I know I said like, 5 years ago now that I was completely done with Promise. But a few weeks back I received a review (because holy moly new people are STILL reading that old thing? wild) that lamented over Arcee and Airachnid never receiving proper closure or reconciliation. And I agreed with them. So here we are.

xx

Arcee was supposed to be leaving Cybertron in the next few breems. Well, she was supposed to be leaving in the next few days, but she seemed to have pushed the departure forward so she could leave without having to say goodbye to Optimus. Smokescreen would be joining her, as well as Chromia and Ironhide, to help with securing ancient Autobot outposts and bringing their sentries back home.

But she was the only one of the team who, at the end of their mission, wouldn't be returning.

Airachnid had considered leaving Cybertron herself, not so long ago. She'd prepared for it. But Arcee was the one who was brave enough to actually go through with it. Or maybe she was just too disgusted at any other option to even entertain them as options.

The real reason Airachnid had stayed (other than Optimus trying so hard to make her stay) was because, in the end, she knew she couldn't run from herself. But Arcee could, and she was wasting no time in doing so. She'd always been smart like that.

Once she was off the planet, she'd make herself very difficult to find. She wanted to seek out what was left of the Decepticons on her own terms, and she wanted to deal with them in whatever way she thought was necessary. Everyone knew that was what would happen, especially Optimus.

Yet he didn't stop her from going. The war was now only a bad dream for those who had survived it, but this fact had not lightened his guard nor eased his burden as Prime of his people. The Decepticons had to be destroyed. Megatron's death was only the first, most vital step in ensuring that goal. If they waited too long, if they allowed those still loyal to find each other and band together under a new lie of 'resisting Autobot tyranny', then the cycle of war would start all over again and the deaths they'd mourned would have been for nothing.

Megatron had named himself after a Prime, after all. Just as Megatronus' name and crimes had lived on through him, his own infamy could easily live on through another. They still hadn't found Starscream's body. And Soundwave…

Well. Airachnid knew that wherever Soundwave had gone, he'd never be found there. Which was a small, if hypocritical, mercy on her mind. But hypocrisy was hardly the worst of her sins.

"You know this isn't wise, Airachnid."

Dreadwing's voice brought her out of her visions of the Pit waiting for her; he stood next to her, in the shelter of the makeshift storage room built for the equally makeshift starport on the Hydrax Plateau, while on the landing platform outside Chromia and Ironhide were making their preparations to leave.

Chromia was her best friend, the one she'd known before she even met Orion... yet Airachnid made herself stay out of sight. Most of the Autobots like Chromia called her Elita One now, even those who had known her as a Decepticon on Earth. Few still called her Airachnid, and she suspected those few meant it as an insult.

Not Dreadwing, though. He was also part of a very, very few people who she didn't think wanted her dead. They both knew what it was like to have a spark split in two. They both sought safety and peace amongst those who hated them. She had thought he might be one to take to the skies and never return as well, but Megatron's demise seemed to scrap all his plans to leave Autobots and Decepticons alike far behind (if he ever had any to begin with).

"It's not a matter of being wise," Knockout weighed in on Airachnid's other side, as he went over his datapad's checklist of medical supplies for the Autobot's journey. "More like being downright suicidal..."

Airachnid had only learned of Knockout's defection after Megatron's blood had been cleansed from her hands. He'd proven his loyalty during that final battle against Trypticon, racing to activate the Omega Lock with Smokescreen… but the fact that he'd waited until all was lost on Megatron's side was not something anyone would easily overlook. So he tended to linger near Dreadwing and Airachnid- because no one else wanted anything to do with him if they weren't grievously injured, and because the two bots had no right to reject someone who'd also been caught on the wrong side of the war.

So Airachnid had two witnesses for when she finally mustered the courage to approach Arcee, who was double-checking the inventory of supplies that were being loaded onboard the ship.

(Wheeljack had offered his precious Jackhammer for use; but it was crowded enough with only two bots onboard, let alone four. And he'd already started converting it into a suitable living space for his daughter Strongarm, insisting that "she'd grow into the space" once it was finished even though she was still barely older than Scorpia).

Arcee hadn't noticed she was being watched, of course. Even if she turned around, the angle of the setting sun would blind her vision and manage to mask the presence of the ex-Cons so close by. Looking at her from across the safe distance, Airachnid couldn't help but notice the faintest smile on her mouth. It was the first time in hundreds of years that she'd seen such a thing on Arcee's face. The Autobot was happy to be going. And who could blame her?

So now Airachnid felt even worse about soon ruining her momentary joy. But...

"It has to be done." She inhaled so that her vocaliser wouldn't dare rise above a whisper. "Otherwise, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. And I have more than enough regrets as it is."

The EM fields at both sides of her let out a brief and identical pulse. Regret was a feeling that all three of them knew very intimately.

"Just… try not to provoke her," Knockout advised, as if he was really doing Airachnid a favor letting her know something so obvious. He was the one who'd told her (if unintentionally) that the Autobot team would be leaving sooner than first thought. He had to have known this was what would happen- Airachnid's last chance to ever speak to Arcee. Or maybe he was still used to the Airachnid who cared more about killing than talking. He'd known that one for much longer.

"If she doesn't try to kill me on sight," Airachnid said in despondent deadpan, flexing the rods of her legs in anticipation of using them to flee, "I think I'll be fine."

She waited until Chromia was nowhere to be seen. Confronting one friend would be difficult enough without having another witnessing it.

Well. Arcee wasn't a friend. And neither was Chromia. They were Elita's friends, not hers. Just because she remembered all the good times didn't mean she was welcome to them. Despite how Chromia had so kindly tried to make her think otherwise.

"Good luck." Dreadwing's notion of support made Airachnid pause, only for a nanoklick, before she forced herself to clear the distance between the safety of the building and Arcee.

She didn't turn around, but Airachnid could tell when she had sensed her arrival. Her EM field was like a minefield of misfiring electric coils, a hissing wall of sheer angry force. As if she could push Airachnid away with nothing but her field, and she was certainly trying to.

"I thought Optimus was going to Praxus to deal with the Insecticon purge." You could hear the effort in her vocaliser, from amplifying her systems so much and from trying not to turn around. It was like listening to someone fighting off a Cortical Psychic Patch when it was already plugged in.

"He is," Airachnid answered, recalling how, a few days ago, she'd helped lure the worst of the Praxus hive over to Kaon for the Dinobot reconstruction team to deal with. "I chose not to join him this time."

She'd also left Scorpia in the care of the medics and Bumblebee, and Wheeljack had offered to bring Strongarm to keep her company. Her daughter was growing bigger every day, so much so that Airachnid couldn't carry her as she used to. Soon she'd grow into her first alt-mode. If they were still at war, she might have been expected to start fighting at that point. Even with her brittle form.

But Airachnid was training herself not to think about things like that anymore.

"You just couldn't let me leave in peace, could you?" Arcee had used up her strength already, as her helm sagged over her shoulder in betrayal of how much she wanted to pretend Airachnid wasn't there standing behind her. "We'd done so well, managing to avoid each other every day, and you just had to go and break the streak with breems to spare."

This was indeed the first time they'd been face-to-face (well, face-to-back) since the end of the war. Everyone had been busy rebuilding Cybertron, since the Omega Lock could only repair so much damage by itself. The Dinobots had been put to hard work constructing and repairing and hauling materials for the most essential buildings; after the Hydrax starport was up and running, they'd joined the returning Wreckers with fixing Iacon's infrastructure. Tyger Pax would be next on the to-do list, then Crystal City and Praxus and so on…

(There was no word on when work would start in restoring Kaon, or any of the other cities on that side of the planet. Those places were where the worst domestic fighting took place. Some thought that Megatron's ghost still wandered Kaon's streets. Airachnid wondered if that was why he hadn't shown up in any of her nightmares).

With everyone so occupied, there hadn't been much time for socialising even between friends. Dreadwing's and Knockout's tales of defection couldn't afford to be deeply questioned because their help was too valuable to turn away. As for Airachnid… Optimus had named her as Elita One. And no Autobot would dare question a Prime's choice in sparkmate, especially not one he'd thought he'd lost.

(But he had lost her).

No Autobot except Arcee.

(Who wouldn't be an Autobot for much longer).

The fact was, Airachnid didn't even have the time to try and actively avoid Arcee. But she always announced when she'd be attending meetings, where she'd be going with or without Optimus. So if anyone wanted to stay away from her, they knew where to stay away from. She'd just assumed that Arcee had paid attention.

"I wasn't avoiding you, Arcee," Airachnid told her, as if that was really something Arcee would be offended by. "I just made it easier for you to avoid me."

"Am I supposed to take that as proof that you can show mercy?" Arcee spat that word out, as if it was something vile bubbling in her throat. Airachnid remembered tasting her own venom for the first time, how it numbed her glossa just as it started to explode with agony. That was the only time she'd known what her victims would feel for centuries after. The look on Arcee's face, though it was still half-hidden, had reminded her of all that. The Autobot would have hated the comparison.

"What do you want, Airachnid?" she sighed, still snarling above the bile in her vocaliser. "Just tell me what it will take to get you to leave."

So there it was. The skin-deep anger phase was over, and now the pain was showing through her old scars. This would be the worst part of the ordeal.

"You won't believe me if I say I came to wish you farewell," Airachnid said.

"Obviously not."

"And you won't believe me if I say I've come to apologise."

Arcee scoffed, though for a moment Airachnid thought she really would spit something this time.

"If you were going to do something stupid like that," she said, "you've have done it already."

According to Optimus, Primus had apparently already apologised to her. But not even He could erase everything Airachnid had done.

"And you would have ripped my legs off for thinking something stupid like that would fix anything," the spider added, even as her legs twitched at the suggestion. Losing just two of them had been painful enough… but that was more or less what she deserved. Definitely less than more.

"I don't play with the people I want dead," Arcee informed her, twitching her helm in her direction but still refusing to turn fully. "I just shoot them to get it over with."

Airachnid wondered if she'd stick to that code when there was no-one around to watch her. But that wasn't the main question on her mind.

"So why haven't you shot me?" she asked.

"Because I don't want you dead. I want you to not exist. But I can't do anything about that."

"And neither can I," Airachnid said with equal regret.

"And that's why you're here, torturing me all over again."

"That wasn't my intention."

It was the first sign of empathy, guilt, sorrow, whatever you wanted to call it, that Airachnid had dared to let slip through. And it made Arcee spin on her heel as she deployed her blade, finally facing the spider in a flash of steel.

"So what is it?! What the frag do you want?!"

Airachnid had been expecting to find the blade held up to her neck, and she'd flinched in anticipation. But instead Arcee kept her trembling servo by her side, holding herself back just long enough to hear Airachnid's answer. If it was a wrong answer, she could just slice her head off in a sparkbeat. Somehow that gave Airachnid some comfort as she started to speak.

"I wanted to tell you that you were right."

Arcee blinked, twice and then thrice, as her shoulders dropped ever so slightly. Her EM field had recharged from its previous assault, and now it let out cautious arcs in the sizzling air. She was, somehow, calming down.

"About what?" she asked.

And Airachnid realised she'd been wrong about two things now. This was the hardest part of the ordeal; having to admit her greatest mistake to the one who had known it all along.

"...I'm not Elita One," she said, only just stopping herself from flinching from the sound of the stolen name. "There is no Elita One. Because the one that everyone seems to remember so fondly never really existed. That's why they accepted me so readily. They didn't know her well enough. They couldn't remember who she was supposed to be. Elita is not a person- she was never anything more than a faint memory."

When Airachnid had realised it for herself, she'd found it reassuring at first. There were no real expectations of her, nothing more than what she was already willing to do to rebuild her home. In a rare moment of spare time she'd checked the war archives, the records created from everyone's collective databanks and painfully cross-referenced and corroborated by only the most diligent surviving Autobots. The war had begun in 7B 862M 9053 (seven billion, eight hundred and sixty two million, and nine thousand plus stellar cycles since the birth of the universe). Elita had been born not long before then (maybe some million years before, though there was no way for her to know for sure), then she was reported dead on Archa Seven in 8B 230M 390235.

On the Cybertronian calendar, it was now 13B 77M 592045.

She'd spent five billion years as Airachnid. Elita had been considered dead for far longer than she'd ever been alive for. And Cybertronians, despite how their lifespans could stretch into infinity with the right maintenance, could only fit so many memories into their databanks. Optimus remembered Elita because she'd been in his spark, where the permanent memories for both instincts and love were forever etched. Ratchet had once spent many breems fixing her injuries, so she among other regular patients would be lodged deep within his banks (though he was on Earth now, enjoying his well-earned retirement).

But everyone else, even others she'd been so close to, only had whatever recollections they thought were worth preserving in the heat of wartime; where tactics and strategies and millions of witnessed battles and deaths would quickly crowd out anything not essential to survival or sanity. They would remember family, and closest friends, and what they were fighting for. They would remember their Prime.

But their Prime's sparkmate was not someone they'd make effort to keep in their memories. They might recall that a tragedy happened on Archa Seven, that their Prime had made sacrifices for the war just as they had done. Nothing more than that.

Not even Chromia seemed to remember her well enough to notice everything that was wrong.

No, the only one who seemed to remember Elita, to feel the true sting of her absence in the presence of her replacement, was Arcee.

"It's worse than that." Arcee spoke through clenched denta, knowing full well the burden of her memories for herself. "They never knew Elita, and they never knew what kind of bot had come along to take her place. The one who had happily killed their friends, mutilated whole species as a side hobby, but because you were at the right place to finish off Megatron, because you got yourself a family of your own, suddenly everyone loves you. It makes me sick. Do you understand, Airachnid? It makes me fragging sick!"

She stepped forward, just once, as Airachnid stepped back, but the fluid from her furiously hating snarls still hit Airachnid's cheek. It was only coolant and energon and oil and the other miscellania that kept a Cybertronian online, but it was full of her words and it stung just as much as Airachnid's own acid. She didn't dare wipe it away.

"Would you believe me if I told you I'd done far worse to Decepticons?" she asked, though she was so quiet that a strong wind could have easily whisked her voice away. But there was no wind, no rain on Cybertron. There was nothing to come between the two femmes if one of them truly tried to kill the other.

"I can very easily believe that," Arcee hissed, "and it doesn't change anything." Her winglets were upright and flared like warning signs, because that was exactly what they were. People knew not to go near her if she was looking like that. The only one who could get away with even talking to her in that state was Elita.

How ironic it now all was. Airachnid would have laughed if she'd thought she would have survived it.

"When you've killed as many people as I have, Arcee," she said, carefully appraising Arcee's blades rather than her face and the hatred held within it, "you reach a point where you know that they won't be confronting you in the Allspark. You know you'll never see them again. In that way, there's nothing to be scared of. It's only the guilt that can truly hurt you. And I didn't feel that guilt, I couldn't feel it until…"

Airachnid didn't know why she struggled to finish the sentence. She only knew the reason was something to do with Arcee, because she managed to finish it for her.

"Until you remembered what it was like to have a spark." Arcee's servos were fully limp for the first time; though the edge of her blades still caught the stubborn light of the setting sun as a stark reminder, and her telltale winglets didn't relent at all.

"There are times that I'd like to rip it from my chest just as badly as you do," Airachnid told her.

"That's one thing we can agree on, then."

"We can both agree that you'll never forgive me, as well."

"Were you expecting me to?"

"Of course not."

"Of course not!" Arcee almost sounded like she was laughing as she exclaimed, but laughing and crying were almost the same sound when you tried to hide them. "Because let me ask you just one question, Airachnid, one question that I've been thinking over for a lot longer than you have…"

She looked at the ground, the dust laid thick between them, before she stepped over it and looked into Airachnid's optics.

"Did anyone make you kill Tailgate?"

Airachnid had been expecting to hear his name at some point. But she still hadn't been able to prepare for it. When she tried to remember Tailgate, all she ever saw was his death. That was the one memory her spider self had deemed worth keeping, just as her spider self had deemed that he had to die.

"No," she admitted. "I did it because, at the time, I couldn't think of doing anything else."

Arcee made a sound that blew air through her vents; she'd known she was right, but she took no satisfaction from it. "Because all you wanted to do was make us suffer. It was never about the information we carried. It was never an interrogation to you. Even if we'd told you everything, you'd have still killed us."

Airachnid wouldn't have had any other option. To the Decepticons, an Autobot that wouldn't defect or play informant was a useless one.

"And that was why you said nothing," the spider said. "And that was why I had to delay that inevitable death for as long as possible. You did your job. I did mine."

And it was as simple as that. It always had been. But, even as she said it, she was still expecting to feel her voice spill out from a fresh line cut out from her throat.

Arcee didn't kill her. She didn't hold the blade to her head. She didn't move at all. She seemed to be frozen, as if her motors were lagging behind her processor. As if she was daring Airachnid to try and strike first.

When she eventually did move, she took several quick steps back as if her EM was suddenly repelling her away.

"Dreadwing had told me something like that before," Arcee told her, though her seething around his name was nothing compared to the disgust that saying Airachnid's name made her show through. "At the time, I'd been too exhausted to argue with him. I'd even almost believed him. So since it's from your own mouth this time, let me understand it fully; you're saying it was our fault that you tortured us? That you… that you murdered him?"

Arcee couldn't hide a sob that came from the word. Airachnid wanted to pretend not to hear it. For all her time as a Decepticon and beyond, she had never understood the difference between killing and murder. Two words for the same thing, what a waste. But she knew better now, with the aid and curse of two minds forced into one. Killing could be necessary, if there is no other way to ensure peace. Murder, by definition, could never be.

Airachnid had killed Megatron, and she had murdered Tailgate. Him, and countless others. She remembered their faces, but not their names. She wished she could remember their names.

"You both carried the Autobot emblem," she told Arcee, only telling her what she already knew and hating herself for saying it out loud. "You knew what the risks were."

'I taught you those risks myself,' Elita's foreign voice echoed in her head.

"You knew there were people like me out there."

'You knew there was only one way the war would end with the Autobots; with you and your friends alive or dead.'

No one had forced Airachnid to kill Tailgate. But no one had forced him and Arcee to become Autobots. They all paid their price in the end.

Arcee was smart. She knew that. She would have hated it, just as she hated Airachnid, but she still knew it was true. She was shaking, trying to contain her old and fresh fury, finally pulling her blades back into her arms. If she'd kept them out any longer, she likely wouldn't have been able to stop herself from using them.

"No…" Arcee inhaled, but each jagged breath was lost as it reached her mouth. "I didn't expect anyone like you."

Airachnid struggled to stay standing still, rooting herself to the ground with her legs just to spare herself. "Then obviously I failed as a mentor."

'My worst failure of all,' Elita scolded from light years away.

"That's the worst part, you know," Arcee spat. "Realising not that you were Elita all along, but that… that Elita was you all along."

"Was she really?" Still holding herself into the ground, Airachnid couldn't mask a sincere curiosity that threatened to overtake her. Arcee had known Elita and, unlike Optimus, her optics weren't rose-tinted and her memory banks weren't biased and corrupted by a spark bond. She was the last living link to the femme that never existed.

"She must have been," Arcee insisted. "Because she's standing right before me, and everything I recognise makes me want to tear my optics out. Because… because Optimus still chose you. He still recognised you, and he knew Elita, and… and she must have been as bad as you for him to not even care about everyone you killed."

Airachnid almost corrected her- she didn't kill everyone, she murdered them. Arcee knew the difference better than anyone, so she made a more important correction while she still had the chance.

"He did care."

"Well it didn't fragging look like he did!"

Arcee grabbed Airachnid's shoulders, her digits digging into the plating like she hoped to claw through to the Airachnid could do nothing; not with her back legs lodged into the ground, not with the knowledge that she was getting what she deserved. It was the first time anyone had touched her, anyone other than Optimus or Scorpia, since her last battle with Megatron. People didn't want to lay anything more than optics on her, as if they knew that if they looked below the surface of their new Elita One they'd know that she was nothing but a lie.

Arcee had started shaking her, but it was a weary effort that she gave up after only some nanoklicks. She knew it wouldn't hurt her, and it wouldn't make her say anything differently. She just had to do something other than stand and stare and seethe. And what better target than the one who had made her like this in the first place?

"So who are you truly angry at, Arcee?" Airachnid asked, softly only because Arcee's head was hanging bowed and limp right in front of her. "Me, or him?"

Arcee still held onto her shoulders, a vice grip on the fragile joint.

"...You," she hissed, lifting her helm up with only the force of her burning optics. "It'll always be you. Elita."

The name was a curse in her mouth, and it was the only time Airachnid actually felt like the name suited her. She had joined the ranks of Unicron and Megatronus of being unspeakable for her crimes.

What an honor.

"Hey, Cee...?" Smokescreen's voice was a distant echo, but he was only standing some feet away when Arcee finally let go of Airachnid.

"You... got everything you need?" Smokescreen looked between the two femmes, only now registering that he'd just likely averted a bloodbath with his arrival. "Ironhide's itchin' to get in the sky."

Airachnid briefly glanced aside to make sure Ironhide and Chromia weren't also nearby, while Arcee stared at her peds.

"Yeah. I've… I've got everything onboard," she said. "I'll see you up there."

Smokescreen nodded, but when he turned to face Airachnid his face fell instantly. He was young, someone who only knew of Elita from secondhand half-remembered stories. He'd heard stories about Airachnid too, which was how he knew that Arcee shouldn't have been anywhere near her. Even then, he had no idea how dangerous she really was, and she couldn't help but like him for that.

"So I'll… see you when we get back then, Airachnid," he said, trailing off as if he wanted to say more that couldn't be said in front of others. "Tell Optimus I'm sorry I couldn't say bye."

He left the two of them behind as he retreated to the safety of the ship, while Airachnid prayed that Chromia would stay inside it. Whatever was about to happen now wasn't something she wanted her, or anyone, to see.

"Well?" Arcee snapped, though the force behind her vocaliser was failing. "Disappointed I didn't give you an excuse to hurt me one last time?"

Her voice was thick. She was already in pain. Airachnid had never needed an excuse to make such things worse. Now, she didn't want one.

"I've hurt you enough for one lifetime, Arcee," she said, finally releasing herself from her tethers in the steel under her feet. "I'll be gone before takeoff."

In fact, she would be gone in that moment. She'd done what had to be done. She'd spoken her words, weathered Arcee's storm, even managed to survive it. And she'd finally answered her most burning question left over from the fires of war;

Arcee would never forgive her. Knowing that as certainty, now Airachnid could start to accept it.

And now Arcee could accept that Elita One she'd known was never coming back for her. Airachnid hoped that, at least. She hoped…

As she was walking away, she turned to face Arcee one last time. The sun was almost gone below the horizon, but there was just enough of it left to illuminate not the edge of blades but the edges of her optics, as coolant began to gather there.

"I hope you find your peace somewhere out there," Airachnid told her. "Wherever you can find it."

Arcee heard her. She didn't look at her, didn't even move to clear her optics.

"...And I hope we never meet again," she choked out. Airachnid had to close her optics, so that hers didn't start dripping as well.

"For your sake, I hope that too."

Those were Elita One's last words to her first daughter. Arcee left Cybertron at sunset, and Airachnid kept her promise to not watch her leave. When Optimus returned from Praxus, he'd been saddened that he'd missed the chance to say farewell.

"But I'm sure Arcee had her reasons for leaving swiftly," he said with a sigh in the moonlight. "No matter. I'll see her again when the others return."

Airachnid then realised that, of all the Autobots, Optimus was the only one Arcee hadn't told that she wouldn't be coming back.

Perhaps Elita had been a mentor after all, then.