Optimus X Elita - Tumblr Posts
I've been listening this song too much that it became my fav‼️
So I made this and I've been working on this everyday. I’ll be posting the rough version soon
Take your OpLita angst :3
I love this!!
Best partner,
best friend！
I'm looking forward to the new film so much that I can't pass up the opportunity to get a little more imaginative....And I’m terribly interested in how the interaction between the Elita and Orion will be shown!!!(≧▽≦)
I love them too much...
I love drabbles and one-shots! Here’s the prompts I’m using for the story on AO3 in case anyone is curious about what they’ll be.
Walking Through the Woods at Night
Keep your temper. Especially when they’ve done something they know is wrong. Nothing unnerves them more.
Elita-1 smiled and nodded to the senator.
“Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me, Senator Descaled. I will remember them when I’m making evacuation decisions.” She kept smiling as the Senator finally started to realize his mistake.
“I mean, I’m just a senator, ma’am,” he backpedaled so quickly she could smell the tires burning. “I’m sure you’re better equipped to organize things that like.”
“I’m so happy to hear you say that. How kind.” She let him flounder a moment longer, just to let her point sink home. “As you know, living in the Silver District, with several modern defense systems, you and your family will not be our priority in case of an invasion. However, now that you’ve brought it up, I’ll ask my surveyor to check again. We might have overlooked some holes in the District’s defenses.” She pulled out her personal datapad and pulled up her contacts.
“Oh, I’m sure that –“ His optics were darting towards the door. Good.
“It’s no trouble! Here he is…Cliffjumper. Best surveyor I’ve ever worked with. He really gets down to the tiniest of inconsistencies. Nothing is too big for him to take on. Now, you have a few main defenses I’d like to list here. You have ONLY the public defense force, correct?” She put her stylus to the pad and started to scribble nonsense. She checked the time.
“Well, there might be a few, smaller security forces –“
“And ALL the defense taxes this year have gone to the Global Defense Trust, correct? You didn’t use any of them?”
“Well, we might have updated the –“
“And remind me, how many turret guns do your city walls have?”
“Um, eight, Commander.”
Elita-1 pretended to be surprised, but not too well.
“Eight? I could have sworn the catalog you sent me said two…”
“A…clerical error, I’m sure. They probably weren’t counting the ones I’ve installed privately – purely for the good of the citizens of the Silver District!” he hastened to assure her.
“Of course. Well, once my mech comes back with a new survey, I’ll let you know if my evaluation procedures will change. If you have eight turret guns then maybe we can move you even further down the list.” She smiled brightly at him. “Is that all? It is Wellhop Night, after all. I don’t want to be held up further.”
Senator Descaled shook his helm fervently.
Elita-1 loved her job.
0-0-0
Elita tried to keep pace with the unhurried tumbling wireweeds on the way home. She wasn’t, as a rule, a superstitious bot, but in the Darkling Season, well, even the skeptics opened their windows for the spirits and blackened the plating around their optics in the days between Wellhop and Hallowkin.
After missing the last two Wellhops, she wasn’t taking any chances.
The bots around her had already started changing their paint. Every Iaconian she drove past had the tell-tale blackening and faint silver lines of luck-glyphs.
The Polyhexians glowed like diodeflies as they wove in and out of traffic. Their intricate year-round designs were covered up with bold glyphs painted in brilliant glow-in-the-dark temp paint to bring luck during the season. More and more of them had come to Iacon in recent years, running from the unrest she was working so hard to contain.
Elita turned from the main road to their narrow side street and released the vent she’d been holding. Don’t vent until you reach home or demons will follow your spark heat. A Wellhop superstition passed down from her great-great-grandguardian when bots hadn’t yet understood the difference between spark energy and core heat
To ward off demons, Optimus’s friend from the Crystal City had carefully soldered lights up and down his frame.
In Praxus, they were probably already feeding their crystals with actinium and tritium and radium.
She pulled up to their habsuite – to their habsuite – and transformed. Even without the wind, the chill in the air made her plating tingle and her spark spin faster to heat it. The darkening sky was black and star-speckled and impossibly clear.
It’s the perfect night, she thought. She walked up the – up their – walkway, kicking loose crystals back into the edging. The click-clack as they bounced off the walk echoed cheerfully in the quiet. She paused at the door.
Residents: Commander Elita-1 & Orion Pax
She traced the engraving gently. They’d waited vorns to afford their own place together rather than bunking in with half a dozen roommates (Optimus) or the army barracks (her). It wasn’t big – barely enough for two – but it was theirs in a way nothing else had ever been.
She laid her palm on the scanner beside the door and pinged for entry.
The locks clunked and spun inside the – admittedly over-kill – blast door and she gave it a shove, slipping in through the narrow gap and letting it slam shut behind her again. Another superstition – don’t let the demons in on Wellhop.
“Hello?” she called, transforming her pedes from treads to soft rubber soles and padding through the dark hallway.
“Here!” his voice rang out and it was Optimus tonight, not Orion. “I’m nearly done, love!”
“Coming!” She emptied her subspace on the hall table – non-emergency keycards, datapads, spare blaster – and followed the sound of clinking pots.
The kitchen was boiling hot – like someone had kept the oven and the stove on all day – and her sparkmate was in the middle of it all, carefully sliding treats into their Wellhop tray.
“It smells amazing in here,” she said, looking around at the piles of pans and dirty trays. It smelled like hot minerals and sweet additives and rich energon.
“Does it? I stopped noticing around lunchtime,” Optimus joked and she could hear Orion peeking out from between the words. “I think I’ve finally got it perfect though, look!”
He held out the pan to show her the fluffy lead flavored mallow crèmes dolloped on baking paper.
“They’re perfect!” she whispered. And they were. She grinned up at him. “You’re amazing.”
This close, she could see his optics – so much more intricate than Orion’s had been, how did people not notice? – narrow as he zoomed in on her. For a split-klik, she became his whole world and it never failed to make her spark flutter. He wasn’t just her sparkmate, for that klik, he was the Prime and he was looking at her. Then it was over and she was standing in her kitchen again, looking at her sparkmate covered in smudges of jellied energon, the light outside fading.
“Ah, well.” Then he averted his optics and shifted on his pedes and it was such an Orion thing to do that it made her spark ache all over again.
“Do you think the decorations are right?” he asked, holding the pan of perfect, crystalized spheres. The gooey centers inside sloshed as he lowered them into a row of divets in their small Wellhop tray.
He’d clearly been working all day on it – the lines were mostly straight – he was an archivist and a scribe after all – and all along the edges were swirls and hexagons and clusters of abstract sparks in clusters of three. Across the bottom of the tray – quickly being covered by the treats - were the glyphs for prosperity and protection.
“They’re beautiful,” she said. They’d formed the sheet metal themselves into the simple tray shape. She’d punched out the little divets since her servos were smaller. Optimus had tried on a scrap piece and crushed the metal thin enough to read through.
They were taking no chances this year and every folktale, rumor, and legend said that a homemade tray warded off evil.
“Even if it’s not,” Optimus continued, gently turning the tray to fill the other side, “they’ll taste good.” He inclined his helm towards one of the – many – pots on the stove.
Elita stepped closer and looked inside. The extra sauce at the bottom of the pan was iridescent and so concentrated it was opaque. She dragged her finger through and tasted it. It was impossibly good – it ought to be, it had almost a month’s pay’s worth of ultra-refined energon in it. S&S Brewery had come out with a Hallowkin and a Wellhop line of energon and it was not cheap.
She winced at the memory of going in to buy it. They had both stood awkwardly at the counter, ignoring the looks they’d gotten when buying such expensive energon just before Wellhop. So what if they were a little desperate? She’d miss the last two and there was a terror nipping at the back of her processor that the next few Darkling seasons wouldn’t be any better.
It had to be this one and they were going to need all the luck they could get.
Luck!
“I forgot the silver paint!” Frag! Fragfragfraggityfrag –
“Here.” Optimus handed her a Wellhop kit – silver paint, stencils, extra-thin tipped paint brushes. “I thought it would be better safe than sorry. Bought it this morning after you left.”
She deflated with relief.
“You think of everything,” she said. “Do you want to hop in the washracks first so I can help you or should I –“
It had to be perfect. They couldn’t mess it up this vorn -
Optimus kissed her, large, warm servo cupping her face gently. She let her spark settle, leaning into him.
“Go,” he whispered, pulling back. “I’ll clean up.”
“You do no such thing!” she scolded. “It’s bad luck to clean before getting back from Wellhop night!”
“You better hurry then.”
She smiled and went, her servo lingering in his only a moment.
She washed with more reverence than usual. This would be her first proper Wellhop as an adult. It would be her first time making the journey into the woods.
She’d been an only creation of three very rich and doting guardians. Every Wellhop, her guardians had paid their respects for their ancestors, warded the house against spirits, and spent the evening tell her stories curled up in their berth.
She stepped out and looked in the mirror. Were they proud of her? Were they watching?
She opened the small window in the washracks and carefully smudged a line of crystal paint across the sill. A ward against evil, an invitation to her family visiting from the Well.
“Ready?” Optimus called from downstairs.
“Coming!” She looked once more to the window.
Please, she thought, I need your guidance tonight.
Then she grabbed the paint thinner and rushed back downstairs.
0-0-0
“No, higher.”
“Here?”
Optimus swiped at his helm and missed the paint smudge again. At least the silver blended in better with his paint than it did with hers.
She could admit that choosing pink as a cadet had been a bit arrogant.
Optimus was the color of the sky and oxidized steel- steady and wistful all in one.
“Oh, come here. Bend down.” He bent obediently and she took the cloth from him.
“You are helpless.”
“Not everyone has Commander Elita-1 as their sparkmate. I am but a humble librarian.”
Except he wasn’t.
Elita was sometimes still struck by how impossible her reality was. She would be doing something normal – buying energon cubes on the way home or trying to fix the stuck window – and then it would all crash down on her.
On Wellhop, in the Darkling season, with the sky black and the wind howling, everything was distant and strangely shaded. She felt like she was standing on shifting metal sheets, all going a different way. Except the shifting was going on inside her processor and she was trying to stay upright and look like it was easy.
Were her servos shaking?
The world knew him as Orion Pax, archivist, friendly librarian, Commander Elita’s sparkmate. Only she knew him as Optimus Prime, Matrix bearer, peace-keeper. Possible Leader of Cybertron.
She asked Primus every night to keep that secret. As long as peace continued on Cybertron, Orion Pax would have a place. Primes would remain the stuff of legend.
She wanted to be the only one touched by war.
“Elita?” She lifted her helm. He was watching her and that look wasn’t Orion’s at all. Orion had been kind and concerned, but that look of knowing…that was new.
“I love you,” she said, the feeling shuddering through her spark like a train running freight.
“And I you.” How he could go from fumbling a dish one minute, to speaking like a Gilded age hero?
“It’s going to be okay,” she reassured him. “Everything will work out.”
“Of course it will.” There was no trace of doubt in his face or spark. She took comfort from that – if the Matrix bearer thought they’d be okay, they would be.
She vented heavily anyways, bleeding excess heat to cool her processor.
The smear taken care of, they were ready.
Elita looked over their silver paint once more, looking for mistakes, misspellings, and smudges.
Optimus carefully wrapped the tray in cloth for the journey, tucking it around the corners and tying it snuggly.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t stop by and store and pick up some professional goodies? There’ll be plenty tonight-”
“Don’t be silly,” she kissed him with a loud smack, “everyone knows homemade is better.”
She laid her helm over his spark to hear the stead movement of its spin.
There had been a time when she’d thought this would be impossible.
Sometimes she still did.
0-0-0
It was the perfect night. There was a chill in the air that stung their plating and made her optics tear up. The trees had dropped most of their leaves, baring the branches. They looked like the delicate wiring of a circuit board – silver and copper lines and swirls.
They stood at one of the gaps in the low wall that served as an unofficial entrance to the forest.
There was a faint scent of goodies on the evening breeze: gooey, sweet mallow cremes dyed and shaped like leaves, crunchy energon drops, gelled energon squares and soft jelly drops with rust flakes. She remembered them from her own sparkling days.
“Ready?” She looked up. Optimus was pretty on a bad day, here and now with the metal around his optics carefully blackened and his plating covered in her own messy stencil work, he was devastatingly handsome. He looked like something out of a Hallowkin storybook.
“Ready,” he whispered back. She looped her arm through his and they stepped into the forest, their pedes stirring up the fallen aluminum leaves as the bare branches closed over them.
Please guide us, grandguardians, she prayed, rubbing her fingers over their names, scrawled over her servos. They were barely into the forest – she could hear the hum of the city noises behind them. Still, she kept her optics open and scanned every wavelength of light she could.
The wind was softer in the forest, buffeted by the thin tree trunks. Thin wisps stroked over her shoulders and down her upper arms. Without the wind, the air was warmer, the crunch of the leaves was louder. Everything felt close and small.
She knew they were walking through one of the largest forests on the planet, a jealously guarded resource, a forest she’d written laws to protect in her younger days with the Environmental Corps. The twists and turns and tiny side roads shrunk the massive forest into matchbox sized pieces, a series of rooms to be searched.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that they were the only ones out in the forest tonight, walking with hope in their sparks, and the names of their ancestors painted across their plating.
She looked at Optimus’s arm, her servo curled around it, the names of his friends in her untidy glyphs. She looked up to see the bare branches, curling over the path like protective servos. She looked at the names on her own frame. She leaned into Optimus. They weren’t alone out here, she reminded herself. Everyone she’d ever loved in the Well would be with her tonight. She hoped they were happy for her.
The sounds of the city faded and the steady hum of the wind got stronger overhelm, even if they were protected on the pathway.
“I remember nights like this as a sparkling,” she said. “My guardians would made spiced energon and make mine extra sweet. We’d open the windows and listen to the storms coming in. Guardian Flicker liked to talk about everything that had happened that year so the spirits could hear her.”
It was one of her oldest memories, sitting on their berth and listening to stories of the grandguardians she’d never met. She looked forward to Wellhop every year. She’d race home after school and spend the afternoons helping Guardian Swivel grind the minerals for energon or sweets. That had stopped slowly, in spurts, as she grew up and homework and friends started to intrude.
“I don’t care, Flicker! I just wanna go with Arcee and Kickstar to the party!”
Later, after the accident, Guardian Towline kept up the tradition so that Flicker and Swivel would know how everyone was doing. Elita had tried to keep it up herself now that Towline was gone as well.
“I remember sitting up in the archives and opening the windows – even though Alpha Trion told me not to,” Optimus said. “I’d hate if I’d left a story unfinished and no one let me in. He only caught me once – on Hallowkin.” Optimus lifted his optics skyward, as if remembering something horrifying. “I can still hear his lecture. He accused me of mistreating the Archives.”
Elita laughed. “Every librarian’s worst nightmare.”
“Of course,” he intoned seriously, optics sparking with mischief, “second only to miss-shelved datapads.”
“Did you ask anyone to open the windows this vorn?”
“I did. Young Smokescreen has promised to do it.” He lifted her gently over a protruding root as if she weighed nothing.
She snorted as he set her down and her pedes sunk back into the soft, crumbling leaves. “You mean you told him and then set up a timer.” She could see the tiny tendrils of the roots sneaking out to reabsorb the leaves and made sure to step around them.
“I like to give him the chance even if he is…less than reliable. I’m sure he will grow into his responsibilities.”
“And until then you’ll be his safety net?” she teased, though it warmed her spark to think about Optimus and his young, eager apprentice.
She paused and he lifted a low hanging branch out of her way.
“He is coming along. Yesterday he asked me about taking on extra field of study. I’m not sure how Hand-to-Hand combat will be useful in the Archives, but he assures me it will. He said something about defending the books from – what’s that sound?”
Off to the side they heard voices, one of the main roads crossing into theirs.
“We should turn here,” Optimus rumbled. “Don’t want to get too close to –“
“Wait – I think that’s – it is! Hey! Flyby! Hey Flyby!” Elita turned and skipped ahead to where the two paths were converging.
“Flyby! Hey!” Elita waved and the pair of jets stopped and turned towards her. “I didn’t know you guys would be out tonight.”
The taller mech smiled at her and ambled over. His sparkmate hung back slightly, holding a tray carefully balanced in his servos.
“What can I say,” Flyby said, as they got closer. “I have a romantic spark.”
Elita-1 laughed. They both knew that was an understatement.
“Is that your new sparkmate?” Flyby asked, looking behind her. Elita turned. Optimus was standing awkwardly, their own tray dwarfed in his enormous servos.
“Yes – Optimus come over here and meet Flyby and Rocket! – it’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”
“A perfect night,” he agreed. Rocket and Optimus both got closer in the ageless dance of ‘our sparkmates are friends, but I don’t know you from Primus.’
“It’s good to meet you,” Optimus said in his ‘hello patrons’ voice. His smile was lighter and just a touch empty. Customer service smile.
“You too!” Flyby gushed. “Elita is always talking about you.”
Elita punched his shoulder playfully – and gently. Flyby was a scout, not a warrior and his armor was even lighter than a civilian’s.
“Like you have any room to talk – ‘Rocket’s taking me to the movies’ and ‘I’ll ask Rocket if he wants to go with me to the opening of that new restaurant,’” she mimicked.
Rocket laughed and nudged his sparkmate.
“I love you too,” he said, the treats in his servos clinking. Elita looked down and felt her optics widen.
“Oooo, that’s a nice tray,” Elita complimented.
It was too – and not store bought.
Flyby had purchased one of the ceremonial trays from the temple – all ornate metal work and inscribed prayers. Meant to be a keepsake.
Elita felt Optimus quickly subspace their flimsy, home-folded metal tray with clumsily painted swirls and sparks.
It was full of different treats, each with its own flight-frame specific symbolism.
“I don’t recognize any of these,” Elita said, staring.
Rocket perked up a bit.
“The pink drops symbolize the energon spilled by our ancestors,” he said, pointing at the generous pile of tiny crystals. “These,” he pointed to very thin, very flat jet-black wafers, “are supposed to look like the sky. The spirits see them and think they’re flying towards the sky. Once they land, they have to walk with us and bring us luck. The shaped crèmes are specific to the temple we bought the tray from – their symbol in a seeker with blue and purple stripes.”
Their own tray looked a bit plain with just the spheres and the plain white mallow cremes.
“They’re beautiful,” she said pushing down the jot of jealousy.
“Thanks! We went to the same temple that officiated our bonding. Good luck and all that.”
Reminded of why they were out, wandering in the forest, sobered Elita. She tried not to let it show.
“It’s really beautiful, Flyby. I wish you luck tonight.”
He smiled and took her servos briefly.
“Luck to you too, Elita-1.”
They parted, Optimus and Elita taking one of the many smaller paths while Flyby and Rocket continued on the main path.
Elita knew she couldn’t compare herself to others. Orion had wanted her. He’d asked her to bond just as she was, grumpy, weapons obsessed, gun grease on the front carpet and all.
Flyby was much younger than her. Instead of spending his youth pouring over university applications and military propaganda, he’d taken a gap vorn and met Rocket. They’d traversed the planet and done charity work, living cheaply and fulfilling every romantic notion of travel. They had a picture album full of pictures of them, fresh from school, sitting in jungle towns or on the banks of distant oceans.
They had a million stories about being stranded without enough credits to buy energon and having to use their wits and charm to get out of trouble.
Flyby had done everything old bots said you were supposed to do with your life – love recklessly, make mistakes, embrace change.
Flyby had a romantic spark. He binged love stories and talked about the poetry of love when you got him overcharged. He was a brilliant speech writer and a loyal friend.
Elita-1 knew she wasn’t a romantic. Orion had been the one to propose finally, as she’d been stumbling around it for a vorn. They didn’t even have a particularly romantic first meeting story.
She’d seen him from a window, walking around with an advertisement for some start-up or another painted across his back.
There had been a small group of minibots crossing the street on pede and he’d stopped to use his larger frame to halt the traffic. He spoke happily to them and waved as they’d parted.
Elita-1 had tracked down the company and then his name and shown up at the Archives to pretend to research naval combat.
It had rather backfired at first since there wasn’t a lot of information about naval warfare on a planet without a single navy. Or many boats.
Orion Pax had taken it as a personal challenge and had spent hours with her trying to get his contacts across the galaxy to provide her with translated resources.
She’d asked him out after he’d handed her a full datapad with the entire history of an aquatic species on a distant planet that he’d smuggled in on a transport ship.
They spent the next fifty vorns working, dating, and trying to save up enough money for a habsuite. Not exactly something you could put into a photo album.
0-0-0
After they left Flyby and Rocket, the woods grew darker. The trees near the center still clung to their leaves, and the delicate lines of the branches grew thicker and fuller, with jagged edges of subtle movements. The ground was clearer and their pedesteps echoed and clacked as they walked, bouncing off the trees around them.
Elita-1 looked down at the symbol she’d traced into her palm in the washracks.
Unity.
It was a word that described her life – her time in the army, her friends, her large family, her –
Optimus.
Or Orion?
She still wasn’t such which was which. Sometimes they blended together, sometimes it was like a beloved stranger was looking out from his optics.
“They seem happy,” Optimus said, breaking the silence that was steadily moving from intimate to oppressive. She couldn’t read his voice.
“They are,” she said. She lowered her servo and tried to thread her digits between his, but he just shook her loose. “Flyby is a romantic.” She returned her servo his his elbow, but even that seemed like an imposition now.
“Yes.”
They walked. Elita kept her optics downward, watching the previously even path start to deteriorate. Roots had poked up, creating bumps and divets. Branches had fallen and started to decay across the path.
Without the leaves to cushion and hid the imperfections, her optics caught on every one.
They came upon a thick, half rotted trunk across the path. She waited for Optimus to lift her up. As they drew nearer, she looked up, trying to catch his optic, but he was staring straight ahead, looking at something that wasn’t the path or the forest.
Or her.
She released his arm and had to dig her pedes into the soft sides of the trunk to climb up and over it. Optimus just stepped over, his stride lengthening. He didn’t slow down. He didn’t pull their tray out from subspace.
Now they walked separate – she couldn’t keep her balance holding onto Optimus if he wasn’t going to walk with her.
The path got worse and the trees got closer, branches heavier with leaves. The sparse starlight was fading quickly and it was only the faint glow of her own optics that lit her path with visible light. She could see Optimus ahead, helm bent down now, brilliant blue optics illuminating the uneven ground and casting unsettling shadows.
Her pede caught the edge of a root and she stumbled. She had to jump over a thick groove – a tiny dry stream – and slipped as she landed, but Optimus was too far ahead to hear her.
Slag him! She was tired and worried and – and – and sad in a way she didn’t want to think about. Now she was sore and if the roaring of the wind above them was anything to go by, she’d be wet as well in a minute.
She looked down at her servos, clenching and unclenching them as her temper flared.
Unity.
It was still there, lines thick and shining.
This was her bonded, her sparkmate.
Ahead of her, he was still walking. He was not going to leave her behind.
With a flick of her ankle, she deployed her all-terrain spikes. Another flick and the spines slide from the tips of her digits. She vented quickly, pulling cold air through her systems and took off running, using her digits to grip the trunks when she stumbled as her pedes gouged into the ground.
So what if it messed up her paint and her polish? Optimus was leaving her. She was a military bot, through and through. Her first solution would always be action over inaction.
She caught him just as the path opened up into a clearing.
He’d stopped as well, standing there in the starlight, like an ancient statue.
She stepped into the clearing and shook the muck from her digits, disengaging the spines, and wiping them on her thighs. Her polish was scraped and dirty now, the silver paint smudged and covered in grime.
Optimus was shining faintly, the dim starlight glinting off his shoulders and somehow growing brighter. He kept his helm down and his servos fisted at his sides.
She stood and waited.
“Do you – do you love me?” he asked, at last, not looking up.
There wasn’t a trace of Orion in his voice. It was only Optimus Prime.
“I – of course!” She took two automatic, stumbling steps closer and then stopped. “Of course, I do.”
His frame only tensed, fists flexing tighter. His voice was strained, struggling to hold up some weight that she couldn’t see.
“I am not…as I was. I am not Orion Pax anymore. You loved him. Then I…took him away.”
It was the first time she’d heard him talk about not being Orion. They had been gently circling and effacing the subject with careful sentences and unspoken thoughts. Except for those first few hours, when she’d held his helm in her lap, his new frame twitching and burning with new sensors, he’d never spoken of being Optimus Prime either.
“I did,” she said. “I still do. I love Orion Pax. I love Optimus Prime. I love you when you are both. I – I love you. I would fight a war for you. I’m trying to prevent a war for you”
She stepped in front of him and laid a servo on his chestplates. She felt him collapse forwards, curling around her, as if she was holding him up.
“Have you been worrying all this time? I…didn’t realize.”
He turned his face away and his voice, when he spoke, was thin and rough. It wasn’t Orion Pax’s gentleness nor was it Optimus Prime’s strength. It was new. It hurt.
“You’ve been living with a stranger in the home you bought with your sparkmate,” he said. “I came and he left.”
“He didn’t leave, he just changed,” she argued, leaning down to try and catch his gaze. “I see Orion, just as I see the Prime. I see you, Optimus.” He wouldn’t look at her. Idiot mech. She squared her shoulders and spread her pedes as if a better stance would also steady her words.
“Optimus…I’ve seen mechs change. They go away to fight and come back with great gaping places in their spark. They watch terrible things happen and carve out pieces of their memory so they don’t have to see those things in their processor every time they recharge. They lose parts of themselves and come back different people.”
She cupped her free servo under his chin and brought their lips together once, lightly. Anything more would break him.
She was an expert sniper. She directed nearly a third of the planetary army. Her servos had aimed weapons powerful enough to obliterate attacking armadas. Here and now, she was holding the power of the entire planet in her servos and he was fragile and frightened and sparkbroken. It was terrifying.
“The Matrix only added to the mech I love. You are more than you were. I can see Orion Pax and I can see Optimus Prime. I love you and all of you. Look at me please,” she begged.
Don’t leave me.
Slowly he lifted his helm and met her optics.
“I see you Optimus,” she whispered. “I know you and I’m still getting to know you. I am so happy to have you as a sparkmate – archivist or Prime or just you. It doesn’t have to be perfect.” It didn’t have to be what everyone else had. It didn’t have to be romantic to be a love story. “I love you.”
She needed to say it and scream it so that it would shake the ground. She wanted to carve it into the metal beneath them and scribble it in the stars.
His expression was impenetrable. She wondered what he was thinking. Was she shaking?
Slowly, he reached up and laid his servo over hers, pressed them both against his cheek.
“Two hundred vorns in love, ten spark to spark, the wisdom of the Matrix and you still astound me.”
0-0-0
The trees this far in were taller and the leaves were bigger. They crunched under their pedes and shattered into tiny aluminum shards, ready to melt back into the metal of the ground.
They stumbled along the path, servo in servo, worn thin by their conversation. Elita felt like she’d won a race and fallen halfway down a cliff. Again.
Beside her, Optimus was venting heavier and he kept squeezing her servo to make sure she was still there.
It was good – she felt like they’d fixed a gear that had been moving steadily out of alignment for a vorn – but she was exhausted and they hadn’t even found –
The starlight glinted strangely and she tugged Optimus to a stop. He looked down at her with tired confusion.
“Elita?”
Was that…
It glinted again and then it twitched.
“Optimus,” Elita-1 whispered, too afraid to vent. “Look.”
There, beneath the shrub, was a tiny, perfect, servo, just poking out.
Optimus’s frame locked up tighter than a torque wrench. He was squeezing the life out of her servo.
She turned on her heat scanner. Attached to the tiny servo was a curled up bundle of heat that could only be one thing.
“Do you want –“ he whispered, but she was shaking her helm already. No – she couldn’t.
“No, you – you do it,” she whispered back. She took the tray from his servos and offered it up to him.
He studied the treats and selected a perfectly formed crème. It looked tiny, held between his two digits.
Elita watched as he approached the bush and rubbed hard at the unity glyph in her palm. She wanted more unity. She wanted this so badly. Optimus knelt and the tiny servo disappeared into the leaf litter, but the ball of heat didn’t move away.
Pleasepleaseplease. Guardians be with me. Help me.
Optimus reached out slowly, holding out the fluffy mallow crème to the shadows between his thumb and pinky digit.
“Steady,” Elita said, mouth barely moving, frozen.
She wasn’t a superstitious bot, but something in her would break if they didn’t get it right the first time.
The round top of a helm came into view.
“Hello,” Optimus said, quietly. The tiny helm poked out farther. “Yes,” he said gently, “it’s for you.”
For a moment, no one moved. Optimus became a statue of platinum. Elita clenched her servos so hard she knew there would be dents.
Please.
In a flash the sparkling lunged for the treat. Optimus simultaneously released the goodie and neatly caught the sparkling’s thin leg between his middle and index fingers. It tumbled back, prize clutched tightly in servos the size of Elita’s thumb.
The sparkling tried to growl, but it was also trying to shove the soft, sticky energon goodie into its mouth. So instead it let out a gwop gwop sound and scowled.
Optimus kept a firm hold on its leg and gently tugged it closer.
“You are okay,” Optimus said and slid the other servo underneath its back to lift it.
Chirp. Grlp.
“Shhh.”
Then he held a sparkling –their sparkling – up against his spark. It put its servos on his chest and smeared the remains of the goodie over his plating.
It scowled at him and growled again.
“Elita –“
She stepped forwards and held out one of the pink spheres.
Grabby servos snatched it from her and with a loud crunch, bit through the shell. Gooey energon trickled down the thin wrists and onto the red and yellow plating of its abdomen.
She couldn’t stop looking at it – large, bright optics, tiny digits twitching around its treat, miniature fangs. It was perfect.
“Messy little thing,” she whispered, daring a single stroke over its shoulder. It turned its glare on her now and she would swear her spark was about to expand right out of her chestplates.
“Its first taste of energon, I’d imagine it’s an exciting experience.” Optimus used one thumb – which was half a big as the sparkling’s entire helm – to gently brush away some of the gooey treat from its mouth. It snapped at the thumb and turned back to the remains of the sphere – just crunchy shell now.
She held out another treat – another mallow crème – with shaking digits and felt the tips of its claws graze her servo.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s the most – isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
“Yes,” Optimus agreed. “Can you put the tray down?”
“Yeah, of course,” she set it down on the ground “what do you need me to –“
Optimus leaned in and said, “Your turn, beloved.”
Then, he placed the sparkling in her arms.
It was warm and heavy and real. Very real. It moved – squirming and kicking its pedes to get comfortable – and then those big bright optics looked up at her.
She completely lost it.
“Oh, Primus I’m a fragging cliché!” she sobbed, helm bent over the sparkling, optics screwed shut to try and stop the tears. “Hard-aft general turns to mush when someone puts sp-sp-sparkling in her arms.”
“Love –“
“Primus!”
She gasped in another vent and then another, feeling her processor cool. She opened her optics.
The sparkling was glaring up at her, shoving the remains of the creme in its mouth. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen.
Optimus cupped her face and smiled.
“New guardian,” he corrected gently, “turns to mush when she holds her new creation.”
0-0-0
They walked back through the trees, the wind a touch colder, stirring the leaves at their pedes. They took turns carrying the sparkling and feeding it treats.
By the time they were leaving the forest, the little spark was asleep.
“I think,” Optimus finally said, as they stepped through the gap in the wall and onto the proper road, “that it was my energon treats that brought us luck.” He smiled mischievously, the expression lightening the blue of his optics and softening the lines of his jaw.
It startled a laugh out of her.
“Clearly, it was my stencil work,” she argued.
The wind sent the leaves skittering down the street as they walked. The light made their shadows stretch and bend as they walked. No one knew her world had irrevocably shifted.
Her sparkmate – witty, kind, intelligent, capable of holding their most precious and holy relic in his chest and keeping it secret. She looked at him, his frame thick with hidden weapons and danger, processor connected to ancient wisdom, cradling their new, sticky sparkling and cooing. Her sparkmate – clever and strong and hers.
Epilogue
“Does it – do you think it looks alright?” Elita-1 readjusted the medal on her chest. The rank decals were smooth, weren’t they? She’d made Optimus and his steady servos do them for her.
“Yes, Sir,” he answered promptly, smoothing her servos away and polishing away the smudges.
She caught his servos and brought them to her lips.
“You know…we have time before the ceremony…it’s quiet upstairs…” She grinned as she felt the rumble of an engine against her. He leaned forwards -
The wail of a sparkling broke them apart.
“I didn’t do it!”
“Scrap.” She let her helm thunk down against his chest and then turned.
Hot Rod was stumbling down the stairs, new sparklet sister held out in front of him like a bomb.
“Careful!” Optimus fell to his knees and scooped both sparklings up. The femmeling – unnamed – immediately latched onto Optimus and began complaining at him. Beside her, Hot Rod was trying to guiltily wipe the goodie evidence off her face without his guardians noticing.
“I’ll get a towel,” she said and walked to the kitchen.
She pulled open a drawer and got one of their old rags out, wetting it with solvent in the sink.
As she turned, the beautiful square of pearlized metal caught her attention yet again. It was carefully magnetized to the energon cube storage.
She lifted her servo to the engraved invitation:
Admiral Elita-1 & Archivist Orion Pax.
She traced their names. Sometimes she was struck by how miraculous her reality was – her promotion to the highest military rank possible, a stillborn war, and a hidden prophet for her sparkmate.
Hot Rod burst into the room, arms out.
“I wanna come with you!”
Elita-1 laughed and swung her first-found sparkling up into her arms.
Miraculous.
Scene from my story Walking in the Woods at Night. You can see Optimus and Elita on the path! My attempt at a metal forest. Made in Canva.
(The amount of time I spent resizing and recoloring and rearranging all the little trees and shrubs is ridiculous.)
Excerpt for context:
Please guide us, grandguardians, she prayed, rubbing her fingers over their names, scrawled over her servos. They were barely into the forest – she could hear the hum of the city noises behind them. Still, she kept her optics open and scanned every wavelength of light she could.
The wind was softer in the forest, buffeted by the thin tree trunks. Thin wisps stroked over her shoulders and down her upper arms. Without the wind, the air was warmer, the crunch of the leaves was louder. Everything felt close and small.
She knew they were walking through one of the largest forests on the planet, a jealously guarded resource, a forest she’d written laws to protect in her younger days with the Environmental Corps. The twists and turns and tiny side roads shrunk the massive forest into matchbox sized pieces, a series of rooms to be searched.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that they were the only ones out in the forest tonight, walking with hope in their sparks, and the names of their ancestors painted across their plating.
She looked at Optimus’s arm, her servo curled around it, the names of his friends in her untidy glyphs. She looked up to see the bare branches, curling over the path like protective servos. She looked at the names on her own frame. She leaned into Optimus. They weren’t alone out here, she reminded herself. Everyone she’d ever loved in the Well would be with her tonight. She hoped they were happy for her.
Scene from my story Walking in the Woods at Night. You can see Optimus and Elita on the path! My attempt at a metal forest. Made in Canva.
(The amount of time I spent resizing and recoloring and rearranging all the little trees and shrubs is ridiculous.)
A Year of Moments Elita/Optimus Drabbles - January
Here’s a bunch of 100 word drabbles for Optimus Prime/Elita-1 using the prompts from the Year of OTP post.
Fake Dating
Orion looked back. Faster! Around the corner –
Smack!
She got up first, kicking him twice as she shoved him off – not that he felt it through the panic.
“What the frag –“
“Impurity Eradication Force,” he whispered, showing her the trembling data stick, squeaking binary pleas, cupped in his servo.
“Oh.” She grabbed him by the finials and dragged him up to his knees. “Got it.”
When IEF enforcers rounded the corner, they found timid, archivist-in-training Orion Pax being thoroughly kissed by Cadet Elita-1, shooting star of the military academy.
Unsurprisingly, they hadn’t seen which way the criminal had gone.
Snow
Elita held out her servo and watched, transfixed, as the white fluff piled up. It was so bright! She heard the delicate crunch of ice crystals and Optimus’s arms encircled her.
“Earth is a wondrous place, my love.”
“It is,” he agreed. They watched a scowling human painstakingly scrap ice from their windshield.
“They don’t seem to notice it,” Elita huffed, looking down at her snow. So pretty and yet so alien.
“No. But they have found more ways to enjoy it. Here.” He folded her servo around the snow until it compacted into a sphere. “Now…where was Prowl going…”
First Kiss
“-one drink! I swear it was only one drink!”
Orion lifted his helm to see who was yelling and dropped it again. Oh. It was the pretty femme he’d met at the bar.
“That sounds about right.” Hello, Ratchet. “Idiot’s got a convoy’s frame and a microbot’s constitution. “
He’d been trying to impress the pretty femme.
“He was probably trying to impress someone.” His frame was dragged forwards and dropped, hard, on the floor. Kind of her.
“Count me very unimpressed after dragging you home.”
Oops.
“Hmph.” A small servo stroked over his helm. “Kiss was impressive enough. Dumbaft.”
Mission Fic
The mech in front of her – the High Lord Prime, His Majesty of Cybertron – was cradling something in his palm.
A litter of glitchmice.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered to them. “I’ll put you somewhere safe. Your carrier will be back soon and we’ll get you all warm.” He lifted down an Ancient, Valuable, and Holy ceremonial cup, stuffed a cleaning cloth in, and carefully lowered each, squeaking pup into the soft center. “There.” He beamed down at them.
Elita-1, the Primary Assassin of the Guild, Terror of the Senate, balanced outside the window on a narrow ledge, lowered her knife.
“Whenever I look at you….”
“Whenever I look at you, I have to go catalogue the entire Silver Age collection of mineral research or I’ll combust,” Orion shouted, nearly wailing. “I keep mis-shelving things. I still haven’t found Alpha Trion’s copy of Pirate on the Rust Sea after you came in last time! I forget half the words in my processor when you walk by! I wake up in the morning and all I think about as I drive is “Will Elita be in the Archives today?” Patrons are asking if I’m ill because all I do is stare at the door – looking for you!”
Historical AU
Elita-1 stepped onto the street and transformed. Oh! The feeling of her wheels spinning and engine thrumming!
The older generation didn’t understand. This new fad of Primus wouldn’t last, they said. Walking was fine! – you could cross the city in a cycle, why rush?
She turned a corner – oh scrap -!
“Oof!”
She slammed into the side of a truck.
“Sorry!” She backed up. “My fault!”
“Don’t worry. I enjoy a good drive too.”
“Drive?”
“That’s what they’re calling it.”
What did his other form look like? Just as pretty?
“Would you like to go for a drive? With me?”
A Year of Moments Elita/Optimus Drabbles - January
Here’s a bunch of 100 word drabbles for Optimus Prime/Elita-1 using the prompts from the Year of OTP post.
Fake Dating
Orion looked back. Faster! Around the corner –
Smack!
She got up first, kicking him twice as she shoved him off – not that he felt it through the panic.
“What the frag –“
“Impurity Eradication Force,” he whispered, showing her the trembling data stick, squeaking binary pleas, cupped in his servo.
“Oh.” She grabbed him by the finials and dragged him up to his knees. “Got it.”
When IEF enforcers rounded the corner, they found timid, archivist-in-training Orion Pax being thoroughly kissed by Cadet Elita-1, shooting star of the military academy.
Unsurprisingly, they hadn’t seen which way the criminal had gone.
Snow
Elita held out her servo and watched, transfixed, as the white fluff piled up. It was so bright! She heard the delicate crunch of ice crystals and Optimus’s arms encircled her.
“Earth is a wondrous place, my love.”
“It is,” he agreed. They watched a scowling human painstakingly scrap ice from their windshield.
“They don’t seem to notice it,” Elita huffed, looking down at her snow. So pretty and yet so alien.
“No. But they have found more ways to enjoy it. Here.” He folded her servo around the snow until it compacted into a sphere. “Now…where was Prowl going…”
A Year of Moments Elita/Optimus Drabbles - Febuary
Long Distance
Her cabin was dark. She had a view of star-speckled space through the only porthole from her berth. Had it always been so vast? So dark? Maybe it had been too long since she’d been in a spaceship, since she’d been able to leave Cybertron.
She rolled away and tucked her servos under her helm firmly.
She was not going to give in. She wasn’t. No.
She flipped over and hit the ‘replay’ symbol on the small, outdated terminal screen.
“I am sending this message out to all the Autobots scattered among the stars. We are here. We are waiting.”
Mermaid AU
Elita-1 had the illustrious duty of looking intimidating while representing the Iacon Imperial Army in front of the robofish people.
Instead she was staring at the robofish leader’s broad shoulders and the iridescent flickers of his blue tail beneath the waves. He was beaming at them, as the rest of his spear-bearing party grimaced.
His Imperial Highness of Iacon had the finest weapons at his pedes.
The Prime was continually being bumped and nudged by mersparklings – lumpy rainbow hued blobs with limb buds. They twined happily through his digits as he gestured.
She caught his gaze and his optics widened.
Valentine’s Day
Optimus made it a point to give out the traditional cards, even though his co-workers at the Archive lacked all romantic sensibilities. Most were quadruple his age, all a bit patronizing. He didn’t mind. He made up a few extra and attached a goodie all the same. It was festive.
“I want all your datapads on murder. Now.” The femme at the reference desk did not look festive.
“Preventing or perpetrating?” he asked. She laughed roughly.
“She’s stood me up again.” The femme blinked rapidly. “Today, of all days.”
Optimus pushed on of the extra cards across the table.
“Here.”
“If I kiss you, will you shut up?”
“I deeply apologize, My Lord.” Her spinal strut was so straight he could have used it to calibrate a laser. “As your knight, it’s my duty to put everything aside when it comes to your safety,” she continued, optics unfocused, as if she was reading from her HUD.
Ridiculous. As if he hadn’t been a very – very – active participant.
“It will never –“
“If I kiss you, will you stop talking nonsense?” he asked, dropping to his knee to look her in the optic.
“I – what?” Her optics widened. His knight was so beautiful.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Fear gas
He shook in her arms, optics widening, vocalizer spitting static at monsters she couldn’t see or fight.
It had to wear off. It had to. She kept her own terror close to her spark so he couldn’t feel it, even as hers was flooded with pain. She looked at ship’s map. Nearly back to Cybertron.
“Megatronus…” Optimus lifted a servo and let it fall.
She buried her helm in his shoulder. She knew she hadn’t been the first bot in his spark. She just hoped that whatever eventually separated them, wouldn’t give Optimus nightmares like he had. She’d die first.
Different
“I’ll be different,” Ariel said slowly, lowering her acceptance letter, “Not coming into work everyday.” Not seeing you everyday.
“At first, but we’ll all get used to it. It’ll be okay.” Orion Pax grinned at her as he checked the rigging on one of the crates. “Besides, once you’re a big shot in the military, you can buy us more drinks!”
“Aren’t you still trying for a place at the Archives?”
His shoulders slumped, but he kept the grin fixed. “Maybe next vorn.”
“Orion –“
“Look! Jets!” He pointed to the entrance. “Hey, you guys! Are you here to help?”
A Year of Moments Elita/Optimus Drabbles - March
Fresh Starts
“I didn’t know Optimus had a wife!” the human femme said, staring up at her.
Wife.
It wasn’t ‘bonded, it wasn’t ‘sparkmate’ with all the history and pain weighting those words down.
Wife. A femme tied to another in love and credits and life.
Not the ‘Prime’s General’ or ‘Prime’s Holy Consort.’
Optimus’s wife.
Wife. Defined by love. Partnership engraved in the etymology of the word.
Not a lowly former dancer turned Prime’s sparkmate turned General. Not a rank. Not an insult.
“Yes,” she said slowly, her human language still accented and slow. “I am Optimus’s wife.”
A new title.
Road Trip
“We’re not lost.”
“Of course not.”
Elita-1 squinted.
“We may have driven past Montana.”
“Understandable,” Optimus rumbled beside her, gleaming in the sunset, still in altmode.
“They need more signs. These ‘states’ of theirs are too small.”
“I agree.” He shifted back and forth to put himself in a sunnier spot.
“I’m sure everyone misses it.”
“Probably.” He was sinking lower on his wheels, engine rumbling lower and deeper.
“Don’t you dare try and recharge out here. We’ll find a…hotel parking lot or something.”
“Wasn’t that what we were trying to find before we drove through Montana?”
“Don’t get comfortable!”
Mutual Pining
“She was the helm of the SpecOps for Iacon. Now she’s the youngest bot to achieve the rank of General.”
“He’s literally the word of Primus given physical form.”
“I’ve read her reports – she excels at everything she tries.”
“He’s the most powerful bot on the planet –“
“She speaks and the war room goes silent.”
“-because the planet picked him to speak for it.”
“Bots that won’t give me the time of day trip over themselves to speak to her.”
“He’s the prettiest mech I’ve ever fragging seen.”
“How exactly –“
“am I supposed to just ask him out?”
“Make me”
She was obviously the bot who had been hacking their system. A week’s worth of grime on her plating, a battered datapad full of illegal software, and an aggressive grin.
“Please stop using the library’s terminal for your illegal activity,” he said firmly. She rocked back in her chair to look up at him.
“Got proof of that?” she asked, voice deep for her slight frame. Her optics looked exhausted.
“I do.”
“And?”
“And I’m telling you to stop.”
“Telling me, are you? Ha. Make me.” So exhausted.
Maybe change his approach?
“How about I ‘make you’ a cube instead?”
Acceptance
“-and tomorrow we’re going to visit the Library of Congress,” Optimus gushed over their private line. “They said I could see things in the restricted section.” Outwardly, he was calmly standing at attention, watching the training maneuvers.
“That’s wonderful,” Elita-1 said, lifting the next cannon onto her knee. She was splattered with mud and gun powder – she’d be chipping it off later.
“I know the humans are implementing your new strategy. I’d like to come watch afterwards.”
She grinned, spark glowing. “It’ll be glorious!”
He smiled back.
The odd places a reluctant warrior turned Prime and battle-obsessed dropout found acceptance.
Fairytale AU
Optimus wasn’t expecting to be struck in the chestplates with a loop of cable, but here he was, on his back, staring up at the angry pink face in the tower.
“You better have punched Lord Starscream’s face in – the smug fragger. Imagine! Arresting me for spying! Half our ambassadors are in his subspace pocket!”
“Um, I’m here to rescue you, Commander Elita-1?” Optimus said, trying to keep up with her rapid-fire complaints.
“Good. I’d rather ally with Iacon anyways.” She loosened her grip and slid the rest of the way down into his arms.
He wasn’t expecting that either.
A Year of Moments Elita/Optimus Drabbles - May
Flower language
Most bots had delicate blooms painted across their plating for the festival – wheel-wheat flowers and uranium-geraniums. Optimus himself was decked out in overlapping laserlillies to symbolize his message of peace and the purity of his intentions - even if the only bots to see it were his fellow rebels.
The femme that approached him now had only a single, bloom over her sparkchamber – a black-optic’d cesium. The subtle yellow and black outline was wire-thin.
“Why have you asked for an audience, Elita-1?” he asked. That flower…
“I heard you stand against the Senate.” She grinned, fangs barred.
Ah. Black-optic’d cesium.
Justice.
Sick fic
It wasn’t fair.
Optimus rolled and pulled the blanket over his aching helm. They’d been back on Cybertron for barely a vorn and he caught a virus. Sure, plugging into the ancient database in Kaon had been risky, but he didn’t deserve THIS as punishment.
Primus, if his internal temperature gauge fluctuated again he was going to –
The door to his berthroom banged open.
“You slagger,” Elita-1 growled. She flung herself down beside him, optics flashing static. “Got me sick too. It’s not fair.” She burrowed against him, shivering.
Well, at least I’m not alone, he thought, pulling her closer.
Pet acquisition
Elita-1 was acting…oddly.
She hadn’t complained about his datapad hoard collection in weeks. She’d been leaving her grenade launcher at work instead of the front room. They’d had Optimus’s favorite fuel three times in the past week. She’d taken him to the theater and sat through “Love, Fractals” without groaning at the soppy dialogue.
She was laying it on thick.
He still hadn’t told her that the turbohound puppy she’d been hiding in the backroom had accidently introduced itself three weeks ago. He wanted to see how long he could get bribery AND secret puppy snuggles before she told him.
“Who are you”
She’d been in the cells…how long? She was so thirsty.
“Tell me again…” she wheezed, “about this ‘team’ of yours that’ll rescue us.”
“Jazz will have tracked me by now,” the voice said, strong, confident, a little bit thinner than it had been yesterday. “He’ll try infiltration first. If that doesn’t work, they’ll attack directly.”
“They?”
“Ironhide, Bulkhead, Cliffjumper, Arcee…”
She closed her optics and scooted closer to her new cellmate’s wall.
“And who are you, to have so many bots looking for you?” she asked, vocalizer cracking with disuse.
“Me? I’m not important. I just have good friends.”
Sunshine
“Elita wake up.”
Something nudged her.
Primus, she was going to have to kill him, wasn’t she?
Late nights soothing crisises of faith, foiling assassinations, light account keeping – all expected.
Optimus Prime, 327th Prime, Lord of Cybertron, Guardian of the Spark of Cybertron, delightedly dragging her around his own palace to translate the ancient glyphs – unexpected.
“Elita, you have to see it!”
Poke. Poke.
Murder it was then.
“Yes, my Prime?”
“Look!”
She onlined her optics, but didn’t lift her helm from the berth.
“What?”
A thin golden line was widening across Optimus’s face.
“We’re going past a yellow star.”
Fantasy
“And you’re going to follow me around until I make three wishes?” This – THIS – was why discount sales were dangerous. Sometimes you bought live ordinance and sometimes you bought enchanted jewelry – he called it a ‘Matrix of Leadership’? – that talked.
“I am yours to command until I grant your last wish, Master” the giant – mostly blue – mech said, bowing.
“Just Elita is fine. Wishes…can I just wish you free and be done?”
The mech stared at her. He blinked slowly.
“Well…you could, yes. But don’t you want –“
“No time. I have meetings this week. I wish you free, Optimus.”
A Year of Moments Elita/Optimus Drabbles - April
Pranks
“I think it’s your color,” Elita-1 sniggered, trying to muffle herself with her servos.
“Quite.” Optimus shook again and more bright pink clouds fluffed up around him. “I think it is more your color.” He glared at the sabotaged vents. “I have a cleaning kit in my office.”
“All the better,” she said, dragging a digit through the chalk as they walked. “Now everyone will know who has claim on you.” She grinned.
Optimus nodded.
“In that case, love, please step into my office, through the door, don’t mind the –“
Splat!
“Oh, dear. What a lovely shade of blue.”
Canon divergence
Orion… Where was he? Where was she?
Wait… Something was off…
Who was she? No…who had she been? Her name -
Arise, Elita Prime.
Frag.
Elita Prime, Matrix bearer, onlined her optics to Orion above her, frame blocking the shower of ash from the fire. Pieces teased out of her memory core – transporting something important, an attack by strange mecha, Orion on the ground, leaking –
“Orion! Primus, are you okay? He – he stabbed you!”
Orion smiled, half manic. “Scrap, Ariel, I thought you were dead!”
She shook her helm - didn’t correct him. Not yet.
There would be time later.
Unrequited Love
If Prime got any stiffer, they could laminate him.
“-which concludes my repot,” she finished.
“Thank you.” Prime barely nodded before moving on.
She’d just completed a successful mission and this was his response? Stupid Prime, stupid pretty optics and stupidly open –for everyone else- spark.
She remained after, fuming.
“Elita-1,” he started. She invaded his space.
“What’s your problem? Have I insulted you?”
“No,–“ He looked around frantically.
She stepped closer. “Do I annoy you?”
His optics widened. He stumbled -put out a servo-
“I am endeavoring to remain professional! P-please step back!” He seemed…scared? No.
Flustered.
Oh.
"no, i'm not dating your brother"
Elita-1 loved Ultra Magnus like a brother. She was thrilled he was “forming new relationships” and making friends.
She just wished they hadn’t fallen for the same bot.
Late nights. Hushed conversations. Clasped servos. A hurried “You can do it, Prime,” this afternoon as they parted.
Optimus was beautiful. She couldn’t blame him. She could only wait and hope her affection weakened - and drink tonight with Chromia.
“Ah, ahem?”
She looked up from her lunch.
“Prime? Sir?”
He shifted his pedes, servos clasped tightly.
“Would you – I mean – do you like museums?”
“But, Ultra Magnus –“
“-said you did?”
Peace
The ship was utterly still, except for the faint, unstressed rumble of the engines. Each step Optimus took split the frozen air like an axe.
He hasn’t been off-world since the end of the war. The clean hallways of the research vessel were overlaid with the damaged walls of the Arc. Was there no place free of this biting, stinging nostalgia?
He stepped into the shuttle bay. Ah… he wasn’t the only restless bot.
“Elita.”
“You too?”
“Yes.”
His warrior sparkmate looked awkward amid the detritus of a science ship.
“Don’t think peace…suits me anymore.”
“Well, this is good practice.”
University AU
It is a universally understood truth that a Library Science Major is in want of a split PoliSci-Engineering Major to lure them out to parties.
It is expected that the Library Science Major will drink far too much high grade and start talking excitedly about Ancient Filing Systems with any bot that stands still long enough. The PoliSci-Engineering Major will inevitably find this adorable.
Circumstances will contrive to draw the Library Science Major to the attention of nefarious bots.
Fate will draw the PoliSci-Engineering Major to his side to –
-watch as he frowns and punches them.
Which is still adorable.
A Year of Moments Elita/Optimus Drabbles - June
Wedding/proposal
“- and I’ve got a great view of the river!” Orion Pax enthused, lifting another box down.
“Sounds great.” Ariel wrote down the recipient and tried to keep her smile in place. “Soon you’ll be out of this job and in the archives, yeah?” - and lightyears out of my reach.
Orion was still talking as he loaded it.
“And – since I’ve got my own place now - and there’s that promotion down the line – and I’ve got a bit saved up for things – I think we should bond,” he said in a single vent, keeping his back to her.
Saving the World
She told everyone it was for extra credit in science. Really, it was to make sure slag-for-brains Pax didn’t sink into the Sodium Swamp and drown.
“Look! It’s got toadlets!”
Pax was leaning over a wriggling puddle.
“Aren’t they cute?” he asked, gazing down affectionately.
“Yeah, cute,” she said. He was going to topple over. “Pax, your pedes are sinking again –“
“Oh! Oops.” He lifted them with a loud sucking sound and trudged forwards. “That’s six endangered species we’ve marked down! They couldn’t possibly build on it now!”
She followed grudgingly.
“Yeah, Pax, we’re saving the whole fraggin’ world.”
(accidental) love confession
Decked out in temp paint and stencils, a false visor, and miles away from the base, Elita-1 waited in line, clutching a fresh copy of Eternal Spark.
Hers was dented and scuffed to Pit. She couldn’t ask Optimus Prime to sign that.
She rehearsed in her processor - “I love your books. You’re my favorite author.”
I was drowning until I read your novels. They were my light.
“Please make it out to Lita.”
If you believe in love like that, maybe I can too.
She reached the front.
Optimus smiled.
“I love you. Make out with me.”
SCRAP.
He grinned.
“You aren’t what I expected”
This was the Prime? The divine mech she was honor-bound to defend?
His frame DID bristle with weapons and his helm DID brush the ceiling, true. Holy light softened the lines of his face and his optics blazed with purpose.
It was just that he was holding a tiny, jelly-coated truck, miniature wheels spinning excitedly as the Prime gently scolded.
“That’s naughty, Dion. We don’t – oh.”
“Hi.” Elita-1 subtly subspaced the Starsaber. Not like she could offer it to him now with his servos…full.
“I’m supposed to accept your fealty today, aren’t I?”
“Yep.”
“Sorry. This is unprofessional.”
“No…just unexpected.”
“Downpour”
Earth held many miracles. They had new friends and allies. A hopeful future.
Today, he watched Elita discover the humans’ painless version of acid-rain – a sun-shower.
She laughed and offlined her optics, tilting her face upwards. He could hear the tiny droplets pinging off her helm and the fine mist threw rainbows across her plating.
He stepped towards her, the puddles beneath his pedes warm as bathwater where they pooled on the hot tarmac.
She turned to him, optic still dark, and smiled.
“Water is their energon?” she asked, her English accented with Iaconian. “Their life-fluid falls from the stars?”
Soulmate AU
Elita-1 smacked her helm into the wall, ignoring the guards’ odd looks – they’d hired her to lead the new Prime’s security – you want a “vicious Kaonite warrior” you got one – and tried to shake the sting from her digits.
Her sparkmate was definitely in Iacon. Once was a fluke, but every time she’d ended up here – trade treaties, mercenary contracts, guarding idealistic younglings around this soft-sparked city – she felt the phantom sensations of her sparkmate’s servos.
They’d smacked them fraggin’ hard against something.
BANG! A guard tumbled in.
“Red! Optimus tripped over his pedes again! He broke the Primal Scepter!”
A Year of Moments Optimus/Elita Drabbles - July
Enemies to Lovers
“Fraggit – move your shoulder!”
“I am trying not to crush your legs. Hold on –“
“I can’t hold on! Your stupid plating in smoother than a zero-friction track! Who the slag does your waxing?”
“Are–are you complaining that I am too well polished?”
“Yes!”
“You weren’t complaining a few minutes ago when it was all, ‘Yes, Optimus, yes!’ and complimenting my –“
“Shut-up-shut-up-shut-up! I heard someone! If anyone finds out I clanged Goody-Two-Pedes himself in a closet –“
“The Global Peace Initiative would not be happy to find out about this either. Not after your speech on space-mounted missiles.”
Vacation Together
Primes…couldn’t go to public beaches. Or amusement parks. Or even nice, slightly out of budget restaurants. There wasn’t a great deal of time either.
He still wanted to.
“Do you – do you like it?” he asked as soon as Elita-1 walked in.
It wasn’t much – he’d bartered for the beach soundtrack and bribed Mirage for the fancy fuel. Jazz had hung the mini-holoprojectors to mimic twilight in the Crystal Gardens and Prowl had lent his tabletop garden.
“I thought, since it’s our anniversary and we –“
He offlined his optics as she stepped into the circle of his arms.
“Yes.”
Power Swap
But Optimus wasn’t here. She stared out at the wide, fearful optics – the civilian optics – and her engine stalled.
“I’m sure you are all –“ a sparkling wailed, a rough voice hushed it – “I mean, it’s been…”
Stir up a fervor in new soldiers? Done. This…
Lend me your magic words for a klik, Orion.
A flash of memory rose up– a late cycle, a stubborn rust infection, bills racking up, Orion’s servos –
“I know you are tired and empty and scared. Lean on each other - we can carry more weight together. I promise you – everyone’s going home tonight.”
“Batman won’t like this”
“Batman won’t like this.”
“Stop calling Prowl Batman.”
Stars
“Coming!” Elita punched the button and put on her ‘greeting fans’ smile as the door slide open.
“What can I sign for –“ she started and realized she was talking to a chestplate.
“Um, it’s to, ah, Optimus?” the chestplate rumbled hesitantly and she looked up into the stunningly blue optics of the Prime, his Holiness, the Sacred Conduit.
He was holding out a holo of her in one of her sparkling movies – The Little Merformer.
“Of course!” She fumbled the holo. “Sure…yes!”
“It’s,” his voice dropped and he glanced at the bodyguard to his right, “it’s my favorite movie.”
Coffee Shop
This wasn’t the cozy energon café she’d been envisioning most of the war. The only space she could afford was between a Real-estate Agent and a steel manufacturer. The cobalt paint she’d thought was so pretty looked like the inside of a dirty cube. The delay of the sign meant the shop still claimed to sell novelty horns.
She had also burned every cube of energon she’d made.
Currently, the only customer was an addled librarian who came in like clockwork because it was “on his way in.”
What an idiot. The Archive was in the opposite direction of –
Oh.
I will never get tired of drawing them, they deserve the best 🥺💖