Optimus stepped out onto... not the cold metal floor that he was expecting, nor into the confused cacophony of questions that would plague the Autobots all evening. The grass was damp with dew frosting each blade, the green muted under the moonlight, and he knew if he looked around he'd find a bare patch of earth trampled by an impatient Dinobot lurking not far away.
"You changed the Bridge co-ordinates?" he asked, watching Airachnid press a hand to her forehelm with her back to him and the legs trembling.
"Don't act surprised about it, Optimus, you... you fragging imbecile!" She snapped around, fury like fireworks bursting on her faceplate. "What on Cybertron were you thinking, blurting out something like that!? Never mind whatever you've got Arcee or the rest of them thinking now-"
"Would you rather I just let the Decepticons overwhelm us where we stood?" As empathetic as he was, knowing he had no right to share the knowledge, the suspicion like a web of knives suspended perilously over his spark, it was hard to keep his tone under control. "I had to tell her something, Airachnid, else she wouldn't have left."
"And you think the best solution is to feed her some lie about me being someone I'm not?" she asked, everything in her body language accusing him.
"It is not a lie, Airachnid-" He thought he sounded certain of it, but she still threw his conviction back in his face with a scoff.
"Call it whatever you want, Optimus, but don't pretend that I'm anything like Elita, dead or alive. It's not fair... to either of us."
Optimus knew she was right about that, at least. And as he tried to accept that she heaved out her exhaustion in a sigh that stretched out for light years, marching over to a rock slammed down at the edge of the treeline and sagging down on it.
"That's not even the worst thing. Megatron… he knows. My only advantage over him is gone. My own fault, I know, but…" Her face was firmly hidden by the claws veiling it, and she gave no notice to Optimus kneeling down beside her.
"That doesn't change anything," he said quietly. "He can't possibly track you, not with the Ground Bridge disabled."
"But he won't stop trying," Airachnid insisted, practically gouging her claws into her helm. "He'll scour every inch of this planet for me, just so he can prove that no-one can run from him."
Optimus could believe Megatron being that determined, but whether he was that capable was something he thankfully doubted. "Every one of my Autobots have managed to hide from him for over twenty stellar cycles. He is not as perceptive as you might think," he told her, and her reluctant laugh at the thought of the mighty Decepticon warlord searching under rocks for Autobots lifted up his spark from those dark depths that were always waiting for him. Truth be told, he could feel them becoming lighter and shallower, ever since he saw the stone in her hands. Even the cruel reality of Megatron, with all secrets torn to pieces by now, he felt lighter than he could ever remember, as if he could float on clouds like a Seeker and visit Primus himself in the heavenly Allspark, just to thank him for this second chance.
With the echoing ping in his comm unit, he almost believed that was the god deciding to answer him for once. But no, it was just a signal that every Autobot capable of comming him was so desperate to reach him that their pings took several klicks to reach him all at once.
Airachnid must have heard the persistent chime from his unit. "Leave me if you must, Optimus. Don't let me keep you from putting out the fires you started." It was a subtle accusation, but a warranted one. If he hadn't turned his unit off on the Nemesis, he'd have been greeted with their voices, angry and bewildered, all clamouring for attention. And lulled by the near perpetual peace of the island, he was reluctant to face it even if he was prepared. So he only sent out pings in reply, a simple message showing he was still alive but in no mood to speak. He doubted he could defuse the situation he'd created in his current state of mind anyway.
But most of all... he just didn't want to be away from her. And after some thought, he decided to admit it.
"I am not sure if leaving you alone tonight would be wise."
Airachnid angled her helm around to show him quirked eyeridges. "I'll hardly be alone, Prime. But… we're both exhausted. I won't force you to leave if you'd rather stay." Even her legs seemed to sag, dangling limp from her back as she shoved herself onto her peds and wearily moved towards the trees.
"Where are you going?" Optimus asked, already making to follow.
"To check on Scorpia," she answered the obvious answer, still moving forwards.
"Before you go, Airachnid…" Optimus struggled to only walk after her, hesitant in dragging her into awkwardness all over again. But it was necessary, and the one thing he wouldn't try avoiding. "I said I would convince you of the truth, when we returned."
She stopped, and he mirrored her. Her legs chipped into the dirt as she sighed. "You're really not going to let this go, are you?" she asked.
"Not until we reach an agreement, whatever it may be." In better words, until they reached a truth they could both accept. And if that ended up with Optimus being wrong... then so be it.
Airachnid faced him slowly, optics dim but lovely in the morning mist. "In that case, it might be best to go somewhere more private."
"What could be more private than an island in an ocean lost among the stars?" Optimus asked, watching Airachnid's lips curl into a knowing smile.
"I have somewhere in mind."
xx
The trek up the mountain was well worth the view; in front of a gale-carved cave was a spear of rock jutting out over the stars, a bridge to the moon hanging low and bright over the ocean of trees below and the ghostly mist hanging over them. Beautiful as it was, Airachnid didn't see it often. The lofty heights, so close to the clouds and the endless possibilities space hiding behind them, only made her pine for her blades. Unlike a Seeker obsessed with speed, snapping sound barriers and the rush of wind flaking paint away, she could hover in one place for breems before she tired of the ever changing horizons stretched to all corners below her. Space was where she belonged, but the skies were often good enough for her. To perch herself in the clouds, a shadow over all life and out of Megatron's claws... to have that taken away from her by those same claws, being reminded of it was almost too much for her.
Still, she hoped the sight would impress Optimus. But it wouldn't distract him from what he wanted to say, the empty pleas and promises she could see coming from just one look at his optics.
So rather than wait for him to choose one, she decided to take control. "Do you care about me, Optimus?" she asked, and though he was jolted from his admiration he didn't need to think about his answer.
"Of course I do."
But she was shaking her helm, expecting the blind agreement. "No, you don't. You care about my role. Not the spark within it, just... who I'm supposed to be. A mother, a rogue... your dead sparkmate." She thought it would be easier than this, even refusing to meet his optics and see his spark breaking for herself, but the lump bubbling in her vocaliser refused to fade away. And her processor was blank, filled only with the imprint of his faceplate the moment he got the whole idea planted in his head. "If I really am her," she continued, "...How do I know you're not just still in love with her? That all I am is just a… cheap replacement for her?" She collapsed again, onto another hard seat of rock just within the cave, and she only saw Optimus' peds approaching her after a long klick of silence.
"After all this time..." He knelt before her, stones crunching under his plates, and his voice was low even with the echo of the cavern around them. "Every time I look at you, Airachnid, what do you think I see? A Decepticon? An enemy? A monster? No..." He lifted a hand up, tentatively slipping it under one of her own, digits achingly warm under her talons. "I see a beautiful femme, with a beautiful mind, who deserved so much better from the universe who changed her. My spark knew that long before my processor accepted it, and longer still before I had proof."
He sounded so sure of it, each word leaking coolant by itself, that she almost believed him. But she wouldn't have survived until now if she was that naive. "Whatever kind of light you see in me, Optimus, it isn't there. It's just a shadow of Elita... whatever's left of her." Her claws pulled out of his warm grasp, instantly chilling again as the breath of the heavens gathered around her, and they seemed to give her what words to say even as she choked on them. "The femme you fell in love with doesn't exist anymore. I'm all that's left, and I can't give you what you want. I'm sorry." She stood with his limp servo and all her guilt spilling out her lap, leaving him behind with only one thing stopping her from leaving; a soft trickle of words from Optimus' vocaliser.
"...I didn't know you were Elita when I fell in love with you."
Something shot up from the ground to root her in place, maybe Unicron's claws reaching up so high to tear her down into the Pit. That would have been preferable to facing Optimus with his helm inclined like a preacher before a god and his optics like shining pleas; beacons of his utter devotion to her, to Elita, to whoever she really was. But it was for her, even she couldn't deny that. "No matter if you are Elita or not... I love you, Airachnid. Despite the flaws, the history left behind you, everything that tells me I shouldn't. If anything, you are living proof that Decepticons can change. That peace is possible for our species. Above all... you've proven that I can still love. If you must look at my spark, carve its core from my chest to see that it is true, then I will not stop you. But please... do not think that I only love you for what you once were."
The space between them was bottomless, and he bowed like his spark was at her mercy, clutched in her shaking, twitching claws. Any denial she had left was eroded away, leaving her no choice but to accept that the leader of the Autobots, the last Prime, was in love with her. Not a femme from centuries ago, not whatever he'd fooled himself into thinking she was. Here was a mech who knew how many of his brethren she'd killed, who knew she'd carried the spawn of his archnemesis, and he was broken under the burden of his love.
With any other mech, Airachnid would have been proud of herself. With Optimus, all she wanted to do was show him how wrong he was. When she spoke her voice was so hushed, scared to make itself known, that she almost didn't recognise it. Maybe it was Elita was being resurrected after all this time. "And how long has this been for?" she asked, and by some miracle he managed to hear her.
"Longer than you would think," he answered, almost begging her to look at him, to see how brutally honest every confession was, how much the truth freed him. When she finally did, his servos were parted in one half of an embrace that she all but fell into, fusing into his arms and burying herself deep in the hearth of his spark, so close she could almost touch it through his chestplates. The envelope of warmth closed tight around her, the love bursting forth like a broken dam from the inferno humming away ceaseless under her helm, was unlike anything she'd ever felt across light years, across any lifetime she might have had, and she never wanted to leave it. Energon brought to a boil and dormant, almost extinct emotions roared so loud in her audios that she didn't hear herself sniffling, almost sobbing against him, didn't even feel the coolant dripping down her faceplate until Optimus tipped her chin upwards and pressed a gentle thumb against the tears. She closed her stinging optics, letting more fall freely under the lids, already knowing when to lean into him. The moon cast a behemoth's shadow over them joined together, lips pressed so gently that Airachnid almost thought she imagined it, almost expected to open her optics and wake up on the Nemesis with the whole stellar cycle nothing but a dream. But he was still there when they opened, still cradling her faceplate, still looking down at her with more love than she would have thought possible in the whole universe.
"Airachnid…" He whispered the moan against her again and set fire to her nodes, holding her closer and not leaving her mouth for a long time. Her fangs nipped softly, unsure of what to do with themselves, but her glossa fit perfectly against his. No mech, not even Megatron, had made her forget herself so utterly with just his mouth. He cupped her helm, stroking each crown with electric shocks arcing through her, landing warm palms on her neck and further down still, past the twitching mess of her legs and, unless she was just imagining, inching under her aft to lift her up and let her melt into him. She wasn't sure when she started moaning, voicing the sharp pangs crashing into her spark, but once they began they couldn't stop, not even when Optimus pulled back and left the air simmering in every tiny gap between them.
"I...I won't ask you to do anything you're not comfortable wi-" It wasn't what she was expecting from him, from any mech, but she was so desperate to feel him again she didn't need to hear all of it, smothering his lips with her claws around the shuddering plates of his helm. Being with him, here in the cradle of his spark, was the closest she felt to comfort ever since she left the Decepticons. She'd been a mother for so long, she'd forgotten what it meant to simply be a femme with needs that consumed her, ignited every diode and made her spark a wildfire bursting from her chest.
Optimus must have felt it, the static charge rapidly building between them and the heat their cooling fans barely managed to keep up with, as he caressed her; digits gliding over her armour seams and masterfully teasing the clasps holding the plates to her sweating protoform. She wouldn't have minded if he just tore them off, almost wanted him to, writhing in his lap against the bulge of his codpiece. Instinct and desire and all primal things in her processor drowned out everything else, everything that didn't matter, and all she cared about was basking in how much he loved her.
Despite his clogged vents heaving against her, codpiece straining between his legs, Optimus broke the kiss one last time to ask her, "Are you sure you want this?"
It was as if he was in as much disbelief as herself, glued together with an impossible love that wouldn't have survived only a few vorns prior. Airachnid pressed her forehelm to his chin, every plate pounding against each other, and let her body speak for her, let him feel how much she ached for him. "I know I do, Optimus. Please..."
It was hard to see exactly what was happening in his optics even as she lost herself in them, but they flared for a nanoklick before he closed the blue fires over and pressed his lips to her neck, soft murmurs against the cables contrasting the hard pulse between them. And the thrust inside her was so jarring, so sudden and full of need that her fangs cut her lips as she whimpered.
"Am I hurting you?" Optimus asked instantly, frozen against her.
She shook her helm with shaky vents, trying to regain some kind of control over herself even as she collapsed around him. "No, it's… just been a while. Keep going..." And he obliged, oh so slowly sliding into her, moaning and clenching and flexing as he held her, and she wondered how the Pit she'd lived without this until now. His mouth soothed every inch of her, both body and spark, while she pushed herself up in a steady riding rhythm and groaned loud enough for the whole planet to hear and envy. It was more than interface, more than just the spill of fluids from a mech trapped in her web. Pleasure ran like an overloaded current between them both, a link that said 'I love you. I want to make you feel like this'. Only one thing in the universe could have joined them together more...
"Wait… wait, Optimus... " Airachnid held tight onto his waist, gasping long after he listened and brought himself to an aching pause.
"Worried about it ending too soon?" he asked heavily, voice almost as thick as his cord, and she almost smacked him for that almost-smug tone it had, knowing full well how good he felt to her, how the breems they spent blended and faded away into nothing more than the moon getting lower and lower behind them. She didn't want to break that spell, yet... if she was right, it had to be done. Just as he knew that he had to tell her about Elita, however painful it would have been.
"If… I am Elita… her memories would still be in my spark, wouldn't they?" She had to speak slowly, her vocaliser unused to anything more than a moan and whine of his name by now. But even at the mention of the dead femme, the glaze of lust masking his optics dropped away. And when he realised what she was suggesting, she thought he was going to peel himself away from her.
"We don't have to merge, Airachnid, not... if you don't want to." He was cradling her helm again, forcing her to know how sincere he was, but she'd already made her decision.
"I do, Optimus. I want to… we both need to know for sure. Please…" Her helm was against his chest, hovering over the hammer beat of his spark, and she heard the plates over it whirring before they started to part. The light that spilled from the gaps was blinding enough, as if the entire Allspark was contained within him, but the chamber itself was a planet-bound supernova of pure white and the faintest, brightest blue that filled his optics. The core was a milky swirl, a galaxy with glowing arms brimming with stars and wisdom and everything that made a Prime who he was. And the fabled Matrix, gilded gold embedded with something so ancient she couldn't think of what to name it, filtered its light through like a prism.
Somehow it was harder to bear her own now than it was earlier that day, knowing how feeble it was when compared to his. When her faint violet glow surfaced, inexplicably baring the faint scratch of his name, the white of his spark seemed to seep through her casing and strike at the core of her existence, harder than any passionate kiss or rough thrust against her.
"Are you ready?" Optimus asked, still holding her helm so gently, and she nodded against his digits even as doubts caught up to her. His chamber opened first, the Matrix itself splitting apart, and the burst of light within him was somehow even brighter. And then her own, the cage of her broken spark wrenched apart with a thrumming release. It was his spark that dangled on a thin line between them, the outer umbra wisping out to touch her own. Only the fact they were still joined together, that he was moving inside her again, stopped her from flinching, even as the core of that bright orb flew out and swallowed her own whole.
And she, Elita One, remembered everything all at once.
xx
Not only did we finally reach the plot twist, we also got to doin the do not long after. I'm on a roll.
I had to slightly censor the sex scene in accordance with FF's content rules, but the spark bonding during it is a bit of a plot point in the next chapter so there was no real way to avoid showing some of it. Everything's been left untouched on AO3 if anyone's curious though.
