Optimus shifted his gaze from the television to the clock on the wall. It read 10:45 p.m. The hands seemed to be moving slower than usual, or at least they looked like they were.

He should be in bed right now.

Yet there he was, sunken into the depths of an old leather couch with a small, square television sat before him. There weren't even any good shows on. But, he couldn't bring himself to reach for the remote and turn it off. The old reruns and terribly annoying commercial jingles were the only things keeping him distracted from his thoughts. Thoughts of his past. Painful ones.

His eyes picked up movement beside him. Frida (Free-dah), his 5 year old rescue cat, had leapt onto the couch to curl up beside him. He sighed and reached over with one hand to gingerly pet her behind the ears. She always seemed to know when he was down. After all, she was the reason he got through one of the darkest periods of his life. Enough about that, though. He needed to focus on other things.

11:00 p.m.

A National Geographic show about killer whales had just come on. At least that was more entertaining than watching people try to answer questions in order to win 10,000 dollars. They always got the easiest questions wrong and Optimus found himself growing annoyed by their constant failure. Those answers should be common knowledge! Well, to him they were common knowledge. Not everyone was a nerdy bookworm like himself, he supposed. He cut them some slack and simply changed the channel instead.

11:30 p.m.

The killer whale show was only about half-way done. Optimus could feel his eyelids becoming heavier as time passed. He wouldn't mind falling asleep on the couch, though it wasn't exactly ideal. He kept them open.

By this point, Frida had crawled into his lap and fallen asleep. He'd been absentmindedly petting her the entire time, not caring enough to stop.

Just as the killer whales finally caught up to the seal they'd been chasing, there was a knock at the front door. Optimus paused, wondering if it was just his imagination. It was getting rather late and his mind tended to wander at this hour of the night.

Knock Knock Knock

There it was again. Three knocks coming one after the other in a rushed manner. It would sound like someone was trying to break in if they were any louder.

Optimus finally decided that it wasn't his imagination after all and got up to investigate (after removing Frida from his lap, of course). He rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles as he drowsily shuffled over to the door. Hopefully it was nothing and he could return to his late night programming.

The door knob was cold against his hand as he gripped and turned it. The door itself parted from the door frame with an eerie creak and a bit of rain-swept wind slipped through the opening, sending shivers down Optimus's spine. A large, dark blob of what he assumed to be a person was standing on his front porch. He had to blink several times in order to clearly see them in the dull yellow light of his front porch lamp.

They were tall, with broad shoulders and a solid figure. They wore a long, dirty grey trench coat that was absolutely soaked with rain. Aside from their clothing, the first thing that grabbed Optimus's attention was their face. Greasy wet strands of greyish-white hair dangled down on both sides of a square, sculpted jaw. He had pale skin that was marked with scars, the scruffy remnants of a beard, and sharp ruby-colored eyes that pierced the inky darkness.

Those eyes. He knew those eyes.

Optimus could barely get a word past his lips before the man was already speaking.

"Didn't think you'd see me again, did you?" He spoke roughly in a poor attempt to joke around. He lifted one arm to cough into his elbow while his other remained pressed against his side. Optimus could see red stains in the fabric where seams of the coat's sleeve met at the elbow—the one that the man had coughed into. That couldn't be what he thought it was, could it? "I know it's been—"

"Megatron?" Optimus cut him off. His voice quavered in fear. The man standing before him was not the Megatron he remembered. Had he really let himself go like that? Immediately, his fear dissipated as if it had been swept away with a broom. His cool blue gaze hardened and the hand that was on the door knob tightened its grip. "What are you doing here?"

Megatron hardly seemed fazed by Optimus's change of tone, though it hurt to hear it. "I had.. nowhere else to go..." He wheezed softly, his face contorting in pain. So much for trying to look unbothered.

Optimus frowned, having spotted the growing stain of red on Megatron's side. "You got yourself into trouble again." He muttered. He lifted his gaze to look Megatron in the eyes. "I told you not to come back." It pained him to say that in such a harsh tone, but he meant every word.

There was flicker of fear in Megatron's eyes that Optimus had never seen before.

"Please.." Megatron uttered, the word rolling strangely off his tongue. He hated every second of this. If he wasn't currently bleeding out from a stab wound between his ribs, he'd storm off into the night without a second thought. "I need your help..."

Every instinct told Optimus to close the door. To forget about it. To leave Megatron in the rain and keep him out of his life like he'd been doing for the past 3 years. But he couldn't.

Because underneath all that anger and bitterness he had for him, Optimus still loved him.

So, he opened the door and let in the very person who had ruined his life.