To Have a Spark
Hand of the Titan
"A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."
-Christopher Reeve
"They are blue."
The words resonated softly from the Prime's voice, yet at those words, the human in his hand froze. Useless eyes narrowed, distrust practically coming off of him like a scent. Optimus drew back, remaining in his seated posture. A deep, almost oppressive silence fell upon the base.
"Your brother's eyes were blue, were they not?" Ratchet asked.
This time, Renalt didn't try to seek out the voice. He just nodded silently, taking a breath in hopes that his mind might start acting logically. It wasn't possible, that he was sitting in a giant metallic hand belonging to a mechanical titan who bore Leonard's name. Leonard was dead. Leonard was dead, yet complete strangers knew his eye colour as well as he knew his own hearing capacity. Renalt lifted his hands again, investigating the hand that held him.
"What has changed...?"
"Patience, Renalt," Optimus rumbled softly. Once more, he allowed questing hands to explore his face.
"Call me Renault. Like you used to."
"Very well, Renalt...Renault. I will speak of the changes soon. The hour grows late. Will you remain here with us?"
"Us?" An echo of curiosity threaded through Renalt's voice then, thwarting any of his own attempts to keep curiosity out of himself.
"I will explain tomorrow. Please. Sleep now," Optimus actually did whisper then. The sound was as strangely haunting as the others might have imagined it to be. Nudging the human with a finger, the Prime didn't need much in the power of persuasion to have Renalt do as he asked. Loosening his fingers a little, he allowed Renalt to fully lie back in his hand.
The sound that came from the Prime's voice at that point was one none would soon forget – it was a soothing sound, found somewhere only in the deepest reaches of oneself. It was like breathing, yet circular, melodic. It was, in a word, beautiful, and it was to this sound that Renalt Carwyn Haakon fell asleep to.
s=
"So how long are you going to keep this up?"
Agent Fowler arrived almost at the stroke of midnight and stood on the catwalks staring at the Prime who sat on a berth below him. The face the Agent was met with was one he didn't wish to see the Prime wear again – it spoke of age, of long and weary aeons fighting against impossible odds. It was a face that spoke of a being who had regrets, who made decisions he detested himself for. When the Prime finally spoke, his voice reflected the same world-weariness his expression bore.
"As long as I need to, Agent Fowler. I cannot watch a being destroy itself if I can prevent it."
"And when are you going to break it to him? How are you going to break it to him, that you're lying through your mechanical teeth?" Fowler retorted. He didn't like this plan of the Prime's – personally he would have felt better if they had simply shipped the kid off to another asylum. When his answer was only silence, Fowler stalked out to the elevator. His last words had a warning in them.
"If you can't get this kid's head on straight soon, I'll have to step in, Prime. I'll step in and keep him away from you."
The elevator echoed on its way up, carrying Fowler with it. There was no mistaking the accusation in the Agent's words. Right now, he didn't trust Optimus Prime of Cybertron with a single human mind, much less an intergalactic war. Or the remnants thereof. Behind them, Renalt slept the sleep of the exhausted. Ratchet briefly fancied that he could sleep through a sizeable earthquake with ease.
Arcee, Bulkhead and Bumblebee appeared, each arriving in from a quiet night of curbside duty and their own troubled thoughts. And they had returned to base in time to hear Fowler's last warning.
"Maybe Fowler's right, Optimus," Arcee first ventured.
"What, that Prime can't be trusted?" Bulkhead whispered harshly.
"No...the kid...I mean that maybe he'd be better off in human care," the femme replied.
"To what end, Arcee? To ship him off somewhere, to..." Ratchet ground out through clenched dentae, then trailed off. He couldn't speak of what the patch had revealed.
"Maybe tell us what you saw in there?" Arcee's tone went from sharp to a gentle question. The only outside observers to the patch had been June and Ratchet himself.
Bumblebee finally spoke up, chirring and beeping softly. Can we let him choose? We can't hide from him here and he didn't hide from you.
"He didn't have much of a choice, Bumblebee. We...We invaded his mind, that's what we did," the medic responded in a broken tone, one laden with guilt.
Did we have a choice?
That was the question, wasn't it? Did any of them have a choice? The question mocked them all. All night, the Autobots sat together, conferring, debating, deciding. They held a human in their hands. One wrong move could destroy him more perfectly than any Decepticon could dream of. One right move and they'd have a fourth human residing in Omega One. A human that couldn't see. A human that was, in all likelihood, a walking liability.
Several hours into their talks, Ratchet and the Prime bore their new charge to the Prime's own room. It was the quietest part of Omega One and the last thing they needed at present, was an awake human with too many questions to answer.
As dawn broke, Optimus Prime had his mind made up. He would bear it all – the responsibility, the possibilities, the risks. He was the Prime. It was what he was supposed to do. What he wanted to do. He stood, readying for morning patrol when his optics fell upon his hands. His hands. How much energon had spilled in these hands? How many lives had these hands saved? The Prime could destroy an organic with a mere flick of his hands – he had to always be so very careful. He stared at his hands and wondered what these hands would do now.