Vigil
At some point, he didn't do it for hope. Time passed, and hope faded. The eastern sky's stars disappeared into the rising sun, and the world turned once more.
He watched the sky change, days blurring into one another as the sun streaked by overhead. Predacon attacks sparked among the dark and light differences, but by and large the time went by unimpeded. When he looked back, he had nothing to measure it with. There was only the waiting, and the hope leeching away into dull duty. Always, always he watched the sky. Always, always, he waited for a bit of light out of place, holding his breath at a falling star as it streamed down toward the horizon--only to exhale disappointment. Falling stars were not alien in nature, and that was what he waited for. He watched the natural, waiting for the return of the unnatural.
Waiting for the return of his friends.
And then just waiting.
The hope died, but its memory lingered on. A sense of duty grew as the hope faded, as if making himself stand watch would ultimately bring about what he no longer believed would happen. He stood and watched the dawn come, too cynical to have faith. During the coldest hour before dawn, he bitterly wondered at his own conflicting urges. It was if the ghost of hope propped him up, but it also poked him as a sharp reminder that he'd failed his friends in even this. He didn't have the strength to believe that they would return to him. How weak. How very untrusting. Surely they would have never have given him up for lost.
Guilt took over where hope gave out. A hollow attempt at convincing himself that he still believed they'd come back, that he'd be here to see them return to Earth. It was no longer a friend waiting for friends, but someone who couldn't convince himself to abandon the stubborn duty that ordered him outside every morning before the sun rose. There was just something inside him that had dug in, and it refused to listen to doubt. It denied resignation, then certainty. It refused to listen to reason. When even guilt wore down, revealing a hint of resentment misdirected at the missing duo, the duty remained. It stayed steadfast while he silently railed at the pre-dawn sky, the dim stars. They hadn't come back! How could he be so stupid to come out here and wait? They weren't coming back!
Depression followed as he couldn't deceive himself any longer, seeing how the resentment was only hurt in disguise. It pained him that they had not returned, but he knew that they would have come back if they could. The anger was denial in another form, covering fear. If they hadn't come back, then they couldn't, and if they couldn't…
Hope faded. Guilt sloughed away. Naivety trembled. Duty stood silently inside him, watching the sun rise.
In the end, the alien light did indeed fall back to the planet. Maybe he hadn't seen it cross the dawn sky, but that wasn't to say he hadn't waited for it all the same. The first ray of sun revealed duty to be patient and waiting. It had never given up. And wasn't that the very definition of hope?
As he looked at what had fallen, at his friends in whatever form they had become, the watcher could only glory in the fiery light that ended the coldest hour of the night. He'd known they would come back.
Who was this? He smiled at Optimus Primal.
"Old friends."
.
.
A ficlet about Cheetor waiting, even after it seems like everyone and everything has given up. I don't like Cheetor or Tigerhawk, but it seemed applicable. He never gave up on Tigatron and Airazor.