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You have earned the Matrix of Leadership…
…but your time is not over yet.
…there is something left for you to fix, once more…
…Optimus Prime.
“— Orion!”
D-16’s — no, Megatron’s — voice rang in his audials, a stressed tone he’s not heard inflicted in his voice for cycles — Orion surged forward with a hurried intake of air, his vents fluttering with alarm as he gasped; stumbling into a pair of arms so familiar his heart hurt for something he couldn’t remember —
Why couldn’t he remember what he lost?
“ Frag — you’re heavier than you look, mech, help me out a bit here!” Megatron bit out, and Orion’s processors finally kicked in; flailing his arms out with a sudden pulse of strength, he pushed Megatron away and fell to his knees, vents panicking horrifically — he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, and hands were tugging at him again, Megatron’s voice — concerned, why was he concerned?! He’s the one that— frag, Primus, everything hurt and he — his arm, both his servos were visible in front of him, all ten digits were curled up against the pebbled metal floor of —
The miner’s sleeping quarters.
The… miner’s sleeping quarters?
His servos were a dull grey — not the special, shiny mixture of textures the Prime cog had turned him into, but before…
Dark gray servos tugged at his helm, guiding his face upwards — Orion tensed, expecting a blow now that he was at his weakest, most vulnerable —
Megatron’s optics were…
They were normal.
Normal. A beautiful, fiery yellow, the octagons twisting and changing as— as he processed everything.
“Orion?” A nervous look appeared on his friend’s — friend? — face plates.
Primus, something was wrong. So very wrong.
“D?”
“...Yeah, mech, it’s me,” D-16’s servos went under his arms and helped tug him back to standing — Orion’s legs trembled with the sudden weight bestowed upon him. He had — gotten so used to the height from before, the extra feet added on top, that it took a second for him to actually process everything again.
“What’s wrong with you, huh?”
Orion turned back to D, his eyebrow ridges furrowing in thought.
What was wrong? Frag, he didn’t know, he didn’t know. Was— was it all just a nightmare, then? All of it?
No. No. It couldn’t be. No.
Nightmares like that don’t just — appear. There’s reasoning for it; there always is.
“I don’t…” Orion shuddered a little, turning back away, down the alley to the opening of the quarters. If memory serves him right, he’d be at the… Archives, by now. Primus, all that seems so far away, now, so long ago…
Orion blinked and gently shooed D-16’s servos away with a soft huff. He couldn’t remember what to do — he just remembered everything else.
“What’s today?” Orion asked with a tremble in his voice, shaking away the sleep still lodged in his fuel lines. D-16 gave him an odd look, and it was then Orion noticed the gentle scratches from the rocks in their mines
“...Uh, nothing special, I don’t think — we’re opening up that new mining channel, right?”
Right. Right. The day Jazz lost his leg, the day Elita got fired, the day they met B-127, the day they found out everything was a lie —
— the day D-16 betrayed him.
Or, the day nothing actually happened, if everything had been a nightmare. Which wasn’t likely, at this rate. The ache in his chassis — it wasn’t something he was used to, definitely not; the ailment right in the middle where his cog should be pounded through his cables, that wasn’t normal.
Nothing was normal about this body. He didn’t feel the pulse of energy flowing through him, the lack of it was such a — loss, he didn’t know how to breathe without the ability to transform in his processor.
“Primus, Orion, you’re acting so weird today. C’mon, we have some minin’ to do, alright?” D-16 tugged him along, before letting go and strutting towards the door.
Orion watched him walk away, optics glancing across everything he never bothered to see before — every dent, scratch, and flaw on his metal that had been buffed out by the Prime cogs. Everything from before he had let go by without a second glimpse, somehow believing he’d see them again come next morning.
Orion didn’t realise how much he had missed D-16, the mech before him; the one that teased and nudged him every time he zoned out, the one that threw an arm across his shoulders and defended him from Darkwing every chance he got, the one that —
— the one that actually believed in something.
Orion knew learning about Sentinel’s betrayal broke something in them all. An unrepairable, chipped gear, stopping a system from working its magic. But it didn’t just break something in D, it broke everything. Every belief, every moral, thrown out the window…
There hadn’t been a moment of peace between D and Bee being taken by Sentinel’s guards. One moment, D-16 had been planning a charge against Sentinel, the next — the next, D had Megatronus’s helm carved into his chest plate and a look in his eye that told Orion that nothing of the D-16 he knew was left.
He had hoped — amongst everything, hope was a fickle thing — that D would find something to believe in. He had hoped D-16 would believe in him, as he always did… in every stupid plan of his, in everything, D-16 had stuck by.
The betrayal had broken them apart.
Sentinel broke them apart.
The next thing Orion knew, they were in the mines; glistening energon rocks sparkled around him, flickering off of the other Cybertronians. Despite the amount of times Orion had shuffled down these channels, the view never ceased to amaze him — except now. The energon, everything the miners had worked so hard for, was going straight to the enemy.
Elita stood in front of the group, splitting them off into separate tasks — everything was too similar to the nightmare, and he knew he wasn’t crazy, he knew he wasn’t glitching, he knew it —
“Something the matter, Orion Pax?” Elita-One bit, the blue panel in front of her helm glittering away as her attention snapped to Orion.
I don’t know.
Orion clenched his servos and shook his helm, glancing around him — he had been left by the rest of the team.
“No, sorry,” he murmured before he was marching off to the channel where he had assumed everyone was — not noticing the glimmer of suspicion across Elita’s face plates.
The channel was going to collapse — he knew it was going to collapse, he knew the exact moment it would collapse; his entire frame had been tense for the cycles it took to get to the deepest part of the shaft.
He kept an optic on Jazz; and ignored the confused optics of D-16 he could feel on his strut. Too deep in thought to actually keep up the personality of Orion Pax, he could sense the second Cybertron started to erupt; before it even began to shake, Orion snapped up —
“It’s going to collapse! Get out!” he bellowed, yanking Jazz’s shoulder plates and propelling him forward with strength he didn’t even know he had as a normal miner bot — and kept up with the rest of the team, with D-16 — the mine was collapsing cycles after he had yelled the warning, the jetpacks doing their damned best to shoot them all forward to the cave entrance.
This time, no one got caught in the collapse. Only Orion, from what he could see from his quick visual checks, had gotten scratched on his heel strut, and even then it wasn't something to fuss over.
There was an internal turmoil threatening to spill over. Elita-One — the only reason she had been down there with them when they surfaced was because Orion Pax indirectly got her fired and demoted to Waste Management. This time round, no one got brutally or gravely injured, so surely —
“Elita-One, you're fired.”
Oh, frag .
Distantly, he heard Elita fighting for her job, and distantly he could hear himself — an echo of defensive personality, a previous experience — fight for her job, as well, but ultimately, Elita-One had been demoted.
If everything was — going how his nightmare went, then that's good news — scrap, he hated thinking this hard.
Orion blinked his optics a few times, and suddenly, they were marching towards their respective recharging pods. D-16 hung back as everyone got ready for the night, servo on Orion's shoulder, gently guiding him back to reality by pulling him to somewhere hidden. His worried face plates entered his vision then, orange optics glistening in the oppressive dark, highlighting the scratched metal around them.
His optics has caught onto D's dermas moving, but simply couldn't stop looking at the orange shapes glowing back at him — twisting and turning and beautifully changing as the other mech processed.
“I like your optics,” Orion whispered into the warm dark, silence radiating loudly between them. Whatever D-16 had said was stunned into a blissful quiet.
The shapes twisted once more, eyebrow ridges furrowing — a vague navy glowing on D's face was the only thing he could notice.
He had missed those optics of D's. They had been gorgeous — even as they had been glowing in crimson rage, he could've drowned in them if he had the chance.
He could hear the gears turning in D's processors, and he wished his digits could grace those thoughts of his — to figure out where he had gone wrong in keeping the mechs' belief in him, to pick apart what Orion had done, what he had said for his partner to stray so far away. Surely, it had been him — something Orion had done, or said, or didn't do, or didn't say —
“I like yours, too, even as bright as they are,” D whispered back, eventually, the servo on his shoulder tracing up to the plates protecting his neck cables. Orion's next breath trembled, his vents fluttering. The action was so warm — foreign from the hand that had blown his spark a mere day… day, cycle, hours, ago…
“You've been thinking too much lately. You gotta tell me what's wrong, mech,” D-16 urged, softly, and in their hidden crook Orion could believe it was only them in the air — pretend for a moment that they hadn't been chosen enemies, that D-16 doesn't have buried feelings of hatred waiting for the right moment to spark—
Orion took a deep breath, and exhaled, tilting his head away and pretended he couldn't feel warmth radiating into his neck cables.
“There's been too much to think about.”
“Tell me.”
“...I can't,” Orion’s frame shook a little, voice thick with conflict — he couldn't possibly tell D. The mech just wouldn't believe him, he wouldn't. None of it would make sense — it barely made sense to Orion, how was he meant to explain everything?
D's fingers tightened on his neck, before relaxing — probably registering the flicker of emotion in his optics, of something not even Orion himself could label.
Times like these forced Orion to remember that D's sudden change wasn't just Sentinel's betrayal. There had been some ire at him, too, and he'd never be scared of D-16 — not in the way he should've been, in the last moments, not in the last betrayal.
He couldn't be scared when he could still feel the scratch of D's fingertips against his own as he was dropped. He may have been let go — to fall down those floors, down everything… fear had run in his fuel lines, waiting for his frame to hit the last ground, for his limbs to splatter into thousands of scrap pieces of metal.
That was what he feared in those last moments.
“You can't?”
“You wouldn't believe me, D.”
Orion could barely believe in himself.
“I always do. Try me.”
Here, something like frustration bubbled in his chassis, in his empty cog chamber.
“...not here,” Orion huffed finally, servos fidgeting. D scoffed quietly, before nodding his resignation.
“Then, where?”
There was a blinding trust glowing in his voice, the rumble of the mech's engine shining through. ’Then, where?’ as if D would follow him to anywhere; as if he didn't already.
An idea of a place popped into his helm then.
“You'll have to trust me.” Orion warned, forlornly, tensing in anticipation for the answer —
“When do I not?”
…Time to go down to sub-level 50.
“You said you knew a place.”
“I do!” Orion returned quickly, though not at all hurried.
“ Orion. Please, tell me this ‘place’ isn’t down the scrap chute.” D-16 stressed, gesturing wildly to the… appealing gap in the ground.
“What’s down there holds the key to everything I’m about to tell you,” Orion promised, though the tilt in his voice was horrifically untrustworthy.
“I’m not going down there!” D-16 gritted his teeth, setting his pedes determinedly into the soft ground.
“Just look, would you?” the other mech sighed, and despite the stubbornness lining D’s frame, he still precariously leaned over —
“—there’s nothing down there but scr—”
Orion shoved him.
“D —”
“ — I’m not talking to you.”
They settled in uncomfortable silence.
B-127, as always, stood very confused in front of them, holding his mask in one hand.
Orion tapped his thigh, clink, clink, clink, counting down the seconds before —
“I cannot believe you, Orion —”
Right on time.
“Listen, it’ll all make sense if you give me a second!” Orion snapped lightly before turning to the yellow mech, “B-127—”
“—Woah, how do you know my name?!”
“Don’t worry —” Orion waved him away, “— listen, where’s Steve?”
“How do you know Steve’s name?!”
“ Don’t worry — just, where is he? I need his…”
‘Helm’ doesn’t exactly work in this… delicate situation.
“...Help. I need his help.”
B-127 eagerly nodded, rushing to the ‘hang-out area’ of this… depressing place, “Right, right, of course!”
Orion, and begrudgingly associated, D-16 followed Orion.
“I have a feeling this is stupid,” D-16 leaned in to whisper into Orion’s audial as B-127 fiddled around with the latch to the opening.
“Listen, genius and stupidity are two sides of the same coin,” Orion whispered back defensively, crossing his arms across his chassis.
“Flipped that coin a lot, haven’t you?” D muttered underneath his breath bitterly, almost mockingly.
“Ah- ha!” Bee exclaimed with raised servos, opening the latch finally and exposing his work friends to his… real friends.
“Ta-da! Alright, Steve,” Bee nudged the… really sad looking contraption of some sorts, the helm balancing oddly on a broken neck, “show ‘em what ya got!”
Orion marched forward and plucked the precious card out of the thing’s neck.
Steve’s helm fell.
The mech winced in preparation — expertly interrupting Bee before he could get emotional.
“Look! Look, both of you,” Orion threw the card onto the table, and just like before, the room was bathed in a gentle blue array of light, Alpha Trion’s voice booming in the sudden quiet.