Broken Circle
by Phantom

Chapter Two

Optimus groaned as his second-in-command deposited a small pile of data pads on his desk. "So how many attacks have there been so far?"

"Five," the young Prime said grimly, drawing up a chair in front of the desk. "Three bombings and two break-ins. Plus a few security violations here and there. I just wish I knew what they wanted!"

Optimus frowned behind his mask as he glanced briefly at each pad. Another supply depot had been hit, their Energon storage facility raided, and some crucial files had been deleted, altered, or simply perused. "And this mysterious symbol has been found at each scene?"

"That's right." Rodimus nodded. "I thought that it could possibly be caused by the explosion at the first site, but it's shown up at every subsequent attack. It has to symbolize something. But what?"

"Hmmmm," Optimus rumbled, more to himself than anything. He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across his abdomen and staring at the ceiling. Anyone else would find his behavior bizarre, but Rodimus was used to such a sight. Optimus was in a mode of deep thought, and he had come up with some of the Autobots' most brilliant strategies after such a session. Not that Roddy was much of a slouch in the innovation department either. Finally his optics focused once more as his thoughts returned to the here and now. Rodimus waited patiently. "Maybe we're thinking about this too hard," the elder Prime explained. "Maybe the circle represents their organization, and nothing more. Like how the Autobot and Decepticon brands indicate our faction."

Rodimus placed his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his hands. "So this terrorist group wants to be known as the Circle?"

"It's the best I can come up with," Optimus sighed. "A circle can represent unity. And it seems that they are unified against us."

"Against the Alliance?!" Rodimus was horrified. The violence had only just ended! Why would someone want to start it all over again? "Who do you think could be responsible?"

The red and blue mech tapped a pad against his desk. "That's very difficult to say. We're going to have to study the evidence very carefully and do our best to stop this terrorist group before it strikes again. They have declared war on us, Rodimus."

The orange and red Autobot stared at the floor in despair. Were they cursed to fight forever? They had finally, after nine million years, managed to eke out a tenuous peace of sorts. Now someone was out to destroy it.
* * * * *
"Sometimes I like awake night after night
Coming apart at the seams"

--" I Go to Extremes" -- Billy Joel

"Hush, little baby, don't say a word
And never mind that noise you heard
It's just the beasts under your bed
In your closet, in your head"

-- "Enter Sandman" –Metallica
Late that night (or rather, early the next morning), Andromeda woke up to see a faint light coming from under the bedroom door. She rubbed at her optics and groggily walked into the spacious living room of her mate's quarters. His apartment was considerably larger than her own, and had more privacy to boot – Rodimus was the only neighbor in the entire secluded command wing. With all the daily headaches and hassles they went through, the two leaders more than deserved a private and comfortable place to relax and unwind.

Although she did not make a sound, Optimus Prime turned around at her approach. "I'm sorry," he said apologetically. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"What are you doing up?" she murmured drowsily. "Come back to bed; you need your rest."

Optimus sighed inaudibly. "I couldn't sleep," he confessed. "This business with the Circle is really disturbing me. The only way I could calm down was to get up and start working on it."

His mate looked chagrined. He got such little rest as it was! She swore that sometimes he ran on fumes alone. But Optimus was a big boy, and no amount of nagging would change the way he was. She could cajole him a bit and show her concern, but he would only get irritated if she pestered him beyond that. She had known when she first became involved with him that he was never truly off-duty. It was one thing for an emergency summons to come in the middle of the night, but another thing entirely for him to get up and voluntarily subject himself to stress and recharge-deprivation. Sometimes she really worried about him. But he was, as the human expression put it, "stubborn as a mule" and occasionally drove himself to the brink of collapse. And she was helpless to stop him.

She gave him a tired but loving smile. "I'm going back to recharge now. Come join me when you're finished with whatever it is you're doing." Optimus was very careful to keep his confidential projects under wraps, and she would never dream of prying. It would not only jeopardize their personal relationship, but Autobot security as well, and being a security officer herself, she knew the risks all too well. She could very easily pose a conflict of interest for Optimus, and they each took pains to keep their professional and private lives separate.

The mighty red and blue Autobot watched her disappear into his recharging chamber, looking after her with an expression of affection mingled with sadness. 'Coward!' he told himself accusingly. 'Why can't you just tell her the truth?' But he knew the answer to that. He didn't want to cause her any more worry than she already felt. He had had fuel-chilling, frame-shaking nightmares nearly every night since Unicron's attack. The threat of the Chaos-Bringer and the momentous task of forging the Alliance had occupied him for the past several months since the attack of the Voracian demon-vampire, but now the crisis had passed. Granted, there was still plenty of work to be done in repairing the damage that Unicron had wrought, and even more in further cementing the sometimes-shaky Alliance, but the real crisis had passed. Once his attention had been diverted from the acute threat, the nightmares had come on full force. He knew without question that the demon had opened doors in his mind that were much better left closed, but try as he might, he could not seal up the traumatic memories. He needed to confront them, stare them down and come to terms with them once and for all, but he was afraid. Deathly afraid. If he pulled out one memory to focus on, they would all fall down like a house of cards and overwhelm his already somewhat fragile psyche.

Night after night he would wake up, a scream of terror lodged in his throat, unable to tear itself free. He felt that it would be a relief if he *would* scream and let out some of the fear, but it didn't come, and by the time he was ready to express it, he noticed Andromeda beside him and simply couldn't do it. The image of the smoky apparition-like demon was burned forever in his memory, and its smile, filled with cruel knife-like teeth, seemed so real that he constantly searched the shadows of his recharge chamber, convinced that it was about to jump out and assault him. And yet he managed to hide it from everyone he knew. Even Andromeda didn't know how bad it had gotten. He had promised her after she had recovered from near-death that they would bond in a ceremony that united them for eternity in the eyes of Primus, but he was fearful. Not of the sacred vow, though that did scare him a bit. No, he was very much afraid of his own state of mind. Andromeda deserved better than a shattered shell of a man, which was sometimes exactly how he felt. He couldn't condemn her to that fate. And still, a part of him simply could not surrender the deeply entrenched fear that she would leave him, find somebody else and abandon him to his mental ghosts. Whatever happened, he wouldn't stand in her way. He wished her all the happiness in the world, and while he desperately hoped that it would be by his side, he could not tie her to him if she would be miserable. He would let her go if it was what she wished. It would be like tearing out his own spark, but he would do it, to save her.

There was one person that he could not hide from, whose knowing gaze burned into him always. Rodimus. Rodimus knew. From him, he could hide nothing. It was all laid out before him, echoing through their link forged by the Matrix, as plain as if Rodimus himself walked among his thoughts. And yet he could not bring himself to reach out and take the comfort that Roddy would so willingly give. If he gave into his half-formed, shadowy fears and ghosts of distant memories, he would totally collapse. It was as if the Voracian demon was still with him, waiting for a moment of weakness, a slip of his eternal vigilance, to claim his mind. He knew it wasn't so, but he couldn't afford to relax his guard, not even for Rodimus. He told himself repeatedly that it was his problem, and he would have to deal with it alone. He did his best to protect his dear friend from the worst of it, but his shields were weak and flimsy while he slept, and a good deal of it leaked out. From the dark smudges and hollows around Roddy's optics, he wasn't recharging well either. That gave Optimus a searing stab of guilt. He felt terrible that Rodimus had been dragged into his private mental war. It made him all the more determined to handle it on his own.

He turned back to his laptop and neat piles of data pads, making notes to himself here and there. Once again he had pressing matters that demanded his attention. He simultaneously loved and loathed his job. His Autobots were the best troops a commander could ask for, hard-working and loyal. They did their best to please him, and he returned the favor by looking after them, giving him as much of his attention as he could afford, sometimes holding the army together (so it seemed) through sheer force of will. They brought out the best in him. But his job *was* his life. Many Autobots found it unimaginable that he had any sort of private life at all. It was, in fact, very difficult to do so. His time alone was so short, and his duties often left him weary. Rodimus Prime helped to ease the burden considerably, and provided him with a confidante, but the workload had doubled with necessary planetary repairs, security upgrades, new recruits, and trade negotiations with countless species. It was up to him and Rodimus to be up to speed and on top of all of it. Sometimes he felt as if his CPU would simply overheat and shut down with the immense load of information he had to memorize. And the public eye was always on him. He couldn't go anywhere off-planet without being swarmed by the media. It seemed that every little thing he did was fodder for the gossip mill. Many found him to be a bit cold and standoffish, for he guarded his privacy very jealously.

Lost in thought, Prime stood and crossed the room, taking an old holo-cube in hand and activating it. He looked wistfully at the images that were projected – images from over nine million years go. Orion Pax. Here he was, goofing off with a younger and smaller version of Ultra Magnus. Another picture showed him playfully kissing Ariel's cheek. What could have been? What would have become of their lives if the war had not interfered? And what if the war had come anyway, but events had taken a different turn? What if he had joined the Autobots, but only as a grunt soldier? Would he have been happy? Could he have led a normal life (as normal as one got for an Autobot), or would there be something lacking, his true destiny thwarted? His shoulders sagged as he turned off the cube, overwhelmed by bittersweet memories. Such thoughts were foolish. Being a Prime was what destiny had ordained for him. There was no escaping it, and thoughts to the contrary were both foolish and painful.

He shut down his laptop and organized his data pads in two neat stacks, knowing that he would revisit them in just a few scant hours. He headed into the recharge chamber silently and slid onto the bed next to Andromeda's peaceful form. He wasn't tired but had suddenly grown sick of looking at all the reports of the latest crisis to strike. There was always something, wasn't there? Something that stopped him from relaxing, from "having a breather", as the humans said. It helped occupy his mind when he was troubled but kept him from truly finding time to himself.

He studied his mate's slumbering body with a look of affection tinged with sorrow. He reached out to touch her but stopped, his hand inches from her face. She looked so angelic, and he couldn't bear to disturb her. She deserved so much more than he could give. And yet she had stuck by him, even when he had brought her so many disappointments. He turned to sit on the edge of the bed, picking up his battle mask and studying it as if he had never seen it before. Ever since his rebirth as Optimus Prime, it had been a part of him. It had become much more than just a part of his armor – it was a part of him. It had become a tangible representation of his public persona. Rodimus was right; it had become a façade that he wore to keep the rest of the world at bay. Sometimes he felt as if he were two different people, his inner self buried under the front he presented to the outside world. Maybe it was cowardly, but he was a very private person, even more so due to the lack of privacy that his position required. He was afraid to open up and trust people with his true self. He was arguably the most well-known and respected Autobot, but sometimes he was so very lonely. Rodimus seemed to have a much easier time in this department. He socialized with the senior officers and the grunts just as easily, never allowing his rank to drive a wedge between him and those he commanded. Perhaps it was Optimus' own fault that he could not relate to them. He had cut himself off from the rest of the world in his efforts to be a respected and esteemed leader. Perhaps he had done the job a little too well. He had changed to become what they needed, and in the process had lost touch with a part of himself.

Such deep thoughts for three in the morning! Everything had taken on a surreal edge. Optimus forced himself to lie down and relax his knotted muscle cables. An irrational part of him imagined that the demon-creature lurked in the dark corners of the room, just waiting for him to lower his guard. It would be a long, long time before sleep would claim him once more.