Part Thirty-Five
Disclaimers in Part One
-Sidhe Chronicles-
Lennox had set the adult curfew at 0100 for the night. That would give everyone a chance for a few hours' sleep before they had to report for duty the next morning.
Diarwen stirred as bots trooped into the hangar, and various doors opened and closed. She had not been sleeping long, and the previous day had been...eventful. Optimus sent a warm wave of love/peace/contentment through their new bond, and felt it returned, with a side order of annoyance at the noise. Then she settled back into sleep.
Optimus was thankful that their suite in the Cliff House was almost ready. The walls in Hangar B were thin, and did nothing to conceal their fields; bots all had to keep their fields pulled in close if they wanted privacy, or else be sure a privacy screen was activated. Moreover, there was no way that several tons of metal could move about in that small space quietly, especially after a few cubes of high grade had made the rounds. The thick stone walls of the Cliff House would be much more comfortable.
Many of the bots passing by would be a little the worse for wear when second joor came around at its usual pace; the same was likely true of the base's humans. But for now, it was a pleasant sort of muzziness. There were no angry drunks in the lot, and they were all settling into recharge. After a last scan of his sleeping consort, Optimus allowed oblivion to creep over him too.
-Sidhe Chronicles-
Circle had been cancelled for the next morning, fortunately, because no one was in any condition to drag themselves out at 0530 that Saturday.
As the base began its day, no one was in a state of mind to make noise. Everyone who could was sleeping in, and those who were on duty did not want to hear any noise, including their own.
Diarwen was awakened after first light by a swelling tide of warm energy flowing in the land, mirroring the warmth in her own heart chakra. She smiled and basked in it, until a far-off distant rumble intruded.
The unfamiliar sound wakened Optimus as well. He booted up quickly—much more quickly, Diarwen realized, than usual. She found a good place to hold onto his chestplate, not sure at all that he wouldn't bolt off the berth. But he caught himself before doing that, even as one servo came around to brace her.
"What in Primus' name—?"
"Thunder, I do believe."
He relaxed, or at least his cables lost their tension. "The summer rains are early this year. Normally we would not expect them for another three to four orn."
"Aye. Are you all right?"
"Yes, beloved, and I am sorry to so rudely awaken you. Thunder is a relatively new phenomenon for me. The sound was close enough to an explosion to cause me to fail over to my emergency fast-boot sequence."
"I was already awake. I am sorry, but I do not understand what you just said. Do you mean, boot up, in the same sense as a non-living computer?"
"Yes, exactly so. Remember that the technology behind those computers was derived from study of Megatron while he was a prisoner of Sector 7. Computers are like simplistic versions of our processors. They operate very similarly, in general terms. Our spark memory is analogous to a computer's BIOS. When we awaken from recharge, it boots up the operating system contained in our memory. Think of each Cybertronian as running a different version of the same original operating system, highly modified for our individual frame type, modifications and function. Normally, as my OS comes online, it checks all my sensors and gives me a very detailed picture of my surroundings, before I regain the ability to move. However, I do have passive sensors that are monitored by a subprocessor at all times. When they detected the thunder, it fell within the parameters of a possible explosion. My normal boot sequence failed, and I booted up under combat ready conditions."
Diarwen said, "And, like any combat veteran, you awakened quickly, ready to deal with the cause of a loud noise. I may not understand the technical terms but I do understand that which they describe."
Her bonded smiled down at Diarwen. "In the end analysis, our similarities will always outweigh our differences."
She snuggled into his breastplate. "Always," she said.
The first showers came gently, and attracted the same notice as the first snowfall in more temperate climates. They listened to it drumming on the metal roof as the rain began in earnest. Out on the land, the parched desert at first soaked up the moisture, then filled the dry washes. Excellion's levee channeled the flow past the construction site, but beyond that, it was free to spread out across the sand.
Optimus asked, "Did we cause this?"
"In part. Beltane, my love, is the promise of Imbolc and Ostara made manifest: Summer is here. You see, in my day, we had but two seasons—summer, which began at sunset last night, and winter, which begins at Samhain. By the modern reckoning, it is mid-spring; modern summer begins at Litha, and winter at Yule. It still confuses me sometimes."
"Years would confuse me had I not set my timekeeping function to account for them, when there are eighty-three of them to a vorn."
Diarwen nodded, tracing a pattern on his chestplate. "A century is a good unit of measurement for a Sidhe. I suppose we think of years more in the way that the humans do weeks or fortnights."
"More to the point, we made it rain?"
"Yes, we had a part in it. Perhaps not so much as those who spirited themselves away to hold their own Great Rite in true, out on the land, as in the days of old. In those days, you and I would have done so as a matter of course, for it was the duty of the royalty and their consorts to bring the gods' blessing of new life to the fields, that the people might prosper."
"A thought for another time," he said, and their fields intertwined more closely than ever before.
-Sidhe Chronicles-
It was roughly ten in the AM, though neither Optimus (who had a built-in chronometer) nor Diarwen (who had a large clock installed on the wall of their quarters visible from both rooms) knew that. They were rather lost in one another; had they been in public, Ratchet, at least, would have had no hesitation in castigating them as "spacey bondeds."
When the knock on the human door came, it startled both of them.
Diarwen leapt down from the berth, and pulled a robe over her head: green, her Lady's color. She opened the door to find a large basket left there: a roasted chicken, baked potatoes, a container of cooked rice, three or four of vegetables, a tin of what proved to be rust sticks in Optimus' favorite flavor, and several good-sized apples and oranges. The note attached said only, "We'll see you later. The Circle."
-Sidhe Chronicles-
Diarwen ni Gilthanel, the bonded Consort of Optimus Prime, said, "A good day to you, acushla, until I see you tonight. I fear I do not know precisely when that shall occur."
"Take the time you need," Optimus said. He watched her trim figure fade from sight, and cherished the knowledge of where she was and in which direction she was moving that was the result of their bonding.
Then he, too, left their old quarters for the last time.
A few weeks after Beltane, the move into the Cliff House was nearly complete, and not just for the bonded pair. Optimus, one among many of his fellow Cybertronians, walked to Cliff House with a laden subspace.
Once inside their new quarters, he unsubspaced Diarwen's boxes of belongings, and carefully set them down on the other side of the railing of her loft office. It was designed, like most human spaces in quarters shared with bots, to allow them to converse comfortably at eye level.
Almost a year had passed since she had agreed to teach him. But what a year! The first year mostly given over to peace in many, many vorn. Only Soundwave's raid, and their own, had brought back the bad old days.
The space he put boxes into was filled with her desk, her cabinets for herbs and essential oils, work benches for herbal work and for care of her armor and weapons, bookshelves, a kitchenette, and a chaise lounge near the wide windowsill where a riot of herbs had already made themselves at home, leaning out of their pots to catch the sun.
One corner had been dedicated to her music: that space was filled with racks and cases to keep her instruments, a small stereo surrounded by a shelf system entirely filled with CDs, and a bookcase for her sheet music.
Diarwen would be much more comfortable here than in the metal hangar building, he thought with satisfaction. Optimus had fond memories of that tiny apartment where they had begun their life together, but he would not miss its limitations.
Her work area overlooked his own office. The space beneath it provided locked storage for datapads. A circular staircase gave her easy access from her office to the top of his desk, where the usual provisions for small visitors had been made; the stair continued down to floor level for other human visitors. A bot-sized sofa and several chairs were arranged in the center of the room. Quite a few people could meet here; if more space was necessary, a conference room lay beyond a locked door into this one.
Optimus took a datapad from his desk drawer and left Diarwen a note in her message queue. His bonded was hard at work with Milestrina learning the cultural references necessary for understanding her latest translations. He smiled, knowing deep in his spark that she was radiating contentment and happiness.
Such was the life of bards and conservators alike. If she and Milestrina became so immersed in their work that they lost track of time and worked through dinner, it would not be the first time.
He subspaced the datapad and left the apartment, transforming as he reached the ramp leading down to the floor of the atrium.
Chromia waved to him, and he flashed his lights in acknowledgment as she hung a large, freshly cleaned mesh over the railing to let the solvent evaporate. Prowl nodded as he and Jazz edged a sofa up the ascending ramp. He met Sunstreaker and Sideswipe as they carried boxes into Cliff House itself.
He stopped them. "Good joor," he said. "A little more care in your packing might not come amiss.'" With one digit, he applied enough pressure to make a still component, the sole part of the contraption that could not be mistaken for something else, scrunch a bit deeper into the box Sunstreaker carried. That allowed smaller components, not quite so recognizable, to conceal it.
Sides flashed him a grin. "Thanks, Optimus," he said. His twin turned red over the faceplates.
Sunstreaker's flush would fade, Optimus hoped, by the time the Big Twins encountered Prowl.
Once outside the Cliff House, he followed the cliff around to the Temple, and paused for a moment. Sunlight picked out the tapestries which adorned the back wall, highlighting first this story, then that mech.
Optimus wondered if he had just been given some information he could not yet access. Something to do with the Original Primes, and with Primus; but what precisely, he could not say. He gazed at the tapestries, at Nova Prime's sunlit representation, then slowly went on.
Gaia awakened when they entered holy ground and hummed a note of delight, flooding Optimus with a feeling of being home. Burnout shared that feeling; Optimus could appreciate the sentiment, but he was a ruling Prime. His duties at this stage of his function did not allow him to devote himself fully to priestly concerns.
::Little one, when you are older, if you desire a frame of your own, you might choose to study for the priesthood. It was the function of an order of priests, after all, to care for the Allspark and for those who came to the Temple to venerate it.::
::I might like that,:: the femmeling replied. ::Do I have to decide right away?::
::No, sweetspark. All in Primus' good time.::
She hummed again, then fell silent.
Burnout had been working at his desk, set into an alcove on one side of the wide rock overhang which provided a roof for the temple. "Prime! Welcome!" he said, as he put his work away and joined Optimus near the Flame. "How may I serve?"
Optimus smiled down at him. "Sam and Hot Rod will be here soon to begin their studies. I believe Bumblebee will be with them. You may sit in if you like."
He felt Burnout's regret. "I'd only have to excuse myself. Camlock had her reformat. When she starts to come around I need to go up to Excellion's medbay."
Optimus had been interested in that himself. One of Excellion's elders, Camlock had been dealing with a worn out frame for some time. A snapped strut had been the last straw. She had elected to reformat into a Pretender frame rather than wait for materials to build a frame for her as much like her old one as possible.
He wondered how much of a challenge it would be for her to adjust to such a small frame; Burnout undoubtedly would be a comfort to her. "In that case, I will not interrupt your plans. Please convey my best wishes to Camlock."
"Yes, Prime, I will. Thank you."
Hot Rod, Bumblebee, and Sam Witwicky entered at that moment. They greeted Burnout, who made his excuses and retired to his office.
Sam looked strained.
When he could, the human Prime caught a cargo plane out of Andrews with Bumblebee on Friday night, arriving at Nellis in the wee hours of Saturday morning to spend a weekend with Carly and Danny. He couldn't do that so often as he might have wished; more experience with his job meant more responsibility, which meant less free time. His Saturdays were often work days; nor were Sundays immune.
Optimus thought as he greeted the human Prime that Sam didn't look physically tired; he had learned the soldier's habit of sleeping wherever and whenever the chance presented itself, and a plane journey was prime sleep time. But to Optimus' optics, he did look weary.
A separation from his wife and son might have been acceptable in wartime. However, the need for security kept the Witwickys on a wartime footing even now, and they would likely have to live out their lives on alert.
Optimus had no good answers for his brother Prime there. Sam could come out here, but away from Washington he would be able to do them very little good. Alternatively, Carly and Daniel could join him in Washington, a solution which Prowl had rejected as creating an unacceptable level of exposure.
Sam and Bumblebee, Prime and Protector, had very good instincts for getting out of the trouble which seemed to find them regularly. Carly and the baby, on the other hand, would be very difficult for a single Guardian to keep safe. The presence of Brains and Wheelie in the Witwicky household would create more danger for Carly and Danny; the two small bots would present a target for the same sort of criminal element that had captured Buzzsaw and Rumble.
If larger bots accompanied them, that placed a visible concentration of Cybertronians at a distant location, which might draw trouble of other sorts. Sending Pretenders was presently out of the question; if their help was needed, their secret was out.
No good solution presented itself.
A small sizzle jerked Optimus out of his gloomy reflections. Hot Rod had paid his respects to the eternal flame, and given to it a small amount of his morning energon, saved for that purpose. Then he joined them, sitting near Bumblebee.
"I never knew there had been so many Prime Candidates over the years, or that so many didn't make it through Elevation after the Original Primes died." The glyphs Rodi sent with the vocalized words conveyed a deep respect for all those who had made the attempt, and for Optimus in particular.
His Elevation had been a transcendent experience that Optimus would not have traded for anything. Only his bonding had come close. But it had also been extremely painful, and incredibly dangerous. There were better ways to reach a state of transcendence, ways that did not include uncontrolled exposure to the arcane energies of the Allspark.
That information, however, was oathbound to a level of the priesthood which Hot Rod had not yet achieved. At this point, he knew only that the lack of the Matrix of Leadership was somehow responsible for the dangerous situation which had marked the vorn of its absence.
Respecting the oathbond, Optimus replied only, "We are very fortunate to have recovered the Matrix."
Sam asked, "I'm still kinda unclear on how a bot, or in my case a not-bot, gets chosen to be a Prime."
"Sam, when Prima was running things, he made sure that there was no political favoritism or even caste consciousness involved in the selection of Prime candidates. Every young mechanism who was found to carry the Sigil of the Primes was brought into the Palace for training. Predeterminism was involved in the decision to do things that way; the younglings so marked had no choice in the matter, as their elders felt they were destined to be Primes. They were taken from their cohorts to live in the Palace and trained in the Temple.
"Some of those candidates were very badly suited to the responsibility of being elevated, and some could not withstand the process of elevation psychologically; a few could not withstand it physically. I remind you of Liege Maximo, for one, and he wasn't the only Prime to fall during the Golden Age—only the most notorious after Megatronus, the Original Prime who became known as the Fallen.
"After the Original Six disappeared, the duty of finding new Prime Candidates fell to the Magnus and the priests, as well as to the healers who typically discovered the Sigil during youngling upgrades. This transfer of responsibilities took place in a time of increasingly strict interpretation of the caste system. Mecha among the elite who put stock in Functionism, believing that one's caste and the frame into which one was sparked determined one's destiny for the entirety of one's existence, began to question whether persons in the castes lower than themselves could truly be intended to be Primes. Therefore, Rodi, by the time you came along, no one was looking for candidates among the laboring castes. After the war began, when Sentinel and I were the only living Primes, and the Decepticons began targeting medics, there was no one left to look for any new Primes, even among the highest castes."
Hot Rod said, "Optimus...about those fallen Primes. How do I know that I'm not going to turn out to be one of them? Fighting, violence, that's all I know. I'm Wrecker-sparked and that's what I know how to be, a Wrecker, nothing more. I'm not stupid, but I'm not the brightest bulb in the box either. What is it about me that—" The young mech threw up his servos. "What if I'm horrible at it, and we find that out too late?"
Optimus said, "Those who fell were entirely mad. Early on, they showed desire for the power and prestige of their elevated position, Rodi. You are not mad, and I think that your very freedom from that desire sets you aside from them. Were you self-important and spoiled, I would have a great deal more concern about your fitness as a Prime than I now possess."
Rodi found his peds suddenly interesting, and blushed. Bumblebee tickled him.
Optimus noted this and felt himself smile, but continued to be the grownup. "As you said, you are not stupid, and a great gulf exists between stupidity and ignorance. The first has no cure, but the second is easily remedied by education. What you do not know, you can learn.
"Also, I submit to you that those who aspire to the leadership of the Wreckers must have many of the same qualities as a Prime—and must deal with a much more headstrong, fractious group of followers than the Cybertronian population as a whole. If you wish to know how someone Wrecker-sparked can be a good leader, then you could do much worse than to observe how Roadbuster and Bulkhead fulfill that obligation."
"Yes, Prime."
Sam said, "I don't know why they picked me either, Rodi. I'm not even Cybertronian. I don't get it."
Optimus smiled. "You are both very young, as have been all new Primes. We are not chosen for what we are, but for what we have the potential to become. We are given the opportunity to fully manifest that potential, and placed in a position where we are free to use it to benefit all the People. And I think Sam's Elevation is a clear sign to us that we are all of the People."
"Until all are one," Sam said softly. "The gods taking it in hand to bond a Prime and a Sidhe? It's another sign of the same thing."
"And picking a nobot like me, instead of some high-caste? Another sign that all means all?" Rodi asked thoughtfully.
The senior Prime's optics brightened as he regarded his young disciple. "I will not state unequivocally that either of those is a 'sign from Primus,' not without a great deal of meditation on the subject. But I would not be surprised by that knowledge, either. However, your caste of sparking will not be the whole of why you were Chosen, Rodi. Primus rarely does things for a sole reason."
Rodi relaxed, and they went on with the lesson.
Optimus discussed the wide variety of bots who had been chosen both as Primes and as Protectors; the others asked questions. The sun crept further into the Temple, and then began to recede.
"I don't wish you to think that you must become like me," Optimus said to them all in closing. "Just as Bee knows that he will not become a second Megatron, unless he suffers a radical realignment of personality. But Ratchet will not transplant the chips for that."
Bee chirped and whistled in amusement, and Sam laughed out loud.
Optimus smiled. "Rodi and Sam, you both know that you have gifts to bring to our people other than my own. Yours will develop as you do, mature with you. As we no longer have access to the knowledge of the priests in the Temple, all three of us will grope our way into the future, much as did the Original Six."
"So does that make us the Unoriginal Four?" Sam said, with a tired smile.
The incense smoke curled about in the still air, displaced in puffs when they laughed yet again.
Optimus smothered another grin. "Those Primes were very much individuals, and that diversity made them strong for half a million years. The Council that preceded me were also very different from one another. I hope to foster as much diversity as possible among our small remaining population, beginning with this nascent Council of Primes."
Rodi and Sam looked at each other, and laughed again. A Council of Primes? Them? Nah.
Optimus let the moment pass. They were young; younger than he would have preferred to saddle with this responsibility. But he could see no other way forward. He ended the lesson, and asked them all to meet again the next time Sam was at the base.
As the young people left the temple, he overheard Rodi challenge Bee to a race. They kept themselves to a civil (barely) speed until they were clear of the temple grounds, then they were off, taking the long way to the main entrance, by the north fence and then all along the base perimeter.
He smiled for their youth, and the things they had yet to learn.
Optimus stood and shook loose sand from his plating, then knelt at the flame.
::Show me the way, O Primus. Would a change to the way Prime Candidates are trained and selected for Elevation be pleasing to You? Should this not be a sacrifice freely given to You and to the People? Should not Your Primes desire to dedicate themselves to You? If I err, I beg of You, enlighten me.::
His spark seemed to settle into his chest. Optimus felt the brief presence of Sigma Prime, and the knowledge arrived that the former training system had been right for a time when the Quintesson slave coding was still active.
Then Nova Prime was there in the temple with him, and he had his answer: a simple sense of rightness and fairness and yes, and he would have sworn that for a brief moment, Nova's servo lay on his shoulder, offering comfort.
In an instant so short his chronometers could not register it, he was alone again.
Optimus grounded himself, and left the Temple.
-Sidhe Chronicles-
Later that day, Optimus was working at his desk when a knock on the human-sized door sounded. Diarwen, working on her translations, accepted a lift down to the floor, and answered it.
"Sam!" she said in delight. "Well come. Will you be having some tea?"
"Let me see if Optimus can spare some time first, Diarwen?"
The young human Prime looked tired, she thought, as her bondmate looked up from his desk and said, "Sam!" in the same tone she had used. "Of course I have time for you." He offered his palm.
Sam settled into the chair for human visitors. "Thanks, Optimus. I've got a problem you might have some insight on."
"I will of course share it, Sam. What is the problem?"
Sam found his hands interesting. After sufficient study of them, he raised his eyes to Optimus' optics, and said, "Before I was made a Prime, I wasn't especially religious by human standards. I knew that Bee had...religious feelings...toward a being called 'Primus,' but I didn't share them, and didn't know anything else about your beliefs. Then, in Egypt..."
"That must certainly have been startling to a young man of your background, yes," Optimus said calmly, folding his servos over his bellyplates.
"That's a mild word for it," Sam said, with a chuckle. "It was...puzzling. I changed fundamentally as a person in Egypt. I worked very hard in high school to get, and keep, my grades up. In college, I had no need to do that. It was exponentially easier, while the classes themselves were exponentially harder.
"You know the rest of that story. But, Optimus," the younger Prime said, looking again at his hands, "I still don't have any kind of relationship with Primus."
"One does not seem to be developing on its own?"
"No," Sam said. "When you talked about a novitiate, Optimus, what I felt was panic. I can't dedicate myself yet, not honestly, anyway."
"Sam, you are unique among my people, and among your own as well. I do not think you need to be concerned about your inability to dedicate yourself. You are being honest with both yourself and Primus about this. It is the mark of maturity to refrain from such a decision if you do not have the strong feeling it is right.
"If you can carve out twenty minutes a day, use them to meditate on Primus. I will have Diarwen send to you those texts she has been translating with Milestrina; that way, at least, you will have more information."
Diarwen said from her office, "Excuse me, Optimus, but I can have those printed out and ready to go in about twenty minutes."
To her amusement, both Primes said in unison, "Thank you, Lady Diarwen."
Optimus stood, and offered his palm to Sam. "Let us go for a drive, Sam. I wish to tell you a few things. One of them is what contact with Primus usually feels like."
End Part Thirty-Five