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D-16 didn’t think he would sleep the night after he on-lined. The first mech he saw shoved him into a box as his helm pounded. He later learned this box was a train, and his helm pounding was from being on-lined so suddenly and from having information bulk-coded into his being. Just enough to get started in the mines. The other mechs and femmes on the train were talking lowly amongst each other, some had kinder bots to great them - to tell them the things they were going to do.
To instill them with pride.
They were nearing their destination, and it was obvious even with the lack of windows. It was the sounds they heard first. The walls of the train rattled with the loud explosions of tunnels caving in, of support beams being planted and powered, and the other bots in the train just became louder and louder. D-16 couldn’t help but feel… nervous? He couldn’t see much in the train, only the warm and cool tones of another bots’ armor when it refracted against the glow of another’s optics. It was how he noticed the red, blue, and silver bot sitting in the corner.
He was shoved between the smaller mechs who might be lucky enough to get into the mines. But he stood out to D-16 for a reason other than how he towered over those mechs, there was something about him - the way he held himself and didn’t seem indifferent to the environment around him. Other bots on the train seemed to be passing through on the moment, reacting only to the slightest movements of the mechs around them. This bot, however, seemed to react to everything. Every rattle, drop, jerk, and shine seemed to grab his attention and he was drinking it in.
That bot turned his helm to look right at D-16, they locked optics. His helm was tilted ever so slightly and he gave D-16 the first smile he had ever seen. He knew what a smile was but couldn’t have put an image to it, but D-16 now knew that whenever he thought of a smile he would picture this bot’s image in his mind.
Four years later and Orion has just made his 63rd escape from the Archives. D-16 is passing by with a cart full of scrap and Orion slips in just as the two guards are distracted long enough. The pair slip onto a train and Orion presents him with his newest piece of Megatronus merch.
Three years and 7 months ago, Orion had given him his first piece of merchandise. A Megatronus decal that now shines proudly against the slab of cold stone that makes his recharge pod.
They were just a few months into being at the mines and their relationship had blossomed within the first few days. Day one and the two were already charging out of a collapsing tunnel with the burn of energon at their heels. Needless to say they were popular names on the tips of everyone’s glossa for a week. Not many miners had a relationship quite like theirs. In their world, in these pockets of caves, everyone blended together and not many wanted to risk baring their sparks for another when that bot’s life could easily slip away.
It was easy being around Orion. They worked together, fueled together, and spent all the hours between that with each other. It wasn’t uncommon for them to sneak out of their barracks, get onto the glossy pavement of Iacon and discover something new. It was how they came upon the Archives and where their obsession with the Thirteen came from.
Orion had found a library at first and they hadn’t even been able to enter the building before being turned away not by a bot, but by norm. You could only enter buildings in Iacon through access cards only found within a bot’s identification code, something that miners didn’t have.
This didn’t deter them, they hopped on top of a train in the middle of the night and rode it until they got close enough to begin scaling the building. Turns out, the Archives sat right above the library towards the center of the spire. They had found this out when a security drone flew too close to their position and Orion got spooked, causing him to fall right into a vent and dragging D in with him.
They had been in the Archives until morning… and if D-16 had stolen too many glances at Orion’s glowing expression there was no one to see. There could have been a word for it, and D-16 would never know, but to have been so close to Orion - ducking between shelves full of data and to discover something new to them and do it together - he didn’t know if ‘happiness’ could capture all of that.
D-16 had continued to tag along with Orion every now and then. The other miners assumed they had been getting up to more, with only the knowledge that they would run off in the middle of the night. They tried asking Orion but gave up when they only got the truth, and an earful of a lecture about the data points he was discovering. And when they asked D-16, well he couldn’t put those feelings into words. He also told them to frag off.
One of their final firsts was getting to see Sentinel for the first time. The broadcasts had began only a year into their time at the mines and it was, in the best ways, daunting. To be relied upon by all of Cybertron for the sustenance of their energy! The idea itself filled D-16 with so much pride. Many in the mines felt the same way and it was a great point of moral for every miner.
Orion felt slightly different about it compared to the other miners. D-16 began to notice that his nightly escapades were beginning to run into the day. Orion was skipping shifts and sleep to find data points pertaining to the Matrix of Leadership, the very thing that could make energon flow through their planet again. D-16 didn’t know what to think. He was frustrated, annoyed, irritated, but never angry.
He could feel anger build in him when Orion would let his escapades run into the middle of a shift. He would run to save Orion every time he was in cuffs, every time he was being drug through the streets of Iacon, and he would have a plan every time to get him out. He would rush down with a plan to finally say the things he can’t put into words and get Orion to listen to him. And every time he would see Orion his mind would go blank.
Orion had a smile, that same first smile, and it would just get bigger every time he saw D-16. It wiped his mind, erased the anger, and D-16 would forget why he was even mad in the first place. Not up until Orion would do the same thing next week, rinse and repeat.
D-16 had begun to worry for Orion. After a while he understood it was Orion’s way of giving back, of showing pride for his home, but if they were separated - then who was going to save Orion? D-16 would follow the bot to the ends of Cybertron, he knew this much, but there was just some places even D knew he wouldn’t be able to follow Orion to.
So, one night, D-16 slipped out of his recharge pod and knocked on Orion’s helm until the bot woke up. Luckily, and unlike himself, he was a light sleeper and woke up promptly. He just wasn’t quiet about it.
“Wha-, D!” He immediately placed a servo over his mouth, he was too bright for a bot just coming out of sleep.
D-16 brought a finger up to Orion’s lips and gestured with his helm towards the escape ladder commonly used during their escapades. It would lead right out to the streets of Iacon, and any higher and it would lead them below an overhang for an upper levels’ platform. The other bot quietly followed his lead and the two were soon breathing in the smog-ridden air of Iacon.
The two bots sat on a ledge, pedes dangling over a chasm-sized tunnel used by shuttles and trains coming in and out of the mines. It was eerily quiet at the moment with it being so late and their only other company, besides themselves, was the golden glow of Iacon.
“Orion, we need to talk,” Orion’s frame tightened, it was an audible movement that D-16 recognized as Orion preparing to argue back, “Nothing bad! No, well… it’s about the time you don’t spend in the mines.” Right choice of words, D-16 looked to where Orion sat and the bot was beginning to loosen up.
“Go on.”
D-16 was appreciative for the verbal acknowledgement, sometimes it felt like talking to a wall when talking to Orion. A wall that happens to be able to smile back and mold the best speeches for every situation.
“I’m saying this as your friend, but you have to be more careful when visiting the Archives.” D-16 couldn’t face Orion any longer, “I’m afraid that one day… I won’t be able to save you.” It was the most open he had been with the other bot. He was always an open mech when it came to Orion, but it was always in the form of sass and off-handed comments that usually flew over his helm. Now, he needed Orion to hear this and couldn’t let it eat away at his spark any longer.
It was silent, the roar of racing and flight-frames overhead was blasting in his mind as the only form of distraction from the unknown of what Orion was going to say next.
“I-I’m sorry… to put you into that situation isn’t fair.” Orion went silent, but D-16 was shocked. He hadn’t expected an apology.
“What, no!”
“No?” Orion questioned, confusion genuinely lacing his glossa.
“Yes! I mean- I wasn’t looking for an apology. I know the archives is your place. If we had been sparked differently, in another universe or something, I know you would have been sparked for the archives. And I wouldn’t want you to drop something you enjoy like that for me. All I want is a promise- that you will be more careful when going to the archives. Tell me when you’re going. I don’t want to have to fish you out of every arrest.”
Orion sighed, the staccato of a laugh hidden in it, “I still want to apologize.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to though. I appreciate you coming to save my aft all the time, and it’s not that I don’t need yous saving me- or don’t want it, but I don’t find it fair that you see it that way. We’re friends, for life, where you go… I go.” Orion held out a fist.
“And where you go- I go.” D-16 met him halfway.
D-16 followed Orion out onto the surface. Willingly and unwillingly. Looking back on it, he knows he should have put his foot down on this one.
Sentinel was a fraud. He knew that much now. He was a coward dressed in gold and radiant azures. He lied.
Sentinel had lied about everything. The energon, their t-cogs, and the matrix! D-16’s spark was spinning wildly in his chest, a burning heat blossoming within his chest plates and he just wanted to let it out. To hit something, to scream, to just stop it from consuming him.
To stop himself.
He took it out on Orion. It was just once, but that had already been too much. Their relationship was stretched thin, at least in D-16’s eyes, and it scared him to see how much everything was changing and how fast it had all just dissolved in front of him.
He didn’t want to lose control like that again. But D-16 didn’t know what was different now. Orion was still the same, taking charge of the situation and D-16 should have just laughed it off when the situation would inevitably go awry because Orion was just horribly clumsy in nature - but he couldn’t.
D-16 feared letting Orion get ahead. Letting him take charge was like dropping stones in his chest and throwing them around in the empty space between his spinal column and spark. Maybe it was to do with the betrayal, the loss of faith, to have a podium of faith pulled from right beneath his pedes so suddenly and he was going into freefall and there was no stopping it-
“I. Got. It”
D-16 held himself away at arm’s length, and if he could just get farther away (save Orion the pain), he would do anything.
But it was too hard to pull himself away from the tether keeping him grounded.
He found an outlet pretty quickly. That seeker, Starscream, was a solid mech - from the Old Guard! With every punch delivered straight into the mech’s chassis it was like punching a solid wall that wouldn’t crumble and it was exhilarating. All that heat that had built beneath his chest was in his arms now and he had never felt so alive before. There was so much power in his hands and the mech beneath him was just begging for it.
“Hit me! Hit me!” He would scream, and D-16 would answer every time.
The jeers filling the air was dying down. D-16 could feel the heat in his fingertips now, and Starscream’s neck was so long and he had wondered how amazing it would be to get his fingers around that mech’s throat - to show him all the ways he needed to be saved, that only D-16 could save him.
But he caught a sight of red, blue and silver pushing it’s way to the front of the crowd from the corner of his optics - a face stricken with horror and grief. With loss. What would Orion know about loss. A mech like him didn’t know loss, he always needed to be saved. Always needed to be held by the hand.
D-16 turned back to the mech beneath him - red, blue, and silver - and a new anger blossomed from within. He reached his fingers around that mech’s throat and squeezed.
“We become no better than Sentinel! D, please, spare his life and he will face trial for his crimes committed against Cybertron!”
What right did Orion have. What right did this bot have to tell him to his face that a system which had betrayed them was a system that would bring justice. What about his rage. What about the days and nights spent in the mines, pulling doubles - pulling bodies - and to just look past that and allow the mech who caused all that pain and suffering to just wallow behind bars. Sentinel had subjected mechs to a worse fate.
“And what does that fix Orion? He must pay and he will pay with blood!” D-16 raised his cannon, the heat was building again. That rage in his chest burned and flooded his cannon.
But he could never point it at Orion, even if the bot was asking for the impossible.
“I’m done, Orion.” Sentinel was getting back up, he was pulling himself back up with shaky legs and energon pooled around his moving corpse - spilling out of him with every movement.
He fired.
And there was gaping hole where bright red should be. And Orion’s optics had turned grey. And Orion was falling.
He dropped his cannon and dove for Orion, barely catching his hand as the bot was slipping over the edge.
“No, no, no, no! What did you do!” His optics were burning. The one mech he wanted to save and he shot him, “Why did you do that!” His voice was choked and the crowd begging for blood had gone cold.
D-16 screamed at Orion, and nothing came back. That smile was gone now. Now, there was only half of a face looking back at him and the other half had been eaten by the void below - eaten by his own rage. He did this. He hurt Orion. He hurt the one and only bot that had ever cared about him. The stories of nights they shared between them was falling into the void below, bit by bit. Spark by spark.
In the mines they had always said to never get close with another bot. Baring your spark like that was just opening yourself up to being broken later. D-16 didn’t believe that. Orion was too bright to be snuffed from this world, and D-16 wouldn’t have allowed for it.
He held onto Orion tightly. He was making a dent into the others hand by now, but he was going to pull him up - he was going to save him.
But then what.
Looking down, he saw the gaping hole where Orion’s spark once burned. Where it had burned for years and burned into D-16’s entire being and devoured him whole. There was nothing there now. There would be no bringing Orion back.
But he could still save him…
And he would save him, and save him, and save him… save him. And that was all he did, wasn’t it? Saving Orion, it was D-16’s job. And if Orion were to make it, had Orion not been shot, that’s all D-16 would have continued doing. Living in Orion’s shadow, living in the shadow of that smile, and would continue to save him and he always told himself he would do it because they were friends.
But were they. Would a friend jump in front of the mech who ruined everything - a mech who lied and cheated his way to the top with no care of the corpses he used to climb his way up? Would a friend betray him? Orion betrayed him the moment he jumped in the way of his deliverance of justice. Orion cared more about Sentinel than to allow D-16 to have his justice, to spill blood for spilled blood. He wanted Sentinel to run dry… and Orion was falling again.
There was no one else who could save him now.
Two bots died together that day and they lie in the abyss they fell into. And if one listened closely to the abyss, they would hear the whispers of feelings that neither bot learned the words of.
Those memories shared between the two, of close touches shared in the dark, would now never be remembered by another bot. The two bots who had lived that life, lived in each other’s spaces and beings, were dead now. Their story would abruptly end - frayed and burned.
But with the days leading into the war, and eons deeper into the war, Megatron would continue to look over his shoulder - expecting and waiting to see red, blue, and silver. And every time he would look into the ghost of where a smile should be.