Chapter Text
Cybertron. Iacon. Before the war.
“I’m almost there!” Orion shouted through the comms as he wove through traffic, tires screeching and mechs screaming profanities as he sped up. “Just hold on!”
“There’s no time!” Skids, one of Shockwave’s sponsored Academy students replied. “Oh slag there’s a big—”
The line went dead. Orion drove faster. Dammit, of all the nights to be asked to work late at the archives! He’d heard chatter on his stolen enforcer comm-console, but he hadn’t put the pieces together. Not until it was too late.
No, it wasn’t too late. Not yet.
He sped towards the safe house—a larger residence in Iacon’s industrial district—where Shockwave had been sheltering a few dissidents and students with outlier abilities. Finally the unadorned building came into view. Orion’s spark dropped. Enough enforcers to take down a cell three times their size had gathered outside. Blasters and laser rifles and one big, security bot in powered armor even bigger than Orion himself. It must have been a load-bearer in there.
Shockwave stood in the doorway. Panic gripped Orion’s processor. The senator was talking, and even though Orion couldn’t hear what he was he was saying, he knew it wasn’t working. The mech in powered armor stomped forward. Its hand reached out and Shockwave tried to retreat.
Red washed over Orion’s vision. His engine growled and with a final burst of speed he transformed and flew through the air, pulling a blaster as he arced through the air.
He shot the security mech, who stopped grabbing at Shockwave more out of surprise than any actual damage. That same surprise took hold of the rest of the enforcers, not expecting an attack from outside the safe house. Orion bashed his way through the ranks, slamming the butt of his blaster or his fist or his shoulder into anyone who tried to stop him until he was standing in between Shockwave and the enforcers.
“Orion!” Shockwave snapped. “What are you doing?”
“Get out of here,” Orion said. “I’ll handle this.”
How he was going to do that he wasn’t totally sure. He wasn’t a combat bot, he was an archivist. He’d definitely picked up some skills since joining up with Shockwave’s resistance. Some of the recruited bots had martial training. Even Orion’s friend Jazz had taught him a few tricks picked up as a traveling musician who sometimes played seedy spots.
None of them seemed helpful as the armored-enforcer grabbed Orion around the arm and yanked him away from the doorway.
Gravity seemed to vanish then come back all at once as Orion’s back slammed into the ground. His vision stuttered, then came back to the view of the armor-bot looming over him. Orion had lost his blaster in the fall, but he could still twist his legs and aim a sharp kick at the bot’s knee-joint. He must’ve gotten lucky and found a non-reinforced spot, because the mech buckled and Orion was able to get his pedes under him.
Only to come up to a laser rifle pointed in his face.
Instinct took over. He slammed the rifle aside with the heel of his palm, then moved in close to shoulder the enforcer in the chest. He heard the crackle of a stun baton before he felt the agonizing charge arc through his struts. He grunted through clenched dentae, then swung his arm to try and catch his assailant, but he was too slow. He only caught air. Another blow hit his side, nearly catching exposed protoform near his waist.
He wasn’t going to win this fight. It didn’t matter. He just needed to buy Shockwave and the others time to find an escape—
“Stop! Wait.”
Time seemed to freeze at the sound of Shockwave’s voice.
“Orion…” Shockwave stared at him, seemed as if he was about to speak, then turned to one of the enforcers instead. “Let him go.”
The enforcer sneered. “After assaulting several officers? Not likely.”
“Let him go and all the others, and I’ll go quietly.”
“No!” Orion screamed, before a stun rod hit his exposed protoform and he collapsed, feeling like someone had shoved static in his lines.
If there was more negotiation, Orion missed it. The next thing he heard was the sound of stasis cuffs locking over Shockwave’s wrists.
“Don’t do this!” Orion finally found his voice as he reached uselessly towards Shockwave. “Please.”
Shockwave smiled gently. “It’s over, Orion. I surrender.”
Orion felt as if the ground was falling out from under him. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t let this happen. He lurched to his feet and stumbled towards Shockwave, before being shoved back by one of the enforcers. Orion couldn’t save him. He couldn’t even reach him.
He could only watch as Shockwave was dragged roughly away, into a waiting transport.
“Please,” Shockwave said the moment before the door slammed shut. “Remember me as I was.”
###
Optimus nearly fell through the first unlocked door he could find. His chest burned. Searing cold shot through his neural net, highlighting his protoform in a map of pain. He barely saw where he was, colliding with the far wall and sliding down, the metal cool against his overheated frame.
They wouldn’t stop . The Primes, all of them, screaming in his head, and no matter how hard he pressed his hands against his audials he could not make them shut up. Even those that tried to speak soothingly only contributed to the noise. Information, thoughts, and emotions overwhelmed his data processors and that wasn’t even the thing that hurt the most.
Shockwave. Coolly slicing open the spark chamber of one of Optimus’ mechs. A good bot, with friends and comrades and hopes for when the war ended. All of them had had hopes. Optimus had been responsible for protecting them, and he had failed. He had so, so utterly failed.
Rage filled his tanks like acid. Shockwave. The mech who had saved him and made him, who Optimus had respected and trusted and loved and let down. Who he’d still, against all common sense, believed in. Just a little. He had always desperately hoped even a glimmer of his Shockwave had survived.
It hadn’t. It clearly hadn’t, and Optimus should know that by now, but he kept refusing to see it!
He laughed grimly. After that lovely little speech to Starscream about how he couldn’t hate…
Too many of the Matrix’s voices responded, and Optimus curled in on himself in a vain attempt to drown it out. It was harder when his own mind—whatever was left of it that could really be called his—was in disarray. Harder to find the threads, build up the walls and the filters. His sparkchamber flared too bright.
“Knock, knock.”
Optimus jerked up. That voice was real. It was outside him. He focused every scrap of processing power he could muster on it, and the Matrix focused as well.
Starscream lingered in the doorway, pointedly examining a talon instead of Optimus huddled on the floor.
Scrap. This was embarrassing.
Embarrassment . That emotion was him. The little twist in his fuel pump, the discomfort of his weakened state laid bare, although it was oddly less discomfort than it might have been had Starscream been one of the Autobots. Optimus could not allow his troops to see him like this. They needed their Prime strong, in tune with the Matrix, but what did Starscream care? Unless he was going to take the opportunity to attack? Except then he wouldn’t have announced himself. He wouldn’t be leaning against the doorframe and poorly feigning disinterest.
Starscream’s hip was cocked at an angle that drew attention to the length of his legs and the curve of his waist. Optimus stared at the bright white and deep crimson paint, scratched but no less striking. Optimus knew just how smooth that plating felt. How sturdy it was, and how it still carried a faint lingering scent of polish. Dangerous observations, inappropriate ones, but they were his . Some version of him. A version of him freer with affection, who could revel in another mech’s beauty and lose himself in their spark.
Optimus missed that. He missed Orion , but he wasn’t sure if the Matrix had buried that mech, or if the Senate had killed him when they’d taken Shockwave away from that house in Iacon.
It wasn’t ideal, but Starscream was something to keep his attention, and since the only other things in this room were broken tools and an overturned storage bin, Optimus wasn’t exactly spoiled for choice.
“So I, uh, found the files with the base’s layout.” Starscream’s voice strained with the effort it took to sound casual. “There’s an energon refiner. Possibly fuel-ready supplies too, but certainly enough of the raw stuff nearby. We can actually refuel and you and stop cooking your systems with that magic glowy ball.”
Huh. Starscream’s voice was…nice? It took some getting used to, but when he wasn’t, well, screaming, it was much easier on the audials. And when he sounded confident or lost himself in his work it was oddly mesmerizing. Optimus tried to vent his systems, but the motion made his frame shudder. He winced.
“Do you…” Starscream’s gaze wandered. “Want to…I don’t know. Talk about it? Or whatever?”
He grimaced as he spoke, but even the attempt was shocking enough. Optimus truly must have looked a mess.
“I was there when the Senate took him,” Orion said.
Distaste gave way to curiosity. Starscream remained in the doorway, but he arched his brow ridge, silently prompting Optimus to explain.
“It was around the time when the Senate tried to get the Decepticons to register as a political party. For their members to give their designations to see if there were enough for official recognition.”
“It was a trap, obviously,” Starscream said. “No one with half a processor involved with us actually gave their identity.”
“I know. Maybe that made the Senate more desperate. But Shockwave…me…a lot of the early Autobots were involved in our own resistance. Not like yours. But the other senators still thought it was dangerous. They sent enforcers to one of our safe houses. I barely made it, but I was too late. I couldn’t stop them.”
It took him several seconds to stop the memory from forcing itself into the forefront of his processor.
“Remember me as I was.” Optimus clenched his fists. “Those were the last words he said to me. Shockwave knew what they were going to do to him. And he surrendered anyway to protect the rest of us.”
To protect me.
“How noble.” Starscream really sounded like he was trying to keep the disdain from his voice.
Optimus shook his helm. “He asked one thing of me. I have tried, Primus knows I have tried, but seeing that …how do I do it? How do I remember Shockwave as one thing when I see another right in front of me?”
Starscream shifted, clearly uncomfortable. Which Optimus felt a little bad about, but it was either this or suffer a melt down. The lack of energon, the Matrix’s power, and his own frayed emotions were all roiling together and if he didn’t pull himself out of this death spiral, he feared he’d actually crash.
It wasn’t a good lifeline, but in the end it didn’t really matter if Starscream thought he was weak or pathetic. He didn’t need Optimus as a symbol the way so many others did.
“I failed him,” Optimus said. “I couldn’t protect him, I couldn’t rescue him in time, and I let him become a monster. So much energon is on my hands.”
“Please,” Starscream scoffed. “Of all the arrogant bluster I’ve ever heard. You could give Megatron a run for his shanix with that kind of attitude.”
Optimus frowned. “Insults aren’t exactly helpful at the moment.”
“If the truth isn’t ‘helpful’ too bad.” Starscream folded his arms. “How exactly were you supposed to single-handedly fight the enforcers and the senate to retrieve your precious senator? How is it your fault some of the most powerful mechs alive decided he was a problem and that they were going to deal with him? Pit, how were you supposed to stop him from being an idiot and sacrificing himself? You weren’t even a Prime, you were a fancy librarian!”
Optimus tried to object, but Starscream kept ranting.
“It took an army to bring the Senate to heel. Oh, but one archivist with a crush was supposed to do it? And how exactly are you responsible for Shockwave’s current lunacy? Were you one of the mnemosurgeons? You sure kept that skill set quiet.”
“You seem upset,” Optimus replied, because he was confused and that confusion was actually strong enough to drown out the Matrix’s voices.
“I am not upset!” Starscream yelled, which did not help his case. “I just don’t like it when mechs think they can control everything and everyone around them. You had no power to change what happened. I’m so very sorry. But why not try blaming, for example, the actual perpetrators? Hate them instead of yourself.”
“I just told you, I can’t—”
“Yes, yes, Primus’ chosen one, too good to get slagged off at the mechs who took his beloved senator. You must be so proud.” Starscream marched into the room and loomed over him. “Good news is the mechs who mutilated Shockwave are dead. There’s a very good chance I killed them. You're welcome, by the way. So hating them will not impede any chance at peace. Give yourself a break. Live a little. Hate the fraggers like the rest of us.”
Optimus wanted to protest but…he was tired. And he did hate the mechs responsible for Shockwave’s fate. His Shockwave had been incredible. Beautiful and brilliant and full of ideas that could have guided Cybertron in the right direction. Optimus—Orion? Both?—had loved him. And he couldn’t even mourn him.
“Is this you trying to make me feel better?” Optimus asked.
“Is it working?” Starscream replied.
Optimus checked his self diagnostics. Still some bad readings, but at least his helm was mostly clear. Only echoes remained, easy enough to ignore. It was like a knot in his spark had loosened, one he hadn’t even realized he’d been pulling taught. Anger at the cruel, power-hungry mechs who couldn’t just kill their enemy, they had to remake him into a twisted effigy of himself…maybe Primus could hold mercy for them but Optimus didn’t want to.
He didn’t have to.
That was a greater relief than he had imagined.
“Yes, it’s working.” He pushed himself up and let a vent of cool air flow over his systems. “Thank you, Starscream.”
Starscream shifted his weight. “Don’t mention it. Really. Don’t.”
###
Thank Primus that was over with.
Starscream didn't like dealing with his own emotions, much less another mech’s. Much less a Prime’s. Part of him was actually a little surprised Optimus Prime could break down like that. He supposed he wasn't completely immune to the Primely propaganda machine either.
As they made their way towards the energon refiner, he looked up at Optimus and wondered why seeing the mighty, divine leader crack wasn't as satisfying as he'd imagined it would be. He should be elated or at least like he had something to gloat about. The great Prime really was just a mech after all.
That was the problem though. He was a mech. Who loved and lost and grieved and was, in fact, affected by the world. He wasn't just The Prime.
Starscream knew how both sides used titles to obscure exactly who they were fighting. No , those aren't mechs you're shooting at, with beating sparks like you and I. Those are oppressive Autobots or wicked Decepticons. Much easier to blast that to pieces than a fellow bot.
Would it be easy to shoot at Optimus again now that Starscream knew what he was underneath that thing in his chest? Was that the point? Starscream used his own past to engender sympathy, so maybe the Prime was too. Although his reaction didn’t seem like something he could have faked. Not the temperature spike or the Matrix’s power surge.
“Something wrong?” Optimus asked.
“No,” Starscream replied too quickly. “Just trying to remember the way.”
He turned them left, then right, following the layout he'd downloaded from the console. The refiner was on the opposite side of the base from where they'd explored and found the generator. This place was large, but luckily not ungainly so. They could probably fully explore everything within a day or two. It seemed like it really had been designed for one mech. Well, one mech and his test subjects but those only took up so much storage space in Starscream's experience.
Something caught his optic down another hallway. Not movement, thank Primus, but a shift in the air and a warp in the wall at the far end of the corridor.
“Prime,” he said.
“Optimus.”
“What?”
Optimus glanced back at him. “My name is Optimus. You can use it, if you'd like.”
That was an absolutely terrible idea. Then again, Starscream seemed to be committing to quite a few terrible ideas, so this probably wasn't the worst one.
“We'll see.” He pointed down the corridor. “We might have a bigger problem.”
Optimus followed his finger then his optics widened. As always seemed to happen when something seemed amiss, he put himself in between Starscream and any impending danger, which was absolutely fine by him.
They could see only the ragged edge of torn metal, but getting closer and rounding the corner revealed a giant hole, like a hand had torn the wall like sheet metal. They each stared down a sheer drop, out into the mountains. The breeze brushed across Starscream's wings and he shivered.
“We should probably secure this before more sparkeaters get in,” Optimus said.
“Oh, you think?”
Starscream stifled a twinge of fear. That predacon could have done this. Scrap, what had Shockwave been doing here? Messing with sparks, apparently. Maybe creating these sparkeaters on purpose or by accident. Something had clearly gone wrong to cause this damage and to make Shockwave abandon this project.
It would certainly be something to find out. Get one over on the seemingly untouchable scientist. Starscream wondered if Shockwave had gotten permission to use those Autobot prisoners as experimentation fodder rather than turning them over for interrogation. Megatron would definitely be interested to know just how many liberties Shockwave was taking. It wouldn't be a pleasant investigation, but it would potentially be an enlightening one
Starscream glanced at Optimus and something odd settled in his tanks. He didn't think he'd be discussing his findings with him. Fine, Starscream should try to prevent the Autobot commander from getting valuable information. But more than that, the idea of showing Optimus more of Shockwave’s depravity and seeing him like that again was just…unpleasant.
Probably because he didn't want to be stuck having another spark to spark.
First things first, though. Fix this damn wall.
###
The door seal broke.
Prowl instinctively reached for the blaster in his subspace. Then he paused and reassessed. He was in his office, in the Ark, no alarms had been sounded, and even he had to admit he got jumpy when low on recharge. The odds of whoever was coming being a hostile were negligible.
However, they hadn’t knocked, which narrowed down the list of potential visitors extensively.
“Hey, Prowler.” A grinning Jazz slid inside before closing the door. He held out a cube filled to the brim with energon. “Brought you lunch.”
Prowl narrowed his optics. “I’m not drinking that. It has clearly spent too long with you, unsupervised.”
“Hey, that was one time,” Jazz objected as he slid into one of the chairs across from Prowl’s desk. “And you were literally about to give yourself processor damage from built up defrag. That’s just energon. And a little magnesium. Your favorite.”
Jazz placed the cube on the desk’s pristine white surface and slid it towards him. Prowl made no move to take it.
“Okay fine, how ‘bout this,” Jazz said. “Either you refuel or the minute Ratchet asks me how you’re doing—and you know he’s going to ask me—I tell him you’re not recharging or refueling and you get to deal with him . How does that sound?”
Worse. Prowl checked his self-diagnostics. Operational efficiency was severely down, and he was starting to build an unacceptable tolerance to stimulants. He did need something clean in his tanks. After another minute studying—or rather attempting to steady—Jazz’s expression, Prowl relented and took a sip.
“There. Was that so hard?” Jazz asked.
Prowl hummed. It didn’t taste like sedatives, but nothing from Jazz ever would. “Just tell me the bad news.”
That got a flicker of surprise visible even beneath Jazz’s visor. A rare victory. “What makes you think I have bad news?”
“Because if it was good news you would not have begun with this—” he gestured to the cube, “—preamble. You would have simply told me what you had to say, then dragged me to the mess hall to celebrate. So. What happened?”
Jazz’s shoulders sagged as he ex-vented.
Very bad news then.
“Mirage is back,” Jazz began. “Mission was a failure.”
Prowl pinched his nasal ridge. “Frag.”
“It’s not his fault,” Jazz added. “Shockwave has been glued to that space bridge, and if not him, Megatron’s got it guarded. Even Mirage couldn’t get close and when he finally thought he had an opening, it…wasn’t. Extraction was hot.”
“Any casualties?”
“Nothing Ratchet and the team can’t put back together.”
“Have him send me a report,” Prowl said. “I need to know who I can send into the field and when.”
Jazz nodded, then stared at the back wall, where Prowl had a holoscreen covered in maps, projections, and scenario predictions. The Decepticons knew they were vulnerable. They were taking advantage, hitting more targets both on Earth and elsewhere. Even Cybertron. It wasn’t the all-out assault Prowl had feared when Optimus had vanished. But it wasn’t good.
“If it helps, Mirage picked up some chatter,” Jazz said, leaning back in his chair. Prowl glared at him before he could try to put his pedes on the desk. “Losing Screamer’s got the Air Force and some of the specialized units chasing their own afts, so that’s probably helping us. Megatron can’t run the whole outfit by himself after all.”
Prowl noted that, but added, “If Megatron wanted his forces to move, they would move.”
“Yeah, but he’s focused on that space bridge, just like us,” Jazz replied. “Which is good. Means he doesn’t think the explosion killed them. If he did, he’d be prepping his victory speech, not trying to figure out what happened.”
A thread of treacherous optimism tried to wriggle into Prowl’s processor. He really must have been tired because he allowed it. He did not think Optimus was dead. He couldn’t think that Optimus was dead. But the odds of him coming back…
“There is no other way to approach the space bridge,” Prowl said, though part of him wished it was a question.
Jazz shook his head. “That was our Hail Mary.”
Prowl did not know what that was, and he didn’t want to ask. Jazz’s meaning was clear.
“Without that data, we do not know if there is any way to determine where Optimus was sent,” Prowl said. “Without knowing that, we have no way to send someone to recover him. Which means—”
“Waiting on our afts?”
Prowl didn’t want to say it. Saying it made it true. But no matter how many times he ran this scenario through his tac-net, the answer remained the same. There was nothing that any of them could do for their Prime. For their friend.
That did not sit well.
Suddenly, Prowl’s vision started swimming.
“You did lace this!” he snapped.
Jazz held up his hands. “I did not. You just haven’t recharged since Optimus went missing, and you’ve been overtaxing your stupid neurals.”
Prowl searched his diagnostics for signs of sedatives and came up empty. Scrap.
“I’m fine.”
“You need rest.” Jazz stood, circled around the desk, and started dragging Prowl up by his arm. “C’mon. I promise I’ll wake you if Optimus calls and asks for a pick up. Which let’s be honest, could happen any second now.”
That…wasn’t impossible. It was so vanishingly unlikely that it should have been impossible, but this was Optimus Prime. Prowl had been forced to add special variables to any calculations surrounding situations where Optimus was involved, just because that mech was a walking, talking, statistical anomaly.
Prowl cycled his optics and suddenly they were in his quarters. Not his office. Odd. Jazz dumped him in his berth, waved again, and slid out.
The room was dark. His berth was solid and cool. Prowl’s frame sank into it against his will, and one by one his neural processes went offline.
Maybe Optimus would just call them soon. Or he’d wander up to the Ark, waving and wondering what all the fuss had been about. That was what he did. It drove Prowl insane, but he found himself desperate for it as well. Because they needed Optimus. Prowl hated admitting it. He hated more that no matter how many times he’d told himself he needed to come up with contingencies for losing Optimus, he never had. What could he do? No one else could inspire like Optimus. Lead like him. Prowl shouldn’t be equating the faction with their leader, but what were the Autobots without Optimus Prime?
He fell into recharge praying that he wouldn’t have to find out.