HEY HEY my dearies! Yes, the next stop of our colossal Optimus/Airachnid ship journey is upon us. Tickets are non-refundable.
xx
Optimus almost didn't notice the sudden flurry of activity sparked by his arrival, stepping slowly through the Ground Bridge warp vortex wrapped in his own thoughts. Only when something thudded against one of his peds did he jolt out of the haze, helm facing downwards at a sheepishly smiling Miko wielding a dented wrench.
"Sorry, Optimus," she apologised with a wave. "But Ratchet was about to blow a gasket, if ya' know what I mean," she whispered with a thumb pointed towards the anxious-looking medic behind her.
"You were gone for quite a while," Ratchet observed as Optimus' frame dripped water onto the base floor. His tone was neutral but there was tension wreathed in his cables.
"I suspected extra Decepticon activity in the area and had to scout around twice. Nothing to worry about," he replied passively. "Where are the others?"
"Recharging while they wait for the rain to ease off," Ratchet explained, servos still crossed even as his faceplate remained blank.
"Then I believe I shall join them after drying off."Optimus walked towards the drying vents next to the base washracks, nodding to Jack and Raf sat on the couch with a video game. Miko watched him leave with something dancing in her eyes and a scowl on her face.
"Did he seem kinda off to you?" she asked, jumping up onto a nearby desk much to Ratchet's irritation. He did seem to consider her words though.
"What do you mean?," he inquired.
"Y'know, kinda..." Miko clicked her fingers as she searched for an appropriate word. "Distant?" Ratchet's optics blinked in thought for a long minute.
"Most likely he's just tired from the extra work," Ratchet finally replied, turning away so that the young human couldn't see his stony mask break into a frown. "Nothing to worry about..." he repeated Prime's own words under his breath as Miko swayed off back towards the boys. Something was troubling the Prime, that much was obvious at least to Ratchet. He'd known Optimus for too long now to ignore even the most subtle indicators of distress. The line of his mouth was forced, his posture too straight, walk stiff. He was trying too hard to act normally and in turn revealed his unease.
Ratchet might have appreciated the irony if he didn't recognise the smouldering fire in his blue optics. He had only seen such flames once before; long ago back on Cybertron in the midst of the war.
On that day, a promise was broken and a spark was lost. And if there was one thing Ratchet had noticed in his long life, it was that fate has an unfortunate habit of digging up old graves.
xx
Airachnid didn't know how long she lay there, huddled against the edge of the cave wall. Her optics were closed, the moon out of sight and everything in darkness. Outside the rain hammered down as ferocious as ever- occasionally a stray droplet would touch her armour and cause her to flinch. She would have slapped herself if she had the energy to spare. No wonder that Prime took pity on her... Primus, she was pathetic. No weapons, no home, and saddled with a parasite.
The sparkling was still silent, not even whimpering from the darkness or cold. Some part of Airachnid hoped that she had met the same fate as her brother- though not as brutally- but so far it hadn't felt as if her spark had been sliced in two, so that distant dream would remain as such. Another routine sigh huffed past her vocaliser, and her optics inched open as she reached behind her to grasp her child. With a tenderness that was completely foreign to her, she cradled her sparkling in aching servos. Part of the web cocoon had worn away around her face, though her own optics remained closed to the world. Her greatest worry was that they finally opened red. Crimson points that would haunt her for the rest of her life... a living reminder of her fall from grace. Hah. To brand that day with a word like 'grace'...
'In a way, I should be grateful for you,' Airachnid thought to herself, touching a digit to her child's still faceplate as she recalled what had transpired seemingly hours ago. 'Without you, Prime would have killed me... or at least hauled me back to his Autobots.' Much of her thoughts had been occupied by the knight in red-and-blue armour, the taste of his given energon still lingering on her glossa. The first question was 'why?'. Why did he feel so inclined to help the one who had caused his soft comrades so many centuries of misery? Pity wasn't strong enough a reason. Optimus' own explanation was unsatisfactory. The inner workings of Autobot minds... one mystery of the universe that she'd never uncover. Best to just accept it as it was and not dwell too long on the details.
He would be back... when? How long would the fresh energon keep her going for? How long would she have to wait for his presence again? The questions made her processor pound in pain, and she resigned back to her faux catatonic state. The energon she ingested activated her automatic healing systems and she could feel tiny nanites going to work over her many scars and cuts. Even the slightly weeping wounds in place of her back legs were starting to heal over. They'd grow back, albeit at an excruciatingly slow rate. They always did... every damn time.
Airachnid had a love-hate relationship with her techno-organic form. The 'hate' side of which had doubled exponentially over the past few months. It wasn't that at first glance people would either instantly love or hate her based on what they saw. Nor was it the simple abominable fusion of living and metal, disgusting and wretched. She couldn't pinpoint the source of her hatred, nor the source of undeniable appreciation buried under the detestment. If she was just another run-of-the-Well femme, then perhaps Megatron might have ignored her.
She mentally slapped herself to keep her processor intact as it drifted back to that agonising night onboard the Nemesis. In his quarters, trapped beneath him as his talons scraped against her armour... to this day the scar on her waist still hadn't faded. A hand glided across the dent in the protoform, tracing the long line where his own armour dug in deep. The other servo clasped the sparkling closer to her, mother and daughter shielded from the roaring elements as they fought their own war inside themselves.
She never cried when she was brought fresh into this fragged-up world.
Airachnid had cried enough for both of them.
xx
The warm currents of air enveloped Optimus and stilled the running droplets of rainwater on his armour. Beneath him the vent grill worked with a loud buzz as his protoform quickly dried. But even with the afterglow of warmth radiating from him, Optimus' maintained his frown. As he trekked through the base hallways and towards his own quarters, his mind was chaotic and swirling with thoughts that he could only barely grasp at before they slipped away into oblivion. But they all held a recurring theme- pink honeycombs and black armour.
He did not regret for one klick assisting Airachnid, but his mind was clouded with possibilities of a grim and complex future ahead of him. How would he continue assisting her and her sparkling, how he would explain to the Autobots, what he would do, what she would do, and what to do with her war-born daughter? He was not one to simply push such matters aside and address them later, he needed answers now. Every day just pushed his spark to its limits and beyond...
He could at least lay out several certainties. Airachnid wouldn't be going anywhere in her current state; her weapons were still offline and Primus knows how long it would take for her to heal. She deeply cared for her sparkling, if unwillingly. The Decepticons would be out looking for her, but her techno-organic chemistry meant that she wouldn't produce a standard Cybertronian signal. Unless they intensely scouted every square inch of the planet, she would be at least relatively safe.
And most importantly, the other Autobots could not know about this. Ratchet would certainly object to assisting a Decepticon, let alone one such as Airachnid, and the relationship with the rest of his team were strained enough as it is. Worst case scenario, if Arcee ever uncovered what Optimus was doing... there was no predictable outcome for how she would react. The hole left by the spider in deactivating Tailgate was torn back open when she set optics again on Airachnid. If Arcee saw her leader, role model and- dare he say it- father figure with his murderer... he'd be spilling salt right into that wound.
He needed to protect Arcee from herself. If he had any hopes of truly saving Airachnid and her daughter from the pit created by Megatron, then his next moves would have to be careful. On handing over those energon cubes, Optimus' life was ripped into two. Light on one side and darkness on the other. Sharp twin shards bound together by a secret-no, a lie- meant to save everyone he loved. Saving everyone, just as he vowed to do a milennia ago...
"You always were an ambitious one, Orion."
Elita One...
It had been so long since he last thought of her; rose pink armour gleaming, shining silver, the brightest of cerulean blue optics that Optimus had ever had the joy of seeing... His legs suddenly crumpled beneath him, and he had to grab onto the wall to stop himself collapsing into a scrap heap. His processor was suddenly overloaded with an influx of accursed memories, smiles and laughs and tears blending together into a masterpiece so haunting that coolant threatened to spill from his optics. Sliding along the wall, Optimus dragged himself into his quarters and almost slammed the door shut, slumping onto his colossal berth with an equally large sigh. His optics squeezed shut and denta clamped down on his lips. He was no stranger to relapses, but like the trauma of war it was something that never settled into a desensitizing routine. When his optics fluttered open a long while later, his sight was fragmented and flickering; something from his processor overwhelming his optical sensors.
The glitches spread out even further across his vision and another sigh heaved past his closed vocaliser. It was going to be a long night...
xx
"You haven't touched your energon."
The lilt of a sweet and familiar voice reaching his audios broke Orion Pax's wall of concentration. Through the rubble blue orbs regarded him curiously, fringed with black and hung above a light pink smile. Elita One sat opposite him, holding a glass of energon near her mouth, while his own was cupped in his hands, forgotten in his other crowded thoughts.
"Thinking again?" she asked Orion as he swirled the glowing blue liquid around idly. He took a long sip before answering.
"Just about... the council. And what Sentinel said."
"Oh, the whole 'these young ones and their upstart ideas' spiel?" Elita smirked good-humouredly at the memory of Sentinel Prime's most recent tirade.
"I recall it as being a bit fiercer than that," Orion said, returning her smirk.
"Looked like his energon lines were about to burst."
"And his optics were practically poppng out of their sockets!" Their shared laughter filled the empty balcony of the cafe and wafted into the evening air.
"Does Alpha Trion know about the new bad influence?" Elita asked through tiny residual bursts of laughter, referring to Orion's newest idol, the Kaon gladiator Megatronus. She hadn't met him herself, but she had definitely experienced the influence his speeches had.
"Not yet. But I've been wanting to discuss it with him. He's... not as close-minded as Sentinel. I actually think he'll be interested in Megatronus' ideas."
"You think it'll shift the dust off his processor?" Her chuckle only increased at the disapproving look that Orion threw towards Elita's jibe at his mentor. Eventually he degraded into more laughs with her.
"I think he's been waiting for someone like Megatronus. Someone to stand up and say 'hey, maybe life actually kinda sucks'."
"Have you been spending time with Jazz again?"
"Well, you know him. He's infectious." Even Orion's light tone couldn't distract Elita from the fall of his icy, contemplative mask that he'd recently generated. Such a thing was arising more often with each passng day.
"What are you worrying about, Orion? We're here, we're alive, we've got good energon-"
"That's just us, though," he interrupted, a plaintive look in his optics. "What about the ones all around us?"
"What about them?"
"I mean... look at that gem seller down there." Orion motioned to the old mech stationed behind the stall at the side of the street below them. "He works all day, barely making enough credits to keep himself powered, and for what? So he can wake up to do the exact same thing for the rest of his life? You try and tell me that that's a worthwhile existence."
"I'm sensing a metaphor," Elita remarked with a habitual smile.
"Look, I'm sorry for getting all philisophical on you again-"
"I don't mind. It's cute." Her smile grew at the sudden rush of heat to Orion's faceplate.
"I'm just saying... we shouldn't have to conform to whatever life was chosen for us. We should have a choice. We deserve a choice. And it's about time the council knew that."
"And you're going to be the one to bring about this mass change in all of Cybertronian culture?" Elita sipped from her glass. " You always were an ambitious one, Orion."
"I won't be alone," he persisted.
"Ah yes, how could I forget Megatronus?" She didn't mean to be so spurning of her friend's ideals, but she couldn't resist easy opportunities at twisting his gears. "There's been rumours about, that he'll be addressing the council directly."
"Yes. He asked me to join him." The simple statement stunned Elita, her servo frozen as she raised her glass to her lips.
"When?" she asked, shifting into a serious tone for once.
"This morning," Orion replied. "It's scheduled a week from now."
"Oh..." Elita's processor was stalling at the aruptness of the news, trying to accept what she was hearing. Orion and Megatronus... marching right up to the High Council, demanding that they change a core element of all Cybertronian life? She was conflicted at what she should be feeling; hope for her dear friend and his goal for a better Cybertron, for a new future. And fear... for what the council might do if they rejected their appeal. There had been too many stories of outspoken high caste members suddenly 'disappearing' floating about... Of course a explanation was fabricated and if necessary, deaths obviously faked to those who looked close enough. Elita never before concerned herself with the blatant corruptness of her home though. If it didn't affect her physically, then she wouldn't let it do so mentally. But ever since she reunited with her old Academy friend, she'd become increasingly more involved with the little fluctuations, details and powers that controlled the whole of Cybertron. To think the fate and function of a planet in the hands of such careless individuals... it scared her more than anything she'd ever encountered. Even the simple idea made her shiver.
Within she was torn. But outside she still smiled.
When Elita looked up from her empty energon glass, Orion had a hand to the side of his helm and a long suffering expression on his faceplate. He made sounds of confirmation into his comm link and sighed when the transmission ended.
"Magnus' threatening to come down here and drag me back to work." He rolled his optics and adopted a small smile. "Will you be at your's tomorrow?"
"Usual shift times," she replied, the glow of her optics wavering slightly. As they stood and hugged farewell, she bade him 'good luck' in his audios. He grinned his thanks and waved before he went out of sight down a far street to the left. The same street that housed the gem merchant stall he pointed out.
Elita tried not to notice the security drones holding their guns to the old mech's head.