In all the years of the war, Optimus had many chances to be terrified. He'd marched into Primus' own spark chamber, the wastes of battlefields old and fresh, the maws of Metrotitans and even the Chaos Bringer himself with only the Matrix to ensure his survival. He'd faced down Megatron across armies and empty plains, pitted himself against monsters of the warlord's own creation and those far beyond what he could ever hope to control.

But walking into his own base with Arcee standing servos crossed, a glare loaded in her optics, was the most difficult thing he'd ever had to do.

At least she made it easier for him by doing away with greetings, and not giving him a chance to speak first. "Ratchet told me you needed urgent medical care, but you don't look that injured to me, Optimus." Her tone would have made many of Megatron's interrogators envious, maybe even Airachnid herself.

"Arcee, I..." Optimus made the fatal error of opening his mouth before knowing what to say to her. Whether or not she could sense it, she took full advantage of the heavy silence that coated his glossa.

"I've suspected there's been something going on behind my back for a long while now, so now I want the truth. What the Pit have you and everyone else been hiding from me?" Arcee jabbed a digit towards Bumblebee behind her as he tried to hide himself behind a platform support. "Either you tell me right now, or I go solo from now on. And that's not a threat, that's a promise."

While Arcee welded a scowl to her faceplate, Bee was shaking his helm hard enough to make his processor rattle. "Optimus, I swear I didn't tell her anything-"

But Optimus was already halting his plea with a hand raised in front of his solemn expression. "It is alright, Bumblebee. She deserves to know." He didn't doubt that the scout wouldn't compromise the secret, but regardless he wouldn't have blamed him for relenting under Arcee's questioning- especially if she gave him the same glare she was giving Optimus right then.

In the time it took Arcee to lay out her allegation, Optimus had been debating with ways to reveal the truth to her, from keeping it vague enough that she'd only be angered by being kept in the dark to just outright fabricating something. But she deserved more than that. She deserved a long overdue honesty.

"We have been... harbouring a former Decepticon, and a sparkling. Both of which would have otherwise been terminated by Megatron." Optimus forced himself to keep eye contact with Arcee, even as her optics swelled with surprise and her vocaliser was choked with shock. Whether it was from the news itself or the fact that Optimus revealed it so readily, she spent enough nanoklicks having to absorb it that Bumblebee managed to slip just out of range of her wrath, but still close enough to eavesdrop.

Arcee vented, blinked, bit her lip and forced her digits into tight fists, all the while struggling to look at him. When she eventually did, the glare hadn't softened. "Who else knows about them?" she asked quietly.

"Myself, Ratchet, Wheeljack, Bumblebee-"

"You mean everyone except me and old Bulkhead?" she cut in, throwing a servo towards the med-bay where thankfully Bulkhead recharged deep enough to not be stirred by her anger. Though Optimus knew now he'd have to let the Wrecker know, before Arcee gave him her own bitter version of the situation.

She was frowning under the shadow her dipped helm cast over her faceplate. "Show me them."

Optimus wasn't sure if the demand was any better than the outrage he was expecting. "Arcee-"

"Don't. Just... take me to them. Now." Her voice was steel warped under the weight of obvious betrayal. Hearing it hurt his spark almost as much as Scorpia's pain did, and Optimus knew better than to refuse her. The Ground Bridge was still humming wide open behind him, and he let Arcee trudge into its embrace first before following behind, with Bumblebee's hurried peds trying to keep up.

A thousand scenarios, each worse than the last and culminating in one femme standing over the other's gutted corpse, flashed in Optimus' processor before he stepped back onto the island, with relief flooding ice through his vents with Airachnid still nowhere to be seen. Ratchet had stayed behind to guard Scorpia, and he almost tried to hide the sparkling behind his back before he saw Optimus and Bumblebee emerge behind Arcee. Grimlock didn't seem to know what to do with himself, cowering in the sunset shadows of the trees and sniffing in Arcee's direction, and he wasn't exactly hard to notice with his horns spearing through the ferns.

"That's the Decepticon?" Arcee asked after a few moments, barely noticing the sparkling cradled in Ratchet's servos. Optimus' mouth hung open but again nothing came out, and Arcee must have taken his silence for a yes. Grimlock made small tremors as he emerged from cover, and Optimus realised that Arcee was the only femme other than Airachnid or Scorpia that the Dinobot had met. Which at least meant he wouldn't try to swallow her whole, if his attitude towards the other two was anything to go by.

Arcee watched the Dinobot approach with hesitation, anxiousness, but no hint of fear. Her winglets barely twitched as she turned toward Ratchet instead, looking down at the trembling child in his servos. Scorpia's whimpers were muffled by the tiny fingers lodged in her mouth, and her optics were brighter than the sun perched on the horizon. She looked up at Arcee with curiosity and an innocence that had no right existing in a species so used to killing each other. There was no indication that she was the spawn of a Decepticon, nothing aside from the dull grey of her proto-armour or the rosy tint of her eyes.

But whatever Arcee saw when she looked at Scorpia, it wasn't a source of joy. She broke the contact swiftly, switching her stare to Optimus and trying to say something that, in the end, didn't want to be said. She kept trying to take vents, preparing her vocaliser, but she didn't seem to think he was worth words anymore. All she did was shake her helm, heave a sigh to move planets, and activate her T Cog. It was still whirring over the squeal of her engine as her wheels tore up the grass on her way back through the Ground Bridge.

For once Bumblebee had kept silence through the whole revelation, clearing static through his broken vocaliser only after Arcee was gone. "...Well, at least she didn't yell," he said, a poor attempt at easing Optimus' grim knowledge that he'd lost one of his teammates so quickly.

"That is what worries me the most, Bumblebee."

But Optimus had a whole other slew of worries flying overhead, in the form of the Jackhammer making its return. The ship's landing was clumsy, flattening several saplings as its thrusters abruptly cut out. The door opened and before anyone could reach it Airachnid was spilling out onto the ground, all legs scrambling in the dirt. She was a blur of black and blue as she almost slammed into Ratchet and tore Scorpia from his servos. It happened so quickly that Optimus only noticed how heavily energon was leaking from her frame when stood trembling with back turned towards everyone, legs dangling limp as she panted like a hunted turbofox. Bumblebee helped Miko down from the Jackhammer's loading dock, and for once the human was completely silent as she hung on the scout's servo. Grimlock was back in the cover of the trees, the only safety he had from so many things happening that he didn't understand.

"What on Cybertron happened, Wheeljack?" Optimus whispered as the Wrecker approached, though Wheeljack seemed just as bewildered as Optimus as he stared at the proud femme now cowering to herself.
"We got to the hive and everything was fine until... Airachnid tried to communicate or something with one of the bugs. At first I thought it was actually listenin' to her, but then... it got angry. Screeched like you wouldn't believe, and attacked her outta nowhere." Wheeljack winced as he recalled whatever gave Airachnid such deep weeping wounds. "I got her back onboard, blew the charges around the hive and she even lobbed her grenade out just to be sure. She was silent the whole way back..."

"That explains Scorpia's distress, then," Optimus mused, wondering how the pain could have been so distinct when mother and daughter were so far from each other.

"Somethin' happen with the kid?" Wheeljack asked.

Optimus nodded, describing how Scorpia seemed to be having a waking nightmare and, as he was obligated to do, informing Wheeljack of the situation with Arcee. He finished just as Airachnid flinched away from Ratchet and hissed at him, shielding Scorpia like a precious gem.

"I think you should go talk to her, Prime," Wheeljack suggested. "She won't try and claw your head off, at least."

Optimus doubted it, but he would have approached her regardless of whether he was welcomed or not. Ratchet seemed convinced she'd scratched him and was scanning his servo armour as Optimus edged around her. "Airachnid?"

The spider flinched from his voice, but she didn't shake as much seeing him. She raised her helm just enough that her voice would carry over to him, though her vocaliser seemed almost as bad as Bumblebee's. "I want everyone else off my island. Now."

"Ratchet should take care of your injuries first-"

"I said everyone," she snarled, shaking from a flare of anger now more than anything else.

"...Very well." Optimus gave the order to Ratchet and Wheeljack despite their protests, and Bumblebee didn't argue as he followed with Miko. Even Grimlock relented and retreated deep into the forest. Airachnid only seemed to calm when the only other spark she could sense was Optimus', and she seated herself in her favoured clearing with Scorpia clinging to her chestplates. Optimus followed her, keeping his distance until she found a perch and motioned for him to join her.

"Wheeljack told me of what happened," he said quietly, reluctant to disturb the quiet she'd shrouded herself in.

"I'm sure he did," Airachnid said softly. With sunset fading and a dark dusk pulling itself across the sky, her glistening wounds were like bright rivers crisscrossing her scarred armour, tributaries trickling onto the ground, yet she didn't even try stemming them. Either the pain didn't matter to her, or her spark was too numb for her to feel it.

"Do you wish to talk about it?" Optimus asked. If she wouldn't let anyone stitch her wounds, he'd at least try to ease the ache on her processor. She didn't refuse, but there were a few more klicks of silence before she knew what to say. And even then, she spoke slowly through a slog of sharp memories.

"...I've always been able to control the Insecticons. I was there when Shockwave was taming them, I watched the first one he modified look at me like I was... like I was a queen. That was the first time I felt like something loved me. And I've never realised how pathetic that was until now." She gave a mocking laugh and didn't give Optimus a chance to make her see otherwise. "I did everything right with this one. I walked slowly, I kept optic-contact, but... something still snapped in him. I saw it in his optics, just before he..." She angled her helm away, pressing Scorpia closer to her chest as her vents suddenly hitched.

"The control works both ways when I tap into it. I see into their sparks, they see into mine... I think he saw something he didn't like."

Optimus watched the stars in her energon dripping down the rocks they both sat on, tried to draw focus off the immense pain trying to form a diamond shell around his spark. "You have gone through many changes since leaving the Decepticons. I would see it as a blessing in disguise," he suggested.

Airachnid made a noise, but it wasn't one of agreement. "Is that really supposed to make me feel better?" Her voice was still cracked, but when her faceplate showed itself again he saw she was at least still able to smile. One of the hands around Scorpia dropped limp to her side, dipping into her subspace and latching onto something that didn't need much rummaging to find. "Call me superstitious, Prime, but... times like this, I like having something to anchor myself to. Nowadays it's Scorpia, but before... it was this useless lump of rock." She held it between two claws like it was a trapped bug, and even in the twilight it glimmered as bright as the day Optimus first offered it to Elita One-

The similarity, and the links snapping out from the impossibly possibility forming in his processor almost crashed every system connected to it. "...Where did you get that?" he asked slowly, utterly failing to make it a casual question. His voice was too thick with hope or fear or whatever he was supposed to be feeling.

Airachnid looked to Optimus in confusion, then to where his optics focused- the small meteorite shard that she still idly passed through her claws. She shrugged indifferently. "I've had this ever since... Archa Seven. Why?"

"That... That's what I gave Elita when..." Optimus revealed, stunned almost into complete silence, hovering a servo close to hers with optics still riveted on the shard. "How-how did-" His stammers immediately ceased when epiphany struck him cold on the ground.

"...Airachnid, what I'm about to ask may seem inappropriate but... I need to see your spark chamber." There was no other way around it, but he still felt guilty posing the demand to her. And her reaction was only expected, rapid blinking and fangs clicking together in her gaping mouth.

"Wh...what?" Only two bots ever normally saw another's spark chamber- medics, and sparkmates. Optimus was neither to Airachnid, unless...

"Airachnid, please, it's... I would never ask such a thing if it was not important. But there... there's only one way I can know for sure... please." Knowing the true depth of what Megatron put her through, taking her spark when she had nothing else to give, he felt all the more dishonourable at asking her to bare it. But his plea was desperate, and he didn't try to hide it. And somehow it still convinced Airachnid after a long moment of consideration- or she just trusted him that it was vital. Whatever her reasoning, she carefully placed Scorpia safe by her peds and, claws flexing and vents battling to stay stable, let her damp chestplates slide apart. Each shift of metal and click of gears and hinges in her frame took eons to complete, and when it was finally done Optimus felt like he was millenias older, staring hard at his only hope for closure or, if Primus was truly merciful, an answer to what became of his wife.

The casing was a smoky translucent white, with thin embedded lines that bled a faint purple glow from the guarded light of Airachnid's spark. The shock of white now on her chest was such a stark contrast to the darkness of her outer armour that at first Optimus thought his optics were glitching at first. But when they adjusted to the light, within the maze of lines he picked out a faint series of engravings on the casing. Airachnid's optics widened further when Optimus pressed his faceplate closer to read into the lines, and her servos instantly shot up to cover the chamber as the Prime suddenly pulled back with a gasp.

"What...What is it?" she asked frantically, looking down under her palms at whatever it was Optimus saw. She wouldn't have found it unless she knew where to look, like Optimus did, and even then she might not have understood what it meant.

Over her spark chamber, the tiny lines formed together to spell out very faded, foreboding letters, in the same signature that Elita chose to have carved onto her chamber.

Orion.

xx

It's taken three years and over 40 damn chapters, but I finally did it.

I finally reached the plot twist everyone saw coming a mile away.

Ladies and gentlemechs, welcome to the point of no return.