Reforged - Part 6 (2/2)

[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 100

Rodimus slammed the door shut in the face of the unfortunate courier who had just brought him the final trial brief. The world had no business existing prior to seven in the morning, never mind whatever more “industrious” mechs would say about the sun being up dictating the day’s beginning.

He had barely gotten any sleep anyway, spending most of the night lying awake with the recharge cables struggling to bypass his active mind for a secure, refreshing connection. It hadn’t been efficient, but it had at least been something, a pitiful aid while he had stolen Drift’s body heat.

Drift’s company hadn’t been the same, but it had been a different sort of familiar and comforting. He hadn’t snored like a broken chainsaw nor twitched with nightmares, but he had still willingly hugged his ailing friend close to scare off the worst of the worrying. Without Drift, Rodimus would have likely sat up the entire night, alternating between self-loathing spirals, the mindless destruction of furnishings, and half-baked attempts at mounting a solo rescue mission that would probably have ended with him breaking one or both of his legs before getting off the temple grounds.

At least Drift had been allowed to stay; a flash of their rarely necessary amica paperwork to the temple staff showing legal kinship provided the privilege. Small matching engravings would have also sufficed but being off-worlders, that hadn’t been a tradition they had followed back then. It was funny, Rodimus had thought at the time, that Drift required papers to be allowed to stay and yet… the Camiens had stuffed Megatron and Rodimus in a room together without a second thought or demands for proof.

Now, this morning, in the hazy green light of day, Rodimus’s attention was drawn to the glyphs on the datapad in his hand.

“What’s this supposed to be? That can’t be right.”

He reset his optics once. Twice.

Just to be sure that he was reading the text correctly.

“What?” He heard Drift shift position from where he knelt on a cushion at the breakfast table where warm, sweetened fuel sprinkled with stimulants waited. Rodimus knew he would be needing those stimulants today, a blunt tool to help him make sense of the world.

As long as Drift didn’t drink it all before he got there. Again. Many a command staff meeting had been ruined that way.

“The trial,” he said, turning his back on the door, “is apparently this afternoon in the local stadium.”

While he had known that the final trial would be soon, he hadn’t thought it would have been this soon. Megatron’s whereabouts were still unknown, and the Mistress of Flame was expecting Rodimus to just pull off another miracle without him?

Worse, the brief didn’t seem to include what the trial itself was or what he was expected to do. This was even less helpful than the one that had simply told him to get on a train or the complete lack of one in favor of being locked in some catacombs. There ought to be some sort of prize for making the universe’s least helpful instructions.

“Huh? That’s odd.” Drift shrugged; a steaming cup was cradled in his hands. “That’s where they’re going to hold the eclipse celebration.”

“The what?”

Rodimus lowered the datapad, the words on it, at this point, inconsequential.

“The eclipse celebration. There are posters all over town.” Drift shrugged. “Have been for days. Apparently, this happens every six months when the planet aligns and—”

“I….”

Celebration? That wasn’t odd on its own. That seemed like the sort of thing a society might celebrate, but it was odd that he hadn’t heard of it. Rodimus had obviously known about the celestial event but not that there would be some sort of major public observance.

Well, Rodimus hadn’t seen the posters, but he hadn’t exactly been “out and about.”

When he’d been outside of the temple grounds lately, he had been going somewhere else at great speed, which wasn’t exactly conducive to “taking in his surroundings.”

Come to think of it, he would have been an excellent target for any deicidal assassins.

Megatron would have told him to be more careful—Rodimus would have given almost anything to hear his voice again, live, and not an asynchronous clip in a missed voicemail about a late report saved to his commlink’s storage.

Drift hadn’t continued after the halted interruption, apparently giving Rodimus the room he needed to process his thoughts. He really owed Drift for this, for this and many other gifted acts of devoted friendship.

“Sorry, I’m….” He tossed the datapad aside, letting it fall to the floor. “I just need some ‘go’ juice. Not exactly firing on all cylinders this morning.”

Star Saber immediately took the opportunity to dart out from under the berth to gnaw on the edges of the datapad with impunity.

“Good boy.”

Megatron was going to be unhappy that Star Saber would think datapads were acceptable chew toys, but that was fine.

It would mean he was here.

 

---

 

Prowl slouched in his chair, back to the door that slid open as Minimus approached. His door wings, still damaged from Rodimus’s outburst, were held low; the edges of the thermal tarpaulin were visible from around the chair, as though Prowl had the warm mesh spread across his lap.

He hadn’t slept yet, had he?

Neither had Minimus.

They could commiserate.

Despite how haggard they both were, Minimus was relieved to see that the patrol car was already in his temporary quarters aboard the Lost Light when he arrived. He had unwillingly entertained the brief thought that Prowl would have still been out stalking the streets of Kremex for information, but it seemed that he had willingly withdrawn from whatever he had been doing to accommodate Minimus’s request for a check-in.

“I didn’t have much time after dropping Prime off at the temple last night,” Prowl started, neither turning around nor even waiting to so much as greet Minimus. “Unfortunately, all I managed to find was….”

Waiting just past the threshold into the suite, Minimus stood silently. He had already taken the official complaint from the crew members involved on his way through the ship this morning, but he wanted to hear how Prowl would spin it.

Prowl visibly struggled to think of a way to say that he had walked in on Cyclonus and Tailgate presenting Whirl with a locally sourced chronometer as a present without sounding like he’d made an awkward mistake.

“The crew going about their routine business.”

A valiant effort.

Minimus decided it wasn’t worth digging into Prowl’s faux pas here. That could be saved for later when there would be less immediately pressing matters.

“Well, it seems we both had less than ideal luck,” he said, restraining from awkwardly fidgeting with his hands.

Normally he did well under pressure.

That came part and parcel with his thousands of years piloting the Magnus armor and pretending to be—becoming—someone else. Losing one’s “cool” could sabotage the entire charade. Yet since letting his identity slip to the crew, he… felt that perhaps he was becoming lax in his discipline, his fingers twitching in want of that crinkle foil he had given to Star Saber.

Minimus forced his hands into taut fists and held them securely behind his back where Prowl hopefully wouldn’t see his weakness. Prowl still had no idea.

“I tried, you understand, to file a missing person’s report with the local authorities.”

Prowl finally turned at that, looking over his drooping shoulder armor at his co-conspirator.

“We both know that’s a waste of time.”

Law enforcement agencies were all the same, generally uninterested in actually performing their duties. For ages, Minimus had merely assumed it was laziness and a lack of discipline, that with the right pressure they could be forced to perform their duties correctly in service of the “greater good,” that corrupt, fallible officials like Prowl were rarities, but working closely with mechs like Rodimus and Megatron had shown him otherwise.

“I know, normally yes, but… not this time.”

His goal had been more than merely trying to instigate the local governmental organs into action.

“They didn’t take the report.”

“Of course not—“ Prowl stopped, something about the words clicking into place in his processor. Minimus could see it on what little of his face was visible.

Good.

“They didn’t take the report,” Prowl echoed flatly.

“No, the intake officer ought to be reprimanded for how casually he revealed sensitive information to the public,” Minimus continued, “He said ‘the disappearance of the Lord Consort-Protector is of least concern.’”

“They know exactly where Megatron is.”

Prowl practically growled as he spun around to face Minimus properly, a million thought threads likely spiraling together in his simulation software into a conclusion as the tarpaulin slipped down his knees.

Minimus nodded, still clenching his fists.

“Precisely.”

“We don’t have long to prepare.”

Chapter 101

The open-air stadium was vast, situated in an exhausted limestone quarry just outside of Kremex.

While Riptide didn’t know all that much about rocks, he did know which ones were a sign of water. For there to be this much limestone, there must have been a vast quantity of water on the moon in the past, long since gone. The entire moon was now arid aside from the occasional surface pools or whatever was pumped up from beneath the crust.

Shame that they no longer had the time case so he could pop back and see the old ocean. Oh well.

Walking through the beautifully carved queues and aisles, all swarming with visitors ready to celebrate the eclipse, Riptide found himself idly wondering what a Camien ocean might have once been like. What color would the water have been? Would it have been full of life? It was easier to ignore the overwhelming din of the crowds with something self-indulgent to ponder.

The planet that Caminus orbited loomed high overhead, casting a yellow-green glow on everything below. The first time Riptide had seen the turnover of the cycle of bright nights, he had thought it was beautiful, but now the effect was strong enough to be visible in the daytime, a prelude to the eclipse that would begin shortly.

Riptide paused in the shuffling queue, squinting with his hand just above his eyes to block glare as he checked the sky. Prokellox wasn’t blocking the distant sun yet, but it would be soon, given that the perspective from Caminus made the planet absolutely dwarf the host star. The edge of the planet’s atmosphere was just touching the star’s corona.

Soon.

He needed to find a seat as quickly as possible and get the protective auxiliary lenses that the priests were passing out from his subspace. They had given him two sets since the standard size was too small for his face.

And not step on anyone accidentally in the process—

“Move!” An impatient voice snapped at him as small fists pounded against the sturdy metal of his shins.

“Sorry!” Riptide shrugged in apology as he began moving again.

The stadium was easily packed with at least half of the population of Kremex, which made navigation difficult. The fact that none of the structures were built to accommodate mechs of Riptide’s size added to the challenge. He struggled to not accidentally jostle the smaller Camiens in the queue with him, not wanting to accidentally hurt them. While he was used to working with mechs a fraction of his size, it was different when the relative proportion of them was far greater.

At least it was a public event that didn’t need tickets, otherwise Riptide was sure they would have been sold out. He didn’t want to go to Misfire for scalped ones, not that he thought Misfire would laugh or anything. It just would be a complete hassle and not ideal just to see a local celebration.

Riptide didn’t even know what was supposed to happen at the celebration exactly, beyond the obvious celestial event. Would the Camiens sing? Would they dance? Would there be games? A play? He hadn’t had the faintest clue and the advertisements had held precious little explanatory information. The nearly empty, polished limestone field down below really only added to his questions.

Spotting Thunderclash in the crowd ahead, an easy feat due to his similarly large size, Riptide made his way over in hopes that sticking together would help them mutually cut an easier path through the carved stone steps of the open-air stadium without inadvertently hurting anyone.

Thunderclash, to his credit, seemed genuinely grateful for the company once they finally managed to find a corner to sit in that they wouldn’t get pushed out of. Unfortunately, that corner was in the far flung wings of the stands.

At least they had seats.

Riptide had seen over his shoulder, whatever wasn’t blocked by his folded-up decking, mechs being forced to stand in the back as the seats filled up with spectators. The thought that they would be blocking the view for others and kicked out to join the standing room only audience loomed in the back of his mind.

Now that he wasn’t jockeying for a place, Riptide could get a better look at the layout.

The stadium itself was only ringed by stands three-quarters of the way around, the remaining fourth open to the wilderness beyond, lined up with the center of where Prokellox would eclipse the star.

Large holoscreens lined the overhangs on the stadiums stands, giving decent viewing access. Currently the screens only displayed a looping placeholder “LIVE FEED COMING SOON” sequence. Interesting, given that all other feeds had been audio only. Some local hangup about visual representations of deities or something. Riptide didn’t pay too much mind to it. He, for better or worse, knew what Rodimus looked like.

Media drones swarmed the air above the heads of the audience, some zipping in the aisles and trailing after reporters with microphones as they took statements from passersby.

The bustling energy of the crowd and drones mixed in seemed to fill the atmosphere with an almost tangible, unnameable anxiety.

Riptide started to wonder if, perhaps, they had overstayed their welcome here.

He had been certain that they were only supposed to be here for maybe a couple of weeks at the most, if he remembered the itinerary that Ultra Magnus had prepared and distributed to the crew before they even approached this system.

And now it was all going on for nearly two and a half months. Probably quite the drain on the Lost Light’s budgets, but at least the trip to that old settlement had been free. All the same, Riptide had gotten rather tired of being physically unable to go into most buildings—restaurants were the worst—and generally getting somewhat stuck in cramped public areas.

He leaned over, elbowing Thunderclash lightly in the arm.

“Hey, Thunderclash, uh, you don’t happen to know when this, uh… ‘vacation’ is supposed to end, do you?”

Unfortunately, Thunderclash provided no answer beyond a shrug and smile. He was just as in the dark then as the rest of them. Great.

A loud crack drew Riptide’s attention to a raised platform at the far end of the stadium, in the center of the section that lined up with the sky. A metal floor split open, great panels pulling apart as a lift brought up a pair of mechs, too distant for Riptide to make out immediately.

The crowd in the stands cheered, nearly drowning out the lively introductory music now blasting out of the speakers overhead. Riptide thought for a moment that he recognized some of the instruments, including the powerful blare of twisted metal horns he had seen played in some of the local markets.

Media drones swarmed from the stands towards the mechs on the platform. Once closer, the the holoscreens flickered to life, showing a feed of the Mistress of Flame standing center stage with careful avoidance of her companion. That must have been Rodimus if Riptide’s squinting of his optics had actually helped any. The violently red shine to counter the pervasive green was a definite clue.

The Mistress of Flame stood in the center of the lift, sweeping her arms wide in greeting as it came to a stop with an echoing clank. The noise of the crowd and music quieted down in response to the gesture.

It was impossible to make out Rodimus’s face at this distance and with the cameras making a point of not capturing him, Riptide wasn’t sure whether he ought to worry. Should he have cheered?

What dangerous feat would she ask today? Probably something that would be solved with lighting something on fire, like basically everything else Riptide had been witness to.

One thing did stand out immediately.

Megatron wasn’t down there with Rodimus.

They’d been practically glued together ever since they landed. As far as Riptide knew, based on the rumors that had been circulating amongst the crew for weeks now, they were supposed to be “pretending” to be… close, to avoid a diplomatic incident.

Riptide didn’t really buy that explanation, not with how emotionally—“devastated” wasn’t quite the right word, but it was close—distraught Rodimus had been after Megatron remained in that other universe. Riptide, while not the brightest mech, had had the wisdom to not weigh in on the shipwide debate about if he was left behind or if he purposefully tried to avoid coming back.

He did, however, know that they had been nearly inseparable ever since New Cybertron had escaped the Warren. After that, The Insider had been running speculation pieces about the captains.

The Lost Light Insider, while often full of silly rumor and photomanipulations with mushy, romantic sparkbursts, wasn’t always wrong. The “Camien vacation” editions had even been keeping unofficial tabs, along with some speculation about “How Many Days Has This Vacation Lasted?” tracker and the “Where In Town Is Prowl?” advisory column.

Not that he needed the gossip to make his determination. After seeing Megatron give his second known hug out in those ruins, Riptide was able to come to the obvious conclusion on his own.

“Hey, Thunderclash,” Riptide started, leaning over towards his seat buddy once more and pointing down towards the stadium floor. “Don’t you think it’s odd tha—“

Before he could finish, the crowd of Camiens, many still trying to find an open seat, erupted in applause yet again as the Mistress of Flame’s voice finally came through the speakers, followed by the gentle swell of softer music.

“Fellow devoted, we have gathered here to both celebrate the biannual wonder of Prokellox eclipsing the sun and to bear witness to the final trial to ascertain whether or not Rodimus Prime is the reenforgement of Solus Prime.”

Finally, Riptide thought. An agenda.

 

---

 

Right now, Ratchet was doing his level best to ignore the Mistress of Flame’s melodramatic introduction blaring through the speakers. A few internal adjustments to temporarily turn down the sensitivity of his audio sensors had done wonders to drown out her pompous spiel and the other racket.

He had been a little skeptical about attending the eclipse celebration at first.

Even aside from Ratchet’s general discomfort with religious services, the overall atmosphere on this damn moon had been… suspicious—the most generous word that he found to be applicable—for weeks now. However, since they had been discouraged from going on that expedition and considering Megatron’s recent disappearance, Ratchet had convinced himself that attending with Drift in support of Rodimus, should the worst happen, was the right move.

At best, he would have just spent the entire event being somewhat uncomfortable as a guest in a stranger’s home but greeted with the beauty of an eclipse behind the safety of the auxiliary lenses provided by the clergy.

He bounced the folded lenses in his palm to test their weight as he sat in the front row, right on the stone floor of the stadium next to Drift. The lenses were light in construction, but otherwise sturdy with magnets on adjustable spokes to be attached to the face.

At worst, they would have to intervene to protect Rodimus’s life.

Rodimus had made a special request that he and Drift be given priority seating as they were “close friends.” Of course, he knew that it was so they could serve as both physical and emotional support, but this was not said. The fact that the request was granted with great reluctance spoke volumes on its own.

Ratchet had no idea where Megatron was, but he strongly suspected he had been taken into custody somewhere. Likely still alive. He was too valuable to just whisk off and extinguish.

Rodimus, only somewhat visible at this distance, was blatantly shifting his weight, a sure sign that he was uncomfortable, especially with combined with how taut and rigid he was holding the fins of his spoiler.

Not a good sign, not with how much Ratchet knew Rodimus enjoyed being the center of attention when at all possible. Then again, he doubted the limelight would really be able to lift even the most ardent praise seeker under these circumstances.

The lack of information was likely not helping. The public didn’t have an inkling of what was going to happen and Ratchet doubted that Rodimus knew much more, if he knew anything else. From what Drift had told him, it seemed as though Rodimus had been progressively kept more and more in the dark about what he was expected to do until the last minute.

None of this passed the sniff test.

Across the field, still on the front row of benches, Ratchet could see Minimus and Prowl. Drift had mentioned something about them working on some sort of project together, but it was difficult to believe. Who knew what they were up to. Frankly, given that Prowl was still allegedly in the dark about Minimus’s identity, Minimus was playing with fire by associating so closely with that paranoid schemer.

However, now Drift sat, tense and ready to spring into action should anything so much as look like a threat. Ratchet reached over and placed a hand on his knee, gently patting the plating, to prevent him from just leaping up. While he didn’t think Drift would overreact, a reminder to remain calm wouldn’t go amiss.

Motion out of the corner of Ratchet’s optics caused him to turn his head.

A bright yellow and green mech with small shoulder wheels and a big, friendly smile approached, flanked by a small swarm of media drones, a mixture of separate dedicated camera and audio feeds that seemed to be the norm for Camien journalists.

Such an arrangement seemed to be the result of their religious beliefs about capturing images of Primes, but had they had that setup before contact with Cybertron and living Primes?

Perhaps, but he couldn’t say for sure.

It could have been a more recent development, arising in the years since the founding of Council of Worlds.

Though what mattered more was the knowledge that they were about to be bothered.

“You’re Ratchet of Vaporex, chief medical officer of the—“

“Former chief medical officer,” he corrected.

The reported hesitated but laughed the correction off with a nod.

“Of course, my mistake. I’m Starcall of Kremex, a journalist with Kremex Public Broadcasting.” They gestured cheerfully to one of the audio drones swarming near their head. Their voice was hardly audible over the stupid, prerecorded “festive” music, full of bells and chimes and the bleating of horns, that was supposed to accompany the Mistress of Flame’s speech. “Would you be willing to provide us with a comment?”

Drift shifted, trying to jump up off his seat. Ratchet’s hand on his knee was the only thing that stopped him from getting further than standing, hands on the handles of two of his altogether too many swords.

“No, no, Drift,” Ratchet said, waving his other hand defensively, a signal for his trigger-happy conjunx to back down. “I can handle this.”

With a slow, agitated ventilation, Drift flopped back down to the bench with a pout, his armor rattling on impact with the carved, polished stone.

Ratchet chalked the whole thing up to Drift just being understandably on edge today.

“You know, I do have a comment. Just for you.” Ratchet gestured for the reporter to come closer.

Starcall’s smile brightened as they hurried over for their exclusive interview.

As soon as the report was in range, he grabbed their audio drone before shouting directly into its receiver.

“Get bent!”

Chapter 102

Optimus had had a nice visit so far, he thought, trying to hold still for the priest gently polishing his armor with a cloth and some local fragrant, tinted, glossy varnish. He wasn’t sure what to describe the scent as other than “exotic,” since he had no point of reference to compare it to. Deep but glowing? Warm and coppery? None of those generally went with smell but whatever it was, he would be bringing some back to Cybertron to share.

The people of Caminus had been so welcoming to him even though it really wasn’t necessary.

This must have been the sort of treatment Rodimus had been receiving these past several weeks, being pampered by the local priesthood. How pleasant!

Offering for him to stay in the temple and give him escorts everywhere was a little excessive, but he couldn’t refuse. What if they perceived his refusal as an insult rather than a declaration of modesty? He didn’t want to risk damaging their already fragile relations.

It wasn’t as though the escort was much of a burden anyway. The six mechs assigned to him had been very polite, after all. They were certainly nicer than the band of Torchbearers that had emigrated to Cybertron and gone rogue. The incident with Pyra Magna and Victorion had been… difficult.

Besides, he would only be here for another day or so. That was all he could spare away from his busy schedule trying to integrate an obstinate Earth into the Council of Worlds. He wouldn’t be a drain on Camien hospitality for too long.

Now, however, Optimus waited in an antechamber at the back of the stands with the Torchbearers while the visitors for the celebration got settled in their seats outside.

The priest put the varnish away on the rolling supply tray next to them and tossed the polishing cloth in some bin, probably for laundry. Interestingly, he had only shined the parts of Optimus’s armor that were red. The tint seemed to exaggerate the hue, making it more saturated in addition to the increased sheen.

The Camiens seemed to prefer red, at least in the parts of Kremex he had been to. Maybe that was all or there was some religious significance or ritual norm that he wasn’t aware of.

The priest picked up a manual buffing pad from the tray before starting on the rest of his armor.

It was interesting, he thought, that he had only seen the Mistress of Flame once in passing, long enough to say “hello.” Between heading up the colony’s major religious sect and her duties as a delegate on the Council of Worlds, she must have been terribly busy. That made sense enough, but she had often made it a point to make time for him before. Perhaps later. The eclipse ceremony seemed to require a lot of preparation, after all.

The clergy Optimus had interacted with so far hadn’t provided much by way of an itinerary, but as far as he knew, his role was simply to be present and enjoy the proceedings and giving his ceremonial blessing over the people. That seemed a little much, but if it meant so much to the Camiens, a few words and well wishes couldn’t hurt.

It was funny, he could almost hear Megatron calling the idea of a short inspiring speech “pontificating.” As though he weren’t a pompous orator in his own right.

It would be good to see his friend again, clap him on the shoulder and reminisce about their youths before everything had gone so wrong. If only Megatron could bother to mention the good times back then. He always acted like there had never been any.

A shame, Optimus thought, that he hadn’t seen Megatron yet since he’d arrived. He had been looking forward catching up with his old friend after so long, to see how his journey on the Lost Light had changed him. Megatron must have just been busy trying to reign in Rodimus’s tomfoolery.

It had been a good idea to put them together on that ship, he told himself. Rodimus would see another example of discipline—somehow, he already wasn’t taking any cues from Ultra Magnus on the matter—and Megatron would be kept busy, along with a crash course in what being an Autobot means. For all Rodimus’s flaws, he was an exceptional Autobot, an example of earnest, if immature and rash… and selfish and—genuine dedication to the greater good.

Maybe Rodimus would even come to finally accept the responsibility of being a Prime one day. He had understandably wrestled with it, much like Optimus had.

Optimus still wrestled with it, much like the priest cleaning him up was wrestling with trying to buff out a scratch on his forearm.

Sometimes he found himself envious of Rodimus having the opportunity to walk away from the burden, something he himself had failed to in his brief descent into mercenary work after the war.

Of course, Optimus had had doubts about his decision to assign Megatron command of the Lost Light. He had functionally let the greatest threat to his species and the universe walk free on a hunch, on… hope.

And… there had been concerns about whether he had actually had the authority to make those personnel decisions, but… but it had worked out in the end. That was what mattered or at least that was what he told himself, especially since it was far, far too late to take it back.

No matter how much he second guessed himself, Optimus could not take any of it back.

Besides, maybe Rodimus and Megatron could even have become friends. Optimus recalled all too well, all too personally, Megatron’s tendency for fondness for those that annoyed him to no end.

“And now we are doubly blessed as another living ancestor has graced us with his presence on this wondrous day!” Those words, reverberating through the stadium, warmed his spark. While he didn’t care for being the center of attention, the Camiens had just been so hospitable so far, especially considering the rocky start to their cultural exchange, that he couldn’t help feeling honored. “It is my pleasure and privilege to welcome our esteemed guest, Optimus Prime!”

The priest that had been retouching his finish put the tools aside on the tray once more and gestured for Optimus to follow him out of the antechamber.

The Torchbearers flanked Optimus’s every step as he walked out onto the smooth limestone at the top of the stadium’s stands.

Beyond the archways above the stands, the bright green and yellow storms of Caminus’s host planet swirled in great bands.

It was almost funny.

Even though the chaotic winds were a raging torrent on the planet itself, from here they seemed so peaceful, calming to look at. It was a good reminder, he thought, that distance could have such a dramatic effect on one’s perspective. If only he had had that lesson earlier in his life, perhaps events and relationships would have unfolded differently. Too late now.

But never too late to enjoy a beautiful view—An overwhelming cacophony of voices swept up the steps. The roar of the Camien crowd upon seeing him brought his focus back down to the stadium with its sturdy stone stands packed full of rejoicing residents.

Never having been a confident showman, Optimus remained grateful for the mask obscuring his face. No one could see the awkward, uncomfortable smile hidden underneath as he waved uncomfortably.

As he descended the stairs, the escort unit flanking him kept a polite distance on the wide steps as they kept back any curious hands and arms.

Media drones swarmed up to circle around his escorts in an open sphere, orbiting in curiosity. Interesting that they all appeared to be audio drones and not combined with camera equipment. Maybe the cameras were broken or it was just part of the show.

Another priest, one that he hadn’t seen before, darted down ahead of him, waving a pair of rods, each with a series of richly painted, interconnected wrought metal pieces dangling from the front. Perhaps, charms of some kind. The “charms” chimed in the forced breeze, rotating in an imitation of a twirling fire.

How festive! Optimus wasn’t sure what they had to do with the planetary eclipse but he’d been around enough foreign and alien cultures to know that he ought to just accept unfamiliar customs like this without too much scrutiny.

After an awkwardly slow descent down the steps, Optimus had finally made it to the stadium floor, across which he could see a raised platform where the Mistress of Flame and Rodimus were standing. He hurried to meet them, eager to leave the center of attention, the weight of thousands of pairs of staring optics dragging at his heels.

As Optimus finally reached the top of the platform, he noticed that Rodimus didn’t quite look like himself. His finish was just as polished as usual, colors bright and healthy, but something about his stance didn’t match the smaller mech’s normal energy. He was almost always eager and excited, but now he looked tired, strained. His spirit was usually so indomitable. It had been quite a long time since he had seen Rodimus appear so downtrodden, not since he’d lost an entire team in that accident on Ki-Aleta.

Something must have happened, but now was neither the time nor the place to ask.

He smiled behind his mask at Rodimus, hoping the genuine feeling of warmth at seeing him would reach up to his optics where it would be visible. He always had such hope that Rodimus would do great things.

Rodimus and Bumblebee had been the closest he had ever had to true “successors,” though it felt a little too “old guard” to think of continuing a lineage of leadership like that. They had both done so much, gone through so much, and Optimus hoped they knew—or had known in one case—that he was proud of them, even if he struggled to say so. Yet another shortcoming he wouldn’t wish on anyone. It was now too late to tell Bumblebee, but not too late for—

“It’s good to see you, Rodimus,” he started, unsure of how to ease into this conversation, especially with the pressure of all the eyes in the stands and ears—drones—still circling. “How have you been?”

Rodimus didn’t respond, only looking up at him, optics narrowed like he somehow was pained. And Optimus apparently wasn’t the right source of relief.

The Mistress of Flame stood to the side, smiling broadly as she held the large ceremonial staff casually aside, as though it weighed nothing.

“Oh, I noticed Megatron isn’t here. Is he busy?”

Rodimus frowned up at him, his arms petulantly crossed.

“Yeah, yeah.” The smaller mech huffed. “You could say that.”

They must have had an argument of some kind. Megatron did have a knack for pushing people’s buttons, something he and Rodimus shared. Of course, it would be expected that they would turn that sharp skill on each other. It would surely all smooth over soon and they would be on speaking terms once more. Megatron had probably simply gone too far in his

“We’ll just see him later then.” Optimus nodded.

They couldn’t stand here talking amongst themselves idly. The show, whatever it was, would have to start before long.

If he wanted to take this chance, it was now or never.

Optimus could do this.

He could tell Rodimus. He could do it. What was so scary about a few words of affirmation to someone who had seen the worst both combat and the multiverse could throw at him?

Everything, but he could do it.

“Rodimus, I’ve always wanted to tell you that I’m proud—“

The riotous music began again, drowning out his words. Rodimus, having heard none of it, shrugged and shook his head before waving it off. He mouthed something that looked like “don’t worry about it.”

Optimus could only hope there would be another opportunity.

 

---

 

They had drugged him again.

When Megatron next woke, he was somewhere new, somewhere dark and lit only by a few electric lanterns. In front of him was solid rock, bright white limestone with smooth tunnels branching off in several directions. Porous, prone to sinkhole creation, not recommended for heavy structures—He manually ended the geological analytical process that had started to run. He never did quite manage to turn off the automatic routine that launched it, on the off chance it was of tactical importance in the battlefield.

Just… in case.

Why destroy a perfectly useful tool when it could simply be repurposed for the Cause? Even though he had since outgrown that need.

The inhibitor claw still dug into his back, the tiny punctures in his armor now clogged by congealed fuel. At least he wasn’t actively leaking anymore. A small mercy.

Maybe.

Or maybe it was just delaying the inevitable.

Chains still clung to him like before but now his arms were pulled painfully behind his back, his wrists lashed to some sort of metal ring in the ground while he’d been left on his knees. Without the claw, Megatron could have simply yanked that ring from the ground and rent the chains holding him in place, but no.

He was, for now, well and truly stuck.

He turned his head to get a better view, but the world seemed intent on violently spinning on his uncooperative visual feed like a kaleidoscope, underscored by the flashing “low fuel” notification in the corner of his HUD.

Wonderful.

The chronometer on his HUD was now also just showing an error. That same fuel alarm indicator was now his only way of knowing how long he had been out.

Unsurprising, as he hadn't even been brought anything to consume the entire brief time he had previously been conscious.

Why waste limited resources on someone that didn't have long to function? It was the rational, practical choice. He would have and had done the same.

In another time.

If nothing else, the lack of fuel was the most obvious clue that he would not leave the situation alive. A good parameter by which to set his hopes: nonexistent.

He was going to starve to death, alone, lost, and helpless—something he had taken every possible step to avoid ever being again—in some unknown karst, the cavernous remains of some long dead ocean as the water dissolved away the deposited sedimentary rock.

After all he had done to escape being buried alive, forgotten underground, Rodimus had been right, when they had talked before his first trial. He had ended up right back where he had started, even in the particulars were somewhat different.

At least Rodimus was safe.

Or maybe… maybe he wasn’t. Megatron didn’t know anymore and there was no way he could know for sure. Did he even deserve the luxury of fooling himself while he waited to go into the numb oblivion of stasis preceding critical spark failure? Probably not. But he would give himself that luxury anyway.

Rodimus was safe and healthy, cared for by his—their—friends.

A dull roar from overhead caught his attention, not that he could turn and look without risking purging whatever fuel he had remaining in his tank.

Music. Incoherent voices digitized through speakers. Cheering.

He knew that arrangement of noises all too well.

An arena.

Barely audible through the stone but… no. No, there must have been some sort of opening up there. That would be the only way the sound could make its way to his damaged audio sensors.

The ground underneath him juddered violently as some sort of small, antigravity engine powered on before the surface slowly lifted up. His vision pixelated with the motion. He must have been bound to a mobile platform of some kind.

Maybe Megatron had been too quick to assume he would have the luxury of dying quietly, peacefully in private. He didn't deserve even that much.

Chapter 103

Rodimus stood there on the platform, keeping his arms crossed to prevent himself from nervously fidgeting or picking at the paint on his hands. The hinges in his spoiler were starting to burn from the effort of holding the fins rigid so they wouldn’t twitch in irritation.

He regularly jumped into the deep end of situations, there was no reason to be nervous, even if the Mistress of Flame hadn’t yet told him what he was supposed to be doing. The words of affirmation played on repeat in his processor, doing absolutely nothing to help keep him calm.

Remaining calm was a tall order when Rodimus felt like his spark had been replaced with a cold, empty void, radiating psychosomatic aches throughout his chest.

The quill, purposeless and most likely fake, rolled around uselessly in his subspace. He’d been a fool for hoping it would save them, that some sort of mystical “fix all the problems” stick would work.

If anyone asked what the matter was, he would say that the music was too loud, that everything was too bright. The intensifying green tint that the surroundings were taking on, combined with the growing darkness as Prokellox slowly moved towards totality and the sound of prerecorded horns in the air, made for an eerie, uncomfortable backdrop.

The Mistress of Flame turned away from Rodimus and Optimus to address the crowd, her face filling the holoscreens around the stadium.

Camera drones with a lone audio drone circled her to ensure the perfect angle was always what was captured. They did a delicate dance to avoid turning in either his or Optimus’s direction.

The remaining audio drones, little more than aggravating floating microphones, darted around both Primes, zipping this way and that to catch any words, shuffling or awkward cough they might make. A swarm of gnats, aggravating nuisances. Under normal circumstances, Rodimus enjoyed attention, but this… scrutiny was too much. Their little blinking red “live” lights were maddening to watch. It took an act of willpower to avoid punching the damn things out of the air.

He had heard word that Optimus would be here for this, but actually seeing him walk down the steps amidst all the praise and fanfare had made it sink in how little they had in common, how much he didn’t want Optimus to see him like this. Being afraid and on edge was embarrassing, not something he wanted to show his superior officer, someone he had looked up to for so long for guidance and mentorship.

Not that he ever had gotten much of either, which was a mixed blessing as he knew that Optimus was far from perfect.

Good soldiers and leaders weren’t supposed to be afraid or unsure. Rodimus knew that wasn’t true, but old, deeply ingrained lessons died slow deaths.

At least Optimus had stopped talking to him. He didn’t stop looking at him though. He was probably disappointed in him for… something. There was probably a whole list of wrongdoings.

Rodimus looked off to the side, at the ground, pointedly avoiding Optimus’s gaze.

The Mistress of Flame’s voice boomed through the speakers as the music softened, like the ringleader of a circus. That’s what this had become, Rodimus thought, a circus.

“Optimus Prime has so generously offered to say a few words for us today, to mark this joyous occasion!”

Rodimus doubted that.

He was pretty sure Optimus had been voluntold to do this, though that didn’t lessen the feeling of once more being in Optimus’s shadow. Years of running a ship on his own—with some help—had helped him start to put the feeling behind him, yet here it was all over again.

Optimus stepped away from Rodimus to face the gathered masses in the stands, hesitating like he was reluctant to leave his side. Easily more than half of the drone swarm followed him.

Solus was, nominally, the most venerated deity in the Way of Flame and yet Optimus, whoever he was supposed to be, if anyone, was getting preferential treatment.

Not that Rodimus really wanted to be in that role, Optimus’s role, so much as it was just a continuation of how the rest of his functioning had gone. Whenever Optimus stepped into the room, Rodimus became less important, easy to ignore. Everyone loved Optimus. No one loved him that much—

No.

That wasn’t true. He knew it wasn’t true—he had a handful of friends who deeply cared for him—but it was hard to fight the negative self-talk when so much else was already wrong. It was easier to simply let it win.

The only alternative he mustered the energy to provide was: Megatron does.

Wherever he was.

If he still was—No. Megatron was alive. He was fine. He was just… somewhere else right now.

“Citizens of Caminus, I’m so grateful that you have invited me to visit your beautiful colony and to partake of your rich culture!”

Now Rodimus had something brand new to be embarrassed about: being associated with Optimus’s awkward speech.

“I’m honored that you’ve let me, a stranger, play a role in your festivities!”

Kill him now. Maybe with a freak bolt of lightning or something.

Rodimus ducked his head and placed both palms over his face, as though that would let him disappear from the situation.

Maybe he could kickstart the elevator platform and jump down the hole back into the underground.

Maybe he could get lost in the caves down there. When he had been led through it earlier, the network appeared extensive. It would be easy to get lost and vanish, a trifle to hide from prying optics. He could easily never be seen again, and everyone would forget about him having ever been here and tangentially associated with Optimus’s cringe-worthy military brass style of diplomatic speech.

That would be perfect.

The audio drones crowded close to Optimus’s face to capture every word, as though they were gospel.

Mercifully, the speech ended after a few minutes, each of which had felt like an eternity.

When Optimus finished, he turned back towards to Rodimus like he had expected a comment.

Rodimus just narrowed his optics at him and shook his head in silence.

There was a hesitation again, like Optimus had wanted to say more, but he didn’t. The Torchbearers took him away, across the field, and up to a separated section of the stands. A decorated box for a “god” to be attended to by the priests and Torchbearers. Rodimus had never been paraded around, preceded by priests with windchimes, his every whim answered by waiting clergy.

He didn’t want that, but he still felt cheated that Optimus got it. He also didn’t see any badgering about Optimus not having a protector, but that was neither here nor there.

Rodimus let his optics wander back down the stands to the front row, where Ratchet and Drift sat, a distant but present emotional support. He had had to twist some arms to get them allowed in, cornering low ranking priests in temple hallways to go behind the Mistress of Flame’s back in case she said “no.”

From this distance, it was hard to read expressions, but he knew Ratchet and Drift were both looking at him.

He sincerely hoped he wouldn’t need to call on his friends’ aid.

On the opposite side of the stadium, he spotted Minimus and Prowl doing something, but he couldn’t quite tell. It was as though Minimus was struggling to keep Star Saber from eating whatever it was Prowl was holding.

By now, Rodimus knew that he owed Minimus more than he could probably ever truly repay, on top of everything from before this trip. It upset his fuel tank to think that perhaps he also owed Prowl, a potentially dangerous debt if it were ever to be called in.

As soon as Optimus got settled, the attention of the media drones once more returned to the Mistress of Flame as she spoke.

“Twice a year, we witness the beauty of the planet, Prokellox, passing between us and our sun, our source of life and energy.” The Mistress of Flame gesticulated at the encroaching gas giant in the sky with her staff. “The eclipse reminds us of what it would be like when that source is taken away. The dark and cold that creeps in all around us.”

Great, a sermon.

Rodimus had managed to somehow avoid those since arriving, possibly because the high priestess had focused on telling him a fragmented history of Solus, who she was and what she had done. She hadn’t even gone into that great of a depth about the stories she had told. It had always seemed like something was missing, but he hadn’t known enough to determine if there were merely gaps in what information had survived to the present or if information was being purposefully withheld. It wasn’t like the Camiens were immune to the effects of information creep.

As Prokellox crept closer to totality, the overall light dimmed, casting everything in a sharp contrast of deep shadows and electric green highlights.

Rodimus held out his hands, watching the colors shift on his polished plating, the reds and oranges shifting to a mossy brown and the yellows to chartreuse. Scuffs from his tussle with Prowl stood out, stark dull scrapes against the shine.

“Yet the eclipse also reminds us of when something else was taken from us, our true sun and source of inspiration, the fire whose blessed memories keep us warm.”

And here came the theology.

“Long ago, before the titan Caminus set off to find a home for us, Solus Prime, who remakes each of our sparks anew, was violently taken away.”

Rodimus was still trying to piece together how sparks were supposedly being remade if he was Solus and he was right here, very much alive, and not reforging sparks. Star Saber was a complete accident, and he wasn’t even sure that Star Saber had a spark in the first place. Therefore, that didn’t count.

“When the hot spot from whence we all are born began to cool, our respected theologians—“ Rodimus had yet to meet one but alright. “—began to suspect that Solus Prime herself had been reborn, somewhere amongst the stars.”

Okay, he wasn’t after that answer but sure. Mystery solved. Rodimus being forged killed off the pulse waves and hot spots. Great, thanks. Theologically, his very existence was responsible for the slow extinction of their species. Yippee.

However, while he seriously doubted that Solus had ever actually made sparks, now wasn’t the time for him to insert his contrarian opinions. Megatron ought to be proud, wherever he was. Rodimus had finally learned when to shut up… at least this one time. Instead, he just clenched his jaw and frowned at the ground.

“Though the treacherous criminal who had taken Solus Prime from our people perished long ago at the hands of Prima, the miracle of rebirth has given us the opportunity to properly right the grievous wrong perpetrated against her.”

Rodimus didn’t like where this was going, not one bit. He lifted his optics to watch the priestess as she gestured.

The Mistress of Flame jabbed the end of her staff into the platform, the heavy metallic noise reverberating through the open stadium, bolstered by the echo through the speakers.

“An opportunity we cannot let pass by!”

Rodimus extended the sun shielding he'd had modded into his armor years ago, protecting his optics from the deceptively direct glare of totality.

The shadows cast by the blocked sunlight stretched over the stadium, merging to form a dark blanket, tinged green by Prokellox’s turbulent atmosphere.

Rodimus lifted his head and turning to gaze at the great black disc in the sky, haloed by a glowing, shifting ring of storms.

Eerie, but beautiful, he thought. He could imagine Megatron penning some fanciful verse to describe it. If only he were here.

The ground rumbled underfoot, drawing his attention back down to the stadium floor. The trembling wasn’t unlike when he had ridden the elevator lift to the platform with the Mistress of Flame. Was something else coming?

Around the edges of the structure, Torchbearers appeared, armed with glowing crossbows aimed the center of the floor. Rodimus noticed several color schemes, indicating numerous units, presumably from other districts of Kremex.

In the center of the stadium, the stone floor pulled apart revealing another platform on which a hulking figure was bound.

Rodimus’s spark sank at the sight.

“Mega—“

“An opportunity we will not let pass by!”

Chapter 104

Just a few more wires and—Prowl yelped at a sharp pain in of his door wings. Something had grabbed and shaken the damaged plating.

“What’s the matter with you—“

“Prowl!”

Still gripping the door wing, Minimus glared up at him, that strange metal emblem on his face twitching. Star Saber, whining pitifully, had crawled up onto the minibot’s shoulder.

“Look!”

Minimus threw his index finger at the stadium floor—Prowl reset his optics—where Megatron was chained to a platform.

“Right on time,” Prowl said.

Of course, Megatron would have been paraded out in some form at the celebration. Even if the Camiens had sat out the war, having been blissfully isolated from Cybertron for the duration, Megatron, in a way, still represented a nightmare to them, even if it was a nightmare that he couldn’t be personally blamed for.

Minimus let go, wrangling Star Saber from presumably trying to dash off to Megatron’s aid. Prowl tried to pay no attention to the fact that, in a way, he was doing the same. He could have a crisis of conscience about it later.

Prowl didn’t think all the followers of the Way of Flame had come to the independent conclusion that Rodimus and Optimus weren’t the only reincarnations of “deities” walking around. In fact, he was sure that the average devotee hadn’t considered it beyond vague amusement with similar names.

However, it hadn’t taken much deduction, after a fashion, to figure out that was what the Mistress of Flame believed, especially given what she had to know of the war through her diplomatic dealings. The reports alone would have been damning evidence of inherent evil carried over from some other life when viewed through the right lens. With her power and influence over both the populace and governing bodies, what she believed mattered, as evidenced by the Torchbearers with their crossbows.

Megatron symbolized a crime, a sacrilege, not satisfactorily punished.

He’d never thought to convict criminals for crimes committed by someone’s past lives before, assuming those even existed. Inventive and… maybe a bridge too far, even for Prowl. There was no precedent that he could think of.

An interesting take, Prowl thought, on the Camien concepts of allegedly restorative justice. This seemed more like a stretch of the traditional punitive justice that had been the law enforcement tool of choice back home, rather than what he’d seen in the Camien texts he had looked through.

"Is it done?”

Prowl, still fiddling with the tiny wires in the side of their stolen camera drone, ignored Minimus’s question.

“Prowl, there’s no time!"

Prowl was very aware that there was no time; Minimus’s reminder was unnecessary, bur he was too busy to waste even more time by explaining that. Better to let Minimus just keep going and focus on wrangling that terrible, ever-hungry creature of Rodimus’s. Primus forbid it get any bigger.

At least he had stopped trying to bite Prowl. Hijacking these drones would have been impossible with the added burden of having to fend off tiny fangs.

The audio drone was already finished, hovering nearby, and waited for the camera to pair with.

Minimus, being small and easily overlooked, had managed to knick the pair of drones from a journalist, too distracted with trying to get Optimus’s attention earlier—an impossible goal given Optimus’s focus on being center stage—to notice a few pieces of equipment missing from their swarm.

Prowl had decided to not ask too many questions about Minimus’s—an alleged “ethical paragon” according to crew statements—sneak thief abilities. They were conducive to the plan, which meant he could pretend to know nothing of it. Until it suited him otherwise anyway.

The final wire snapped into place; the camera drone beeped cheerfully, a light flashing to signal a readiness to pair with an audio drone.

“Done,” Prowl said, pulling out a modern data slug, having transferred the necessary data earlier in the morning. “Now we just need to pick the right moment.”

 

---

 

Rodimus stood frozen on the platform.

He was still processing the sight of his conjunx, bound and restrained in a humiliating public display after being missing for days, but the Mistress of Flame continued her speech, unconcerned with how her “beloved” Prime’s jaw was on the floor.

The high priestess threw her free arm back, pointing at Rodimus while the camera drones expertly swerved to avoid capturing his image.

“While our glorious sun is hidden from view, we cannot give up the hope that it will one day return to warm us and light our way!”

Rodimus leaned around her arm to better see Megatron, even though the priestess was several paces away.

It was hard to tell from here, but Megatron seemed… ill, like he wasn’t fully aware. Then again, if he were fully aware, he likely wouldn’t have let himself be restrained, not like this, not without even a measure of dignity. It was reminiscent of those mechanimals placed in combat arenas for entertainment.

The Mistress of Flame kept talking, though the words were no longer processing in Rodimus’s mind. They were just sound, only noise as her arms gestured dramatically. Some phrases made it through—“sparkless betrayal” and “heinous crime”—giving him the distinct impression that she was still retelling the generally accepted narrative of what had happened to Solus.

Rodimus didn’t care, maybe he should have. He had more important problems right now, like Megatron down there on the field dazed and tied up like an altar offering meant for sacrifice.

The priestess circled around him, going past back towards the platform they had ridden up here from the caves below, the caves where somewhere in the labyrinthine network they must have hidden Megatron. Rodimus had been unknowingly so close to finding him—the one damn time he hadn’t wandered off.

He turned, unthinkingly, to follow the Mistress of Flame’s movement, watching as she opened a nondescript box on the platform, a crate he hadn’t noticed. Rodimus had ignored it on the way up, dismissing it as a container for maintenance supplies or something unimportant.

Perhaps he’d been meant to let it pass beneath his notice, he wondered, as the priestess pulled something out of the unassuming, modest crate with her free hand.

Whatever it was glowed, a bar of blinding light, undeterred by the filtering and sharp shadows of the eclipse.

Rodimus reset his optics behind the sunshields, trying to recalibrate them to better identify the object. A few manual adjustments canceled the glare and brought an image into focus.

A magnificent sword, half as long as the priestess was tall.

The Mistress of Flame raised the sword high overhead, presenting it to the crowd. The blade burned white blue, valiantly fighting the forceful tint of the light passing through Prokellox’s atmosphere.

Rodimus had seen this sword before, depictions in books and archives, in art hung along the temple walls, and in the schematics that he had requested before the second trial.

The Star Saber, or at least… a reproduction of it. Certainly more accurate than what Rodimus had made, even if what he had made was cuter and better in every way than a rinky dink sword. He had made an entire whatsit.

All the same, the blade in the priestess’s hand looked like a legend made real, missing only a faux Matrix of Leadership at its guard, probably based on another taboo—the Camiens probably wouldn’t want to see the wrecked state of the Matrix in his chassis right now. Instead, elaborate metal curves and arcs, not unlike the wrought flame charms hung by Caminus’s exposed brain module, formed the guard.

“Our blacksmith recreated the sacred weapon in honor of the occasion, a divine tool to close the circle of suffering and injustice!”

Rodimus froze as the Mistress of Flame approached him, the sword now lowered. She turned it in her hand, presenting the hilt to him to take.

“Your final task, Rodimus Prime, is to mete out justice.”

Cold dread settled in his chest.

“’Justice’?” he echoed. “I don’t….”

He took the sword on instinct, the weight heavy in his hand.

Rodimus turned back towards the stadium, seats once seething with celebrating mechs now just still, stunned and confused.

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

The words spilled out of his mouth before he could stop them—not an unusual occurrence—only for the audio drones that had been loosely orbiting him to zoom further out like they’d been zapped.

Ah.

Language unfit for broadcasting.

A tidbit worth keeping in mind if he wanted privacy. It was just a shame that had never worked on Prowl.

The Mistress of Flame’s extended arm tensed and pulled back for a moment, a flaw in her perfectly elegant mask caused, presumably, by his inappropriate behavior. The projector screens lining the top of the stands each showed the ephemeral grimace on her face before she brought it back under control.

That was fine. He wasn’t here to make her happy. Or anyone else for that matter.

Without waiting for an answer, Rodimus took the opportunity his mild profanity had created to dash down the platform past the priestess, towards the stadium floor. The crowd in the stands collectively gasped.

The floating camera orbs ducked and dodged, spinning wildly in the air to avoid breaking the taboo. The audio drones, however, followed but only after hesitating, like the instructional decision trees in their program weren’t certain if he would say something unprintable again.

He had to reach Megatron, get him free of those bonds.

Whatever happened after that would be future Rodimus’s problem.

Chapter 105

“Now,” Minimus said, as Rodimus began his mad dash. “We have to move now.”

Prowl held up the data slug, ready to plug it into the camera.

“Agreed. Start talking.”

They had already divided up roles and Prowl had decided Minimus would be the best equipped to make a “culturally sensitive” announcement.

He watched the field, tracking Rodimus’s path across the stone towards Megatron while Minimus brought the microphones of the audio drone close to his mouth.

“Attention, citizens of Caminus and Cybertronian guests.”

Minimus’s voice projected through the stadium’s speakers, the music cut by Prowl’s override commands.

The screens lit up with Minimus’s face, captured by the camera now contently paired with its comrade, Prowl’s hand waiting nearby for his part.

The audience collectively gasped at the interruption, indistinct murmurs rapidly rippling across the stands.

Rodimus skidded to a stop in surprise, optics wide and nearly overbalancing at the abrupt noise.

“We have something you have the right to know.”

Prowl watched, tense as Rodimus stared blankly in their direction.

He had no idea, which was for the best. They had deliberately neglected to tell him what they had learned, especially after Megatron was taken.

“However,” Minimus continued, a practiced calm steadying his voice. Very similar to Ultra Magnus, Prowl thought. Very similar indeed. “What you are about to see may be unsettling or even uncomfortable for you. What we are about to show you includes visual footage of entities you regard as divine. It is a necessary consequence of the information you are about to receive—“

“Blasphemy!” The Mistress of Flame hollered from the raised platform, slamming her staff down in outrage. With the audio for the stadium being restricted to Minimus’s stolen drone, her shouting was barely audible.

Minimus, however, paid her no mind, even as some of the armed Torchbearers shifted their aim to the interlopers.

“We understand the gravity and magnitude of this transgression of your norms and ask for your understanding. If you must, please—“

Snap.

A cheerful chirp followed, as Star Saber crunched on the snapped, stolen power wire feeding the microphones.

So much for Minimus’s culturally sensitive broadcast. It would take several uncomfortable seconds, if not significantly longer while also corralling a struggling mechanimal, to fix it, fiddling with auxiliary wires to reroute enough power to the right places.

Prowl would have to step in.

“Just fix it!” he snapped, taking a whining Star Saber with his free hand. “I’ll take it from here.”

At least he still had his megaphone from prior law enforcement missions in his subspace. It would be the only way to get the information out.

Prowl slammed the data slug into the camera drone.

“We’ll just do what Cybertronians have done for the last several million years: make do with what we have.”

With on hand now empty, he pulled out the megaphone out of his subspace and held it up to his mouth, his voice blaring with the lower fidelity amplification. It wouldn’t the same, but it would suffice.

“If you must, avert your gaze! It is imperative that you see this! All of you have been provided misinformation!”

He had a transcript from the footage, just in case, and he could read it aloud until Minimus rewired the drone or they were arrested, but luckily the first sequence had very little sound. That would buy them some much needed time.

The screens above replacing Minimus’s desperate face, while he scrambled to repair the damage, with a memory, a memory of a dark hallway with the long-gone vista of Crystal City at night hanging just beyond a window, smoke clinging to the ceiling, and long dead, heavily armored hands bearing a tray of fuel.

“If I’d wanted to choke on smoke, I would have stayed on active duty,” Prowl flatly quoted, the transcript hovering in his HUD.

“Cease this sacrilege at once!”

The Mistress of Flame was welcome to try.

 

---

 

Megatron’s vision was still fighting him as the remnants of the drugs that had been used to subdue him worked their way through his system. The dosage must have been smaller this time than when he’d initially been taken into custody.

Even without a steady picture, he knew what was happening. The Mistress of Flame’s voice practically sentencing him to death through the stadium’s speakers rang loud and clear in his processor.

His time had finally come.

He knew Rodimus was here somewhere. He’d heard him, his upset above the din, but the world was taking its time sharpening into a cohesive image from a pixelated mass of color and motion. Now that he himself was no longer moving, his processor finally had the chance to catch up, even if it had to fight the unmitigated glare of the eclipse overhead.

If he weren’t careful, the delicate photosensors in the back of his optics would burn out.

Not that it would matter.

He’d hardly need vision before long.

Or anything else if he were being honest with himself.

Vibrations in the ground, traveling from the stone floor to the metal lift platform underneath him, told him that Rodimus was approaching his position. While he didn’t have the same specialized hardware anymore to interpret tremors in the ground that he used to, millions of years of experience allowed him to make an educated guess, for what good it did him.

A distant red and orange shape, slowly coming into focus as it neared and his optics cleared, confirmed Megatron’s assessment.

Rodimus was probably rushing foolishly to his aid, for all the good it would do. Probably had something to do with that bright blue thing, whatever it was.

The attempt was unsurprising.

There was a flash of warmth in his spark at Rodimus’s boundless, inextinguishable hope.

It was a shame Rodimus would only be disappointed, either today or in the near future.

Frankly, Megatron doubted he would even be given the opportunity to stand again, to die on his feet with a semblance of dignity, rather than on his knees like an insolvent debtor sold to perish for the entertainment of a sadistic audience. He'd seen several of those in the illicit arenas, bound and fed to half-wild turbofoxes… or left to be a plaything for mechs like Overlord.

A humiliating way to go, immobile and helpless, but he supposed he didn't deserve anything better.

Then again, he wasn't sure exactly how the Mistress of Flame expected him to meet his end. It was almost like she thought Rodimus would put him out of his misery. A doubtful outcome. She ought to just do it her damn self if she had the bearings for it.

Megatron swayed slightly as he knelt, his vision steadily returning. The chains rattled with the motion.

Minimus's familiar voice, collected and professional, echoed overhead, announcing… something.

He tilted his head to the side to get a better view of the screens flashing up above, now that he could actually see them. The motion brought a brief but fleeting wave of nausea as he watched Minimus sternly proclaim that something wasn't right, something that the Camiens needed to see.

Did this… have something to do with those odd memories Minimus and Prowl had come across?

The audio feed abruptly cut, and Prowl's voice boomed from somewhere off to the side with the squawking static of a standard issue police bullhorn.

Was that… a hallway? Was this direct footage from one of those memories? It had to be, but why were they showing this? Why did the Camiens need to see this and what did it have to do with the current situation?

Worse was that… somehow, as Megatron watched, it felt as though he had seen this before, but he couldn’t place it. No memory in his own processor’s databanks matched it. Probably only an illusion.

The edges of the picture gradually came into view as Megatron slumped, exhausted, against his bonds. At least the spinning had mostly stopped. He still wasn’t willing to chance it, not that he could, not with the inhibitor claw rerouting most of his energy and power.

He could hear the Mistress of Flame yelling vaguely in the distance, but the hijacked speaker system prevented her from being coherent. Probably something about blasphemy, not that it mattered. What was a little blasphemy at an execution? For once his imperfect hearing gave him the luxury of ignoring her.

The scene on the screen played on, hands carrying a tray of lovingly prepared fuel somewhere.

It was eerie, the bits of the image breaking and tearing. Was that the footage or his own optics still fighting the chemical suppressants?

Prowl’s voice came through the bullhorn.

“This is a memory retrieved from Megatronus of the Shadowlands.”

There was a roar of upset from the crowd. As far as Megatron could guess, the outrage was at the taboo of visual recordings of “gods,” but the memory did come from a great cultural “enemy.” Anything and everything could be the problem.

Indistinct voices, discordant and asynchronous, formed a stormy soundscape above him, not dissimilar from Prokellox’s atmosphere, shadowed by totality.

“We have reason to believe it was involuntarily altered by a third party before it was retrieved and does not represent a factual account of events, but events as he had believed them to be.”

Of course.

Shadowplay.

His plating rattled against his will with an imagined chill at the thought.

A far-off noise—maybe Minimus—barely made it to him over the din before sound once more came through the commandeered speaker system, once more aligning with the visual feed. They were, for now, spare the torment of Prowl’s megaphone.

A voice, one he couldn’t identify yet sounded so familiar. The camera peered around the corner to see the speaker.

Megatron’s ventilations hitched as a slender bronze mech with an elaborately cabled headdress came into view.

Everything about this person reminded him of Rodimus somehow, comforting and warm, even if the timber of the voice was slightly different and the only physical resemblances were in stance and manner.

“I’ve heard the news, Prima. It was a tragedy.”

Hollers of “blasphemy” and “iconolater” came from the raised platform across the field, as armed Torchbearers shuffled closer, both to Megatron and to those responsible for hijacking the event.

Where was Rodimus anyway? He ought to have crossed the field by now, Megatron thought, unless the chemical suppressants were still playing games with his chronometer.

The video played on despite his wandering thoughts, Solus—her name confirmed by this “Prima” she was speaking with—agreeing to betray her lover for the sake of the “greater good” before the feed ended in a hiss of static.

Minimus’s smooth voice came through the speakers once more.

“The data degradation and artifacts of imperfect editing show us that this did not happen. This memory was implanted! What is important, however, is that Megatronus truly believed this exchange occurred. He believed that Solus had betrayed him.”

What did that have to with anything?

Was he not being executed as retribution for his innumerable crimes, both violent and otherwise?

Then the Mistress of Flame’s allegations in the archives pulled themselves up from his memorybanks.

So… that was what this was about. Megatron was not even being punished for something he had actually done, but for something she had perceived him to represent, regardless of the factual misdeeds for which he was well and truly culpable.

He shook his head, immediately regretting it as the resulting nausea caused him to sway in his chains.

Even his execution was a complete and utter circus, a parade of absolute nonsense.

This was not how he thought being assigned to the Lost Light would kill him. The stadium was a surprise—A shape partially blocked the glare of totality directly in front of him.

Megatron’s vocalizer crackled with static from lack of use.

“Rodimus?”

On instinct, he turned his face towards the shape.

A resounding zap crackled as his visual feed went black, the retinal photoreceptors finally failing in the face of the eclipse haloing his visitor.

A shame, Megatron thought, as he knelt on the hard metal of the platform in his new personal darkness.

He would have liked to see Rodimus one last time.

Chapter 106

Those crossbow-bearing mechs were getting close. Too close for comfort. Minimus held the audio drone protectively close, the ad hoc repairs being just a patch job to get them through the end of this.

However, Star Saber, accidental saboteur extraordinaire, clung to his back, sulking at having been prevented from consuming the entire drone. He was probably getting ready to molt again in the next few days. Just how big would he get? A slightly terrifying thought that would have to wait for another time.

There were more immediate concerns, such as the very… sharp glowing bolts being aimed in his direction.

Minimus would just have to go somewhere where shooting at him would be more trouble than it was worth.

Rodimus, no longer stunned by the sudden commotion of audio-visual disruption, was already at Megatron’s side. Whether this would ultimately help them or not, who could say, but being anywhere in the vicinity of Megatron would probably only increase the odds of getting shot, even with Rodimus there.

He needed a bigger shield.

Glancing up the stands, he saw Optimus in his specially set apart seating box. There weren’t any civilians in the path either. A clear shot, both for his escape and for the bolts. Better that than risking a Torchbearer with imperfect aim shooting a bystander on accident.

Minimus, ducking a bolt from an undisciplined Torchbearer, ran as he began his commentary.

“Onyx Prime was Megatronus’s mentor, however, he manipulated the situation for—“ He threw himself flat to the stone steps, dodging another bolt. “—personal gain.”

Prowl queued up the next memory, momentarily unaware of Minimus’s flight since he’d been standing on the side without an optic.

A dark room, somewhere played across the screens up above the stands, Megatronus arguing with a shadowed figure.

“Megatronus may have suspected he was being used as a pawn in some grander scheme, but he would have been unable to prove it. Almost all of his memories from around and for a few months before this date show the same evidence of tampering.”

Minimus pulled himself from the steps, the family emblem on his face knocked askew from the original impact, and resumed his dash up to Optimus’s box.

As soon as it was in reach, he grabbed festooned edge of the low wall and vaulted over, to Optimus’s shock and awe. Now was not the time, however, to explain that they, in fact, knew each other very well and that a complete stranger hadn’t just commandeered the safety of his orbit.

The Torchbearer unit assigned to Optimus’s box bolted to attention before Optimus himself raised a hand to stop them. He never had been the sort to feel like he needed guarding, always preferring to be in the thick of it, though this hardly constituted a battle.

This time, anyway. There wasn’t an explosion of Decepticons trying—and failing—to free Megatron like on Luna-2.

“Well, this is certainly unexpected,” Optimus started, probably the beginnings of a monologue for which they had no time.

“If you’ll excuse the intrusion,” Minimus mumbled in the bare minimum of explanation, turning back to face the masses and the furious priestess after adjusting his mustache.

Torchbearers, unsure if they should continue to fire upon him, looked back and forth for guidance before deigning Prowl to be the appropriate target.

Better a one-eyed foreigner disrupting the “festivities” than risk one of their beloved deities.

“Prowl, move!” he called—right into the soft filaments of the microphones haloing the audio drone. “Archer on your left!”

Most mechs present flinched at the sudden audio sensor-piercing order, including Prowl. That flinch let a crossbow bolt graze the side of his helmet before embedding in the limestone of the stadium wall behind him.

From his perch, Minimus could see his co-conspirator’s mouth move in the shape of a vulgar curse. Unprofessional, but understandable under the circumstances.

At least Prowl was on the move now. He’d be fine.

On the screens, the memory played uninterrupted and a massive beastformer emerged into view, only to reach towards Megatronus’s face.

The footage froze there, on that frame as intended.

“We do not know what Onyx Prime’s plan was exactly, but the events today are unanticipated fallout of the contrived circumstances surrounding Solus Prime’s death.”

Star Saber made an indistinct noise, somewhere between a click and a chirp. Maybe all the excitement had gotten him riled up.

A whisper of “Shockwave” came from behind him.

That was right, Minimus realized, Optimus had known him well. He would have recognized Shockwave’s voice, no matter the guise.

“What is going on here?” Optimus demanded.

His question was, of course, understandable. He doubtless hadn’t the slightest idea of anything that had been going on on Caminus for the past several weeks. Prowl, as Minimus understood it, had been keeping him informed on basic level up until they had discovered the memories. Even if Prowl had told Optimus about those, he would have likely doubted their importance at the time.

For all he knew, maybe this “spectacle” was part of the show, arranged by or in conjunction with the Camien authorities for an exciting little drama that they had simply neglected to prepare him for.

He possibly just thought he was visiting friends for a “fun, foreign festival”—good alliteration, Minimus would have to save that for a poem—without any idea that his “friends,” generously including Megatron under that label, were in real danger.

Unfortunately, now was an absolutely terrible time to bring Optimus up to speed. Soon, but not right this minute.

“I’m afraid that will have to wait until the debriefing, Prime,” Minimus said, glancing back over his shoulder to see the leader he had looked up to for ages sitting tense and upright in his seat. The retinue of Torchbearers at his side jolted, some reaching for their subspaces presumably for a sidearm.

Optimus narrowing his optics was the only thing visible over his mask as he waved for the Torchbearers to stop. He took a slow ventilation, slumping back against the cushioned seat—the only one with such luxury in the entire stadium—with resignation.

Minimus knew that Optimus had always hated not having the full story, but at least he seemed willing to wait it out for once rather than jumping in to join the “battle.” Maybe, maybe he thought Megatron was just waiting and would take care of the situation himself, rather than truly being immobilized.

“I promise, I’ll explain everything,” Minimus said.

“You….”

Optimus blinked at him for a moment and then nodded, as though understanding something.

“You remind me of someone.”

“You know,” Minimus said, not bothering to look back over his shoulder, “I hear that all the time.”

 

---

 

Prowl darted across the field, annoyed that his missing left optic was hampering his ability to effectively dodge. The massive blind spot and resulting poor depth perception meant he tended to either under or overshoot how far he had to move out of the way. Overshooting, at least, would be less likely to end with a crossbow bolt sticking out of his armor.

He held the camera drone snug under his arm as he hurtled his way across the stone.

It was a shame the Camiens had eschewed energy weapons like blasters as part of their energy conservation ethos.

It was harder to shrug off a chunk of metal penetrating ones plating than a blaster shot fired at an off angle. They statistically tended to scorch and transfer kinetic force rather than actually make it through armor to delicate components and circuits inside the chassis. That took a special kind of luck and aim.

Maybe that was part of why their war had taken so damn long.

Prowl paused in his flight, having to advance the footage to the next memory. He fumbled with the controls on the drone, his thumb slipping before depressing the right button.

Megatronus’s voice, silent for millions of years before today, played from the speakers for all to hear, bringing Caminus, the titan and the moon, the news of Solus’s unfortunate fate.

“This memory is entirely unaltered, occurring after Onyx Prime’s interference.”

Minimus continued his commentary, in the breaks between dialogue, from where he had cleverly taken refuge from the archers—Now if only Prowl could find a sheltered place of his own.

Thud!

A bolt embedded itself into the stone by his foot, a good sign to stop dawdling.

The next memory played on, a calm, somber view of Caminus’s brain module, clean, healthy, and free of debris.

“Cease this at once!” the Mistress of Flame shouted from her vantage point on the raised platform, the sound of her staff being slammed against the metal echoing across the stadium.

Rather than perfunctory outrage, Prowl couldn’t help but notice a tinge of… real emotion behind her voice, something he had never before heard from her.

Was that… fear? Fear of what though?

There had been several pieces of the puzzle that hadn’t made sense, that Prowl couldn’t quite fit into his understanding of the situation. The Mistress of Flame had obviously always known more than she let on. Perhaps… she had just mistakenly shown her hand.

The memories were given to Caminus, but Prowl had found them in a disused solar temple. Ergo, someone had moved them. Maybe not viewed them—he couldn’t be conclusively sure of that, but the Way of Flame’s iconoclast precepts would have precluded it for any devout believer—but definitely moved them.

“Rodimus Prime!” The priestess’s usually controlled voice now bordered on a plea.”Do not be distracted by these blasphemers!”

It wasn’t a leap of logic to guess who had moved the memories.

It looked from Prowl’s position, jogging hither and thither to avoid the crossbow bolts, that Rodimus was just ignoring the Mistress of Flame and her objections.

Instead, he had finally crossed all the way to where Megatron was shackled on his knees, just as the ghost on the screens gave Caminus, the titan, his last promises.

“Yes, I’ll visit your newsparks before I go. I promise. I’ll tell them goodbye for her. It’s a shame she won’t see who they’ll become with your help.”

Prowl used to think that was what he had wanted, a monster brought low for what he’d done to their people and paying the seemingly only price he could—Newsparks?

Caminus’s hot spot. Rodimus had reignited it. Perhaps it wasn’t the first time it had had a problem.

His simulation opened of its own accord, running the probabilities before spitting out that it was a high likelihood that a hot spot that had trouble maintaining ignition once likely had this issue regularly, perhaps as a result of almost assuredly being artificial in some way. The technology for creating artificial hot spots after the end of the pulse waves had long since been lost… and likely so had any knowledge about maintaining and repairing them.

It was finally all coming together.

Chapter 107

Rodimus had finally crossed the field, no longer distracted by the mayhem Minimus and Prowl were causing.

The mismatched Torchbearers were now running amok, determined to catch Prowl and stop him from transmitting whatever those weird media feeds were. Only a handful had still been aiming their crossbows in Megatron’s direction when Rodimus had gotten close.

Those few had cautiously lowered their weapons as soon as he had gotten within range.

Rodimus was probably too valuable to target, despite the local claims that only a Prime could kill a Prime. That would explain why no one was taking shots at Minimus in Optimus’s seating box. Even if they believed that they couldn’t kill Optimus, they could still hurt him on accident and probably violate some or another stricture.

Maybe Rodimus should have been paying closer attention.

However, the more he thought about it, the more it became clear that the Mistress of Flame had been more interested in teaching him certain “grand myths” about Solus and less about how everyday adherents lived their lives or what his own role in their lives was supposed to be.

But that didn’t matter right now.

This was about his own life.

In a way, Megatron’s life was his own. The Mistress of Flame couldn’t change that.

All this time, he had been participating in these trials to stave off the Galactic Council taking his friend—now partner—away and putting an end to the adventures. He could have said “no” at any time, but now… the Mistress of Flame’s final request had changed the game. Rodimus had no reason to carry on with her little trials, even at the expense of looking like a failure after all she had put them through. More time was worth that cost to his reputation.

As Rodimus reached the bound form on the platform, he saw a bright flash behind Megatron’s lenses before the lights went dark just as the larger mech sluggishly turned towards him.

“Weren’t you the one telling me the other day to not look directly at an eclipse?”

Rodimus chuckled awkwardly.

Maybe a joke just now wasn’t appropriate, but he couldn’t help himself from attempting a bit of levity. Laughing in the face of danger and fear was a long-standing defense mechanism that he felt no desire to unlearn.

The replica sword was unceremoniously tossed aside, the blue glow fighting the ubiquitous chartreuse tinge. The blade clattered against the limestone. That probably wasn’t the best way to prevent damage and wear to it, but it was just an imitation of the original Star Saber, Rodimus thought. They could make another one whenever. It wasn’t special.

It wasn’t clear if Megatron was frowning because of the poorly timed humor or if it was a grimace of physical discomfort, but that didn’t make it a pleasant sight to behold.

“Don’t worry, babe,” Rodimus said, quick to change the subject. “I’ve got you.”

It was obvious that Megatron wasn’t in any shape to move on his own, which meant Rodimus would have to do the heavy lifting for once.

That was fine. He was strong. Maybe not “launch a guy into low orbit” strong, but he was no slouch. If he really had to, Rodimus knew he could haul Megatron off, even if the big guy were unconscious or otherwise incapacitated. He’d done it before to load him onto a MARB for emergency extraction.

“Just hold still,” he said, grabbing the chain keeping Megatron’s wrists lashed to the central ring driven into the platform. There was a fair amount of slack, like they had overestimated how much they would need or were concerned that if it was too short, he could leverage himself free.

“You’re wasting your time—“

Of course, Megatron would complain. He always had a complaint lined up. The Functionists had gotten it wrong. His “Primus-given purpose” wasn’t to mine, but to whine.

“Alright, so, ‘holding still’ now includes your mouth.”

Rodimus gave the chain a furious yank, the links rankling and scraping in protest. Megatron grunted from being jostled. The damn thing wouldn’t budge. Maybe the Mistress of Flame had asked her minions to take Megatron’s stupid strength into account.

That would explain the inhibitor claw too.

Rodimus saw the heavy contraption digging into Megatron’s back, dried energon around the small puncture wounds in the plating, encasing the circuit disrupting wires that were clamped underneath. Electricity visibly crackled along the tines as it was siphoned away. Even without the chains, Megatron wouldn’t have been able to move under his own power with this draining him. That and the effects of whatever chemicals that had been used to subdue him.

He threw down the slack. The loose chain clanked loudly against the metal platform underneath.

At least the Mistress of Flame seemed too distracted by the interruptions to notice what Rodimus was doing. That was for the best.

She would have complained about him trying to get Megatron free, pairing it with some sort of proscription against an act of kindness in some incredibly specific and contrived circumstance. That was exactly what she was shouting at Prowl and Minimus, not that it was particularly distinct without the boost of the combined transmission of her personal audio drone swarm.

“He needs to be punished for what he did to Solus Prime!”

Or at least, he was pretty sure she said something about “punishment” and “Solus Prime.” Something like that.

Sure, whatever.

The people involved were both long dead and decidedly not Rodimus’s problem. Those memories Prowl and Minimus had dug up were interesting academically, but Megatronus having been set up millions and millions of years ago was hardly relevant to—Something clicked in Rodimus’s processor.

It was relevant because the Mistress of Flame had made it relevant, by forcing a myth to conform to her understanding of it, which meant saving Megatron required ripping that understanding apart.

That also meant Prowl, who had been so bound and determined to haul Megatron away and sacrifice him on the altar of the Galactic Council’s fury, was helping.

Rodimus had better hurry before Prowl thought better of his course of action. Who knew how long that obscuring veil of distraction would last, with every adherent to the Way of Flame’s optics glued to the screens above the stadium, watching the violation of a sacred stricture with a color commentary accompaniment.

He leaned in, close to Megatron’s audio sensors. It was funny, almost, how much closer they were in height this way.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get you free. I promise—“

“Rodimus, stop.”

Not this again.

“No, I—“

Megatron once more cut him off, perhaps getting some revenge for all of the times he’d been interrupted since they had landed on Caminus.

“This was going to happen sooner or later, one way or another. You know that.” Resignation weighed heavy in his tone. “There’s no avoiding it.”

“Don’t start that again!” Rodimus grabbed Megatron by the shoulders, glaring into his dark, sightless optics. “I told you I’m not having it!”

Even in his aggravation at Megatron’s unhealthy preoccupation with his own death, it was all Rodimus could do to not shift his grip into an embrace. He had no idea what Megatron had suffered since they’d been separated. If only he could soothe it all away.

It was one thing to know what Megatron had done, the atrocities and mass suffering that could be laid squarely at his feet even without Censere’s fields of flowers to show for it or the accused abhorrent actions of a supposed past life to add to the guilt. Rodimus had long since accepted that there was no erasing the hurt a monster had caused. Megatron’s actions had even been to blame Hot Rod’s death and, by corollary, Rodimus’s violent, painful creation.

Yet even knowing all of this, being personally on the receiving end of it, it was hard for Rodimus to care about the supposed justice of it.

Even when he had considered Megatron a dear friend, he’d been unwilling to let Prowl take him away.

Rodimus couldn’t bring himself to look at his chosen conjunx, drugged and immobilized for ease of slaughter, and decide that he had to die.

Minimus’s voice over the speakers caught his attention as he continued to hold Megatron by the shoulders, grip desperate.

“This memory is the last we’ll show you, clearly doctored and meant to deceive Megatronus into believing he had killed Solus Prime.”

Rodimus looked up, finally deciding it was worth looking at these images of the past, even if they were deliberately faked.

On the cluttered floor of some unknown room lit only by firelight lay the bronze, charred body of a mech. Their optics were dark, without lenses like they’d been broken but there was no glass nearby. An old-fashioned headdress was discarded on the floor nearby, the beaded cabling broken and strewn about the ground in a mad tangle.

The footage juddered as the gaze of the viewer panned slowly across the scene, some of the data clearly degraded or damaged by modification. Rodimus could practically see where two competing truths overlapped when the editor tried to imagine some of the optical glass back in with dubious success.

A glowing sword, not unlike the one Rodimus himself had cast away, had been plunged into the mech’s torso, right through where the spark chamber would be. Only a small, residual amount of coagulated energon clung to the edges of the wound.

Someone had deliberately posed this body.

Solus’s body.

Rodimus’s spark chilled, his hands tightening on the heavy armor of Megatron’s shoulders. Even in death there was something about her that was familiar, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Nevertheless, whoever had moved her body hadn’t even done a very good job of it, but had Megatronus even had the wherewithal at the time to notice the mismatched details? Had he been too distraught at her death to think clearly?

A large, dark hand, attached to the viewer—no doubt Megatronus—released the grip of the blade with a horrified roar.

The footage froze, the image of Solus’s scorched corpse haunting the screen.

“We do not know how Solus actually died,” Minimus continued.

A second later the camera feed fritzed out into blackness with the distant thud—and the accompanied unintelligible swearing—of what was presumably a crossbow bolt impaling Prowl’s drone. Rodimus looked up at Minimus in Optimus’s seating box, seeing his little mouth and mustache moving frantically when he wasn’t smacking the audio drone. Apparently destroying its paired camera had disconnected it.

Maybe Minimus and Prowl didn’t know, but, looking at the damage on her body and remembering what he’d felt like and the repairs he’d needed after reigniting the colony’s hot spot, Rodimus felt certain that he knew how she had died.

The same way he nearly had.

The same way he would have had if not for Megatron’s intervention.

Rodimus’s thoughts began to race, a picture forming in the eye of his processor.

The hot spot had once been inside Caminus’s body, given that was how the colony was founded, before it been moved elsewhere. That meant when Solus died….

“Caminus does! Caminus knows!” he shouted without thinking, his hollered epiphany barely audible over the cacophony of the crowd still upset by the images of their most beloved deity’s broken body.

Solus hadn’t been murdered. She’d died in an accident, an accident that had been manipulated for some ancient political motive. What had happened after that? Rodimus struggled to recall—No, wait, it was the kick off of a war between the original Primes.

Solus’s death was just the pretext.

The audio drones that had followed him to Megatron’s platform swarmed closer now that they were back in control of the feeds.

Rodimus turned towards the closest hovering orb and shouted his revelation into it, his voice echoing off every surface in the stadium.

“Caminus knows what happened to her!”

Chapter 108

“Caminus knows what happened to her!”

Rodimus shoved the audio drone away with his elbow as he let go of Megatron’s shoulders. He still had to get the big guy free before time ran out, before the Mistress of Flame noticed what he was doing.

There was a crackling noise, grating on the sensors, as Prowl must have pulled out his megaphone again to pick up where Rodimus had left off. The harsh blare come from somewhere behind them towards the platform where the Mistress of Flame stood.

“If that titan knows, then who would he tell but the most trusted member of the clergy!”

Rodimus picked up the slack part of the chain again, pulling it tight to put pressure on the ring.

“I’ll get you free! We’ll get out of this, I promise!” he said, forgetting that now he was no longer functionally mute to the audience.

“The Mistress of Flame has been concealing information from all of you for who knows how long—“

“Enough!” the priestess snapped, her personal drone swarm projecting her displeasure for all to hear. “That is more than enough!”

The admonishment was punctuated with the thunderous slap of her staff against the metal flooring of her platform.

“Rodimus Prime, please cease this nonsense at once!”

Time was up.

Clutching the chains to his chest, the slack bound up around his arms, he turned on his heel to face her. The tension and momentum caused Megatron to tip sideways, colliding with the ground with the dull clatter of armor when the restraints were yanked.

There was a brief pulse of guilt in his spark, but he knew Megatron could survive a little rough treatment.

“It’s not very sporting if he can’t fight back!” Rodimus lied, laughing awkwardly into the microphones dancing around him.

“Rodimus Prime, please, you don’t understand!“

One of her arms was drawn in protectively close to her chest rather than cast wide as part of her practiced showmanship. Perhaps that was in response to Prowl rapidly scaling the steps towards her.

She pivoted in place, keeping the ceremonial staff between her body and Prowl.

Prowl’s hands held only his megaphone, proving Rodimus’s earlier theory that his drone had been destroyed by a Torchbearer with good aim. The broken drone’s scrapped remnants were most likely abandoned on the stadium floor somewhere.

Rodimus struggled to see the Mistress of Flame’s face clearly at this distance, instead opting to use the screens which were now focused back on her with Prowl’s control over the feeds solidly broken.

The Mistress of Flame’s optics were narrowed, her mouth pulled back into a fearful snarl revealing the gleam of her teeth, green in the light of the gas giant above them.

It was strange, Rodimus thought, watching that perfect impassive mask of hers start to crack. She had tolerated every single one of his missteps with an easy smile and a calm word, yet this was somehow too far.

He glanced back over his shoulder, hoping to see some support in the form of Drift’s blades and Ratchet’s biting wit.

Unfortunately, while his friends were standing in the aisle by their front row seats like they had gotten up to intervene, Torchbearers had boxed them in, crossbows pointed at vital components. Ratchet was trying to pry Drift’s hands from the grips of his blades so they didn’t get shot by a “trigger-happy zealot.” Or at least, that was Rodimus’s guess of what the doc bot was saying. Seemed like something Ratchet would say.

The Mistress of Flame and her lackeys weren’t messing around.

More of her minions were approaching him—and Megatron—but slowly, cautiously with their crossbows lowered. A few also had blades strapped to their backs, probably as a last resort. He supposed they were afraid to hurt him, but viewed Megatron, even weakened and shackled as a potential threat.

Rodimus fixed them with a glare before returning his attention to the master puppeteer herself on the stage.

“What? Don’t you believe in me?” He awkwardly freed one arm to point at her, forcing himself to grin. He could still win this; he could still turn it around on her. “You think I can’t take him?”

Wait.

“In a fight!”

“Of course, we all believe in you, Rodimus Prime,” she continued, backing away as Prowl finally reached the top of the platform. “But you don’t understand! This is the only way to restore balance! You have to—”

Rodimus rattled the metal links, clenched in his raised fist, at her.

“I don’t have to do anything!”

The plating in his other arm began shift around, redirecting the airflow to support an impending ignition as he aimed the pipes at the chain in his grasp.

“Who are you to tell me what to do? Who’s the god here? Hm? Do you revere me or is it suddenly the other way around?”

Flames blasted out of the pipes on his arm, torching the chain, brown and black marks coating the metal as it scorched.

He just had to get it hot enough to melt and then Megatron would be free. They could leave. They could run—Rodimus could kind of run and drag Megatron if he had to, until the big guy came to his senses. It would be slow and awkward, but they could get out.

However, the chain, glowing red as its temperature climbed, did not give. Rodimus pushed the flames hotter but he couldn’t even get the metal to glow orange, a sign of malleability. If he’d learned anything about metalworking from all these stupid tests and Whetstone’s advice—so long ago now, it seemed—it was that.

Had they used a heat resistant alloy on purpose? Possibly.

This wasn’t working.

Rodimus tossed the charred chain down, the resulting metallic clank echoing through the stadium’s speakers.

And he’d forgotten the damn inhibitor claw. Chain or not, it needed to go.

A bright white-blue glow shimmered in his peripheral vision.

Never mind if the chains wouldn’t cooperate with his attempts to break them.

There was still one option left to him.

“It’s my judgment that matters!” he shouted, the audio drones still calmly orbiting him as though this were all some performance, entertainment for the masses at his personal expense.

Snatching up the replica Star Saber, Rodimus watched as the encroaching Torchbearers shuffled back several, probably to ensure they were outside of the cutting range should he swing the blade wide.

The Mistress of Flame’s optics went wide on the holoscreens, an unnatural expression on her usually carefully composed face. Her mouth opened with one more plea.

“Remember what happened to Sol—“

“Shut up!”

Before Rodimus could pull from his impressively extensive vulgar vocabulary, the sound of static and unintelligible muttering behind him caught his attention.

Lowering the sword, Rodimus looked back, seeing Megatron still on his side on the ground. His legs were bent and his wrists tightly bound behind him, like he’d been neatly tipped over. The inhibitor claw had likely prevented him from adjusting his posture to something more comfortable post-impact.

But his mouth was moving, saying something, but what? Rodimus squinted as though that would make his audio sensors all the more keen for the effort.

Was this how Megatron felt every time Rodimus mouthed words silently to mess with him?

Had… had Megatron gone binary back there? Maybe Rodimus should have picked him back up after knocking him off kilter.

 

---

 

“Babe, what… are you doing?”

Megatron paused at Rodimus’s question, an ancient word dying half-formed in his mouth.

What was he doing? He hadn’t considered offering an explanation, because he hadn’t considered that Rodimus was listening, not to him, not in the midst of whatever fruitless argument he was having with the Mistress of Flame. No matter what Rodimus would say to her, the situation would ultimately be the same, even if it would be a different pair of hands holding the axe.

If Rodimus would just accept it, then it would be easier to get it over with now.

Besides, Rodimus would do him the courtesy of putting him down quick, clean, and with as little pain as possible. If he did it at all, which Megatron doubted. He knew Rodimus would try to rationalize a way to get out of it, to avoid an unpleasant outcome.

Understandable but futile.

There were, ultimately, only unpleasant outcomes in this life.

At least, now blind, Megatron could explain himself without having to bear live witness to Rodimus’s disappointed expression. It would exist only in the shadowy imaginings of his tired processor.

“… I always thought would meet the end in battle. Of all the things, I never actually planned out a final statement. I’d intended to do that in prison while waiting for the inevitable verdict.”

“Megs, stop—“

“No.”

He needed to be selfish the one last time.

There had been a certain poetic beauty to the blessing that Aphelion had taught him. His last act ought to be something profound. What better than to indulge in the art form he held closest to his spark?

Sure, it would have qualified as a religious pronouncement. All the better that he could further diverge from what he had been than by throwing away one last tenet of his mismanaged ideology, even if in name only. Belief itself didn’t matter, not really, but beautiful last words affirming that he would not act against Rodimus’s safety and wellbeing? That was worthwhile.

Besides, he wouldn’t be alive long enough for there to be any substantive consequences to nominally discarding his atheism, even if Rodimus didn’t act. The Galactic Council would simply step in and do it instead.

“A kind spark gave me something worthwhile to say, better than saying nothing like some whimpering coward shying from the headsman’s axe—”

“Babe, listen—“

“—And since you interrupted me, now I need to start over.”

“You’re not listening.”

No, no, he wasn’t.

After heaving a heavy sigh, Megatron reluctantly shut his mouth.

Could not even his last act go correctly?

 

---

 

Rodimus squinted down at his stubborn, unseeing conjunx, still gripping the sword like his life depended on it.

All while seeing his own face reflected at him by the green glare of the eclipse on Megatron's dark optical lenses.

"You're just giving up, Megs," he said, "you're just giving up, which is pretty funny because last I heard, you were a guy who wasn't afraid of anything, who struck fear into the sparks and….” What did organics have again? “Organic sparks of nearly every being in the galaxy!”

Nailed it.

“You’ve been giving up for years now, in bits and pieces ever since what happened on Luna-2, and, you know what, I’m not going to let you do that.”

Audio drones crowded in, their minute, mesh-filament microphones fanned out wide expectantly.

“I’m not going to let you fucking do that!”

The audio drones scrambled away, flung from their orbits by the vulgarity.

“I don’t need this!”

With his free hand, Rodimus pulled out the quill before casting it to the ground. The novelty writing implement smashed on impact, pieces of fragile, modern metals scattered across the stone.

“And I don’t—“

With both hands on the grip of the sword, he raised it high overhead.

Precise aim was crucial.

The blade swung down, slicing through the inhibitor claw and the chain wrapped over it.

The broken chunks of claw sparked and spat electricity in aimless arcs before the entire contraption fizzled out on the ground.

“—Need this!”

He tossed the fake Star Saber aside once more, finally rid of the last replica the Mistress of Flame had foisted upon him, and knelt on the ground next to Megatron to ease off the remaining bonds.

No more fakes.

No more counterfeits.

The past, the artificial narrative, wasn’t what was important, but the fact that they were here now. Tangible. Real.

"That isn't what she would want. That isn't what I want,” he said softly, watching as Megatron seemed to clumsily regain control of his limbs. Leaning forward, Rodimus reached out, cautiously grabbing one of his conjunx’s unsteady hands and rubbing his thumb over the knuckles.

“And now, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure I’m incredibly annoying, aggravating, and loud. I manage to annoy myself. And you have to put up with this for the rest of our lives, which was your own choice, for the record. Personally, I’d consider that punishment enough.”

Chapter 109

The foreign law enforcement official, the one who took terrible care of himself, continued approaching her on the platform. Her Torchbearers were too occupied with containing the threat on the ground and the interloper who had run to hide in Optimus Prime’s seating box to intervene. Apparently this one, this Prowl, was not enough of a risk.

Save to one, Aphelion, ever loyal and faithful, small and difficult to notice, crept up the steps behind him, but kept her crossbow lowered. Hesitation was one of her persistent shortcomings.

It seemed the foreigner, however, hadn’t seen her, the Mistress of Flame thought, stepping back away from him as he encroached on her space.

She held her staff out in front of her, a guard against his getting too close.

In her dealings with Cybertronian authorities, she had heard tell of Prowl and had known a little of what to expect, especially after speaking with him on rare occasion.

Stubborn, calculating, but prone to a narrow focus in pursuit of goals, of the greater good.

They weren’t so different.

He was here to wrangle Megatron and prevent mass violence and suffering, the kind she had heard of when speaking with Optimus Prime, Starscream, and Windblade. Prowl had come to hunt a monster, a monster she too hunted, even if their methods had differed. The crimes she sought to avenge were older, far older, but she had been unwilling to fully trust him as an ally.

As he stopped just beyond the reach of her staff, the Mistress of Flame knew she had been right to not bring him into the fold of her plans. A foreigner, a nonbeliever, even for all his pragmatism, he wouldn’t have understood why Megatron had to be punished this way. The crimes in his new life were simply further evidence that he had not suffered enough for Megatronus’s original violation.

Or at least… the original violation as the Mistress of Flame had come to understand it, had come to believe in.

And as a Prime, separated from his original post by his first death, only Rodimus Prime or Optimus Prime—if need be—could truly slay Megatron in this life. A seemingly mortal wound for anyone else would simply not be sufficient.

She narrowed her optics at the interloper, forcing her face back into a composed expression of indifference. It was so much easier when she wasn’t looking at Rodimus Prime struggling so much for someone who had brought only suffering across at least two lifetimes.

“You know what happened to her, don’t you?” Prowl asked, holding the megaphone in his hands. The audio drones around her picked up his voice, rendering the projection device pointless. The cameras moved to capture his face, a scowl, both disappointed and disgusted, exaggerated by the empty optical socket.

“He’s caused so much irreparable harm. There’s so much I can charge him with—I have an extensive rap sheet that I’ve been preparing for millions of years, just waiting—and you charge him with something fraudulent.”

Prowl bounced the megaphone against his palm, impatient. Cybertronians were all, with rare exception, so impatient.

“The one crime that we can prove he, personally, is not responsible for, and you choose that one.”

“The soul is the same, even if death separates—“

“Sure. On Caminus.” The foreigner raised a finger upward, towards Prokellox in the sky. “There’s no legal precedent for that on Cybertron, where Solus died,” he continued, ignoring her and disrespecting the blessed Solus Prime by not using her appropriate title. “That isn’t your jurisdiction, ma’am. That’s mine.”

“Do you not have laws against murder?” she sneered, pushing a chilled edge into her voice to displace the cold feeling beginning to rest in her spark chamber, the dreaded weight of having possibly made a mistake. “Or has your civilization’s relentless self-slaughter made you forget what justice and harmony look like?”

Prowl seemed to pay no mind to the insult, a tacit agreement in her opinion.

The Autobots and Decepticons pretended they were different from each other, but all she had seen from them was the farce of order, barely held in check by Optimus Prime’s divine wisdom, Windblade’s brave spark, and Starscream’s shrewd political machinations.

It was a pity Optimus Prime had such little sway these days among his own people. Were he to reside on Caminus with the faithful…. A problem for another time.

“The evidence suggests that Solus—“

The Mistress of Flame stamped her staff against the platform, the sound echoing through the speakers.

“You will use her appropriate title when speaking of her.”

Prowl paused, rolling his one remaining optic with a derisive sigh.

“The evidence suggests that Solus was not murdered, not like is commonly believed, and we have reason to suspect you know what actually happened.”

The Mistress of Flame struggled to maintain her neutral expression, unwilling to give in.

Caminus had been wrong, mistaken, she had told herself. The chill of doubt still pressed down on her internal components, compounded by the tension of her mental labor to maintain control.

She had expected Rodimus Prime to be a wild, free spirit as a result of poor mentoring, but she hadn’t expected his blatant disregard for everything sacred and just. She had underestimated Solus Prime’s deep love for her murderer, a love that had apparently survived their deaths.

Once more, the Mistress of Flame looked over to the field down below where Rodimus Prime was kneeling, comforting Megatron. Muttered words came through the speakers, but they were soft enough to be unintelligible. A moment of privacy on a world stage for all eyes to see.

Shame at not believing the words of their sacred ancestral titan added to the strain on her aching spark, finally breaking her mask.

All this time… she had been wrong.

She let her optical shutters snap closed, her mouth falling into a pained grimace.

Dropping to her knees under the weight of her plans crashing down around her, the Mistress of Flame had regretted talking to Caminus all those years ago. The heavy staff she wielded fell unceremoniously beside her with a resounding thud. Her richly embroidered cape and vestments bunched up against the dusty stone floor of the arena, the dirt dulling the sheen of the gold threaded through the mesh.

So deeply now did she regret that conversation with the colony’s titan. A cool, dull pain deep in her circuits radiated outward from her spark, pulsing slowly in shame.

The Mistress of Flame bent forward towards the stone, averting her gaze. The many optics of the crowd, if they weren’t trained upon Rodimus Prime and Megatron in the center of the arena, she knew they were trained upon her, watching her in her disgrace.

Her palms were pressed to the cold ground as she let her head hang low.

The titan had rarely been talkative, no matter the identity of the interlocutor, from passing pilgrim to devoted theologian. He had spent millions of years since the sacrificing of his body drifting in and out of lucidity. He had often slumbered for thousands of years at a time, waking only for a few hours, projecting some cryptic message, and then once again falling away from the flow of time.

Yet, when he had awoken briefly after she had ascended to her current position following the tragic expedition to Antilla, she had needed… counsel, advice only a sacred titan, a beloved friend of Solus Prime, could provide. Some manner of spiritual comfort to remind her that she was on the right path, that was all she had wanted. It was a precious opportunity that she couldn’t have afforded to waste.

Caminus had taken pity on her and had spoken to her, in that colorful, expressive way so unique to titans. Her training permitted her the luxury of not needing a cityspeaker intermediary.

And what he, the benevolent, steadfast progenitor of them all, had told her was unthinkable heresy.

Solus Prime had died in an accident, trying to reignite Caminus’s nascent hot spot. She had died giving the colony the precious gift of life, not murdered at the hands of a treacherous lover. And, worst of all, the titan had said that Solus Prime’s death had been capitalized on for a political agenda, the purpose of which he had never understood.

He had offered the Mistress of Flame evidence, evidence so that his children could know what Solus Prime had done for them, what his dearest sun had done for them. The high priestess, of course, he had entrusted with such precious knowledge.

Ancient dataslugs from Cybertron.

A whole drawer of them, Caminus had given her after guarding them within his own frame for millions of years.

And in her horror at his lies, she had them sealed away, far from Kremex, in a box below the temple of Saxetum. They would be safe there, she had reasoned, the scraplets she had encountered there being worthy guards. Before now she had never once looked at their contents, terrified that she would wander from the path of truth and faith.

And Caminus had once more drifted off to sleep, resting for yet another indeterminate span. The Mistress of Flame had asked some of the priests who tended to the titan to ensure he was “comfortable” and “relaxed.” Dutiful, trusting that the high priestess had known what was best, they had kept Caminus under, in a quiet repose. She couldn’t risk Caminus, in his obvious senility, accidentally corrupting some doubtful seeker of wisdom with his heretical stories. His databanks had started to succumb to the dreaded information creep, she had decided.

And then, a few months ago, word had arrived a living Prime and his “friend,” an allegedly repentant killer, responsible for the destruction of their mother planet, would be visiting Caminus, a little vacation.

It had been an obvious opportunity to put it all to the test, to prove that she had been right and that poor Caminus had been mistaken. The Mistress of Flame would parade Rodimus Prime around for all to see, a living Prime, a god in his own right according to the Way of Flame. He would serve as the proof that the orthodoxy she held so dear was correct.

Then she had spoken to him… and had seen telltale traces of Caminus’s depiction of Solus Prime in him. And then she had seen Rodimus Prime’s pet monster up close.

And she had begun to suspect who they truly were.

And she had to know.

And now, at long last, she knew for certain. Without question. Without doubt.

"So… this was her doing.” The Mistress of Flame didn’t realize she was speaking aloud, that the microphone that an aid had earlier clipped to her vestments in case the drones on the speaker’s network moved too far away, was still on and broadcasting, as she processed what had been right in front of her all along. “She forgave him, even after death, even after what he did. She took his spark and reforged it anew… and then reforged herself to join him again."

Caminus had been right. And, in a terrible, incomplete way, she had been too. Caminus had not known that Solus Prime and Megatronus yet lived, in new frames and new names.

The priestess sat back up and looked at her hands.

An apology would not be enough, not for her disbelief, not for her blasphemy, not for her mistreatment of Caminus or the Primes.

Now she would have to find some way to atone for her transgression.

“I will… I will tell you what happened to Solus Prime.”

The green darkness of the eclipse began to fade, the glare receding as totality ended. The gas giant now visibly continued its path through the heavens around their home star.

In the eclipse’s place, as color returned, the star’s light brought her a sense of relief.

A hand touched her shoulder, gently.

The Mistress of Flame looked up to see Aphelion, smiling without judgment.

“Your Grace, before you do….” The Torchbearer’s voice was cautious, like she had to summon all of her bravery to speak to her superior. “Before you do, please… tell me that you hear it.”

“Hear…?”

The priestess paused, forcing herself to quiet her mind, to listen.

Words of an ancient dialect, the one sung in prayer or to bless the Divine, were being tunelessly whispered, just enough to be heard on the speakers, likely an accident. An inadvertent, voyeuristic intrusion on something deeply personal.

The voice belonged to Megatron, to the manifestation of death and betrayal himself.

“I fear neither the heat of the flame for it warms my spark nor do I fear the void that lurks beyond its light’s reach for I shall shelter in the dark."

“Babe, you’re still not dying and… everyone can hear you.”

A moment of silence, awkward and embarrassing before Megatron answered, curt as ever.

“I see.”

Perhaps this was not entirely a failure, the Mistress of Flame thought.

“Yes, Aphelion,” she said, “I do hear it.”

Chapter 110 - Epilogue

The soft clinking of dishes on the low table in the temple’s dining hall was the only distraction Rodimus had from the uncomfortable silence that had followed from the day’s earlier “incident”—Optimus had taken to calling it anything more dramatic—at the stadium.

The Mistress of Flame had invited them all to dine after the upset had settled down but had not deigned to join them. She couldn’t even look Rodimus—or anyone else for that matter—in the optic before she announced that she would be secluding herself for the time being for purposes of “introspection.”

Sure.

The newest way to describe “sulking” after nearly getting someone killed. It wouldn’t even be the first time since landing, but some of those had also been Rodimus’s own fault. He could own up to sometimes not having the most safety conscious plans.

Jumpstarting an entire hot spot, lighting an explosion next to a titan’s brain, slapping random metal blanks together into a whatsit, and willingly letting himself be led down a dark catacomb without backup weren’t flawless in the safety department, but those had been his own choices. Climbing straight up a sheer wall after Star Saber had been fine though.

The Mistress of Flame had purposefully put him and Megatron both in dangerous positions.

The least she could do was sulk about it, if not apologize. Though, Rodimus wasn’t sure if there really was any penance or restitution she could perform. He might have just needed to be satisfied with the sulking.

Prowl sat opposite Minimus at one end of the table, neither really eating. Prowl politely held his glass of fuel but didn’t really seem interested in consuming it. Minimus was idly shifting a chunk of aerogel around his tiny plate, only succeeding in cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces.

Star Saber had hidden under the table at some point, but even without being visible, Rodimus could hear him begging Optimus for scraps of whatever he was having.

Meals were a rare occasion to see Optimus without his mask. Rodimus had never quite gotten used to it whenever he’d seen it. He had known that Optimus had something under there, but seeing it was always surprising, like his former leader was just meant to not have a face.

The amused smile he was giving Star Saber was even rarer and more bizarre, unsettling given some of the serious, lingering uncertainty in the atmosphere.

“Prowl,” Optimus started, as though this were a pleasant, friendly meal. “What’s to be done with Megatron?”

Optimus had probably meant well, and it was a question that needed to be answered, but he had picked an awkward time to address it.

Rodimus dreaded this conversation, though he had known it would have been inevitable. He had saved Megatron from a brutal public execution on Caminus, but the Galactic Council was still looming in the future.

Surely, Prowl would be chomping at the bit to put Megatron back in chains and haul him off to sacrifice on the altar of safety from genocidal retribution for their homeworld.

And they all seemed to lack the tact to maybe not have this discussion with Megatron sitting right there, kneeling next to Rodimus and staring sightlessly towards wherever he thought voices were coming from.

At least the blindness was temporary, as Ratchet, seated on Megatron’s other side to make sure he wasn’t suffering adverse side effects from the chemosuppresants, had promised to replace the burned-out sensors after everyone had refueled.

“I can hear you, Prime. I am right here—“

Ratchet shushed him and put a cup of plain, unflavored fuel in front him. At least it was his preferred way of taking energon, even if Rodimus would never understand it. Megatron’s complaining dissolved into disjointed grumbling.

Prowl opened his mouth, holding his glass up for inspection, as though it were some piece of evidence rather than something to occupy his hands.

Rodimus, however, spoke first, reaching over and helping Megatron close his fist around the cup.

“We haven’t really gotten anywhere with the ‘take a life, pay a life’ system, have we?” he suggested, trying to ignore the growing tension in his spark.

He saw Drift nodding in agreement next to him out of the corner of his optic.

“What I was going to say,” Prowl said, setting his glass down before looking at his palm, the one that Megatron had repaired after it was torn apart by the stone door, “was that after spending time here and a preponderance of the body of evidence, we may wish to take a different tack than we had originally planned.”

“What do you mean?”

Optimus looked surprised. The deep curve to the frown that would normally be hidden by a mask seemed out of place, but that was probably because Rodimus had almost never seen Optimus’s mouth.

“There is a severe deficit in trained Cybertronian physicians. Not enough care to go around for the sick and injured of our species.”

The focal rings in Rodimus’s optics spiraled wide.

“I ran the statistics, Prime. Sacrificing even one is a net loss.”

Rodimus involuntarily leaned closer to Megatron, hoping that Prowl had truly changed his mind.

“Furthermore, I had the opportunity to witness many attempts by the Mistress of Flame to provoke Megatron to violence. He did not take the bait. Had I been in his place, I don’t know that I wouldn’t have. I have reason to believe he is, currently, not an active threat to public safety.”

The tension in his spark uncoiled all at once, his processor suddenly a dizzying whirl of relief.

“This isn’t like you, Prowl,” Optimus noted, optics curiously wide while “sneaking” a piece of aerogel to Star Saber under the table. “You’ve never been the sort to change your mind.”

It was as though Optimus hadn’t grasped that they were talking about someone’s life and not what toppings they wanted on a shared dessert.

“So, what do you suggest?”

“After looking into local history for guidance and consulting with a legal expert—“ Minimus’s skewer skidded to a stop on his plate. “—I’ve decided that we should investigate a local approach. Today’s… incidents being an exception, Caminus has deep-rooted tradition of something called ‘restorative justice,’ rather than the punitive form prevalent back home.”

“Yes?”

“I suggest sentencing Megatron to community service as a physician. Likewise, I suggest reclassifying the Lost Light as a hospital ship, given the large proportion of medically trained or otherwise medicine-adjacent crew members.”

Rodimus’s jaw dropped.

“You mean—“

“I’m not finished!” Prowl snapped at him, pointing an index finger across the table in accusation. “While we still need the quantum engines to successfully mature the sparks remaining on Luna-1, we can simply borrow your quantum engineer, that Nautica person, to make copies and diagrams.”

Optimus, as though unable to prevent himself from taking advantage of the opportunity to make a tonally gauche statement, asked, “And… what of the Galactic Council then? They’ll be expecting something from us.”

“We’ll just have to find another diplomatic solution.”

Minimus started talking, something about offering his assistance, suggesting alternatives or something, but Rodimus wasn’t listening anymore.

None of that mattered. It wasn’t his problem.

Instead, he leaned on Megatron’s arm, content in the knowledge that no one would be pulling them apart.

“Rodimus, have you eaten?”

“… Yes,” he lied.

Chapter 111 - Epilogue

Megatron pulled a red paint cartridge out of the airbrush kit in the washroom of the small temple suite that had been their “home” since making landfall all those weeks ago. He gingerly nudged a larger, freshly molted Star Saber away from the kit with his arm, as apparently the creature had started taking a shine to the taste of paint cartridges.

“Leave it.”

Star Saber, of course, whined as though he were being so cruelly deprived.

They would be moving out soon, but not yet. Rodimus wanted to stay in their temporary temple accommodations a little longer. A few days, not too long. That gave the temple staff time to finish refurbishing an outbuilding on the temple grounds into an apartment for whenever the Lost Light was docked in Kremex. The ship’s registration had been transferred to Caminus, as part of the legal agreement for Megatron’s amended sentence.

Besides, there was hardly much to move other than some of Rodimus’s belongings from the captain’s quarters on the ship. Megatron, however, had nothing to move. He owned naught but two things and they were on his person at all times: his surgical kit and his Rodimus Star. Walking into a location was as good as moving in.

They wouldn’t be in Kremex constantly, so there was really no rush. When on the moon, he would serve the colony as a physician, assisting in a nearby medical facility or occasionally sent to a more remote settlement for emergencies. That was fine. He could live with those responsibilities, a small penance to preserve life when he had taken so much.

Seated in front of the mirror on a bench, he stuffed the cartridge into the airbrush with a click. In retrospect, Drift’s “help” with the nozzles had actually been quite useful, even if it had been just a ruse to talk to his debatably former friend in private.

Behind him, visible only in the mirror was Rodimus, standing in the doorway to watch.

It was the first time Megatron had ever attempted to paint himself, at least like this, for any purpose other than battle. Even once the war had really gotten underway, he’d dispensed with that as well.

“Do you need something?”

“No.”

Rodimus scratched as his upper right arm, the plating there now freshly engraved with a round moon—meant to be reminiscent of Luna-1—and a scattering of stars and swirling lines of cosmic dust. Everything was inlaid with silver paint, the closest the artist could get to Megatron’s own gray paint without too closely mimicking the color of dead metal.

“Stop scratching your engraving.”

“I’m not!”

There was a certain type of amusement that came from seeing Rodimus blatantly do just what he was accused of while denying it.

The engraving work was fresh, only finally completed the other day. Rodimus had never been engraved before so the novelty of the experience—the itching during healing, the prolonged sharp pain of the chiseling itself, and the sting of wet paint being applied to the raw plating—had yet to wear off.

There was only so much verbal explanation could truly prepare one for.

Whereas it wasn’t Megatron’s first go-around with the engravers, so he had known more intrinsically what to expect. He had needed his old markings redone with every new body. A tedious process, but a vanity he had allowed himself.

The most difficult part of the design had been planning it in such a way that it would not look distorted in alt-mode. Luckily, Rodimus had been excited to have a particularly unique fender to flout on the road.

Megatron hadn’t had that problem when the design for a burning yellow sun wreathed in flames was finalized for his left arm. He could no longer transform, so one less consideration and more creative freedom. If he could have, the pattern would have ended up hidden by treads.

Rodimus continued to distractedly rub at his fresh markings, probably to make the technical argument that he wasn’t “scratching.”

“Leave it alone.”

“I am!”

Megatron huffed, lifting the airbrush to his face to attempt a simple undereye design. The paint hissed softly as it escaped, colliding with his old, microfracture-laden facial plating.

Strictly, he wasn’t required to do this except for particular events and festivities but given the high visibility of his position at Rodimus’s side, even going on an errand qualified as a public appearance. How Drift did this every day, he could only wonder.

The Mistress of Flame, interestingly, had forgone the paint. Megatron couldn’t, in fact, recall an instance where she’d been wearing it.

Out of the corner of his optic in the mirror, however, he caught Rodimus staring, frowning in what he supposed was concern.

“You know, you… don’t have to do that.”

“I am aware, yes.”

A silence lapsed but the staring continued.

"Don't look at me like that. You're no stranger to converting public faiths for utilitarian reasons yourself," he said, although “utilitarian” was an interesting word to describe “might as well say something beautiful before death.”

The consequence of not having perished either then or at some gently pushed back date meant he had inadvertently ascribed to something for longer than anticipated. An argument could theoretically have been made that he had chosen this without sufficient information or under duress. Megatron had weighed his options and had, ultimately, decided not to walk it back. If they were going to live on Caminus part-time and if he was going to be bonded to the populace’s living deity, it would be easier.

That… and fewer would question his carefully nurtured pacifism. It was yet another way Megatron had thrown away his past, publicly denouncing in one swift motion the ideological atheism, a major tenet of his earlier Revolution.

Now he was struggling to recall the painting skills he honed as a gladiator to apply the red cosmetic under his eyes. It had been so long since he last decorated himself, though recently assisting Rodimus with a refinish had helped him remember the right pressure to use.

"What, if anything, you or I actually believe is an entirely separate, private matter."

It would all be easier if Star Saber didn’t keep sticking his new magnets, that Rodimus had insisted on attaching as soon as possible, to his forearm, impeding the fluid movement required for clean lines.

"What do you believe?"

Star Saber bumped the airbrush, the paint flow skewing to the side across Megatron’s nose.

Megatron turned off the airbrush and shrugged. Now he’d need some sort of corrective solvent.

"That is the question, isn't it? One that I have no intention of answering."

The difference was that Rodimus, when he had chosen spectralism, had sought revenge or at least that was how it had appeared. Whatever else he believed was his own business and Megatron had always done him the favor of not poking at it.

“That’s no fun,” Rodimus said, crossing his arms petulantly.

Luckily, another thought apparently popped into his mind, filling the void left by his previous unanswered question. One of the things Megatron appreciated about Rodimus was his ability to bounce back so readily.

“Hey, are you going to start treating Optimus like a god?”

Megatron scoffed, awkwardly reaching into the kit on the counter to avoid letting Star Saber’s pilfering magnets get in as well.

“Absolutely not.”

The very idea was revolting.

“Aw, that would be funny—“

“I already don’t pray to you.”

The sound of fingers scraping against raw plating echoed in the small washroom.

“That’s not what you said last night in the—“

“Stop rubbing your engravings.” The reprimand cut off the impending crude comment. Not that Rodimus would listen. “You’ll wear down the crisp ridges and need to get them redefined. You’ll also dislodge the paint.”

One of the downsides to engravings was waiting for the pigment to settle into the “wound” before sealant could finally be safely applied. Perhaps, Megatron wondered, that was part of why the pit fighters had never developed much tradition of painting their markings. It would take too long and get damaged during bouts.

He could just imagine how many appointments for reworking would have to be made before the entire piece was set.

“It itches—“

And to think partaking in the Camien tradition of engravings for bondings was Rodimus’s idea.

“It’s going to itch until your pressure sensors acclimate and your self-repair nanites no longer see the engraving as damage,” he continued, finally managing to fish out a bottle solvent before Star Saber could steal it.

“Yeah, yeah, sure, but it itches now.”

Chapter 112 - Epilogue

At long last, the opportunity to peruse the archives for entertainment like they had been originally intending to do ever since making landfall on Caminus had arrived.

The colorful floor paths outlining a map to their destination, the dim lighting, the gentle weight of carefully curated datapads full of cultural and artistic insight, and, most wonderful of all, the complete lack of any security escorts just in case Megatron finally “snapped” and went on a rampage.

Within minutes of arrival, Megatron and Minimus had wasted no time in navigating to the deep recesses of the non-fiction stacks referencing various local literary traditions, far more interesting than probing the theology section for clues as to what threats might have loomed on the horizon. While reading up more on what was now expected of him given his public conversion was something Megatron had planned on doing, he would do that on his own time and not the trip he was sharing with Minimus.

Meanwhile, Rodimus had gone with Drift to wander the markets with Star Saber, who was getting to be rather too big to carry around constantly. Rodimus had managed to cobble together a harness and leash out of random supplies he “conveniently found lying around” in the temple.

Now, poking through the datapads on Camien chromatic poetry, a style where glyphs were written in particular shades to either enhance or contrast the glyph’s meaning, Megatron awaited the almost certainly impending news that a loose “divine beast” had caused havoc in the Market District.

“Megatron, there’s been something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

Minimus stood next to him on a footstool borrowed from the reception desk, now standing at chest height. Unfortunately, that meant it would be that much easier to accidentally elbow him off his perch, requiring Megatron to be even more careful as he scoured the shelves.

“Hm?”

He looked to the side, trying to not move too abruptly.

Minimus, rather than smiling like he had been when they had arrived, appeared… somber.

“Now that we have some privacy, I… wanted to talk about the situation between you and Rodimus.”

In lieu of a verbal answer, Megatron merely raised an optical ridge in question. As far as he was aware, the situation was straightforward. They had decided a union was appropriate for them and that was all that mattered.

“While I’m happy for you both, especially since now you won’t be conjugating illicitly—“

Did Minimus have to call it that? And Rodimus accused him of having old-fashioned ways of alluding to interfacing.

“Minimus, this isn’t necessary—“

It was also rather sudden to bring up, but he trusted Minimus, both professionally and personally.

Even though Minimus steamrolled right over his objection.

“—Even putting aside workplace ethical considerations, there are some lingering… concerns.”

Sharing both command and a life was… not generally considered a wise ethical choice, but the conflict of interest issue had likely never occurred to Rodimus and Megatron had been certain he would be dying before it would have been consequential.

That would be a new problem to solve, but one that was solvable and paled in comparison to the problems of which they had just divested themselves.

With a shrug, he pulled a datapad from the shelf, giving the title a quick glance.

Oil In The Water: A Primer on Fabrikasian Chromatic Poetry by Whetstone of Fabrikas.

Wasn’t that the name of the blacksmith in town who provided advice to Rodimus? A mech of many talents, it would seem.

“Concerns?” Megatron shook his head before holding out the datapad for his friend to take. “Minimus, please. What do you think of this one? I haven’t checked the contents yet.”

“No, you don’t understand—Oh, thank you.” Minimus took the datapad, seemingly on reflex. Megatron wondered briefly if he could just hold random items out and have Minimus take them automatically. “I’m referring to the legal paperwork. I can help you both put it in order, so there are no loopholes to exploit.”

“If necessary, we’ll submit a filing to Iacon, but there’s no urgency.” Megatron didn’t foresee stepping foot on Cybertronian soil for quite some time, especially with their ship’s jurisdiction being changed. “On Caminus, our engravings constitute sufficient legal precedent.”

“Engravings? As a legally binding contract?”

Minimus’s facial emblem drooped on the sides as his mouth dropped agape in horror.

“Yes, it’s something of a cultural norm here. Surely, you’ve seen mechs walking around in the city with paired markings.”

It was a unique cultural practice, as far as he was aware, but not one he really had the grounds to dispute. If it were the norm here, where he would be spending a lot of time, then so be it.

Minimus waved the datapad in his hand at Megatron, as though he’d forgotten he was even holding it.

“But is Rodimus now the Lord Consort of Kaon or—“

Ah, those sorts of legal concerns, rather than relationship recognition. Outdated and irrelevant concerns for title and social standing, but once upon a time, prior to Megatron’s upending of the political and power structures of their homeworld, those would have mattered.

Of course, Megatron shouldn’t have been surprised.

Dear Minimus Ambus, for all his modern understandings, was still “old money gentry” in his upbringing. Certain ideas rarely broached would be the last to be unpacked. He would, naturally, have certain expectations.

Minimus meant the best after all, good intentions even if slightly to the left of helpful.

Megatron just shook his head.

“Frankly, that all hinges on whether or not a title can exist without its polity and seeing as Kaon now exists only in historical texts, the matter would be rather academic.”

And Megatron hadn’t used his unintentionally acquired noble title in millions of years, a legacy of Kaon’s archaic legal codes that had managed to persist long after their intended context. The only mechs who had addressed him by that name had been Decepticons who had believed it a necessary sign of respect, no matter what they were told otherwise. The fact that it had always been awkwardly combined with the shortened version of his name had made it funny enough that he had ultimately allowed it to slide.

“I rather think it doesn’t matter,” he added, pointing at the datapad he had handed Minimus a few moments ago. “Now, please, what do you think of that one? I’m interested in your thoughts. Should we borrow it?”

Minimus finally looked at the datapad that he’d been unintentionally gesturing with.

“Oh, I—My apologies, but there’s more.”

“More? What more could there be?” Unless Rodimus had secretly been a member of a long defunct noble house this entire time, Megatron sincerely doubted there was anything else to prod at.

“Will you require legal paperwork establishing reincarnated identities or—“

“No, Minimus, I’m going to stop you right there.” Megatron held out a hand, palm flat and perpendicular to his chest. “There’s no such thing as reincarnation, no matter what the priests around here tell you.”

Minimus squinted up at him, his mustache twitching in judgment.

“What? Don’t tell me you believe in—”

A small green hand pointed right at his face. Megatron leaned back, palms up defensively on instinct despite the lack of any credible threat from his friend.

“But the paint under your eyes there says that you do.”

Perhaps his public role did allude to some… assumptions.

He lowered his arms, careful to not accidentally bump Minimus off his footstool.

“What is with this sudden interest in legal identity, Minimus?”

The moment the words left Megatron’s mouth, his companion’s gaze drifted off to the side.

He placed a hand on Minimus’s shoulder.

“No, don’t answer that. I understand.”

This was about Minimus being public and open about Ultra Magnus.

 

---

 

“Minimus, this isn’t necessary,” Megatron said.

Ultra Magnus, however, shook his head.

Standing in the hall by the closed doors of the Lost Light’s bridge, Minimus knew it was time to finally come clean. He couldn’t stand the hiding anymore, not after everything that had happened.

“No, it’s… something I need to do.”

It was strange, he thought, adapting back to looking down to look his friend in the eye rather than up. He’d gone without his armor for so long on Caminus that it struck him as odd. It’d had been ages since he’d gone without wearing the armor for at least a few hours daily.

“You’re sure, Mims?” Rodimus asked, hands apart to underscore his plea. “I’ve even thought up a fib for where good ol’ Ultra Magnus has been hiding. You got lost looking into policies for all the customs paperwork for the souvenirs. Easy! Especially with Drift’s new swords, maybe there’s some weird legalese to take them off-world or something—”

Magnus raised his hand and waved the idea off before Rodimus could fully descend into a full-blown information dump based on conjecture and a limited understanding of the legal processes. He meant well and Minimus wouldn’t fault him for it, but it ultimately wasn’t relevant.

Furthermore, he had already made up his mind.

Prowl and Optimus were waiting on the other side of the heavy blast doors, deaf to the conversation in the hallway.

“Please, Rodimus. I’m doing this for myself,” he said, placing a hand to his own shoulder, right over the bright red of his impeccably aligned Autobot badge.

Rodimus sighed and nodded reluctantly.

“Yeah, I know, but I was—“

“Just trying to help, I know. Thank you… Captain.”

A smile returned to Rodimus’s face at the acknowledgment.

“Look, you know we’ll support you no matter what, so let’s go!”

Megatron entered a command into the access panel on the wall, the blast doors sliding open.

Rodimus ducked through without hesitation, but Ultra Magnus lingered, looking at the floor as though he could ignore the last-minute doubts that had arisen in his processor.

A hand set itself on his upper arm.

“Before we go in, Minimus,” Megatron started, whispering so as not to be heard, “I wanted to say that this is very brave of you.”

Magnus looked back up from the ground, a hopeful smile on his face for the first time in what felt like ages.

Chapter 113 - Epilogue

Prowl instinctively recoiled, as much as one could do while reclining on a repair bench, from the flash of the micro-soldering gun that Ratchet had been using to try repairing the damage in his optical orbit.

At least no one else had been in the Lost Light’s medical bay to see it, a small mercy on Prowl’s remaining dignity.

Most of the others—both crew and medical staff alike—were still enjoying their “vacation” if they weren’t harangued by First Aid into preparing for the ship’s reclassification. He had left with his party of medical minions on a restocking errand in the city and to ensure all of their paperwork was in order, both for the reclassification and for the change in their home port.

It was a lot of work, but if the Lost Light was still going to be flouncing around space with a large medical staff, they might as well do some goodwill, rebuild their species’ reputation as something other than warmongering monsters.

Unfortunately, more immediately, Prowl’s not letting his optic get repaired for so long had caused significant corrosion to develop in the orbital socket. This sort of invasive patching was necessary, allegedly, before a fresh optic could be installed. The added unpleasant complications to what was normally an easy, painless procedure was Prowl’s punishment for having neglected his own health and maintenance for so long.

"Hold still!"

Ratchet, of course, was less than understanding of Prowl’s reaction to being poked in the tender place where a retina used to be. He waved the soldering gun at him in mock menace.

Prowl squinted with his one remaining eye.

“It’d be easier to hold still if you weren’t stabbing dangerous instruments in carelessly!”

Just a hyperbolic excuse, of course.

Ratchet had always been careful, a cautious physician. It was one of the notes near the top of the comprehensive personnel file that Prowl had kept since working for Sentinel Prime.

Prowl had the brief thought of telling Ratchet that even Megatron had steadier hands but had dismissed that as being unnecessarily cruel.

“’Carelessly’?” Ratchet huffed in offense. “It’s not my fault you’re squirming like a new-build at their first medical visit. I’ve replaced worse on you than an optic over the years, so don’t be so damn fussy!”

“’Fussy’?”

“If you didn’t complain so much, Prowl, this would be done, and you could have been on your way already.”

Prowl crossed his arms in displease but didn’t continue to argue. He would attempt to hold still, if only so he could hasten his department from Caminus. He’d spent far too long on this strange colony as it was.

For the time being Ratchet let a familiar, though not comfortable, silence fall between them as he went back to alternately repairing circuits and removing corrosion in the socket, switching tools as needed. Prowl did his best not to flinch as freshly repaired circuitry started sending unpleasant signals to his processor.

After the preliminary repairs were finished, Prowl watched as Ratchet fished out a tray of spare optics from a cabinet on the wall. While it was expected that spares would be on hand for replacements, Prowl had the sneaking suspicion there was a relatively high demand for this specific part on this ship, given the accident-prone crew… following in the example of their accident-prone captain… captains, given Megatron’s own recent optical replacement.

Ratchet, ignoring Prowl’s mental journey, brought the tray over and carefully held up optics, presumably checking for the right size for Prowl’s orbit.

“So, what do you plan to do when you get back to Cybertron? Right back to work and sleeping in your office?”

“I—No, actually.”

“No?” Ratchet chuckled, swapping the ill-sized optic in his hand for another one. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally picked up a hobby.”

“No, I—“ Wait. “Ratchet, I have hobbies.”

The fact that surveillance and categorizing the resulting data was useful at work didn’t mean it wasn’t also a passion.

“Sure, but I think you ought to take a break from those as well as work. I can’t order you to take leave anymore—” No, not after stepping down from his role as the chief medical officer for the army. First Aid theoretically could order him, but First Aid wasn’t here now to exercise that authority. “—But I can go over your head and make strong recommendations to Optimus.”

Not a conversation Prowl wanted to have with Optimus.

Though… perhaps his “little hobby” was a passion he could stand to indulge in rather less than he had been.

A few lines of florid verse valorizing the color “vermilion” popped into his processor, a reminder of finding things he’d rather not have found, a reminder that Megatron as an immediate danger was a threat he could, much to his own surprise, discount.

Ratchet was right. Prowl needed to do something else, at least for a while. Besides, admitting it now would also avoid an awkward, hypocritical “you’re working too hard” conversation with Optimus.

“Fine.” Prowl waved his hands in defeat. “Fine. I’ll… I don’t know yet, but I’ll take some time off.”

Ratchet took the opportunity to pop an appropriately sized optic into the orbit, the new component clicking easily into place.

Light, full of blurry colors and shapes without a lens to focus them, registered on his newly expanded visual feed. The dissonance in focus between the half-repaired optic and his intact one summoned a wave of nausea.

Prowl grimaced.

“Good.” Ratchet nodded and held up a finger, or was it two? Hard to tell without the glass. “Blink twice and follow my finger. I need to check optical function.”

He obeyed, if only to get this over with faster.

Ratchet nodded again, seemingly satisfied.

He grabbed a blue smudge from a tray before installing it, Prowl’s vision clearing instantly.

“Alright, you’re done. Don’t wait years to get your optic fixed the next time you break it by hacking someone off.”

“Finally.”

Prowl got up from the bench, pushing past Ratchet to make for the door.

Ratchet sighed, already packing his tools away from the sound of them clacking together.

“You’re welcome, Prowl.”

“Yeah, yeah, thanks, Ratchet.” He waved at the doctor over his shoulder.

“And I meant what I said about taking time off!”

“I’m tracking it!” A little notification appeared in his to-do list, a timer set to remind him when he was done clearing out his impromptu office onboard. “I’ll file the leave request at the first opportunity.”

Though, as the doors to the medical bay closed behind him, Prowl wondered what he would even do with a vacation.

Maybe Hook and the others would like a trip to Hedonia. They knew how to “have a good time.” They would certainly be willing to give Prowl a few pointers.

There was time to make a call home using the comm in his impromptu office before packing his supplies away.

 

---

 

The dark ring of the powered down space bridge loomed behind Optimus as he stood at the platform with Prowl. Rodimus and Megatron stood across from them, seeing them off back to Cybertron.

He wondered how he hadn’t noticed that close bond that had formed between his former protégé and his former nemesis, seeing now as they stood close with their recent engravings still sharp-edged.

Was this his fault? Had he put them on that path by placing Megatron on the Lost Light against Rodimus’s wishes?

Maybe, maybe he had.

The Megatron Optimus had known during the war would not have allowed any of this. There hadn’t been space for feelings and vulnerability, any display of what could be construed as weakness. The occasional banter and allusion of comradery, sure, but that was all.

Optimus found himself grateful again for the mask obscuring the conflicted frown on his face. He felt safe behind it, allowed a small measure of privacy. Being in a very public position of leadership and scrutiny for so long often afforded him scant little of that luxury.

He had hoped that Megatron had truly changed, which was part of why he’d been willing to put his oldest enemy on the search for the Knights of Cybertron in the first place. It wouldn’t have been very Autobot of him to not give someone the opportunity to prove a change of spark, especially after their conversations in the faux privacy of Omega Supreme’s secure hold.

Every hour, every minute after he’d made that decision, Optimus had doubted it in the safety of his own thoughts, second-guessing himself like usual. Had he endangered the lives of innocent Autobots on a hope, on a nostalgic whim that the poet-activist he’d befriended as Orion Pax was still in there somewhere?

And it seemed that Rodimus, brave and persevering, had found his old friend in there after all.

The frown lifted at the warm thought.

“Well, I suppose,” he started, awkwardly folding his hands together like a practiced politician, “this is goodbye for now. It’s shame we didn’t get the opportunity to really talk.”

“Another time,” Megatron suggested, posture rigid like he still expected a threat around every corner.

Though, from what Optimus had seen, he doubted Megatron was looking for threats to himself but to Rodimus, which were… also unlikely, on Caminus at least. Perhaps he was keeping watch for opportunities Rodimus might exploit to do something foolish. That was far more probable.

“Rodimus,” Optimus continued, separating his hands enough to gesture vaguely with them, for all the good it would do, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you—“

Rodimus laughed, one of those uncomfortable laughs he did when he didn’t want to be present. Maybe he thought he was about to be scolded for his choice in partner.

“No, Optimus, you don’t have to say anything. It’s fine.”

He waved his hands defensively, as though to ward off any impending judgment.

“No, please, I insist. It’s not what you think.”

Rodimus’s hands froze midair, the younger mech blinking at him in confusion.

Optimus took a deep ventilation to steady himself before forcing the words out, despite the hesitation and nerves clawing at his processor. He had been meaning to say this for years, and he had failed to say it to Bumblebee. He would not fail saying it to Rodimus while he still had the chance.

He was not going to miss this opportunity; he wouldn’t allow it to slip by, not again.

“I’m proud of you.”

The words out, loose in the universe, an awkward silence fell. Rodimus’s face twitched like he was trying to smile but wasn’t sure what he ought to be feeling. Maybe he didn’t want Optimus’s praise. Maybe it was too little, too late.

Optimus’s spark sunk in his chest—

“Thanks, boss bot.”

A bright, genuine grin beamed on Rodimus’s face.

That made all the effort worth it.

Prowl, however, coughed impatiently, standing nearby with his arms crossed as he stared at the floor with a newly repaired optics.

That had also been Optimus’s fault.

“Right, yes.” Optimus nodded to acknowledge Prowl’s wordless request that they get a move on.

He flagged down a Camien technician to activate the space bridge.

With a loud rush of buzzing energy, the dark ring of the bridge glowed to life.

 

---

 

The hovertrain pulled to a juddering stop at the edge of the valley where Caminus’s broken body reclined.

“Do you think the Lost Light will be alright out there?” Rodimus asked, hesitating in his seat as the doors opened automatically.

Megatron, seated beside him, gestured for him to go first.

“Absolutely,” he said, “With Minimus at the helm and Drift assisting him, I think the Lost Light will survive without us for a few months.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Rodimus shrugged before getting up and stepping out onto the dark stone of the local terrain.

Maybe it would be worth paving into a proper path or road at some point, he thought idly, but this part of Caminus was relatively smooth so it didn’t matter that much. It just seemed kind of plain for leading to the titan’s resting place.

Rodimus put his hands on his hips, surveying the mechs scattered across the valley, all at work either with shoring up Caminus’s neck or erecting new plating and components to reform his shattered head.

His partial acceptance of the extended shore leave situation didn’t mean not being on the ship didn’t feel strange though, that his home was leaving without him.

At least Getaway wasn’t stealing the ship. Impossible—or rather, unlikely—given that the bastard was devoured by Whirl’s scraplets. Bless their little… whatever animating force they had that wasn’t a spark.

Mims and Drift would come back for him, for them. The ship wouldn’t be the same otherwise.

It was just a brief foray, a maintenance run practically, to get everyone comfortably back into space for a while after far too much shore leave. The opposite of cabin fever, homesickness for the stars.

Rodimus wished they could go with them, but this time they had more terrestrial duties.

And, if he were being honest, the “terrestrial duties” weren’t so bad.

Caminus, the titan, needed a lot of assistance, first rebuild his head but then to… possibly, rebuild more. Rodimus didn’t need to be around for all of that, but he wanted to be there for the start at least.

It was what Caminus deserved, to have a friend nearby to advocate for him.

Even if Rodimus didn’t remember being his friend before. He still wasn’t sure if he agreed with the Camien assumption of his alleged prior life, but that was fine. He didn’t need to know for sure. He could be Caminus’s friend now, on his own terms without having to rely on a precedent set by someone who had died millions of years ago.

And who wouldn’t want to be friends with a titan? Especially one as generous and caring as Caminus. He had given everything, even his body, to give his colony a fighting chance.

A hand rested on his upper arm.

“Come on, Caminus and Sunburst are waiting for us,” Megatron said.

Ah.

That was right.

Rodimus had forgotten what personal name the Mistress of Flame—he had to stop calling her that to himself—had taken once she’d resigned her post. After that dinner with Optimus where she’d excused herself, right as everyone was preparing to disperse for the evening, a letter of resignation had been delivered to the table.

The temple acolytes and priests were still searching for a replacement for her, to fill that leadership role. Aphelion had kindly been offered to take the interim delegate seat at the Council of Worlds, so the wheels of politics would still turn.

Sunburst—Rodimus repeated the name under his breath to help him remember—had decided to take a vow dedicating herself to the titan’s restoration as part of her self-imposed penance.

She hadn’t needed to do that, but Rodimus was glad she had done so voluntarily.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. This time.” Rodimus nodded. “Can’t keep your biggest patient waiting.”

With a smirk, he grabbed Megatron’s hand and sprinting down the valley.