War was over. Megatron is deactivated and the decepticons are scattered and weak. Optimus should feel proud, shouldn’t he? He completed his mission, he saved his people and the humans, and he restored Cybertron.

He should be celebrating, he should be out there giving speeches and being the leader everyone believed him to be. He should be doing so many things, yet here he was. Sitting on the top of a ruined skyscraper in a a city on Cybertron most forgot about.

Optimus didn’t know what he was doing here.

Except, that was a lie.

He knew what he was doing here, and he knew why he was here. He just didn’t want to admit it to himself, because that would be failing as a leader even more than he already was.

Optimus was still as he stared down at the dead city below. The streets littered with debris and rubble from before the war.

He tried to banish the voices in his helm telling him that he’s a monster, that his goal of peace had cost thousands of innocent cybertronians their sparks. He tried to focus on the fact the war was over, but even that seemed like a hollow victory when there was so few mechs left to inhabit Cybertron again.

He shuttered his optics, lost in the memories that have tortured him for cycles. Cycles and cycles of the same nightmares, of the same fear that what he’s doing isn’t right.

And then, a EM field brushed against his from behind.

He didn’t move or acknowledge the other mech, just vented softly and ducked his helm.