The concept of giving up was novel, bewildering, and, to be honest, a little bit hilarious. He'd never given up in his life. He'd fought a war, chased the Allspark to dozens of stars and worlds, seen his own brother killed twice, had destroyed an ancient, and taken the life of his own beloved mentor before dragging his tired, aching feet back to Cybertron, only to be locked in irons by the very people he'd given everything to save.
He'd expected to die. He'd been waiting to die, had wanted to, almost. Had wanted to die with Megatron, to lay down on that bridge in Chicago of Earth and shutter his optics and let it all go away. He didn't know why or how he'd come back to Cybertron. It was a blur. It may as well have never happened at all for as well as he remembered it, but it had happened nonetheless. It came back to him in bits and pieces, in between fleeting moments of consciousness-he remembered Sam, and saying good-bye, and the way Earth had looked as they floated away into the depths of space, how fast it had moved away from him as they slid into the last working space bridge in the Milky Way galaxy, a tiny blue jewel of hope in the far distance, thousands and thousands of stars away.
If he couldn't die on Earth, he'd have stayed there, even if it meant hiding for the rest of his existence, if it weren't for the one being waiting for him back home, someone he hadn't expected to be alive, let alone standing upright on her own two feet, and when her message had reached him-finally, finally-a response to the call he'd sent out after the destruction of Allspark, suddenly Primus himself couldn't have kept Optimus Prime from returning home.
And look what it had gotten him, gotten them both. Foolish. He should have anticipated this. He'd known from the moment Megatron took up arms that he'd never escape this war, that it would eat him alive.
War crimes. He supposed he was guilty, in a sense. Megatron was gone, and he was the only one left, the last remaining symbol of the civil war that had torn apart a planet that had once been beautiful and full of life. Optimus made himself look at the desolation as the heavily armored transport carried him to Cybertron's most impenetrable facility, watching mile after mile of gray, dusty landscape whip by. It made him miss Earth, with its vibrant colors and varied life forms and silly, unpredictable little bipeds with their wide smiles, their sense of hope. He missed that more than anything. Hope.
His cell was, for the most part, devoid of anything of interest. The walls were gunmetal gray, mirroring his protoform where his paint had been scratched away. It was thrice his height in length and almost exactly his height in width, and he could stand in it relatively comfortably. He had a berth that was remarkably uncomfortable, and a dilapidated desk stood in the corner, but there was nothing upon it. He was allowed none of his belongings, not that he particularly needed anything, but a holocube or datapad would have been nice. After several orns with only his own quiet musings for company, he'd give just about anything for a list of numbers to organize, or one of Perceptor's reports to mull through with total and utter bewilderment, or even one of Prowl's write ups of all the disciplinary discrepancies that had occurred lately (really just a repeated list of Sunny and Sides' names, with occasional smatterings of rec room brawls or training accidents, which weren't always strictly their fault). He wondered how things were going on Autobase, if it was still running and in what capacity. He missed his friends and his spark ached.
The inner door was quadruple reinforced with a Cybertronium alloy even stronger than that which had comprised his battle armor, same for the outer door, and he strongly suspected that a force field existed on the other side, probably guarded by three, four, maybe five large mechs. The inner door locked electronically; the second was manual. There was no window. A single light on the ceiling illuminated his sad living conditions, and he wondered objectively if prisoners on Cybertron had always been treated like this while he was unawares, distracted by the war. No one deserved this, save for maybe the most violent of killers. Then he remembered that he stood accused and committed for the deaths of millions, and forced his train of thought to derail.
He didn't know when he'd see Eilta again, if ever. Councilor Pyxon had specified limited visitation, but hadn't been clear as to what that meant. Would his sparkmate be allowed to see him? Would they be given time alone, without the watchful gaze of the security camera in the corner, to renew their bond, to enjoy the physical intimacy they'd been denied for so long? And Ironhide, Chromia, Ratchet, Ultra Magnus, Prowl, the friends and comrades he loved so dearly, would he ever hear their voices again, speak to them face-to-face, laugh or drink with them again?
As much as the absence of his loved ones ached, it was the anger that hurt the most. It came in tides, swelling up and consuming him, making him rage and shout and snarl at its worst. After ten vorns he destroyed the desk in the corner. After fifteen, he nearly punched a hole through the wall, and was tranquilized. He passed ten more in brooding, seething anger until he tried to rip the inner door from its hinges. More drugs, and security doubled. At its best, he was left feeling empty, exhausted but unable to rest. He rarely recharged, but instead faded in and out of awareness, feeling himself slip away for longer and longer stretches of time. He lost track of joors and orns, and eventually of passing cycles. He couldn't see the stars or the twin moons. When he faded out he lost all memory of being sedated or fed, and couldn't use the clockwork visitation of his captors to mark the passage of time.
Where was he? He'd once known the name of this facility, but it escaped him now. He called it Trypticon in his head. It was so easily likened to the worse prisoner camp on the Decepticon side, the site of death for thousands of his soldiers. At least he was being fed. Most of the Autobots who wound up on Trypticon were given just enough sustenance to stay alive, at least until their torturers were convinced they'd gleaned as much information from them as possible. Useless prisoners were gassed and burned and starved and shot and melted down for slag, their twisted, broken bodies sent to Shockwave for the creation of his abominations. If they were alive, they were sent for experimentation, killed after being inoculated with cybonic plague and rust infections, fed to scraplets to test new shields and repulsive measures.
Thoughts of Trypticon gave him nightmares. He woke up screaming, thrashing, fighting, and more than once was pinned down by several shouting guards and sedated. He hated being drugged more than anything. It didn't make the nightmares abate-if anything, it made them more vivid-but he could no longer pull himself back into consciousness to escape. He lay still, trapped in his own body, his own memories, and screamed silently until the poison in his lines burned off.
His shoulder ached where his arm had been severed from his body. Ratchet had reattached it successfully, and it had healed well, but the protoform around the joint had thickened, and became sore and stiff if he didn't move around. He tried to massage it, but his thick, blunt fingers couldn't reach beneath his armor. He did laps around his cell, circling his shoulder, grinding his denta against the ache and wishing desperately that he could have some relief from the constant, throbbing pain.
The reality of age set in the more he prowled around his cage. Every joint was stiffening, every old wound seemed inflamed. He heard and saw things that weren't there. Memories of battles made him jump and spin around, listening for gunfire in the silence. The voices of fallen comrades jolted him awake when he managed to settle into blessed recharge. He saw their bodies lined up along the wall, hands on heads, waiting for the Decepticon firing line. Sometimes they waited for joors, and he with them, hyperventilating, staring at the wall, jumping and shouting when the report of automatic gunfire erupted unexpectedly in the quiet. Sometimes the room warped, melted, shifted, and he'd find himself standing in the ruins of Praxus, at the horror of Tyger Pax, and he would curl up on the ground, hands around his head, and wait for the illusions to pass. He supposed this was what Will and Epps had gone through after the destruction of their base in Qatar, after they'd witnessed the death of all of their comrades. They had explained to him that they were in therapy, that a special doctor hired by the military was helping them to work through what they'd seen, to find some semblance of inner peace. Optimus tried again and again to recall the word they'd used to describe their condition. An acronym. It escaped him, and the waking nightmares continued.
