Summary: No-War, No-Factions AU. Festival of the Five: They were two stars circling a single gravitational point. One driven by faith, the other by desire. They came together only with the blessing of the Guiding Hand, and when they did all of Cybertron was caught in their orbit. They weren't destined for each other, but as Primus said: There is destiny, and then there is destiny.

Warnings: Sexual Content, including one (mild but detailed) tactile interfacing scene. Cannon-typical violence. Alien Religion and various issues thereof.

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Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

Epilogue: The Festival of Primus

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And when you do, it will be the first pebble of an avalanche, the first raindrop of a hurricane…

In hindsight, that had been a good description of that festival. Mirage's division from his caste was complete. There was no acceptance from that quarter. There was no going back. His words and influence couldn't be entirely discarded — those came from his relationship with the Prime — but he wasn't one of them any more and they weren't going to pretend otherwise.

Mirage was through pretending too. Something in him had changed during the Race. He may have been shaped and molded by the centuries before, by Sunstorm, rebelling against Phantasm and paying the price, by standing by the Prime's side and falling in love. By training with Valkyrie and by making a choice… But the race had been the final stroke. He'd held his own life, his own fate in his hands, and decided the fates of others. He'd maimed another bot…He'd killed (a mere battery mimic, true, but still a living spark) and there was no stepping back from that and returning to being just another noble, however rebellious.

He spent his time at Prime's side, threat assessment evaluating everything and everyone, instead of socializing on his own.

The next century was the tense calm before the storm broke.

Clouds gathered in the form of resentment. The scent of acid came on the wind in the rumors of loyalties being quietly tested and turned. This Prime and his chosen advisors were a poison to their carefully nurtured power and preparations were made.

…The first light of a new dawn, and you are its herald.

In contrast, Mirage and Hound and Prime could not be more loved by the people of Cybertron. A noble had lowered himself to race for a laborer's affections and won, at great injury to himself. The story was told and retold again and again and was slowly taking on the cadence of holy scripture, though had not yet been penned as such, thank Primus. The race of Primus was a joyous celebration.

Both sides of it built, gaining momentum, until the Festival of Mortilus, where the gladiator Megatron finally cast down his last opponent and declared for all of Cybertron to hear that he wished to claim the Prime himself! Optimus had been nearly paralyzed with shock. He'd had a stupid newspark crush on the gladiator forever and Mirage and Hound had finally had to shove him forward to accept. They'd made a spectacle of themselves to shame any public claiming in living memory. The bonding, however, had been private. And that story penned as scripture within a vorn.

Optimus had been very pleased to find his new bondmate was as much a poet and writer as he was a gladiator. Megatron had ideas and ideals and Optimus was eager to listen, debate and eventually begin to implement some of them. Their first joint Primal Decree was intended to address the issue of illiteracy among laborers and other castes that did not require it to function. It wasn't even a law, just an attempt to make learning more accessible. It was a small gesture, but enough to provoke a response from their enemies.

The first bolt of lightning struck not long after. The first assassin was sent to kill the Prime and his new bonded before even a vorn had passed. Dagger had been prepared to neutralize Megatron — had in fact been commanded to kill them both — but had not been prepared for the Prime himself to fight back, or for Mirage to be there, the three of them discussing just how literate was a reasonable goal. Or for the noble to be just as capable of maiming another bot to protect the Prime as he had been during the Race.

Prowl, whom Prime had brought back to Iacon to get him away from Barricade and Lockdown and others in Praxus while that situation was dealt with, proved invaluable in investigating, hunting down, and arresting those responsible. Mirage had been called on to defend his Prime three more times, and to assist in breaking into fortified manors on a near dozen occasions, before Prowl was satisfied he'd found them all and chained them before the altars of Mortilus for trial and judgement.

That Senator Proteus and Baron Phantasm and many members of the noble caste had been taken didn't surprise him, but the corruption went deeper. There were scientists and military generals… there were clones created only recently in an attempt to breed an army to oppose the one that was proving too-loyal to Prime. Worst of all, in the deepest recesses of the manors, there was evidence that they had been using the dark magic of shadowplay to steal the loyalties of key personnel throughout the military. Fortunately they also kept records of their victims, and the unfortunate sparks were also taken before the altars for trial and judgement.

The Functionalists had depended on the manipulation of the current system, on the actions and inactions of a sympathetic Prime, for so long that someone had acted, sent an assassin, before the infrastructure of a rebellion could be crafted and thus robbed them of the time they'd needed to prepare before they could tear down the Prime's rule and instill their own.

Even with no war ever declared, even with many of the shadowplay victims being acquitted and sent to the Temples of Primus and to medics to have their minds and programming healed, Mortilus' altars had been bathed in enough energon to slake even the death-god's thirst. A forest of empty spark chambers, impaled on spears of different metals to represent their crimes, appeared at the entries of the temples the God of Judgement. Grisly, stark and vicious, they rusted there under the care of the priesthood. Iron for murder. Magnetite for heresy. Platinum for the practice of dark magic.

Iridium for attempted deicide.

The spears would stand long after the spark chambers rusted away in the acid rain. Already some were doing so, becoming as nameless here on the mortal coil as they were in the Well and leaving behind only the marker of their crimes.

What followed was the greatest reorganization of the castes since the days of Prima and the First Forged. Because of Megatron and their discussions, Optimus did not simply wish to spark replacements from Vector Sigma; he wanted to fill out the vacancies from the ranks of living mechs, if possible. The temples helped, priests either stepping in to temporarily take on a job left vacant, or they knew someone — someone in another caste — who would be a perfect replacement. Then with those jobs left open, others who were qualified were moved and then replacements for those were what Prime took before Vector Sigma when it came time to pray for new sparks.

When, for the first time in living memory, all the asked-for sparks were enframed, that day had practically been declared a holy day and Cybertron celebrated.

Optimus and Megatron were still arguing over the specifics, but they agreed that an option for people to change their caste should be implemented as part of the vornly census taken before the Prime's pilgrimage to Vector Sigma. The tests had been put together and were restricted to only applying for jobs that were open or became open when its holder changed caste and every vorn the system was redesigned to address some flaw in the way it worked. It was difficult to adjust to, but Prime, his consort and the mostly-new senators and council members all admitted and agreed that they were making something by trial and error and it might be a very long time before it was set into permanent law.

Having given up his — Phantasm's — position to a bright, newly sparked archivist to whom Vector Sigma had given the name Lex and who'd chosen the name Dharma, Mirage had stayed with the nobility only reluctantly. Something had changed in him during the Race of Adaptus. As completely as he'd been rejected by his caste after, it had only been a manifestation of what he already knew. The gods had changed him and he wasn't a noble, not in his spark, any longer. He'd intended to retest for the military, but Optimus had convinced him not to, and instead he'd taken on Mortilus' coat of arms as the Prime's spymaster, a position that had lain empty since before Sentinel's rule.

This is not a thing to fear.

By the Race of Adaptus, Optimus and Megatron were bickering over the future of cloning in the military, as many of the mechs most eager to change caste had been the military clones.

To Mirage's surprise, Sunstorm hadn't been one of them. He'd expected the seeker to take the first chance he was offered to become a priest, but he stayed with the military. When the next race came around, they talked again — as equals — and he'd understood why: he'd always said that his spark belonged to the Guiding Hand, not to any one of the gods, and priests didn't race.

And when Sunstorm won… an entirely reflexive anticipation had thrummed through every wire. The seeker had flown over to them and looked him over and Mirage had quivered in a thick mix of excitement at being chosen again and resignation that he'd have to refuse. But instead of the ritual request to know if he'd proven himself worthy, Sunstorm had only looked at him and Hound both and said, "Congratulations on your bonding, Herald," and then flitted over to the attending priest.

Excitement had crashed to confusion and resignation, but it hadn't been Mirage's half of their spark that broke.

He and Hound… they were spark of each other's spark, so closely bonded that sometimes it was difficult to truly be separate. Everything that had happened had only driven them closer. Two sparks, pulsed as one. And it was together that they'd made a decision.

"You certain you want to do this? You're not jealous?"

Sparks and bonds had more configurations than just a pair. Trines were also very common, even standard in some places, and quintets weren't uncommon. However, if a bonded couple wanted to compete for the attention of a third, they had to do it in the Race of Primus. It was the only one of the Races where the synchronization of minds and bodies that came with the bonding of sparks was not so much an advantage as to disqualify them from entering.

"I wasn't ever jealous. Perhaps I should have been. I just didn't understand what you could see in me, when you had him, but… it wasn't about lust or even love. He is your faith, your connection to the gods. Besides, it's a little late to reconsider now, lover."

To keep them from assisting each other, Mirage-and-Hound were assigned two lanes on the opposite edges of the track. Together they stretched their tensile cables and loosened up their hydraulics in preparation for the race ahead. A footrace, no alternate forms, no elaborate puzzles, no need to be able to fly or swim… Primus' was the fairest Race of them all. Everyone competed on equal footing in the optics of their Creator.

"You know I wouldn't hold you to this if you were uncomfortable. I made my choice and I can't ever regret it."

One fate, one destiny… one spark, they moved together to their starting positions. The priest said the blessings. The excitement was thick, EM fields layering it into air.

"You made a choice, and I didn't, couldn't, know at the time what that choice meant. I do now. I want us to do this."

"He won't ever bond with us."

"RACERS TO YOUR MARKS!" Prime bellowed with all the power a mech of his bulk could produce. This was, Mirage-and-Hound knew, one of Optimus' favorite duties of his station. Megatron, his own bondmate, stood by his side.

"One fate. One destiny…Given everything that's happened, a spark bond is just a formality. If he's only ours when the gods say he is, one night at a time, so be it."

"GET SET!"

"We can wait," they thought together, "We'll prove ourselves worthy of him, that we want him here with us and then we'll wait forever."

"GO!"

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Glory, glory, hallelujah

His truth is marching on!

— Julia Ward Howe, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory"

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End