our history has brought us to it, here is attrition. Megatron means to make hell of this in the hopes that decent spirits will break in the face of atrocity.” Optimus held Elita’s gaze, like binary stars hold orbit, he held her eyes. “He underestimates the quality of decency,” he said, “underestimates our temper and tang. I mean to surprise him, Elita One. I mean for our people to survive and come hell, come terror, come another million years… I do not intend to surrender.”

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Elita did disapprove. She was even opening her mouth to say so. But then the Prime accessed the Matrix, and Elita felt it like a jolt of static in the air, and she forgot what she was going to say.

She listened, as quietly and intently as she would have to Solus Prime herself, and as he said exactly the right thing to give her the strength to keep fighting, she reflected that it was times like this when she thought the Matrix truly had chosen well after all.

She smiled, reached out and squeezed his arms gently. "Then," she said determinedly, "neither do I, my friend."

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And that’s when Optimus’ leg gave out.

It was possible he might have almost – kind of – sworn just a little bit, grabbing Elita’s arm as his right knee abruptly buckledlike it had been threatening to for the last two kilks. The pain, again, was rather incredible and from the feel of it there was damage that was into the nerve directories because what should have been firewalled numb was throbbing molten. Despite that his first thought was Really? I couldn’t just have that moment? That was a good moment. Then resigned himself, again, to the fact that Elita One would always be there when things were at their worst.

It was more telling that he did not really mind that so much. “Ow,” he said again, this time more exasperated than anything.

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It had been a truly inspiring moment, right up until the Last Prime fell flat on his face.

Elita gasped in shock as Optimus's weight fell on her arm, dragging her down to the floor with him. She landed hard enough to make her knees smart, and just to add the perfect coup de grace to the whole undignified mess they knocked helms.

"Ow! Slag on a silicon wafer." Elita leaned back, one hand to her helm to feel for a dent. "...Don't tell anyone I said that."

She lifted her optics to Optimus's face, making sure he hadn't knocked himself silly or put out an optic on her crest - and despite herself, she started to laugh.

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Optimus stared at her, for a split second with this kind of bewildered look on his face. He laughed before he realized he’d done it, once, before some reflex stopped him. He tried to recall the last time there had been any call for laughter, any smile beyond the grim grit of a grin the face of another onslaught. Those moments when he would wonder Could this be it? The last battle? Do I die here?/ The humor of dead mechs before the barricade broke. This wasn’t that, for once, not even the relief of those who narrowly survived what had been, for the hundredth time, certain death.

No it was actually just funny.

“I think it best,” said Optimus, rolling onto his back and rubbing the side of his smarting head, “that we just refrain from telling anyone about anything that just happened and maintain that we’re still in charge of things.” It is a very narrowly maintained illusion after all.

Certainly anyone who came through that door into the racks just now would have never believed the pair of mechanoids rubbing their helms and sprawled on the floor were at the lead of two armies respectively.