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“You can’t.”
Optimus stares at Rodimus, unsure how to react. The younger mech juts out his chin, repeats himself.
“You can’t, Optimus.”
“And why not?” Prowl cuts in, angry. “Rodimus, give me one reason not to execute the leader of the Decepticons– one reason that doesn’t tie in to the misguided relationship you had with him.”
Megatron, kneeling and bound with his chestplating forced open to reveal his spark, glances between the triple-barreled gun before him to Rodimus’ defiant face. He doesn’t speak.
“Why not, Rodimus?” Optimus asks. He’s curious. Rodimus has a reason, he’s sure. And it will be disregarded, no matter what it is– they’ve come too far with this execution to undo it all now.
Rodimus steps forward, well into the camera’s view. He grins. Too late, Optimus recognizes the trouble that’s in every curve of that grin.
“We’re sparkbonded,” Rodimus announces, a gleam in his optics. “If you kill him, you kill me– Primus’ chosen one–”
“Get the camera off of him now!” Prowl hisses, but the damage has been done. There’s an immediate outcry from the Camiens, and one of the more dedicated even leaps onto the platform to do– something, Optimus doesn’t get to see what it is before she’s tackled by security.
And Rodimus is still speaking.
“Our bond is reinforced!” he shouts, and folds open his chestplating to bare his spark, adding its flickering glow to Megatron’s. Optimus is horrified. He still has no shame. Not in front of Cybertron, not in front of the world.
… Yes, the world. The camera is still running, still displaying Rodimus’ message to all of Cybertron and beyond. The cameraman glances at Optimus, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s defiance he sees in the mech’s face.
“All of you here,” Rodimus says, “all of you watching– if I die today, Optimus Prime and his Autobots killed me!”
“That’s enough,” Prowl snarls, yanking him roughly away from the camera.
“Let go of him!” Megatron roars. As he raises his voice, the guard at his chest shoves the triple-barreled gun warningly at his spark, looking to Optimus for permission to release the trigger.
“No,” Optimus says, hardly able to believe the words coming from his vocoder– but the Camiens were near to storming the stage with their fallen sister, and he’d gotten more “urgent” messages on his HUD in one minute than he had in ten years. “Not yet.”
Rodimus’ chestplating is still open, and tendrils of white light lick out at the air as he fights against Prowl’s attempts to manhandle him offstage. “Are you gonna kill me, Optimus?”
In a heartbeat, Optimus knows, if it would mean Megatron’s death followed. But he can’t say that. And he can’t do it, either, not when he knows what it would mean politically to have Primus’ chosen killed.
Damn you, Rodimus. He should never have let him near the Matrix– if the mech hadn’t bonded with it, he would have no claim to being important enough to stop Megatron’s execution for. But the Camiens and their Mistress looked to him as a sort of holy one– and even if the Matrix resided in Optimus’ chest now instead of Rodimus’, the little mech was more of a Prime to them than Optimus would ever be.
But he has to play the part, and though Prowl is looking more and more frantic by the second, begging him with his eyes to come up with something to fix this, he can’t. There’s nothing he can do.
“I would never allow you to come to harm,” he says, making sure the Camiens can hear him. “You’re worth too much to me, Rodimus.”
“Like hell,” Megatron mutters, behind him. Optimus ignores him.
“What will you do, Optimus Prime?” Rodimus shouts, apparently unwilling to let it go where it should be left. He, too, is speaking to the Camiens.
“What do you ask of me?” Optimus grits out. “I will grant you one boon, Rodimus.”
Rodimus straightens, and Optimus realizes his mistake. The mech had been ready for this question.
“I ask that you give me a ship and my conjunx endura,” Rodimus says, “and let us leave Cybertron. We’ll seek out a new life together, away from all this.”
“Optimus, you can’t,” Prowl hisses.
He can’t. He can’t do that. But the Camiens are clamoring yes, yes and the Mistress of Flame herself is overriding his HUD with messages, and Optimus doesn’t even have to struggle with himself for more than a minute before he knows he doesn’t have a choice.
“You will be an exile,” he says sternly, trying to salvage the situation. “You will be hated on your own planet. Are you willing to sacrifice this, Rodimus?”
Rodimus locks eyes with him, and spoils the gravity by grinning cheekily. “You better believe I am.”
“Then go,” Optimus says viciously, and motions the guard to step back from Megatron. “You may have my ship–” a blind, fumbling attempt to restore even a little repute with the Camiens. “Leave. Immediately.”
Rodimus bowed low, so low that only Optimus could see the mocking light in his eyes. “As my Prime commands.”
“What would you have done if he had demanded to verify our bond?” Megatron asks, quietly, that night, as Cybertron fades away in the distance and they lean against the berth and pant away each other’s exertions.
“Probably been executed as a traitor,” Rodimus says, flippantly.
“I–” Megatron hesitates, runs a hand against Rodimus’ chestplating. “I can’t say that I wanted you to do what you did. If they had checked–”
“Hey. If they’d killed you, I don’t know that I would have wanted to live anyway.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Megs, I can’t lie.”
“Don’t call me that, either. Rodimus, I–”
“Shut up, alright?” Rodimus gently scratches at the scraped and dented plating that, only hours before, had been roughly wrenched away to bare Megatron’s spark to the guns. “I’ve got you now, haven’t I? And you’ve got me. And neither of us are dead.”
“Because you lied about being sparkbonded with me.” Megatron gave a short laugh, shaking his head. “You never fail to amaze me.”
“Hey, yeah, I lied, but what do you say about making it the real deal?” Rodimus grins up at Megatron, excited. “There’s no excuse for you now, is there?”
There wasn’t.
And, Megatron found, he didn’t want there to be.
“No,” he purred, sweeping Rodimus off of his perch and into his lap. “There’s no excuse, Rodimus.”
Rodimus pressed against his body, gently bringing their closed chestplating together, and kissed him. “No excuse.”
Megatron took hold of him, carefully, like the most precious thing in the world (and he was, in this little shuttle together, he was) and kissed him back.
Less than a day ago, he was mourning the reality of being forced to die without once having shared what was most precious about him with the mech he loved the most.
Now, he found, he was being offered the opportunity to do it over and over, with no time limit, no hunters at their backs, no consequences.
Megatron would be a fool not to take that chance, and he had never considered himself one.