Archive of Our Own

Blame it on Orion Pax’s middle caste background, or maybe his Iaconi residency and citizenship, or perhaps his own damned obliviousness, but Optimus had never once thought his pronunciation of the Southern languages to be anything less than standard. Perhaps not perfect, but passable, he’d naively thought.

When one works as an archivist, one develops a sense of appreciation for the diversity and intricacy of language. Despite the best efforts of uniformist scholars, binary standard never took hold in Cybertron’s schools, nor its streets. Standard Iaconi, of course, ruled over the planet’s (and colonies’) universities and was therefore spoken by 100% of the populace of Crystal City. The Iaconi city-state had strict political control of over 80% of Cybertron’s habitable (and non-habitable) area. As such, variations upon the Iaconi standard could be found from Polyhex to Praxus, with distinct dialects in neighborhoods in every city. In addition to Iaconi standard, individual cities often had their own ancestral language, usually dwindling in native speakers as Iacon grew in political power.

And of course there was Vos, the only city-state on Cybertron that rejected Iaconi standard with such ferocity that most districts refused to provide government services in it.

Iacon had conquered the plains of Tarn shortly before taking all of Kaon’s other outlying lands in the second Southern war. Then, one war later, they’d taken Kaon itself. Upon colonization, the languages of Cybertron’s Southern region had melded and begun along the route followed by the previous conquests’, towards eventual death.

But Cybertron’s southernmost mecha hadn’t had much time to assimilate, when Orion Pax met Megatronus. Four generations, at the very most, had lived under the Prime’s complete rule. Culturally, the underbelly of Kaon still ate traditional foods (though the quality had certainly dropped, from drained turbofox to cyber-rat and from oil-well to processed gunk). They spoke a mish-mashed version of Kaonite and Tarni and the Tereran and Helexan varieties, in a city that churned a thousand refugees of a hundred accents into the same desperate worker with a similar voice. Enforcers had made sure Iaconi standard entered into their vocabulary, but the streets were ruled by this altered Kaonite. And thus it was this altered Kaonite that Orion Pax had learned.

He’d downloaded a basic vocabulary pack easily enough after a few days on the job, once he’d realized it would help him peruse, sort, and otherwise analyze the Archives’ incoming inventory. When Megatronus’s speeches caught his eye, he’d downloaded a more complex translation pack. And that had been fine, up until the day he first traveled to Kaon.

Vocabulary and grammar translation software are only as good as the mech who designs them. And no Crystal City linguist had ever spent more than ten kliks in Wreckage Alley.

The issue lay in the accent, the pronunciation, and the annoying tendency of mechs to insert Iaconi whenever they were about to say the only word Orion’s software could have translated. And the tenses, it would always mess up the tenses.

Over the decades, the dialect changed and his vocabulary packs became even more useless. But he kept up his visits to Megatronus and the Pits and the natural course of such things took root and before a century was up he had begun to notice the language slipping into his own processor. Learning the language outright seemed important at the time, having so recently discovered that everyone in the city had learned his language by force. So he’d asked Megatronus to teach him more and one thing led to another and now -

Now it is millenia later and the war has ended and he has a half dozen Decepticons chained up in the brig and five dozen others milling about under the constant supervision of suspicious Autobots and nothing he says seems to ease the slowly ratcheting tension. And to top it all off, he can’t even translate this latest series of clearly anti-Autobot graffiti, because he never bothered to learn Vosian, nevermind its altered, Decepticon-language form.

He feels a lot like he had when the war had just begun - bright eyed, terribly naive, and overwhelmingly nervous. He has no training in this form of leadership, just as he had no training in war games then. It had felt containable, at first. He had had less than a hundred mecha total, complete control over Decepticon high command, and the brand new ability to rejuvenate portions of Cybertron’s surface. But the refugee ships came quickly, using space bridges he hadn’t known existed (and are controlled by foreign powers, which is a concern he’s been placing on the backburner and should not be), and Megatron was released from med-bay with a new weld on his chest, and a rejuvenated surface does little for their dwindling energon reserves.

Cybertron is a powder keg once more, and Optimus has helped set it off before.

His Autobots are outnumbered and the Decepticons are becoming increasingly frustrated, if the graffiti and occasional, silent sit-down strikes are anything to go by. They never actually voice their complaints, not that Optimus has heard. Well, the free, lower ranking Decepticons don’t. Starscream voices many complaints from his cell, but communication with him had never been the issue.

And it is a communication issue. At least, that’s what Optimus hopes. He’d brought the Decepticons into the main meeting hall the first week they’d reached Cybertron and he’d told them that no harm would come to them. He’d told them they’d be respected, their voices heard, if only they would tell him what they needed and remain non-violent. The room had remained eerily silent.

Bulkhead tells him that they’re afraid and angry, understandable emotions from mechs in their situation. But Optimus can’t address fears when he remains the enemy to them. They can’t trust him, they can’t trust anything. Optimus can understand that, at least.

“I can get them to shut up,” Starscream tells him, “If you let me go.”

Optimus, who had been inquiring about the passcode for the Nemesis lower lab rooms, frowns. “What?”

“The clones. And whoever else you have out there. Let me go and I’ll keep them in line for you, shut them up.” Sometime during his imprisonment, Starscream had learned how to switch his cuffed hands from the front of his body to his back. Ratchet has suggested it involves dislocation of his arms. Whatever the method, he does it every time he hears Optimus approach, for the sole purpose of being able to hold his wrists behind his back and strut about like a sage philosopher. Or a sneaky businessman.

“That’s the problem,” Optimus replies. “They won’t speak at all.”

“Oh?” Starscream switches tactics. “I’ll get them talking, if you’d like. If you let me take a real shower. What do you want them to say?”

What does Optimus want them to say? Anything, would be his first answer, but that’s not exactly true. He muses over the question for a couple of days, watching Cybertron’s first new city struggle its way into existence.

He decides that communication must come in incremental steps, a slow build of healthy trust. Were they to deliver a proper complaint, specific and fairly straightforward, Optimus could respond easily enough. Positive reinforcement of open communication, That's the goal. So he needs a complaint easier to tackle than ‘we wish you were dead’ or ‘we wish you hadn't won the war’ or ‘please free our command staff’.

His original speech hadn’t asked for that. It had been too broad and too soon after Megatron’s half-dead frame had been dragged through the hallways. He briefly considers rounding up the clones and giving another speech, this time acknowledging their fears and asking for a list of concerns. But a speech like that, standing on some pedestal in front of 60 subservient mechs, would do nothing but reinforce the power imbalance he’s facing. And it would require them to organize amongst themselves to write such a list, which leaves too many open variables.

He needs something smaller, a more intimate discussion with a representative few. So instead he catches the next Earth-mine shift before they can fire up the space bridge. He gathers them around an engineer’s work table in the adjoining room, all 12 of them. They twitch and shift and rub at their wrists like guilty children in the principal’s office. His attempts at soothing their worries backfire, if anything.

“I am concerned that the ex-Decepticon populace has reservations about our movement into a peaceful Cybertron,” he starts. “And, considering your situations, I cannot say I am surprised. You have every right to be worried or angry or upset, and you have every right to demand what you need from us. I want to hear your ideas for a better Cybertron. How can we better support you?”

He receives blank stares in return, and nothing else. He waits a couple minutes before continuing, hoping the silence would prompt some discussion or contribution.

“You can say anything here and it will not be used against you,” he clarifies. “I won’t free Megatron or the rest of your high command, but we can discuss anything else.”

There is some more awkward shuffling, then one vehicon raises a shy hand. “I’d like to stay on Earth,” he replies in English, with a little stutter. “I think I’d like to stay on Earth after this shift. Can I do that?”

Optimus doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. His first reaction, the part of him that can’t believe he’d have any control over anyone, is to say ‘yes, of course, go wherever the pit you’d like’. But this is a Decepticon asking to live on Earth, and he doubts he’d be able to set up any sort of supervision system before the mech’s shift ends. He splits the difference and prays he isn’t undermining his own trust-building goal.

“I believe it would be feasible for you and some of your colleagues to live on Earth,” he says. “But I think we will need some time and further discussions to decide upon a check-in plan, energon allowances, and the like. If you come and find me when you return, I can set up a meeting with Ultra Magnus and Ratchet and we can negotiate some rules.”

The vehicon’s face visibly blanches. He murmurs something Optimus can’t quite make out.

“Why don’t you all take your time on Earth to discuss and decide on a couple of problems you’d like to work towards solving,” Optimus says, attempting to salvage the conversation. “Rations, shifts, free time, privileges. Consider it, then send me a note and we can discuss our next steps.”

The vehicons do not seem thrilled about this prospect, to Optimus’s dismay. They appear more confused than anything, which he supposes is a step up from outright fear, but not ideal for the level of cooperation he desires. He leaves them to their work, disappointed and as worried as ever.

It’s not just the Decepticons he has to worry about, of course. The neutral population grows steadily, filling up apartments faster than they can be built. They are far more eager to communicate with his ‘administration’, as they are calling it, though Optimus sometimes feels they’ve overshot his mark and are over-communicating. And by that he means yelling.

“You have Megatron locked in the basement, his high command chained in your brig, and his Decepticons building the whole slagging planet,” one such Neutral representative informs him, as if Optimus were unaware. “You are outnumbered, you haven’t managed to kill the slagger- your control is hanging by a thread. How are we supposed to trust the Autobots to keep this planet from falling into war again? Why should you retain any sort of power at all?”

“The Decepticons are not a threat,” Prowl lies. He’s only recently returned from the Osaris front, or wherever he had ended up during the last decades of the war. “And our ‘Autobot control’ is the reason you have a berth to sleep on and energon to drink. Tell your people to calm down and have patience.”

“Megatron is always a threat,” the representative retorts. “Kill him or let him kill you, we hardly care, but get one done, won’t you? My people require a stable, free planet or no planet at all. Limbo only puts us in jeopardy.”

“You should truly consider the possibility of no planet at all,” says Prowl, voice rising, “Because that is what you would have without us.”

“If I may,” Optimus interrupts with a calming hand. “What exactly is it that you would like us to do to calm the nerves of your people? We have given you housing, energon, and the promise not to implement Megatron’s more tyrannical policies. Do you have a demand that does not include the murder of our prisoners?”

“We want your removal from power,” the representative says.

Prowl growls. “Then you will get a Decepticon dictatorship. Is that what you prefer?”

“Then kill them and step down. Kill them like you have been doing for millenia, then remove yourselves from the equation and allow a neutral council to take over.”

“I believe we are talking in circles,” Optimus interrupts. “Let us adjourn for now. Clearly this is not a disagreement that can be solved without major compromises on both sides. It may be best to take some time and consider where our hard lines lie.” The representative squawks, but leaves Optimus’s office with Prowl’s ushering. Prowl does not. He turns, after the door has firmly closed, and looks Optimus in the optic.

“They are right,” he says. “We should kill Megatron.” It’s an argument they’ve had too often. Optimus lacks the energy to have it once more.

“I will not,” he says. “He has declared he no longer wishes to fight. He has had the dark energon removed from his lines and spark. I will not kill him now.”

“It is a ploy,” Prowl argues. “He was chained to a med-bay berth, he said what he had to. Because he knew you would cave.”

Optimus knows he cannot force Prowl from his office, not when he so clearly wants a fight. So instead he rises from his desk, pushes past Prowl, and exits himself. Let Prowl have the paperwork.

“Don’t run from this conversation,” Prowl says, following him down the corridor. “You and I both know it has to be done. You don’t need to do it yourself. Take the guard off and he’ll be dead in a day.”

“I will do no such thing, and neither will you.” Optimus stops in his tracks and turns to stare down at Prowl. “You have been gone a long time. You do not know what Unicron was like. I believe Megatron has changed for the better. I will not kill him.”

“Neither will you talk to him, or free him, or speak of his future. Will you leave him there to rot for eternity?” Optimus has no response to that. It is not a question that could catch him off-guard; Prowl’s used this talking point far too often for that. But there is no answer he could provide that Prowl would approve of and neither is there one that would be truthful. He doesn’t know what to do about Megatron, pure and simple.

He realizes now, cornered by Prowl in a Nemesis corridor, that they’ve been having this argument for far too long for Optimus to remain clueless. He understands Prowl’s concerns, and has heard them echoed by most of his team. Truthfully, he’s been using the mess of conflicting sociopolitical groups as a cover, an excuse to avoid doing what’s needed to be done this whole time.

And, if he wants to keep Megatron alive, he’s going to need a better answer than stony silence the next time Prowl asks.

After his spark stabilized and he regained consciousness, Megatron had been transferred to the interrogation rooms on the Nemesis lower decks. The location had been chosen for the higher security protocols of the interrogation chambers in comparison to the general brig, where the rest of his officers are being held. To enter the interrogation rooms, Optimus has to have his spark scanned twice and type in three separate command codes. Optimus doesn’t remember Autobot prisons being this much of a hassle, but they never had one on a fully functioning warship, so he supposes the risks are different. And Autobots always threw their long-term prisoners in stasis pods so as to reduce the chances of an escape.

After he enters the final code, the door opens to an empty room. The far wall is a clear, reinforced plastic. It looks into the prison cell, a small room that previously held two interrogation tables but now contains only one, so that Megatron has enough space to occasionally stretch his legs. He’s doing so now, a three short step then turn pacing regimen made difficult by his chained limbs.

This is as far as Optimus had gotten, before. This time he acts before he can second guess himself. He presses the comm button.

“It is good to see you can walk again,” he says. “You had a close call back there.”

Megatron’s helm whips towards Optimus, optics settling somewhere to Optimus’s left. He can’t see him, but his faceplates brighten regardless. One must get desperate after so many months alone, Optimus supposes.

“Your medic fixed me up fine,” Megatron replies with a grin, “I look brand new. I think he even fixed my twisted ankle and lower back strut, Primus knows why.”

It’s good to hear Megatron talk. It’s really good to hear Megatron talk. Confident and blusterous as ever. Optimus finds the door to the left and enters another keycode, then lets it scan his optic. The door clicks as it unlocks, but remains closed. Optimus manually opens it.

And just like that, 4 keycodes, 2 spark readings and an optic scan later, he’s in the same room as his greatest nemesis for the first time in six months. Megatron’s wrists are bound in front of him and attached to the wall with a long chain.Should he tug on them too roughly, the manacles will inject a serum directly into his lines, putting him into a deep recharge. His ankles are chained a little less than a shoulder width apart. Should their chain be ripped from the floor, the cell would activate a stasis lock. Megatron folds his hands together and steps closer, radiating a sort of dignified power no other mech could achieve when bound in such a manner.

“You look well,” Optimus says, hovering at the door. Megatron huffs. The movement of his chassis draws Optimus’s attention to the scar now decorating his plating, a vertical slit where Ratchet welded his chestplate back together.

“And you look like the war hasn’t ended,” Megatron replies. “Did Starscream escape? Or have the Decepticons revolted? Or is it Soundwave? There’s a bet going around about what will happen first.”

“Who are you betting with?” Optimus asks. Megatron’s energon is delivered through a chute in the wall. He has not granted permission for his command team to enter Megatron’s room, for their safety and Megatron’s.

“Ratchet.” Megatron breaks position and turns to the berth. They hadn’t bothered to remove the handcuffs from the slab’s corners, Optimus notices. Megatron sits, then beckons Optimus closer. “He still comes in for my checkups, when he is on Cybertron. He tells me he’s hoping I catch a rust infection my system can’t handle. He says the nicest things.” Optimus enters the cell cautiously, unsure of the appropriate social etiquette for speaking with prisoners in one-mech cells. Or for broaching the topic of their fate.

“Should you catch a rust infection, he would treat you to the best of his ability,” he says instead. Megatron leans back a little and trains his optics on Optimus’s frame as if studying a laboratory specimen.

“Obviously,” he replies. “So, which is it? Starscream? The mech is a menace and a roach, it’s not shameful to have a difficult time adjusting to dealing with him.”

Optimus considers this. It is fairly surprising that Starscream hasn’t been more trouble than he has, considering. Optimus had settled on a carrot rather than stick method of things, and the occasional shower privileges had won the Autobots some fairly vital security codes. His escape attempts so far have been lackluster, likely due to the scarcity of energon on the dead planet below.

“It is not Starscream,” Optimus says. “Your second in command has been on his best behavior. Though he does appear to be routinely dislocating his own shoulders.”

Megatron absorbs this information with the acceptance of a mech who can no longer be bothered with curiosity. Or perhaps he fully understands Starscream’s thought process and doesn’t want to attempt to explain it to an Autobot. Maybe it's a Decepticon thing. Anyway, his reaction amounts to little more than a shrug.

“But it is something?” he inquires. Optimus, fool though he may be, knows at least enough not to tell a captured warlord his people are restless. He may be contained, but that neutral representative had been correct - Megatron is capable of anything.

“We need to discuss your fate,” he says, instead. “You understand the predicament I am in?”

Megatron rolls his optics. “Nonsense. Don’t deflect. Look at your plating, you haven’t polished yourself in weeks, if not longer. Your tires are slightly deflated. You haven’t been driving. If you’d spent the last six months ruminating on my future you would have come to see me sooner. And you’d have buffed yourself out first.” Optimus attempts to sneak a look at his tires, which he had not noticed were, in fact, mildly deflated. Megatron catches him looking. “You’ve been distracted,” he reiterates. “And I’m bored. Tell me what my crew is doing?”

“Your crew are expressing themselves with incomprehensible graffiti art,” Optimus admits, figuring the cat is likely already out of the bag. “And they speak in some uninterpretable mix of Decepticon and Terran languages. Even Ultra Magnus can’t figure it out. And when they do reply to us in Standard or English or Simple Decepticon or Mandarin it’s never more than a few words, and never enough to diagnose a real issue or propose a solution.”

Megatron looks at Optimus for a long moment, then begins to laugh. His manacles and chain clink as they shake. “Oh Primus,” he says, once he’s calmed down enough to reply. “Do you have pictures?”

Optimus considers the risks of showing Megatron the latest graffiti, then decides it’s quite unlikely that the eradicon who drew it was attempting to send secret messages to Megatron via Prime-messenger. He pulls a datapad from his subspace, then locates the image file and hands the pad over.

Megatron studies the image for a moment. “Huh,” he says. “Creative.”

Optimus edges a little closer, so that he can peer at the pad as well. It is upside down from this angle. But he remembers the scene well enough. “‘Perros’ means dogs,” he tells him. “And I know that means ‘rule’, I still know a bit of Kaonite. Prowl informs me the two Vosian words are ‘up’ in the verb tense and ‘death’. ‘Autobots’ is simple enough to make out. But the symbols are put into the overall picture, which makes them difficult to make out. And some of these are not standard Decepticon. Clearly it is a protest. The issue is determining the specific issue any protest is about. I cannot do anything about simple anger at defeat, I need something solid.”

“Well, first of all, it isn’t in standard Decepticon because there is no standard Decepticon.” Megatron lowers the datapad. “Where is your spymaster? He would know this.”

Optimus frowns. “You have a written language,” he argues. “We can translate your documents.”

“What is written is the Decepticon vernacular as it was at the beginning of the war,” explains Megatron, with a shake of his helm. “What is spoken is quite different. Unlike your Autobots, which were already operating on Iaconi standard, Decepticons were a bit of a linguistic mess. We had mechs from everywhere speaking everything, and it's not like we wanted to use the Iaconian language for anything other than communication with you. So we shoved a little bit of everything together into a language that could be comprehended by mecha with different backgrounds. We reduced the number of tenses from Kaonite to better support those who spoke Tarni, removed the wing indicators from Vosian - they managed to add those into their written language, you know? It’s a whole new language designed to be as legible as possible. And then the war continued on.”

“We saw drift in our language,” Optimus says. “But nothing compared to this.”

“You didn’t have new generations come online every three centuries,” retorts Megatron. “But the root of it is still the same, we’ve just collected different words. Half of the vocabulary is redundant. If you speak Kaonite, they’ll understand you just as well as if you spoke Autobot. They probably find Standard a little off-putting though. It’s been a while since your lot pronounced your ‘cheays’ like you used to.”

“Alright, but what does this say?” Optimus points to the datapad. “Because the words are so jumbled by the placement it is difficult to make out the grammar structure at all, which makes the individual vocabulary useless.”

“I told you, it's a simplified version of the Kaonite structure.” Megatron re-onlines the pad, then taps at the right corner. “It says that you’ve got a problem with distribution of labor. You got rid of the command structure, didn’t you?”

“The Decepticon command structure is in prison cells.”

Megatron rolls his optics again, which Optimus finds rather annoying. “The clone command structure, Prime,” he explains. “Who is giving the lower levels orders? They shouldn’t be getting them straight from your Autobots. This is beginners’ hostile command tactics here. Recruit the previous leaders, give them the orders, then have them command the troops.”

Optimus considers this. “The clones had internal leadership previously?” He’d assumed, as most Autobot reports had determined during the war, that the clones were deployed only as foot soldiers and manual laborers under the guidance of older, more experienced, higher ranking mechs. Clones, being designed for mass production, did not have the armor or weapons required to live long enough to climb the ranks. That had been the argument they had used against their deployment in the Autobot armies.

“Go look through Soundwave’s personnel database and locate shift leaders. They do far more than keep workers on task. Ask them to keep their mecha in check. They’ll cooperate for fear of reprisal, or because they want the promotion, or out of boredom at the very least. And they’ll have one or two bosses of their own that coordinate larger scale projects or divisions. Stop letting Magnus or whoever pitslag high-caster you’ve got up there manage construction and mining. Your command team wouldn’t know galvanized rebar from epoxy-coated; tell them how many buildings you want and let them handle it.”

Optimus makes a quick note of this. He could locate the mech previously in charge of energon extraction and put him in charge of deciding on managers for both planets. It might be good to relieve Ratchet of supervision duties. The issue would be convincing his own Autobots that an unsupervised batch of Decepticon clones in an energon mine won’t be tempted to blow something up. “What good will giving them this freedom do, should their distrust morph into action?” He steps back from Megatron and the datapad. “Though I’ll admit it may be easier to earn the trust of a few managers than the entire populace.”

Megatron huffs. “It’s always trust with you, isn’t it? You don’t trust me, do you?”

“No,” Optimus replies, “though I doubt you could blame me.”

Megatron snaps his fingers. “Exactly,” he says. “But you respect me, which is why you’ll take my advice. You don’t need trust from the bossmechs, you need respect. Get them to respect you.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Give them respect and they’ll return it.” Megatron points down at the pad. “Clearly they don’t feel valued. They’re telling you right here.”

Optimus sighs. “I’ve tried to communicate respect,” he says. And he has. “I’ve spoken to them-”

Megatron interrupts him. “Optimus, you and your Autobots never change. I’m sure your version of respect feels like the pity of a guilty victor. It’s why you won’t get a conversation about my fate today, and it’s why Starscream will stay and play with you until he’s bored.”

Optimus instinctively wants to argue with that assertion. He does not feel guilty about their victory. It was necessary and it was hard won. But the accusation of pity, that is not wrong. He doesn’t respond to Megatron’s latter declarations, knowing a losing argument when he hears one.

“How do I go from speaking to them as a pitying Autobot captor to asking for their support as a potential and respectful ally?” he asks. He’s tried the round table, hasn’t he?

Megatron taps at the datapad thoughtfully. He’s silent for a couple moments, thinking, and then he says “Well, you have it right here, do you not? Lower yourself to the language of the pitiful, Prime. Ask them like a Decepticon.”

And so Optimus finds himself in a room with four hand-wringing Decepticons, making his best attempt at speaking Kaonite clearly enough to be understandable to a group of mechs who don’t speak anything close to the same variation. He is millenia out of practice, and as he speaks the expressions of the mechs in front of him slowly morph from nervousness to confusion to what he can only interpret as cautious, sadistic delight.

This is not the most embarrassing thing he’s ever done, but he’s beginning to worry that it's up there. Primus knows what the Kaonite word for ‘boss’ means now, thousands of years of change later. Maybe he’s speaking utter gibberish. He really had thought his pronunciation was perfectly fine. At least these Decepticons are no longer afraid of him.

“- in charge of your individual divisions, with a fair amount of freedom to accomplish our goals.” he finishes. He has made it through the entire speech without stuttering, which he’s thankful for. The mechs in front of him are silent.

“Is that Kaonite?” Asks one, eventually. His reply is in that mixed Decepticon form, but it's short enough that Optimus can parse it.

“Where did you learn this language? An attempt at seduction with another mech’s voice?” Asks another, this time in Spanish. Optimus’s translation unit figures that one out for him. He’d learned yesterday that this mech - Crate - had been stationed in Argentina for three years prior to his promotion. He’d also learned that the miners like to watch cable tv programming while on shift. Optimus attributes his diction to an over abundance of telenovelas.

“This is Kaonite,” Optimus confirms. “I have been informed that your language matches it in grammatical structure and some of the vocabulary. You can understand me?”

“Sure,” says another. The discoloration on his chassis marks him as the one named Highflight, a construction coordinator. “It’s just - you are aware you sound exactly like -”

He is interrupted by the first speaker, whose name is either Rubek or Sparrow. Rubek (or Sparrow), stomps on Highflights’s pede and hisses at him. The other two mechs shift nervously.

“If you would like, I can switch back to speaking the Autobot language,” he tells them. Sparrow (or Rubek), shakes his helm.

“It’s not a problem,” he says, in something far more like Kaonite than the Decepticon language. “Do you have packets with project goals and parameters for us? We can begin as soon as you would like.”

Optimus smiles gratefully and reaches into his subspace. He had had Ultra Magnus prepare such directives already. One in utilities construction, another for habitation, and one each for energon- mining and processing. He hands Crate the Earth-based mining pad, Highflight the apartment and building construction pad, then pauses. He looks between Rubek and Sparrow.

“He’s Sparrow,” says the one he’d been referring to as Sparrow (or Rubek).

“He’s Rubek,” says Rubek (or Sparrow), pointing his finger so as to accentuate his point. Optimus hands Sparrow the processing overview and Rubek the goals for utility management.

“I would like to speak with some of your shift leaders,” he informs them. “Not to undermine you, but simply to dampen their distrust. I am requesting your permission to do so, and perhaps the names of some mechs you believe may be more inclined to listen.”

“Yeah,” starts Rubex. “Well, if you keep talking like that I think you’ll do just fine. I’ll send over some of my folks. I’ll assign each shift leader a subgoal. You should ask them about it, that’ll cheer them right up.”

Optimus makes a note to do so. The other division leaders make similar agreements. It is, in the end, a successful meeting. Optimus feels the weight on his shoulders lighten just a bit. He’s proud of himself - proud to have found what could be a solution to a dangerous situation of political unrest and proud that his Kaonite is still understandable, all these years in.

This pride lasts almost two joors, which may be a record for him. And then Arcee finds him.

“I just had a fun meeting,” she tells him. “Want to guess with who?”

Optimus looks up from his Decepticon personnel files. “Was it Ultra Magnus?” he guesses, figuring she’s heard the news about his little redistribution of power. She shakes her helm.

“Rook,” she says. Optimus knows the mech, a neutral who fancies himself a bit of a reporter. “Do you know what he told me?” This feels like a trap to Optimus, so he doesn’t bother to guess.

“I’m sure he disapproves of everything we do.”

“He said,” she continues, stressing her words. “That you visited Megatron last night. And that you went from his cell straight to Ultra Magnus’s office. And now you’re promoting Decepticons and considering the release of their high command.”

Optimus had not considered the release of the Decepticon high command, at least, not anymore than he does on a usual day. “No one’s being released,” he assures her. “Well, besides Knockout, but that’s been our intention for a while now.” Knockout has been granted outings and, on the condition of good behavior, will soon be allowed more freedom for the purpose of medbay shifts. Their doctor is still on Earth, after all.

“Obviously I don’t care what conspiracy theories Rook has come up with,” Arcee says. “But you didn’t deny meeting with Megatron. You’ve been avoiding him, don’t think we haven’t noticed.” She approaches his desk, pulls out one of his visitor’s chairs, and sits. She crosses one leg over the other then looks up at him, frowns, and readjusts so that both legs are underneath her. It gives her the height necessary to meet his optics without craning her neck. “So what was his answer?” She asks, not bothering to clarify what she believes the question was.

“He refused to discuss his fate,” Optimus says, truthfully.

Arcee raises an eyebrow. “So you just left?”

“We discussed his Decepticons. He did advise me on earning their trust.”

“Sure,” she says. “Because that’s what we needed, advice on trust from a Decepticon.”

Optimus glances down at the datapad, filled with the names of mechs now far more invested in the success of their units. “The advice was solid,” he tells her. “We have a serious problem with our Decepticon populace. We may have won the war, but we are outnumbered.”

She nods. “And that’s exactly why you need to come to a decision regarding Megatron. Half the population is in limbo.” She leans forward, optics locked on Optimus’s, and stresses her next words. “I think we should kill him. He deserves to die. But if you are unwilling to do that, we need a different concession, something to quell the ranks. We need him in an Autobot badge.”

Optimus spends the rest of his shift deluding himself into thinking Arcee’s suggestion would be simple to accomplish. Megatron has renounced his old ways, after all. He’s proved himself to be agreeable in a sense - he has not escaped, attacked Ratchet, or otherwise made himself a threat. Taking the Autobot badge wouldn’t be too difficult a leap.

Or, at the very least, he could give a public announcement of his new loyalties. It isn’t too much to ask.

But Megatron isn’t particularly inclined to discuss his position the second time Optimus visits him either. He’s quite insistent on the opposite, in fact.

“I’ve got all day every day to worry about that,” he tells Optimus, shifting to one corner of the berth and tapping the padding. Optimus does not sit in the newly cleared space. “I don’t want to waste my time with you discussing when you plan to kill me. I’ll find out when you lead me to the gallows.”

Optimus feels a little bit sick. “That is not the plan -” he begins, only to be cut off by a wave of Megatron’s hand.

“Tell me about my Decepticons,” he orders. “Did you speak to Crate about the shoreline mines? He’s been trying to put them out of commission for the last decade on account of the fish. That BP Oil spill freaked him out. I’m sure you’d agree with him.”

“I don’t believe we have any ocean drills running,” Optimus says. “Though I suspect Prowl and Ultra Magnus will want to begin operating them. Our energon demands are only increasing.”

Megatron hums thoughtfully. “You’ll need to go collect the Allspark sooner rather than later. Better to restart the energon flows on Cybertron than try and convince Crate to potentially condemn some seagulls to energon poisoning.” He taps at the berth again. This time, Optimus complies, gingerly seating himself on Megatron’s one possession.

“Noted,” he says. “And your cooperation is appreciated. Which is why I believe we need to discuss -”

“Have you been chucking some energon into the shadowzone?” Megatron asks. “Ratchet tells me that’s where you deposited Soundwave. He’ll put himself into low power mode, but by now he’ll be requiring fuel.”

Optimus sighs. “It is too dangerous to open a gateway to the shadowzone while he still operates.”

“Not if you open it in one of the interrogation rooms,” Megatron tells him. “Set up another room like mine, open a portal, and toss some energon through. Or let him out. I’m sure he has something you want.”

Optimus considers this, then dismisses it. “I doubt he would provide us with any information willingly.”

“He will if I ask.” Megatron pauses, takes in Optimus’s unconvinced look, then adds “Or just throw him some energon. It’s not the Autobot way to starve a mech to death.”

Optimus supposes it isn’t. They sit in a peaceful silence for a couple minutes. Megatron has one leg bent on the berth padding so that he can face Optimus, but his pede dangles off the side so as not to strain the chain locking his ankles together. He plays with his manacles.

Optimus thinks over his discussions with Megatron’s subordinates, searching for something to discuss other than what Megatron clearly won’t. He lands back on the division leaders’ first reactions. “Do I speak Kaonite with a weird accent?” he asks Megatron. He speaks in the language, aware that Megatron likely hasn’t heard him use it in millenia.

Megatron smiles when Optimus speaks, then frowns as he processes the words. “No,” he says. “You sound perfectly fine to me.” He responds in standard Iaconi with a perfect high-caste accent.

“Huh.” Perhaps the specific words he had used have new meanings now, or sound like Decepticon phrases with other connotations. “Never mind then.”

So Optimus leaves his second meeting with Megatron without the promise of an Autobot brand he’d been hoping for and instead with a new hurdle. Megatron is correct - it is not very ‘Autobot’ to let Soundwave starve to death in the shadowzone. Ultra Magnus is not pleased.

“If Soundwave is released from his prison dimension, he will only be another problem we have to, as the humans say, juggle. And he’s likely more of a risk than our other Decepticon prisoners.” The comm is silent for a moment, then Ultra Magnus adds, “Though I do concur that it is against protocol for handling of POWs.”

“I agree with you completely,” Optimus says. “We’ll have to open the bridges in a cell like Megatron’s. Will you speak to Ratchet about the bridge calculations and a potential method of subduing Soundwave.”

“I will, but -” Another pause. “We’ll have the entire Decepticon high command alive and in custody. And a population that is 40% Decepticon with access to the very ship they are being held in. Unlike Megatron or Starscream, I doubt Soundwave’s loyalties have wavered.”

“Understood,” Optimus says. “I will handle the Decepticons.”

‘Handling the Decepticons’ is a bit of an oxymoron, so Optimus settles for ‘testing the waters’. He has now spoken to 12 clones - 4 division captains and 8 of their shift leaders. He knows Megatron had been correct when he suggested speaking Kaonite would lower their defenses, and so he feels fairly confident when he steps into the lower-level Decepticon mess hall. His goal is to gauge their feelings with regards to the more recent changes. And he’d like to determine the actual risk of a coup the Autobots face, though he’ll probably need to rely more on the division leaders to report that.

The clones, for their part, do not stare as he enters the room. En masse, they raise their helms, crook an eyebrow, then drop their attention back to their meals. Optimus walks to the counter.

“Hello, do you have mercury flavoring?” he asks the distributor. The distributor’s voice does not fluctuate from a monotone that would sound bored even to Shockwave.

“Sure,” he replies. He walks down the counter, grabs a cube and a bottle from under the counter, then begins to pour the contents of the bottle into the energon cube. “Tell me when,” he says.

“When,” says Optimus, a little late on the uptake. It’s a lot of mercury. The distributor hands his cube over the counter. Optimus takes it and watches as the mech returns to his original position, as if devoid of any emotion. “Do you like this job?” Optimus asks him, mildly concerned.

“Are you kidding?” replies the mech. “This is the best job I’ve ever had.”

Optimus isn’t sure whether to take that statement as a serious and truthful response, so he turns and scans the tables for someone not doing their best to emulate Soundwave. In the end he picks the table closest to him. There are three mechs there already, two discussing something, the other reading a data-pad. He sits, sips at his drink casually, grimaces at the overpowering mercury taste, and then says:

“I have a serious hypothetical question for you all.”

“Wow, he really does talk like that,” says the first of the two conversing mechs. The other, sitting across from him, rolls his optics.

This again. “Talk like what?” Optimus asks.

The third mech, the reader, leans forward to be seen past the other two. “You have a very distinctive style of speaking Kaonite,” he replies in that very language. He’s likely one of the older ‘batches’, Optimus decides.

“Where - - - to speak Kaonite?” asks the eye-roller. It’s in that Decepticon language, but Optimus can guess what the missing words are.

“I spent a lot of time in Kaon before the war. I do not speak the Decepticon version, however.”

“Yeah?” asks his partner. “Kaonite’s hard. The downloads don’t work like they do for Iaconi. Someone taught you?”

“Don’t,” orders eye-roller. Then, in English. “Ruckus, no ruckus.”

Reader snorts. “Ruckus no ruckus? You mean ruckusing?”

The first one - Ruckus? - raises a hand in mock-surrender. “Fine,” he admits. “I won’t ask him if the first words he learned were ‘don’t stop’ and ‘Primus’.”

“‘Primus’ is just ‘Primus’ in Kaonite, dipshit,” says eye-roller. He turns to Optimus. “Don’t ask him that question you had. The answer will be stupid.”

“Ok,” says Optimus, still rerunning some of his translation software. “My question actually had to do with your work details.”

Reader taps on the table. “You mean reinstating our shift leaders? We can get Bright to run some efficiency calculations but it hasn’t been long enough to see a drastic change. Still getting reordered.”

Optimus nods. “I meant…does reporting to a Decepticon division leader actually benefit the workers? Tangibly or intangibly? It is perfectly fine to tell me if the answer is no.”

Reader hums thoughtfully. Eye-roller sits back, scrutinizing Optimus’s face like Ratchet reading a scanner. Ruckus is the first to speak, which Optimus is beginning to think has more to do with a need to break the silence than any actual response.

“My shift leader’s name is Aurora,” he says. “Like the Princess. She’s cool. I like it better than working with Arcee because that two-wheeler is wicked scary. She killed my brother-in-law. Bumblebee is cool though.”

Optimus’s processor stops. “Your…brother-in-law?”

Eye-roller sighs. “His girlfriend’s batchmate,” he explains. “Though Bumblebee’s certainly killed one of Eelwhip’s batchmates too.”

“Not one I liked.”

“I think -” interrupts Reader. “what Ruckus means is that there is now an additional degree of separation between the Decepticon workers and the Autobots. Not having Autobots as overseers does help reduce tensions, but it doesn’t make any meaningful change to the power dynamics. A Decepticon foreman still reports to Bulkhead. And if Bumblebee walked out of the ship tomorrow and shot Ruckus’s other brother-in-law, absolutely nothing would happen. We are still third-class-citizens with no legal protections.”

They do have some legal protections, as the Autobot code does detail appropriate punishments for Autobots who abuse prisoners, but Optimus doubts telling them that would be the appropriate reaction. And truthfully, they have a point. He can’t imagine Bumblebee doing such a thing, and as such finds it difficult to imagine how he might respond. And it would be his response; adding Decepticons into the lower levels of the power structure does little to hide the fact that Optimus sits at the very peak.

“The Autobots cannot remain in complete power indefinitely,” he begins slowly. “Not when we make up the minority. Already the Neutrals are in discussions with us about their representation in governance -” he does not mention how unsuccessful those talks are. “Would the Decepticons have mechs they would send as representatives for negotiations?”

“Sure,” says Eye-roller. “We could figure that out.”

“Well, we’d have to convince people that Prowl won’t just kill them if they insist on Soundwave’s release,” says Ruckus. Optimus’s finials perk.

“Is Soundwave’s release a priority for you?” he asks, tentatively. This could be either very good or very bad, depending on their reasoning.

Reader sighs. “People don’t like that he’s in the shadowzone. His spying is even creepier when you can’t see him.”

“Eelwhip wants him out cuz she says it's unethical to starve him to death,” Ruckus retorts. Then, quieter, he admits “but yeah, he could be anywhere.”

Optimus… had not thought about it like that. He ignores the urge to glance around. “If Soundwave were released, he might attempt to rouse you into restarting the war,” he says cautiously.

Reader resumes his table tapping. “I think he would find it a lot more difficult to round up a unified Decepticon front, should he find that some of us now outrank him to a meaningful degree,” he replies, eventually.

“You know, I bet if you tried talking to him in this voice he’d capitulate real quick,” adds Ruckus. “Ca-pit-ulate, 25 pence word.” Eye-roller does as his nickname suggests.

Optimus talks to a few other mechs as they filter in and out on lunch breaks. Their conversations follow a pattern - surprise at Optimus’s use of Kaonite, a relatively quick acceptance of Optimus’s insistence on conversation, and then a gently delivered complaint, usually padded with compliments. It’s the same complaint at its core, of course, though phrased differently.

“I’d like access to higher education,” says one. “I was taking online classes on Earth. I was gonna be one of the bridge engineers. Now I’m a construction worker, which is fine I guess, but I miss math.”

“I think some of the neutrals should help with the waste line construction,” adds another. “And your Autobots too. What are they even doing? The only Neutral working is that ridiculous reporter who insists you’re keeping Lord Megatron as an insidiously-influential mistress. Being the slave of an Autobot? Fine, you guys won. But the Neutrals? They ran and hid. Why am I building their damn waste incinerator?”

“I like being a miner. Life really isn’t that much different now as it was before. Except we don’t have HBO on Cybertron. Or Netflix. Or even one of those pirating websites. And Ultra Magnus won’t let us listen to music on shift either. He says it’s ‘against regulation’. What does he know about mining? I’ve been doing it longer than him. It’s nice that I have an actual shift leader now and he lets us listen to music, but only when Ultra Magnus is confirmed to be occupied elsewhere, just in case he comes in for a surprise inspection.” A pause. “The way you speak Kaonite is really familiar, you know that? Like a moviestar. I learned Iaconi through old movies too.”

So it’s the same complaint, really, the same as the one in the graffiti too. They want respect, they want power over their own lives and a personal freedom that will make Prowl blow a gasket. Optimus understands and he knows the solution. The issue is convincing his own mechs to give up a modicum of power to their enemies.

“It has to happen eventually,” he tells them when the topic of their weekly team meeting shifts into a discussion of the Decepticons. “We cannot rule Cybertron. That was never our intention. Neutrals and Decepticons will have to have power over the future of their own lives and their planet.”

“But not these, specific Decepticons,” argues Smokescreen. “Cuz they kinda suck. If we let Starscream out he’s going to do something crazy, we all know it.”

“He’ll kill someone,” Arcee says. “That’s what he’ll do.”

“We could kill him first,” suggests Prowl with the half-sparked intonation of a mech who knows he’s going to be ignored.

“Agreed,” adds Hound, with the seriousness of a mech who has only just returned and is therefore blissfully unaware that they’ll be stuck with an alive and kicking Starscream for the rest of their functioning. It would be easier, Optimus knows, to offline the treasonous little mech and be done with it. The last time Optimus had trusted Starscream he’d stolen the Omega keys and nearly gotten them all killed. Unfortunately, his treasonous tendencies are a half-decent argument against killing him, and Optimus certainly can’t smelt the mech if he is intending on freeing his boss.

“We’ll have Soundwave in the interrogation rooms soon, as well,” reports Ultra Magnus. “Releasing Starscream could be seen as a precedent. We may be forced to do the same for a more formidable enemy.”

“Might I suggest focusing on the free Decepticons first?” Optimus says. “They form the majority of Cybertron’s working population. Requesting their labour without allowing them access to the decision-making process will only make them more susceptible to any bad actors who wish to see the war reignited.”

Hound frowns. “You want to give some clones the ability to vote on key decisions?”

“I think it's a good idea,” says Bulkhead. “They are hard workers, they deserve it. And I don’t think they are that fond of their ex-bosses either.” Optimus smiles thankfully in his direction.

“If we let them into these meetings they’ll want to vote on whether or not to release those ex-bosses,” argues Arcee. “It’s a bad idea.”

“Well, it's either that or a coup,” replies Bumblebee. It’s the exact reasoning that has had Optimus so worried; he nods his support. “Anyway,” Bumblebee continues, “I’d rather have a Decepticon on the council than a neutral. No, how about two Decepticon representatives and one Neutral, so they’ll shut up. That reporter called me a ‘cardboard cutout with Matrix ambitions’. So any Neutral but him.”

“We already have a Neutral ‘representative’,” Prowl reminds him. “We just don’t listen to him. And rightly so. He’s an idiot.”

“Three Decepticon representatives and two Neutrals,” Bumblebee suggests.

“How about zero Decepticon representatives and half a Neutral one,” counters Arcee.

“How would that work?” As Smokescreen.

“Cut him in half,” Arcee replies.

“Listen to him half the time?” suggests Bulkhead.

“What does representation amount to?” Asks Ultra Magnus. “We do not make decisions based on a council. It would be inefficient.”

“I disagree.” Optimus gestures around the loose circle they’ve formed. “We are making a decision as a council right now.”

“And we are being wildly inefficient,” argues Prowl. “And if you insist on a council-based decision making system, then I would argue the first order of business should be voting on whether to kill Megatron.”

“I suggest we table that motion until after we integrate the three Decepticons and two neutrals into the decision making process,” Optimus counters. This garners a defeated groan from Arcee and an enthusiastic grin from Bulkhead.

Hound, who had spent the last minute or so with a considering look on his face, crosses his arms. “I haven’t spoken to any of the clones yet, and I didn’t get any one-on-one time with them during the war. You really think this is a good idea?”

“No,” says Prowl.

“I think that we will soon be interrogating Soundwave,” Ultra Magnus says. “And I believe that, given the current tension in the ranks of our workers and Soundwave’s ability to rally Decepticon troops, it may be in our best interest to provide ample reason for the clones not to listen to his potential attempts at a coup.”

“Or we could leave Soundwave to rot,” argues Prowl. “It is the most logical move.”

“It would be against code -” Ultra Magnus starts, but Optimus holds up a hand. Their arguments could go on for days.

“If Ultra Magnus will take a meeting with the Neutral representative and work towards deciding on a fair process for the Neutrals to decide on another, I will have a similar discussion with the clones.” Smokescreen raises his hand. Optimus nods towards him.

“Are we going to keep adding more representatives when we get more incomers?” He asks. “Because eventually someone is going to ask about that representation being ‘proportionate’ or whatever and then we are going to have to start kicking some of us out of this council.”

“That sounds like a problem for another day,” announces Bumblebee, pushing himself up from his chair. He catches Optimus’s optic, clearly attempting to communicate something. Optimus takes a guess.

“I agree,” he says. “We’ve been here a while. We all have work shifts to get back to.”

Bumblebee doesn’t catch him on the way out like he’d expected. He isn’t in Optimus’s office either, but Optimus suspects he’ll let him know what’s on his processor soon enough. And Optimus has other things on his to-do list.

“Are you sure I don’t speak Kaonite oddly?” Optimus asks upon entering Megatron’s cell for their third meeting. He’d decided to stop in after meeting with the division and shift leader. They’d promised to take point on finding three Decepticon representatives. “The clones seem to think so.”

Megatron shrugs. “You sound like you were raised in the Pits,” he says. “And maybe you have some family in Tarn.”

“Half of the people in Kaon cycle through the Pits,” Optimus complains. “And all of them had friends from Tarn. My pronunciation isn’t weird.”

“Exactly,” says Megatron. He shakes his chain. “Is that why you’re here? Are they giving you a hard time?”

Optimus shakes his helm. “They are being perfectly polite.” He steps forward and practically falls onto the far side of Megatron’s berth. Megatron follows him and sits by the helm cushion. “Did you ever have one of the clones in your command team? Or making command decisions?”

“We had Steve,”Megatron says. “but you probably have him locked up for trying to free Starscream. And the division leaders always made their reports and suggestions.” They do, in fact, have a clone locked in the brig for attempting a jailbreak. Prowl won’t release him because the mech insists he’ll do it again. “I take that to mean you’ve decided to add some to your team roster?”

“Cybertron must move forward,” Optimus tells him. “Speaking of which -”

“How far do you intend to go with this?” Megatron asks him. “Do you intend to give up Autobot command in favor of - in favor of what exactly?”

“I suppose -” Optimus invents, then exhales slowly. “We always talked about a society where the lower castes would have the same freedoms as the higher castes. I don’t think that violence is necessary to distinguish leadership. Cybertron’s future should be in the hands and at the will of the people.” It’s almost embarrassing how nervous Optimus feels right now, almost like a mechling proposing their final project to their favorite professor.

“You have a populace prone to violence,” Megatron warns. “And your Autobots are still outnumbered. Your desire for a Cybertron that follows its people is commendable, but you will have to deal with the fact that the majority of those people are not Autobots. It will be political chaos.”

“Maybe,” Optimus replies with a shrug. “You never approved of chaos.”

Megatron huffs. “No,” he admits. “I never did. I suppose I should be glad I won’t be around for Cybertron’s new political paradigm. Primus, if you put eradicons on your ‘council’ they’ll be voting to free Starscream soon enou-”

“You are not going to be executed,” Optimus tells him. Megatron stops mid-sentence and stares for a long moment.

“Alright,” he says eventually. “I’m not sure keeping me in chains for a million years will save your spark from the taint of immorality though.”

“I don’t plan on keeping you here either,” Optimus says. He shifts to face Megatron more squarely. “You’ll be out of here someday. And you are right, with the clones on the council it will not take very long before Starscream is released. Especially if you work with us.”

Megatron eyes him suspiciously. “That is ridiculous,” he says. “Ridiculous and stupid. You are planning to entirely upend the fragile power dynamics of a war-devastated planet. And you’d like to reintroduce me into the mix, too, just to add kerosene to a swiftly burning blaze?”

“Yes,” Optimus folds his hands together. “I’d like to think your freedom may actually benefit the peace.”

“Yeah? And how would I do that?”

Optimus invents deeply again, quashing that familiar anxiety. “Wear the Autobot brand,” he says, holding Megatron’s gaze. “Ask your people to cooperate for peace. Autobots and Decepticons together outnumber the Neutrals. I’m sure that together we can make sure the needs of the mechs that fought are kept in mind.”

Megatron looks at Optimus for a long time. Not frowning, not smiling, his field and face perfect masks. And then, after a dizzying couple minutes or so, he says “No.”

Optimus’s spark sinks. “No to…?”

Megatron stands from the berth. His chains send echoes through the cell. “I will not wear the Autobot brand.” He repeats. “The Decepticon movement went astray, I know that. And maybe the Autobot cause now is half-decent. But it wasn’t always that way. I cannot wear a symbol with that history.” His voice rises, almost angrily. Almost, but not quite. A restrained…something. It takes a while for it to dawn on Optimus. It’s fear.

Optimus’s resolve crumples like a piece of paper in the rain. Perhaps it was weak to begin with.

“Does living with the Autobot symbol truly scare you more than death?” he asks. “Or is it simply living with an Autobot victory?”

Megatron crosses his arms and stares at the ceiling. When he looks back at Optimus, his face is set in a stony frown. “I am not yours,” he says. “I care about my people. I won’t command them again, but neither will I wear the coat of arms of their enemies.”

“We are no longer enemies -” Optimus attempts to argue, but Megatron cuts him off.

“You are the victors. And until the day you give up all control over my people, you are the enemy.” Megatron sighs then, brings his locked hands up to rub at his faceplate. “Just. I’ll tell them to cooperate. I’ll announce my desire for peace, I’ll tell them how happy I am about the direction Cybertron is headed. Slag, maybe they’ll even believe you haven’t tortured me into it. But I won’t wear the brand.”

“Alright,” Optimus says. Then softer, in Kaonite. “Yes. Alright. Come, sit back down.”

Megatron complies, falls to the berth by Optimus’s hip. “It’s a right mess, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” agrees Optimus. “But I think we can make do without the Autobot brand. What you say about the…torture, it makes me think…”

Megatron eyes him curiously. “Yes?”

“There is this theory, running about the Neutral news headlines,” He begins. “Let me think for a day or so first. It’s a bit of a hare-brained idea. Let me think about it.”

Megatron shrugs. “Alright,” he says. “I have nothing but time.”

So Optimus thinks about it. He browses the latest headlines, considers calling Ratchet, envisions the exasperated lecture Ratchet would lay on him for even considering it. He’s a little bit exasperated with himself, to be perfectly honest. There’s no denying that he has been acting selfishly, keeping Megatron alive as long as he has. He’d been acting selfishly when he’d held onto his straining wrist, when he’d pulled himself onto the Nemesis deck and tugged Megatron’s prone frame behind him. He supposes the time he’s spent rallying the clones and interrogating Starscream has been selfish too, a way to… apply balm to a guilty conscience.

Megatron is correct, he is not Optimus’s. He won’t wear the brand. And that makes him a threat. But he always has been, and that hasn’t stopped Optimus before. He wants Megatron alive and free. There is a way to accomplish that that would effectively end any remaining power imbalance that might anger the Decepticons into revolt. It would strengthen the Autobot position against a similar Neutral rebellion. And it is, at its core, a selfish, tactically unsound plan.

So Optimus spends a while considering it, and rethinking it, and reconsidering it again. And then he finds out Bumblebee has been thinking about it too.

“Hey,” Bumblebee says, after a quick tap-tap-tap on Optimus’s ajar office door. “I need to talk to you.”

“Of course.” Optimus waves him in, gesturing towards the chair across from him. Bumblebee enters and sits. “Is this about what Smokescreen said earlier?”

Bumblebee nods. “He’s right. We get an average of 1.3 returning neutrals a week. That number drops to 0.4 when you look at Autobots. They outnumber us. And that’s not counting the Decepticons who may begin to filter back once they hear about Decepticons in the leadership. There is no scenario in which Autobots continue to control New Cybertron, Not unless we leverage our current superiority and weaponry in…unfortunate ways.”

“I agree with your assessment,” Optimus says. “I assume you have thoughts as to a solution.”

Bumblebee nods, fiddles with his digits for a moment, then says “I think we should lean into it?” It’s spoken like a question.

“How so?”

“Make Starscream one of the ‘council’ members. We all know he’s… secretly efficient. And his loyalty is flexible enough that he can be convinced to vote against any more extreme Decepticon measures.” Bumblebee’s voice becomes faster and stronger as he speaks, gaining confidence or maybe just out of some sort of excitement. “To better soothe tensions with the Decepticons, we can introduce him as a candidate to consider and allow the clones to vote him in. They will, most likely. Then we announce that his release had been our plan all along. He’d been our partner in ending the war and our partner in peace. Everyone knows he’s been giving us codes, it’s believable.” Bumblebee stops for a moment and watches Optimus, waiting for a sign to continue. Optimus nods him on. “It would give both the Decepticon underclass and the Neutrals the illusion that the Decepticons have never been ‘under our thumb’, and it practically guarantees that the Decepticons will be biased towards Autobots over Neutrals. And we don’t end up with our heads cut off after the miners realize a vehicon division leader isn’t the same thing as proportional representation.”

Bumblebee fiddles nervously, watching Optimus process this. It doesn’t take Optimus long; he’s been mulling it over for over a day..

“I have a counter proposal, Bumblebee,” Optimus says. He leans forward and interlocks his fingers on his desk. “You identified Starscream as the best choice for placement on the council. It is true that he is willing to ‘change his colors’ on command, so to speak, and he’s been quite helpful. But I believe there is a mech who has recently changed a bit more than just his colors, and he does not have a history of continually reversing course.”

Bumblebee blinks. Then he blinks again. “Oh,” he whispers. “Oh! On the council?”

“Maybe.” Optimus had gone back and forth as to whether Megatron’s reintroduction to the political scene would do more harm than good before deciding that, if he were to be released, it would be up to the clones. He’d be their representative, after all. Prowl would throw a fit.

Bumblebee ponders this for a minute. “I think, if Megatron has really changed, that it will be Starscream that ends up on the council,” he says.

“It could be both.” They’d given the clones three choices.

“Nah. I think Megatron won’t go for it. But if you can convince him to tell everyone he hasn’t been a prisoner this whole time and that he’s been secretly co-designing our peacetime society, freeing him might be more effective than Starscream. If we just release Starscream, they might see him as too much of a turncoat.” It’s a good point. Optimus wonders if Bumblebee had worried about that during his day of deliberating like Optimus had been worrying about the flaws in his own plan.

Optimus pulls out the datapad he’d been using earlier and taps it on. The article he’d been pursuing pops up on the screen. “Prime visits ex-warlord again, rearranges Cybertron’s governing body,” the headline reads. He turns it towards Bumblebee.

“I don’t think convincing people of Megatron’s influence will be too difficult,” he tells him.

“Yeah,” says Bumblebee. “Maybe not.” He sits quietly for a moment, then rolls his neck. Optimus hears a small pop. “So if we go through with this, we’ll want to start off with an Autobot majority and slowly phase down to something more proportionate,” he says. Optimus nods and he continues. “Not to sound like I’m spending too much time around Starscream, but I think my foreknowledge of and… more eager consent to this plan makes me a better candidate to remain on the ‘council’, or whatever it will end up being called.”

Optimus leans back and takes in his former scout. “Yes,” he says. “It likely does.”

Bumblebee nods, then stands. “Alright,” he says. “I suppose you’re going to speak with Megatron. Would you like me to talk to Bulkhead and Smokescreen? They’ll both go for it, but I’m sure they’d appreciate a little warming up.”

“Introduce the idea, but avoid specifics. This is not a sure thing yet.”

“Gotcha.” Bumblebee’s voice is full of a sudden cheer. He swings one arm across his chest and stretches it, meandering his way back to Optimus’s office door. “Good luck with The Almighty Slagger,” he calls on his way out. Optimus almost smiles.

His visit to ‘The Almighty Slagger’ is delayed by Ultra Magnus’s enthusiastic efficiency. He arrives at Optimus’s door not five minutes after Bumblebee's departure with two mechs in tow. The first is the original Neutral representative, the other is a dark green mech with yellow eyes and the build of a slightly shorter Knockout.

“The Neutrals have chosen,” Ultra Magnus announces, once Optimus has waved them all in. Optimus blinks in surprise. He’d given the clones a week to consider the proposal before picking candidates. Granted, he’d known their candidate list might change, but a day seems too quick.

“That was fast,” he says.

“He gathered us all on the landing deck and wouldn’t let us off until we’d voted,” the green mech tells him. His voice is gruff. “Which I believe amounts to unlawful imprisonment. At the very least, it shows disrespect. How were we meant to make an important decision on our representation in six hours?“

“We won, Crank,” says the former rep, whose name still evades Optimus. “Quit complaining.”

“Six hours! On the deck of a warship,” Crank argues. “That’s your problem Idia, you let them do this slag-”

“It’s not like anyone had anything better to do.”

Optimus holds up a quieting hand. “That’s actually one of the first things we need to discuss with you,” he says. “Most of the Neutral population is not contributing to the reconstruction effort. The Decepticons are complaining about the unequal workforce. I agree with them. We need to begin identifying the abilities and training of your people so that they can most efficiently be assigned tasks.”

“Oh, sure,” says Crank. “Let’s just destroy the planet, then force the people who didn’t fight to clean up our mess.”

Idia nods. “I agree. We are not your Autobots. You do not get to ‘put us to work’.”

It is not that Optimus doesn’t understand their argument. He, an Autobot general, should not be in charge of work assignments for these mechs. He has been treading a thin line these last few months. If the Neutrals should not be forced to work by the war’s victors, then their labor should be handled by their representatives. That is the just course of action.

But the Decepticons have been unnecessarily genial and surprisingly agreeable. It is equally unfair of Optimus to have them build houses for mechs who, from Ultra Magnus’s reports, are building bars selling products made from energon mined by vehicons, exploring beyond the current reconstruction borders and, for a certain subset, making a small killing in the galactic market selling battlefield salvage.

“You are correct that I cannot control your mechs and their actions,” Optimus replies. “But I do control the goods produced by my mechs, and that, for the time being, happens to include the Decepticons. I am telling you this as a courtesy - soon we will be implementing a new program for assigning new accommodations. First priority for housing units will be to those who contribute. Everyone else can remain in the barracks.”

Both representatives fume for a moment, and then Crank speaks. “Will Neutrals be prevented from building their own housing, separate from the Decepticon/Autobot teams?”

Optimus glances towards Ultra Magnus, who squints as if in thought. “No,” Optimus says. “But they will need to discuss appropriate trade with the utilities coordinator for access to energon, water, waste, and electric lines. Actually-” Optimus reaches for his comm. “I believe this discussion may best be had with the Decepticons.” He opens a channel to Rubek and Highflight.

“Have they chosen representatives?” Ultra Magnus asks.

“Not as of yet, but as this conversation relates to Neutral participation in reconstruction, I’m sure the division leaders will have some insight. Two should be in the area.” He hails the two mechs. “They’ll be here soon,” he tells them. “They’ll know more about the reconstruction efforts than I do and I’m sure they would be happy to discuss plans for Neutral involvement.”

Highflight and Rubek arrive not five minutes later, with a courteous but unnecessary knock on Optimus’s half-open door. Optimus waves them in.

“This is Idia and this is Crank,” he introduces. “The two Neutral representatives. And here are Rubek and Highflight, managers of the construction of housing and utilities. I would greatly appreciate it if you four could spend some time discussing Neutral participation.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Rubek, holding out a hand. The two Neutrals look at it, confused.

“Shaking hands is a human greeting gesture,” Optimus explains. Crank reaches out and grabs Rubek’s servo, He gives it an experimental shake.

“Nice to meet you too,” he says. “We are considering sending some mechs your way, or perhaps heading up our own operations.”

Rubek responds with an affirmative noise, which is all the cover Highflight needs to lean towards Optimus and, in Decepticon, mutter “About slagging time. You — together?” Optimus interprets the second sentence to mean ‘you rounded them up’ or perhaps ‘you got us working together?’

“I have listened to your mechs’ complaints,” he replies in Kaonite, “And I explained to them that it is in their best interest to contribute. I doubt they intended to stay on the sidelines for long.”

He is distracted from Highflight’s response by Idia’s loud coughing. When Optimus looks, the representative is sending furtive glare-like glances at his compatriot. Crank has yet to release Rubek’s servo, his attention elsewhere. On Optimus, to be precise.

“Slag, mech,” he says, ignoring Idia’s threatening hisses. “When the newspaper said you were acting like Megatron’s mouthpiece I didn’t think they meant it literally. Didja really learn a language from pillowtalk or have you been memorizing his speeches for fun?”

It takes a long moment before Optimus fully processes Crank’s words. A long, silent moment. And then Rubek giggles.

Optimus visits Megatron again.

It is good to let people see him marching on down to Megatron's room, he reasons. He's a bit less quiet about his journey this time; he comms Bumblebee as he's leaving the office and by the time he's made it to the lower decks that reporter is trailing him with the subtlety of an insecticon on circuit boosters.

His visits will be front page news again by tomorrow. It will make their play more believable.

But his and Bumblebee's political power play - or whatever one might call it - is not Optimus's primary motivation for suffering through all 4 keycodes, 2 spark readings, and an optic scan.

"I learned something interesting today," Optimus says, once he's pushed past the slowly opening cell door. Megatron looks up from where he is, for some unascertainable reason, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"Something...bad?" Megatron asks, optics narrowed in suspicion.

Optimus pauses. "No," he admits, after a moment of consideration. "Not bad, I suppose. Why are you sitting on the floor?"

"I got bored of the bed," Megatron explains. He doesn't make any move to stand. Optimus looks to his normal place on the berth, briefly imagines the angle he'd be forced to speak to Megatron from if he sat there, and instead carefully lowers himself to the ground.

He is not a young mech anymore. Primus. He leans back on his wrists and leaves one leg unfolded, pede by Megatron's knee.

"It turns out I have spent the last few weeks ingratiating myself to your Decepticons by speaking with the exact tone and cadence of a certain gladiator turned warlord," he says. "So thank you for that."

Megatron looks at him oddly. "You speak like a Pit Mech, obviously. That's where you learned to speak the language. But I wouldn't say you've copied my exact way of speaking."

"No," Optimus says. "No, I have had it explained to me quite plainly. I am your vocal mimic. I've been running about Cybertron like an Iaconi version of you. The champion of Kaon in red and blue."

Megatron takes a moment to absorb this development, and then he begins to laugh. Optimus's spark spins oddly at the sound, a stuttering, finicky feeling.

"Alright," Megatron says, once his laughter has calmed. "Speak a little Kaonite to me then. Let me test these accusations."

Optimus fights back a smile and switches languages. "I like to think they appreciate that I speak like you," he says. "They have not seemed too put off by it. They've been surprisingly helpful, considering their situations."

When Megatron replies, it is in standard Autobot. "If you squint, I suppose you do carry my cadence. It isn't my normal speech that you've adopted, you realize?"

Optimus frowns and tilts his helm questioningly. "How so?"

"You pause for a beat too long after every sentence. You enunciate every syllable with impeccable clarity. You emphasize a consistent pattern of syllables." Megatron pauses, mouth twisting into a smirk. It is not unlike his battlefield ones, except perhaps softer. Or maybe that is simply his optics, which no longer alternate between cold and blazing but have instead found a gentle medium. “You don’t speak like I do, Optimus. You speak like I do when I am making a speech or rallying a crowd… or attempting to be persuasive for other purposes.”

Optimus thinks about this for a moment. He has no recordings of his own voice to compare to Megatron’s and, upon further thought, he realizes that he hasn’t heard Megatron speak much Kaonite at all since before the war. Since Megatron was teaching him the language, in fact.

“And that was not intentional on your part?” he asks. “Or did my processor’s learning programs only become active while you were giving a speech?” Megatron does not reply immediately, which would be suspicious if Optimus wasn’t entirely certain that Megatronus had not purposefully trained Orion Pax to speak like a Tarnian-born gladiator-turned-politician with a fondness for poetry. He stares at the wall as he crafts his response.

“I think,” Megatron begins eventually, voice deliberately slowed. His optics return to Optimus’s own. “that if you replay the conversations we used to have, you’ll find I was… being ‘actively persuasive’ through them all.”

It takes a moment for Optimus to process that response, and when he does his first instinct is to hide his face in his hands in a desperate attempt to escape the semi-hysterical laughter bubbling in his chassis. He is successful, surprisingly so, until Megatron decides to open his mouth and say, with full sincerity,

“I hope that you’ll take that as the compliment it is and not as proof of…trickery, or something of the sort.”

“Oh Primus,” replies Optimus. “Are you kidding me?”

Megatron twists the chain around his wrists and does not reengage optic contact. “I wish I was,” he mutters.

“I am too old for this,” Optimus decides, speaking more to himself than to his imprisoned nemesis of millions of years. “We are too old for this. Here I am, running a peacetime society into the ground, and I’m doing it with the accent of a lovesick teenage gladiator.”

“I like to think I was a bit more than that,” Megatron mumbles. Optimus ignores him.

“I will never live this down,” he continues. “Your Decepticons - and now some Neutrals and Ultra Magnus, Primus help me, have heard me negotiating like I’ve spent the last millenia listening to tapes of your greatest hits to put me to sleep.”

“Have you?” Megatron asks. Optimus rubs his optics.

“So what do-” Optimus pauses, takes a deep in-vent, and removes his face from the safe embrace of his servos. He looks Megatron in the optics and is pleased to find that Megatron has the decency to appear a bit sheepish. “So what, exactly, do you actually sound like?” He asks.

Megatron shrugs. “The same as when I speak standard, just…a different language,” he guesses. Optimus stares at him. Megatron stares back.

“Alright,” Optimus says. “Alright. This isn’t why I came here.”

“Yeah?”

Optimus takes another deep in-vent. "I have a proposition for you," he says. "It does not involve putting you in the Autobot brand and neither does it involve killing you, so I believe it would be in your best interest to accept it."

Megatron leans back on his hands and squints at Optimus. "We'll see," he replies with a diplomatic grace that would have dumbfounded Optimus twelve months earlier and now only serves to annoy him further.

"We are going to tell everyone that Decepticon high command has been negotiating for their release and the prosperity of the Decepticon people from their jail cells. We will not identify what leverage you used - I have faith that gossip and speculation will solve that for us. Then you will submit your designation as a candidate for Decepticon representative to a preliminary council. The clones - and Knockout, and any returning Decepticons - will vote you in. And then we rebuild Cybertron."

Optimus watches Megatron's face as he processes this plan. It remains frustratingly blank, until finally Megatron speaks.

"If I disagree with part of this plan of yours, will you revert to the execution?"

Optimus holds back an irritated sigh. "That depends on what you have issue with," he says.

"This...'representative' position," Megatron replies. "That doesn't make practical sense. I'm too big a fish, as the humans say. Or perhaps 'too many cooks in the kitchen' works better. Maybe the clones will vote me in, if they think I've had something to do with any recent gains they've experienced. But my presence would decimate any attempts for cross-faction agreement with your Autobots."

"You have been partly responsible for their recent gains," Optimus argues. But Megatron has a point, and Optimus knows it. He taps the ground by his pede.

"Optimus, I can guarantee that it is your soft spark that is entirely responsible for every freedom they currently enjoy," Megatron says. A sly grin creeps onto his face, slow as if it were being actively repressed. "Except, of course, for all the linguistic inspiration you've taken from my speeches."

Optimus half-heartedly kicks Megatron’s extended pede. "Heartsick teenage gladiator," he taunts. Megatron chuckles.

"Starscream then," Optimus continues. "He's Bumblebee's pick anyway. He'll do well. You can do..." He pauses. "You can spend your time keeping yourself out of trouble. I know that will require most of your energy."

"Certainly," Megatron laughs. "But I won't have much opportunity. You'll keep me down here for a little while longer. Until after Starscream has ascended and found himself the most throne-like council chair."

Optimus frowns. "You believe your imprisonment should be extended?"

"I believe I should be executed," Megatron replies. "But for the time being, imprisonment will do. Don't rock the boat too severely, too quickly."

This, too, is a sensible proposition. Optimus nods. "Fine," he says. "Then you can spend your time talking Soundwave down. Ultra Magnus will be opening a groundbridge into a similarly modified interrogation cell. We would prefer he didn't attempt to kill us on his arrival."

Megatron glances about. "That should not be too difficult. I'm sure he's been listening to all of this."

The clones' concerns pop back into Optimus's processor. "I'm not sure that will make him more interested in a calm surrender," he says. "He might be quite motivated to break free and beat us both over the helm."

Megatron smiles fondly. "Yes. Just like the old days." He raises one servo - which forces the other up as well - and waves at the open wall behind Optimus. The chain rattles.

Optimus cranes his neck to look behind him. He sees nothing, but he doesn't doubt Megatron's judgment in this area - Soundwave is probably there. He turns back to Megatron and watches the chains move. The clones were right, keeping Soundwave in the shadowzone was a strategically unwise decision. A potential enemy that can see everything, watching his former leader in chains and his enemies flounder.

Optimus reaches forward. The stasis cuffs around Megatron’s wrists are operated by code transfer, with no option for manual override. That's fine - Optimus has the code. He'd put the cuffs on, after all, back before Prowl arrived.

He sends the code to the stasis cuff's open line. There is a click and then both ends unfold. The middle falls into Optimus's outstretched hands.

"Why would you do that?" Megatron asks, clearly upset for some unknowable reason. "Do you have no survival instinct? Informing me of a future plan to release me does not an idle, willing prisoner make."

Optimus sits back, then looks pointedly at Megatron's wrists. "You still have the chains," he says. "I've simply enabled your waving."

"I could strangle you with them," Megatron argues. "It wouldn't be very effective, but it would be entertaining."

"Just don't cut off an actual energon line. I need to be able to think straight for at least another year. Or until my Autobots can figure out how to make me obsolete."

Megatron rattles his chains threateningly. "I'm sure plenty of your Autobots would be overjoyed to take over for you, what with your tendency towards stupidly kind behavior. What do you expect me to do with this newfound freedom?"

Optimus shrugs. "Enjoy it?" he suggests. "Or don't. Whatever suits your fancy." He tucks the stasis cuffs into his subspace, then moves to stand. It takes him a surprising couple of moments. Perhaps the lack of action is making him stiff, or maybe he's just old.

Optimus extends a hand, should Megatron also want to stand. He does, grabbing Optimus around the wrist and pulling himself to his pedes. Optimus finds that he enjoys the contact too much. He hasn't touched anyone in a long while, he realizes. Not with Ratchet spending most of his time on Earth.

"You know, I believe you used to call me that before the war too, 'stupidly kind', 'open-sparked and naive'. Do you remember the first sentence in Kaonite you ever taught me?"

Megatron pauses, hand still around Optimus's wrist, and replies in the language. "Probably 'I am here with Megatronus' or 'frag off' or 'get your filthy hands off me or I'll rip your optics from your face'," he guesses. He is not totally incorrect, because Optimus does understand all of that.

“It is interesting that you taught me to deliver threats with your exact warlord-to-be cadence,” Optimus muses, “but no. My official reason for being in Kaon was to collect works overlooked by Iaconi scholars. Your works, for one, but I found stories and histories passed on orally and unpublished works passed along in those alley libraries you showed me. And when I first told you this you sat me down with a cube of highgrade and trained me over and over on one sentence.”

“Yes,” Megatron says with a soft smile. “It is not what I remember most about that night.”

“Neither is it my favorite part of that night, but it has stuck with me. It was ‘I ask with good intentions and an open spark. I come with Megatronus’s approval’.”

Megatron nods. “You were about to spend a decacycle asking strangers in Kaon to relay information to you that could make them vulnerable. I was saving your life.”

Optimus thinks back to his many close calls back then, when he was shorter and naive and couldn’t throw a decent punch. “I’m sure it did save my life,” he says. “Why don’t you teach me to say it without the…grandiosity? It is a phrase I think I should use more often.”

It would be against Megatron’s nature not to be mildly suspicious about Optimus’s requests, and this particular ask certainly is not without ulterior motive. But the suspicion bleeds off quickly when Optimus allows his servo to brush against Megatron’s.

“Alright,” Megatron concedes. “But it is hardly any different.” He stops, a considering look on his face.

“Indulge me,” Optimus urges. Megatron sighs, meets Optimus’ optics, and says

“I ask with good intentions and an open spark. I come with Megatronus’s approval.”

It takes…a surprising amount of time for Optimus to process that. The issue is not that the words are entirely different, nor that he hasn’t heard them before. They are clearly understandable, simply the casual formation and structure of a previously formal sentence. Spoken faster, slightly altered prefixes, a heavier accent -

“That,” Optimus starts, once the shock wears off, “does not sound like when you speak ‘Iaconi standard’ at all. That is completely different. That sounds…” realization strikes Optimus like a Decepticon shock prod. “That sounds like how you speak when you are drunk!”

Megatron averts his gaze. “It is…difficult to maintain a proper vocal pattern when one is inebriated,” he admits.

Optimus stares, processing. The logical part of him tells him this is not their most pressing problem, or even much of a problem at all. But his spark rejects that notion vehemently. He’s known this mech for millions of years. He loves this mech. “I am reconsidering your pardon,” he says, without much thought.

“You are?” Megatron almost sounds hopeful, and he’s reverted to his formal speech, and neither do much for Optimus’s mood.

“No!” Optimus shouts. “Why would you want that?”

Megatron throws his freed servos up in fake surrender. “I am receiving a lot of mixed signals-”

“You are receiving mixed signals? I’m the one who just discovered the mech I’ve spent the last four million years listening to has been using his fake voice on-”

“It is not fake. It is the voice I use when I am attempting to make a strong impression,” Megatron argues. “I use it far more often than the other. It doesn’t mean anything.”

It strikes Optimus then that he is not going to win this debate by arguing about deception. And his real motive lies in a perceived lack of care, which would require delving into emotions he’d rather avoid discussing in Megatron’s cell. Or at all. But Megatron has created an opening in his last statement. Optimus takes it.

“I think your more relaxed and natural intonation is more attractive,” he says. Megatron’s mouth closes in an almost audible snap.

“Well,” he says. “Alright then.”

They stare at each other for a long moment.

"I will let the clones know that Starscream is an available candidate," Optimus says, eventually. "I trust Bumblebee's judgement as to when Starscream should be released, but it will likely be before the clones make their decision to reduce any hint of impropriety. We will negotiate with Shockwave, and then it will be your turn."

"You'll have the 'council' vote about it, won't you?" Megatron asks. It is going to take a while to get used to this voice, Optimus realizes, having previously heard it only while inebriated himself.

"Yes," Optimus confirms.

"And should they vote to keep me imprisoned? Or to kill me?"

Optimus blanks at the question. He truthfully had not considered the possibility - he knows he will vote for Megatron's release and so will Bumblebee, Bulkhead, and Smokescreen. Ultra Magnus could go either way, but may be convinced by Megatron talking down Soundwave. Starscream will, knowing Megatron's freedom is a part of the larger public relations plan that also included his own release. And the other two Decepticons likely will too, out of loyalty. That is 7 mechs against 5, should both Neutrals vote for imprisonment, plus Magnus as a wild card.

"It won't happen," Optimus says.

Megatron raises an eyebrow. "It might. Minds change. What will you do?" Optimus considers the possibility. There is no good answer. But he's gone this far for this mech, hasn't he?

"I would resign my post and free you myself," he tells Megatron. "We would travel through the spacebridge to Earth and seek shelter with Ratchet, who would be utterly livid. Most of my Autobots wouldn't attempt to stop us. And you would not die."

Megatron takes this in, then nods. "Alright," he says. "I believe you."

It goes as Optimus had predicted. He tells the division leaders of Starscream's candidacy and asks them for an approximate timeline.

"Give us a couple days," Crate says. "I have mechs on Earth right now and they will need some time to get here, clean up, and think it over."

"Does three days work?" Sparrow asks. Crate nods.

Rubek does too. "We can hold the vote during the evening exchange."

"Alright, three days, with votes tallied after the evening exchange. Assuming an hour to check and double check results, and that is… Friday night around 6pm PST for the departing miners." Sparrow turns to Optimus. "That work for you?" he asks.

"Whatever pace is needed will do," Optimus says. "I don't intend to rush your mechs. Yes, that timeline sounds great."

That same day, Ultra Magnus and Bulkhead open a portal to the Shadowzone. Soundwave hops out, seats himself on the altered interrogation berth, and presents his arms for shackling. Optimus considers this a sign of approval.

Starscream is released the second day, so as to have time to mingle and campaign. Bumblebee is assigned to follow him for the first couple days, a task he sighs about but seems to enjoy regardless.

"He is an utterly bizarre mech," he tells Optimus. "I'm learning a lot." It is a mildly concerning thing to hear from the mouth of his scout, but Optimus can recognize the hypocrisy of any criticism he could dole out. As long as Bumblebee's presence keeps Starscream in line, it seems fine.

And Starscream does stay in check. He spends his time reacquainting himself with the Nemesis's running schedule, then he hunts down individual shift leaders and requests reports. He locates Bright and comes to Optimus with analysis of the latest changes. And then he asks them to release Steve on the argument that he does wonders for ship morale.

Prowl begrudgingly releases him, having no real reason to keep him imprisoned.

“The most clever turbo-mouse charms the refiner,” Megatron says, when Optimus relays the news. “My command team is tenacious.”

They are. Starscream practically secures his position as one of three Decepticon representatives before his first day is up. Soundwave weasels out of his cuffs, moves his arms behind his back, and re-cuffs them again, all without dislocating his arms. Optimus, sensing a pattern, is momentarily grateful that neither Starscream or Soundwave ever seemed inclined to simply keep their cuffs off.

But Soundwave cooperates, as much as not killing them all can count as cooperating, and Starscream huddles himself and the two other Decepticon representatives (Bright and a mech named Xian) into a room for four hours and comes out with a smug look but no explosives, so Optimus counts it as a win.

"This," hisses Prowl, "Is the exact opposite of an Autobot victory. We have lost."

"I dunno," says Hound. "There are still more of us leading and no-one is dead yet. Seems better than I'd hoped for."

"Our work capabilities have increased substantially with Neutrals in the workforce," Ultra Magnus reports. "And the Decepticon division leaders are skilled report-writers."

Prowl throws one hand up dismissively. "Wielding the Decepticons against the Neutrals was a half-decent move," he admits, "but foolishly executed. We gave more than we got."

"Maybe, but we wanted what we got." Bumblebee flicks something across the table. It soars through Smokescreen's digits, earning a curse. "Does it really matter all that much to you, Prowl? You still think we are going to end up back in a war anyway. Might as well be sooner rather than later."

"I would prefer later," says Arcee. She despoils Smokescreen of the triangular piece of plastic before he can flick it. "But whatever. Forgiveness and all that. I understand."

And thus ends the last Autobot-only meeting on Cybertron's governance, because not a moment later Ultra Magnus receives notification that Laserbeak has escaped Soundwave's cell to join Megatron for his afternoon meal. Magnus announces that such a thing is against regulations and runs off to intervene, pulling Optimus with him, and leaving the others to disperse. They don't meet again until two days later, with the representatives from the other factions.

Optimus finds that the 'council' is far less antagonistic than he had anticipated. They begin with 20 kliks of introductions, which take so long in part due to Bulkhead's insistence that they ‘get to know one another’. Optimus has never enjoyed small talk, but he must admit it is useful in lessening tensions. When that is said and done, with only one minor outburst from Arcee about Starscream's recent kills, Xian raises his hand.

“This is nice and all, beginning this transition now,” he says. “but I think I can speak for most of us when I say that most of our people don’t actually believe you intend on abiding by any decisions we make that you happen to disagree with. And I think we all know exactly what decision will act as the proverbial nail in the coffin of public trust.”

Ultra Magnus replies before Optimus can. ”I have taken the liberty of drawing up an outline of rules and procedures for the decision-making process of this council as well as the enforcement of those decisions.” He pulls out a datapad. “Enforcement begins in section 5, page 106. I’ve sent you files. All Autobots present today have signed, affirming their promise to respect the decisions of the council.”

“As they should, considering they make up the majority of the votes.” Crank crosses his arms. “I read your rule-book. It’s thorough, but needs some work before I would be willing to sign it.”

“I believe,” says Starscream, having been silent for several minutes longer than he can usually take, “That Xian’s point was that anything this council does will be meaningless as long as we are ignoring the rather large elephant in the room.” He twirls his pen around his fingers and continues nonchalantly. “The rather large, obnoxious chained-up former warlord in the room.”

“It is an understandable concern to have,” Optimus replies. “Let us put it to rest. It is only fitting that the first decision we make here should be about the Decepticon prisoners. And when we comply with the vote, it should be more than enough to convince people that we intend to take the council’s resolutions seriously.”

“If we vote to free him, that is,” says Arcee. “If we vote to kill him, it will just be further proof of ‘Autobot tyranny’.”

Bright huffs a laugh. “Well, that is certainly something to keep in mind while ruminating on your vote.”

“Do we require more time to consider our options?” Ultra Magnus asks. “I have drawn up three plans, one for release, one for execution, and one for imprisonment. Does everyone find them satisfactory? Each one only indicates a general path - details can be decided upon subsequently.”

Prowl sighs, rubs his optics, and then folds his servos together on the table. “It makes no difference when we do this,” he says. “So let’s get it over with. Xian is right, there is no sense allowing this ‘court’ to remain untested.”

The vote goes as Optimus had predicted, continuing a streak of good fortune longer than Optimus has had in a long while. And then follows four and a half hours of negotiation over release plans and voting guidelines, followed by another vote that goes the same. Peacetime is exhausting, Optimus decides, even as the weight of the last six months finally dissipates.

He doesn’t need to insist on being the mech to free Megatron. No one suggests an alternative.

“Soundwave tells me that I sound like a for-hire construction yard laborer, but that’s because the only Tarn-raised folk in Kolkular were labor-frame refugees that camped by the hardware stores,” Megatron says upon Optimus’s arrival. Optimus, who had spent the walk down imagining this conversation, takes a moment to process this unexpected information.

“Soundwave is from Kolkular?” he asks, eventually. Megatron shrugs.

“Everyone is from Kolkular in some way,” he replies. “Except the Tarnians.”

Optimus files this in his under-populated table of ‘facts about Soundwave’. “I don’t think you sound like a for-hire construction laborer,” he says, moving towards the berth. Megatron sits on the far side, back against the wall. “I think you sound a little drunk. But that is your own fault. When did you speak with Soundwave?”

“That particular comment is from 4 million years ago,” Megatron says. “But I spoke with him earlier today via what I will be patenting as the ‘Laserbeak phone line’.

Optimus sits. “Does the ‘Laserbeak phone line’ transmit audio instantaneously?” he asks. “These cells are supposed to block all wave communication.”

“They do, the signal is dismal. Laserbeak relays messages herself.”

“I suppose the cells are also supposed to be Laserbeak proof,” Optimus muses, glancing about the room for some vent or other entrance. There are none. Perhaps the front door is Laserbeak’s method of ingress. “It doesn’t matter much now, though.”

Megatron tilts his helm. “No? Have you gone and secured my freedom already?”

Optimus pulls out his work-pad and offers it to Megatron. “The first decision of the new council,” he says. “I assume you can manage to avoid assassination plots on your own, but I would remain cautious for the time being.”

“I am always cautious,” Megatron lies, taking the pad. Optimus smiles.

“I am sure.”

Megatron flicks through Ultra Magnus’s proposed release plan, newly altered by a few hours of debate. “This does not dictate my new role,” he says, once he’s finished.

Optimus nods. “You refused my offer of a political position,” he says. “Did you expect some other duty?”

“No, but I can’t imagine myself sitting around doing nothing. I have had my fill of that.” Megatron shakes his chains. “Once I am free I will have to do something. Idle minds are dangerous minds.”

“I suppose you could be a for-hire construction laborer,” Optimus suggests. “We have plenty of need for that.”

Megatron considers this. “Maybe,” he says eventually. “Or maybe Prowl will kill me. That would really slag Soundwave off.”

Optimus laughs. “It would really slag me off.” He catches the chain below Megatron’s wrists and slides his servo up, looking for the lock. It should be a field and print scan. “You don’t have to decide now.” Optimus glances up to find Megatron’s thoughtful stare locked on him. Megatron’s servo covers his. The silence is a tense, spark-stopping thing, until Megatron breaks it.

“I still don’t think you speak like me,” he says. Optimus blinks in surprise.

“No?”

Megatron’s smile looks concerningly like a post-victory smirk. “It isn’t nearly Tarni enough. We can do better.”

Optimus knows a hook when he sees one, but it isn’t as if he’s ever backed down from Megatron’s games before. “Better?”

Megatron’s servo squeezes around his. “Unchain me,” he says. “It’s about time the Tarnian construction laborers stayed in Tarn, don’t you think? You’d make a fine hauler. We can work on your accent.”

Optimus thinks about kissing him. “I want a library,” he replies instead. “And then you can employ my frame however you’d like to.” His free servo closes over the lock. Megatron’s roaring laughter covers the click of it disengaging.

“Yes,” Megatron says, once he’s calmed. “That sounds like a perfectly fine parole plan.”