Chapter Ten

Thunderous was walking toward the bridge when he caught sight of the very mech he wanted to see. "Bumblebee," he hailed.

His second in command had seen better days. The yellow paint was barely visible under a layer of fine dust and energon splatter. His left arm had been dangling just earlier, but Thunderous had re-attached it, a feat which he hadn't predicted every completing. His optics were dull, as if they never expected to see sunlight again. Maybe they wouldn't. Here on Cybertron, there was a permanent cloud of gunpowder and smoke that blocked out all natural light. Only on Earth had they felt the warmth of a planet's sun like they probably never would on Cybertron.

"I need a report," he said carefully. It came out as dejected as he felt.

The yellow minibot tilted his head, "We have many injured, but I think everyone is going to be okay. Skyrush took up the radar again with no sign of the Decepticons. Sunbeam is handing out energon to the most weak. The ship is as damaged as could be predicted. The engine room was almost completely destroyed." He hesitated. "We didn't find any remains of Gamma except for his skateboard."

Thunderous bowed his head. If there were no remains of Gamma in his own chamber, he was probably burned up for scraps in the fire. "He was very brave," he murmured, feeling a sickening knot in his spark.

Bumblebee nodded, once more hesitant. His palatinate optics were searching, and Thunderous could guess what was coming. "How's Ironhide?"

The Autobot leader trembled as he thought back to his old advisor. He hadn't wanted to leave the dying mech, but he hadn't known what else to do. With Chromia holding the red warrior's hand, he had felt intrusive. This was their private moment with no place for him to step in. He had quickly left the Medbay in search of his SIC and any update that might take his mind off things.

"Chromia's with him," he sighed. "It won't be long now."

Bumblebee's face fell. "You mean…Kyrus couldn't save him?"

Thunderous shook his head. "There was no way she could have. His injuries were too great."

The SIC stumbled backwards and fell against the orange wall with a metallic clank. He slid to the ground and lifted his hands to his face. Thunderous could empathize with him. Ironhide and Bumblebee had known each other much longer than he could claim to have known any of them. They had been friends for a long time. He must really be hurting now that his friend was gone.

After a few minutes of just taking it in, Bumblebee moved his hands and looked up at Thunderous. "Can I go see him?"

He shrugged. "You could, but it would be pointless. Kyrus put him in stasis lock, to make his journey easier."

Thunderous wasn't sure where those words came from, but now that he thought it, it fit perfectly. Nobody wanted Ironhide to be in pain on his way to join Primus. Kyrus had made a good call, locking him in stasis.

"What are you gonna do now?" the yellow officer asked after another moment.

The blue and black seeker shrugged, his central processor throbbing as he tried to compute all the information running through it. His head engineer was dead, his advisor heading down that path. He had no idea where the Decepticons were, or what they were planning, but they certainly knew where he was. His crew was injured and weak, and they needed to get out of the crashed starship and find refuge elsewhere. In the meantime, they were perfect targets for Starscream and his attack force. It was only a matter of time before the Decepticon commander took advantage of his upper hand.

He needed to take charge now. He needed to get his people out of the destroyed ship and moved to somewhere safer. Plans needed to be drawn up in case they were attacked, energon needed to be collected and rationed. But Ironhide was still alive for the moment, and Kyrus probably needed a real break. Come to think of it, he needed a real break.

"Right now? I'm gonna go get some energon in me, and I suggest you do the same. We should probably take a cube to the Medbay as well."

Bumblebee dipped his head. "What then?"

"We'll worry about that when we get there."

…

It took Ironhide a full hour and then some to die. Chromia spent every second of those 100 minutes holding his hands. She didn't say anything (Ironhide wouldn't have heard her anyway), but she never left his side either, and by the time his spark finally blinked out, her joints had locked in that position. Kyrus had had to manually unlock them, as the moment his spark finally extinguished, Chromia became a vegetable.

She watched with inky indigo optics as Brawn, Bumblebee, and Thunderous carried her dead mate away for burial. Kyrus knew she should have felt curious about Ironhide's body's fate. Back on Earth, humans buried each other in the dirt and mud and covered it with plant life like flowers to try and make death seem somehow peaceful. On Cybertron there was no dirt, or mud, or flowers.

But no matter, Kyrus was not curious, and she didn't follow the mech's carrying Ironhide away. Rather, she turned in the opposite direction. She didn't want to have to look at Ironhide anymore, and she didn't think she could bear being trapped in that Medbay any longer.

She walked without knowing where she was going. Not that she didn't know the ship. No, she knew the ship like the back of her hand (which she knew surprisingly well). Her mind was wandering away from the path on which she was walking, and she was slightly surprised when she found herself at the exit. As soon as she saw the outside, she wanted so badly to leave the ship that she didn't think twice about stepping out. Her foot contacted metal instead of earth and it slightly shook her from her reverie. What the…where was she?

Cybertron. That's right. She frowned. Her first step on this new and alien planet should have been more gratifying than it was.

As it was, she felt almost nothing after the initial shock wore off. Cybertron was brilliant. The buildings were so fragging tall, and there were no hills, but rather different levels. There were no valleys, but simple holes in the metallic ground that vanished to nowhere. Everything was silver, and shiny. Even the buildings, which were falling apart, were certainly a spectacular sight. It should have stirred her spark. It didn't stir her spark. It didn't stir anything inside her today.

She walked a good distance, listening to the metal clink her every step brought with it and thinking she might once have had trouble adjusting to it. Now, the only thing it did was give her a headache.

She found herself at one of the pits and blinked, this time feeling some real surprise. Of all the ironies, The Alpha Trion had crashed here, at The Well of Allspark? She would have laughed if she'd had the spark to.

It was sitting there, with her legs dangling into the Well where Thunderous later found her. He marveled that she had come so far only to sit with her legs dangling in one of Cybertron's many pits. He didn't know if he was invited to sit with her, but he did so anyway, moving so that his legs also dangled and he could feel her vents whirring next to him.

"Here," he said quietly, holding out a small cube. "I brought you some energon."

"Thanks," she whispered, taking the cube with one hand. In the other, he noticed her wrench. She was caressing it with one finger. Did she even realize that she was holding it? When the cube was empty, she glared at it angrily. "I should have done more," she growled to it. "I should have been able to save him."

"You did all you could," he disagreed gently. "No one could have done better."

Her hand clenched the wrench tightly, her optics boring into it without really seeing it. "Ratchet could have. Ratchet would have saved him. All I did was prepare him to die."

Thunderous shook his head. "No, I don't think he could have. I didn't know Ratchet as well, but I saw Ironhide's wound. There was nothing you, or he, could have done to change Ironhide's fate."

She trembled as she glared into the pit below them. "Ratchet never gives up on a patient."

Her optics were slanted funny. It reminded him of how human Kyrus really was. He may not have been an expert on reading human expressions, but even Thunderous couldn't mix up that look.

"You love him." It wasn't a question.

"We're bonded," she said quietly, her hand brushing over her cerulean chest. He thought back to Earth, when Kyrus had been snarky towards the couples. Now he knew why they bothered her so much. They were having everything with one another that she couldn't have. It also explained why getting the prisoners back was so important to her. It meant she could see her bondmate again.

He bowed his head. "You must miss him."

She coughed, closing her optics completely. "More than I've ever missed anything in my life." The slight clatter of metal hitting metal reached his sensitive audios. There was the barest tremble in her position as she kept her head bowed. "I know he's alive. I can feel it. But…other than that, I feel nothing. It's like he's just gone."

Something about her words roused something inside him, something that had been screaming at him for a long time. How he had hated monotony. His life had always been the same: scouting energon for Megatron, attacking the Autobots, or sitting around base doing nothing. Neither group had really taken the initiative though. Ambition…it meant nothing. The only thing a real leader needed was strength, brains, and cunning. It was like he could see his life, laid out before him from beginning to end. He had always been meant to take power. This had been his destiny from the get-go. Only it had taken him this long to realize it.

"We know he's alive," he intoned, his voice more sturdy than it had been in weeks. "And we can easily figure out where they're being kept."

She must have heard the change in his voice, for she sat up straighter and actually looked at him. "What are you talking about?"

Violet optics, no more lined with blue, stared into her own Majorelle eyes. "I doesn't seem like you enjoy working alone, Kyrus. I say we find you some help."

There was no missing the confidence in his voice. "You don't mean?"

"I do. Let's get our scientists back."