Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Axalon landed spectacularly on the surface of Cybertron, overzealous thrusters scorching the steel of the landing pad, drawing the curious sensors of even the most distracted of onlookers. What was to be a simple disposal/retrieval, or rather a reconnaissance…or, whatever-it-was mission, turned out to have more significance to the as-of-then undisrupted future of the Transformers on Earth, humanity, and the solar system itself, than anyone could have expected. The Maximals on board: Rhinox, a stoic scientist unused to battle; Rattrap, a veteran espionage artist with a chip on his shoulder rotator that could have sunk a small freighter; Cheetor, a youngling barely out of basic training; Blackarachnia, a fembot with a bark as big as her bite; Silverbolt, a Fuzor with a personality as grandiose as his paintjob; and the leader of the free peoples, the New Faction, the Maximals, Optimus Primal, would all have the attention of the planet’s remaining populous for plenty of cycles onward.

All good attention, Rattrap wished, but realized it was probably too much to hope for. The second civil war was ended on and off Cybertron, most definitively with the defeat of a dangerously overclocked and battle-weary Megatron, but there were still plenty of discontents from either side of the conflict to be found on the planet. Predacons still resented their treatment as second-class citizens, and the Maximals resented being made to so much as share their well-earned space with the likes of their more dastardly counterparts. Still further removed from the major conflict were the remnants of the Autobots and Decepticons, very little in number but the ones who survived did so in infamy.

The fact was, the Axalon’s crew could not expect to be greeted with unanimous respect and exaltation, and Rattrap wasn’t sure he wanted to hang around to experience the backlash, if he could avoid it.

Besides, he had something more important in mind. A mission of his own: very secret, and very personal.

Primal stood massive in his latest form, dwarfing the rest of the crew and all those Maximals who came to greet their arrival. All stared up in awe, chatting relentlessly while Optimus took it in stride, and Cheetor practically jumped for joy. Rhinox watched with an unreadable expression, and Blackarachnia and Silverbolt looked at each other doe-eyed, while the fervor grew up around them, like a rising tide.

Rattrap caught Optimus by the elbow joint, pulling him aside from the growing crowd, which filled in eagerly in his place. Cheetor was cheering and gloating of his exploits and proudly showing off his foreign form to the Maximals who looked star-struck and eager all at once.

“So, uh, permission to go on a little shore-leave?” Rattrap asked, tilting his head in Optimus’s direction, then at the swelling crowd. The larger bot, obviously confused by the sudden disinterest in what surely would be a justification of his comrade’s typically large ego, frowned back down at him.

“Right now?” Optimus asked, “you don’t want to accompany us to The Hall?”

Rattrap shrugged his shoulders, flicking a fleck of dust from his smooth chrome plating with mild interest. “Eh, not really my scene.”

“I suppose not,” Optimus conceded, “all that’s left is to turn Megatron over the proper authorities, then we’ll be free to go our own ways,” he continued levelly, “surely you would like to receive your share of the credit for the tyrant’s demise?”

“I can do without,” Rattrap answered, not really needing to come up with an excuse, but compelled to anyway, out of respect for their esteemed leader. He could’ve said “see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya,” and dashed out of there, the mission to Earth complete, as it were, and he no longer under Optimus’s direct leadership. But he wanted to leave on a light and thoroughly unsuspicious note, rather than dashing away under cover of night as his rodent instincts told him to do.

“Can I at least ask why you’re leaving us so suddenly?” Optimus asked, sounding very much like a teacher scolding his student, making Rattrap instinctively recoil. He’d gotten plenty of scolding at the Academy, and didn’t plan on getting any more. But somehow life had a way of catching up to him like that: things he thought he’d put aside nagged after him incessantly, like the gnawing of bored nanobots.

“I’ve got…” Rattrap sighed, looking away, down the pin-straight roads and alleyways of Cybertron City, the looming silver buildings and delicate skyways, “I’ve got something to take care of,” he concluded vaguely, not catching the Big Bot’s optics.

Optimus’s expression went grim, a slow understanding coming over him, and a subtle sadness, too. As leader, his crew’s pain was his pain, and surely the lot of them carried their own scars after the last mission—even if some showed it more than others, he noted, hearing Cheetor’s triumphant exaltations.

“Very well,” he answered finally, and Rattrap looked up, “you’re dismissed.”

A relief came over Rattrap that he hadn’t expected, and he reached for Optimus’s massive servo to shake. His small servo was utterly dwarfed by only two of the Fearless Leader’s digits; it was like shaking hands with a Titan.

“Appreciate it, Boss-Monkey,” he said, voice cracking with unexpected feedback. He realized then that this might be the last time he saw his leader, for a long while, at least. Part of him didn’t expect to ever come back from this journey he was about to embark on…but then, Rattrap got that feeling just about every mission he went on.

“I hope we’ll cross paths again,” Optimus said with a finality that seemed to make Rattrap feel secure, gently clutching the smaller bot’s servo in his own, “and sooner, rather than later.”

“Yeah,” Rattrap squeaked out, then turned to leave before he embarrassed himself further…or found it impossible to go.

As he turned his back on the Axalon crew, Rattrap put the Beast Wars behind him, along with Earth, history, the Autobots, all of it, clearing his processor of any of his old mission. He was on Cybertron now, and he had a task of his own. It was an unusual mission, probably unheard of, risky, and painful, and maybe impossible: he planned to reverse a spark-bond.

Not just any spark-bond, but his own, shared with his spark-mate of cycles passed, who went to join the Matrix and the Allspark itself, some…Primus, was it two decacycles, at least, already? Not to mention how many light-years… Dinobot, yes, that’s what he was called, had passed on, his spark ascending into the cosmic array, like some poetic tragedy, rising up until he was out of sight, another pinpoint of light over an endlessly clear primeval Earth sky.

Or at least, he was supposed to.

Spark-bonds are supposed to break when one of the mates dies. The process was akin to making redundancies in a circuit: you add a second set of wires and switches just in case something happens to the first set, then, when the first set goes out, well, the circuit can still function, but it’s like half of it is just burned out, empty, like a black hole, the space between the stars.

That’s how Rattrap saw it, at least. He knew anecdotally of the effects of losing a spark-mate: it was like losing half of your own spark, tearing it in two, never to be repaired, a huge gash always felt for the rest of the remaining partner’s life. Some bond-mates even expired from grief, their processors too overwhelmed by the despair of losing such a big part of themselves that they just...went offline. Some others became lethargic, as if they were running on half-power, for the rest of their wretched lives.

But, well, that’s not what happened to him.

Something had gone wrong, like a little too much of Dinobot’s spark had been transferred over in the bond. Instead of feeling half-empty, Rattrap felt rather…over-full, like he was running at 200% capacity all the slagging time. He overheated much quicker, his memory chips sometimes went fuzzy, and it seemed like the whole thing was messing with his optic and audial sensors, because he could sometimes see and hear things he knew he wasn’t really experiencing. He could only attribute his operational issues to the bond, as they started after Dinobot went offline, and his spark travelled away into the galaxy, Rattrap watching it go with his own, fully-functioning—if a bit misty—optics.

The bond was botched, somehow, and Rattrap needed it fixed. Besides the discomfort it gave him, he knew, somehow, that Dinobot was hurting, too. His spark, or what was left of it, just a back-up of a memory stored in Rattrap’s own spark chamber, thrashed and fought frantically, like a soldier visited by nightmares. The angry spark-shard, or whatever it might have been, was in pain, and wanted to be free. And Rattrap would give it—give him—that, even if the task took his own life.

Only…he had no idea how to go about it. It was likely such a thing had never, would never, should never have been done. Spark-bonds were exceedingly rare, and as such the desire to break them surely even rarer. Obviously no decent Maximal diagnostic bot would attempt such a feat, and Predacons would surely take it as a sign of ultimate weakness to relent under the pressure of a botched bond. To suffer in loyal agony was more the Predacon way, it seemed, given the way Predacons groveled under their leader’s pedal to the bitter end. But Rattrap was not so inclined.

Maybe he was weak. Sure, maybe that was it. Maybe the memory was just too painful, too close. Whatever exactly it was, Rattrap needed out.

He had but one hope—a scientist, so powerful, and so elusive he was possibly more legend than mech, now, hiding out somewhere beyond the Sea. If he was still online—maybe he would know what to do. Or at least be willing to give Rattrap’s request a shot. It was his only choice, and he’d made it long ago.

“Well,” Rattrap said softly, when he was clear of the landing pad and safely anonymous in his robot mode, blending in easily with the Cybertronian crowd as if he’d never left. He looked down at his spark chamber, feeling it thump with the echo of life, feeling the memory of his spark-mate ever present. “We’re home.”

Rattrap walked the streets of Cybertropolis with the sort of ever-alert stagger of a recent veteran, always expecting something to come out of the shadows and fire at him. Inferno, Tarantulas—memories of long-dead predators floated to the forefront of his mind, as if they could jump out at any moment and threaten him. Not even their memories had returned to Cybertron with them, yet still, the niggling fear of capture nearly drove Rattrap into hiding at every suspicious noise that rattled his audial sensors.

He blamed the meekness and diminutive nature of his beast-mode. After all, what advantage would an Earth-rat have on a planet populated almost entirely by vehicles, appliances, and ships? In fact, it begged the question of what use would any of the Axalon crew’s alternate modes have on Cybertron? Would they need to reformat? What if their alt modes became damaged, and there was insufficient data to repair them? After the fear of being ambushed finally started to fade from Rattrap’s processor, insecurity about his alt mode took its place. What was he doing here, on Cybertron, dressed like an alien organic? What if, what if?

Despite his concerns, he wasn’t in a position to reformat, and he feared it would do something to his now mutated spark. And somehow…there was the sense of nostalgia, an attachment to the body he’d awoken to on Earth, and the body Dinobot had loved to deride.

“Rodent,” he would spit, huge, gnashing teeth of his alt mode bared in a sneer, “how does it feel to be always at my feet?”

“Better than bein’ up there, Dino-breath,” Rattrap would reply, making a disgusted face. Caught up in the memory, Rattrap hardly realized he was walking the streets suddenly alone, the crowd completely dissipated.

Rattrap realized why. He’d come into a bad neighborhood, or at least by Cybertropolis standards. The metropolis built on the ruins of the glorious Iacon was a shining example of Cybertronian ingenuity and architecture, with skyscrapers of silver and blue, steel and copper, and suspended roadways that wound around each other in perfect harmony, creating an endlessly organized pattern between the buildings. But even the brilliant city had its dark places.

Places where decent Transformers dared not venture. Places where mechs shot up illegal fuel mixes and tore up the town, and still-hungry survivors of the latest civil war satisfied their need for violence in less-than honourable ways. The streets turned dark, street lamps turning a blind eye to the corruption of the block, the metallic brilliance of the building faces turned dull in the dim light. The high light of daytime lit his path as Rattrap went further into the shadowy area, the glow of this crimson optics on the road before him. He felt even more comfortable here, as a rat, instinctively drawn to the safety of the darkness, than when he had lived here before the war.

His apartment building looked the same as ever, looming and impassive, with a quaint sort of inferiority complex some buildings sported when sat next to the massive, gleaming skyscrapers of the city. The rectangular structure had curved edges, and shone in metallic purples and greens, the most awkward of combinations, yet striking and familiar. Rattrap approached the front door, struts moving automatically, pedals falling gently on the road before he stopped at the entrance, and paused.

He looked up at the building’s face, sensors indicating other bots inside, but seeing and hearing none. This wasn’t exactly the kind of place where your neighbors came out to greet you with a cheery tone and freshly-polished smile. He took in a deep intake, pressing a well-remembered code into the keypad at the front door, sighing with relief when the metal panel slid aside.

The door to the lift creaked and stuttered open, as usual, making Rattrap chuckle, and the spark inside him shudder and pinch with disgust.

“What?” Rattrap shrugged emphatically, addressing the voice inside him for the second time since landing on the planet, “it’s not the classiest place, but what else did you expect?”

The elevator rose slowly up the floors to the third from the top, where Rattrap’s room was centered, most inconspicuously in the middle of the hall. Not the top floor, not the bottom, not the middle. He was about as far from where you could reasonably guess as possible, and that’s how he liked it. He wondered, now, what compelled him to make himself so isolated from his fellow mechs, in his old life, before The Mission. Something solitary in him, or maybe a sense of privacy, kept him living in places like this, when he could reasonably afford more amicable abodes. The amount of credits transferred to his account after this mission would more than afford him the nicest, highest suite in the entire city, but for some reason this seemed much safer, and just…better.

“I know, I know,” Rattrap said to the non-presence in the room, the judgemental ex-Predacon whose spark was thrumming agitatedly inside his chest, “it’s probably not your taste.” He looked around at the state of the apartment, the mess on the floor, the appliances and gadgets torn apart and half-rebuilt on the counters and shelves. Projects sat half-finished before curiosity moved him on to something else, and he abandoned the old hobbies where they fell. It was a mess. A rat-nest, some would have called it.

“I can do without your critique, thank you very much!” Rattrap barked, as a nondescript thud rattled his inner sensors. He liked to think the random rattlings of his warped spark were his old mate communicating with him in some way, though that was probably just an illusion. Sparks that have moved on have moved on, and that’s all there was to it.

Rattrap didn’t believe in the whole “Cult of the Spark” philosophy that some mechs followed, that said the sparks of your loved ones who passed on were living in eternal peace with Primus himself, floating merrily about in the cosmos. Nor did he believe the idea that the sparks of those who offlined were simply reformatted into new Transformers, and your best buddy the wrecker-bot who died in a building collapse could have been “Re-formed” and living as your communications console right now. It seemed just a little too farfetched to take on sheer faith. Faith was never Rattrap’s strongest suit.

“Not like you have to live here!” Rattrap went on, as the convulsing of his spark stuttered to a halt, and he realized the implication of his words. Sure, there was a time when he actually wanted the ol’ slagger to live with him. When he looked forward to showing Dinobot the Maximal side of the town, where Dinobot, now reformatted, could travel without fear of persecution. It was decacycles ago, but sure, he had wanted that.

Not that he’d ever said anything to the mech himself. Who knows if Dinobot would even have wanted to have anything to do with the Maximal city, or Rattrap’s meagre offerings of a one-room apartment in a bad part of town. It was a pipe-dream, anyway, and one that was as burned-out, now, as the half-opened burner plate on Rattrap’s counter.

“Yup, this’s home sweet home, alright,” Rattrap mumbled, shaking those lofty thoughts of shared habitation free from his processor. He went around the room finding what he’d come to retrieve, a few provisions for the road, back-ups and discrete weapons to keep himself safe in less hospitable environments. He found a ten-pack of Energon supplements in a pile of broken extractors and stuck them in his back compartment, and a small repair kit next to the power generator, which he put away as well.

For weapons he took a tiny pistol and an even smaller, razor-sharp scalpel blade, typically only available to diagnostic workers for doing surgeries, because it could cut through almost any plate materials like butter. Rattrap almost hoped his life would be put in mortal danger, just so he would get the chance to use it and see how it worked.

He gathered everything and left the apartment without locking up (one didn’t really do that in this sort of place), dashing back down the lift as if he was going to be caught. The building door opened into the same bleak, barely illumined landscape, which in turn opened into a gently-curving roadway that meandered off into the distance, looping around the edge of a tall storage facility and disappearing beyond.

That was as good a place to start as any.

Rattrap’s servos trembled as he tried to work on the console before him, compromised optic faculties blurring the screen and colouring it red and pulsing. He was angry, and not for the first time, at his raptor comrade, steam venting out of every seam as he raged silently in the maintenance room.

They had gotten in another fight, but this one had claws that sunk deep. Each insult kept cycling through his memory banks, bearing prongs, nasty and sharp, that seared into his circuitry.

And the worst part was it was mostly Rattrap’s fault. There was one thing, among all the possible derisions they could come up with, one subject that was never brought up, and that was Dinobot’s former allegiance. Size, shape, strength and personality (or lack thereof) were all up for teasing, but it was a silent agreement between them that Rattrap didn’t bring up the larger mech’s former team. It just wasn’t fair. While the saurian wasn’t ashamed of his past, being reminded of the lack of faith his supposed comrades had in him was unequivocally jarring. It put one in a position of power over the other—after all, no other Maximal had to answer for being the once-ally to the megalomaniacal rebel leader.

So Rattrap felt pretty guilty, though he hid it under layers of anger and resentment, pressed it down so tightly it turned adamantine, an immortal nugget of regret that would lodge in his gears for the foreseeable future. He went through the motions of typing commands into the maintenance console, watching the same subroutine over and over again, not really taking in any of the information, too distracted by his own misery.

Sooner or later, he would need to apologize, even if it would likely be under duress. Firing squad, if Rattrap could choose. But for now, he stared blankly at the screen, digits stuttering on the vibrant panes.

A tap against the doorframe surprised him, but Rattrap didn’t move. The familiar clunking of pedal servos on the floor echoed behind him, but he remained facing the computer in silence.

“Vermin,” Dinobot uttered from over his shoulder, and Rattrap huffed.

“What?” he barked, then stiffened as Dinobot pulled him into an embrace.

Rattrap froze as two thick arms circled around his torso, enwrapping him from behind. The warmth of Dinobot’s chest cavity radiated up his back, even through his shield, and Dinobot lay his faceplate against the top of Rattrap’s helm, bringing their frames together.

They stood like that, Rattrap slowly moving his stunned servos to wrap around Dinobot’s arms, embracing him back as well as he could.

Just like that, no apology was needed. Taking solace in each other’s vulnerabilities was tantamount instead, and Rattrap slowly felt his trembles subsiding, his limbs becoming firm and still again. The whirring of steady gears soothing his agitated processor, Rattrap didn’t say a word, letting Dinobot hold him as long as he wanted.

After a few cycles they separated, and Rattrap turned on his heel to face the giant bot, who was looking down at him with the usual mix of confidence and sorrow on his inscrutable faceplate.

“You good?” Rattrap asked, finding his voice coming out surprisingly creaky. He cleared his vents with a rough expulsion of air.

“Better than you,” Dinobot replied, with a delighted smirk. They went off that day without another word, the moment belonging only to the two of them.

Rattrap continued down the road until it turned into wasteland, jagged bits of road and rebar sticking up here and there, giving was to the now-empty land outside the city. Once, before the war, the suburbs surrounding New Iacon were filled and bustling with bright-eyed Transformers: now, there simply weren’t enough left to fill the in-between zones, and as such they had fallen into disarray, now empty monuments to lives lost.

Rattrap stepped lightly between bits of debris in his robot mode for as long as he could, suddenly ashamed of his foreign alt-mode on his home planet. He recalled that his beast-mode hid him from enemy perception; would the same effect work here? Or would the alien form just make him stand out more? After all, an alien organic in the rubble of the city would be an oddity.

When finally his footfalls became too disrupted on the uneven ground, he transformed, sliding his wheels onto his rump and walking on all fours instead. Like this, he could duck between bits of rubble and under arches of cement blocks, leaned hastily together in rudimentary A-frames. He snuck across the wastes of the outer city, the going slow, until it was night, and the lightless landscape rose before him.

He caught himself thinking about the advantages of his new form, then, as he walked distractedly through the wastes. He set his sensors to night-vision and his speed to auto, letting his narrow, primal pedals carry him as he went.

Would the beast forms of he and his crew eventually expire, like out-of-model computers? If so, could he expect an upgrade? He would prefer a detection drone alt-mode, if possible, able to scout out for miles in all directions if he was being tailed by a Pred. Drones, of course, didn’t have weapons, he recalled, so he would have to find a way around that…

Why was he even thinking about weapons, anyway? The war was over, the Beast Wars complete, Megatron utterly finished. He would probably have to find a real job, too, after this. Something in security, or surveillance, if he was lucky.

That is, if he survived this mission.

He fully expected that when he did meet the Decepticon scientist, he would he gutted and strewn-out across on examination table, ended as quickly as discovered. Or else, jarring Dinobot’s spark-shard, or whatever it was, from his own would disrupt his circuitry so much it would leave him unable to function. Still, like every suicide mission he had undertaken until now, he would follow through, grumbling all the way.

“I hope you appreciate all I’m doin’ for ya,” Rattrap mumbled, looking down at his sealed chest-plate, which shuddered in reply.

Joints slippery with the exertion of interface, Rattrap moved to gain his stability on the edge of the berth, swinging his short pedals over the side, where they swung in the air, well above the ground.

It wasn’t the first time they’d done it, and it wouldn’t be the last time they would end up like this, high on the adrenaline of battle and a sense of “holy slag, we’re still alive, let’s do something stupid”, and fall into congress together, parts crashing against parts, panels being mashed, circuits lighting up in every wavelength on the spectrum. But Rattrap still felt inclined to dash away afterwards, as if he would get caught having “feelings” or something equally as humiliating.

This time, Dinobot caught him by the wrist.

“Join with me,” he suggested, battle-borne roughness gone in favour of an improvised sweetness. He kissed Rattrap’s silvery digits, gently dragging his razor-sharp teeth across the knuckle-joints.

It took a moment for Rattrap to realize what the other mech meant, and when he did, he tore his servo away.

“I don’t think so,” he replied, and Dinobot frowned in distaste.

“Why not?”

“Don’t like bein’ tied down,” Rattrap replied caustically, “I don’t believe in monogamy. I already promised my spark to Primus. I’m bonded to my job. I’m allergic to bonding—if ya want, I can randomize some more excuses.”

Dinobot ignored the insolence and reached for him again, trailing a massive clawed digit down his back in a way that he knew—just knew—sent shivers down his smaller partner’s spinal plates. “I don’t want to share you with someone else.”

Rattrap felt his faceplate heat up at the unguarded sentiment of that confession, but he shook his head just the same. “Maybe I wanna be shared. Maybe I’m too much bot for you to handle.”

Irritated by the challenge, Dinobot snarled, digits crunching a dent in the edge of the berth.

“Impudent rodent,” he hissed.

“Stuck-up saurian,” Rattrap retorted, flashing a grin. He stood, then, and went out of the berth, stopping only to syphon off the excess lube from his joints, erasing all evidence of them together before facing the rest of the crew. Their intimacy was still theirs and theirs alone, no one else needed to know.

Across the valley, Rattrap knew, only anecdotally, that there was an old Predacon base, where a handful of rebels had set up a camp away from the persecution of the city, after Megatron had become a bona fide criminal. They turned that day from a lobbyist group with radical pro-assimilation, anti-diversity ideals, to a legitimate criminal organization, forced to hide in daylight lest they be taken in for questioning simply for the sigil they wore on their chassis.

Rattrap actually felt a little sorry for them. Surely there were peaceful Predacons, or at least those who didn’t kowtow wholly to Megatron’s wild ideas, just as there were Maximals opposed to the war that were outfitted with offensive weapons and drafted anyway, but they all were swept up in the fervor of civil war just the same.

Not that Rattrap was feeling sympathetic to the Preds, now. He wasn’t quite that soft yet.

“Don’t you worry about me,” Rattrap chided his spark-chamber as he clambered over the rocks and debris, “I can handle myself. I was doin’ solo espionage missions when you were just two spot-welds and a pile of wire.” He grinned, silver dental plates flashing. “Wait, or are you older than me? I guess that’s just my go-to insult.”

Chuckling to himself as he felt his spark burn a little with irritation, Rattrap went on his way. Across the valley of immolated architecture, there was a narrow path running through what seemed to be a ramshackle town, built of undeveloped shapes and scraps of metal. The area seemed completely abandoned, save for a few blips of Rattrap’s radar, but nothing of real note. This was probably the old camp, by now completely abandoned.

Remaining in beast-mode, Rattrap decided to follow the path down the centre, as it was clearly the quickest route through the area. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea, but sometimes Rattrap did follow the mantra “hidden in plain sight”. Maybe the closer he was to danger, the further from harm he would be.

Stalking into the camp, keeping a careful eye on both sides of the trail, Rattrap sniffed eagerly at the air for any sign of life. There was none, but he didn’t trust only his senses, and flashed on his long-range radar instead. Still nothing.

The air felt thick, filled with something. It stank like malice. The structures on either side of him appeared to be small housings built from the ruins of buildings, tiny maintenance sheds, really, not exactly foreboding.

Gathering what little courage he had, Rattrap switched to robot mode, still walking stealthily along, but now with much improved motor control. His radar still showed nothing, until the faintest light seemed to creep into the corner of his vision, and then another…and another.

His display was pinging with dozens of different signatures in seconds. He froze as the menacing green markers drew nearer, converging on his location hastily. He still couldn’t see a thing in his peripherals, but his radar was reacting frantically, and Rattrap was halted with fear.

His spark began to rotate frantically, and soon he felt a clenching in his chest that was so deep and penetrating, he fell to his knees in misery. The foreign half of his spark was reacting wildly, ready for a fight, thrashing and twisting about in his chest like a virus.

“Not…now,” he murmured under his cautious intake, reaching a servo around his aching chest cavity. Teeth clenched he tried to get back to his pedals to no avail, back arching.

The green indicators were encroaching on him fast, but he couldn’t see a thing. They must’ve been in the camps to his sides, but he couldn’t sense their approach with anything but his internal systems. In nanoseconds they would be upon him, but instead of fleeing, he was trapped prone by his rebellious spark.

It wasn’t right. A spark-bond wasn’t supposed to be like this, especially not after your partner had passed on. Rattrap could barely intake. He was curled over himself on the narrow path, alone in the dark, save for the other presence inside him.

“I…can’t move—!” Rattrap hissed, digits scrabbling over his chamber door. By Primus, he was going to get caught. This defective bond would be his undoing, and not for the usual reasons.

He felt light flare up inside him, brighter than a flame, and suddenly, he could feel its pain. It was the same way it felt when Dinobot reacted to his former comrades turning on him, a mix of shame and fear, a yearning to defeat, a desire to protect…

“I’m…fine,” Rattrap huffed out, clenching his arms over his chest, nearly sinking to the ground head-first with the pain. “You can…let go,” he hissed, barely above static, and finally, blessedly, the trapped feeling subsided and he was able to stand.

Carefully getting to his feet, the foreign indicators nearly upon him, Rattrap dashed away, transforming back to beast mode mid-stride, spinning away as fast as his wheels could carry him. He didn’t stop fleeing until he’d left the camp behind, and there wasn’t so much as a ping from a stationary satellite on his sensors.

Rattrap skidded down an embankment of twisted metal and rust, flipping back into robot mode only when he knew he was good and hidden in a pile of rubble. He was intaking frantically, coolant pooling in his vents as he tried to calm down. Travelling would be easier in the night, but even his enhanced nighttime tracking equipment needed to be charged, and he needed recharging, right now.

Cycling slowly returning to normal speed, Rattrap curled up on his side in robot mode, wedged tightly under a shelter of rubble. He needed to find that scientist, and the sooner, the better. He was a mess. His own circuitry, his very spark—was working against him. Trying to free his memory banks of all stress, he drifted into stasis, only temporarily, to regain a bit of his waning charge.

Rattrap’s digits traced the stripes on the thick rubber of Dinobot’s outer skin, beastly disguise folded onto his chest plate, eyes unilluminated. Their beast-forms were still foreign-feeling even after all this time, but, Rattrap realized gradually, that he’d spent more time with his crewmates in them than out of them. He could barely remember what the group of them looked like unformatted, and of course, he hadn’t ever seen Dinobot in his non-dino form. What kind of alt-mode did he take on Cybertron? A jet, a wrecker, a tank? Or something utterly unrecognizable to a Maximal? If Rattrap had met him on Cybertron, would he even have thought to take a second look?

“Hey,” Rattrap muttered, looking up at the bot in whose arms he was currently spooned, who lied reclined on his berth, a thoughtful expression glazing his optics. Dinobot peered down at him, face firm, stark as always in the dim lighting of the private bay.

“Do Preds, uh…ever join sparks?” Rattrap asked, suddenly. The way Dinobot’s eyes narrowed at him made him regret asking almost immediately. He didn’t know why the thought suddenly came to mind.

“Of course,” Dinobot intoned, “did you assume they did not?”

Rattrap ducked his head, suddenly ashamed. The answer to that particular question was that for all of his life, Rattrap had been raised to believe that Predacons were built from different schematics, made from different parts, dark materials forged in the crucible of Unicron or worse. They were practically a different species: unreasonable and violent as their Decepticon ancestors, always wanting power and betraying anyone to get it. But that clearly wasn’t the whole story, and the proof that Predacons were capable of something deeper than destruction and mayhem was currently intaking softly under his wandering digits.

“Well, you know,” Rattrap said diplomatically, “figured there’s gotta be some cultural differences.”

“You think Predacons are capable only of destruction and chaos, that there are no complex workings that constrain their society?” Dinobot questioned, “you think they are not able the experience the same intricate feelings of honour, guilt, pride, and joy of which Maximals are capable?”

Rattrap’s faceplate heated up with embarrassment. It was still a little hard to swallow, the concept that Predacons could be something other than 100% bad news.

“For Predacons, joining sparks is the ultimate sign of respect for your fellow transformer,” Dinobot explained, in that poetic sort of tone that made Rattrap equal parts awed and amused, “when melding, the two sparks war with each other for dominance—being able to resist domination, to retain one’s own self despite the intrusion, is the decisive proclamation of one’s true strength.”

Rattrap frowned a little at the concept. So yet another rite-of-passage was conceived as some sort of fight-to-the-death for the Preds, huh? Actually seemed pretty typical.

“Why not just…y’know, share? I mean, why fight for control?” Rattrap asked with distaste, and Dinobot returned a wistful smile.

“That would be a sign of disrespect,” Dinobot answered, “we show our admiration by allowing ourselves to be put in the position of being potentially crushed by our partners.”

Rattrap’s optics widened; the use of the familiar “we” did not go unnoticed by him. It was a little unnerving, still, when Dinobot referred to himself as a Predacon, as rare as it was, and Rattrap found himself drawing a little bit closer to the larger mech, leaning his faceplate against a broad shoulder. Rattrap thought…somehow, that if Dinobot ever felt the urge to turn on them and go join the wrong side again, he would be able to stop him. Change his mind, somehow. It was probably selfish and over-estimating his own persuasive ability, but, well, it was all hypothetical anyway, so what did it hurt to imagine?

“Have you changed your mind about melding with me?” Dinobot asked coolly, the timbre of his voice shadowy like charcoal, or the fog that sometimes clung around the fields of the terra in the early morning, when it was still dark outside. Rattrap never got used to the gentle tone, twitching and pulling away.

“No, no!” Rattrap answered, “not a chance, Dino-breath.”

As much as he tried to sound as appalled as possible by the idea, it just wasn’t genuine, and Dinobot noted the anxious look on his face with a wicked smirk. Rattrap frowned and smacked him harshly on the chassis.

“Don’t you go gettin’ any ideas!” Rattrap scolded, “it’s not happening.” Dinobot simply continued to smirk, expression so smug Rattrap could almost taste the smarminess in the air. “It’s not! I promise you dat!”

Rattrap rebooted under one layer of charcoal dust and on top of another, rolling over onto his side and taking in the bleak landscape on his sensors. He briefly reflected upon how uncomfortable it suddenly was to rest in rubble rather than the sturdy arms of another bot, but he brushed those thoughts off as quickly as they came upon him.

Maybe his systems were slow; maybe he needed to be reformatted. Maybe his Earth-form wasn’t up to snuff back on his home planet, because it felt like everything was lagging, running slow, catching and clipping. He could see shapes in the far distance, buildings, maybe, but it was like looking through a tinted lens. Had Cybertron always looked this desolate? Or was it just empty inside of him?

Rattrap stood cautiously and started his journey again. His tracking software kept him going in the right direction, and one pedal servo hitting the dirt at a time, he crept onwards. The junkyard turned into open desert, which swelled suddenly into the ruins of an ancient city, a library at its centre. He wandered through the streets as rubble grew into larger and more complete buildings, until finally near the middle of town, the city was untouched, and…populated?

Rattrap looked carefully around; the sun had risen above Cybertron and was casting the whole of the city in a greyish-white light. Shadows hung carefully around the edges of buildings, down alleys, and he found himself nearly jumping out of his skin with every noise that rattled out of the darkness. He ducked into the space between two buildings and hid, peering carefully out at the quiet city.

Slowly, mechs and femmes started milling about the streets, blowing the dust from the roads with careful precision, entering the buildings that stood gracefully, if a bit weathered by the dust in the air. The fervor was nothing like that of Cybertron, where vehicles zoomed past nonstop, suspended in skyways and tearing across overpasses—but still, it was busy, here, and Rattrap could sense only Maximal signatures, so he slowly revealed himself to the fray.

It was a city ravaged by civil war. Many of the bots were lagging or damaged at best, to say nothing of their landscape and architecture. Buildings were burned and caving, the streets were rocky and unkempt.

Rattrap wanted to tell these bots that it was over: the war was won. A previous version of himself very well might have stood up and announced to the whole city his heroic part in the plan to stop Megatron, and would have been glad for it. But not only did he have another mission at risk, he also felt he shared a deep sense of loss with these civilians. No amount of good news would turn their hearts: their city was still ruined. Yet still they went on.

Rattrap took in a deep cycle of dusty air, walking unnoticed through the crowd. His unusual half-mammal form didn’t even garner any more attention than the occasional curious glance, temporarily cast his way before moving on. He moved unseen, the perfect surveillance bot, perfect espionage, perfect decoy…he nearly lost his sense of self in that crowd. His parts drifted into the parts of the other Cybertronians, until he was blending together with them in the shifting mass of the city.

When he finally cleared the damaged streets, he cast a quick glance back over his shoulder, compelled only slightly to do something about their plight. He felt the unseen voice inside him agree, with a swirl of hot energy boiling in his core. But there was nothing he could do for them, not right now. He had to move on.

“You okay, Dino-breath?!” Rattrap called to an unresponsive shell, knocking his servos against Dinobot’s prone chestplate. “Come on, buddy. Speak to me!”

“….Nnnrrrwhat?!” came a growled reply, and Rattrap sighed with relief as Dinobot surged back online, shaking his helm back and forth and swiping the dirt from his chassis, snapping closed the diagnostic panel Rattrap had popped open and fiddled around with in his panic. A Pred attack left them vulnerable and clambering in the dirt like blind beasts for a time, until Dinobot’s system simply gave out and he collapsed onto his back in the sand, as if he could no longer sustain himself. Rattrap feared he’d gone offline or shorted out, and he wouldn’t be able to transport the hulking bot back to base himself. He could carry Dinobot’s weight, especially now in his improved transmetal form, but not with his own trajectory and guidance systems running shoddily, and his joints full of sand.

“Phew,” Rattrap let out coolant, sitting down in the sand, leaning against Dinobot’s side with one elbow perched on his broad chestplate, “thought I was rid of ya for good, for a nanosecond there.”

Dinobot groaned as he rolled to sit up, wincing with the strain on his joints. “As if I would offline before vermin such as you.”

Rattrap smiled a little, returning the jab heartily, “oh yeah? Because you were pretty out of it for a while there. I figured one of Waspinator’s stray shots musta fried your circuits.”

The saurian growled and turned over, falling across Rattrap and pinning him to the ground with two servos on his wrists. “Not likely!” He leaned forward as if to bite his teammate with his massive incisors, but instead landed against his breastplate with a gentle kiss. His metallic mouth plates clacked against Rattrap’s chassis, making him squirm under the delicate attentions.

“Hey,” Rattrap protested lightly, “see, this is why I was hoping you were outta my whiskers permanently!”

Dinobot didn’t respond but to kiss more intently, trailing his thick digits down the groves of Rattrap’s forearms, into the joints of his elbows, which he knew were particularly sensitive, and the rodent responded ardently, yelping as a shiver ran from the base of his support column to the tips of his digits.

“As if you could continue to function without me,” Dinobot whispered in a deep, raspy voice that made Rattrap swoon. He smiled as fingers flicked against his delicate joints, beneath the edges of armour-plates and strayed close to deep, there-to untouched circuits. Rattrap endured the attention with a sighing sound to his voice, realizing just how comfortable he’d become with the larger bot’s caresses. It was probably dangerous, it would probably come back to hurt him, just like every other time he’d, well, given up any sense of his reserve to another bot, and there had been plenty of times—but he felt so comfortable there under the other mech’s touches, he barely heard the proximity alert signal blasting in his helm.

“Rattrap, Dinobot, do you copy?” Optimus’s voice sounded over their shared coms, and Rattrap struggled to sit up, only to find his body pinned again by the ex-Pred’s massive servos. Dinobot’s digit sunk into the dip between two of his torso plates and Rattrap nearly moaned right into his waiting uplink with the Big Bot.

“Yeah, loud and clear! Just ran into a little, uh…resistance,” Rattrap called back, batting Dinobot off of him, but the larger mech was clearly having too much fun flustering him with subtle attentions to his chassis that had Rattrap’s system swirling with needy energy. “Not the time!” he huffed at Dinobot with his microphone disconnected, so their Fearless Leader wouldn’t have to be subjected to the squeaky sounds he made while Dinobot teased him.

“I’m 15 clicks inbound,” Optimus answered, his voice powerful even under the distortion of the coms, “be right there. Tell me everything that happened!”

“Roger dat!” Rattrap shoved at Dinobot’s shoulders, only succeeding in driving the bigger bot’s body down further against his, bringing their frames into contact along endless pathways of sparking energy. Rattrap gasped and lifted his helm to the sky, clamping his jaw plate shut to resist a particularly pathetic sound issuing from him. When he looked down at Dinobot, he saw the reptile’s stark faceplate conformed into a smirk, and he frowned back. He was a brute, and an arrogant one at that. Rattrap had fallen in love with an arrogant brute.

“What am I evah gonna do wit’you?” Rattrap asked, shaking his helm. He ran a servo across Dinobot’s helm, adoring the affection just the same. Just so long as Big Bot didn’t see them mid-interface, he’d accept Dinobot’s eager advances, no matter where they took him.

Out of the battered city, Rattrap walked for what seemed like cycles until the architecture fell away, and the metal that sustained their cities became scarce. He travelled on until the sun rose high above the desolate landscape, and he walked, the fog and dust rising around him until he was practically inside it: The Sea.

It stretched out for fathomless kilometers from the shore, the land disintegrating into puddles of battery acid and run-off, then into empty wasteland wreathed in a constant, swirling cloud of rust and smoke. The ancient hell-storm remained the symbol of all fears, the villainous setting to every Cybertronian folktale, the site of every abomination and creator-less spawn to ever grace the planet, even if only in programs. It was the worst place imaginable, and the place Rattrap needed to get.

The gas wasn’t the biggest threat, Rattrap realized, thanks to his unique surficial alloy created for his Earth alt-mode. The blend of waterproof silicon and rust-proof steel had benefitted him greatly during the hot, humid days on prehistoric Earth, and saved his gears from jamming all to pieces when he was crawling through the mud and stone like his animal counterpart during surveillance missions on the foreign soil. He found himself once again appreciating his alien form, as he entered the swirling clouds in beast mode, rolling under the smog as he made his way across the crater.

It was several cycles before anything resembling technology appeared in the smoke; where before the entire landscape appeared like a barren asteroid, now stood small, uninviting structures, half-buried in the caked dust. The architecture appeared foreign, possibly from the old world, before The First War, but not like anything Rattrap knew. Then again, he’d never really left the cities of Cybertropolis and New Iacon in his lifetime, so he wasn’t surprised there were things unknown to him on his own planet. As it stood, he probably knew more about Earth than this place, now.

As he drew nearer, Rattrap’s core started to heat up and he worried for a moment his systems were clogging with the infamous Rust. But it didn’t feel like a physical issue, no, it was the same nagging, throbbing of a weary second spark in his chest, that made him lose course for a moment before resetting his tracking sensors.

“Leave it,” Rattrap hissed to the unresponsive energy source, “I got us dis far, didn’t I? I ain’t turnin’ back now.”

Despite himself Rattrap found himself appreciating the company as he entered deeper into the centre of the crater. There architecture grew taller, more recognizable as actual structures, until he came up against a massive wall, easily forty stories high, windowless, impenetrable, and with no end in sight in either direction. His sensors shuddered for a moment, and the desire to bury himself in the dirt like a rodent rose up in him rather quickly. He steeled his joints and flipped carefully into robot mode, even as the voiceless sound in his chest protested frantically.

“Ow!” Rattrap hissed as a shock ran through him like he’d bitten into an active wire. His spark clenched and fought and he struck a servo over his chest, as if to discipline it. “I’m fine! There’s no one here. He probably high-tailed it outta here centuries ago.”

Mood dropping slightly, Rattrap surveyed the wall, which rose out of the dust and unfathomably high. Because he couldn’t see either end, it seemed unstoppable, though it was probably just a large research or archival facility, the likes of which could be found anywhere else on Cybertron. Only, this wasn’t like anywhere else on Cybertron—this was foreign, old, dark. He went on.

Rattrap followed the wall until he found an intake vent, thoroughly clogged with years of rust and virtually ineffectual. With the notion that he was doing whoever owned the building a favour, he removed the filter plate and tossed it aside, switching to beast mode and putting his wheels up on his back so he could walk on all fours. It wasn’t a tight squeeze by any means, painfully reminding Rattrap of how small he was compared to other bots. Among Maximals, he was diminutive at best, and compared to his ancestors? If the sizes of the frames they found in the Arc were any indication, he could probably stand in Starscream’s hand, or sit in Rachet’s compartment comfortably. The old legends were never as scary as they were in that moment, when they sat dormant between the Axalon crewmembers.

He moved down the corridor, even as the spark-shard raged inside his body, telling him to turn back. Rattrap frowned, gritting his jaw plates together as he moved through the yawning shaft. The vent was long and twisting; all the small mech could do was continue forward until he came upon something.

He reached the end of a tunnel and came on another grate, quickly disconnecting it with the scalpel he’d snatched from the apartment. So far, no security protocols had nabbed him—there was nothing. No signatures of any kind, Maximal, Predacon, or older, were anywhere to be seen on Rattrap’s radar, which pinged dully with the shape of the room before him. He hopped down from the mouth of the vent and into the empty room, flipping to robot mode with a quiet recitation of the protocol.

It appeared to be an old research facility, replete with test chambers, tables, consoles, and stacks and stacks of used parts. By Rattrap’s deduction, it was for researching new weapons, at best, and torturing out-dated bots at worst. There were insect-like old parts—including heads and processors—lying all around the huge chamber, which had a balcony at least two stories high to look down upon the center of the room. Even coated in layers of rust and grime, and viewed through Rattrap’s night vision sensors, the facility was plain, bland, and economic. No elaboration was made to any of the architecture, which loomed stoic and monotone; all of the focus was on the research.

The chamber, too, was void of all life. Rattrap’s processor slowed to an ambling pace, half out of disappointment, and half out of relief. He never expected to find the great Decepticon scientist here, except for maybe traces, much less online. For some reason, he had this image in his head of Shockwave as the Great Survivor, who outlived the entire war and generations after him, through his cunning and enormous capacity for survival.

But it was too much to hope for. There was no one. No one left who could help him, help them.

On the other hand, Rattrap’s anxieties at least were assuaged by the lack of red signatures on his radar. What was he thinking? What had he expected he would do when he came upon one of the most powerful Decepticons of the first Great War? Shoot him with missiles? Tail-whip him a little? It was ridiculous. Rattrap was turning to leave whence he came, but as he turned around, he came face-to-swivel-plate with a humungous mech with one enormous, glowing optic.

The foreign mech scooped him up by the neck, gripping the intake tubes tight enough to crush the poly-fibre flat, restricting Rattrap’s air. He scrabbled his digits down an unyielding claw, the dark metal locked around him in a crushing grip.

“Shock…wave…” Rattrap gritted out, but the Decepticon didn’t move an inch. His head cocked to the side, optic aperture narrowing to a point as he examined the foreign bot.

“Strange composition. Alien alt-form,” Shockwave noted dryly, filing the information rather than acknowledging the bot struggling to function in his grip, “unfamiliar signature. Perhaps of the New Faction. Perhaps Primal’s lot.”

Rattrap groaned, kicking his pedals frantically towards the larger bot, but it was no use. He was trapped. He recalled the piles of used parts in each ill-lit corner of the chamber and his spark’s rotation grew frantic.

“Why did you come here?” Shockwave asked, head twitching as if his tracking sensors were bugged. But the steadfast gaze of his one, huge optic said anything but.

“I’ve been…lookin’ for ya,” Rattrap answered giving a bit of a huff of a laugh, even with collapsing air intakes, “I didn’t expect you’d be so…jumpy.”

“‘Jumpy’? You jump, not me. Your pedal struts are made for it,” Shockwave said, his voice low and ominously still, “what are you? What is your alt-form?”

“I’d love t’ tell ya, if I could…intake for a…nanocycle or two!” Rattrap hissed, processor growing fuzzy with lack of air. His fans were slowing to a halt, and he’d go into stasis in seconds. Only now did he realize that he’d gone a few cycles without refueling any Energon…and who knows how long he’d been wandering the Sea, with neither any landmarks nor solar orbit to judge time by.

Mercifully, the huge mech released him and Rattrap fell a few metres to the ground, jolting his tracking out of alignment. He scrabbled on the floor while a second voiceless frequency raged in his helm, but he ignored it, servos trembling on the hard floor.

“What are you?” Shockwave asked again, but before Rattrap could answer, he sunk to the floor of the chamber, examining him with his own eyes. His optic bulb widened and shrunk as he examined the stranger to his laboratory closely, tilting his head back and forth.

“A…Maximal. One of the New Factions,” Rattrap explained, “you know what we are, right? Even locked up in here, you must’ve had an audial on the outside.”

Shockwave didn’t answer, instead reaching out with one thick digit to prod Rattrap, who recoiled. The Decepticon wore a huge bisecting hook on one arm and a normal, five-digited hand on the other, and the former of the two loomed dangerously close to Rattrap’s midsection.

“I came here because I have…a proposition for you,” Rattrap continued, flicking the overzealous scientist’s wandering digits out of his face.

“So…how does dis work?” Rattrap whispered to a decidedly mute Dinobot, who was examining each of his silvery digits with extreme discretion, as if each was an alien artifact of its own. He hadn’t said much since Rattrap agreed to spark-bond with him, choosing instead to just watch him, studying him from head to pedal, occasionally kissing a fluttering digit clasped in his immense palm.

“How do you think?” Dinobot answered abruptly, looking up, red optic lights piercing.

“How should I know? I never done dis before,” Rattrap responded in kind, pulling his servo free. He could only take so much sap. If the poetry started, he was outta here.

“Neither have I,” Dinobot sighed, “such is the nature of such a ceremony.”

They were seated on the edge of Dinobot’s berth, on break from their respective duties as crewmembers, with only a cycle or so to spare to complete what was possibly the only system-changing event a Transformer went through in his or her lifetime. It was pretty daunting, but Rattrap had already seen two alt-mode changes, one or more alien attacks, plenty of Predacon raids, three bomb scares, and hundreds of close calls in his short time on this planet, so he was more-or-less in the mindset of thinking “what could possibly go wrong?”

…Which was probably not the best attitude to be feeling when entering into a spark-bond. This sort of thing…so final, so thorough, was supposed to be one of the most—if not the most—important moments in a bot’s life, if he or she was so lucky to get the chance. So why did Rattrap still feel so apprehensive?

“What troubles you?” Dinobot whispered, and Rattrap stared back at him with fizzling sensors. The look in the raptor’s eyes set his circuits alight, for more than one reason.

“I don’t know. I don’t think I can…” Rattrap frowned, pensive, “give anyone 100% of me, you know?”

“You do not need to,” Dinobot answered immediately, “this bond is not about relinquishing control, it is about exposing yourself to another’s competence. Showing him that you respect him and trust him enough to let him see the deepest, most sensitive part of you.”

Rattrap swooned, circuits flooding and sensors cloudy. It sounded good. Too good to be true. There was no way this would last. A Pred and a Maximal? Moreover two fighters who could barely stand each other’s company most of the time? (Okay, that was more-or-less just a front at this point, but Rattrap was hard-pressed to admit he actually enjoyed the raptor’s company more than going without.)

Dinobot’s thick claws hovered over Rattrap’s chestplate, snapping open the spark chamber. The light inside swirled and pulsed but didn’t move eagerly to greet the intruding servo, instead remaining deep inside the circular cavity.

Long digits approached the singing sphere and Dinobot crept closer with his own contained light, but the nearer he got, the more Rattrap withdrew, sensors flashing red with warning light.

“Wait,” Rattrap whispered, placing a servo over Dinobot’s, “let’s…not.”

The saurian snarled his frustration, but didn’t make a move to overpower Rattrap in any way, which was well within his abilities. “Why?”

“I ain’t sayin’ forever, just…not right now,” Rattrap explained softly. He didn’t really have an explanation for it himself. He was frightened, he had a bad premonition, more than that, it felt too strong, too intimate. It hurt. It made his circuits tighten, his joints clench, and on a non-physical level there was something inside him that was messy and foggy and he didn’t know how to approach it.

“Fine,” Dinobot hissed, stepping off of the berth. Despite his better nature—the one which he’d been showing a lot more of lately—his temper flared as he turned to leave. Rattrap’s jaw felt soldered shut as he watched the bigger bot go, the image of his retreating back far more painful than anything else warring inside his heart.

In retrospect, allowing a massive, ancient, and very possibly insane-since-the-moment-he-went-online Decepticon to inspect his circuitry was probably not the best idea. But Rattrap was never known for his brilliant, fool-proof designs. His only hope was that the scientist plucking at the circuit board in his back was more brilliant than he was, or at least had enough design sense to not skewer Rattrap on an energized pike and leave him to decorate his lab.

“Interesting: subject’s circuitry has been fundamentally changed to house a foreign subprogram,” Shockwave noted as he brushed a digit across a set of wires that had Rattrap flinch as a cold sensation ran up his back.

“Quit it with the ‘subject’ shtick, would’ya? I’ve got a name: Rattrap,” the Maximal replied, “and what you’re probably looking at is the ‘organic acclimatization’-dealy; we got it on Earth,” he explained, raising an eyebrow. Yeah, maybe this was a bad idea. Shockwave was the product of generations passed, before hundreds of years of progress and advancement swept the planet. This was the equivalent of a brand-new GPS-enabled Transformer asking an out-of-model geomapper to give him directions. Rattrap winced as another one of his wires was struck by a tiny tool.

“Incredible; there are two subroutines working in tandem…the ‘organic’ and the ‘Cybertronian’…how do they work together so seamlessly?” Shockwave’s diagnosis continued as if his subject was not even present. Charming guy: it’s no wonder the ’Cons left him planet-side. “And then…what’s this?”

Rattrap’s sensors sparked to life at the excited tone in Shockwave’s otherwise markedly dull voice. “You find it? You find what’s wrong with me?”

“Your system has definitely been altered, and not for the sake of efficiency, that’s for certain,” Shockwave responded. He stood behind Rattrap but his frame was so massive he could look over Rattrap’s shoulder and into his face with one big, unblinking optic without removing his grip on the smaller bot’s backplate. “You seem to already be aware of the cause of this. What is it?”

Rattrap’s intake spiked with a hiss, and he leapt immediately from the scientist’s grip. He turned his pistol on the larger bot, pointing it carefully at his optic stem as he backed away. The weapon seemed to be more for Rattrap’s own assurance than to warn Shockwave, however, as the Decepticon barely paid heed to the threat.

“It was a mistake. A big one,” Rattrap began, vocal output shaky despite himself. “A spark-bond all gone south. Bet you don’t see one a’ those every day, huh?”

Shockwave’s optic glow seemed to flare even brighter in response. His attention was clearly piqued—but it was hard to tell anything by his face otherwise.

“Well? Can you fix it? I need this bug reversed, and I need it bad. Dis spark needs to be out of me,” he announced, vocalizations going shaky and transparent as he spoke. He ignored the warring in his core as he spilled his insecurities, finally getting to say out loud the pain that had haunted him for these last two decacycles. “He’s stuck in there, he has nowhere to go. I know he’s in pain and I don’t want it anymore. First I thought I would do anything to get him back, but now I just…I need him to be free.”

Shockwave was impassive, unmoving. He appeared to be processing the information in silence, until he finally spoke, optic narrowing and widening as he thought.

“Very well,” he agreed, “I will attempt to separate your sparks. I think I may even have a spare bipedal dinobot frame or two around…” with that, he dashed away, leaving Rattrap to heave a sigh, chest plate sagging under the weight of his relief. It was almost over. It was…finally almost over.

The heat of battle didn’t seem like the appropriate place to do it, so Rattrap went utterly silent as he waited for them to return to base, spent and joints creaking with the ache of the wounds of the latest firefight. Halfway through the chaotic skirmish, Rattrap started to get this intense feeling of dread, of loss that he couldn’t shake, every time Dinobot went out of his sight. The feeling didn’t match when Cheetor or Optimus strayed from his line of vision or flickered on his radar, but the idea of Dinobot being out of his visual range tore him apart. Which is why he kept an eye on the huge bot’s back panels the whole agonizing trip back to the Axalon, following him into his berth and closing the door behind them without a word.

“What’s bothering you?” Dinobot accused, looking an irate Rattrap up and down. The smaller Maximal’s servos were quaking at his sides, balled up into small fists.

“Bond with me,” Rattrap said, mimicking the proposal Dinobot had made cycles hence.

The saurian didn’t answer right away, looking cautiously at Rattrap. “Are you certain?”

“I said so, didn’t I?!” Rattrap leapt forward, shoving Dinobot backwards into his berth, grabbing him by his forearms, the rubbery skin pinching under his grip. He climbed up over the bot’s lap on his knees, sitting atop him and holding him down. It was folly, really, to think he could do much as keep a single one of Dinobot’s digits in place with the strength of his miniature frame alone, but the larger mech didn’t move, staring cautiously up at him.

“It is an important decision,” Dinobot warned, “best not to be made in haste—” whatever he meant to say next was cut off by Rattrap meeting him in a kiss, and shoving open his spark plate. The circular covering opened and Dinobot’s spark was revealed, and they both stared down at the whirling orb for a long moment, before Rattrap pulled back enough to open his own chamber.

As the two sparks drew nearer, Rattrap’s sensors started to overload, radar whirring and optics blaring white. He vaguely sensed his alarms calling in warning as his systems began to overfill and short out, the closer he lowered his chestplate to Dinobot’s. The two sparks, nearly identical on the outside, blue and white and dancing organically into one another’s orbits, came closer to each other, until they were nearly touching, and Rattrap’s systems were nearly fried.

The massive energy surplus was like nothing he’d ever felt, and Rattrap’s helm lolled back, faceplate raised to the ceiling, optic sensors overloading as light flashed from his optic wells, streaming into bright white beams of light. His fingers dug into Dinobot’s forearms as all of his sensory feedback blared, all-consuming, all of his sensors alighting at once, prickling, setting aflame, until he went utterly offline.

When Rattrap’s consciousness faded back, his systems flicking online in languid succession, he was being held in Dinobot’s arms, their bodies finding each other sometime during the process, pressing their frames together everywhere there was frame to touch.

In his innermost processing, the deepest part of him, Rattrap didn’t feel very different, but there was definitely something new there alongside, something fervent and alive and pulsing in his inner chambers. It was like he’d been freshly formatted, received an upgrade to every system in his entire mainframe, his body responding to Dinobot’s proximity with grace and comfort. He felt like he didn’t have anything to hide, not anymore. Dinobot’s body enveloped him, held him, and he felt every inch of the other mech’s circuits mirror the feeling in his own.

Wrists hooking him into a slanted table, Rattrap frowned around the facility with anxiousness blaring across his sensors. For better or worse, he was really going through with it, prone and at the mercy of the Decepticon, there was nothing else he could do. His wiring trembled, the copper coils shivering inside the casings of his limbs as the scientist stood over him, his massive, looming frame soulless and unkind. Shockwave’s clawed forearm pried his spark chamber open, huge single optic aperture dilating with pleasure at the uncommon sight he found beneath.

Rattrap’s spark quavered like it never had before, shivering as if in the cold, swirling rapidly out of control until the bot himself could barely stay online. It shied away from Shockwave’s intruding attachments, the tiny, deadly light scalpel clasped between two digits…

Almost over.

It’s okay, Rattrap thought, desperately trying to calm the shuddering of the spark inside his chest, it’ll be over soon.

It spun and swirled, energy reacting to the stimulus Shockwave applied to his inputs here and there, the barely-conscious Maximal unable to tell the difference between the sound of his plates clacking together and the grinding of restless Decepticon gears looming above his head.

Suddenly, there was pain, a shock of disturbing stimulus to the deepest, most immutable levels of his programming, so intense his frame locked up. Every joint stung and ached with blinding, molten titanium-hot agony, so intense he couldn’t make a sound save for to choke out a small squeak of pain, body seizing and chestplate thrust to the ceiling with the tightening of his seams.

The last thing he saw was the swirling white-blue of his spark floating above his body, misshapen and in turmoil, swirling, flattening, contracting, and finally expanding outwards like a galaxy.

Holding Dinobot’s servo in his own while he offlined was oddly one of the proudest moments in Rattrap’s less-than-exemplary life. Knowing he had in his spark-mate an entirely brave, unbreakably admirable, (sometimes unbelievably intolerable) soldier of honour was something no one could take from him, and so he saluted his escaping spark proudly, without a hint of reluctance. His mate’s spirit rose into the galaxy, to rejoin Primus and be accepted willingly. Rattrap had never really put much stock into those old-fashioned beliefs about the Genesis of the Allspark, until that very moment. Love—like tragedy—made believers out of sceptics.

When he got back to his berth, servos clenched into indelible fists, pressed so tight he thought the joints would fuse that way, the put-together façade crumbled in nanoclicks, and he put his aching fist through the wall. The first and only hit sent a shockwave up his arm and through his entire frame, and he collapsed to his knees, struts striking the floor as he fell over onto his side, curling up as tight as his structure could manage.

The pain was unlike anything he’d ever felt. Less than fourteen cycles since he and Dinobot had mated sparks, the bond was being torn apart, the galaxy imploding like a burning star. The tearing, shredding sensation disabled every voluntary function, and feeling like each fibre of his circuitry was being stripped one-by-one, Rattrap lied motionless on the floor, crying in silent agony. He knew what he was in for before forging the bond, willingly tying his life force to that of another, but in no way was he prepared for the hurt. The pain didn’t stop for another cycle, and by then Rattrap’s energy was so depleted he could do nothing but go into shutdown, insensible, silent, forgotten, alone.

Rattrap came online with a tremble in his finer circuitry, peering around the room with curious red eyes. Shockwave was across the room tinkering excitedly with a new project, a large frame—heavy, joints stuttering when they did reposition, its motions incredibly deliberate, as if uncertain. It was a dinobot, with black and silver plating and an olive-green protective skin, which folded and popped when he—it—if it had any consciousness at all—moved.

He was unrestrained, so Rattrap sat up cautiously from the table, a brief diagnostics check telling him he was all in order, nothing removed or repurposed by the mad scientist with his back now to him. A small part of his instinct driver told Rattrap to attack now when the villain’s back was turned, but it was overridden by an overwhelming sense of lightness and freeness, which swirled through his frame like coolant mist. He felt light—but also empty, like he had no objective, nowhere to go, nothing to do. He was totally free, and totally lost.

“Did it work?” Rattrap asked, even though he thought he knew the answer. Shockwave cast him a cursory gesture, raising a clawed hand to the air and beckoning him forward. As the smaller bot stood, he could sense another presence in the room, familiar, compact, whispering its energy from somewhere nearby. He approached the Decepticon, who drew away from the saurian frame he was constructing, revealing its shape to the room.

The dinobot frame was big, not as massive as the Old models, but larger than Rattrap, towering over him in alt-mode and looking down with curious green eyes. It was in the shape of a terran dinosaur, but in inorganic dark green and silver tones, and a belly complete bare of reptile skin, made of interlocking metal plates instead. Half-creature, half-Cybertronian, all too…familiar. Shockwave continued to prick at its frame with tools, soldering closed the seams of a cracked case plate or two, and alighting circuits long dormant underneath the thick outer shell. The stranger read as a Maximal signature on his radar, but Rattrap was too cautious, too skeptical to hope.

“Vermin…?” the stranger spoke, inclining his large head, brilliant optics focusing on Rattrap’s diminutive form with curiosity, and Rattrap nearly fell apart.

“Dino-breath?” he couldn’t help but chuckle, coolant sloshing into his optic rims as he stepped forward, silver servos trembling as he did, “yeah, it’s me. Is it you?”

“I should think so,” Dinobot replied, scanning the room cautiously like a newly-formatted model, trying to understand his function, “but why…? My presence here seems…uncanny. Incongruous…”

At that moment, it was as though an understanding came over him and Dinobot’s new frame seized, plates moving and twitching anxiously as memories flickered back to him like tiny sensors lighting up on a grid until it was utterly full. His arms trembled and he batted away Shockwave’s attentive servo, which caught him in its massive hook.

“Not too hasty,” Shockwave muttered, and forcibly continued his treatment while the two Maximals watched helplessly.

Rattrap didn’t know what to do, now. He felt suddenly lost. Most of his programming was telling him to go to his struggling spark-mate, who was twitching in the grip of the larger mech, aware he was far outmatched and his systems were still configuring themselves in the wake of what was a major systems overhaul. But another part of his programming told him to leave—he was no longer needed here. His mission was over. It was over. He no longer felt the stinging connection of his mate’s spark—or whatever restless shard was left of it—crowding his own, but instead the calm complacency of knowing he’d done well by his beloved. It was over. He was free. They both were. Only, it was hard to tell by the saurian’s current bondage, with Shockwave’s claw squeezing his arm and the other servo molesting his plates.

Both Maximals were completely helpless to do anything about Shockwave’s capture of them, as he worked on lubricating joints, welding plates and fixing an otherwise flawless frame. Its quality seemed impeccable: how a “bipedal” dinobot frame stayed in such good shape after so many cycles was a mystery and a miracle.

After a long while, when he finally appeared satisfied, Shockwave pulled away from the decidedly mute Dinobot, releasing him and stepping back from his creation.

“A fine specimen,” Shockwave concluded, placing his servos on his swivel point, then reached into an open slot on the outside of his leg, and pulled out a small pulse field projector, one just big enough to fit around a bot’s neck, “and a fine general to lead my new army.”

With that, he snapped the projector to the back of Dinobot’s neck, and Dinobot let out a groan of pain, head thrown back as the tines of the ring dug into his plating, and a glaring green ring of light materialized around his throat.

“What are you—?” Rattrap snapped immediately, flinching away from the Decepticon as his instincts told him to flee. Anger flooded his sensors when he saw the way Shockwave dug his clawed servo into Dinobot’s support column, forcing his back to bow into a curve, pushing him down to the floor.

Rattrap didn’t know what to do; for the first time on the entire trip he was terrified. Maybe the doubled-up spark inside him had been giving him extra courage and vitality because now that it was gone, he felt its loss immensely. The trip had exhausted him, and moreover he was no match for a ten-tonne, out-of-his-mind, million-year-old Decepticon scientist whose modus operandi was to take apart weaker bots and weld them back together into unrecognizable shapes. In his new body, Dinobot was a third the size of Shockwave, and Rattrap a third of Dinobot’s size in turn, so what was he supposed to do?

It was over, wasn’t it? The mission was through, Rattrap had nowhere and no one else to go to. His servos trembled as he sunk to his knees, trying to make himself small, insignificant. After all, what was he, in the scheme of things? Weak, tiny, forgotten. And now, entirely alone.

Shockwave pushed Dinobot to the floor with a hand on the back of his neck, subduing his struggles by pulsing some sort of hateful energy through the collar on his throat. Rattrap’s sensors all blared at once in horror, and…anger. Anger at seeing his once spark-mate being treated so…maliciously, clawed servos bearing down on him, trapping him once again… Trapping him the way he had spent the last two decacycles, finally unfettered, only to be forced into captivity again… Rattrap’s HUD turned pure white in his rage, and he climbed to his pedals.

His miniscule size allowed Rattrap to sneak up behind Shockwave without being detected, and he climbed up the back of the mammoth bot’s leg, little digits clinging around the back of a thick, ancient plate, pulling himself up with a surge of energy before being caught around the throat again.

“What are you doing?” Shockwave hissed, wrenching Rattrap up before him with his clawed servo around the tiny bot’s throat. He squeezed until Rattrap felt the support wires creaking, his air intake tubes clenching under the pressure, body going stiff on instinct.

“L-let…him go,” Rattrap forced out, circuits blasting warnings in his ears. If he was going down, he was going down fighting, he wasn’t about to beg. He groaned as he tried to pry the claw from around his neck, to no avail.

“Pathetic mutant,” Shockwave answered, pulling Rattrap nearer, his one huge optic widening with interest and rage, staring Rattrap down as vocalizations issued from an unknown part of his frame. “Perhaps you could be of some use to me, too. I would enjoy ripping your frame apart, piece-by-piece, and rebuilding you from the tiniest shred of your consciousness, until you know nothing of what you used to be…”

“Maybe next time,” Rattrap spat in reply, and in a flash, reached up and slashed the joint of Shockwave’s shoulder, cutting through the support wire with the razor-sharp scalpel attachment he’d brought from his home.

Shockwave’s optics flashed in shock as his arm went limp, Rattrap’s surgical precision rendering the appendage useless. Rattrap cut through the other shoulder and waited to go crashing to the ground as his attacker’s other arm went limp, but instead found himself knocking against the firm, foreign panelling of Dinobot, who slid into place beneath him, breaking his fall. While Shockwave thrashed in outrage, useless arms dragging at his sides, Rattrap shot his once-partner a glance before slicing through the containment unit of the energy collar as well, freeing him.

“Worthless New-World atrocities!” Shockwave cried, finally losing his steadfast composure, shocked-still by the loss of his arms. “You think you’ve won the war? You think you’ve won anything?!”

“Come on!” Rattrap yelled, and Dinobot followed without a word as he dashed out of the brightness of the lab and into the hall, breaking back out of the facility the way he had come.

“I will be the one who is victorious! Me!” Shockwave screamed, out of his mind with anger as Rattrap and Dinobot ran, not looking back. “Go! My Insecticons! Do your duty!” Shockwave ordered, to an empty facility. Piles of dismembered bots and long-useless limbs showed no reaction to their old master’s edict. His desperate screams went unanswered in the empty laboratory, as the two Maximals made their way out, running without stopping, without turning around.

They made it to the ventilation shaft and Rattrap led the way to the outside without a word, jumping quickly into alt-mode and setting his wheels to the tunnel floor to match Dinobot’s pace as they raced to freedom. The screams of the manic Decepticon grew more distant until they were no longer there, replaced by the howling wind of the Sea. They broke free of the structure and burst out into the rust storm, Dinobot wincing as the dust dove into his joints, swimming among the plates and stinging everywhere it touched. Rattrap didn’t notice, too busy navigating the empty landscape by radar alone, processor running cooler and cooler as exhaustion started to catch up to him.

It had been Primus knows how many cycles since he last charged, and Rattrap was finally feeling the effects of the low energon levels in his system. That, combined with the impromptu surgery he’d undergone earlier, he was surprised he could function at all. His processor began to slow, until his wheels were grinding deeper into the dirt beneath him, ferrous dust clogging his intakes as he crept forward.

“Keep going, we are almost free of this accursed landscape,” Rattrap heard echo vaguely behind him, and almost instinctively looked down at his spark chamber, expecting the voice was coming from there. He didn’t know where it came from, only that it was close, close enough to touch…

His optic shutters drifted closed, and Rattrap rolled a few more meters before slowing to a halt. He could no longer see, his sensors were offlining and his radar was blacked-out. He felt a nudge against his backside, pressing him forward, but he could go no farther. He was unconsciously aware of a huge set of teeth pinching gently into the plating of his neck, maybe in a last attempt to rouse him, or to eat him, Rattrap neither knew nor cared, as he slowly, slowly, then immediately, went offline.

Black.

Black.

When Rattrap awoke again, he was in robot-mode, lying splayed upon the remains of a sheet-metal floor, body stiff from disuse and sensors all dark. As each light of his HUD went on in turns, systems flicking to life one-by-one, he was elusively aware of an energon transfusion cube being clicked into place in his chestplate with the greatest of care. He groaned with pain as he tried to sit up, making no progress before clunking back down against the slab of corrugated steel beneath him.

“Awake, are you?” came a raspy, powerful voice, and Rattrap’s spark clenched in an all-too familiar way at the sound. His audials strained to catch the trajectory of the voice and found it near—so near, he nearly jolted back offline in shock. As his vision slowly returned, Rattrap saw the source of the sound, and even though in his processor, he expected it, his deepest, most sensitive emotive programs were simply not prepared.

Dinobot was sitting not two meters from him, facing away, at the edge of a cooling pond, well away from the Sea and onto the outskirts of some small city. The sky was clear, but dark, indicating the end of a solar cycle, and that it had been at least a day since Rattrap had offlined. There was only one way the two of them could have gotten here together and in one piece, and as Rattrap realized the trouble his once-mate had gone to pull his lifeless body through the denseness of the storm, he spark whirled with anxiousness.

“Yeah, uh,” Rattrap began shakily, rolling over onto one side, leaning on his elbow cover, “how long was I…?”

“Not long,” Dinobot answered swiftly. He was in his robot mode. It was the first time Rattrap had seen him in a domestic format; even one strangely alien in model, its construction was purely Cybertronian. His frame was tall and elegant, with a slim center of gravity and narrow, sleek plates that bloomed into broad shoulders and thick upper struts. His helm was different but his faceplate was still striking as ever, with a deep topography and sharp, angular lines that drew his expression into one of constant intensity. As Rattrap looked him over from root to tip, he couldn’t help the way his processing smoothed over into a pattern of comfort and peace at seeing his old mate again.

“This is Cybertron,” Dinobot announced, tilting his head to the sky, “or so my cosmic map indicated. But I did not believe so it until I looked up at the stars to confirm it for myself.”

As Dinobot observed the night sky, Rattrap watched him, focusing on his face, the way his optics gleamed as his gaze jumped from star to star, and his mouth fell open just a little to give a glimpse of sharp, raptor teeth. He was really there—Rattrap could feel his presence, it was close, but rightly separate from his own.

“What happened to me?” Dinobot asked, turning his head to catch Rattrap staring, and the smaller bot quickly turned away from his searching gaze, clearing his intakes.

“What do you remember?” Rattrap asked in reply, cautiously, carefully moving to sit up. Repositioning himself was painful, but at least he was powered up. His joints felt clogged, and he started to realize how much he’d been neglecting his own frame since he landed on the planet.

“I remember…” Dinobot began, looking down at his knee, where his servo, no longer five massive claws, but instead a set of slender metal digits, lay, “fire. The sun setting over the Earth, and being…unafraid. I wanted to save them, the creatures of Earth. They were innocent, they did nothing wrong. They deserved to have the chance to make their own mistakes. I remember thinking that…then…nothing after.”

Rattrap’s processor skipped inside him at the dejected, lost look of his old teammate, whose helm sank deeper against his chest as if with the weight of the memory.

“What else?” Rattrap asked, pushing himself up on his hands, willing his body to stand, despite the toll it took on his joints. “Do you remember…us?”

Dinobot looked wistful, then raised his optics to meet with Rattrap’s, who this time met his gaze fearlessly, feeling as if sinking into a memory. Even in an unfamiliar new body Dinobot was here, right in front of him, and much closer and truer than the ghastly abomination Megatron had crafted in the dark from the remains of his memory, or the niggling little sound that had flailed inside Rattrap’s chest for the last few cycles. Rattrap had wondered what seeing his old mate would do to him, after all this time, and now he had his answer: he was utterly gone on him. Entranced, positively in love all over again.

“Your little silver digits on my chestplate,” Dinobot said in a voice no louder than a whisper, “the flick of your tail side to side when I stroked my servo down your spine—you were in a different form, then,” he pondered, tilting his head as the memories slowly reformed. “I remember your mischievous grin, your impudent voice and insufferable self-surety…”

Rattrap smiled, a small, shaky thing, at the tender memory of his mate’s voice. A sound he’d never expected to hear again. His optic wells filled with coolant, threatening to spill down his faceplate.

“I remember joining our sparks,” Dinobot whispered, “the feeling of you rushing into me, your consciousness flooding into mine and mine into yours. My display lighting up with every different wavelength on the spectrum before going black…and holding you close to me.”

Rattrap wiped his optics dry with the back of his servo and climbed to his feet, then, sniffling air through his vents as he walked to Dinobot’s side. He sat down next to Dinobot, their feet dangling over the edge of a rusty dock that overlooked the coolant pond.

“That’s the gist of it,” Rattrap nodded, sitting down on the metal and placing his hands behind him. “But lemme fill ya in on the rest.”

Dinobot listened in silence as Rattrap told him the whole story, right from Dinobot’s heroic death, to landing on Cybertron with Megatron in tow, to finding himself in Shockwave’s lair with his spark chamber exposed for all the world to see. He left the parts about suffering in agony so terrible, it made him more than once contemplate rebooting his entire programming just to see it would make a difference, out of the retelling, not wanting to burden the newly-reborn Dinobot anymore than he was. Dinobot didn’t react save for to narrow his optics in concern, pondering the information and allowing his processor to cycle through it while Rattrap spoke.

“Which brings us, y’know, here,” Rattrap said, gesturing to Dinobot’s new body, tracing his finger through the air around the long shape of him. “This is my doing. I just couldn’t…I couldn’t let you go.”

Dinobot was silent, unmoving as he listened. Rattrap went on, nervousness welling up in his circuits as he drew a deep breath and allowed himself to say that which he had been denying for the past miserable cycles.

“I wanted to let you free, because you were suffering in there, and I couldn’t take it,” Rattrap explained, servos trembling at his sides, “but when it came down to it, I couldn’t watch you disappear again. I know it was wrong. I know I shouldn’t’ve tried to get you back after you’d…you’d moved on, but I just…couldn’t do it. I’m sorry, alright?

“But I was weak. I’m weak when it comes to you. The idea of watching you slip away again…it made me feel like my circuits were all exposed and I was going to go into stasis permanently with just the thought. So I let that…freak put you in this new body, without even thinking about what you wanted…”

The shame of his own words drilled deep into Rattrap’s core as soon as they came out, and he sank down where he sat, trying to make himself small, to hide, to retreat. Dinobot just continued to watch him in silence: obviously he agreed. He wasn’t meant to be here: he’d made his peace with his mortality once, and now he was stuck in this desolate landscape, nothing but wastes all around them, an apathetic public…and a worn-down old apartment…awaiting his return.

“So anyway,” Rattrap said loudly, swiping dribbles of coolant from under his optic wells, “I’ve said my piece.” He gestured to Dinobot with the back of his servo, indicating his foreign shape, the debris around them, everything he could with the reach of his small arm. “I understand if you wanna…go. It’s totally fine with me, won’t break my heart any.” He lied. “It’s your decision. I get it, really, I do.”

With that, Rattrap went silent, his jawplates sealed, looking at his lap. He was fully prepared for Dinobot to leave, then. To watch his new pewter and green frame turn and go into the distance, taking the voice, the face, and the memory Rattrap knew so well, with him.

It was really over, now. He had no right to keep Dinobot here, in the emptiness of a war-devastated Cybertron, after what he’d put him through. The pain of their separation burned in his core again, rising up like a chemical flame, but it wasn’t the same agony he felt when Dinobot died and his spark was rent in two. This was a deep, dull ache, a denting, crushing feeling of his containment chamber being suddenly too small, cramped, misshapen. He sucked in a few shaky intakes, prepared for the inevitable.

An unbearably long moment passed, and Dinobot looked from Rattrap, to their meagre surroundings, to the bright lights of civilization in the distance, which mimicked the stars overhead.

“I would like…to stay,” Dinobot answered, to Rattrap’s cautious answering gaze. Red optics peered up at him and Dinobot nodded back.

“R-really?” Rattrap felt a shiver run up his support column at the familiar severe look that graced Dinobot’s face. The same look he had when he’d asked Rattrap to join sparks with him the first time. The look that said he was serious, and utterly sure.

“I do not think…we have had enough time,” Dinobot whispered, “for all the things I want to experience with you, a mere few decacycles is not nearly enough.”

Rattrap was speechless, his servos shaking as he started to reach out for Dinobot, placing a cautious touch on the mech’s thick upper arm. His mouth opened and closed a few times, unsure of what to do or to say.

“Besides,” Dinobot said, with a familiar smirk, “I doubt you could continue to function without me.”

Rattrap leapt forward and caught the larger mech around the neck, squeezing him close and nearly toppling the both of them with the force of his embrace. Tears leaked freely from his optic wells, these of joy as he buried his face against Dinobot’s neck, feeling the warmth of his processor, the softness of the air that puffed from his outtake valves, the smoothness of his plates under his digits. Dinobot’s servos, long and slender and new, swept across his back, wrapping around his smaller frame with ease. As though they’d never left—no, that wasn’t it. This was a new beginning as much as it was a continuation. A new format, a new planet, a new life to live, together.

As they held each other, Dinobot’s faceplate nudged against Rattrap’s neck, nuzzling into the space. “This was not your fault. None of this was your fault. You saved me,” he whispered, voice muffled, angular jaw clacking against the smaller bot’s chestplate, “you saved my life.”

Rattrap pulled back, holding Dinobot’s face with one small servo on either side of his gaunt helm. He stared into dark red eyes and frowned with all of his might at the sentimentality, before bursting out into a smile so broad, the internal light of his processor beamed out of his oral cavity, “shut up! Shut up already!”

He pulled Dinobot to him in a kiss, squeezing their mouthplates together until he felt the metal scrape and spark with the intensity, pulling away, only to bring him back for a second. And a third. And a fourth. He kissed Dinobot’s new face, his cheek ridges, the trajectory sensor which pointed out from the center of his face on a sharp, unforgettable angle, his mouthplate, the borders of his optics, the bolts of his helm. Over and over until he was satisfied. Until he could know for sure, without a doubt, that they were here. He was here.

They were home.

“Your—” Dinobot struggled to get out between enthusiastic kisses, “mouth tastes of rust,” he complained, trying to pull away from Rattrap’s charging mouth, but the steadfast grip around his neck kept him in place.

“You should talk, Dino-breath!” he retorted, placing one more kiss on Dinobot’s cheek, then a last one on his mouth, slow and full, sharing his air into his mate’s intakes, melting into the gesture. He pulled away just slowly, optics dimmed, core pulsing to the steady rhythm of his mate’s spark, pressed up to his, chamber to chamber.

They were no longer connected, but their sparks bore each other’s marks forever. Rattrap could feel a part of himself that was not himself, but that belonged to someone else, bracketing around his psyche. He also knew that a part of him was given up and rested with Dinobot from now on, and until they both went offline.

“Now what happens?” Rattrap asked, climbing up to straddle Dinobot’s lap, perched between him and the tailing pond, planting his servos on Dinobot’s shoulders and nuzzling their helms together. “We can do anything.”

Dinobot made a low sound of deliberation, the deep rumble of it sending shivers up Rattrap’s support column. “I suppose I never thought I would make it this far. And as a Maximal: when I left Cybertron, it was as a Predacon.”

Rattrap nodded, “we’ll have to get’ya re-registered, then. Optimus, Legs, Cheetor, Birdbot—the rest of the gang’s back in Cybertropolis, I’m sure they’ll wanna see you too.”

“Perhaps you might let me another cycle or two of peace,” Dinobot growled at the recollection of his old teammates, but with a good-natured smile splitting his bold faceplate. Rattrap laughed and knuckled his shoulder rotator.

“But, wait!” Rattrap said suddenly, “what about Shockwave? He knows our signatures, now, d’you think he’ll try t’come after us?”

Dinobot hmm’d, frowning thoughtfully before shaking his helm. “Perhaps, but it does not matter. We are more than a match for a decrepit diagnostics bot.” The smirk of utter certainty that clicked into place on his faceplate made Rattrap’s sensors light up in a hundred different ways. He thought he’d experienced every single possible emotional routine there was when it came to Dinobot, but he was wrong. There was plenty more to look forward to.

“The two of us?” Rattrap asked anxiously, optics flickering with playful glee.

“The two of us,” Dinobot confirmed, bringing his helm to press against Rattrap’s, making the little bot’s grin impossibly wider.

They were on their home planet now, among their people, fit to take their rightful place as heroic explorers from beyond the deepest space. But Rattrap could be just as happy if they remained like this, the pair of them balanced over a coolant runoff pond, surrounded by trash, their signatures two tiny, unremarkable blips on the scanners of any passers-by. He took a large, elegant servo in his own and stood, leading Dinobot to their next mission, which was whatever they chose it to be, turning to head back into the deserted wilds of Cybertron, side by side.