So... as some of you might have seen already, I accidentally uploaded the wrong document for this chapter. What I uploaded was actually a very very rough draft for the next chapter, and I only noticed it much later.

And to add insult to my own incompetence, my internet cut out right after uploading it, so I've only been able to fix it now.

*'Mad World' plays in the distance*

xx

It was a pleasant surprise for Airachnid to wake up with warm sunshine on her faceplate, and a gentle tugging at her claws. Soft grey armour came into view as she blinked awake, and her daughter looked up at her with something on her hand. Scorpia had grown fond of finding parts of the world she was only just beginning to grow into, and bringing them to her mother to see what she made of them.

Airachnid stifled a yawn and squinted at the sparkling's hand. "You found a butterfly, darling."

Scorpia looked down closer at the yellow wings and twitching antenna on her digits. "B-Bubber... fwy." Ever since it made her first word, her vocaliser had been searching for even more to say other than the usual trills and chirps. Usually sparklings had words and constructs downloaded directly into their processors, but with so little to work with Airachnid had to make do with teaching her manually.

"Close enough." The spider smiled as Scorpia climbed into her lap, still holding her fluttering friend. The tangle of wires sprouting from her helm had grown long enough to reach past her peds, and Airachnid found some peace in winding strands through her claws.

Scorpia tried prodding one of the butterfly's delicate wings, but it flew from her grasp. Her faceplate started to crease, and she whined sadly as Grimlock chased after it.

"It must be late for something," Airachnid quipped, with no idea of how to deal with a crying sparkling and not wanting to have to. "Why don't you go find another one?" Scorpia's quivering lips lifted into a grin again, and she clambered off her mother's lap and crawled to the edge of the clearing again.

'Even when I have one, I still don't understand sparklings.' Airachnid couldn't imagine herself as one, so tiny and helpless (and flippant). She wasn't sure if she ever was one, if she was born of the Well or in a laboratory or wherever her kind came from. Mostly because she never really cared.

Grimlock thudded towards her with yellow in his denta and fell down beside her in his listless way. The colossal mech hadn't tried chasing her again, and flinched whenever she pointed her palms towards him, so Airachnid felt safe with his helm close enough to vent buffets of heat against her.

She pulled her last energon cube from her subspace and threw it aside for the dinobot to devour. He had said the main reason he chased her was because he was cranky with his energy levels being so low, and she'd rather have him fed and docile than putting up with any more rampages, even if it meant sacrificing some of her own energon.

The rock beneath her was damp with rain, but it helped her regain alertness as she leaned back and let the encroaching sun cast its glow over her. Ever since she departed from the Decepticons she'd taken a little longer to fully awaken- it was expected that all officers be alert immediately when awoken from recharge, and Megatron had no patience for late risers. That was why she was always one of the first to report to the command centre, allowing Knockout to take his time polishing his armour and receive the first helm-slap of the day.

Of course, it meant every morning began with moments spent alone with Megatron; with her spark beating fast enough for three (if only she knew...) and feeling his optics crawling under her protoform, but it was better than suffering his wrath. Again.

The scars at her waist itched infernally, but a ping in her comm served to distract her from scratching them.

"Optimus?" He was the only one with access to Airachnid's comm unit, since she'd erased all traces of Decepticon radio numbers and altered her own frequency (that also usually earned a bot a royal beating from Megatron, but with her being dead she assumed he wouldn't be too worked up about it).

"I hope you are well, Airachnid. I will be bringing Ratchet along with me today-"

"And why is that?" Suspicion made her hiss sharper than usual.

"He wishes to examine you-"

"Absolutely not. I won't have his hands anywhere near me."

"I'm not exactly incensed by the thought either," Airachnid heard the medic grumble at the edge of the comm line, followed by a grunt and a thud of metal as Optimus no doubt pushed him away. "He did no harm to Scorpia, and he will not do any to you."

Prime had a point, but she'd still have been more likely to allow a Decepticon mnemosurgeon near her than the medic who would have surely killed her if Optimus wasn't there to hold him back. She didn't want to have to put her trust, or what little of it she had left, in any more bots than she had to. Ratchet may have been gentle with Scorpia, but she was no sparkling. She was an adult... abomination.

"I'll be in the clearing where the Ground Bridge point is." She didn't wait for Optimus' reply before switching her comm off. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, and all of a sudden she didn't appreciate the damp stone underneath her. Grimlock had been growling while she spoke to Optimus, but now he whined at Airachnid's sighs as she hit her helm against a knee spike.

There was no gentle tugging this time, but Scorpia chirped to catch her mother's attention as she crawled over to her again, holding something else on her digits. With coolant in her optics it was hard to see it at first, but Airachnid recognised the thread-like legs and bulbous black body of her ancestors anywhere. It was nowhere near as large as the spiders who had raised her on Archa Seven, of course, but it still made her smile as it hesitantly tiptoed onto her claws and weaved between them like a miniature dancer.

"At least you still have all your legs..."

xx

"There's every chance that he might not be with the femmes. He may be recharging, or hunting-"

"Hunting for us, you mean." Ratchet's apprehension about Grimlock had not eased in the slightest as he and Optimus pushed way through the dense forest. Rain had fallen heavily sometime last night, and Ratchet had to keep shaking his hands free of water whenever he shoved a fern out of his way.

Though Optimus did not share his fears, he stayed vigilant for any signs of the dinobot being nearby. The two mechs bridged slightly afar from the agreed meeting point with Airachnid, in case Grimlock was with them and he turned aggressive with Ratchet's presence.

The dinobot lay on his side beside Airachnid as she sat perched on a boulder, and his optics snapped open when the two Autobots entered the clearing. His warning growls shook through Ratchet's frame and almost sent the medic bolting off into the trees, but Airachnid placed a hand over Grimlock's muzzle. The stroking of her claws made him fall silent again, and he reluctantly laid his head back down, still watching Ratchet warily with drool dripping between his teeth. The medic shuddered and frowned as he forced his attention on Airachnid.

"Where is Scorpia?" She looked away for a few klicks, just as a rustle in the ferns followed the sparkling being spat out onto the grass and rolling to a bumpy stop at the foot of the boulder, giggling as leaves cascaded down her. Ratchet spluttered as Airachnid leaned down to pick her up.

"You just let her just wander freely without any supervision!?"
Airachnid shrugged as she held the squirming sparkling close to her chest. "She has Grimlock to protect her. And it's not as if she can get far without walking."

"She is your child-"

"Which means I can raise her however I wish." Her optics were narrow slits again, and Optimus knew he was klicks away from another confrontation between the two.

"I doubt a sparkling would be laughing if it was hurt, Ratchet," Prime pointed out as he moved in front of the medic, blocking his access to Airachnid. All Ratchet could do was grumble about 'irresponsible Cons' and let the subject drop.

"Are you ready?" Optimus asked. The already-sour look on Airachnid's faceplate curdled even more, but she nodded.

"Just get it over with." The mutter seemed to stop Scorpia's giggles as she was handed over to Optimus while her mother tried not to attack Ratchet as he approached her.

"I will need you to turn around." Though his request was as polite as he could make it she still hissed and kept her helm looking over her shoulder with her back towards him. Ratchet wrung his hands out before daring to place them anywhere near her, hesitantly looking closer at her armour.

"...it will be a while still until the legs grow back fully, but they're healing surprisingly well." Somehow Ratchet managed to keep his hands steady as they held the stubs that remained of Airachnid's secondary legs, studying the strange metal with zooming optics. Even if it was on a Decepticon, Ratchet couldn't deny how fascinating it was to see techno-organic armour so closely; it was thought that no two TO's had the same molecular structure and compound metals involved in their frames.

Airachnid herself was obviously uncomfortable with the medic's hands on her, and she crossed her servos to grab her elbows while her legs twitched irregularly. She seemed more at ease when Ratchet asked her to face forward again, but she was still reluctant to lower her legs from her chest. Optimus stood to her side with Scorpia in her servos as she nibbled on one of his digits. He was reluctant to move her, knowing now what type of energon flowed through her veins, but he ached to have her closer to his spark. Imprinting, it seemed, had an effect on sires as well, as Optimus found himself yearning to have his surrogate daughter nearby. There was something ultimately soothing in her soft chirps and trills, something that closed his spark in an oasis of peace. It was the only peace he had known in centuries- even the three years Megatron was away from Earth was wrought with worry in every day at what the warlord might bring back with him.

In a way, when he returned to Earth he brought Scorpia in the form of his dark energon shards with him. Optimus wasn't sure how to feel about that.

Ratchet brushed his hands off his armour and made his report. "All protoform wounds have healed with some minor scarring, and apart from the legs you are in perfect health, Airachnid." That was only a physical assumption, and Ratchet was aware of it. He knew better than to ask to look at her spark chamber for any spiritual damage. "Now, if I could see Scorpia again..."

Airachnid's helm snapped backwards to face him, optics narrow and lips tight with suspicion.

"You already examined her."

"And I need to perform another one, for consistent results." Both medic and Prime were uncertain of how long they could keep Scorpia's dark energon problem a secret from her mother, but they both agreed it would be best if Airachnid didn't know for now- she had enough to concern herself over.

Reluctantly she nodded to Optimus, and he transferred Scorpia from his servos to Ratchet's. The sparkling whined as she was pulled away from her sire's spark, reaching out tiny hands and waggling her digits towards him, but Ratchet managed to soothe her enough to cease her squirming.

Airachnid kept her optics trained on them both, trying to keep her faceplate free of any worry. But Optimus recognised her distress, just as he did when Ratchet had taken Scorpia for the first time. He suspected that it wasn't the mech himself that Airachnid had issues with. It was any bot that she didn't trust taking her daughter from her- that was what made her hostile. At some point her gaze couldn't help but flick aside to Optimus, making sure he was still there. He nodded at her, though he wasn't entirely sure why. He supposed he thought it would reassure her in a way. For the same unknown reason, she nodded back.

"All done," Ratchet announced surprisingly quickly, breaking the two bots' silent commune.

"Well?" Airachnid asked, taking her child back and quickly scanning her over for any extra marks or devices Ratchet might have planted on her.

"All... systems normal." Ratchet cleared his vocaliser when it suddenly grew tight with his lie. "Her first armour layer is growing in, and this..." He lifted up the trail of wires hanging down her back with two digits. "...filament is growing even faster. It's not uncommon for sparklings to have extra growing pieces as their systems fully initialise. I'd recommend having it cut off- painlessly, of course-"

A loud high-pitched squeal interrupted him, and Scorpia pulled her wires closer to her defensively. Ratchet's optics were wide in surprise that she could even understand him, and Airachnid smirked.

"The filaments stay."

Ratchet sighed and rolled his now normal-sized optics. "If you insist. Just don't blame me when she starts tripping up everywhere. Now, with that all dealt with... I see no reason to stay here." He didn't wait for Optimus as he walked to the trees where the Ground Bridge would show. Prime saw no pressing reason to stay either, so he gave Airachnid another nod of farewell before following.

"Rafael, I'm sending you some co-ordinates. I need you to open a Ground Bridge at them, alright?" Optimus raised an eyeridge at Ratchet's comm, to one of the humans?

The medic caught Prime's quizzical look and glanced away guiltily.

"I've been... teaching him how to use it."

Optimus couldn't help but smile. "That just may come in handy, old friend." The gateway home split open before them in a whirl of green.

But just before Optimus stepped into the vortex, a familiar chirp sounded behind him. When he turned on his ped, Scorpia was trying to walk towards him, tripping on her trailing braid.

"What did I say, Optimus?" Ratchet tutted. "That thing would be a death sentence in any battle!" Optimus was deaf to his scoffs though, watching Scorpia intently as she wobbled on her pedes and took tiny steps forward. The most she managed was three before she fell down. He glanced behind her to where Airachnid still sat on her rock, watching her as well with Grimlock's helm raised.

Scorpia's lips pursed together in a pout, before wavering as they tried to form words instead.

"O-oppy." She giggled again at Optimus' faceplate, melting in a pool of awe and love. His spark was blooming as he swept Scorpia up again and held her close to it, feeling for all the world he knew that she was his daughter. Megatron could have been galaxies away for all Optimus cared about him in those close moments with her. He couldn't see Airachnid, but he suspected her spark would be no calm place either.

"She said my name." He almost didn't recognise his own voice, so soft and quiet as Scorpia nuzzled deep into his chest.

Ratchet could only scowl. "'Oppy' is not a proper word..."