Optimus lead the way through the Ground Bridge, sword balanced on his shoulders like a shining knight, yet Airachnid felt wholly defenseless the nanoklick she set her heel on the floor of the foyer, filled with bots that clamped their stares onto her as soon as they saw her emerge. And she recognised almost every one, the glint of their Autobot insignias flashing up from deep memories in her spark. Just as she looked at Optimus and saw both Airachnid's and Elita's precious moments with him, so she did with the soldiers that used to look at her with the same respect they gave their Prime. And knowing that respect had all but dissolved by now, replaced by only the wariest kind of curiosity, she felt a whole new and great sadness form a heavy hollow in her already-drained spark. Even Wheeljack, the only other Autobot who looked past her reputation even if it was only because of her frame, had narrow optics on her. Optimus said nothing as he stood in front of her, only moving to pull his sword down to his side in a barrier.
Strangely enough, the mech Airachnid didn't recognise was the one she was most comfortable facing, the only one brave enough to approach her. He couldn't have been much older than Bumblebee, though unlike the scout he was utterly unafraid of her. In fact, the way he peered at her was weirdly similar to how Scorpia did.
"So... you're Elita One?" he asked, the same question she'd been asking herself on an endless loop since that morning. Airachnid looked to Optimus, for some kind of cue on what to say, but he only inclined his helm towards the young mech. He'd brought her over, but it was up to her to sell herself to these Autobots.
"I... suppose I am," she said, trying to avoid glancing at any other faces trained on her. "Though I'm known as Airachnid nowadays." Despite her efforts her optics strayed onto Ratchet, short enough to keep his harsh gaze unreadable and long enough for the mech to now be bowing in front of her when she looked back at him.
"Smokescreen, ma'am. I've heard a lot about you." It should have come in a voice slogged with caution, but for all his youth Smokescreen sounded like he was greeting a herald of Primus, even had that glint of awe on the edge of his optics as he tilted his helm up at her.
Airachnid wasn't sure if she should have been flattered, or bewildered. Both was the safest bet."And yet I've never seen you on Earth before," she said.
"Well, I only crash landed earlier today, on top of a squad of Decepticons." Smokescreen pushed his backstrut straight as he rubbed at the back of his neck. "Then I blew them all up with a shot to a fuel line, and then I got that big sword for Optimus-!"
"Kid, she ain't interested in how you hid behind a rock while we were busy keeping the Vehicons off," Wheeljack cut in, nudging Smokescreen in the back before he went on an ego-fueled spiel and throwing a wink at Airachnid she never knew she needed so much, especially with the other Autobots all converging in on her (though the Wrecker seemed to falter as Optimus glared at him for some reason). Smokescreen more or less faded behind them all, smoothing over where Wheeljack collided with his frame and mumbling, "She might be..."
"So I know I already said sorry for calling you a monster that one time, but I kinda feel like I have to say it again..." Bumblebee's guilty blips trailed off, just as Bulkhead shoved in front of him with the most guarded expression she'd ever seen, every inch of his faceplate locked down.
"Were you... really her? All this time?" he asked, his jawplate actually struggling to move as he formed the words. Though when was the Wrecker ever not tense... and how did Airachnid know that about him?
She didn't, but Elita did. She'd just need to get used to sifting through what she had left.
"I only realised at the same time everyone else did... when Optimus bonded with me," she answered, struggling not to cast a look back at him and instead focusing on her claws as they tied themselves together in a sharp lattice in her lap. "I don't know what he's told you about me, or all that he's done for me and my child, but I do know what my spark is telling me. Elita's spark. As her... I see you all as friends." The last word almost came out as a question, one she still wasn't quite convinced of the answer to. And from how his optics narrowed so slightly, Bulkhead wasn't convinced either. "Even if you doubt it, Bulkhead... I know that a Wrecker takes all the friends he can get."
And for the very first time, Bulkhead faltered in the face of words he hadn't heard for centuries, since the day he decided to join the Autobots, and only then from one femme. He was still frozen when Wheeljack thudded his chest lightly.
"Don't we know it..." He moved in front of Bulk now, sparing the larger mech the need to shield how his whole frame underneath his face seemed to collapse. "So, where's Scorpia?"
And just like that, Elita might not have even existed from how attention immediately dogpiled onto her daughter instead.
"Is she alright?"
"Hey, I wanna see the sparkling as well!"
"Wait your turn, kid, we all got here first!"
While Smokescreen wrestled to re-secure his place at the front of the team, Airachnid felt herself smiling as she went on an automatic newsreel about Scorpia. How big she was, how heavy, what words she could try saying and whether her braid was still tripping her up. But even as she spoke, hooking the mechs with all their paternal urges bubbling up with the irresistible lure of an adorable sparkling, she listened to the other two Autobots who drifted somewhere further down in the foyer. Optimus and Ratchet stood apart just enough from the others that they weren't caught up in the conversation, and just close enough for Airachnid to hear them.
"What are you thinking, old friend?" Optimus asked.
"...I'm thinking about why we had to wait so long before we found her," Ratchet answered after a long, sigh-drenched pause, leaving Airachnid to wonder at how tired he sounded as he approached her for the first time, cleaving a path in between the excited chatter of the other mechs.
"What do you remember of me... Airachnid?" Such a simple question phrased like an accusation, leaving Airachnid chilled with the realisation of how her once-familiar role had so suddenly switched from interrogator to prisoner. Or maybe that was from just how much she knew about this old, proud medic, and how hard it was to choose just a handful of memories to prove who she was.
One of them almost made her laugh, so that was the one she went with. "...The first time you saw Megatron, harping on about Kaon's castes, you leaned across to me and you said it was like listening to a rusty Minicon being sent through a smelter." It was so easy to say it because she was there, both as Elita and Airachnid, forced to endure a speech crammed with truths that Megatron only believed in for as long as they were useful to him. And one memory lead to another, even as Ratchet's optics bulged over his slack jawplate. "You also said your main reason for becoming a medic was getting to see femmes without their armour. And you thought Optimus didn't hear you that time, until he made your helm ring with a backhand across it."
Everyone laughed, even Optimus allowing himself a lovely chuckle; everyone except Ratchet. The medic's expression was stuck in a swamp of shock, rippling waves of confusion crashing against a cautious but overwhelming joy that quickly broke on the shore of his grin, the laughter falling hard and eager from it as he reached down and pulled her close, swelling his servos around her so his spark's warmth could pulse against her, a inferno stoked back into life after so long spent just dying away.
"Welcome home, Elita..." Airachnid was still trying to get used to being hugged, only having distant memories of being so enclosed by other bots, but just hearing the relief in Ratchet's voice, different yet so similar to Optimus' and so much like the young medic she once knew, made her own servos slowly hug back. Over his shoulder she saw Optimus sharing the feeling, a smile sweeter than cured energon that seemed to last forever- or at least until he heard something before anyone else, a flurry of cursing from the elevator that Airachnid hadn't noticed was there until its doors slid open.
"Damn secret alien crap, think just cause they can kill ya with one step that they can just cut you off... " The human, one she hadn't seen before but bristling like Starscream on a particularly bad day, marched up to the railing of the platform that made him level with Optimus' waist. "Since no-one seems to be answering their damn comms, I gotta come down here to-" He was pointing across at all of them, inevitably seeing Airachnid when Ratchet released her from the embrace and then trying to leap back into the elevator.
"DECEPTICON!" He was clearly bigger than the children she'd seen, yet somehow more terrified of her than all three of them combined (though where Miko was concerned, she seemed to lack anything like a preservation instinct anyway). But the flight behind safety only lasted for a few seconds as he glanced to all the Autobots, wondering why they weren't panicking as well.
"...Friendly Decepticon?" he asked, squeaking slightly from fear.
"It is a long story, Agent Fowler," Optimus said, with the ghost of that smile still lingering.
xx
In hindsight it all went much, much better than what Airachnid was anticipating. She was still alive, at least. Still walking, still sighing and heaving under the weight of so many sparks crammed into her chamber. But each step seemed to get easier, even without Optimus at her side or Scorpia in her servos. The former was waiting for her in his quarters, somewhere in this concrete maze the Autobots called home, and the latter would be safe and sound with Grimlock until tomorrow.
Things had gone so well, in fact, that she should have expected to hear Arcee behind her.
"Is that it, then?" The Autobot, still as stubborn as both Airachnid and Elita remembered, was shaking as the spider turned to face her, barely holding herself back and clawing into her palms. "You have a kid, get everyone to feel sorry for you and we're all supposed to forget what you did? All our friends that you killed? The fact that you still worked for Megatron despite hating him as much as the rest of us?"
Airachnid watched her fists get tighter with each cracking word, her peds shift as she struggled to keep them planted. "If you're going to hit me, Arcee, just do it already. I've been expecting it for a long while now."
Arcee scoffed in disgust at the invitation, venom practically dripping off her glossa like Airachnid's could. "And give you an excuse to go running back to Optimus? I don't know what you did to him, what you said that made him think he cares about you, but I know it's all lies. That's all you're good for, lies and deception and making every single living thing around you hurt."
She was trying so hard to not cry as she hurled the insults. Airachnid knew if she glanced at the femme's face, she'd see the same kind of tenacity and desperation that let her survive where Tailgate perished. Or maybe she feared seeing the opposite, the wariness and questioning stare she fired at Elita the first time they saw each other in the dust of Iacon. She'd changed almost as much as Elita herself.
"Quite frankly, I don't care what you think of me, Arcee," Airachnid lied, still staring at those digits twitching so eagerly, so impatiently to claw at her. "I'm not going to stand here and plead for forgiveness because you and I both know that's beneath us."
"Why are you here, then?"
"To be with my sparkmate, and secure a future for my daughter."
Arcee tried to spit up a laugh, but all that came out was a lump of static. "Bullslag. You'd have killed that sparkling by now if she didn't get Optimus to pity you."
And now Airachnid was the one dulling her claws, hauling herself back from a lunge at Arcee's spark chamber. She sighed, grating through her vents, speaking slowly. "You know hating me won't bring Tailgate back. Just like how me killing Megatron won't bring my dead son back. But I'm going to do it anyway, because the look on his face when his spark bleeds out will be the only thing that can replace the nightmares of him."
"Then you know exactly how I wanna do the same to you," Arcee said quietly, dangerously.
"Well, there's nothing stopping you now," Airachnid told her, raising her optics to the coals of Arcee's for the first time. "Unless... you're worried you might actually be killing Elita as well."
The Autobot's optics flashed like a seizure, and she surged forwards so quickly Airachnid was expecting that to be the tipping point, the nanoklick before she finally felt her spark being torn out. But Arcee stopped just short of her, baring a warped face and snarling damnations. "You're not Elita. If you... if you were even half the femme she was, you would have never became a murderer. You're an abomination with her name slapped on. You're nothing but a fragging mockery of everything she stood for!"
"...You may be right about that," Airachnid conceded.
"I know I am." When Arcee whirled around, trudging back the way she'd come knowing there was nothing else Airachnid could say, Elita knew she had to have the last word.
"You joined the Autobots after the fall of Vos... when Chromia found you and Tailgate escaping the ruins. To you, it didn't matter what symbol a soldier showed, you hated all of them. You kicked and scratched anyone who came near you and almost took Ironhide's optic out. Only one bot was able to make you calm down... because she knew you were just frightened. You'd spent so long running from the fighting, you didn't know which side of it was good or bad."
Arcee had stopped, but she didn't turn back around until the other femme finished. Her optics were still burning, still full of hatred, but wide so the emotion wasn't so concentrated now. "...Is that all you have to say?" she whispered, most likely because she knew how weak she'd sound if she went any louder.
"Just one more thing... if you lay one digit on my daughter, the part of me that is still very much Airachnid will bury every piece of you at every corner of this wretched planet."
Each time Arcee blinked at her the optics filled more with coolant, but she was marching away again before any of it could spill down her faceplate. Airachnid wasn't so lucky, feeling the sting behind her lids the whole way to Optimus' quarters.