He was small, weak, and disappointing for a Prime. Orion Pax was, in one word, pathetic, and this Orion Prime was no better. The High Council had named him that, but he was far from being a Prime. He had to get better.

Ironhide was stuck to making him better. "Alright, kid..." He tossed the little mech an axe, but the mech caught it awkwardly and ended up going down with it and a rack of swords and other weapons. Swords, shields, cannons, and daggers went in all sorts of directions, some in reach and others all the way across the room.

Ironhide had to train some real pathetic mechs, but this one topped his list. "Kid..."

"I can do it! I can do it..." He struggled under the axe, trying to get it off him. It must have weighed thousands and thousands of pounds, but Ironhide lifted it off him as if it weighed nothing. "I could do it."

"I could see that, librarian." He dropped the axe beside him, shaking his helm. "Alright...you're one of the worst fighters I have ever seen in my life. The High Council chose you to be a Prime?"

Orion's helm lowered and he sighed. "They gave me the title..."

"A title doesn't make you a Prime. You have to become a Prime, and that's why I'm here, unfortunately for the both of us." Ironhide grabbed the younger mech's shoulder. "I'm going to press you physically, mentally, and emotionally, to see if you break. If you do, I'm requesting a new Prime."

Orion slowly nodded, whimpering. That earned him a growl and a warning. Rules were set into place: No whimpering, no sniffling, no crying, no sobbing, no quitting, and no dying. Orion lowered his helm and he listened the older mech rant about how weak he was, how pathetic he was.

Deep within Orion, something snapped and he grabbed the axe, hauling it up and over his helm, bringing it down on Ironhide's shoulder with a loud clang. Gravity had done the work for him, but because Orion had lost his power, the axe didn't harm the mech. It just dented his armor. The larger mech didn't even move, didn't even flinch.

"I am not weak," Orion growled.

He smirked and moved the axe off his shoulder, grabbing Orion by the neck in nearly the same movement. "I have good news and I have bad news. Bad news is, you've earned yourself half a cube of Energon instead of a full one. Good news is, all we have to do to get the Decepticons to die is to tell you they thought you were pathetic and weak."

Orion went limp, but that earned him a low growl.

"What if Megatron had you like this? Would you lick his spike, too?"

He struggled, growling and scratching at his arm.

"You fight like a femme."

He started to twist and kick out at him.

"What's wrong with you, Orion? Have you gone to sleep? Is it nap-time?"

When Orion was dropped, he kicked at him, sweeping Ironhide's pedes out from under him and he shoved a sword that was laying in reach at his neck, prodding a vein.

"Good," Ironhide grunted. "But you hesitated."

His optics widened. "You want me to kill you? But you are my teacher!"

Ironhide got up. "Orion, this is war. They're not going to roll over and let you jump on their bellies. They are going to find your weaknesses, your hesitations, and they are not going to hesitate in using them against you." He touched the mech's cheek gently then, his thumb stroking under his optic. "Do you understand, Orion?"

He nodded, squeaking when Ironhide grabbed his auido finial and tugged. "Good. Then get some recharge. You've earned it, slightly, and don't forget to refuel."

"Half of a cube, right?"

"Now what idiot told you that you could only have a half of a cube?"

ooo

Orion had forgotten what a good night's recharge felt like. Ironhide woke him regularily and wore him down until medics had to come and retrieve him due to his inability to get to his pedes. Orion had known it would be hard, but nothing had prepared him for this!

"Come on, Orion!" Ironhide shot at the mech's pedes and Orion dropped the datapads he was supposed to be supporting in his servos above his helm. "What is this? This is disappointing!"

"If you would let me sleep, I could do more things!"

"Do you think that the Decepticons will let you sleep if they see you're exhausted? I'm training you, making you have greater endurance, greater strength." He walked around the smaller mech until he supported the mech's trembling arms, putting the datapads in his palms one at a time this time instead of all at once like last time. "You're not going to be able to sleep. You're going to be tired all the time and you'll be expected to lift massive amounts of weight in the forms of cannons, your fallen warriors, and supplies. These datapads will get you used to supplies. Then we will move on to frames, empty husks and, eventually, dead bodies. Then you will carry crates. Big crates full of live-saving Energon..."

Orion, with Ironhide's help, stopped trembling and supported the datapads above his helm, then below his spark, and then back up again. His arms hurt, but he imagined running these supplies to his troops that he would, eventually, have and he felt renewed.

"Go get some rest, Orion." Ironhide stroked his helm gently. "I will be in my quarters if you need me."

Orion hadn't expected to need Ironhide so soon. But before long, he was standing in Ironhide's doorway with a pillow and a blanket. Terrible nightmares clung to his processor and made the mech tremble more than the datapads had.

Ironhide was surprisingly gentle. He let Orion lay in his berth, let Orion press up against him while he read his datapad. He watched the bigger mech, curling his digits into the fabric on his pillow. He flinched when Ironhide touched his helm, but then he relaxed and curled up around him.

The black-armored mech laid down with him, pulling the sheets around him and propping his helm in his servo as he watched Orion study his chest.

"What's your story, Pax?"

Orion looked up at him with nervous optics. "I was born into the data-clerk caste. I would have been a data-clerk until my spark could no longer power my body. But then came Megatron..."

Ironhide listened to the story with interest, and even told his story. "I worked in the mines. For years, the only thing I saw was my partner, B-65. I was B-64. We were given those names by our peers, because our section of the mine was B and we were the sixty-fourth and sixty-fifth miners in that mine. We could communicate through pings and clicks. We were not taught speech, but Freezeframe, he tried. He could say bucket and stop, and the rest of us didn't let him alone. We wanted him to teach us, you know?" Ironhide sighed and he looked at him. "G-83 turned on his partner, took the name Megatronus, and rallied us together. We saw the light for the first time, saw our peers for the first time. B-65 was grey and flecked blue. He was so beautiful..." He rolled over as he continued. "I was the only dark colored mech. Megatronus, he thought I was covered in dust, but I was born that way. I didn't even know."

Orion huddled against his side, peeking up at him from under the sheets.

"B-65 took the name Freezeframe. He learned to speak alright, before he died. He had this disease. Something was wrong with his spark. He went blind, but the poor mech kept struggling, gripping life until his spark gave out. He was only a servoful of eons old. He was so young..."

That never happened for data-clerks. They were trained to sort from day one, trained to obey, trained to only read, but never analyze, never remember anything. Orion remembered how he sorted blocks the moment he could understand what they were for. He sorted them by color, by size, by favorites. Some would get inventive, some wouldn't, but Orion would do more. He would stack them, make buildings only to knock them down. He was playing, something that the supervisors didn't know how to handle other than isolating him until he was conditioned just right. But they never became too old to do what they were born to do. They died at their desks, a slow, peaceful death that no one really noticed until the body began to stink.

Ironhide took a deep breath, jolting Orion from his thoughts. "All the miners followed Megatronus. I broke away when he said Freezeframe was the reason we were fighting. Freezeframe hated conflict. He despised it, really. If a fight broke out in the next section, he would ping for silence, ping for one mech to forgive the other. I broke away from Megatron because he lied to me. Freezeframe would never allow a war to break out on his beloved planet he only saw for a short while."

Orion had fallen asleep, curled up against the mech. If his deep breathing and slack faceplates were anything to go by, nightmares wouldn't bother him for a while. Ironhide curled up around the smaller mech and held him close, stroking his helm.

"I couldn't protect Freezeframe. But I will protect you for as long as I can."

Ironhide was a ticking timebomb. He knew he would die someday, and when he did, he would destroy everyone and everything in his wake. He only hoped he got to see Cybertron one last time, beautiful instead of sick, alive instead of dying. He prayed to Primus then, wondering if Primus really heard him when he prayed.