A/N: ...Yeah. It's not going to be easy for these two, either. Nothing is free, especially not peace.

Present

Although all charge-berths would transform in order to accommodate the varying bumps and kibble of the Cybertronians who would occupy them, it was customary to lie flat on one's back. It was simpler that way, easy and quick.

And yet Elita lay curled on her side, her hands folded together close against her chest, her bent knees pulled up tightly. As he took in what he saw, Prime flinched. His lifelong bondmate looked lost, wounded, and alone.

He hadn't seen her like this since they'd first been reformatted by the courtesy of Alpha Trion. She had not responded well to such a change, to such a cataclysmic rebirth.

He stepped into the room, and let the door slide shut behind him, the soft swish of its bearings blending with his own soft-vented sigh of acceptance. He knew full-well the pains of reformation. Even Cybertron itself had suffered turmoil at the onset of the Ceasefire. And here was Elita now, trying to fit in to a family that had been reformed around her without her consent.

It was so often this way – willing or no she would be handed an unexpected set of circumstances: a new body and a new role as the bondmate of the Prime... a few million years alone upon a dying planet, without knowledge of that bondmate's whereabouts... the addition of her greatest enemy into her bondmate's spark... And yet, she seldom said a word about it. She curled alone in a dark room instead. His spark constricted as he looked down at her, at this unguarded expression of honest pain which she would never have revealed while online.

He checked the charge berth's timer: 2.5 breems left before reboot. He checked his schedule: he was running late for a command meeting with the top lieutenants of both factions (and of course Megatron) in half a breem. After that, he (or at least, his trailer) was needed to help move trusses for a new bridge to the construction site at the city's outer rim. The thought distracted him for just a moment, and his miled a little to himself. He and Megatron had built a lot of bridges in the past few quartex, and not just figuratively. The Co-Commanders both felt it was vital to the integration project not to have the orbits of the city-states remain so isolated from each other. So far, the bi-faction construction effort in itself was working nearly as well as the new bridges were in keeping down rebellion.

Prime's glance fell back to his bondmate; and he blinked. Here was another bridge that needed shoring up – needed it right now. He commed to Prowl, making his apologies. There were some duties that ought not to wait a moment longer.

With care, the Prime lay down beside the femme he'd loved as long as he remembered. It wasn't easy; berths were narrow: even the largest were designed to hold only a single bot. But then, he had a bit of practice at this sort of thing. He lifted her head gently, and stretched out his left arm beneath her neck, so that her helm could rest upon it, against his shoulder. Then he wrapped his right arm around her middle, and drew her in to him. His bent knees fitted perfectly beneath hers on the berth.

They'd always fit together, even before the reformatting of their bodies. Back then, when things had seemed so simple, so safe, so serene, they'd recharged in each others arms because the could, because they fit, because they loved being together. One of Elita's greatest fears, as she'd surveyed the taller, grander Optimus Prime where once Orion Pax had once stood, was that she would no longer fit into his arms so perfectly. He'd proved her wrong, of course. And for his part, he'd clung to her. She'd always been his bulwark, his mainstay.

Over the course of ages, Prime had sometimes taken criticism for this habit. It was foolish, he was told, to take two leading officers out of circulation at the same time. What if there was an emergency? But Prowl, newly wise at the high cost of a lost bondmate, had deflected the objections with a word. And Optimus had insisted that some things were worth taking risks for. Elita was important; and although there would be many times when they would be apart for quartex, for vorns, for eons, they would always come back into each other's arms, come back into a single curl upon a single berth, where they would recombine into the singularity that was Orion and Ariel.

A singularity, that is, until Megatron had come along.

Now they were three. And Optimus spent much of his time with his new bond-brother, helping, hoping, even holding the Decepticon as he floundered and fought his secret battles in this unexpected bond. It wasn't that he'd forgotten Elita. It was that Megatron's need for him was obvious, immediate, and un-ignorable – accompanied as it often was by bouts of either loud profanity or punching holes in things.

Elita's need was as it always had been: an ever-present undercurrent pulling beneath everything she did.

But perhaps the current has grown stronger of late, Prime realized, as he allowed himself to sink into the blissful nearness of her. So often now, he felt himself pulled in two different directions, buffeted by opposing wills. In some ways he had drawn inward, making unconscious defence in response to those demands. But all Elita probably felt was that her anchor had slipped in its moorings, had perhaps even been tethered to another ship, and she was being dragged across the universal ocean to a destination she did not intend.

Optimus checked on his chronometer, anticipating her awakening. This time, he swore, he would be here for her, would show her he was not going to leave her, show her that for all the recent complications, he was still the same young mech who'd fallen in love with her all those uncounted ages ago.

He waited, with his arms around her tightly, for the quiet ping that signaled the charge-end, and for the well-known hum of life that would course through Elita's frame, bringing it back online and into life.

The moment, when it came, was not at all what he'd expected.

She came to with a gasp. Wrapped in his strong arms, Elita went rigid. And from her spark there radiated such strong fear that even Optimus, who tended to be bumbling in such abstract matters as energy, could sense it. She gave a muffled cry of terror – "Optimus!"

And then her entire frame fell slack, and she sank against him with a little laughing sob of pain.

"What's wrong?" he asked, distressed.

It was a moment – a long moment – before Elita would reply.

"Your energy has changed since your spark-bond," she said. "I thought-"

And he could almost hear the ache as each carefully-chosen word was pushed, resisting, from her vocalizer.

"When I came to, I thought that you were Megatron."

Postscript: There will be more to this. I won't just leave them there. I know in some ways it is mean to leave this as such a punch-in-the-gut cliffhanger. But to just swim right on into the resolution would cheapen the real hardship that Elita's going through.