I know, I'm horrible, starting another story without having updated any of the others in months...but the idea for a time-traveller from a post-apocalyptic future for TFP has been simmering in the back of my mind for a while, and after watching Darkest Hour, and seeing the way Miko reacted to being separated from Jack, this little bugger bit me pretty dang hard.

Prologue

"Daddy, who's Optimus?"

He froze, with one hand on the shoddy cupboard door while the other held a can of beans in midair. He could feel her watching curiously, likely snuggling with her ratty old teddy-bear, which was missing an eye, an ear, and half an arm. He wondered how he should answer, how he could answer her. Optimus Prime was so many things: he was brave, selfless, noble, inspiring, fierce, merciful, compassionate, humble, loyal, and strong in both body and mind.

But he was also dead.

He inhaled a shaky breath, closing his eyes as he did so, trying not to relive the last time he had seen the Autobot Leader alive, standing in the missile silo, watching each of them leave, destined for a different part of the country. Back then, he hadn't known that would be the last he saw of the great mech; he hadn't known that Prime would stay behind to destroy the ground bridge computer so that their locations could not be salvaged from the wreck of their base. At the time, he had merely thought he would also relocate to another part of the country, slowly traversing it to regroup with each of them…

It hadn't been until five months later, when they finally regrouped with Ratchet and the others, that he and Arcee had found out he was dead.

Slowly, Jackson Darby set the can of beans on the stained, grimy counter, attempting to steel his nerves against the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. When he felt he was as prepared as he could be, he turned to face the six year-old sitting on the dirty floor in ragged, patch littered clothes. She sat there, staring at him with grey-blue eyes that matched his own, peering out from a heart-shaped face that matched her mother's, all with a mop of brown hair atop her head.

He walked over to her, sitting down on the floor and pulling her into his lap, trying not to let her see how much the past was affecting him. Jack had to be strong for her; for the Resistance that looked to him as their leader, and for what little was left of humanity.

"Well, sweetheart," he began, trying not to choke on his words, "Optimus Prime was the leader of the Autobots before you were born. He was a great mech; I had never met anyone in my life who was as caring and self-sacrificing as he was. Back when your mom, Uncle Raf, and I were all younger, he…"Jack's words died in his throat, mind swimming with memories; the space bridge, open and aiming at Earth, the terribly beautiful light of the Omega Lock, and the fire and smoke that followed its destruction.

Jack rested his bearded chin upon his daughter's head, unconsciously tightening his hold upon her as he closed his eyes. For a long while, he didn't speak, and the cowardly part of him told him to just say, "he cared for us deeply" and leave it at that. That would be enough to satisfy his little girl's curiosity until she was older, he knew. Yet…he saw Optimus in his mind's eye, the self-recriminating torment in his glowing blue optics…and he felt his gut clench with guilt at the realization that not telling Prime's story would be nothing less than an utter disregard for his memory.

So he opened his mouth and began to speak again, his words halting at first as he described the fearless leader's humble beginnings as a data clerk on a far-off world, but slowly gaining strength as he told her everything he knew.

She listened with rapt attention, eyes dancing with amazement as he spun the tale, and when he finally stopped speaking, hours later, her mouth dropped open in a little "o" and she breathed out an amazed "wow" that reminded him vaguely of her mother's younger years, which she had spent running through ground bridges and staring wide-eyed at ripped out spark chambers.

And then, his daughter voiced a rather blunt opinion that had occurred quite suddenly to her, and made Jack's heart clench painfully.

"He sounds like you Daddy."

Before he could open his mouth to tell her "no, he was better than I could ever be," another voice interrupted from the doorway.

"They're two of a kind, sweetheart."

Jack looked up with a sad smile on his lips (his smiles were always sad now, they had been for thirteen years) to greet the woman who was his wife in every way except legal matrimony.

Miko gave a cheerful grin in response that threatened to split her face in half, but the smile, so familiar from their youth, never lit up her eyes anymore. The light had gotten dimmer starting with the death of Optimus, and dimmer still with the death of each Autobot that followed until, finally, it went out completely alongside Bulkhead's Spark.

The grin dropped from Miko's face and she was suddenly all business, locking her gaze onto Jack's own tired visage.

"Fowler, Raf, Ratchet and Bumblebee are waiting for us in the command room."

Ah, of course. There was never any real rest for the weary, just moments of waiting sandwiched between crises.

Jack slowly rose to his feet, cradling their daughter in his arms—the daughter he had always wanted, but never planned to bring into such a horrible world as the one they were living in.

He handed her carefully over to her mother, and then wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulders as the two began walking to the command room together, their child giggling quietly in Miko's arms as the Asian woman made funny faces for her benefit.

Jack smiled slightly, and, for a moment at least, he could let himself believe that they were an ordinary family in an ordinary world and that, far above him, on the surface of the Earth they called home, there wasn't a dying world littered with the carcasses of empty cities, where the skeletons of skyscrapers still stood against the back drop of an eternally grey sky, vigilantly, but futilely, waiting for the sun to split the veil open and shine on them with hope again.

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed the prologue, first chapter should be up next week, it's almost done. Let me know what you think.