The journey back to base was... cramped, to say the least.
"You sure you 'Bots are havin' an energon shortage?" Wheeljack grunted as he tried to jostle around Bulkhead's weight squashed between the captain and passenger seats.
"Hey- what're you tryin' to say, Jackie?" Bulkhead said with a thud of his fist against his servo. Wheeljack laughed even as the controls threatened to lurch from his grip. Again. "Least my weight is useful."
"Oh, that's it, you old-!"
"How long until we reach Jasper again, Wheeljack?" Optimus asked, eager to prevent the outbreak of another impromptu sparring match (the last one had almost sent the Jackhammer into a nosedive).
"'Nother hour or so," Wheeljack answered just as he was unwrapping a hand from around Bulkhead's neck. "Should touch down just before dawn."
"Just in time to bust in on Ratchet's mornin' coffee. Think we can get a few extra hours'a recharge when we get back, Optimus?" Bulkhead chuckled as he rubbed at where Jackie had left paint scuffs.
"Woah, woah, whadda'ya mean 'we'?" Wheeljack protested, flicking one quirked optic off the sky and back to Bulk.
"What, you're not stayin' with us?"
"I told ya' Bulk. I ain't an Autobot. I can't be tied down like that. Only reason I ended up back here in the first place was 'cause'a Dreadwing-"
"And now he's back with Megatron. If you're with Team Prime, then you can get to him again as well as the rest of the Decepticons!" Bulkhead pressed on, pleading in his optics. "Optimus, whadda' you think?" The Prime jolted at the mention of his name, brought back from the fringes of his thoughts with shuttering optics. He had to take a moment to process what the two mechs had been saying. Wheeljack staying on Earth... from what he said of Archa Seven, he obviously wasn't a fan of spiders. But Airachnid could defend herself if there ever came the chance of the Wrecker coming across her and Scorpia... and now was the time to put the welfare of his team first.
"The Autobots would be very grateful to have you working with us, Wheeljack. But if your spark still lies in the stars, then no-one will force you to stay." It was a long, bumpy moment before he gave an answer.
"...Maybe it is time my peds stayed on solid ground for a while," he mused, letting the control wheel drift in his grip, and the uncertain line of his mouth turned to a scarred smile towards Bulkhead. "Still got those alt-mode ideas in that lugnut of a processor?"
"You're just lucky I do- you'd probably pick something like a dumpster truck-"
"Even if I knew what one'a those was-"
"Think 'Huffer on Wheels'."
"Ah, Primus."
Optimus lapsed back into the realm of his mind while the Wreckers bickered, only able to think of his berth and whatever recharge had in store for him this time. In a way he was looking forward to seeing Elita's face again... even if it was through filmy optics.
"Hey, Bulk," Wheeljack said after another silent minute.
"Yeah?"
"What's 'coffee'?"
xx
Early sun rays were spilling over the horizon line when Optimus disembarked from the Jackhammer, with Wheeljack and Bulkhead falling out behind him. They argued over who pushed who that time as the elevator descended into the mountain, dropping them just outside the base's foyer. Ratchet greeted them- slumped over his console with vents snoring, screen blank and sleeping as he was.
"Anyone got a welder?" Wheeljack asked with a stifled chuckle to Bulkhead, contemplating how the medic would look with some choice symbols carved into his armour. Optimus opted to ignore it as he approached his friend, gently placing a warm hand on his cold shoulder. His backstrut shot up as soon as the metals made contact, servos flying everywhere.
"O-Optimus!" Ratchet stuttered, instantly springing upright with optics blinking as they whirred online. "I-Is Bulkhead-?"
"Right here, Ratchet. Safe and sound," the green mech answered with a smile, raising a hand that came down to pat his back. Even as his systems were still warming up the blue optics that rested on Bulk's servo were scanning- the ever scrutinising look of a worried medic. Bulkhead recognised it, drew his hand away and pounded it against his chest. "Minus a few scratches, nothin' to worry about."
"Even so, Bulkhead, I'd like both yourself and Wheeljack to be examined for other potential injuries," Optimus said, to a scoff from the white Wrecker behind him.
"Don't worry 'bout me, chief. Whatever I got, I'll fix myself up- I survived mutant spiders, I can live through Dreadwing tryin'a make us inta' craters."
"Suit yourself," Ratchet grumbled with a tone that would have been apologetic if not for the suceeding mutter of "Not about to waste Autobot supplies and my time on some rogue." As Wheeljack sauntered back to the base's exit with a backward wave of his hand to Bulkhead, Optimus coughed through his vocaliser.
"As a matter of fact, Ratchet, Wheeljack may soon be joining our ranks-"
"Woah, let's not jump the gun here," Wheeljack protested, spinning around on his ped and marching back to them. "I said I'd think about it, that's all-"
"I recall, Wheeljack, and I understand that you may want to scout this world to see that it is suitable for you. But can I trust you to maintain covertness while you do so?" Now it was Ratchet's turn to scoff at that as he checked over Bulkhead's frame for anything serious.
"Pfft, what, ya' think I'm gonna walk in the nearest town guns blazin' like it's Darkmount all over again?" Wheeljack retorted with a smirk. "Trust me, Prime, as soon as I get one'a those alt modes, you won't even know I'm on this rock."
"In that case, let's go and find that mode for ya'!" Bulk said cheerfully as he slipped out of Ratchet's examining grip and pounded on his friend's back, to the former's even louder groans. "Go with the Ark, Optimus said. Remaining Autobots need your medical expertise, he said."
As the two Wreckers made for the road-bound entrance of the base, Optimus approached Ratchet again as he switched off his data screens.
"A whole night without recharge," Optimus pointed out, causing his servos to freeze for a moment, before his sigh as he let them drop to his sides.
"I was... worried," Ratchet answered, turning his optics hesitantly to his friend's. "About yourself and Bulkhead..." He started to trail off, and his optics followed his servos in pointing to the floor.
"And the Decepticons." It wasn't a question but Ratchet nodded regardless.
"I still don't know what you were thinking when you decided to aid them, whoever they are," Optimus noted the emphasis on 'whoever', but he didn't want to give names yet- best to let him see them for himself when the time came. And he knew that that time was very soon.
"But... as long as you believe that it was the right thing to do... then I guess I just have to accept that." Somehow Ratchet gave a small smile, which Optimus returned.
"I trust everything was peaceful in our absence?" he asked, eager to turn the subject away from Airachnid.
"Almost. Arcee did awake just before you came back," Ratchet revealed. "She was disoriented, said something in her processor was blocking her recharge. I sent her back to her quarters with a hibernation chip." Optimus gave a curious hmm.
"I will check in on her on my way to my own quarters," he said with a departing nod to Ratchet. "And I expect you to be heading to your own, old friend." Even at the roll of his optics and his usual dismissive groan, Optimus knew he heard tired footsteps behind him in the direction of their berth.
Optimus own was certainly calling to him as he trekked through the corridors of the base, but he paused outside the door to where Arcee had made her small home. It used to be bigger, but after Cliffjumper's death she couldn't bear to be next to an empty berth... Optimus' optics flickered at the thought of their fallen comrade, but he kept them bright as he opened the door.
He recognised the stains of coolant under her creased faceplate buried into her berth surface, even as her forlorn shape turned into a blurr of blue and silver as Arcee instantly stood up, wobbling on her peds as she furiously wiped a servo across her optics.
"Y-You're back," she said, walling off the croak of her strained vocaliser. No look of shock in her purposely blank expression, nor the usual adomishment that he'd heard being giving to Bumblebee many a time of 'don't you know how to knock?'. At that grim note Optimus nodded, letting the door close fully behind him as he stepped closer into her room.
"Ratchet told me you couldn't sleep."
"I was just... uh... th-the hibernation chips made my optics leak," she explained in a furious rush, turning away from Optimus with her servos over her chestplates.
"I've used those chips enough to know that's not true, Arcee," Optimus said gently, remembering how he went through entire catridges of them following Elita's demise. She stayed silent, losing her defiance as she sank to her berth again and let her helm fall into her chest. It wasn't unusual at all to see Arcee like this, but Optimus could tell this wasn't about Tailgate or Cliffjumper.
"I miss her..." Her vocaliser crushed the words into a whisper that only just entered the range of Optimus' audios. He approached her with slow steps, kneeling down to where her optics would be if they were able to look at him then. "All of them, but... Elita was the first to go..." They started to leak again, and she didn't flinch when Optimus reached out to wipe the coolant tears with a digit near her faceplate.
"I remember when the news reached Cybertron. It was Blaster that told me, played me the recording himself. I didn't come out of my quarters for a long while then- not even when Tailgate was threatening to break the door down-" Her laugh at that wavered with the sadness flooding into it. "Only when you came back to Cybertron, I managed to drag myself out of there. It didn't feel right... walking without her. Every step I took I thought I felt her servo through mine's, but when I turned to look...praying that somehow, she was still with me..." A long sob wracked through her frame, and Optimus kept a firm hold on her shaking shoulder as she tried to fight it back down.
"I saw you walking down from the Ark," she went on. "The look in your optics, the way you pushed past everyone gathered there... they never tried to comfort you. No sympathy, no empty words, they just... let you be. And I always wondered what that look was... it would have been useful for me." How long had all this been boiling in her spark, Optimus wondered. Even with Cliffjumper she'd managed to push her grief aside. But perhaps that was the problem... she was so quick to just shove her more fragile emotions away into the dark corners of her spark to just let them be forgotten, until they start to grow and leach off her very core...
"To be honest, Optimus... I always blamed you for it," Arcee confessed, tilting her helm up and shuttering her optics. "After the numbness all that was left was... anger. At you, at Megatron, at the whole fragging war. That was why I didn't join you on Earth... I stayed on Cybertron with Tailgate. It was only Cliffjumper who brought me down here, and now he's gone. I..." Her vocaliser seemed to freeze up, her stuttered words lagging.
"I too blamed myself for Elita's demise, Arcee," Optimus revealed after his long silence as Arcee trailed off into her own. "Ever since we lost her I'd always thought if I hadn't left her on the Ark... or kept her to Cybertron..." His optics whirred frantically to keep stray tears at bay. "But then I realise that she wouldn't have wanted that. Nor would she have wanted her family or friends to mourn her so. The only one at any fault here is Megatron, and only in stopping him can we serve any kind of justice for her. She died as an Autobot... and that is all she would have wished for." Arcee's tears had started again, but she didn't try to hide them as they spilled over her tiny smile.
"I was... family?" she asked in a whisper as Optimus placed another hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him.
"You were as close to a daughter as Elita could have ever hoped for... and if she was here now, she'd be telling you to get some sleep."
When Optimus own processor finally shut down, for the first time in days all he saw was Elita's beautiful beacon optics flickering in the darkness of his recharge, joined with a smaller pair just below. His love and his child watched over him as he slept.
xx
Airachnid's emergence from sleep was less peaceful than she would have ever preferred, as her optics snapped open as soon as she recognised the distant rumble of engines roaring outside. Her first thought was Vehicons, despite all her delusionary reassurances that the Decepticons would never find her here. She instinctively checked her servos, where Scorpia still slumbered in a realm of sparkling-borne peace. A fresh wrapping of web put her safely on Airachnid's back, just between what remained of her legs there. Scorpia's optics slitted open and bled lines of blue, but other than that the movement didn't disturb her as her mother climbed out of the cave. The sound was still coming closer, though Airachnid hadn't seen any roads nearby. But whoever said Decepticons needed roads to travel?
She had emerged at the other side of the cave this time, where Optimus had first approached from and where it opened onto wider dusty ground at the foot of the rocky hill ahead. Just looking at them sent prickles of pain through her nodes, so she turned her attention to where the land stretched ahead into flat plains, with only a few trees of the surrounding forest cropping up to break the horizon. She thought she could hear the engines in that direction, and debated the wisdom of staying out in the open or in her confined space where one laser bolt could offline her instantly. There was another cliff just above the cave opening, where it turned into the ravine that the other entrance led to, but... could she climb it? She had no worry about the strength of her webbing holding Scorpia to her frame, but there was still the familiar ache of healing ringing through her.
With another cautionary glance at the plains to her sides Airachnid placed a palm on the rough tumbles of rock strewn overhead, feeling her weapon port suction to it. Her other hand did the same, and she was pulling herself up onto the ledges above with only the slight pain of her back legs swaying on their joints to complain about. She stopped just as she reached a wider ledge of trees and saw shape starting to emerge from the forest patches and crest the plains stretching far out before her. She shielded herself behind the branches as the shape, wavy from wafts of Earth sun battering against this small corner of the planet, came into distinction. A vehicle- mainly white sports car. Airachnid didn't bother to identify it further beyond 'not Decepticon' before she pulled back further into the trees, praying that Scorpia was still in her lull of silent sleep. Just as she was about to dismiss it though, her scanners brought her attention to something interesting.
'Cybertronian life signal...' An Autobot, then. Not sent by Optimus- Airachnid didn't expect him to tell anyone of his little secret. Then that raised the question... what were they doing here? Her helm peeked out from a tree trunk just as she heard tires skidding to a stop with rings of black marks in its wake, and her optics just took in the shifting plates of transformation before she remembered where she'd seen that white armour before. She was sure to cover her daughter's growing audios before she uttered her usual curse to Wheeljack.
"Frag my life."
xx
Yep, bringing back that previous Wheeljack quip full force. At first I was debating against it, cause I don't want to drive anyone off with an /implied/ pairing that I know a lot people will turn their noses up at, but what the hey, I love Jackie and felt that him running into Air and Scorpia first would have some sweet potential scenes.