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        To Chapter Twenty-One
 

        "We’re getting a distress signal," Hubcab said.

        Rodimus walked across the temporary command hub, stepping around the emergency generator in the center of the room and ducking under some loose wires hanging from the ceiling. That was the problem with reactivating a millions-of-years-old command center from the height of the Great War—it just wouldn’t be up to the standards they were used to. Fortunately, some of the best Autobot engineers were rebuilding Command and Control even as he strode toward the communications console, thoughts of Cliffjumper far from his mind.

        "Is it from the recon shuttle?" Rodimus asked.

        Hubcab nodded.

        "Put it on the viewer."

        The viewscreen just over Hubcab’s head sprang to life with a loud burst of static, and everyone in the command hub turned to see what had caused the noise. On the screen, Rodimus could see Brainstorm through the bands of static, and what looked to be the shuttle on fire behind him.

        ". . .nyone. . .ere?. . .is Brainst. . ."

        "Brainstorm? This is Rodimus Prime. Report what you’ve found." Rodimus frowned—he needed to know where the Decepticons were, and he needed to know now.

        ". . .adly damag. . .on’t be able. . .ake it back. . .ound the Dece. . .ad shape. No thr. . .y’re on . . .ringer’s. . ." The message broke up completely for a few seconds, then returned with a terrible clarity. "Repeat, Springer’s dead. Galvatron killed him. He saved our lives."

        "Springer?"

        Rodimus started by that tiny voice behind him. He turned around, knowing who he’d see, hoping desperately that she wasn’t there, fearing her and fearing for her.

        Arcee stood near the center of the command hub, one hand held up to her mouth. Her optics were wide in confusion and shock, and she started to stumble backwards, her optics darting from the viewscreen to Rodimus Prime to the others in the command hub, not knowing where to look, what to say, how to feel. She tripped over some loose wires on the floor and fell against the generator, landing heavily on her skid plate, staring off into nothing.

        "Arcee? Arcee, are you—?" Rodimus reached out to Arcee, hoping to be able to comfort her.

        She suddenly focused her optics directly on him, and he couldn’t help but start backward—her gaze was so filled with such passionate anger, grief and hatred, all of it directed at him, that in that one second he thought she was capable of tearing apart anything that was near her. That second passed, and all that was left was her grief. She stood and ran from Rodimus, ran from the command hub, away from the scene where she learned of Springer’s murder.

        Rodimus watched her go, then bowed his head to the ground, his shoulders slumped. He could hear the communication signal behind him collapse back into static, and Hubcap’s murmured announcement that he had lost contact with the shuttle. Rodimus nodded, half to himself, and walked slowly out of the command hub. He needed to see her, talk to her, tell her how sorry he was, share her grief with her.

        In some small part of his mind, though, he realized that his rival for her affection was no more.

        As Rodimus approached her quarters, he could see she’d left her door open, and the sounds of crashing and sobbing echoed through the hallway from within. He walked up quietly and stood in the doorway, taking in the scene inside. Arcee had already smashed most of her collection of Earth artifacts, the shattered remnants of which were strewn across the floor in her quarters. She herself was lying crumpled in the far corner of the room, sobbing, occasionally beating her fists savagely against the walls or floor. Rodimus watched her for nearly a minute, unnoticed, feeling only a small part of her pain. What he felt, more, was a sadness that she was feeling pain, both in that she loved Springer so deeply that his death affected her in this way, and in that Springer’s death even happened, that it would cause her such pain.

        Rodimus stood, not knowing what to say, if he should say anything, if he even could find appropriate words to say. He didn’t feel the loss of Springer, himself—in part because he was a rival for Arcee’s affections, in part because he never cared too much for Springer’s bravado. Springer never knew his place—he was just a soldier, not a Prime. And he knew what he was getting into. There was no doubt that travelling into the lair of the Decepticons reeked of a suicide mission. If Springer hadn’t thought that, then Springer was a fool, and better dead.

        Arcee finally looked up, straight at Rodimus. And what he saw in her optics made him stagger backward, so unexpected was his discovery. He found not grief, not sadness or depression. Nor did he find mere anger. Instead, he found hate. The deepest, most passionate hatred he had ever seen. Far deeper than the fury that drove Unicron on his quest to annihilate the universe; far more powerful than what he saw in Megatron’s face, at the first battle of Autobot City; far more agonizing than Prime’s scream, when he learned of Elita-One’s death. . .

        "You!" She screamed, her vocoder reaching the very limits of its tolerance, virtually tearing itself out of her throat as she leveled an accusing finger at him. She stood, that lone finger an unbreakable barrier between them. As she stumbled toward him, her legs weak from grief, her optics glistening with leaked fluids, Rodimus realized that there was nothing he could ever do, nothing he could ever say, that would remove that finger from between them, take the hate she held for him from her laser core. Then and there, as she shuffled toward him, the few unbroken artifacts on the floor uncaringly crushed under her feet as she moved, Rodimus almost backed up out of the room and ran away, down the hall, far from Arcee, far from her hate-filled eyes, far from her accusatory finger.

        Later, in quiet moments gazing out from his quarters where he had once watched Arcee and Springer walk hand-in-hand, he would wish he had. He would think that maybe things could have turned out different, had he fled from her. But he did not run. He was a Prime; Primes could not run, even though it would kill them not to.
"Arcee, I—" He started.

        "Shut up!" She screamed, her hand coming up with the efficiency of a warrior and striking him across the face with the strength of an Autobot. She was smaller and lighter than her male counterparts, but she was still a soldier thousands of years old, and she was far stronger than she first appeared to a male-dominated society. Rodimus stood his ground, rolling with the blow—but he could feel the damage to his newly-reconstructed frame, and somehow he knew he deserved it, deserved whatever punishment she chose to inflict on him.

        "You bastard! You killed him!" She slammed both open palms into either side of his chest, pushing him backward into the wall. "You killed Springer!"

        "Galvatron killed Springer." Rodimus managed weakly.

        "Bullshit!" She spat the word at him, as though both he and it were so contemptible that it pained her to deal with either. "You were jealous of him. Of us. You sent him to find the Decepticons knowing he would die. Did you plan it that way? Did you put a beacon on the shuttle so they’d find him easier? Bastard!"

        She struck him again, and Rodimus didn’t try to defend himself, taking the blow, wrapping his consciousness around it. Had he sent Springer off, knowing the Autobot would be killed? No, that wasn’t possible—if Springer could be killed, then his team could be killed, too. Would he send an entire squadron of Autobots to their deaths just to get at Springer? Perhaps he had hoped they would escape, that Springer would stay behind to protect them as they escaped. And isn’t that what happened? Did he know the Autobots he led so well that he could manipulate them into dying for him, without ever realizing it? Rodimus staggered under Arcee’s blows, not from the physical weight of them, but because of the terrible possibility of the words she threw at him.

        She battered him again and again, bringing her fists down upon his frame, all the while sobbing for her lost Springer, until finally, too physically tired and emotionally exhausted to continue, she sagged to the floor at Rodimus Prime’s feet. Rodimus stared at her with empty optics and wondered at her grief. He had been friends with Springer, once—all of them had been friends. How was it, then, that he felt nothing at Springer’s death, how he was completely blank inside, while Arcee felt enough grief to shatter worlds? Had becoming the Autobot leader deadened his senses, or, instead, was she right? Had something in him, some jealousy, made him kill Springer or, at the very least, send him into a situation where he could very possibly die?

        His mind numbed by the horror of it all, he turned and started to walk out of Arcee’s quarters. He stopped in his tracks, though, when he heard her voice, soft yet determined, rise up from the floor as he crossed the threshold.

        "I’m leaving."

        He turned around to face her. She wasn’t looking at him, but she continued, somehow knowing his eyes were on her.

        "I can’t stay here any more. I can’t be a good little soldier anymore. I’m tired. I’ve lost everything I ever had, because of this war. And now because of you. I can’t stay here. I can’t look at you any more. I’m leaving." She spoke slowly, carefully, and Rodimus wanted to cry out that he didn’t want her to go, anything that would get her to stay.

        But he knew there was nothing. "I can’t convince you otherwise?"

        Her head shook slightly, barely perceptible to anyone who hadn’t known her for so many years. With that, he knew there was no going back. There was never a way to make things the way they were.

        "I’ll have a shuttle prepared for you. It’s yours; no need to send it back. I—" His vocoder stopped, then, tightening against what he wanted to say. "I’m sorry," he finally managed, quietly, before leaving.

        It had been said, in Autobot legend, that the shoulders of a Prime could never slump, never show a physical sign of the enormous weight and sadness that they carried. That legend is not true.
 

        To Chapter Twenty-Three