Reforged - Part 6 (1/2)

[heliopauseentertainments]

Part 6 contains chapters 88-109 & all 4 epilogues. Part 6 is split into 2 posts because of Dreamwidth's character limits.

Continuity: IDW1

Rating: Teen

Relationship: Megatron/Rodimus

Characters: Megatron, Rodimus, Prowl, Mistress of Flame, Minimus Ambus, Ultra Magnus, Torchbearers, the Lost Light crew

Warnings: Suggestive themes, occasional depictions of trauma, alcohol & drug use, some gore, canon divergence and canon blending. Slow burn. Incredibly slow burn. Please see AO3 entry for full applicable tags.

AO3 Summary: In which Rodimus is "mistaken" as the reincarnation of Solus Prime.

A fanfic novel with themes of romance, xenoreligion, reincarnation, the role of fate, and religious political conspiracies, Reforged expands on the moon colony of Caminus, its dominant culture, and what myth means to a recalcitrant "former" Prime on "vacation" to forestall fate, a condemned war criminal living on borrowed time, and an obsessed investigator fixated on discovering a dangerous hidden agenda.

Crossposting: AO3

Chapters under each labeled cut. Please see AO3 for the most up-to-date versions. Some chapters may have chapter specific warnings not covered by the overall tags, so please mind the warning notes where applicable.

Chapter 88

There was something about the evening in Kremex that had started to become familiar, Rodimus thought as the hovertrain pulled into the station, the transport’s engine winding down on approach. Sitting on the transport’s bench, he leaned against Megatron’s arm, taking comfort in a familiar presence.

Maybe it was the sensation of a cool breeze coming in through the open doors to the balcony in the temple as the moon radiated the heat that it had absorbed throughout the day.

Maybe it was the crisp smell of the paint that decorated the districts and streets.

Maybe it was the quiet darkness—sometimes tinged an eerie yet beautiful green—that had begun to settle on a major urban center in a way so foreign from the bustling Cybertronian cities he’d known before the war. Nyon, if anything, became livelier—and more dangerous—at night, but Kremex was built by a people constantly strapped for fuel.

Whatever it was, Rodimus was itching to get out into it, energy pent up from being forced to sit still most of the way back to the city. He’d tried to run up and down the carriage a few times to let off steam and the lingering excitement from his success with Caminus. Unfortunately, Megatron had pulled the “decorum” card after a few careless turns and wayward spoiler fins had knocked over some of the Torchbearers in his exuberance and had insisted that Rodimus stay put.

As the carriage pulled in, the platform outside was packed with mechs, many carrying lanterns or torches and several cheering loudly.

In the flickering glow of the lights, he could see a great number of them had red eye paint. Maybe it was his imagination but there seemed to be proportionally more of them in the crowds as these trials went on.

More people he was fooling—No. He needed to stop thinking like that. Even Megatron, as devout an atheist as Ratchet, believed in him. Perhaps not in his alleged divinity, but certainly in him personally. If Rodimus dismissed that belief, he’d be as good as calling Megatron a liar or an idiot. Neither of those were true.

The Mistress of Flame waited by the door of the carriage, having hardly sat down the entire trip back. She’d grinned like everything was going according to plan, whatever that plan was. Rodimus couldn’t begin to speculate about what it was, if she even had one.

All he knew was that he was so close to finishing the trials. Only one remained.

But then what?

He would have proved himself to be a god reincarnated? So what? What did she expect him to do after all that? After all that fanfare?

Would he be expected to remain on Caminus? Some sort of deity-in-residence?

That sounded boring, but maybe that wasn’t the Mistress of Flame’s goal at all.

Rodimus hadn’t really considered what would come after succeeding in all six trials. He had only agreed to do them in the first place to buy time to come up with a plan to get them all out of the mess waiting for them back on Cybertron. And, even after all this time, he hadn’t come up with one single goddamn idea.

The door opened and the priestess stepped out, a pair of Torchbearers immediately on her tail, the one with treads and the one with the wings that had gotten bitten by Star Saber. The others remained behind.

Rodimus leaned in his seat to look out of the door, spying the media drones as they swarmed out of the carriage to follow her.

The Mistress of Flame, arms raised overhead, announced victory to the hushed crowd of devotees, the same victory she had already announced back at the valley where Caminus, the titan, resided.

“Caminus, our beloved titan, is reawakened!” she shouted, slamming the base of her heavy staff into the metal platform underfoot. One of the priests that had been in the titan’s valley had managed to locate it in the rubble before the traveling party had departed.

She was just repeating herself, Rodimus thought, shaking his head and standing up to head out towards the crowd. At least he wouldn’t be alone out there. Megatron would be with him.

“Rodimus Prime has yet again done the impossible!”

As soon as he stepped out of the hovertrain onto the platform next to the priestess, the gathered mass of Camiens erupted with wild applause and ecstatic shrieking, like he were some sort of hero—no, like he were some sort of god.

That was the idea after all, he reminded himself, plastering on a wide grin. A fake, confident smile was easy to wear, something he’d long practiced. It was second nature to use one to hide how tired he suddenly felt. His limbs seemed heavy and sluggish, even as he forced himself to wave excitedly to the adoring crowd.

No one had ever cheered like that after one his speeches on the Lost Light or even when he had announced their quest in Rivets Field.

He would have preferred to just be carried back to the temple and tucked in to bed. Better to let all the praise and adulation come tomorrow when he could really soak it in.

Maybe Megatron had been right—a terrible thought—and he shouldn’t have been racing up and down the carriage on the way back. That was probably all it was though. He’d just worn himself out.

The faces on the crowd chanting his name seemed to blur together as they all jostled against each other for a better view of him. They believed in him so sincerely. It would only be a matter of time before he would let them down somehow, he knew.

“He has brought our dear titan, Solus Prime’s loyal companion, back to us!”

Rodimus still hadn’t figured out why Caminus had been offline, whether it was by choice or if someone had made him go into stasis, but he didn’t have the energy to think about it too deeply right now. Maybe why Caminus could be onlined at all was a better question.

In the back of the crowd, however, something… someone caught his optic. Several bright blue lights danced around over the heads of some sort of the shorter Camiens.

Rodimus knew those lights. He was pretty sure he had made those lights. On accident, sure, but he had.

Star Saber?

He and his flailing legs looked to be held up by small green hands, just barely visible.

Minimus.

Minimus had come to see them and was trying to flag them down over the chaos, using Star Saber as a very creative beacon.

The smile on his face suddenly felt a little less forced, just a little.

“Could you clear a path?” he asked, turning to the Torchbearer immediately at his right. Heatsink, the one who had been tasked with sticking Megatron like an epoxy. Rodimus pointed out across the crowd towards where Minimus was just barely visible in the mass of mechs. “I want to see him.”

Heatsink nodded and started to walk off into the crowd, gesturing with their arms for mechs to make way.

Rodimus called after them, cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify his already powerful voice.

“I want to see my boy!” There was a pause. He had nearly forgotten. “And Mims too! I want to see him too!”

Without another thought, Rodimus tore off through the opening Heatsink had made in their wake. The only thing stopping him from shifting into alt-mode for glorious speed was the fact that he would overtake and probably mow down the poor Torchbearer in the process.

Cheering echoed around him, the worshipful voices coming from all sides, as he dodged penitent hands seeking his blessings. He could bless them later.

Heavy footsteps sounded behind him, a reminder that he wasn’t alone in the crowd and had someone at his back to cow mechs who might get too “enthusiastic.”

“Mims!” he shouted, just as soon the little green guy came into view, Heatsink having banished everyone who might have gotten in the way. “Saber!”

Minimus held a squealing Star Saber out. Without hesitation, Rodimus scooped the creature into his arms.

He immediately pressed his face to the mechanimal’s flat underside, taking care to avoid the metal shredder inside Saber’s recessed “mouth” and the retracted fangs just in case Saber got a little too excited.

Star Saber chirped happily.

“I’ve missed you too, little buddy—“

A loud cough sounded nearby. At first, Rodimus thought it might have been Megatron being uncomfortable with this display of public affection, but the pitch was wrong. A little too high. And now Star Saber was growling.

He turned to see the Mistress of Flame nearby, her smile still just as plastic as before as she forcibly wedged her way between him and Minimus, bumping the minibot out of the way.

“Rodimus Prime,” she said, barely audible over the crowd, “it’s time to go.”

 

---

 

"And, of course, Rodimus solved it by blowing something up. That's what he generally does," Prowl stated, setting his cube of fuel down.

A few drops splashed over the side of the container. Some flavored oil mixed into energon, glowing bright green. No engex.

Minimus nodded along and sighed, slumping against the table as he sat in a booth in the back of one of the Temple District's lower end oil houses. He kept his other hand out to block Star Saber from putting his feet in the spilled drops of fuel, mostly for the mess it would inevitably make.

The entire day had been stressful and exhausting enough that he willingly set aside the expectation of a proper, straight posture. Besides, in the back, who would see him but Prowl? Prowl already had awful table manners as it was, such as wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and not some sort of dedicated cloth, so he would be the last person to judge.

Minimus hadn't been able to catch the audio feed from the trial as his commlink had decided one of the updated files was corrupted and needed to be reacquired. By the time he had found a public area where the audio was being broadcast, all he had caught was the Mistress of Flame declaring the entire event a success. At least that had been enough of a clue for Minimus to return to the train station and wait for them to return… with all the other onlookers.

Rodimus, thank Primus, had spotted him, and ordered a path cleared for him, but they had only managed to talk for all of thirty seconds, long enough to put Star Saber on his face. Then the Mistress of Flame had intervened, shooing Minimus away. She had then taken Rodimus and Megatron through the parting crowd to exit the station, losing Minimus and Star Saber in the chaos.

Star Saber would be returned to his family—was that the right word, he wondered—tomorrow in the morning, when Rodimus and Megatron had had a chance to rest. The last thing they needed was to chase after an excited mechanimal that had missed them, especially when Rodimus had been unwell recently. He had hardly been back on his feet when the Mistress of Flame had hauled him off to wherever the titan’s remains were.

Prowl, luckily, had managed to catch the entire feed live and recorded a copy. While he had insisted that they listen to it together in Prowl's habsuite on the Lost Light, Minimus had pointedly declined. He had become sick and tired of hiding out on the ship, holed up in the dark with ancient memories and datapads.

It was beginning to seem like all they had been doing for the past several days was wasting time, digging into the past that seemed to have limited relevancy, at best, to their current situation.

"That is his usual modus operandi," Minimus agreed. “We’ve both seen his service record.”

He looked at his own drink, a cup of some purple, heavily sweetened fuel with gelled chunks of energon floating inside. A novel texture combination that he had so far only encountered on Caminus. While he had enjoyed it every time he'd ordered some, tonight he found that he didn't have much of an appetite.

“The audio dones picked up Megatron coughing for some reason, and, on the way here, I overheard some of these locals, these Camiens chattering about how he’s probably dying of a terminal disease.” Prowl waved a hand flippantly at the rest of the pub, a proxy for the rest of the Kremexian population. “Utter slag.”

“You know how people are, Prowl. Just like on Cybertron. They’ll start a rumor about anything.”

He sighed again before taking a small sip from his drink, inadvertently no longer blocking Star Saber’s legs. It was a shame the gelled chunks liked to cling to his mustache. Maybe it was because it was slightly magnetic.

Alas.

Prowl, meanwhile, harrumphed.

“Say… Prowl,” Minimus began, hesitating. “Do you think maybe—No, let me rephrase that. What if we’re wasting our time? There’s only one trial left and I don’t know that we’ve actually… made any real headway.”

He gestured vaguely at the air between them.

“Sure, we’ve… we’ve made valuable historical discoveries. We have firsthand, primary sources for a time that’s slipped into myth from information creep, but have we really made any tangible progress for what’s going on here? To help Rodimus and Megatron?”

They certainly weren’t making any headway with the way the Mistress of Flame had been further isolating their—Minimus’s—friends from the rest of the crew. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but after he’d practically been shoved aside earlier….

Prowl opened his mouth, probably to say something along the lines of not being here to help Megatron at all, that he was here to protect Cybertron’s interests in having a valuable war criminal brought to justice. Instead, he said nothing for a moment, pointing his index finger at the ceiling as though he had just lost the point he had intended to make.

After several awkward seconds, Prowl set his hand back down, only to wrap it once more around his virgin drink. Perhaps he was beginning to wish it had engex after all.

“I’m… not sure.”

Chapter 89

The trip back to the temple had been… tiring. Sure, the ride on the hovertrain had been much shorter this time than their trip to Saxetum, but Megatron had been preoccupied with stopping Rodimus from running up and down the carriage, whooping in victory and occasionally taking out a Torchbearer in his unbridled enthusiasm.

That and trying to figure out why Caminus had called him “Night Wander.” Such a strange moniker, especially out of nowhere. They had never met before, after all; Megatron would have remembered that, he knew it.

At least before they’d left, before Megatron had needed to object to leaving Caminus in the state of being little more than a gigantic lifecord, the Mistress of Flame had had the priests in the valley call for an emergency crew to construct some temporary shelter to replace the titan’s cranium. Just until a more permanent solution for housing the colony’s precious founding titan could be devised, of course.

Assuming Caminus, the titan, survived that long. It would have been… so easy for something to go conveniently and tragically wrong.

For the time being, the titan’s welfare was out of their hands.

Now, sitting on a stool in their washroom back at the temple, Megatron struggled to get the grit out from underneath the plating surrounding his wrist.

Caminus’s collapse and then having to dig Rodimus and himself out from under the debris had managed to lodge small metal fragments in all sorts of terribly inconvenient places. It was a shame that Caminus had been, for whatever reason, forged primarily with non-magnetic alloys, which meant a magnet couldn’t be used to pull the fragments free.

At least he really only needed to concern himself with his front, as Rodimus had insisted on breaking out a scrub brush to attack his back with. It had worked wonders to get to pieces of Caminus out of the hinges holding the fins of his spoiler in place, after all.

It had been easier to simply let Rodimus assist rather suffer the indignities of a limited range of motion. His own damn shoulders got in the way of doing it himself.

With the surgical kit unrolled on a nearby counter for ease of access, he picked up a pair of tweezers to pluck some of the more stubborn fragments from his wrist, all while Rodimus continued to scrub at his back.

“Hey, you could understand Caminus.”

Megatron paused, a piece of shrapnel pinched between the tweezers’ blades.

“Yes? And?”

Frankly, he had been surprised the explosion had even worked and not just outright killed the already fragile titan. That would have been the last thing they would have needed. Committing a specifically sacrilegious murder. God or not, he doubted Rodimus would have gotten away with that in the optics of Caminus’s dominant faith.

“… I don’t know why I could, so why could you?”

Megatron shrugged, not having really thought about it. The titan communicated in glyphs, ones he had known. It wasn’t complicated. They were archaic versions of the glyphs usually used to write Neocybex, hardly a mystery. Outdated variants that didn’t survive to the modern age. He wouldn’t write with those, but… he also couldn’t remember having learned them.

He chalked that up to information creep, probably having learned glyphs like that early in life and simply forgotten their acquisition. Simple, he thought, despite the nagging in the back of his processor.

Sure, some nuance was missing since titans usually communicated more… directly, through cable connections that could provide more breadth and depth of meaning.

“The glyphs were different though, weren’t they? You saw them.”

But Rodimus was younger. Those obsolete variants would likely have never been put in front of him before. That nagging grew more insistent.

“They looked familiar enough,” Megatron said, more to remind himself than to convince Rodimus of anything.

The tweezers closed around a piece of shrapnel before he yanked it out, tossing the bit of metal into a nearby recycling bucket.

“He had seemed a little confused, but he mostly seemed baffled by you being alive.”

The scrub brush on his back continued coax bits of foreign metal free, which pinged whenever they bounced off the floor. It would be a hassle to sweep them up for disposal, but that would be a future problem.

“I’m not sure why; after all, he’s never met you before. Maybe he merely made the same, apparently understandable mistake the Camiens have.”

“There’s something I want to ask you.”

Megatron nearly dropped the tweezers at Rodimus’s sudden change of topic.

The question was apropos of nothing, but very well.

“What is it?”

“So… I want to make it official.”

That wasn’t a question, not technically. That was a statement, but he decided not to be pedantic this once.

“Official? What do you mean?”

Megatron decided this was a great opportunity to play a little dumb, if only because he didn’t want to assume and end up with Rodimus potentially being upset at him.

He resumed removing bits of Caminus of with the tweezers, as though he hadn’t just witnessed a very serious pronouncement.

It was almost a shame Star Saber was with Minimus for at least one more night, but then again, Megatron had a feeling Star Saber would be overly enthusiastic in separating the titan’s broken metal from the plating and components he and Rodimus were still actively using.

Otherwise, Minimus had been overjoyed to see that they were well, according to the brief written message Megatron had received on his comm after being forced apart at the train station by the Mistress of Flame.

In the message, Minimus had… also seemed almost melancholic at the thought of handing Star Saber back over.

One more night wouldn’t hurt.

“Official official. You know, with all the stuff that entails, like taxes and whatnot.”

It was tempting to make a comment about not being tax liable because he wasn’t actually being paid for his work on the Lost Light but had technically been performing community service. No income, no taxes. That wouldn’t have been an appropriate response though, not to something so serious, not to Rodimus. He wouldn’t have found it funny.

“Rodimus, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said flatly, setting the tweezers aside now that his wrist was relatively free of shrapnel.

While he had agreed, at Rodimus’s “vigorous” behest, to stay together until the inevitable end, he didn’t think a legal union, no matter how necessarily short-lived, was a smart move.

Ever since their small… disagreement on the balcony, Megatron had been struggling with accepting that Rodimus truly wanted him around. He had thought that, perhaps, Rodimus was merely riding on an emotional high and being influenced by Camien social expectations. It would be easier to process the situation if that were the case. Rodimus would have been hurt less in the long run, easing Megatron’s conscience.

And then, whatever pain Megatron would have felt from unequal passion would be erased before long, when he finally submitted to justice.

It would have been fine, knowing that Rodimus would move on and be healthy when he finally came to his damn senses and realized wasting all of that energy on Megatron had been a colossal mistake.

“Not a good idea? What are you talking about?” Rodimus careened into view, having frantically scrambled around him, fighting the slippery floor to stand in front of Megatron all while carelessly waving around the long-handled scrub brush. “Of course, it’s a good idea! Why wouldn’t it be?”

“The legal and social stigma of that would follow you the rest of your functioning,” he responded, staring Rodimus right in the optic. “You deserve better than that—“

The back of the scrub brush clanked lightly against the front of his helmet, shutting him up.

“Stop it.” Rodimus shook the brush in faux menace. “Stop with the unrelenting, pragmatic fatalism for five minutes, okay? I don’t want to hear about that slag anymore. I’m not stupid. I know, alright? We’ve been over this. You promised.”

He underscored the assertion with a stomp of his foot.

Megatron didn’t recall promising not to mention his impending death, but, of course, it would have been an uncomfortable topic for Rodimus as well. He supposed it wasn’t the time to argue. With a sigh, he nodded.

However, the idea that Rodimus might have truly returned his feelings seemed almost more frightening than the insensate void that awaited him. His tired spark lurched at the thought, but he struggled to interpret the feeling.

“Look, I know you try to keep all of your feelings on the inside. I get it.” Rodimus tossed the brush aside. It smacked against the mirror, shockingly not shattering it in the process. A warm smile stretched across his handsome face as he placed his golden hands on either side of Megatron’s face. “You think no one can hurt you that way, but it’s not like that.”

A little reductive, but not… wholly incorrect.

“Rodimus—“

Rodimus shushed him before he could say more.

“You’re being selfish again. We already talked about that. We’ve been over it, alright?”

He paused, taking a deep ventilation, probably to psyche himself up for whatever he still had left to say.

Megatron feared, an experience he still wasn’t used to, what words would come next.

“Alright, I love you—“ That was altogether too casual. “—And we’re basically already conjunxed anyway at this point. I am fully aware of what I’m getting into, so don’t go giving me that spiel about uninformed decisions. I know what I’m doing. You can dial back the ‘protector’ act a little. We’re literally one Act away from having visitation rights as it is—”

Now it was Megatron’s turn to interrupt, despite the firm hold on his face.

“That’s ridiculous.”

He tried to stand up, but Rodimus’s grip remained solid, an effective deterrent. Of course, Megatron could have broken free if he had really wanted to, but… there was something about Rodimus’s touch that stopped him.

“What do you mean by ‘one Act’ away from it? There have been no Acts.”

“Uh, duh, the four Acts. You know what I’m talking about. They’ve been the same for millions of years.” Rodimus finally let go and began enumerating each one on his fingers. “Disclosure, Intimacy, Proferrence, Devotion. The big four.”

Those four fingers were thrust in Megatron’s face to make a point. He reached up and put his hand over Rodimus’s, nudging the digits away from his optics. Being poked in the optics was something he could do without, thank you.

“Yes, yes, I know what they are but we haven’t—“ Or had they?

“We have!” Rodimus stamped his foot again and waved his free hand, completely unfazed by his other one being captured. “Look. What’s so hard to get? I told you about… you know, how this whole thing—“ That free hand was thrown towards the washroom door, presumably loosely indicating the entirety of the world outside. “—Has been making me feel.”

Alright, so that was one; he reluctantly agreed, nodding slowly.

Rodimus rarely owned up to his short-comings and admitting that he felt like a fraud had certainly taken a lot of trust, but….

“We cuddle all the time,” Rodimus continued, just barreling forward with his list of evidence. “That alone should count fifty times over! If you need a specific instance, there was the time at the bathhouse and—”

“No need to go into explicit details, thank you.”

It was starting to look like Rodimus actually had a point.

An unfamiliar sense of fear—was it fear?—began to swell in his tank.

“And I gave you Star Saber! That’s three right there!”

Even though Star Saber, when he was with them, actually spent more time with Rodimus and lately had been with Minimus for more than a week.

“I’m sure if I wanted to reach, I could find a time where I asked you to do something for me.”

Caring for Rodimus while he’d been injured would probably have counted if Rodimus had actually asked him to.

Megatron opened his mouth, but for once, he wasn’t sure what to say. Luckily, Rodimus didn’t give him the opportunity to find words. The one time he didn’t mind being cut off.

“But that doesn’t matter. I want to do this right, alright? So I’m going to ask you to do something for me now.”

Anything.

And the worst part was that he knew he would do anything. Anything at all, just because Rodimus asked.

He nodded.

“Cool. So, you might have noticed… my finish is completely trashed. Turns out a titan collapsing on you isn’t great for keeping your paint looking all nice and shiny. I want you, even though I know you’re a clear sealant and matte spray paint sort of guy, to help me get back to looking all godly.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. Shine me up and make me glow, babe, c’mon. There’s a detailing kit under the counter. I found it a week or so after we got here.” Rodimus dramatically pressed a hand to his own chest. “Conveniently, it’s got all of my colors in it and my favorite brand of racer’s wax. There’s even an airbrush so you can’t mess up.”

Megatron would use the kit, but it certainly sounded like it had been deliberately planted, probably by either the priests or the Torchbearers.

He nodded again before allowing himself, at last, the luxury of turning over the hand he had captured earlier and placing a kiss on Rodimus’s wrist.

“… Convenient indeed.”

Chapter 90

Rodimus held stock still.

The airbrush hissed, spraying a vivid red along his cheek-guard, a firm hand under his chin to keep him stable. He narrowed his optics, turning them off in the process, against the noise of the airbrush as it ghosted his plating.

Luckily, Megatron had a steady hand, preventing the paint from splattering where it shouldn’t have. Had he always had that sort of fine motor control or had that come more recently through his unofficial medical training? Rodimus wasn’t sure, but he was certainly reaping the benefits of it regardless.

He’d been holding still for what felt like ages, while Megatron had sanded him down and carefully airbrushed fresh coats of paint onto his plating. The paint was high quality and dried quickly, but it still required several coats to get the color saturation Rodimus wanted since they didn’t have a primer on hand. A little strange for such a nice detailing kit, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

He still needed a coat of sealant.

It didn’t matter though. Megatron was clearly trying to do a nice job, even if his own finish required the barest minimum in upkeep. The attempt, effort, and care were what mattered and if Rodimus had to hold still for an insufferably long period of time for it to work, then so be it.

That wouldn’t stop him from hating the experience of being stationary though.

The delicate handling he received though, his limbs repositioned gently like he was something precious and fragile, was worth it. When getting certain tender areas—such as pelvic plating and spoiler fins—painted, Megatron had even been professional, though Rodimus would have absolutely let him put propriety aside for the sake of a little fun.

This was what it was to be treasured.

“Smoochies,” Rodimus announced, with all the grace of a thrown brick, before pursing his lips expectantly.

“Rodimus, your paint still needs sealant.”

He turned his optics back on to see Megatron still leaning down towards him, ostensibly focused on his work.

“Come on. One little one won’t hurt.”

“I don’t want to smear your paint. I worked hard on that.”

“Please,” he said, a faux pathetic whine in his voice.

Rodimus was not above begging or being purposefully irritating to achieve a goal, depending on the goal. This certainly wasn’t how he intended to ask for clemency for Megatron from Prowl if it was necessary, primarily because it wouldn’t work on Prowl specifically.

There was a pause, like Megatron was repressing another sigh.

“Very well.”

Yes. Score.

Finally, he leaned closer.

The kiss was warm, familiar aside from the wet slide of unsealed paint that hadn’t quite finished drying.

Hell, he could taste the bitter flavor of paint. Damn.

Alright, that had been a miscalculated risk.

When Megatron pulled away allowing them to see the damage, Rodimus abruptly burst into laughter and twisted away, no longer concerned with the fact that his face would need a touch-up.

He had left a white smear in the shape of his lips on Megatron’s mouth.

 

---

 

It had taken several minutes to rectify the wardrobe malfunction of paint transfers and smears caused at Rodimus’s instance on a kiss.

Now the final coat of clear sealant was drying, preventing any further mishaps while Megatron looked in the kit for a bottle of glossy top coat to go on next. The sickeningly sweet smell of the still wet sealant filled the washroom.

Rodimus, now no longer required to stay put, stood up and flicked on the fan to banish the nauseating odor. That was the major downside of a manicured finish aside from requiring a lot of time: the harsh chemical smells that burned his nose. Turning off that particular sense only helped in the short term since the circuits could still be damaged by exposure.

Not even a god could escape the price of looking amazing.

While relishing how the ventilation system banished the fumes of sealant and paint, Rodimus could hear Megatron mumbling, probably to himself. He probably thought he was whispering. Poor thing didn’t even know and Rodimus couldn’t bring himself to say anything about it.

Instead, he decided to trudge forward, assuming the comment was something he was supposed to hear.

“What was that, babe? Missed the whole thing,” he said, stretching his arms overhead to loosen his joints. Not moving for too long tended to make them stiff and prone to embarrassing popping noises.

Megatron clicked a bottle into the airbrush’s intake tube. Must have found the glossy topcoat. At least that would dry quickly, but it would leave him with such a beautiful shine after a nice wax. He’d look the part of a god when they were finished.

“I was just thinking….” Well, that was hardly news. Megatron was a thinker by definition, but sure. Rodimus just nodded along, now stretching his arms out to the front to make his shoulders happy. “About how if we followed Camien tradition, we would be expected to get complementary engravings. Usually, they start with those of amica endurae and grow from there, from what I understand.”

“Engravings?” he asked. Rodimus hadn’t really noticed, but he hadn’t really been looking either. Too much had been going on for him to really absorb all the nuances of local culture. Though, so much of the architecture and even the roads had been embellished with engravings, so why not also Camien bodies?

He was pretty sure Nautica had one.

Megatron already had some, a simple swirl design, from his time in the arena. Pitfighters often decorated their frames. A separate cultural origin from the Camiens, obviously, but a similar idea of owning or personalizing themselves.

“Yes, but it was just a passing thought. I don’t think we would be here long enough for that to really matter—“

“Don’t start that slag again.” Rodimus pointed at Megatron accusingly before letting his arms finally drop. “I don’t want to hear it—“

“I mean physically here on Caminus, Rodimus. We do still intend to leave afterward, after all.”

Megatron shrugged before waving Rodimus over to the bench again to get his new shiny topcoat.

“Besides, we’re offworlders. They hadn’t held us to that standard as yet. They probably won’t start. It’s not as though the general public will know that we hadn’t already bonded per the paperwork ages ago.”

“I mean, yeah, that’s true, but….” The gears in his head were already turned of their own accord, not that Rodimus could have done anything to stop them even if he had wanted to. “I think it’s a great idea. Maybe we could get some before we leave. I mean, everything will already be legally kosher at that point anyway.”

“I don’t think you know what that word means.”

Rodimus plopped down on the bench, holding his left arm out for Megatron to spray with topcoat.

“Come on! Matching tats would be rad!”

He waved his right arm in a wide, dramatic arc.

“Think about it! I can already see it now!”

The airbrush started making steady sweeps over his arm, leaving a wet shine in its wake. Megatron, otherwise, said nothing, presumably focusing on his work.

“Maybe you could get some flames, I don’t know, maybe a sleeve of them. Maybe with a sun. That’s thematically appropriate, isn’t it? It would look totally cool.” He continued, rambling off his thoughts, barely braking to ventilate heat. “Camiens put paint in their tats don’t they? You’d look great with some of my orange and red—”

“Rodimus, stop moving.” Megatron paused, like he was searching for the right word. “Please.”

“Alright, alright.” Rodimus waved his free arm one more time before letting his hand drop to the bench to support his posture. “I don’t know what I’d get though. Maybe a moon. Your spark was forged on Luna-1 before Brainstorm found it and chucked it into the past and Whirl put it in that one body—“

“Stop moving.”

“Look, I just think it could be really cool. One sec.”

Rodimus put a piece of plastic film in front of his optics to protect the glass from the spray. Those didn’t need topcoat.

“Go. And we should totally do it.” Now it was Rodimus’s turn to pause. “If you want.”

“I’ll think about it,” Megatron said, moving along to continue quietly top coating the remainder of Rodimus’s frame.

It didn’t take long, maybe ten minutes of hearing the airbrush hiss softly. The topcoat dried nearly as quickly as it was applied, making for a smooth finish.

“I think this is good. A wax can wait until tomorrow, I think.” Rodimus looked down at his frame to see how the topcoat caught the light and accented his vibrant colors. “Yeah, it can totally wait.”

“Very well.” Megatron unclipped the bottle of topcoat from the air brush and turned away to start putting supplies back. “If we have time afterward, perhaps we shall get those engravings.”

“Great! It’s official!” Rodimus jumped off the little bench and triumphantly clapped his hands together. “Now you’re stuck with me forever!”

However long “forever” might turn out to be anyway, but they would find out together.

That was what mattered in the end.

He would even have a physical reminder of their relationship if anything happened or if, in the far future, his memory began to fail. He would always have something of his conjunx—a now true appellation—a memento in his plating.

And, while Megatron’s back was turned as he was still putting all of the detailing supplies back, he was presented with the perfect opportunity to take advantage of his newfound legal right to be a complete and utter nuisance. To Megatron specifically.

Rodimus leaped onto the larger mech’s broad back, clinging on by throwing his arms around Megatron’s neck.

“Rodimus!” came the exasperated shout. “Please!”

“Don’t worry—I’m too tired for anything more fun today.”

“That’s not—“ Megatron sighed. “I’m just trying to put the tools away.”

Rodimus didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but that was alright.

Chapter 91

The early morning light, tinged just a little green with the approach of the eclipse, came in through the open balcony doors. They had been left open at Rodimus’s behest, despite the blatant security risk.

The moon, Caminus, was just entering the phase where Prokellox—a hurricane world haloed by bright, constant polar auroras—would loom indomitable in the sky, day and night. This next pass of the cycle would culminate in a planetary eclipse where the host planet would block all light from the system’s distant white dwarf star.

Megatron had concerns about what the Mistress of Flame had planned for them when the planet and moon would align. The priestess had mentioned it, briefly, while Rodimus had been injured. Well, she had mentioned that there wasn’t much time before… something, that Rodimus had not been recovering as quickly as she had wanted.

Though, of course, as usual she had not deigned to provide much by way of detail. Plenty of plausible deniability, a classic technique for diplomats, politicians, and other con artists. There was a small chance the Mistress of Flame hadn’t meant to imply anything about the upcoming astronomical event at all, but Megatron doubted it.

All the same, there was little he could do about any of it, not right now anyway.

Waking the titan for the previous trial could have waited, given that Caminus’s stasis had seemed stable, so Megatron doubted that was the source of urgency.

The eclipse seemed like the most likely catalyst, the most likely time she would have Rodimus perform the final trial, whatever it was. Many religions tied their calendars to the movements of celestial bodies, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. The eclipse would also make for a good spectacle, he thought, so there could be an element of showmanship involved.

For now, however, all Megatron could do was put those thoughts on a lower priority thread.

Instead, for now, he just watched the brightening sky through the doors that had been left open for the night breeze, comforted by the lingering, drowsy haze of power flowing in through the still connected recharge cables.

Beautiful.

It paled in comparison to having his ventilations sleepily stolen with kisses by an eager, but exhausted—too exhausted from the trial earlier yesterday to follow through on any vulgar ideas—race car last night. Though the sight of the encroaching dawn was worthwhile all on its own.

A pleasant way to begin his first—of probably depressingly few in total—full day of being conjunxed per their internal systems’ documentation, even if their lived experience wouldn’t be much different. Rodimus would still do absurd, thoughtless things and Megatron would try to either stop him or mitigate the damage.

But, rather than beginning the day at dawn’s first light, Rodimus apparently wanted to roll over instead.

Megatron sighed as one of Rodimus’s spoiler fins caught their shared thermal tarpaulins and pulled them off. This left them both exposed to the cold air as the tarpaulins tumbled to the floor below, not that they had far to fall given the short-legged construction of their recharge slab.

Megatron’s only solace was that in the process, Rodimus had accidentally rolled right off of his chest and onto the mattress below, waking himself up anyway when his recharge cables were yanked out.

Served him right.

Rodimus pushed himself up on his elbows in a panic, clearly confused.

“Babe, what happened? What’s going on?” Shifting his weight, he reached out blindly with one of his hands, smacking around the mattress until he found Megatron’s arm.

Megatron sighed, sitting up and pulling his own cables free of the recharging unit. This would have been easier if Rodimus had onlined his optics, but no matter.

“You startled yourself awake. That’s all.” He put his hand over Rodimus’s to reassure him that he was still here. “It’s alright.”

Or… as alright as possible under the circumstances.

“There’s no need for—“

A sharp knock sounded at the door to the hallway.

Visitors, most likely unwelcome ones.

Rodimus flopped to the plush mattress with a whine, throwing an arm over the side to fish around for the lost tarpaulin.

After they had returned from Saxetum, the Torchbearers had not been terribly generous towards anyone they had wanted to visit, allegedly to keep overly keen worshipers from overstepping boundaries. Another part of Megatron’s nominal duties that the Mistress of Flame had deigned to delegate elsewhere in-house.

Ratchet had been allowed to visit while Rodimus had been recovering from injuries solely due to his medical expertise and Megatron’s specific request for his presence.

Megatron had yet to hear from Minimus in any significant capacity since Minimus had begun investigating what might be underpinning all of these trials. All they had shared were the occasional comm message regarding Star Saber’s whereabouts and wellbeing. Anything in further detail was at risk of being intercepted over the comms. Even though the frequencies were encrypted, it was difficult to establish the Camien's decryption capabilities with their current resources.

It was beginning to seem like the Mistress of Flame and her temple were purposefully trying to isolate Megatron and Rodimus from anyone who might have been an ally. It had been gradual. Now, looking back, the difference between the bizarre vacation they had started and their current cloistering, trotted out before the masses only for show, was stark, obvious. He should have noticed. It had all been right there in front of him, plain to see.

The knock sounded again.

A nagging thought in Megatron’s processor reminded him that if he were still half of the mech he had been before, he could have seen this all coming. He could have intervened if he hadn’t gone soft and complacent, if he hadn’t let down his guard and relaxed.

And that thought was wrong. No matter what his deeply entrenched programming wanted so desperately to believe. Megatron no longer lived in a world where constant paranoia did him any favors. Constant paranoia certainly wouldn’t have brought him into Rodimus’s company, not like this. Even then, there was a nonzero chance he still wouldn’t have noticed the what was going on. After all, so much wrong with the Decepticons had managed to escape his attention.

Rodimus whined in response to a third, louder, more insistent knock.

“Tell them to come back later.”

Megatron dearly wished he could.

He wished from the depths of his spark he could just throw the interlopers into the sun and go back to the berth to wallow in the comforting warmth that came from sharing recharge space with Rodimus. If he could just lie there doing nothing else but even chastely—though ideally not—enjoying Rodimus’s company until fate hauled him off to the gallows, it would have been time well spent, one of the few parts of his life lived free of regret.

He sighed and pushed himself off the bed to go answer the door.

Opening it just in time for the knocking fist to collide with his midsection, Megatron found himself staring down at one of the temple’s courier lackeys.

Two Torchbearers, some of the one’s who names he hadn’t managed to catch at any point, stood on either side of the door. What good would they even do Rodimus that Megatron couldn’t?

Especially if a threat came in by the balcony.

They would hardly hear anything out here. They were either for show… or to keep track of comings and goings. Most likely the latter.

The courier, a small, even by Camien standards, mech with wide amber optics and green paint, stumbled back in surprise and fear, nearly dropping the short stack of datapads clutched protectively in their other hand. They probably assumed Megatron would rip their tiny arm out of its equally tiny socket for touching him.

“My apologies,” they said, backing up against the far wall of the hallway.

Megatron, in the mood to neither assuage their concerns no confirm them, simply held out his hand to accept the delivery. At least one of those datapads had to be for them. Obviously.

The courier anxiously shook their head.

“No, my message for you, Lord Consort-Protector—“ Every time someone addressed Megatron with that awful, awkward title, a small voice told him to throw off the pacifism for just a few seconds, just a few. But he was stronger now than his violence. “—And Rodimus Prime is verbal.”

At least Rodimus didn’t get spared the aggravating, unwanted title treatment. They could suffer together.

Well, he supposed that—shared suffering—was the idea of making it all official actually.

“Then get on with it.”

No. Manners.

Megatron had manners, of a sort.

Patients didn’t tend to react well to rude doctors, unless that doctor was Ratchet.

“If you don’t mind,” he added, retracting his outstretched hand to grasp the door’s frame. Megatron had too much dignity to clarify that his impatience was because he wanted to go back to berth to laze like a wastrel until breakfast.

“Yes, of course.” The courier, peeling themselves off of the wall now that they were aware there was no immediate danger, cleared their throat. “The Mistress of Flame has asked for Rodimus Prime’s presence at the morning fueling in ten minutes.”

It would take half an hour to even drag Rodimus from the berth, let alone ensure he was awake enough to have coherent conversation with the priestess.

“Alone or—“

“No, sir. Your presence is also expected, of course.” The courier paused to cough uncomfortably before adding, “That goes without saying.”

Because he was Rodimus’s accessory, a walking shield. Just because he would put himself bodily between Rodimus and any threat to him didn’t mean everyone had to act like that was his entire purpose, but fine.

“Of course.” He narrowed his optics in mistrust, barely suppressing an offended snarl. “Now that you’ve delivered your message, go on. You’re dismissed.”

The courier shuddered, their plating rattling pitifully. Apparently they were the sort to scare easily, something that would certainly be known by their supervisor. Sending this particular mech to deliver a message to a notorious, retired slagmaker was likely a punishment for something or another. Maybe they delivered the wrong note to someone or were a few minutes late to a meeting. Supervisors knew no limits to pettiness.

“No, there’s… more. I… was asked to accompany you both.”

“Why?” The aggravation came so easily, it felt natural, comforting almost to fall into a familiar pattern. All the more so when he could sense this mech’s cowardice. “Does that pompous high priestess think we can’t navigate on our own? After all these weeks?”

Ridiculous.

“She’s dragged us all over the damn place,” he snapped, “shackled us to an ‘honor’ guard, and now we can’t even be trusted to know our way around the campus.”

The courier clutched their precious stack of datapads close to their chest.

The Torchbearers visibly tensed in Megatron’s peripheral vision, but, luckily, no one seemed to move to draw a weapon.

“No, I—“ The courier fumbled their words, chattering nonsense.

Waving a dismissive hand at them, Megatron pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep ventilation to force his nerves to calm. This tiny courier didn’t deserve to be the target of his irritation. They were just doing as they were told.

One mustn ’t shoot the messenger.

But he could, prompted an old, cruel subroutine, and no one could stop him if he really wanted to—No. That was unnecessary, he thought, manually ending the processing thread. Megatron had come to accept that such intrusive thoughts would probably perpetually plague him. He just needed to ignore them to the best of his ability, not give them reign to terrorize those around him.

Another deep ventilation, just to be sure Megatron had truly tamped down his temper.

“Very well. Wait here.” He pointed to both Torchbearers in turn. “These—What are you called again?”

“Valence,” said the one with wide wheels, two pairs on their shoulders and two pairs on each ankle. Megatron guessed their name was likely a tongue-in-cheek comment on having wheels like an atom has electrons.

“Blazar,” added the other one, the one with treads, in turn.

Megatron couldn’t make a linguistic connection there, but that wasn’t really any of his business. Cybertronian names were incredibly personal things. Camien names were likely much the same. He himself had been named by factory workers thinking they were being funny. When Megatron finally had won the freedom to change his designation, he had decided to keep that ironic name and be, as Rodimus had once called it, “hilarious.”

“Yes, thank you.” Megatron nodded before directing his attention back to the courier. “Valence and Blazar will wait with you until we’re ready to leave.”

He slammed the door shut, fingers flipping the lock closed, to prevent having to give the courier or Torchbearers a timeline.

It would certainly be longer than ten minutes.

“Rodimus, get out of the berth.”

A familiar, unwilling whine rose up over the headboard.

Chapter 92

Rodimus wished Megatron hadn’t peeled him out of the berth. The blast of cold air had been a rude alarm, especially on the morning after legally finalizing their union, but it was too late now.

Seated on a low cushion in the dining area they had been invited to on their very first night on Camien, Rodimus watched groggily as serving mechs set little trays of fuel, both solid and liquid, on the table. His optics remained fairly dim with the focal rings spiraled nearly closed to banish as much light as possible. It seemed like too much effort so soon in the day to turn the optical lights up all the way and the Mistress of Flame had decided to leave every last curtain in the dining hall open to let in every last ray of distantly green sunshine.

A shorter mech he didn’t recognize, carrying a small stack of datapads, stood aside in silence by Megatron’s side of the table. They were shaking, like they’d been frightened earlier in the morning and were still coming down from it. The strained look on their face betrayed that they would probably rather be absolutely anywhere else.

At least being dragged out of bed early came with breakfast, even if Star Saber wasn’t here to steal table scraps or beg for goodies. Hopefully, Minimus would bring Star Saber by later in the day and the four of them could all relax a little.

That would be nice, he thought as a small plate with more of those energon gels with copper shavings was set in front of him. At least Rodimus wouldn’t have to share though, given Megatron’s distaste for copper. He didn’t understand, but that was fine. Megatron would eat all of the tungsten-flavored things for him. That made it fair.

Rodimus had hardly seen Minimus this entire time. He had seen the minibot even less than Megatron had. There was still a small, lingering guilt that these trials had gotten in the way of Megatron and Minimus spending time together like had been originally planned. Maybe they would still get to when it was all over.

At some point, the visit to Caminus had stopped being a vacation and Rodimus wasn’t able to mentally pinpoint when exactly that shift had taken place.

He made a grab for one of the copper-filled gels, only for a cup of warmed and sweetened fuel to be placed in the way. Rodimus, sluggishly yanking his hand back, just barely avoided knocking it over.

Never mind. Breakfast could wait apparently since dishes were still dropping.

The entire time the Mistress of Flame knelt primly on the opposite side of the table in silence. She was probably waiting for the final portion of the meal to be delivered, unless this was already everything. The last time they had dined with her, an evening meal, the meal had just been a few cups of fuel brought in sequence, but breakfasts delivered to the suite had always been an array of plates and cups all at once.

When plates and snacks stopped appearing, Rodimus finally snatched up one of those energon gels and stuffed it inelegantly into his mouth.

“Rodimus Prime.”

He coughed, thrown off guard mid-swallow. The Mistress of Flame had a gift for timing and an inclination to use that gift for evil, because of course she did.

“I must thank you for being so gracious as to join me here this morning.”

Megatron scoffed next to him, but said nothing. He was probably biting down a scathing comment. That was for the best. It was too early in the day for more sarcasm and verbal assault, even if the Mistress of Flame could have stood to be taken down a peg. Rodimus had overheard plenty of that already today in the hallway when the courier had come for them.

Well, too early in the day for any more of that from Megatron. Rodimus didn’t feel the need to contain himself once his mouth was no longer full.

“That’s funny, because I remember being dragged from my comfy berth at dawn.”

Even if technically Megatron had done the dragging, but he hadn’t been the one to do the actual summoning.

“I don’t remember agreeing to that expectation,” he added with a yawn.

“My apologies,” the Mistress of Flame said, voice congenial but hollow, no sincerity behind it, “for the miscommunication and inconvenience, Rodimus Prime.”

Rodimus grumbled, an incoherent noise before grabbing the nearest cup of warm fuel. There had better be stimulants of some kind in there or he would riot. They wouldn’t wake him up like they did other mechs, but they would be comforting… and help dull the headache of sleeping wrong.

“There is a small, trivial matter regarding the final trial.” The Mistress of Flame picked up a cup of fuel, mirroring Rodimus though with far more poise than he could scrounge up just then. She tilted her head politely to the side, her mouth a cold smile, like always. No matter how often he saw that grin, he still found it unsettling.

The priestess continued.

“Just a trifle, you see. It should be no problem for you at all, but we will need your assistance with it before we can go ahead. I humbly ask for your divine aid.”

She bowed her head towards Rodimus deferentially.

If there were a list of “most comforting things ever said to him,” Rodimus was certain none of those words would have been on it. He narrowed his optics, likely making him seem even more like he would much rather be in berth than he already looked. The fact that he could practically hear Megatron—who still hadn’t reached for anything on the table—tensing at his side did absolutely nothing good for his nerves.

“… I’m listening.”

Rodimus sniffed the cup in his hand, still leaning on the table with his other arm. It smelled alright, nothing immediately suspicious. Maybe Megatron didn’t suspect poisoned fuel, especially since he did nothing to stop Rodimus from consuming anything. He was probably just in a mood again.

 Out of the corner of his optic, Rodimus saw Megatron finally taking a tungsten aerogel from the table. Nope, not concerned about poison, just grumpy.

“As you might know, the planetary eclipse will be soon—”

“If you’re about to tell me that the gas ball outside is broken, I am not fixing it.”

There was an awkward pause as the Mistress of Flame blinked at him, like she was struggling to verbalize a response while he sipped at his fuel. The silence was only filled by the unmistakable sound of Megatron putting his palm on his face.

“No,” she started, hesitating before taking a sip from her fuel. “No, that’s not the matter. While I don’t doubt your ability to find a way to manipulate the heavens, Rodimus Prime, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

Her unwavering faith in his undeserved divinity would never cease to be strange, but, sure, if she thought he could move celestial bodies, let her think that.

He would never do it.

Probably.

Actually, now that he thought about it, he had accomplished weirder and arguably more impossible feats, such as time travel and dimension hopping, so maybe he shouldn’t count out moving planets and stars just yet.

Luckily, that wasn’t today’s problem. Allegedly.

“Alright, what do you got for me this time?” He yawned, setting his cup down and stretching that arm out to the side, only to accidentally thwap Megatron in the arm. “Sorry, babe.”

Not that Rodimus thought he had actually done damage, not to plating that thick. It was the principle of the matter.

Megatron grunted indistinctly, seemingly not bothered by the bump.

“Anyway,” Rodimus recovered, “what do you want me to do?”

“There is an artifact,” the priestess said, face impassive, “supposedly created by Solus Prime herself, that is rumored to have made it to our moon in Caminus’s hull. We need your assistance in retrieving it before the final trial. If it exists, it will be vital that we have it here.”

“Why my assistance specifically?”

 There were plenty of priests out by Caminus’s messed up frame that they could probably have a few poke around in the rubble and wreckage. Besides, why hadn’t they looked for this thing while they were there the other day? That would have saved a trip.

“As the embodiment of Solus Prime, you, Rodimus Prime, are the most likely to locate it. If it was stored within Caminus’s body, you have the highest odds of locating it. Perhaps you will remember where it was.”

Yeah, not likely.

Part of what made him doubt all of this in the first place was that Rodimus had never remembered a damn thing about Solus’s life, let alone where she left some knickknack that may or may not be on this particular moon and may or may not exist.

“I mean… I can look.”

He shrugged.

The Mistress of Flame seemed unconcerned, still smiling like she expected his full cooperation.

“Thank you, Rodimus Prime.” Her voice was practically a purr. “We will need you to search for the quill.”

“The quill? Just a qui—Oh.”

Oh, that quill. The quill that could change the future. That quill.

Optics brightening, Rodimus threw a sidelong glance at Megatron.

That quill.

He could save them with that quill.

“Of course!”

Rodimus slammed his cup down on the table, a little too forcefully. Fuel splashed over the sides onto his hand and the surface below. Megatron could also be heard coughing briefly, probably realizing the magnitude of the situation at an inopportune moment for eating a bite of aerogel.

“I’ll do it! Megs and I will find it, no problem. We’ll take care of that for you.” The fuel began to dry, coagulating and sticking to his fingers as he snapped a confident finger gun across the table at the priestess. “Lady, consider that artifact found!”

Her empty smile stretched wider as the Mistress of Flame slowly shook her head.

“Oh, no, Rodimus Prime, I’m afraid we require you to find it alone.”

Rodimus opened his mouth to object, but the priestess continued, waving her hand at the mech with the datapads dismissively. The mech bent into a hasty bow before beating a retreat like they had never once been more relieved to be told to get out.

“And, as it seems you already know of this artifact, we will not be needing these documents from the archives to help you become familiar with it.”

Something about the way her optics didn’t move wasn’t right, like she already had known he would recognize the target of the search.

“Tomorrow,” she added at last, “we’ll clear the roads to hasten your search.”

Tomorrow.

He looked over at Megatron again, noting the tension that had once again settled in the larger mech’s jaw, not unlike when they had been buried underneath the rubble of Caminus’s collapsed frame. It was likely taking all his willpower to not say anything, to not pick a fight that probably wouldn’t be worth it.

Rodimus didn’t want to leave Megatron behind here, not when they had so little guaranteed time, but if he found the quill, if he found it… they would have all the time in the world.

He swallowed the lump in his throat that he hadn’t noticed forming.

“Alright,” he said, turning back to look at the priestess. “Alright, tomorrow it is.”

Chapter 93

Megatron opened the door to the habsuite, suppressing a smile at the sight of Drift in the hallway, framed by Valence and Infrared—he had finally learned the name of the one who wore a visor and mask, for all the good it would do him.

Rodimus’s laughter carried into the hallway through the open door.

“Good, you’re here,” he said, before Drift could get a word in edgewise. He stepped back, gesturing for Drift to come into the habsuite. “Rodimus will be glad to see you.”

Drift frowned at him in confusion for a moment before just nodding and walking in, letting the door close behind them.

Past the berth, in the small open space of the suite, Rodimus and Minimus were chasing Star Saber, who had decided to turn the ceiling into a speedway. Rodimus and Star Saber clearly thought it was some sort of game, but Minimus had not quite yet fully grasped the concept of “playtime.” His arms were up in the air, reaching out just in case the mechanimal somehow fell.

At least, when everything was said and done, Rodimus would have someone to help him care for Star Saber. Since Megatron would still have to go through with a trial before his final punishment, he would have time to prepare a final will and testament, which could include designating care for pets. Minimus would no doubt assist him with that, even if the very idea that Megatron was thinking about “end of life” plans would have upset Rodimus.

“Oh, hey!” Rodimus froze, arms still stretched overhead towards the ceiling where Star Saber was playing, upon spying his amica in the room. “Drift! What are you doing here? I thought only Mims was coming over.”

Despite the surprise, he still had a smile on his face. Rodimus could seemingly always spare a smile for Drift.

Drift, however, wore an entirely different sort of surprise on his face, like he didn’t think his presence would be unexpected.

“Is… this a bad time?” he asked, caution in his voice. Megatron still found it strange to see Drift exhibit caution, something Deadlock would never have bothered with.

He wasn’t yet sure if this new feature of Drift’s personality was fitting or not. Perhaps Megatron would never find out, but that didn’t matter.

What mattered was that Drift could be trusted. That was all Megatron needed.

“No, of course not,” he said, before either Rodimus or Minimus could answer. “You were invited after all.”

Specifically, Megatron had done the inviting. Though, he would be willing to leave that unstated and ambiguous. Rodimus would likely be wondering if he had invited Drift and simply forgotten about it.

Unfortunately, that caused everyone in the room to react with varying states of confusion. Drift, head tilted slightly and optics narrowed, hadn’t been told that only Megatron knew he was coming. Rodimus, squinting in half-sparked suspicion, hadn’t been told to expect another guest, the thought spiral of “have I forgotten something” likely already beginning. And, lastly, poor Minimus, still holding aloft a crinkled up ball of foil with which to entice Star Saber, had zero idea what was going on.

Star Saber chirped from the corner of the ceiling he had scuttled into.

Shortly after they had been released from that impromptu breakfast meeting with the Mistress of Flame, Megatron had sent Drift an encrypted, but simple, message on his commlink, asking him to come by in the afternoon. There was little that Megatron could risk saying beyond simply asking Drift to visit them. Who knew who could be listening in, encrypted frequencies or not.

While he could have used the excuse to invite Drift over to announce the news of an official union, he was of the opinion that it was their private business unless someone had a legal or medical obligation to know. That and… Rodimus would probably just blurt it out. It had certainly been the first thing out of his mouth after saying “hello” when Minimus had arrived.

Megatron gestured at the room with a wide sweep of his arm.

“Please, Drift. Make yourself at home.”

 

---

 

After about an hour, it seemed that most everyone had gotten comfortable. Or at least, comfortable enough. Rodimus had readily adapted to Drift’s presence within a few minutes of the latter’s arrival and Minimus seemed relieved to have someone else on hand to take the brunt of Rodimus’s boundless energy.

Drift had, perhaps, forgotten that he had been asked here on special request. Understandable, given that he had hardly seen Rodimus in weeks and playing a game of “Catch the Critter,” as Rodimus had dubbed chasing Star Saber, would be quite distracting.

That had left Megatron some time to get a small, details-light update, transmitted via visual hand, from Minimus while the others played. Of course, he would have preferred a more granular level of detail, but time was of the essence and he would take what little information could be transmitted quickly.

:: Memories? Whose? ::

:: Megatronus ’s most likely. ::

That couldn’t be right. His historical namesake had no left no known artifacts, not any that weren’t originally made by Solus herself.

Megatron twitched his hand and then repeated the name, a request for confirmation.

Minimus gave a curt nod, affirming the information.

:: What do they show? ::

Why they were here on this moon where Megatronus had never been and hidden away in a temple dedicated to the lover he had murdered? But that was a question for another time.

:: We ’re not sure exactly. ::

Of course. Megatron nodded, letting Minimus continue. Meanwhile Rodimus’s laughter nearby signaled Drift learning firsthand about Star Saber’s tendency to nibble affectionately.

:: They ’re altered, forged. He was likely unaware and believed the contents to be genuine when accessing the memories, but we’re not sure which parts specifically are faked. He might have suspected something was wrong but seemingly couldn’t pinpoint it. ::

A fascinating historical find to be sure, but did they matter?

There were plenty of worthwhile questions to be had about what Prowl and Minimus had uncovered, a treasure trove of primary sources. Should his friend turn to historical scholarship as a professional field in the future, he would have a long career solely examining these memories.

:: Are they relevant to the problem at hand? ::

:: It ’s unclear. There isn’t much to go on. ::

Megatron’s shoulders slumped at the words.

That was disappointing. Even after all this time, they had little to show for it.

A traitorous thought suggested that perhaps there really was nothing amiss in regards to the Mistress of Flame’s behavior and that Megatron was merely being paranoid because he didn’t care for her or her religious dogma. He shut it down the process.

It was tempting to accept defeat, to accept that there was nothing he could do but see this through to the end.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling there was something here.

Minimus moved his hand again, as though sensing Megatron’s disappointment.

:: We ’ll keep looking. ::

Even if they didn’t find anything else, the thought that Minimus wanted to reassure him meant much on its own.

:: Thank you for the update, though I ’m surprised that Prowl has been willing to help you. ::

Minimus hesitated before responding.

:: There is still one thing about these memories that continues to bother me. ::

Minimus started a gesture that seemed to be part of a name, but Star Saber lunged for Minimus’s arm, eagerly seeking pats. Megatron would simply ask his friend about it later.

 

---

 

As the afternoon wore on and the distant sun dropped closer to the horizon, Megatron decided it was time to act on the reason he had invited Drift in the first place. It wouldn’t be long before their guests would leave for the evening.

Unfortunately, there weren’t many options for private conversation in the small habsuite they had been granted by the temple and who knew where someone might have been listening.

The balcony, while an obvious location, was too public, given the courtyard down below and that someone could hide underneath.

Whereas the washroom was more secure. Megatron had also been unable to locate any recording or transmission devices in there, not after he’d caught Star Saber eating what was probably one shortly after Minimus arrived earlier in the afternoon.

Megatron coughed to clear nonexistent static from his vocalizer.

“Drift, could I get your assistance with something?”

Drift tilted his head to the side as he sat on the floor next to the low table with Rodimus, who was sipping fuel brought for the evening meal.

“What… is it?” The skepticism in his voice was blatant. And not without reason.

Of course, they could theoretically speak hand to have this discussion, but he doubted Drift would hold still for tactile hand or respond well to incredibly obvious visual hand. Minimus would also notice and Rodimus would probably find it unusual behavior. Megatron and Drift had generally avoided each other’s company, given the awkward circumstances of their previous factional affiliations, since the latter’s return to the Lost Light.

Even asking Drift to speak in private was pushing the norms of their current level of comfortable interaction.

“The painting tools they’ve supplied us with have been behaving oddly. I have been meaning to ask since you arrived and it completely slipped my mind.”

Although “slips of the mind” were not generally something that Megatron could be accused of being plagued by. His comprehensive list of plausible excuses to briefly monopolize Drift’s attention in private was, regrettably, short.

It wasn’t exactly a lie, as Drift was more skilled with air brushes than Megatron was.

All the same, Drift scrutinized Megatron’s expression, as though looking for tells. If anyone in the room had a chance of finding any, it would be Drift.

Even if he found one, he still cautiously nodded all the same before following Megatron into the closest thing they had to a semblance of privacy.

As soon as the door closed, Megatron grabbed the air brush kit, opening it up as though his request for assistance with the tools had been entirely genuine.

“I need you to do something for me,” he began, setting the items out on the counter as Drift approached.

“Megatron, you realize, right?” Drift hesitated, scowling with his optics focused on the pieces of equipment laid in front of him. It looked as though the air brush tools had insulted him personally. “I… I don’t work for you anymore, not like I did. You may give the orders on the ship, and that’s fine, but not when we’re off-duty.”

“No, no, I understand, I’m not… giving you an order.” Megatron kept his tone even. “I’m asking you as an old friend.”

Drift’s scowl deepened.

If Megatron had more time, he would have liked to repair his broken friendship with Drift. So much had happened, so much trust lost, but this would be just one more insurmountable regret he would take to his grave.

It was almost hard to imagine that, once upon a time, Megatron had been almost as close to Deadlock as he had been with Soundwave. Deadlock had been an invaluable asset early in the war, both militarily and rhetorically, assisting with Megatron’s writing, especially at dark times when words would not come easily.

Drift had doubtlessly done the same for Rodimus. Megatron had seen the drafts of Rodimus’s rare preplanned speeches; unmistakable traces of Drift’s rhetorical style had been embossed in the texts.

“Then I’m asking you to do something for me… for Rodimus’s sake.”

And now Megatron and Drift were practically strangers, linked almost entirely by their differing affections for Rodimus.

Drift sighed, the tension leaving his shoulders as they dropped down from their hypervigilant position.

“Alright, I’m listening.”

If there was anything, anyone, the two of them could agree to help, it was Rodimus.

No more need for pretense; the tools on the counter became irrelevant, even as Megatron and Drift began disassembling them into their component pieces.

“Rodimus is being sent out tomorrow, to search for some artifact that probably doesn’t exist in preparation for the final trial.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to go with him.”

“Why don’t you go?” Drift scoffed. “You’re his ‘protector’ these days, aren’t you?”

“I’m explicitly barred from going,” Megatron said, holding out, for Drift’s inspection, a nozzle that wouldn’t keep the right pressure last night. He simply hadn’t bothered using it, but it would have been more helpful with getting into the tiny breaks in Rodimus’s plating. “According to the Mistress of Flame, I’m a ‘distraction’ and would get in the way of Rodimus communing with Solus’s memories, whatever that nonsense is supposed to mean.”

Drift’s optics glowed more brightly, reflecting off the mirror in front of them.

“And you think something is going to happen to him out there,” he said, taking the nozzle from Megatron’s hand and bringing it up to optic level.

“Precisely and I know that you won’t be seen. You won’t be caught by whomever they have trail him. And I know that, no matter what, you won’t betray him.”

Drift silently nodded and, having spotted the problem, used a pair of pliers from the kit to unbend something inside the nozzle. After a few seconds of fiddling, he set everything down, the task completed.

“… And, Drift, just to be clear, it will most likely be the last thing I ever ask of you.”

The resulting silence stretched out between them as Drift dropped his gaze to the floor.

Chapter 94

Finally alone, after Drift and Minimus left at sunset, Rodimus stretched out on the long cushion next to the table, still dotted with empty cups of fuel from supper. As nice as it was to see everyone, though Drift had been a surprise, he was grateful for the quiet.

Moments of quiet on the Lost Light were rare and, while they had more downtime throughout their stay at the temple, Rodimus had, in his own way, learned to appreciate them.

As long as they didn’t last too long.

Even Star Saber, now finally home, had been tired out. He purred quietly underneath the table, napping after all the excitement of playing all afternoon.

Tomorrow morning Rodimus would trek out towards what remained of the titan he’d woken up.

To poke through his vaguely inhabited remains for a treasure that would change everything if he could find it.

And he would do it alone.

Glancing over, he watched as Megatron closed the balcony doors and drew the heavy curtains shut, blocking out the increasingly green light of the gas giant outside.

They had been on Caminus long enough to see the regular cycle of a few days of bright nights and a few days of dark repeat over and over, but the effect had been comparatively subtle. This was their first time approaching the planetary eclipse, where the planet’s glow dominated. A tinge of green peeked out around the edges of the curtains’ thick mesh. When lights out would come, automatically as per the temple’s presets, Prokellox’s intrusive light would form an eerie halo.

Rodimus didn’t know how long it would take for him to find the quill, if he could find it—No. He would. He had to.

Unfortunately, his affirmations didn’t produce a timeline. It could take anywhere from hours to days. The Mistress of Flame implied that the final trial was linked to the upcoming eclipse, so that was likely a hard stop. She hadn’t outright stated it, but she did juxtapose the ideas.

Could they even go forward with the trial without the quill? Or would they wait for him, for however long it took? They couldn’t exactly rush a god, could they? Then again, Megatron had relayed that the Mistress of Flame hadn’t been satisfied with how quickly he had recovered from electrocuting himself for the newsparks at the hot spot.

A feeling of queasy unease settled into his fuel tank.

At least Megatron would wait for him, right here and insufferably sour about it the entire time. A comforting thought, but that still required being apart for who knows how long.

Rodimus didn’t want to think about being apart.

Maybe they didn’t have to be.

Megatron sat down on the edge of the mattress after awkwardly lowering himself down. Camien low-set furniture wasn’t designed with tall mechs in mind, even if it was funny sometimes watching Megatron struggle to not just fall onto it.

As soon as Megatron was settled, Rodimus launched himself off the floor, rocketing right into the middle of the larger mech’s chest.

Taken off guard, Megatron was knocked flat onto his back on the mattress.

Straddling his middle and grinning broadly, Rodimus waited for the inevitable question while Megatron recovered from being stunned. The big guy’s combat reflexes were getting rusty since Rodimus hadn’t been flung off like an enraged flier intent on murder.

“What are you doing…?”

“Well, tomorrow I leave for who knows how long, right?”

Megatron slowly, hesitatingly nodded, clearly wondering where Rodimus was going with this.

“So, I want tonight to be… special, you know?”

“Special how exactly?”

He should have expected that question, but, luckily, he had a straightforward answer.

Rodimus took his fist and knocked on Megatron’s red badge. Funny, he thought, that the Autobot red no longer looked so out of place.

“I want to sparkbond.”

What better way to be together even when they had to be apart?

Megatron pushed himself up on his elbows, Rodimus forced to slide down towards his legs in the process. In order to even sit on the low mattress, Megatron had kicked his legs out, forming a slope. Rodimus scrambled to grab his conjunx’s midsection to avoid slipping off to the floor.

“Absolutely not.” He shook his head. “That’s a terrible idea. Inadvisable and—”

“What?” Rodimus interrupted, optics wide as his smile shattered into dismayed shock. “Why not? I don’t see what the problem is.”

His first thoughts were self-deprecating, that of course Megatron would be disgusted by the idea of exposure to Rodimus’s innermost self, direct access to his thoughts and codes in such a blatant display of vulnerability. Of course he wouldn’t want to mix his own into the absolute mess of Rodimus’s systems, especially not when he had always been so aggressively protective of his own mental privacy. It was foolish and selfish to even suggest such a brazen violation of Megatron’s boundaries.

Rodimus should have known better and—A palm reached up to gently rest on his cheek, momentarily banishing the negative thought spiral and grounding Rodimus in the present. He was here with his new conjunx, safe and cared for. It was okay.

He could fight that self-deprecation when it would inevitably come back.

He knew he mattered.

Rodimus reflexively grabbed that hand, taking comfort in the reminder that he was wanted, no matter what his lying processor tried to tell him.

“When one spark in a bond is extinguished, the other often fails as a result.”

That was why it was so rare after the start of the war. No one knew who would die next. Early on there had been mechs whose bodies had never been found, but the only confirmation of death was their bondmate suddenly offlining without warning. Sometimes that was even how some private bonds were discovered, only noted down at autopsy.

“It’s a risk I don’t want to take with you.”

Megatron had promised to not talk about his potentially impending death, but the words were too soft for Rodimus to object just yet. The topic was still on thin ice.

“I would much rather die, whenever that is, knowing that the universe still has you in it instead of knowing for certain that I would be taking you with me to whatever comes after. The universe is a better place for your presence in it. It would be selfish of me to damn you.”

“You spend millions of years doing exactly what you want and now is the time you choose to not be selfish?” Rodimus sighed. “What if I want to be selfish?”

Still, he decided not to push. Rodimus shook his head before Megatron could say anything else.

“That’s fine.” Mostly. It was mostly fine. There would be other opportunities, he told himself, in hopes of ameliorating his disappointment. “That’s… fine.”

There were other ways to make tonight special, other things he had wanted and been turned down for before. Might as well go for broke.

“In that case, I want something else.”

Megatron’s optics narrowed in suspicion, but he said nothing.

Good.

Rodimus grinned in mischief, his earlier confidence making a rapid recovery as he pulled himself back up Megatron’s torso. His heavy tank armor made for good handholds when scaling him, very convenient.

“We can just bang instead.”

“Excuse me?” Offense flashed in Megatron’s red optics as Rodimus finally stopped climbing, securely holding onto the larger mech’s broad shoulders.

“Oh, come on!”

Was he going to be a prude about this? Really? That was his prerogative, sure, but—

“Why would you call it that?”

Oh, it was just a complaint about word choice. That was fine. That was a complete nonissue.

He shrugged off Megatron’s question, undeterred.

“Because I’m not old, unlike some mechs who think ‘lovemaking’ isn’t the most embarrassing and awkward thing you could call it.” Rodimus petulantly stuck out his tongue, still hanging onto those shoulders. Megatron didn’t even seem the least bit bothered by the weight. “Obviously.”

Megatron sighed, looking around like he was trying to make sure no one was looking.

“Very well.”

Score.

“Where is Star Saber?” he asked, still craning his neck to try and spot something, presumably their pet whatsit.

“Uh….” Rodimus shrugged while he tried to remember. “He’s… uh… under the table, I think. Asleep probably.”

“I worry we’ll wake him up.“

It would be… more than a little awkward to interface in front of Star Saber’s many innocent optics, even if he probably wouldn’t have understood in the slightest what was going on. He’d probably think they were playing and try to jump on them—Yeah, actually that would be terrible.

Easy to fix.

“Not a problem,” Rodimus smirked, canting the fins of his spoiler high to show off their bright, tantalizing shine. The finish was hardly smudged at all after the beautiful, attentive job Megatron had done last night. Not even the most stoic mech in the universe would be able to resist touching them, especially not when they were so blatantly on offer.

He had a genius plan, a brilliant idea. Not even Megatron could poke one his annoying holes in this one.

“We’ll just have to be,” he said, leaning in close to Megatron’s face and dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “really quiet.”

“Rodimus, I’m… not sure you know how to do that.”

“That’s mean. Don’t be mean.”

Rodimus put a hand against Megatron’s badge and shoved him back down to the mattress.

“Now, I always had you pegged for an old-fashioned hardline kind of guy, but manual interface array stuff’s cool too. I’m up for whatever.”

Including the exhaustion that he’d have from a lack of sleep come morning.

Chapter 95

Rodimus mentally kicked himself for not getting more than a few hours of recharge as he stood by the arched gateway leading from the temple grounds into Kremex properly. His limbs felt heavy and sluggish whenever he moved. His fuel pump squirmed like a frightened glitch-mouse. Every twitch felt awkward, like a neon sign advertising for all to see that something was wrong.

Maybe it was it was just nerves. Maybe no one noticed. Maybe it was all in his head.

No one had commented on it, but then again, no one would really tell a god they looked off their game.

Probably.

Well, Megatron would. And he hadn’t, so it was probably just nerves. Rodimus prayed, to someone, to anyone, maybe to himself, that it was just the “pre-quest jitters.”

Rodimus sighed, staring blankly at the roadway underneath the temple’s entry arch.

The flames painted on the road wouldn’t be particularly helpful guides this morning, since they were meant to lead visitors to the temple, not away from it, but he would figure it out. His onboard compass still worked, and he remembered which general direction the “not dead” titan’s body was in from here.

Easy. Totally easy.

Using those forced words of affirmation to bolster himself, Rodimus rubbed his upper arm to stave those “jitters” off, as though it would do any good.

It didn’t.

His fuel pump still seemed like it was fluttering in his core, but with surface-level confidence and bravado plastered over it, Rodimus didn’t have to notice it as directly as he lifted up his gaze from the stone-paved ground.

Locals, cordoned off by woven mesh ropes and jostling just to get a better look at the living embodiment of one of their most beloved gods, crowded the edges of the route that the city’s Torchbearer units had cleared for him.

Was it just his imagination or did Rodimus see a higher proportion of red eye paint in the crowd now than he had at previous events? Yeah, probably just his imagination.

And even if it wasn’t, it was probably only the most hardcore believers that were still showing up. Just a skewed portion of the population. It wasn’t as though he could be inspiring faith. He certainly hadn’t inspired any in himself.

The sight of such blatant, unfounded support punched a hole right through his thin plaster coating of bravado, causing him to suddenly be more acutely aware of the unsettled floundering of his fuel pump and queasy tanks. These Camiens had no idea just how misplaced their faith was, how let down they would be. Maybe not today, but someday, he would disappoint them. He already disappointed himself on a daily basis.

It would only be a matter of time.

Gritting his teeth together and forcing himself to take a deep, cooling ventilation, Rodimus looked back over his shoulder.

The Mistress of Flame stood, grinning coldly in silence nearby while Megatron waited several paces back, Star Saber dozing on his shoulder.

And he would let Megatron down too…. No. He couldn’t. While Rodimus could stomach disappointing the masses—and it would hurt—he couldn’t fathom disappointing Megatron. The mere thought of failure sent chills down his spinal support struts. He would find the quill; he would change the future.

Damn, he was still staring blankly like a moron.

“Hey, so… quick question,” he said, planting his hands on his hips as he turned towards the high priestess. “Why can’t I just take the train? That seems like, I don’t know, it would be faster and with less of a chance of getting lost.”

Wait.

Gods didn’t get lost.

“Not that I ever get lost—I’m a notorious walking compass—but, you know, I’m asking on principle. Just for, uh, general purposes.”

The Mistress of Flame continued to smile while Megatron could be heard suppressing a contrary comment with an indistinct grunt.

“Unfortunately, Rodimus Prime, the hovertrain dedicated to making the trip to our beloved titan’s abode—“ What a thing to call the mountain valley where Caminus’s body was just sort of… propped up, but alright. “—is undergoing vital repairs at the moment, making it unavailable for use.”

“Huh.” He tilted his head to the side, purposefully ignoring his fuel pump’s fluttering by easing off his verbal brakes. “It seemed just fine when we got back the other day. No weird clunking noises or any other ‘train’s busted’ red flags, but, sure. I’ve got wheels. I’ll just deal, I guess.”

Though, with driving out rather than the relying on the convenience of Camien high-speed public transportation, it would take a lot longer for him to get back, several hours in each direction even if he floored it in high gear. Even racing models had limits… because Ratchet vetoed installing one of Brainstorm’s experimental “I can’t believe it’s not teleportation” engines.

Rubbing the back of his head, Rodimus turned to look over at where Megatron was standing impassively. His rigid posture gave nothing away. As usual. Megatron generally kept feelings inside, where no one could use them against him… and Rodimus knew he was lucky to be allowed to see them in private.

With the distance to the titan, it would take at least a full day and night just for traveling on his own wheels, never mind actually finding the quill itself, especially if it was buried in tons of rubble.

Hopefully, Caminus would forgive him for destroying most of what was left of his frame just to wake him up.

Soon, in just a few seconds, Rodimus would have to leave and not look back until he had the quill in hand, until he could return and fix everything, until he could stare Megatron right in the optic and proclaim, without a hint of doubt, that everything would be okay.

He stepped away from the Mistress of Flame, crossing the several paces back to Megatron.

There was just one more thing to do before embarking on yet another journey with an indeterminate end.

Megatron looked surprised, or at least, that was what Rodimus thought at first, as he shifted his weight, the focal rings behind his lenses spiraling wide as Rodimus approached. Sometimes it was difficult to interpret all of a mech’s tells, the subtle ways faces scrunched and stretched.

Maybe it was concern, not surprise. Could be both.

By now, though, Rodimus liked to think he could read Megatron’s tells fairly well—he would be a bad conjunx if he couldn’t read those, right?—but moments like this summoned the nauseating tendrils of doubt.

He planted his feet wide and cleared his throat, an attempt to project the confidence that he wished circuit-deep was real.

“I promise I’ll find it.” It would be like looking for a needle in a pinstack, but he would do it. He’d done more difficult things before. Rodimus would pile on as many ego-boosting affirmations as necessary to get through this. “I’ll find it and I’ll come right back. Okay?”

Megatron opened his mouth to respond but Rodimus could already feel the itch to be on the road in his wheels, the anxiety telling him he needed to get on with it before it was too late. The more time he spent saying goodbye, the less time he would have to find the mythical cure to his problems.

“Okay,” he said, answering himself and trying not to pay attention to the sudden frown on Megatron’s face as his jaw snapped shut, interrupted for the millionth time. “Don’t get into any fights.”

Star Saber chirped, his little magnet-filled feet popping whenever they pulled free to adjust his stance.

“Don’t let him get into any fights. We don’t have that kind of bail money.“

Rodimus pointed at the creature before reaching up and giving the nearest leg a pat.

“Good boy.”

Unfortunately, Rodimus knew that if he stayed any longer, he would lose his resolve.

With the clicking, popping, and buzzing of his transformation cog, he flipped around and landed on his tires.

“Love you, bye!” he called, as though he were merely going on a fuel run.

Revving his engine, Rodimus zoomed off.

Leaving the temple grounds, he was flanked by a Torchbearer escort, one rolling alongside and another flying.

And, tires squealing against the painted pavement, off Rodimus went through Kremex’s streets towards the remnants of the colony titan, full of desperation and hope.

 

---

 

Drift had waited in alt-mode by the edge of Kremex’s boundaries. He knew the direction in which the colony titan’s body rested and he knew that Rodimus would have to come by a specific route to get there. That had made it easy to track him at a distance. After Rodimus had passed him by, hurrying towards his goal, Drift had simply waited a few moments and then followed the trail of dust.

The Torchbearers, for reasons unknown, hadn’t left the city, allowing Rodimus to go into the wilderness outside of Kremex unsupervised, which meant no one to trail after Drift either.

It was strange, Drift thought, given how the Torchbearers had practically been welded to Rodimus and Megatron since planetfall. It didn’t seem right, especially given that, from what he could tell, they were meant to ensure Rodimus’s safety. Yet, Rodimus could have gone anywhere, could have run into anything or anyone without any backup whatsoever.

Drift had begun to have suspicions about this entire trial business ever since he and Ratchet had been asked by temple staff to stay behind on the excursion to Saxetum. Now this? In plain contradiction to the tight grip the temple had tried to maintain on Rodimus and his movements? He couldn’t be sure yet what was wrong, but he could only hope that carrying out this mission—no matter what Megatron had called it—would lead him to an answer.

Without having to also evade Torchbearer eyes, Drift also hadn’t had to be quite so stealthy while doing this presumably “one last favor” for Megatron because Rodimus had been too distracted with his single-minded purpose to notice his friend hiding in the curve of the horizon in his rear-view mirrors.

Without the hovertrain to speed their way, several hours had elapsed before Drift watched Rodimus duck into a valley between the moon’s low mountains.

Approaching the mouth of the valley, Drift transformed out of his alt-mode to minimize the noise he might make.

The light of the dead sun was already fading as the white disc started to disappear behind the horizon. With how small the star was relative to its distance from Prokellox and its inhabited moon, sunset took only a matter of minutes.

Though they wouldn’t be left in the complete darkness, not with the gas giant looming in the sky and throwing a strange green light across Caminus’s rocky face.

Drift recalled the first few times he witnessed the usual dark and bright night cycle, early in the crew’s stay on the moon.

It had been so beautiful.

At first.

Back then, he had asked Ratchet to sit by the large windows in their hotel to just watch the twilight cityscape with him. Huddled together on the low cushions in their hotel suite, they would watch the colors shift on the metallic surfaces of buildings as Camiens turned off their lights to save on energy.

Now, he could still see, farther ahead, the eerie reflection of that verdant glow bouncing off Rodimus’s bright, warm paint as he approached the shattered remains, a split open chest cavity and piles of rubble, of what must have once been a powerful titan. The titan’s frame was too disparate to detect an aura, and the brain module and spark were not in sight, either shielded by some other structure or buried. Without a closer inspection, it was hard to say whether the titan was even still alive.

Green had many possible associations to devout spectralists. Power, associated with the color of point-one-percenter sparks, was one. Energy, long life, beauty. Drift could have interpreted this as a good omen, but when combined with other hues, green could have meant a struggle.

What did it mean to the Camiens, he idly wondered, taking up a post just behind a jagged boulder.

The light of the planet also lit up the strange structure in the center of the valley, grand cables leading away towards the back of the valley where they disappeared into a landslide of plating and rock.

Rodimus stopped in front of the central structure, transforming back, and hesitating there.

The last rays of white light sunk beneath the horizon.

The eclipse would be in only two days.

 

---

 

Exhaustion clung to Rodimus’s plating at he stood in front of Caminus’s spark housing. He had hurried here, nonstop, from Kremex over the course of several hours. He had no idea where to start looking.

Placing his palms flat against the smooth surface, he leaned his weight against the structure. Maybe Caminus could give him some advice.

Maybe.

Caminus was supposedly his old friend and the titan had seemed to recognize him the other day. Sure, it was entirely possible that Caminus was simply mistaking him for Solus—he wouldn’t have been the first to make that mistake—but that didn’t mean Caminus could be helpful in the search.

There was no reason to break the old guy’s spark about it, so Rodimus would play along if need be.

Caminus had seemed nice enough, when they had “talked,” if… tired.

He had also mistaken Megatron for someone he had known once, but Rodimus wasn’t sure who. It probably didn’t matter.

“Caminus?” he whispered to the smooth metal. “Caminus, buddy, can you hear me?”

Rodimus would likely have had better luck, he knew, by trekking all the way up to the brain module, but the spark had been closer, a good first place to rest.

It was strange, somehow, Rodimus felt like the titan was familiar. He couldn’t put his finger on why or how, but he felt… safe and comforted near the spark housing.

That was probably just a coincidence, nothing more.

“I need your help,” he continued, ignoring the fact that his only response was silence.

He felt stupid, talking to the housing. Sparks were strange things and titan sparks were stranger still. Rodimus couldn’t know for sure whether Caminus could hear him this way or even sense his presence, but maybe.

That didn’t stop him from feeling stupid though.

At least, in the green half-dark, no one could really see him or at least not see him well.

The priests milling about the valley, with their buckets of bright paint and ceremonial brushes, paid him no mind this time. Maybe he looked like he knew what he was doing. However, the last time Rodimus had been here, they had stopped whatever tasks they had been carrying out just to come see him. It wasn’t really adding up, but perhaps they hadn’t recognized him in the eerie twilight.

Talking to the spark through the housing wouldn’t work and he didn’t have the time to try and open the access hatch on the off chance he really could communicate directly with the spark inside.

Rodimus’s only recourse was to scale the landslide of wreckage at the back of the valley in hopes of making contact via the brain module again.

Chapter 96

While Rodimus hesitated at that strange structure in the center of the valley, Drift crept closer, ducking behind boulders and stone shrines.

He could see some priests lingering by some of the shrines further away, towards the metallic landslide at the back. He had heard, both via the news and the local gossips, shortly after the most recent trial that Caminus, the titan, had been damaged and repairs were being undertaken.

None of this, however, really looked like repair work of any kind.

It appeared to be more like calm “business as usual,” not that Drift really knew for sure what the priests that served in this valley did on a usual day. The drying paint, shining slightly in the green light of the gas giant above, of the split chest cavity gave some manner of a clue.

Ritual maintenance of some kind, most likely.

For repairs of this scale, Drift would have expected more of a flurry of activity, more mechs, construction equipment or scaffolds, supplies stacked at the ready. Anything really rather than what appeared to be a grim acceptance of either death or imminent death of the moon’s founding titan.

Caminus deserved better, he thought, crouched now behind a shrine within several meters of Rodimus. Perhaps, Drift wondered, he didn’t know the full situation, perhaps he wasn’t versed enough in local beliefs to really make that judgment call, but… for a people that revered titans as sacred… this didn’t fit his understanding of what that would look like.

Rodimus had his palms on the smooth walls of the artificial structure. The fins of his spoiler were canted down though Drift couldn’t say for sure what exact emotion was driving the display. A hushed voice, the words indistinct, sounded like Rodimus was whispering… either to the structure or to someone who wasn’t visibly present.

What did that mean?

A flash of movement from an open area barely visible behind the spark housing caught Drift’s optic.

A priest, holding something in their hands, darted up the landslide.

 

---

 

Rodimus had left Caminus’s spark chamber to clamber up the wreckage, following the path of the energy and fuel cables, the aftermath of his debatably brilliant attempt to wake the titan up from his slumber.

The cables laid quiet and limp. Before they had hummed loudly with their conveyance. Now, Rodimus had to touch the mesh casing to feel anything. They were still working, at least, but even when Caminus had been asleep, they had been more active. This… didn’t seem good, but he would know more when he reached the summit.

When the path had been the interior of a throat, the gradient had been dramatic but easy on the legs and wheels. Now, however, crumbling blocks of metal made for a haphazard ad hoc stairway, meant for someone with decidedly longer legs. Even Megatron with his longer legs and arms, Rodimus thought, would have to climb it rather than walk up.

The way was tedious, but surmountable.

He would get there.

Scaling the remains of Caminus’s neck was still an easier trip than scaling a vertical stone wall, scrambling for footholds and handholds, pretending he wasn’t one slip away from plummeting to the ground below while chasing a tiny creature who thought they were just playing a game.

Something moved up ahead, some indistinct shadow against the pieces of broken plating. Rodimus paused to get a better look, but he didn’t see anything. Maybe it was just the light of the planet and stars bouncing strangely off the mottled paint that got damaged in the collapse.

Just a trick of the light, nothing more.

He had seen some priests in the valley below, but not up here on his climb. It was probably nothing, his imagination just running wild with

Oh well.

Rodimus continued his climb.

When he finally pulled himself up the last block of metal, he stood in front of Caminus’s brain module. The floor was still open from where Megatron had cleared the rubble away before.

The brain module itself was still floating, a good sign. The cables still carrying some fuel and charge meant that Caminus was at least alive. Perhaps not awake, but alive.

Probably.

Rodimus’s spoiler drooped when he saw no lights on the brain module’s surface as he approached. A small shelter had been erected over the brain module, a simple three-sided booth of woven mesh with a roof. That would protect the delicate component from exposure on all but the one side. Wind could still get in, especially if it swept up the side of the mountain.

The mesh was painted with what was presumably bright colors, but the influence of Prokellox’s glow heavily privileged the green hues, making it difficult to fully discern. The design mimicked the symbolic data transfers of the Memory District, wreathed in the sun and flame designs of the Temple District. Other markings Rodimus didn’t recognize were also enmeshed: scrolling knot-work, swirls of what might be sand, and others that he had no cultural context for.

The structure was also festooned with handcrafted pieces of metal. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be swirls, stylized and entwined together to form a flame.

Rodimus cautiously reached out his hand to touch one of the one’s hanging down from one of the posts supporting the booth. Cupping it in his palm, he realized that it was actually fairly lightweight, perhaps meant to sway in the breeze and make a noise.

They seemed to be painted as well, based on the texture. They looked now to be a dull brown or black but perhaps in the full light of the sun, they would have been bright red and orange. He glanced down at his own frame, confirming that suspicion by comparing with his own finish.

Were these offerings? Protective amulets of some kind?

Maybe… Caminus was dying.

Rodimus let go off the strange, probable wind chime before ducking under the booth itself.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have a physician here to make a prognosis. Megatron would have complained again that titans weren’t in his realm of specialty, but Rodimus knew that, despite that, he would at least try to help.

With titans, it was always hard to tell. Life on such a different scale was somehow so alien, even when they were the same species.

It looked more like the priesthood had given up on their founding titan rather than trying to repair him and make him more comfortable.

Caminus had given so much of himself, both literally and figuratively, for the colony and this slow pulling apart and dereliction of his frame was what he got in return.

There was a chance that Rodimus simply didn’t understand, but it felt… off.

Without the suspended cables of fuel and spark energy, Rodimus figured he wouldn’t be able to just rig another explosion alarm. Besides, with Caminus being in such a fragile, fairly exposed state like this, without even a cranium to block the wind, Rodimus would just risk killing or injuring him.

“So much for getting expert advice,” he muttered, reaching out and placing his palms on the brain module’s surface. “I’m sorry, Caminus. This… is my fault.”

The last time he had been here, Caminus’s brain had been floating too high for him to reach directly, but now… the brain hovered lower, perhaps to conserve energy. That was just a guess. Perhaps it was simply to accommodate the protective shelter.

Not having Caminus’s direct help just meant he would have to look for himself. There was so much of Caminus’s body to look through though that Rodimus wasn’t sure where to even start.

“Just… hang on, buddy. Maybe we can fix this—“ Rodimus jolted back as blue light crackled from underneath his palms, shooting away across the surface of the brain.

No glyphs formed, but the module trembled with the sudden burst, like Rodimus had accidentally given the brain a small kickstart.

“Caminus?”

The light that had spread coalesced once point into a point before darting downward, arcing from the brain module itself into the platform below with a loud zap.

A compartment panel opened up, next to the floor.

Rodimus knelt down and stuck his hand inside, fumbling around blindly until his hand closed around something narrow.

“What’s this?” he asked no one in particular.

He pulled his hand out to examine whatever it was that Caminus had given him.

It looked like some sort of… writing utensil, but strange. It wasn’t quite like a light-pen, but it did still have a manual power button on the back end. It looked more like something he would have seen in a museum, longer and heavier for less refined internal components. It was bulky and the point at the far end was sharper.

This was probably a quill.

No, this was the quill.

Rodimus felt his spark jump dizzyingly in his chest as he leaped to his feet.

That was… strangely easy.

Almost too easy.

“Thanks, Caminus! I owe you!”

 

---

 

After Rodimus began to ascend the wreckage, Drift saw the priest from earlier descend, quickly and quietly like they were hoping to not be seen. Their hands were empty, most likely having deposited whatever it was they had carried up.

Several minutes passed and Rodimus still had not yet returned.

Enough of this ruse, Drift decided and hurried up the landslide after his friend. Megatron had told him to not be seen, but Megatron wasn’t here right now. His primary goal was make sure that Rodimus was alright.

A few minutes into scaling the crumbled plating, Drift saw a shape approaching from above, awkwardly picking their way back down like they couldn’t use their hands to ease their descent.

In plain sight on the exposed rubble, Drift stood still, feet apart in case the shape were a threat.

Then, however, the shape locked blue optics on him and froze in place, a brightly reflective spoiler canted high.

It was Rodimus.

Drift scrambled up the next few blocks to close the distance.

“What are you doing here?” Rodimus hissed as Drift got within range.

In Rodimus’s hands, clutched protectively close to his chest, Drift saw… something, but he wasn’t sure what exactly. It was hard to see through the possessive clench of his friend’s hands. Whatever it was… was small, easy enough to hide in two hands.

A reflective point poked out past the end of one of Rodimus’s fists.

A quill.

“Rodimus, I….” A million lies and excuses crossed his mind, anything he could tell Rodimus to explain his presence here that wasn’t the truth. For so long, lying had become second nature. It wasn’t even that Drift had anything to hide this time, so much as it had become a habit, a habit that Ratchet had been gradually helping him break. Rodimus deserved to know.

Drift took a deep ventilation to help focus in the face of Rodimus’s shocked, wide optics, bright blue in curiosity and confusion. He kept his palms out defensively, just in case.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

Another deep ventilation.

Rodimus watched him, the confused blue shifting to a suspicious yellow.

Drift knew that Rodimus rarely used the optical chromatic shifting mod that spectralists often had installed upon conversion. His reasons for that were his own and Drift tried not to pry, but that made the shift itself cause his fuel tank to roil.

“Megatron,” he started, watching that yellow shift to a frightened orange. “Megatron suspected… that sending you out here was… a trap of some kind, a trick.”

“So, he… what? Sent you to babysit me?” Despite the affront in Rodimus’s voice, the orange in his optics remained. “I don’t need to be babysat. I’m fine—I’m more than fine.”

He opened one of his fists and held up the object he had previously been protecting. A grin, slightly manic, stretched across his face as his optics shifted to a hopeful green, pale and edging into blue.

Drift’s guess had been correct.

The quill reflected a metallic sheen in the green light of the gas giant. It was likely made of steel or titanium.

The lack of a glow at the writing tip, normally caused by the leaking of the two chemicals used to create a flowing, luminescent ink indicated that this was probably a reproduction of the quills historically used, rather than something genuinely old. There was no obvious button near the grip to depress and combine chemicals from the internal tanks. It probably was just a standard modern light-pen in a novelty case, made heavier to mimic the weight and feel.

Quills had stopped being in common usage before Rodimus came online. He had probably never seen one outside of a period piece on the holonet, but Drift recalled using them. They had been common before datapads were readily available, used to write onto slabs of stone and metal or for artistic purposes.

“I found it. I found it and it’ll be okay—“

Drift reached out and gently placed his hand on Rodimus’s wrist.

“Rodimus, that’s… that’s not a relic.” He had never even heard of a relic like this. What was it even supposed to do? How would it make something “okay”? “That was planted by a priest.”

“How would you know?”

“I saw.”

“Right, right, Mr. Espionage—“

“No, Rodimus, I really did. I saw a priest, with my own optics, come up here before you. I didn’t see them place the quill, but I did see them carrying something up and leave empty-handed.”

Rodimus hesitated, frowning down at the replica in his grasp. His spoiler drooped in disappointment.

"I… but this was…." The words fumbled. "This was supposed to fix everything."

"How would some old quill 'fix everything'?" Drift wasn't even quite sure what was broken, other than impending sparkbreak. He had seen it coming ever since he had returned to the Lost Light, but perhaps there was more.

"It's supposed to rewrite the future."

With everything they had seen in their journeys, Drift couldn't flat out say that there was no such thing, that it was impossible. They had changed universes, traveled to the past, challenged would-be gods, and survived several times where, by all accounts, they ought to have died.

Yet, this somehow still seemed a bridge too far.

Drift laid his other hand on Rodimus's shoulder, patting the smooth, recently polished plating. Someone had refinished his friend with love and attention.

"Rodimus, I don't think that's—"

Rodimus suddenly perked up, standing up straight with his spoiler once more tilting high in excitement. His optics flared bright blue again.

"We have to find the real quill—"

"Rodimus," Drift tried again. There was no way to put this gently. "There probably is no quill that can rewrite the future, no such thing."

"But Caminus—"

Drift shook him by the shoulder.

"Listen to me, please."

Another deep ventilation, all while Rodimus stared at him expectantly.

"There is no quill." The realization hit Drift like a brick. “This was probably just a distraction to—"

Rodimus, catching on before the words even fully escaped Drift’s vocalizer, finished the thought for him.

"—To get me out of the city."

Rodimus hadn’t been the target at all.

Chapter 97

Star Saber sat up at attention in the dark, his many blue optics glowing brightly.

The sound of the front door sliding into the wall didn’t wake Caretaker. He didn’t even stir.

No one usually came around at this time of the night. The one mech did once, the white and black one—Mean, Star Saber had decided to call him. He had been suspicious; he had always been suspicious, as far back as Star Saber could remember. Star Saber had been good, biting him to defend his home and family. He had even received extra pets and snuggles for having been so good.

Caretaker had looked tired when he had laid down. Yet it had taken so long for him to fall asleep, almost like he couldn’t, even with the sleep machine. Star Saber wasn’t sure why Caretaker and Creator needed it when he didn’t, but he was pretty different from them both.

Maybe he just missed Creator. Star Saber certainly did. It just wasn’t right without him there.

He had always been there, except when Star Saber was with Green and Mean.

He hadn’t yet picked out what beeps and hums seemed to refer to them, so he had simply assigned them nicknames in his own coding language until then. It wasn’t that important. No one seemed to understand him exactly, except for when he was hungry or angry. Those were the ones that really mattered.

Right now though, someone was coming in. A stranger, a smell he didn’t immediately recognize. No, several. Strangers.

He hissed as someone came around the side of the bed, into view.

One of those mechs who followed Caretaker and Creator around, tall and blocky. The one who was always cold feeling to be near. He did know that smell, but not well because he avoided the cold.

Star Saber reared up on his back six legs to wave his front two in menace, from his position on Caretaker’s chest as the mech reached out, something sharp and thin in their hand. They pulled back, hesitating.

Good.

It was bedtime, not time for playing. Caretaker had, on many occasions, tried to teach him that when it was dark out, it was not playtime. This person could just come back when the sun came back up.

Baring his large curved fangs, he hoped that the threat display would encourage them to back up and leave.

Something grabbed his back legs and pulled, yanking him off Caretaker’s chest.

Star Saber had forgotten that others had come in with the first mech. He struggled in the grasping hands, trying to turn around and bury a fang into plating. Instead, however, he was dropped into a mesh sack, just in time to see Caretaker’s optics briefly flash on and off as the sharp thing was jabbed into his neck.

He heard unfamiliar voices talking, more sounds that he didn’t understand the meaning of. Mechs were struggling to carry something heavy, furniture and feet furiously shuffling.

Star Saber squealed and squirmed in the sack, trying to get purchase on the smooth mesh with his feet. However, whoever was holding the bag kept jostling him, like they were running.

Wait.

He rolled and pushed his fangs through the sack, slicing it open.

Falling to the floor, he heard a shriek from above.

Getting his feet underneath him, he saw that this was the hallway outside of where he and his family lived.

Another one of those mechs that followed Creator and Caretaker around stared down at him. There was no one else in the hallway. Caretaker was nowhere in sight.

This one had wide, heavy wheels on their shoulders and ankles. Creator also had wheels. Wheels were soft, he knew, from nibbling on Creator’s wheels, something that always got him shooed away.

Soft but vital.

Star Saber charged forward, sinking his fangs into the pliant rubber of the wheel on the nearest ankle. There was another shriek and a loud pop, followed by a hiss of air as he retreated back into the suite.

Creator would come back soon and find him. Staying there would mean he wouldn’t get lost. Then together they could find Caretaker.

 

---

 

Minimus had promised Megatron he would come visit in the morning, to keep him company. They hadn’t had much time to spend together since landing on Caminus. Seizing on such a rare opportunity to enjoy each other’s presence had been an obvious choice at the time.

However, the door to the suite Rodimus and Megatron shared at the temple gaped wide open, slid into the wall like it had been forced. The only sign of an occupant was what sounded like Star Saber whining for attention.

“Megatron?” Minimus called from the hallway, not able to see anything around the headboard and recharging unit of the large Camien recharge slab. The back of the headboard was towards the door, which meant it was blocking line of sight to almost the entire room.

He would have expected the door to be closed. It wasn’t like Megatron to just… leave doors open, not generally.

That just wasn’t like him.

He was too cautious.

There was no answer, only more morose clicking and chirping from inside the suite.

Minimus could barely see the edges of the tarpaulins hanging in a disorganized tangle off the side of the slab.

Megatron wouldn’t leave a bed unmade like this, not with his distaste for any and all tripping hazards.

Minimus hesitated before entering the room, creeping around the side of the low bed. Star Saber’s upset whines came from underneath. He bent down to peer below and saw the poor creature huddled near the dark shape of what looked to be Megatron’s surgical kit abandoned.

No sign of Megatron, only a few drops of dried, coagulated purple fuel lingered on the disheveled tarpaulins.

He needed to call Prowl immediately.

 

---

 

The roar of wild applause, worthy of a returning hero and not some guy who found some useless doodad in an ailing titan, greeted Rodimus as he reached the outskirts of Kremex just after sunrise. He had barely noticed the breaking of the dawn on the horizon.

Drift had separated off further back so that he wouldn’t be seen arriving with Rodimus. They had agreed to meet up again at the temple.

So now Rodimus would have to face the rejoicing mass of Camiens alone, their adoring cheers no longer boosting neither his confidence nor his ego the way they once had. Their love was just noise, grating and burdensome.

The Mistress of Flame, with a gaggle of her staff and fellow clerics, stood at the head of the group. He noticed a distinct lack of either Megatron or Torchbearers in the crowd.

His spark sank in his chassis, the small hope that Drift and Megatron had been worried over nothing immediately dashed to meaningless pieces by the obvious absence.

He’d been lied to.

Something had been been off this entire time, ever since they’d made planetfall, and he had hardly noticed.

Megatron had been on edge a lot, but Rodimus had just thought that had been the anxiety about the future, not anxiety about some very real threat in the here and now on Caminus. Megatron had managed to mostly keep his suspicions to himself, a feat given his inclination to complain constantly.

Rodimus still had no information about what the threat itself was. Beyond the Mistress of Flame having been… suspicious and a little creepy for quite some time, he wasn’t sure what more was hiding. He had originally thought she was just strange, but now, after Megatron had sent Drift, he couldn’t ignore his own doubts that she was up to something.

The white light of the distant sun burned bright as he impatiently skidded to a stop in front of the gathered crowd, transforming back to his root mode by the Mistress of Flame.

Apparently having no reason to suspect anything less than a “triumphant” return, she calmly spread her arms wide in greeting, still carrying that hammer-shaped staff.

The crowd around them quieted in anticipation. The sudden silence underscored Rodimus's place as the center of attention.

Anger seethed in his circuits, a searing heat that tensed the hydraulics in his arms and shoulders.

However, before she could do more than open her mouth, Rodimus scowled and shoved the quill in her face, proof that he’d done her stupid errand. It was all he could do to restrain himself from bouncing it off her damn teeth like one of those basketballs Optimus liked so much.

“There!” he snapped, “Happy?”

He haphazardly stuffed the quill back into his subspace, never mind the fact that he had been asked to get it because it was “necessary” for the final trial itself, whatever insane task that would be. Only the thin hope that Drift had somehow been wrong kept him from smashing the damned quill on the ground at the Mistress of Flame’s feet.

The priestess continued to smile, unfazed by Rodimus's irreverent behavior.

His patience, however little of it had survived the return trip to Kremex, was rapidly waning.

"I knew you would succeed, Rodimus Pri—"

"Stop it."

The Mistress of Flame froze, apparently unsure what to do with this blatant defiance. Her optics widened for a moment in genuine confusion.

It wasn't like she could tell a god off for being rude, Rodimus knew, and he was willing to leverage that.

"Stop calling me that."

A career showman, the Mistress of Flame's smile only slipped down to a disappointed frown. The rest of her posture, with raised shoulders and elegantly extended arms, remained refined and graceful, with all the necessary dignity of her elevated socio-political role.

"Rodimus Pr—"

He stuck his palm out in front of her nose. While she was taller than him, the difference was small enough that he didn’t even have to stretch to reach her inscrutable face.

"What did I just say?" he said, not waiting for answer before adding another demand. Sure, he would look like a jackass in front of all these people, but it wouldn’t be the first time and probably wouldn’t be the last. "Now where is my conjunx endura? Tell me!"

The priestess said nothing for a moment, still watching him impassively before just calmly shaking her head.

"I'm so sorry to inform you, my dear Prime."

That was never a sign of good news, especially not with the diplomatically cool tone to her voice.

The temperature of his spark plummeted as it sank in his chest.

Rodimus never should have left the city, not without Megatron, the quill be damned.

What had Prowl done in his brief absence?

"No one has seen him since yesterday morning after you left. We have been—“

Her voice was just as unsettlingly smooth as ever. It was becoming one of those things that made him want to commit a crime. He was beginning to envy Megatron’s self-control to not just punt her into orbit.

However, before the Mistress of Flame could finish, Rodimus’s wheels were already on the ground as the crowd parted to let him through.

 

---

 

Rodimus wasn’t sure what he would see when he got back to the habsuite in the temple, Drift now following close behind as his engine roared through the narrow halls. The sounds echoed, reverberating off the walls and announcing his approach.

His wheels skidded on the smooth stone floor of the corridor as he slammed on his breaks, practically flipping himself through the open door as he transformed.

“Where is he‽”

When the universe didn’t deign to provide an immediate answer by way of simply returning his missing partner, Rodimus allowed his optics to refocus, finally taking in the disorderly room.

Tarpaulins were on the floor, used dishes from an evening fueling abandoned on the low table, Minimus frozen amid his near frantic talk with… Prowl.

Prowl stood nearby, holding Star Saber in his hands, away from his body like one would a potentially dangerous creature that liked to bite.

Prowl.

Without thinking, allowing himself to be nothing but a vessel for the surge of hot rage in his circuits, Rodimus launched himself at the patrol car, leaving Drift standing alone in the doorway.

Star Saber leaped to the safety of the disheveled mattress as they crashed to the ground.

“Where’s Megatron?” he demanded, his voice as a roar as he straddled Prowl’s middle to pin him to the floor.

One of Prowl’s door wings collided with the corner of the meal table, the dishes cascading at Minimus’s feet.

“Where is he, Prowl? What did you do with him?”

“Rodimus!” He could hear Minimus begging, his feet shuffling as he no doubt tried to pick his way over the shattered cups and plates to intervene without making more of a mess. “Please!”

Rodimus ignored his friend’s pleas as he hooked his hands under the plating of Prowl’s shoulders, forcibly bending him up and slamming him back down. Prowl’s plating audibly buckled and dented with each shove.

Drift joined Minimus’s in calling his name, but he too went ignored.

“Where is Megatron, Prowl? You finally hauled him off to some Ops black site for an extra-judicial execution, huh?”

Who knew if Megatron was even still alive? Had Prowl pulled the trigger himself? The painful thoughts swarmed and crowded in Rodimus’s processor as he struggled to focus, struggled to find any point of calm in the storm burning through his circuitry.

Small, but strong hands took hold of his upper arms, pulling him back. Rodimus struggled against Minimus’s grasp, remaining seated on Prowl’s waist.

“You just can’t let anyone be happy!” Rodimus’s vocalizer protested the straining howl, clicking in a threat of rebooting. “Can you? Can you, you miserable b—“

A burst of painful static escaped his throat as his vocalizer shorted out, shutting down to prevent damage. It would be several minutes before the forced reboot would complete, leaving Rodimus mute save for his fists. If he could just wrench his arms free, he could finish making his point. It wouldn’t solve anything, but it would bring a brief catharsis to render Prowl as unrecognizable as the broken dishes.

All the while, Prowl barely resisted, only staring up at Rodimus with an irritated glare, as though he were merely inconvenienced rather than being the victim of a righteous assault.

“Rodimus!” Minimus called again, finally yanking Rodimus from Prowl’s frame. “You need to calm down—“

Rodimus opened his mouth to snap at his friend, to round on him for being a traitor. Minimus didn’t deserve it, he didn’t, and Rodimus knew that, but the ache in his spark demanded to be vented somewhere, anywhere. Nothing but static, a sharp tension in his neck, came out of his mouth as he gaped.

“Listen, please—I called Prowl,” Minimus continued.

Confusion overrode shock, distracting Rodimus long enough for Minimus to better utilize his load-bearer strength and hoist Rodimus high overhead, off Prowl.

There was an awkward shuffle of plating and feet, as though Minimus was trying to avoid colliding with someone else, most likely Drift. Rodimus wobbled, his weight shifted from side to side.

“No, no—Thank you. I have him.”

He effortlessly hauled Rodimus over to the low berth.

Star Saber immediately crawled onto his lap, tucking his many legs close as he settled into place.

“I called him for help when I found Megatron was missing.”

Rodimus opened and closed his jaw in vain, trying to express his bafflement while futilely gesturing meaningless signals with his hands and arms.

Prowl calmly pushed himself to his feet, as though getting roughed up were a regular occurrence for him, as though he were merely aggravated at being forced to go through it yet again. He brushed himself off, which did absolutely nothing for his crumpled and scuffed plating.

“You always did leap before you looked.”

Prowl reached into his subspace with a grumble, muttering something about “how we got into this mess,” like he was struggling to locate something.

“Contrary to your unfounded assumptions, I actually need Megatron alive. This—” He waved his free hand at the mess of dishes and tarpaulins on the ground, looking ridiculous with his other arm stuffed into his subspace. Rodimus would have laughed were he not both still fuming and relegated to forced silence by his vocalizer. “—Is not my doing. As though I’d be so sloppy.”

A white hand came into view—Drift’s—passing by quickly before taking a gentle hold of his shoulder as Minimus stood to the side. Drift’s presence was calming, a reminder that he wasn’t in danger, especially with Minimus here as well.

Rodimus was safe; Star Saber was safe.

“We’ll find Megatron,” Drift said, his voice practically a whisper barely audible over the din of Prowl rummaging around.

That didn’t comfort him, not at all, especially not with his fading anger no longer numbing the oil-chilling fear that something had happened to him.

After a moment, Prowl pulled his hand out and held something out for Rodimus to see, to take.

A datapad.

“This is yours.”

Was it?

Frowning, Rodimus snatched it out of Prowl’s grasp before turning it on. Several innocuously labeled files (“Situation Notes,” “Status Report,” and so forth) were stacked neatly on the screen.

None of these were Rodimus’s.

He tapped one open out of curiosity.

A longing, florid text flooded across the screen, awash in euphemism and metaphor.

“I… found it,” Prowl lied, “while securing the scene.”

Chapter 98

“You know, Prowl,” Optimus said, cheerfully walking through the temple halls surrounded a band of Torchbearers. “I think this is already the longest I’ve spent on Caminus.”

“I’m sure it is, Prime,” Prowl said. The previous occasion had been part of Prowl’s own failed attempt to use Devastator to destroy the space bridge. He had no plans of mentioning it, in the hopes that Optimus wouldn’t bring it up either. It would have been said like a joke, like Optimus was laughing with Prowl, but only the one of them would find anything about it even remotely funny.

It was odd, Prowl thought, seeing the some of the same Torchbearers that had been following Rodimus and Megatron around now encircle Optimus, save for three.

Two were currently stationed as “guards” at Rodimus’s door.

As for the third one missing in action, the smallest one, Prowl had no clue as to their whereabouts. They could have been anywhere, but he didn’t have the luxury of time to go search for them. He wasn’t even sure if it mattered, but it did strike him as… unusual, noteworthy, a tiny potential clue amongst an endlessly growing pile of others.

Prowl had been required to go, along with the Torchbearers dispatched for the task, to meet Optimus at the space bridge and escort him to the temple, where he would be staying for the next few days.

While he would have to wait to hit the streets to try and locate where Megatron had gone, Minimus had done the “proper” thing and gone to file a missing person’s report at the local security station… for all the good it would do.

It would have probably been more effective than Prowl’s desperate pinging of Ultra Magnus’s frequency, every attempt going directly to voicemail until the storage was full.

The Lost Light’s AWOL second-in-command would have probably suggested filing an official report as well, now that Prowl thought about it. Magnus’s disappearance was just yet another stumbling block, but at least Minimus was helping mitigate the absence.

At least with Optimus arriving so late in the evening and without any prior public announcement, there hadn’t been any crowds of faithful Camiens to wade through which would have cost Prowl even more precious time. The Mistress of Flame hadn’t even made an appearance save to greet them at the threshold into the temple complex.

To complete a set of six for Optimus’s evening arrival, three substitutes had been borrowed on the Mistress of Flame’s orders from another district in Kremex, their blue and purple uniform paint clashing loudly with that of the local unit.

The hallways seemed endless as he walked alongside Optimus and his temporary, silent goons even though Prowl knew the wing that housed the residences was one of the smaller parts of the temple complex, with most of the structure only being two floors.

“If it weren’t so late,” Optimus continued as they passed by the hall where Rodimus’s own Torchbearer sentries were posted, “I’d have liked to stop in and see how Rodimus and Megatron are doing.”

“Now is… probably not the best time, no.”

Thankfully they didn’t have to go down that hall.

Prowl wasn’t sure he wanted to hear whatever Rodimus was doing to process his feelings. The on-sight assault earlier in the day had been more than enough. Drift was likely doing an admirable job of containing the damage.

“I haven’t seen either of them in so long, but I suppose I can see them tomorrow.” Optimus was blissfully ignorant of the situation and for once, Prowl didn’t feel the need to clue him in. Though, the fact that Mistress of Flame hadn’t mentioned that Megatron was “missing” to her beloved Prime was another clue in and of itself. “There’s no rush, after all. We can probably see them before tomorrow’s eclipse celebration.”

Celebration?

Prowl grunted indistinctly, which Optimus seemed to take as a cue to keep talking, as though this were a friendly chat, just small talk. Then again, to Optimus, it was. He had no reason to think anything was amiss on Caminus. He hadn’t believed Prowl from the start.

“They’re probably at each other’s throats by now.”

Optimus chuckled to himself as they walked, seemingly thinking Prowl was also in on the “joke.”

Another nonstarter was telling Optimus this his former archenemy and what passed for the Prime’s only living protégé—Bumblebee’s death was still a gaping hole in the faction and with the chaos of the last several years, Prowl hadn’t yet dedicated time to truly processing the demise of one of his only friends—had overindulged in method acting to appease the Camien government and had actually become lovers.

It was completely out of the question. Prowl didn’t even want to imagine the words coming out of his own mouth, let alone Optimus’s wide-optic gaze of surprise and… possibly disappointment. In whom or with what Optimus would be disappointed was be up for debate and Prowl would have preferred to not participate in that conversation.

“In a manner of speaking, Prime, yes.”

Megatron, whenever they found him, would owe Prowl for his discretion.

“See? I told you everything would be fine.”

 

---

 

Rodimus was grateful for Drift’s company, he thought, watching silently as Drift tried to set out a nice little spread of the evening fuel and “consolation” desserts provided by the temple. The fuel had arrived later than usual, but Rodimus tried not to think about it too much.

Normally a priest would arrange the meal setting but Drift had insisted on doing it himself and shooing the priest away after the fuel had been handed over. Something about “art.” Drift wasn’t much of an artist aside from with an airbrush, but he had what Rodimus would generously call “artistic sensibilities.”

There was a soft clacking noise as Drift moved the small cups around, the work hidden behind his white and gray back, which was all Rodimus could see from his place on the bed.

Drift had kindly offered to stay the night to make sure that Rodimus wasn’t alone.

It probably wasn’t safe to be alone. There was so much they didn’t know, too many unknowns to make assumptions about the situation.

All that he knew for sure was that Megatron was gone, somewhere, and that he did not go voluntarily.

That was one of his few sources of solace.

Megatron didn’t leave because of Rodimus, because he had thought better of being bound to a dumbaft like him for the rest of their lives. He wouldn’t stage a kidnapping; no, he would just say it bluntly with a dramatic choice of vocabulary and walk right out.

Drift was another rare source of comfort and so Rodimus had readily accepted the offer of company.

A cruel thought tried to suggest that Megatron had played him for a fool all along, that it was a front, a way to deceive the Autobots and escape his fate. Rodimus, sitting on the mattress holding his knees against his chest, shut it down immediately, not wanting to even waste processor bandwidth on considering it. The horrible inner voice would surely find some new target for its malevolent indulgence in short order.

Rodimus, still hugging his knees, continued to silently watch Drift move cups around, setting them out in some unknown pattern for some unknown purpose. Even though his vocalizer had turned back on hours ago, he wasn’t in the mood to be chatty. Thankfully Drift didn’t question his silence, only accommodating him.

Bright green light reflected off his friend’s white armor through the open door to the balcony, a reminder that the eclipse would be tomorrow. Even though the sun had set over an hour ago, Prokellox thoroughly banished the night.

Megatron would have already closed the heavy curtains and told him to go to sleep.

If he had just asked differently somehow, maybe… maybe Megatron wouldn’t have refused to bond, maybe they would know where he was. Maybe Rodimus would know if he was alright. Maybe he could have prevented Megatron being taken.

That was a stupid thought, a self-deprecating thought, a self-defeating thought. That’s what Drift would have said if Rodimus had verbalized his fears.

Ratchet had been informed of what was going on, so he wouldn’t expect Drift to come home quite yet after the trip out to the valley. Ratchet had offered to join them, if only to make sure that Rodimus was healthy, but Drift had asked him not to, on the grounds that Rodimus likely needed some space.

That didn’t stop him from feeling selfish about making Ratchet experience that same separation from an emotional support that Rodimus was now. Sure, Ratchet’s separation from Drift would end soon and he knew Drift was alive and well, but logic didn’t rule the feelings of shame and guilt.

Star Saber squeaked nearby before a crunching noise started up. What was he chewing on now?

With a sigh, Rodimus sluggishly pulled one of his arms free and flopped it in the general direction of the sound.

Still not looking, he could hear Star Saber skittering away before his hand made contact with the covers.

The datapad Prowl had handed him earlier, the edges now lightly gnawed, brushed against his hand as he swept his palm across the quilted, thermal tarpaulin.

Rodimus had forgotten the datapad on the bed earlier after Minimus and Prowl had vacated.

Despite what Prowl had said about how he had acquired it, Rodimus knew it was the datapad that Megatron had mentioned being stolen. He hadn’t reported it to the authorities when he had reported the surgical kit being taken, but they had both known Prowl had been behind it. Prowl, now having returned both items with the excuse of having “found” them, hadn’t even bothered to come up with a better lie.

Not that it really mattered now. What mattered was that they—and Star Saber—were all he had left of Megatron. If Drift hadn’t offered to stay, Rodimus would have put the rolled up surgical kit in the berth to keep at his back. He might still do that anyway, even if just to bask in the familiar smell and better beat back the pain and fear.

Rodimus ought to be out looking. He knew that if he were missing, Megatron would be trying to find him.

Or maybe not. Megatron hadn’t come for him in Saxetum, when Rodimus had been trapped below ground with an army of ravenous scraplets. He’d been left to get out of that one himself. Megatron hadn’t ever said what he’d been doing while Rodimus was down there. All he knew was that he’d emerged from the darkness, scorched and exhausted, to find Megatron dropping an injured Prowl onto the sand.

Had… he tried to leave then?

Wanting a distraction from yet another depressive thought spiral, Rodimus held up the datapad, covered in pits and smeared with oral lubricant from Star Saber’s grinding teeth. The datapad had been too big for his little mouth to actually eat, but the tiny whatsit had still managed to rough the thing up.

He clicked it on, watching the words scroll by. None of them, no matter how pretty, made it into his processor.

Rodimus knew it was poetry.

He had always hated trying to read poetry. He could just never get into the flow of the words or the imagery if it weren’t a naughty Nyonian limerick.

But Megatron loved poetry. He loved writing poetry, even if he didn’t always share it.

These words were his and that tangible remnant tugged at Rodimus’s aching spark.

Unfortunately, the poems here didn’t seem to have an audio recording to go with them. Megatron must not have had either the time or the inclination to record a reading.

“Drift,” he said, voice hoarse as he flapped the datapad in futility. It was the first thing he’d said in hours.

Drift nearly dropped whatever cup he was holding to scramble back towards Rodimus on the mattress, a tiny container of fuel still in his hand.

“Yes?”

Drift leaned over Rodimus, the low berth giving him a distinct height advantage, but now also letting Rodimus see whatever he was doing with the cups.

The fuel and lead-laden snacks were arrayed on the table in a configuration not dissimilar from an impressively sized hardline.

Drift must have been intending to make him laugh.

A weak smile stretched across his face despite the cold throb in his chest as he raised his optics to meet his amica’s once more.

“Buddy,” he started slowly, “Can you read this to me?”

Drift tilted his head to the side.

“My… my brain’s doing the thing.”

That was all the explanation he could offer.

That was all the explanation Drift needed.

With a nod, he took the datapad back Rodimus and began to recite, using all of those “artistic sensibilities” of his to make the word “vermilion” sound like a warm embrace.

The eclipse was tomorrow. The sky was an all-encompassing green, but all Rodimus could see in his mind’s eye were an absent Megatron’s written depictions of a beloved inferno.

Chapter 99

It was dark down in whatever cramped, cold stone cell Megatron had woken up in. Well, dark aside from the harsh burning beams of white light that formed the bars on his cell. A small measure of green light from Prokellox filtered in through the high windows in the hallway beyond his bars but did little to usefully illuminate his confines.

The nociception circuits in his head screamed, probably from whatever drugs had been used to render him harmless when they had seized him from his bed. The light of the bars only made the pounding worse. It was tempting to simply turn his optics off, but that would be unwise in a hostile, unfamiliar environment.

His best guess was that he was likely still somewhere in or near Kremex, though there was no way at the moment to determine where exactly. His internal GPS wasn’t working correctly, feeding him only nonsense readings. Almost certainly another side effect of the chemical suppressants, literal disorientation.

Based on his internal chronometer and his fuel levels, he had been offline for more than an entire day. Whatever they had used on him had been strong. They likely dosed him with more of the chemical than was necessary, probably to account for his size.

The air circulation here was better than other cells he had been in. Cybertronian prisons didn’t have much ventilation, making them sweltering hells of restrained mechanical bodies struggling under their own warmth. A torture technique, one he had certainly made use of during the war.

Yet, now, a light, dry, undeserved breeze came in from the hallway through the bars, a meager mercy to wick away the heat of existence. There was probably a vent directly in the ceiling nearby, which was likely how that faint viridian light was getting in in the first place.

There was barely any space in the cell itself, but it was at least larger than the holding cell at the Memory District’s Torchbearer station. This one he could have at least stood and paced in… if he could move, which remained to be seen.

Megatron tried to move his limbs, but to no avail. The slight movement he could manage only made the chains securing him rattle. He’d been left seated on the floor, with his back uncomfortably against the wall. His arms and legs were bound in front of him.

Worse, as soon as he shifted the position of his head, a wave of dizzying nausea rolled through him, his visual feed pixelating violently. Yet another failure of his impaired sense of proprioception.

Under normal circumstances, Megatron could have broken free of the chains, shattered them like the cheap, mass-produced handcuffs used by law enforcement officers. That would have been easy, but an inhibitor claw of some kind had been clamped onto him. The claw drew and diverted most of his energy, rendering him unable to do more than wriggle and talk.

The device’s sharp tines dug into the plating of his back. The stinging points were pushed in further by his own weight leaned against the wall. Small puncture wounds through the armor trickled energon, his only confirmation being the HUD notification of minute leaks.

Even if he could theoretically reach his wrist commlink to contact anyone for assistance, it too would have been drained of power by the claw. Not that it would have been necessary. A stinging sensation in his wrist told him that someone had specifically disconnected the commlink from his wiring, rendering it completely useless, powered or otherwise.

Someone had gone to great pains to render him as harmless and helpless as possible short of permanent damage to his motor circuitry.

If he could still transform, he would have felt more deprived, but as a monoformer, that was at least one thing they couldn’t take away. The secondary anatomy of a tank alt-mode and transformation cog only existed to help him feel whole in this frame the Autobots had so “generously” granted him after his defection and release on remand.

That was the one bright spot to otherwise being confined in the dark, an ancient nightmare that he could feel creeping along his wires and circuits. That… and the fact that wherever Rodimus was, Drift would be watching over him.

Good, loyal Drift, who loved and cared for Rodimus just as much as Megatron did. Not that Rodimus needed “protecting” as such, but Drift would do whatever it took to help him, even if that meant violence.

That much could be relied upon.

It would ultimately be alright, even if Megatron himself would almost certainly not be.

He didn’t know what exactly would happen to him, but it stood to reason he was nearing the end of… something, whatever it was.

Perhaps the Mistress of Flame had grown tired of trying to provoke him into breaking his vow. Perhaps she had found out about Drift following Rodimus out into the wilderness. Who knew. Some sin against the local faith or another transgression of some kind that he wasn’t aware of. It could just be added to his already extensive karmic tab.

He wondered how much his current situation was due to the Mistress of Flame specifically and how much of it related more to the hegemony of the Way of Flame here on this moon.

Perhaps it was, in part, both.

Perhaps it didn’t matter. It was just as likely a natural consequence of the choices he had made in life far before ever setting foot on this moon, the outgrowth of his own hubris having the last laugh.

The sound of cautious, hesitant footsteps approaching yanked him out of his self-deprecating thought spiral.

“Why are you here?” he asked as soon as a shape appeared in the hall outside of his cell.

At least the inhibitor claw hadn’t removed his ability to speak, and he had nothing to lose by challenging his captors.

The voice that answered him back was soft.

“I’ve… come to help.”

As the stranger approached the energy bars, the light thrown off made it clear this was the smallest of the six Torchbearers that had been assigned to their “honor guard.”

“Help?”

This Torchbearer probably wouldn’t be letting him out of here. That was most likely a bridge too far. They probably wouldn’t even remove the inhibitor claw from his back, to improve the comfort of his confinement, in an act of mercy.

Not that he deserved mercy.

He had left prisoners to languish in far worse states than this. Decepticons had not been renowned for their lavish treatment of captives. They hadn’t even started harvesting him for spare parts yet.

Then again, Megatron wasn’t even sure what he would do if he did get out of here. It wasn’t as though he could simply go find Rodimus. The best chance would be making it to the Lost Light and claiming he was on Cybertronian territory. It would be a fast-track of this world… but right back into a Cybertronian prison to wait for Prowl to hand him over to the Galactic Council. There were no good moves for him to make.

As far as he could see, it was checkmate, and they might as well butcher him now.

“And… how exactly do you propose to—“ He paused, realizing he did not know this one’s name. This one was the one that had been cowering behind the Mistress of Flame on the hovertrain to the colony titan’s undead remains. “What are you called?”

“Aphelion.” They smiled sheepishly.

Something about them reminded him of the Camiens on the Lost Light. Perhaps it was the grin…. No, the rounded face. Camiens in general tended to have rounder faces, he had noticed.

Maybe this one also went by “she” like Nautica and Velocity, but they hadn’t said. He wouldn’t assume, not after the time he accidentally called Nickel “he” on reflex and understandably got a wrench thrown at his head.

“Aphelion,” he repeated.

Funny.

The farthest point in a body’s orbit from the sun.

The implication that they understood the sun… or in this case Solus and Rodimus the least.

Yet here they were.

“And, Aphelion,” he continued, “how exactly do you intend to help me?”

“Being from Cybertron, I think… there’s a gap in your knowledge.”

He scoffed, but that didn’t dissuade them.

“No, you don’t understand.” They took a deep ventilation to remain steady. “I know the others… sometimes say things. You’ve probably heard them.” 

Megatron had not heard them, but the Torchbearers weren’t exactly a loquacious bunch in his presence. If they had been talking, he presumed it had been out of his earshot… which was, unfortunately, still a rather short distance.

He quietly shook his head to the contrary, the chains rankling with the motion.

“‘She’s foolish,’ usually… is what they say.”

Aha. She.

“But, please, hear me out.”

Megatron nodded slowly. It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be. His already sparse social calendar had just been thoroughly cleared for the foreseeable future.

“I am listening, Aphelion. Go on.”

She scooted closer to the energy bars, remaining on her knees. If the bars had been solid, Megatron could only imagine that she would have grabbed them for support.

“There is a blessing the faithful say daily or upon conversion. It’s also the last thing one should say before death. As the lover of a Prime, you are the most faithful of all.”

Well, part of that was now technically true, but “faithful” in the religious sense had hardly ever applied to him, a lifelong antitheist. “Atheist” had hardly even covered his disdain for religion most days of the war.

“And… what is it that is said?”

He might as well know.

“It’s in an older dialect, only used for liturgy now, but… I’ll teach you. Ideally, you sing it, but the words and intent are enough.”

 

---

 

Seemingly satisfied with what she had set out to do, Aphelion stood, mumbling another apology and turning to head towards the exit.

“You should consider changing your name to Perihelion,” Megatron said, stopping her in her tracks.

Though, these days Megatron was far away from providing name suggestions. So many mechs early in the war he had arrogantly provided with a nom de guerre, to either empower them or assist them with throwing away the identities that the system had forced upon them….

It was, of course, not his business. He himself had never changed his name. Answering to a shortened form wasn’t the same as changing it completely.

Aphelion turned to look back at him curiously, her hand on the wall behind her for support.

A mech’s name was a private, personal matter. It had been presumptuous, perhaps even rude, of him to even suggest it, but the obvious linguistic connections were staring him right in the face.

“Why?” Aphelion tilted her head to the side.

“You don’t realize it, but you are closer than anyone else on this moon to understanding the sun.” He wasn’t sure how a smile made it onto his face in light of the dire situation. “Rodimus is lucky to have someone like you who believes in him.”

Primus knows he doesn’t believe in himself, Megatron thought.

“Thank you.” The Torchbearer shuffled her feet uneasily before ducking out, disappearing into the green Camien night.