Author's Note: Firstly, this has a pretty big spoiler for DotM. If you haven't seen the movie yet, please hit the little "back" button because I don't want to be responsible for ruining it for anyone. :)

Secondly, as noted in our profile, Dark of the Moon fics will be an AU from most of the Botosphere, especially the Kinship Trilogy and Introductions:Annabelle. However, while watching the movie, this scene jumped out at me and I had to share it from Optimus' perspective. My retelling of it includes the brother-bond developed in the Kinship Trilogy, but it is otherwise an AU for our fanon.

I'd felt Sam's desperation and terror last night, but when I had reached out over our brother bond, he had blocked it (as best he could). Being so young and new to the bond even now, he could never completely shut me out if I were determined to break through, though I'd learned my lesson with Megatron and would never again provoke a bond brother that way.

His emotions were still in turmoil as he limped toward me on the launchpad - fear and grief with guilt all but drowning out the rest. I briefly scanned him, worried he'd been hurt, and what I found there froze my spark. Slamming the door shut on our bond, I looked away. I could not let him in, not when he stood before me with an unfamiliar piece of Cybertronian technology on his wrist. Taken with his guilt-laced anguish, the drone Decepticon watch made his intentions clear.

Sam planned to betray me.

I took small comfort in the fact that he felt driven to it. My brother's love had not grown cold like Megatron's nor was his treachery calculated and long-planned like Sentinel's. This betrayal was born of desperation and it pained him. It was still a betrayal.

"Optimus..." he began

I cut him off. "What your leaders say is true," I declared, already placing a wedge between us, between Autobot and human. "This was all my fault." My mentor, my brothers, my losses, my fault. "I told them whom to trust." I trusted you, Sam. "I was so wrong."

"That doesn't make it your fault, it just makes you human for a change." My brother reached out to me over the bond without meaning to and probably without realizing it.

I would not yield.

Nor could I simply walk away. Even as I abandoned him, I could not deny our bond. "Remember this: you may lose faith in us, but never in yourselves." You are a Prime,I willed him to remember.

Power surged through the disguised watch, and I strengthened the block between us as I turned my back on my brother. My spark ached to comfort him, but I had no doubt that our every word was being overheard. I had no idea how deeply the Decepticons had ensnared him, so I didn't dare trust him with anything over the bond, either.

Struggling, all but choking the words, he begged, "I need to know how you're going to fight back. I know there's a strategy. I know you're...you're coming back with reinforcements or something. I know there's a plan..." His gaze darted to his fellow humans before he shoved against my will with all his strength. "You can tell me. No other human will ever know."

'No human,' not 'no one.' There was a warning in that single word, proof that he was not completely turned - or proof that he was trying to regain my trust in order to gather intelligence. Clamping down even harder on the bond, I answered, "There is no plan." He'd lied to me first; I only repaid him in kind.

Disappointment - with himself, with me - flashed in Sam's eyes. "If we just do what they want, how are we ever going to live with ourselves?"

That question was too close to the truth, and whatever his true intent, he had warned me. So I told one more lie that would hopefully protect him and perhaps let his heart know the rest was not true, either. "You are my friend, Sam…"

It was a slap to the face to call him a friend, and he blinked against the words. I knew how they would sting. I did not kneel, either, as I usually would have when speaking to my brother.

"...and you always will be." That, also, was too close and could put him in even greater danger. Realizing I had crouched closer without meaning to, I straightened and looked away, building the wall and the pain between us thicker and higher. "But your leaders have spoken. From here, the fight will be your own."

I forced myself to turn and walk away. We were abandoning Earth to the Decepticons, if only for a short time, and it was a distinct possibility that I would not see him alive again, that I would lose my bond-brother.

He had betrayed me, I reminded myself, and it helped to steel my resolve. I only hoped we could someday make this right.

My gaze fell on Bumblebee, anguish and confusion in his optics as he approached. /Scan his watch/ I sent to my unfailingly faithful friend. Then aloud, "Make it short."

The way his antenna fell back and his doorwings drooped told me he understood.

"We're loading up," I ordered, not quite keeping the grief from my voice.

The plan was to show the humans they needed us. The plan was to turn the tables on the Decepticons and give ourselves the advantage of surprise, our only tactical hope. The plan was to place my brother in the line of fire with no protection or aid and merely hope it was his fate to survive. As I climbed aboard the lie we spent the last two years building, I knew his unplanned betrayal was nothing compared to mine.