Transformers Prime belongs to Hasbro.
Jack knew this was it.
He would never see his mom again. Miko or Raf or the Autobots he grew to love just as much as his human friends. Hell, at this moment, he would give his last moments to say goodbye to Agent Fowler, if the man had survived.
His only solace was Arcee, and his heart broke to look up at her. The defeat, the loss, the knowledge of her failure to protect him was stricken over her face. Blasters were out and aimed, but even if she were at full-strength instead of her weakened state, she was outnumbered and outmatched by the twenty-some Decepticons who had tracked down their hiding place in the wooded cliffs.
But she tried. Oh God and Primus, did she try. She fought. She screamed. She dodged and kicked and fired and took fire. Never once did she break her position; never one did she let the enemy get near Jack. Until the last drop of Energon left her system, Arcee would protect Jack. His back was to the cliff face, unable to make a difference in this fight with Titans of metal. The only way to touch him was through her.
But she fell. She felled as many as she could, but Arcee joined them on the floor of the planet that was hers by adoption and Jack's by birth. She was still alive- -and for the moment, so was Jack.
He ran to her, sacrificing his parody of safety that was the cliff wall. His death was inevitable- -death was always inevitable, but now his was imminent- -and he could think of no other way to spend his last, his precious few moments of life left than with the alien who ended up as his reluctant- -his cherished- -guardian.
He glared up defiantly at Death as he placed his small, human hand into her larger Cybertronian palm. She struggled to push herself up from the ground, to place herself between the boy- - no, the man she had the privilege and honor of watching him become- -and the Decepticons once more. She lacked the strength to place herself in front of Jack; she ended up at his side. That was how human and Autobot would die together: side-by-side.
Or rather, it would have been how human and Autobot died, had they not been witness to the remaining thirteen Decepticons falling to pieces before their eyes. They stumbled forward, they were blown back, they were tossed aside by energy. Jack could not see where the blasts came from, Arcee had resumed her guardianship role and covered him when fragments of former Death threatened to strike him. But he knew.
He knew.
And just as suddenly as the firing began, it stopped, and though Arcee began to rise from her position, Jack stayed huddled on the ground, crying. They were alive, he was alive!
And slowly Arcee did rise, her body numb with fright and disbelief, yet wracked with pain in a cruel paradox. She almost fell again before she felt herself running, abandoning her human charge for the first time in a long time as struggled to catch the falling Prime.
As Jack rose, his eyes were clear but by no means was he even close to being composed. He could only watch as Arcee lowered him to the ground, could only stare while experiencing the same twisted mixture of unfeeling and feeling everything that his partner was suffering now. He was broken, he was crazed, he was missing an arm, he looked like he was dying but by all the stars in the universe, he was alive.
And Jack could not remember moving from his spot on the Earth, but he found himself at Arcee's side once more, and was thus privileged to hear the first words Optimus Prime had spoken since saying goodbye to the Autobots and humans he so loved:
"I found you."