Loom

Chapter 3

Anxiety and bewilderment had quickly been displaced by anger in Bumblebee's mind, and he strode into the woods with the stealth of his profession but at a speed the humans couldn't match. He couldn't conceive a reason for Prime to glitch so violently, but what was far more disturbing was the reaction of the other mechs. Ironhide had been dismayed, not surprised, and Ratchet's composure seemed to indicate that he'd been expecting it. The older bots had known something was wrong, whatever it was, but hadn't warned anyone and had still brought Prime with them.

His charges had been scant seconds from being crushed to death, their fragile bodies torn apart and pulverized inside the heart of the Peterbuilt's transformation sequence. And no reason had been given. It was unacceptable.

The mechs clearly did not want their conversation to be heard, retreating over a quarter of a mile into the forest. None were suppressing their energy signatures to hide, though, trusting the order for Bumblebee and the others to stay at the clearing. That, perhaps, was what was making it worse: the ongoing secrecy and the adamant refusal to give an explanation.

Bumblebee paused for long minutes when the mechs did, lowering himself with dimmed optics into the bracken. Prime was pacing. Ironhide wanted to go further. Ratchet sounded taut and wearied. They continued on, and Bumblebee was still struggling to understand.

Prime could have been sick, afflicted with something that caused him to glitch seriously but that wasn't contagious. Only he himself the threat. It hadn't been a flux as, after transforming, he had definitely been online. Whatever it was, though, it was too dangerous to keep everyone in the dark about and subsequently at risk.

Lennox, Sam and Mikaela had caught up in the time the mech had spent waiting, and Bumblebee acquiesced to their pace for the last hundred yards. The soldier came to stand at the crouching scout's hip, eyes narrow on the three visible through the spaces between the thick trees. He'd not intended to spy on them, and it had gone against his better judgement to follow Sam and Mikaela after Bumblebee into the woods, leaving Ratchet with the other soldiers. Now, he was stunned to find that none of them had detected them when they were so close.

He had mixed feelings about Sam and Mikaela being here. Bumblebee was another matter, though from the set of his battle mask the mech was just as rattled at the turn of events as him. The teens had almost been killed. If Ironhide had not managed to pin Optimus for those vital few seconds, they definitely would have been.

This had been partially Optimus's fault for consenting the humans into his cab, though he wasn't sure how cogent the mech had been when they got inside. He could have already been in recharge by then, Lennox conceded, which turfed the blame to Ratchet and Ironhide for allowing it. Someone was at fault because this had been wholly avoidable. Sam and Mikaela should not be now crouched alongside him, alabaster white, wide-eyed and looking for answers.

Regaining himself, Lennox closed his eyes and pushed his fingertips against the lids. This was Megatron's fault. All of it. What was important now was to deal with what they had been left with. A glance to the three with him confirmed in his gut that secrecy was no longer acceptable. With that in mind, he led them closer so that they could hear.

Optimus couldn't stop moving, lines and micro-components twitching noisily beneath his plates as he paced, trying to think. His optics were bright and narrowed, one hand hovering between covering his face and punching something. "This can't go on, 'Hide. I can't keep doing this. Primus, I nearly killed them."

Ratchet and Ironhide stood a few paces off, close but granting space. The medic looked between the two pained mechs, arms folded and shoulders sagging with what felt like an accumulating weight. What had just transpired had been his worst fear since this had all started – that the lingering trauma from the attack would put a human at risk. Being grimly prepared hadn't made it easier, though. For any of them. "I think we should consider taking you off duty for a while."

The tall mech turned on his as if shot, finally standing still. "No – absolutely not. I only returned to full duty eight months ago, and I gained nothing from being off of it. None of the… difficulties have been related to my role."

Ironhide shook his head, stepped forwards between the two mechs to break the tension before it could mount. "He's right. It's all been off-duty or outside like this."

Ratchet tipped his head back a little, thoughtful. "Then is it perhaps time to tell the Autobots something, or at least consider it."

Optimus's hand slashed through the air in a forbidding stroke that conveyed as much conviction as his voice. "No. They can't know. They don't need to know."

"Ironhide?"

The dark mech looked between them both before his optics settled on Optimus, his gaze almost apologetic. "I think they can take it. Fragger's long gone now, so near enough no chance of them finding him and nullifying the treaty. It won't change anything."

Emotional hackles raised, Optimus turned to face them fully. "It would change everything."

In the face of such raw feeling, Ironhide bowed his head. Ratchet did not hesitate to pick up the slack, his tone both reassuring earnest. "They wouldn't judge you. If anything it would humble them, and make-"

"I agreed to being Megatron's whore," Optimus snapped with a sharp gesture, "that is not beyond judgement."

Ironhide shook his head forcefully. "You sacrificed yourself."

"You're still their Prime. Our Prime," Ratchet went on, optics brightening with frustrated dismay.

"No, I'm not," Optimus replied in low, tight tones that seemed to be boiling up from somewhere deep in his chassis. "I'm more damaged parts than your Prime, to you. A victim, and you're keeping me as one." This was the crux of the problem in his mind – the forbiddance to cast what had happened aside and move on. It felt as though those terrible few hours were now to define him in the minds of those who knew, who treated him with a concern akin to fear and seemed to have no faith in his ever being 'normal' again.

Ratchet raised his hands fractionally, palms down and fingers splayed. This was getting out of control. "You were hurt, are hurting and probably will keep hurting to some degree until you offline."

He was not the mech he was, Optimus concluded with a hard shunt through his vents. Would never be again. Though he knew in his spark that Ratchet and Ironhide were acting out of care and concern, a small part of him found himself resenting their insistence of returning to that event, and to wanting to make it public. With what had happened tonight, however, perhaps he had lost the luxury of keeping this a secret. It was a lot to think on.

"I'll meet you at the 'bridge," he uttered at last, his voice softening with weary resignation.

The plates of Ironhide's face pulled together, pained. "Optimus-"

"Please, Ironhide," his sparkmate asked, optics softening and conveying this need. "I need to think on this."

It was Ratchet who permitted it with a short nod, one hand moving out to touch Ironhide's chassis when the dark mech stepped to follow. That Optimus was going to give this serious thought was enough, and it was his way to try to work through emotional grievances alone. This was one of the few times when he would allow it.

When they detected the energy spike of a transformation sequence before the low rumble of a truck's engine pulling away, Ironhide folded his arms and shuttered his optics. "What do I do, Ratch'? What am I supposed to do?"

"It's not a question of 'doing' anything," Ratchet replied softly, laying a hand on the mech's shoulder and squeezing lightly. "This isn't something you can fight, just as it isn't something I can fix. All you can do is be strong and handle him as best you can."

Ironhide's mouth pulled in a grimace and he shook his head, looking to the space in the trees where Optimus had last been visible. "He's right. He's not the mech he was."

"That, I'm grieved to say, was inevitable."

A pause as Ironhide considered his words and shifted his weight, optics drifting to stare at the marred ground where his sparkmate had paced. "Sometimes, most of the time, he acts like nothing's happened."

"But you're watching for it. Waiting," Ratchet finished, concluding the terrible statement softly.

"All the slagging time."

Ratchet took his hand from Ironhide's shoulder and brushed his jaw, his fist resting between his jaw and chassis thoughtfully. "Then maybe we have been keeping him as a victim."

It felt like a truth, and yet an awful thing to hear aloud. "Primus."

"We should trust his strength and move on as he wants us to: with him." He waited for the dark mech to meet his optics before going on. "But we must still be vigilant. This will not end with a single moment."

"Only a hundred terrible ones," Ironhide agreed quietly, his hands dropping into fists at his sides. It was a conscious will to relax them.

Ratchet waited until the other mech had composed himself before nodding towards the trees. Ironhide needed more time to calm himself enough to go back to the campsite, and taking a long way back to where the others were waiting would provide that opportunity. "Come on. There's no reason to wait until daybreak to follow."

Ironhide made a low sound of agreement, also wanting to give Optimus a degree of space but not to allow him fully out of sensor range. They would give him a head start, some solitude to think, but they would not abandon him even at his request.

As the medic moved into the trees, Ironhide heard something wet snap underfoot and turned hard optics to the bracken, bringing his sensors to bear. Bumblebee was retreating quietly with the human teens, but Lennox was crouched at the edge of the clearing.

He didn't move when Ironhide took a step forwards, and mindful of Ratchet the dark mech could only point sharply back the way they had come. Fury clenched at his spark, only adding to the anger that had been building out of love, fear and helplessness. This feeling, at least, had a focus he could take it out upon.

The air inside Ironhide's cab was actually hot from the mech's rage, and Lennox could feel the prickling tension in every feature of the transformed Autobot. Bumblebee, Mikaela and Sam didn't know that Ironhide knew that they'd been there, and that somehow made this situation worse. Ratchet was leading the NEXT convoy several miles back, and the soldier was rather wishing that they'd catch up after his guardian had growled off ahead. Silence had reigned aside from the engine since leaving the site, and when Ironhide spoke Lennox actually found himself jerking.

"You betrayed my trust," the radio spat with gravel. "You betrayed –me-."

Lennox rubbed a hand across his jaw, quashing the recurring thought that Ironhide could easily throw him out at this speed by opening the door, retracting the seatbelt and throwing himself into a spin. He suspected that the mech had been entertaining a similar thought, and held up his hands in a pacifying gesture. "They needed to know-"

"That was not the way they should have found out," Ironhide bellowed back, accelerating to an even more reckless speed on the empty road.

That tone on anyone else might have worked, but Lennox had seen and survived too many of his guardian's moods to be phased. "Sam and Mikaela were almost crushed, and we can't just be put together again like you guys can. They deserved to know why they almost died, just like Bumblebee and the Autobots deserve to know why the war is over."

Ironhide knew and agreed with that. The feeling wasn't particularly deep down, either. Anger was the easy emotion to have right now, but it wasn't appropriate. His wipers twitched in a proxy headshake, the growl of his engine softening as he coasted back towards a legal speed.

"It should have been in his way," he finally uttered, the words stiff.

Lennox couldn't suppress a small, bitter smile at that. "Ironhide, his way was for nobody to find out ever."

"True."

They drove on in silence for twenty miles, but without any of the tension that they had set out with. Optimus was just coming into close-sensor range with the spacebridge, Wheeljack and Starscream. A fine ending to a nightmarish day in Ironhide's mind. Since the declaration of peace, all three Seekers had been peaceful but no less caustic, which made their arrangement to life off-Based wholly agreeable. Starscream had been keen to get onto the Ark and back into space, diving into the spacebridge project without hesitation. He had turned out to be the first mech to demand a schedule that Wheeljack's obsessive enthusiasm had struggled to keep up with.

Ironhide tempered his speed further to allow the rest of the convoy to catch up. They had planned to arrive at the site together. He opened his glovebox, which he'd been chilling for the last few minutes, and offered the soda can inside to Lennox. It was an apology that Lennox accepted just as quietly.

The mech sighed a little through his vents, abruptly feeling his age. "Optimus, self-sacrificing glitch that he is, has been ready to die for the Autobots for centuries," he mused aloud, frustration and admiration clear in his voice.

Lennox nodded a little, unsurprised. Their Commander had died protecting a human he'd known for a comparative blink in time, and before that had order Sam to use his spark to destroy the Cube – and thus himself. "Yeah, but, this is a lot harder than just dying. This is living with a sacrifice every single day. He's punishing himself by keeping it a secret."

"Stupid slagger things he should be punished," Ironhide groused, bristling at the ongoing grievance. "And it's not that nobody knows. This is one of the worst-kept secrets I've ever seen. You and Prowl knew as well as me and Ratchet from almost the beginning. Now, Sam, Mikaela and Bumblebee do too. The only thing it isn't is common knowledge."

"Do you think it should be?" It was a blunt question and had escaped before Lennox had thought it through, but it seemed an apt one.

"Not the specifics of it," Ironhide replied after a pause, his tone forcibly even. "But the bots should know that Megatron tore a strip in exchange for peace, and that it's left their Prime hurting. They'll work it out or they won't. Either way they'd gladly give the space and peace he needs, and be nothing but grateful and humbled."

Lennox absorbed that silently, his gaze fixed absently on the top of the can. He came back to himself with a sigh and drained the rest of it. "Are you going to tell him that 'Bee and the kids know?"

A beat passed as Ironhide thought. Finally: "No. Not yet, at least. That's not information that'll do him any good to know. They should tell him themselves if he doesn't figure it out on his own."

The soldier sat back and rested a hand behind his head, brows arched. "So we're going to go to Certa and do this recon' mission pretending that nothing's happened."

"That's what Optimus wants."

Lennox nodded a little. "I'll talk to them. Say to keep quiet about it."

"I've already communicated as much to Bumblebee," Ironhide assured, his scanners flicking back briefly to touch upon the scout to make sure he was alright. "I've left it to him to discuss this with his charges."

A silent minute dragged by. Lennox finally scrubbed a hand across his face with a low sound. "This is gonna go swell."

Ironhide rumbled a low agreement. "If Starscream acts up, it'll be slagging perfect."

The atmosphere inside the Camero was a thick mixture of shock and dismay. Mikaela and Bumblebee were silently introspective in contrast to Sam's nervous energy and false-start sentences, their minds cast back to last year. At the celebration of the new peace, Optimus had approached Mikaela with questions that had since continued to disturb her, and Bumblebee could not bring his processor away from the memory of Ironhide punching the concrete in the Yard with helpless, agonised rage. These events suddenly made sense, but the understanding brought no comfort.

Bumblebee in particular felt lower than slag right now for him earlier anger towards Prime. It had left him skulking at the back of the convoy, Ratchet leading and the other two mech somewhere ahead. There was no questioning leaving them to their space.

"That bastard." Sam wanted to kick something, but thought better of it. Instead he folded his arms tightly, hands fisted against his ribs. "We've gotta do something. Hunt Megatron down and make him pay."

Bumblebee warbled a low sound, viscerally agreeing but knowing better. "We cannot, Sam. Megatron is long gone, and even if we could find him, to fight would be to instigate another war."

"And the reason Optimus did this was to stop war and save lives," Mikaela added quietly, moving one hand to touch her partner's arm.

Sam sighed beneath her touch, a hard and violent sound. He curled forwards to rest his elbows on his knees, hands moving into his hair and gripping. "It wasn't… It wasn't enough for Megatron to just kill him."

"Megatron has always wished to destroy Prime," Bumblebee agreed, selecting his words carefully. He'd been thinking on this returning back out of the woods into the clearing where Ratchet had been waiting. "And for everything he's done for us, we cannot now allow this to destroy him. We will not see Prime destroyed by a left wound."

"Absolutely," Sam announced decidedly, bringing a fist into his palm. "Whatever he needs, man. Support and understanding and all that. Anything."

"I think," Bumblebee began, pitching his voice carefully towards both teens, "that the best we can do for now is to pretend that we do not know."

"It's not healthy for him to suppress this," Mikaela replied quickly, her features hardening with concern. "Last night was a perfect example of why this can't be ignored."

Clouds covered the sun and the inside of the Camero turned suddenly, strangely bleak. Bumblebee moved in closer to the personnel truck in front of them. "Ratchet and Ironhide have been managing, this, for a year now, and feel that we should maintain a pretence of ignorance for the time being." He went on before either of them could vocalise the protests they were starting. "The truth must and will come out, but it should be at Prime's choosing. He deserves that much."

Silence stretched out inside the car. One mile. Four. Finally, Sam gathered the courage to ask the persisting question. "How does that even work for you guys with-"

"Sam," Bumblebee broke in flatly, "that is not something I'm prepared to speculate on nor explain at this point."

Sam sank a little in the seat, murmuring an apology and 'of course'. Mikaela took and squeezed his hand with a sympathetic smile, conveying that it was a question she'd also been wondering. Prime's question about human sex, how someone could permit another to breach their body, felt raw in her mind all over again.

She'd never shared that conversation, and suddenly felt that Optimus had been trying to tell her then in the woods, numb with High Grade and away from his soldiers. Wanted her to figure it out and to offer some reassurance and comfort. Guilt swamped her body, tightening her chest and twisting her stomach. She suspected that that was a feeling they'd all be living with for some time now.

Thank you for reading. Any and every kind of review would be wonderful.