Some references are made to Dance With The Devil (Promise's prequel) later on in this chapter, but if you haven't read that then hopefully everything will become clear anyway.
On another note, I've had this one planned for a while and I'm really happy to have finally gotten around to it. You'll see why soon enough.
xx
Despite Optimus' warmth still lingering across her frame, Airachnid knew she was alone again when she awoke. As always, the berth was so much larger without him sinking into it with her. Scorpia still lay in her servos, curled into her chest with all the trust a sparkling could give.
She really had no idea what kind of disease was infesting her spark. Airachnid tried to be grateful for that as she pushed herself upright, wiping her face and armour down with her claws. Whether or not she was ready to face Optimus and the Autobots again, she was sure she'd meet them in the foyer if she ventured out the door. She could try and sleep the day away in blank dreams, or hope that no one else heard the death threats she hurled at Ratchet. Despite her protesting senses, Airachnid chose the latter and almost clawed Wheeljack's face off when the Wrecker suddenly greeted her outside the door.
"Mornin', Sleeping Beauty. Or afternoon. I never understood how time works around here." If he knew how close he just came to death, he kept it well hidden. He'd had plenty of practice in that around her.
"How long have you been waiting out here?" Airachnid asked tightly, willing her spark to stop trying to pound out of her chestplates.
"Couple'a breems. Optimus asked me to stand guard, at least until you woke up."
Airachnid narrowed her optics, making to march past him. "I don't need a guard."
"I know, and he knows. It was just if you needed dragging out of your recharge." Somehow he managed to walk past her stubborn steps and take the lead. "Come on, he should be in the main hangar."
She could hear the rest of the team already, a patchwork of vocalisers that increased in volume with every step. Scorpia was too big for web cradles now, but she was almost tempted to carry her on her back in the sling that kept her safe as a newspark. Anything to trick herself into thinking she was out of harm's way if she was kept close enough to her mother. As appealing as that illusion was, she settled with just carrying her in her servos. If she acted like everything was normal, maybe everyone else would follow suit.
Even so, Airachnid hesitated before the foyer. From the voices she heard, it seemed every other Autobot was gathered to hear what Optimus was saying. Wheeljack almost had to drag her from out the corridor, pulling her into the gathering with Optimus' back facing her and his Autobots staring past him. As always, she was as inconspicuous as a Seeker parked on a highway and instantly created awkward silences as effectively as an Enforcer at a party. Scorpia at least seemed to like the attention, chirping up at the staring faces as Airachnid took her place at the edge of the gathering and avoided Optimus' gaze. She knew he'd be smiling at her, and she didn't want to see it.
"You were sayin'?" Wheeljack injected into the silence, prodding the meeting back to life.
"I was saying... at least we have our own Space Bridge now," Arcee said, alerting Airachnid to the drastic change that the Ground Bridge had undergone. Just as she'd said, a giant gunmetal portal identical to the one floating in Megatron's slice of space had replaced it. The Forge of Solus Prime lay leaning beside it, the gold sheen reflected brightly in Scorpia's wide optics and even in the Bridge's dark rim.
"We have a portal to Cybertron, but without the rest of the keys it will stay as nothing more than ruins," Optimus reminded them, still unable to take even small victories in his stride.
"Can't we just make another two keys with the Forge?" Smokescreen asked, the only one who would think it was that simple.
"Unfortunately, the Forge's power does not work that way, and I would not wish to waste it with attempting to recreate them."
Ratchet pitched in to the questioning after a sigh at Smokescreen's suggestion. "Would Megatron know where the Omega Lock is?"
"I would not expect him to," Optimus said. "The location is only revealed when all four keys are linked together, and through ancient datapads he would not have access to." Every Autobot before him had the grim looks of lost bots etched into their faces. Only Dreadwing kept his expression empty, for Decepticons never showed their fear.
"Dreadwing, could we infiltrate the Nemesis again and find the keys onboard?" Optimus asked, knowing it was their only real chance at retrieving them. Dreadwing kept his heavy thoughts to himself for long nanoklicks, before finally letting them out in a sigh.
"I would not advise it. I would have brought the keys myself if not for them being under heavy guard. The risk is just too great."
Optimus made great effort to limit his despair at nothing more than a low grunt. "We are at a stalemate, then... Airachnid, do you have any suggestions?"
Airachnid blinked in surprise. She wasn't expecting to be called on, content to just stand and listen, but Optimus still looked to her for her own verdict. As if this was a proper command meeting, and she was still his equal. Hadn't they both made the decision to meet Megatron at Archa Seven like this, so long ago?
"…I suggest that we consolidate our strength, and wait for an opportunity to retrieve the keys to reveal itself," she said, hesitance making the words come slow to her vocaliser. "As long as we still have half of them, Megatron can't make any moves on Cybertron. And he can't launch a direct assault without knowing where this base is."
She thought it was the most sensible course of action available, but Bulkhead scoffed at it. "Sit on our afts and do nothing until something happens, my favourite strategy..."
And of course Arcee wasn't eager to support anything out of Airachnid's fangs. "Can't we use the new... 'Dinobots' somehow?" she asked, prompting a snort of laughter from Wheeljack.
"You kiddin'? Just the weight of them all would make the Nemesis crash before they'd do any good. That's like sending a whole army of Bulkhead's up there. No offense, buddy." Even with that addendum, Bulkhead still punched him in the shoulder.
Optimus stretched his patience thin as he tried to bring focus back to the meeting. "Furthermore they only listen to Grimlock, and I can't trust him to lead such a delicate operation. Airachnid is correct, there is nothing we can do just yet. We must simply be patient. Back to your stations, Autobots." Not even hearing the decision from Optimus' own vocaliser helped to cement it, but the Autobots could do little to argue against it. Though they didn't show it, everyone was scared. Sitting around and doing nothing would only make them even more so. As Airachnid watched everyone drift numbly back to wasting time and trying to forget the war existed, for once she couldn't pity them. Not when she knew the feeling intimately.
Out of the corner of her optic, she saw Optimus in the midst of a plan to approach her when his comm unit interrupted him. She took the chance to put distance between them, giving herself a closer look at the new Space Bridge as Optimus spoke behind her.
"Yes, Agent Fowler? I see… yes, I understand. It should not be a problem. I will send him over." There was a pause as he closed the comm line. "Smokescreen, your presence is required- "
"Oooh, you got a team of Deceptidrones for me to wail on? Or is it another one of those Iacon relics-?"
"No, the humans wish to evaluate you," Optimus corrected, somehow maintaining patience even as a clang of Smokescreen hitting something rang out. "As a recent addition to the team, as well as a new resident of this planet, they want to ensure that you aren't dangerous."
"Ha! I'm as dangerous as they come when a Con is in my way! Just send me to them and I'll knock peds off! Or… whatever they use to walk. They'll be impressed, is what I'm saying."
Ratchet sighed once again in weariness by the Bridge's control panel, so grateful to be sending the young mech away. Airachnid watched Smokescreen shift to his alt-mode, some kind of tacky human-made frame, and stood aside just as he went roaring towards the Bridge's vortex.
With Smokescreen taken care of, Optimus turned to Dreadwing while he still stood in his permanent vigil. "There was also mention of their… reservations at having former Decepticons in our ranks…" The Seeker levelled a cold stare at the Prime that told him he would need to be put into stasis before he would willingly go near government humans.
"I shall tell them you'll be unavailable, then," Optimus wisely said.
"Good," Dreadwing decreed.
Airachnid listened closely to it all as she dragged her claws down the Space Bridge's frame, silently reading the Primal Vernacular glyphs etched beneath them. Scorpia too reached out a tiny hand to stroke at the cold and scarred metal, somehow both worn and elegant at the same time and. It was identical to every other Bridge she'd seen, yet built in less than half the time. Was it really so simple as just walking through it to be on Cybertron again? Or any other planet? She'd been stranded on Earth so long that the thought almost made her spark stop.
"Airachnid?"
She dropped her roaming claws at the sound of Optimus' voice, not quite turning to face him. "You made it into a Space Bridge with the Forge," she said as calmly as she could. "Rather ingenious. Does it really work?"
"We have not tested it, but it should be fully operational." Optimus stood by her side, seemingly sharing her own fascination with the portal as he too glazed optics over the ancient designs and writings. Even so, she was hesitant to ask…
"...Can we try it?" she said, not much louder than a mutter. "Can we go to Cybertron?"
From the silence that followed that question, she realised they were completely alone in the hangar. Even Dreadwing had decided to take his leave. There was no one else to stop them from leaving, just for a few klicks, no one except Optimus himself.
He looked down at her, optics so clear that she could see her own desperation reflected in them. The stern face of a Prime would tell her no. But then the mech who wanted to know everything, who would have travelled to another galaxy just to see what it was like, who she first fell in love with, Orion Pax, smiled at her.
"If you wish," he said, leaving her to wonder where he'd been all this time as he calibrated the Bridge's co-ordinates. In less than a klick, the way back home appeared in front of her like a long-lost ghost. It looked the same as any other portal, but she swore she could hear Cybertron through it; the taste of processed energon in the air, the blare of impatient traffic and a warm, familiar view greeting her when she woke up beside her love.
The memories rushed so fast in her processor that she almost forgot that the planet was dead, before she stepped onto empty dust. The ground beneath her was still, the vacant air hanging limp around her as the decay of a thousand years threatened to choke her vents with anguish. Buildings she might have recognised now lay in ruins, spilling their innards across the landscape as their corpses so slowly rotted away. What little slithers of sunlight that managed to make it through the wreckage were sucked away by stains of rust and ancient energon. With no-one to carry and nothing to support, the roads lay barren like the dark veins of a dying animal.
In this wasteland, only one structure still endured. The Hall of Records, half caved-in and scorched by the last efforts to take over what little the planet had left to offer the Decepticons. It was all so wrong, but what else did she expect? This was what home was. Dead and forgotten.
"…This is Iacon?" she asked, holding Scorpia tighter as dread clawed deep into her chest.
"What is left of it." Optimus stood bolted to her side, shielding her from the cold that seemed to come from all directions; a perpetual ice that didn't come from wind or snow, it simply just was. Though Scorpia didn't cry out, she shivered in her mother's arms as Airachnid forced herself forwards across the grey desert of dust. The only sound was her low vents and the lonely click of her heels stabbing the scars of the ground.
"The last time I saw Cybertron was during the Exodus," she said to herself, tracking through the leftovers of that time. "Even then, it hadn't looked so… broken." She creased her olfactories to stubbornly force a tear of coolant back into her optic. "No wonder we all left."
"If it upsets you, we can leave at any- "
Airachnid grabbed Optimus' servo before it reached her shoulder. "No. I can't leave just yet. I…" She released his hand, letting it fall slowly to his side. "I want to see everything that Megatron did to our home. I want to see what he left behind before we make him answer for it."
With that, she continued her pilgrimage. Optimus didn't follow so closely behind now. She had no way of knowing whether Scorpia knew what she was looking at, the legacy of her people being nothing more than a planet left to rust and a war that refused to end following them wherever they went, but the sparkling didn't make a single sound. It was as if she was mourning the home she never knew.
Even so, there was one sight that made Airachnid smile. On Iacon's outskirts lay a familiar courtyard that few knew about even in the Golden Age. With its dissected statue of Solus lying at her peds and the once glorious stained-marble floor left shattered, Airachnid recalled the countless evenings spent practicing while Orion watched from behind a datapad.
"Do you remember when you'd watch me dance there?" she asked softly.
"How could I forget?" Optimus asked in return. "Solus herself burned with jealousy when she watched you move."
"Oh, stop it." Airachnid would have swatted at him if he was close enough, dragging her heel through the ruins of her sweet memories. Back and forth along the shards of marble, like she was sharpening her heel into a knife or just warming up for a dance. As a hunter as well as a dancer, grace and poise were just part of her job. A dancer positions herself so carefully, slinks across her stage and dives for her audience just as a hunter does for her prey.
In that regard, at least, Elita and Airachnid were not so different. Though it had been countless cycles since she had the time for a waltz, she found herself swaying to a once-forgotten song that found its way past her fangs. Her vocaliser simmered its low hums, until she found the strength to be louder and let the lilt echo throughout the rusted ruins. She set Scorpia down on a clear slab of stone by Optimus' peds, not pausing to see how he looked at her as she fell into her song. She couldn't recall where she'd heard it, or even what it was called. But it hit the chords of her spark so closely that she had to play it to herself, closing her optics to forget the cold wastes around her and replace it with what once was, if only for now. If she would see Cybertron restored only once in her life, she would happily keep it safe in her mind, her only regret that Scorpia couldn't see what she once did.
In the trappings of her fantasy she didn't even realise she was dancing until Optimus caught her, not at all rehearsed yet so perfectly timed. He balanced a hand against her back as the other held her servo, happily letting her back legs caress his face as it hovered over hers.
"I thought I'd never see you dance like that again," he confessed, with the same awe that she'd never been able to understand. Airachnid slowly righted herself, legs pushing off the ground to release her from Optimus' dip. She didn't feel herself moving, yet her joints throbbed exactly as they did when she danced. The dust on the stones marked the path she took, a thousand lines that wouldn't be the same if she'd tried it again. And if she needed further proof, Scorpia stood trying to copy her mother's moves on wobbly peds. Airachnid swooped her up just before she tripped again, and faced Optimus' reverence with the only emotion she could muster- sadness.
"We'll dance again when the war is over," she decided, swiftly turning away from him before he could read any guilt on her face. Optimus said nothing to that, but she was sure he was as confused as she was.
Because it wasn't Orion she was thinking of when she danced. He was her first love, but he didn't teach her how to move. He didn't teach her how to survive, or how a bot was supposed to love. And she hated knowing that there would always be another, when Optimus loved her so dearly.
She loved him too. Too much to keep lying to him.
"Do you still want to know why Soundwave let me go?" she asked, when she reached Iacon's edge and found nowhere else to run. "Why he's been trying to help all this time?" She forced herself to face Optimus as he thought of how to answer. He took long enough to tell her that he hadn't expected it to come up again, or at least so soon.
"All I want to know is who we can trust," he eventually said. "Anything other than that does not matter to me." His answer somehow told her both everything and nothing about what he suspected the reason was. But no matter what he thought of it, or of her, nothing had changed. He looked at her no differently than the day he realised who she was, and with no less love.
Airachnid had to root herself to the ground to stop herself running up to kiss him. Even her vocaliser failed her as she tried to comprehend just how she found a mech as perfect as Optimus. No matter what, she knew who she loved. Past, present or future would never change that.
"…I don't know if we can trust him," she eventually managed to say. "Even if he released me, Soundwave could have stopped Megatron from... he could have intervened. He could have done something other than just ignore it like everyone else-"
She might have rooted herself, but Optimus closed the distance between them in two strides to take firm hold of her shoulders, leaning down to look into her optics. "Airachnid. You know there's no use in thinkin of 'ifs' and 'should haves' right now. It's those thoughts that almost killed me centuries ago. I won't let them do the same to you. Not after all you've been through."
Thankfully he embraced her before her tears could spill over her optics, with Scorpia caught between their bonded sparks in a cradle of shared adoration- for each other, and for the chance to start again.
Behind Airachnid, the empty space between Iacon's ruins and the abandoned battlefields beyond grew dark as Cybertron's star disappeared behind the battered horizon, leaving behind a sky that was like bruised skin stretched thin over a corpse. Out of everything she'd seen that day, the sight of such vast and inescapable darkness made Scorpia whimper for the first time.
"This is no planet to raise a child on," Airachnid said quietly, holding her daughter closer.
"This won't be her planet," Optimus told her. "Hers will be resurrected... it will be beautiful. Better than before."
"Is that a promise you can keep?"
Optimus took hold of her closest hand, pulling it close as he knelt before her and let the setting sun split its last rays on his bowed helm. "For you, Airachnid... Elita... I would cross a sea of galaxies to see your smile on the crest of a starlit wave."
Even if she'd snatched her hand back, Airachnid couldn't have possibly hidden her blush behind it. "You remembered that from our bonding vows."
"And I stole it from the inscription on the shrine to Solus. You were always too busy dancing to read it," he admitted. If it was anyone else but Optimus she might have smacked them in a sulk; but it was Optimus, so all she could do was laugh against Scorpia's helm. Optimus returned to her side when she recovered, but as she made to take his hand her claws instead dipped into her subspace, pulling out the last untainted remnant of Cybertron. The meteorite, her wedding gift, caught the very last ray of sunlight just before it bled away, and Airachnid let Scorpia clutch it like a good friend.
"Do you think she knew?" she asked.
"Hm?" Optimus stared off at the silhouetted horizon, too distant to have heard her.
"Scorpia," she clarified. "Do you think she knew... that we were sparkmates all along?" The sparkling gave her mother a wide-eyed look, as if teasing her for the question, but Optimus didn't give an answer. Airachnid looked up at him expecting to see him lost in thought, but rather than the gentle face that had guided her here, she was met with frozen steel amid wide, terrified optics.
"Airachnid. Take Scorpia and run," he commanded hoarsely, not taking his sight off the horizon for a nanoklick.
"What?" Airachnid tried to turn and see what had left him so petrified, but Optimus shoved her backwards before she could get more than a glimpse.
"Run, now! Stay out of sight!" Optimus turned around only to bellow at her, shifting his shotgun into place and aiming it towards the skies ahead. Any other soldier would have obeyed without question, but Airachnid had to waste precious nanoklicks of her escape to see what the threat was.
And she instantly regretted it. Even from a distance, even in the darkness, she recognised those red optics that seemed to find her wherever she went, and the purple stain of Dark Energon burning behind them.
If she could see Megatron, then he could see her.
Knowing that was what finally got her running.