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“I’m done saving you.”
The words stuck in Orion’s audials, distant and ringing as he dimly registered the rushing wind on his plating. Dee had let him fall. No. That couldn’t be right, could it?
He fought to stay awake as Iacon’s light faded into a pinprick. His lids felt heavy, his limbs heavier. Sleep would be nice right now. Nothing better than a recharge after a long day, and this day had been so, so long. No, he had to stay awake. For some reason. What was the reason?
“I’m done saving you.”
Orion and Dee had disagreed on something. Something important. They argued (they argued all the time, but this was different somehow). And then… and then Dee did something. How’d he get from the platform to the cliff?
The details of the chasm blurred into a dark mass crackling with electricity between Orion’s optic lids. He couldn’t see Iacon anymore. Maybe that was for the best. Dee seemed pretty mad at him.
“I’m done saving you.”
Orion tried to move his arm. Couldn’t. Why couldn’t he—oh, right, it was missing. Wind gushed around the sensitive wires. It probably should have hurt, since those usually stayed in his body, but he couldn’t feel much of anything.
Was he dying? He didn’t want to do that. There were too many things to do. Who’d keep Elita from killing Bee without him?
A smile managed to get past the numbness. He’d miss them, Elita and Bee and Dee and Jazz and the rest. But Orion got the feeling he wouldn’t be going back.
Still, if he was going to die, there were worse final thoughts. Silver and pink and yellow flashes muddled his vision, not quite the faces of his loved ones. They almost hugged him as the weariness finally dragged his lids closed.
Orion felt a tug on his spark as his breath began to still.
Orion jolted awake with a sharp vent, coughing as his intake decided to expel a thin layer of dust coating his internals. A dull thudding persistently made its presence known inside his processing unit, and an empty ache in his spark chamber finally forced him up.
A soft slab, not unlike the ones in the mine’s med bay, lay beneath him. As he swung his legs over the side, walls painted in warm shades met his gaze, along with personalized trinkets scattered around carefully carved shelves. He thought he recognized the model of a ship used by the Primes during the Quintesson war.
“Oh dear, make sure not to move too quickly. It may take a bit to adjust.”
Orion’s helm shot up towards the sound. Once the nausea and blurry vision cleared, he spotted a bot sitting at a table with a large cube of energon in hand. Nearly small enough to be mistaken for a cogless and wearing goggles so thick they almost obscured the electric blue of his optics, the slender orange and white stranger tilted his helm with a smile.
“It’s nice to finally meet you face-to-face, Orion Pax,” he said. His voice had an odd, dignified quality that couldn’t fully be put into words; it reminded him of Alpha Trion, albeit without the Prime’s commanding boom.
Orion blinked. “How do you know my name?
“I’ve been observing you for a long time.”
“Oh,” he said. “Thanks. That’s not creepy at all.”
Standing, he misjudged the distance of a step with his recently acquired upgrades and stumbled forward. While he caught himself without issue using a nearby niche, what he saw caused his optics to widen.
“Your injuries didn’t follow you here,” the stranger said, nodding towards Orion’s gleaming left arm.
“How did you do that?”
“I can do a lot of things,” he said, then gestured towards the seat across from him where another cube of energon waited. “Please, sit.”
“I—wait, no,” Orion stuttered. His head spun as he gazed at his arm, memories rising to the forefront of his processors with volts of prickling dread. “I have to get back to Iacon. Elita and Bee—“
“Elita-1 and B-127 are fine for now,” the stranger assured. “My home exists outside the flow of time.”
“What?”
“Do try to remember. It would make things easier.”
“We exposed Sentinel,” he said with a furrow of his optic ridges. “Dee wanted to kill him. I disagreed. He…”
Orion’s leg struts threaded to give out, and he gripped the wall again.
“Yes?”
“He let me go,” Orion said faintly. He looked up, meeting the mech’s piercing optics. “Am I dead?”
“Would you like to be?” the stranger asked.
“I—“ Orion swallowed. “No. Not yet.”
“Then you aren’t. Simple as that.”
“Where am I?” he asked, finally taking a seat across from the stranger.
“That’s a… difficult question. It would be somewhere around Cybertron’s core, I believe, if it had physical grounding.”
Orion’s gaze drifted towards the window. Cerulean shone through the drawn curtains, the same color as the stranger’s optics. The same glow, he couldn’t help but notice, emanated from his glassy spark chamber.
The pieces finally clicked together.
“Primus,” he croaked.
The other mech chuckled. “I’ve never been fond of that name. Too formal for my taste. You can call me Rung if you’d prefer.”
“I didn’t realize you were still…” Orion trailed off. What could one say to the planet itself? What words wouldn’t seem foolish to the one who’d created his entire species?
“Alive?” Primus offered.
“Aware,” Orion settled on saying.
“Oh. Yes, I suppose the dominant thought suggests that my consciousness is centered in the Matrix, doesn’t it?”
“The Matrix,” he echoed. Primus must have seen his frown, for he leaned forward.
“What troubles you, Orion Pax?”
Orion hesitated. He didn’t always try to choose his words with such careful precision, but the nature of his conversation partner changed things.
“You’ve been here the whole time?” he eventually asked,
“As long as I can remember, at least,” Primus said with a touch of amusement.
Staring down into his cube, Orion found himself unwilling to match the lightheartedness. “Then… you saw Sentinel. You saw what he did to the Primes.
“Ah,” said Primus as his smile faded. “I see what you’re getting at. You’d like to know why I didn’t stop him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I took the Matrix away from Sentinel for a reason,” he responded softly.
“And then you let him live for fifty cycles.” Orion looked up. “All those miners slaving away for energon. Time we could have spent resisting the Quintessons.”
“Time you could have spent with a cog?” Primus said gently.
He couldn’t help it. His optics flicked away from the goggles. “That too.”
“You don’t need to be guilty about your feelings,” said Rung, who gave him a sympathetic look. “Given the circumstances, I think it’s quite normal to be angry. It’s a natural part of existence. How you process your anger, though—that’s the important thing.”
“Dee got angry,” Orion muttered.
“Yes, he did,” Rung agreed. “I hope he’ll be able to channel that anger towards good. If not now, then in the future.”
“You haven’t answered my question, though. Why let Sentinel run free for so long? Why not just, I don’t know… smite him or something?”
“You said it yourself, didn’t you?” Rung said. “‘Rebuilding Iacon cannot begin with an execution.’”
“I don’t think a divine spear through the spark is quite the same,” Orion pointed out.
“Perhaps not,” he conceded. “Nonetheless, it would have thrown Cybertron into chaos. A power vacuum without the Primes. I shudder to think what would have filled it. All I could do was watch. And wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For someone I could give my blessing to,” Rung said with a small smile. “With a noble spark and a humble spirit. Someone like you, Orion Pax.”
Orion thought the floor might give way from under him.
“I don’t understand,” he said shakily.
“Cybertron is on the brink of change. They need a leader to guide them through it.”
“Someone who isn’t me,” Orion responded, trying to resist the way the room spun. “I can’t even help Dee stay on the right path, how do you expect me to lead others?”
Rung removed his goggles. Without the filtering glass, his optics glimmered like suns, as vibrant and crystal clear as the purest energon. It hurt to look, but Orion kept steady, desperate, searching.
“You already have,” Rung said. Standing, he took Orion’s servos in his own, helping him to his pedes. “And you won’t be alone.”
He led him through a door that hadn’t been there when Orion first awoke. The light nearly blinded him, yet illuminated a sapphire impression of the cave where they’d found the Primes. Where each body had lain now stood glittering white figures that towered over the pair. Solus, Prima, Megatronus,—
“Alpha Trion,” Orion whispered, optics widening. His once-ally, now restored to his former glory without the moss and rust of time, nodded his head in acknowledgment.
Rung stilled at the head of the chamber and turned, Zeta Prime moving to his right and Alpha Trion to his left. The bot didn’t change in any meaningful way, but Orion could feel a growing presence emanating from him in waves. He was small, yes, but so much greater than what could be seen with the optics. Primus stood before him in all his glory, burning with light.
And Orion, in all of his mortality, dropped to his knees.
“Orion Pax,” Alpha Trion began with a stately rumble, “your noble sacrifice for the greater good has proven you worthy in the eyes of Primus.”
Looking up into Rung’s eyes, he only saw encouragement. It braced him, like the courage that came from good high-grade without the foolishness.
“He entrusts in you the future of Cybertron.”
Rung put a servo to the brilliant core in his chest. From it solidified a familiar golden shape, its center that same dazzling blue.
“And the Matrix of Leadership!”
Matrix floating in one hand, Rung stepped forward. His arm stretched out, lightly brushing Orion’s left shoulder, then the right. Finally, the servo stopped to tilt his head back.
Orion glimpsed tears in Rung’s optics as he pressed the Matrix into his chassis, but he smiled with the relief of a bot who’d been waiting cycles for this. As inadequate as the newly knighted mech felt, the expression filled him with hope. Even now, he was helping to lift the burdens of others.
As he stood, the Matrix did its work—panels lifted, cables lengthened, glass encircled the spot just above his spark. Even his arm, which he hadn’t given much thought to since waking, knit outward in full repair.
With each click into place, the chamber dissolved. Blue was broken by scorched gold, and the Primes dissolved in favor of stunned miners and High Guards. They moved sluggishly, as though he hadn’t quite left the in-between realm from the Core. Primus faded last of all. His smile remained, though, hovering at the corner of his vision. Watching. Waiting.
The transformation completed, and he put his weight onto larger pedes. Vitality filled his limbs as he vented deeply to face whatever had become of D-16, and Alpha Trion’s words echoed in his audials.
“Arise… Optimus Prime.”