Title: Circle Broken
Author: Femme4jack
Rating: NC-17/M+/Explicit
Pairing: Arcee/Optimus Prime
Continuity: AU TF Prime/Alligned (see note)
Summary: Despite coming from an insular culture and hidden frame-class, Arcee's fate becomes tied with that of Optimus Prime. Written for the tf_rare_pairing first fives challenge, despite totally uncooperative muses who kept trying to kick Optimus out of the story entirely.

Content Notification: Angst, bleak themes, depression, thoughts of suicide, references unspecified modes of creating sparks other than the AllSpark, canon character death, and, if you can make it through all that, explicit intimacy of the sticky and oral variety with a side of size kink. All of the explicit sticky intimacy is confined to the final major section of the story, labelled "first interface", for those who would prefer not to read.

Notes: This story is related to another I wrote, I Needed That (the first one-shot in the Prime Time series on this profile), but familiarity with it is not needed. Loosely set in the TF Prime Continuity, prior to the series, and utterly AU. I have not read either of the related novels (Exodus and Exiles) and am not attempting to stay in canon with them, or the related comics. I love the bleak but beautiful look and feel of TF Prime, and certain aspects of the history as I understand through fandom, the cartoon, and the Wiki. I thoroughly love Prime's Arcee and wanted to explore a story I've had budding about how she ended up on "Team Prime" and what, exactly, is a femme, since it's unclear to me why robot aliens would have genders. Thanks to Merfilly for the awesome chats that have helped me get my mind wrapped around those amazing femmes.

Prelude

They had been drilling Metallikato combinations when her circle's fierce founder collapsed in the middle of a complex sequence of moves. Elita-1's sharply clawed digits gripped at the plating over her own spark as high frequency keens were wrung from her vocalizer, echoing the sounds coming from the others of their circle who were at their haven, and the sub-quantum backlash from those who were not.

As the youngest creation of her collective, Arcee was still shielded from the fullness of the circle's bond, and would be until she decided whether to remain with her creation circle or join with another. But even protected, she, too, went to her knees with the agony that lanced through her spark. Greenlight's designation pierced her processors just before Elita-1 managed to brutally take control of the sub-quantum link and remotely snuff the scientist's spark.

Arcee was suddenly free of whatever torture Greenlight had been subject to, but her spark was also devoid of Greenlight, one of six femmes who were her creator-sister-lovers - her entire world. The emptiness was as horrifying as the now absent, slicing pain. She crawled to where Elita-1 was spasming on the floor, knowing that her elder sister's spark was in far more desperate condition than her own. Gripping the elder femme to herself, she felt the other's arms cling to her, claws raking her back with each jerk of the energon-colored frame.

"Didn't... didn't take her out in time!" Elita-1 managed to say. "Soundwave was so fast, broke the circle's codes..." Elita's vocalizer shorted out in a hiss of static-laced pain. Arcee felt the tug on her spark as her elder sister pulled her more deeply into the sub-quantum link. ~He will be able to find us... any of us... no matter where we hide. You are not fully bonded to us yet. Sever it now and you escape.~

"No!" Arcee protested aloud, shocked at what her creator was suggesting. ~I fall with my circle, and will tear apart as many as I can on my way down!~

"It was not your fate to remain with this circle," Elita-1 managed to stutter out, grim hope pouring through the bond. ~Our intention... for you to bridge the theocracy and the collectives, fully bonded to both our circle and Prime's cohort... if you agreed, my sister.~ The elder femme managed to sit up, gripping the sharp flanges on Arcee's deep blue shoulder armor. ~Go to Optimus. Treat his cohort as you would your own sisters. Treat him as you would your circle's Elita. Protect him and extinguish his enemies.~

"Don't, please!" Arcee begged even as she felt the circle founder initiating the coding that would sever the young femme's bond from the sisters who had made her. "My Elita, don't do this! I serve no Prime..."

"Go!" Elita-1 commanded in a tone that even the Elita-founders of the other circles would not have been able to disobey. ~Megatron's forces will find us soon. Let me extinguish knowing a part of my circle will live on.~

Suddenly Arcee was alone, bereft in her own spark. The femme clinging to her was a stranger, an outsider. She let go, horrified by the sensation, and keening, gripped her own chest armor.

"Please, Arcee," the elder femme implored. "Please go."

Arcee ran, looking back only once. She could no longer hear the orders the Elita was most certainly giving along the circle's link, only the screaming emptiness of her own processors. She transformed beyond their haven, winding through narrow conduits deep beneath the planet's war-torn surface. As she sped away, she swore to herself that she was only leaving to seek assistance from their mech allies, not abandoning her sisters to a horrifying fate, and most certainly not abandoned by them, leaving her hollow within herself.

Later Arcee would realize that Elita-1 would never have allowed her sisters to face the fate Megatron most certainly planned to deal them. She would have waited until they had taken out as many as they could, but would have not have risked their capture. Not while she had the codes to her sisters sparks.

First Meeting

She sat stiff on the high stool designed to bring her to the level of his desk. Her expression was flat and field held tight, giving no hint of how much she despised the benign, gentle, pitying expression on his unmasked face and even more deeply felt in his openly shared field. Perhaps it was designed to warm the circuits of the mechs who worshiped his pedes, to bind them to himself in love and duty. For her, it did nothing.

At least the other mech, the warrior brooding by the door, had the decency to be on guard with her, to recognize the danger she presented. Wariness was far preferable to pity.

"I understand what your circle's Elita commanded of you, Arcee, but I wish for you to take your time, to fully consider your choices. You have just suffered the excruciating loss of your collective..."

"If you think I would scrap the final wishes of my Elita, you know nothing of femmes."

"Then help me to understand, Arcee. It is true that outside of my alliance negotiations with Elita-1, I know very little. There is practically no knowledge of your class in the databanks or even the Matrix. But we are all sparked of Primus."

Arcee's optics darkened as they focused in on the Matrix-bearer. "I have no use for your Matrix, your mech god or the theocracy that has made you his emissary. We serve no Prime; nor have we ever needed one to grant us our sparks." She leaned forward, allowing her own field to push outward, to show him the strength of her will and resolve. "I will be your protector. Where you go, you can be sure I will be somewhere hidden, nearby. This was the final will of my circle and my Elita, which means that you are a mech who was worthy of her respect and protection." She said the last as though she were challenging Optimus to prove it so.

"You have no use for Primes, yet you're expectin' us to give you free reign to protect one?" the massive red warrior cut in, his field radiating hostility. "It's a load of scrap, Optimus. She blames you and wants revenge."

"Elita-1 made her alliance with the former data clerk, Orion Pax, whom you call Prime, a mech whom she respected as an equal," Arcee spat back, not flinching when the warrior's shoulder cannons spun with a low level charge. "She died for that alliance, true. But she would not have made it had Orion not been worthy. I will protect the mech, Orion, because it was her final wish. Whether you accept it or not, whether you see me, or not, is irrelevant. I'll carry out my duty. You certainly aren't under any illusion that you have a cell that will hold a femme, are you?"

It was a bluff, she knew. There were ways to hold any prisoner, no matter how nimble and deadly. Otherwise, her own sisters would have had no reason to fear. Arcee gambled on Prime's followers being too certain of their moral superiority to use those means.

"Maybe we should see," the warrior growled.

"Enough, Ironhide," Optimus commanded, and then turned a level glance at the femme. "Arcee, was that all Elita-1 asked of you? To be my protector?"

Arcee shifted uncomfortably. "It's all that matters. My circle's original plans ended with their deactivation."

"Ironhide, please stand guard outside the door."

"Slag it, Optimus, femmes are dangerous, and you didn't even have us disarm her."

"I am a weapon," Arcee shot back. "You can't disarm me of myself."

"Go, Ironhide," Optimus said with long-suffering patience. "I am certain I can handle myself."

Ironhide cursed, but left the room. When the door slid shut, Optimus signaled a dampening field.

"My cohort built a highly skilled minibot scout, with a frame suited to the inner passages of our planet," the massive mech explained gravely. "The intention was for him to formalize his cohort bond, and then go live with your circle, had he agreed."

"I didn't think Primes were allowed to have a cohort," Arcee said, recalling something about Council dictates, the sacredness of the Matrix-bearers spark, and Council-selected consorts.

"I had a cohort before I ever became Prime, Arcee. My refusal to bow the dictates on the Council on that matter was one of the reasons Elita-1 trusted me over Megatron, who despises bonds, cohorts, or anything else he believes limits our individual wills."

Arcee was silent for a klik, considering his words. "I was created for the same purpose as your scout," she finally admitted, though saying so was like striking her own spark chamber with an acid lance. "It's irrelevant now. I can't be a bridge to something that no longer exists."

"You are a Cybertronian who finds herself alone, without circle, cohort, or trine. That is the path to madness, no matter what your class. Elita-1 wished for you to be a part of my cohort."

Arcee made a stricken sound.

"Was that not also her final wish, Arcee? That you not be alone?" he said softly, the gentleness of his tone and field, at first enraging, suddenly so tempting, so alluring to the aching emptiness of her spark. It made her despise it even more.

"I can't," she said.

"No, not now. Not when your loss is so new. Follow your circle's wishes, if they are truly your own. I will order my mechs to do nothing to prevent you from doing so. But know that there is a place for you, Arcee, if you wish to do more than protect from the shadows, whether as one of my cohort, or simply my friend."

First Speech

His voice continued to intone the words that had the crowd transfixed, offering a vision of a future where mecha were free to achieve, to change, to speak from their sparks and disagree without fear of reprisal. He offered a future free both of the tyranny of Council and caste, but also of Megatron's despotic rule that would destroy any who dared oppose him. He called upon them to be Autonomous and free, as they had been in the beginning when Primus had granted them sentience from the machine hive Cybertron had once been.

The words, and the voice which spoke them, moved her little. It was not that she didn't agree with aspects of his vision. Her frame-class had never had any use for the High Council and its traditions, nor had they been dependent upon the AllSpark for life. Their circles had thrived, free, deep within the planet where most feared to delve, keeping systems functioning that the mecha above had not even known existed.

But Megatron, controlling much of the planet, had not been content to allow the hidden circles to remain forgotten and ignored by the surface and sky dwellers. Not when the femmes held reserves of energon those on the surface were starving for, and were the guardians of artifacts he believed would add legitimacy to his cause.

The Elitas, speaking through the eldest of the circle founders, Elita-1, had cast their lot with the mech who had been proclaimed Prime, not as followers, but as allied equals, with the promise that they could continue their way of life and be part of Cybertronian society on their own terms. Elita-1 believed they could no longer afford to be insular. It was better to be allies now, to share the resources they had, than to have even the more ethical of the mechs above look upon them as enemies when starved for fuel.

The decision had disappointed Megatron, to say the least, and when it became clear just how deadly his new enemies were, he had targeted them relentlessly, recognizing that their greatest strength - the hive-like bonds through which a circle could fight with a singular will in multiple locations - was also their greatest weakness.

Listening now to the mech called Prime, Arcee realized that it no longer mattered. The circles had been broken. The femmes that remained were now alone, like her, and most had gone far more mad than she had. No matter who won the war, there would be no returning to the ecstasy of a shared circle mind, nor to lovingly maintaining the circuitry in the tight, living depths of her world.

The mech called Prime's voice droned on, the fields and sparks of the hundreds gathered surging in response overhead. Arcee's field surged in a response all her own as she dropped from her hidden recess onto the mech in the conduit below, slicing between his plates and into his spark before the 'Con even knew he'd been attacked.

Perhaps it would have been better to have allowed him to succeed in planting his bomb. But at least this way she had some small measure of revenge against one Decepticon for the lives of her sisters.

As she dismantled the greying frame, Prime's voice continued on, calling upon his followers to value all life, even those who might tear apart their cohorts or destroy their cities, promising that no spark was beyond the possibility of redemption. What would separate them from their foes was their compassion and willingness to forgive. He asked them never to lose their reluctance to extinguish another spark, because in doing so they had already lost the most important war.

Arcee could see why her Elita respected him, wanted him protected. His words could be comforting, moving, even hopeful. Far more hopeful than siphoning off the energon and subspacing the tubes and useful parts for reprocessing. Right now, her only comfort was merging her will with her Elita's final command, as though she were still a part of the circle acting in concert with her sisters. That, and the empty comfort of revenge upon a nameless enemy. She could not allow herself to be comforted or given hope by the voice that continued to stir the sparks above her.

First Partner

She continued to refuse his offers of cohort and comfort. But she was wise enough to know that her solitude was paving the way to madness. For a mech, onlined into a cohort, being alone was bad enough. For a femme, sparked and built to be both individual and part of a circle's bonded mind? It was suicidal.

When she realized, as though onlining from deep stasis, that she was no longer sure if those she tore apart in the darkness were enemies, frightened neutrals, or even allies, she begged forgiveness from her extinguished sisters and approached Optimus for a different assignment, one involving a partner or a unit.

The look he gave her was far too discerning.

Tailgate proved to be just what she needed. He'd lost his cohort, had his own grief carefully concealed under his easy banter and humor. He never asked her to frag or cable up, seeming to know on instinct that she did not want any mech's touch. But he made her laugh and got her talking about trivial things that covered the brutal silence in her processors and spark.

She trusted him. Not like she would one of her sisters, but enough to know that someone had her back, and enough to care whether she had his. They scouted long and far, and with her knowledge, deep below as well, bringing back intel far more valuable than the trophies she no longer brought to recycling.

Through it all, she felt Optimus watching her, always making a point to speak with her briefly when both were on base. Always with his field so open, so kind, the promise of a cohort not spoken, but simply there.

First Comfort

Somehow, having never truly grieved her sisters, Arcee's grief for Tailgate encompassed their loss as well.

That it had been another femme, gone mad, who had offlined him, seemed almost a cruel justice of some sort.

And now, having rebuffed the comfort and companionship offered by the two mechs from Prime's own cohort who had rescued her from Airachnid's clutches, she could not even bring herself to snuff her own spark. Not when her sister had commanded her to live and to serve a Prime she did not even believe in.

"Leave me alone," she muttered when the door to the private room in medical slid open yet again.

"I'm afraid I cannot do that"

Arcee's helm jerked toward the door, surprised to find Optimus standing there rather than Ratchet, or Bumblebee and Cliffjumper again.

"Why the pit not?"

"Because you are not meant to be alone, Arcee. You saw where that leads. Your class..."

"You know nothing of my class! Nothing!" she erupted, before curling in on herself, muting her own vocalizer before she could say anything more.

"I know that no Cybertronian should be alone, Arcee." His voice was gentle, soothing... lonely.

His vulnerability infuriated her.

"Yeah? Well the 'bots who get close to me don't have a very good track record. Maybe it's a sign. You slagging well are always looking for that kind of scrap. Maybe the Matrix will tell you something about it, if you go have a good long meditation. In the meantime, get the scrap out."

She turned toward the wall, not waiting to see if he left.

She felt him sit next to her berth, the hum of his systems, the cycles of his ventilations irritatingly soothing, as was the calm patience of his field.

"You're still here," she finally said.

"Indeed."

"Why?"

"Because I, also, was given a command by your circle's founder, Arcee, and I have failed in it. I promised that when a bridge was made between her circle and my cohort, that the one who built it would never be lacking in the companionship and comfort that her sisters would have given her."

Arcee felt his broad hand settle on her back plating. Had she really not been touched by another in anything save battle or medical care since... since before she'd been alone?

"I have allowed you to be alone, without bonds to anchor you," Optimus continued. "I thought that it would be enough for you to have a partner, but now you have been robbed of him as well, and are more alone than ever. I will not abide by that any longer."

"What are you going to do, force me to bond with you cohort?" she asked incredulously, forcefully ignoring the way her haptic nodes were firing in desperate welcome of his unmoving, supportive hand.

"I am going to sit with you," he answered simply. "Keep watch while you recharge, and be here when you online."

"Last time I checked, you were some kind of Prime or something, with responsibilities and scrap. You've got better things to do," she blurted, paying no attention to that hand. None at all, nor to the way her field was beginning to relax and play along the edges of his.

"As you have reminded me so many times, Arcee, I am just a mech with a fancy title," Optimus responded wryly.

Arcee cursed, but signaled the berth to lengthen and widen to fit his frame.

"If you're going to stay, you might as well get some 'charge, too." she explained. "Ratchet'll give you slag if you don't, and I don't want to be onlined by his griping."

It was most certainly not the frame of a sister who settled around her own, sheltering her with far broader limbs and pouring the heat of a far less efficient system into her plating, but she couldn't help but to note that it felt so very good.

First Interface

It was never clear whether it was the mech or the femme who began stroking and kissing the other as their systems onlined. All that Arcee knew was that somehow she had ended up on top of his massive frame, her mouthplates and glossa exploring the complex structures of his neck while his glossa ran along the sensory point that crowned her helm. Her thin digits extended and delved into the circuitry beneath his lateral plating with the same passion with which she had once caressed the circuitry of the depths of their world.

The rumbled groan her touches drew from him sent a shiver through her entire frame. So different, the feel of his field, his voice, the size and energy of him. Not in any way, shape or form one of her sisters - he didn't remind her of what she had lost as his broad hands gripped the sensor winglets on her back and stroked them suggestively. She cried out, arching into the touch that was new and strange, but so very much what her frame needed, what her spark needed.

His hands moved to her waist, pulling her upward until she found herself straddling his helm as his glossa stroking the seams of her panel. Her hands gripped his antennae as though she were attempting not to fall from some great height. Heat pooled low within her, and she felt her spike pressurizing, her valve becoming slick, her frame awakening from stasis lock.

"Open" he rumbled against her, and the plates immediately retracted, her spike pressurizing into the heat that opened and enveloped it. His arm bent, allowing his hand to cup her aft, one of his large fingers pressing into the rim of her valve as he swallowed her spike whole. The tip of his glossa circled and stroked her base, and then his whole mouth squeezed tight around her as the back of his intake massaged the tip, every node along her length sparking and firing. Her frame jerked with each squeeze of his oral plates.

"Don't you dare stop, don't stop, oh Cybertron, yes!" she cried out, and began pumping into his willing friction and gripping his invading digit with her calipers. He began moving his hand at the same pace that she thrust in his mouth, his other arm holding her steady around her waist, squeezing her encouragingly as she lost all semblance of control and simply writhed on him. A second finger joined the first and he moaned around her spike in encouragement. She keened and nearly bent his antennae when the overload ripped through her as her hips snapped hard several times into his mouth.

As her charge settled, she half scrambled off of him in her hurry to get down to his own panel, her need to build the charge again, to feel alive again, demolishing any objections her processors could throw in her way.

"Careful, easy," he murmured as she poised herself over his spike, his hands coming to grip her aft and thigh struts, to force her to take him slowly. He held her still while letting the tip of his thick spike circle and tease the nodes on her rim, sending sparks and zaps of charge up her slicked valve and along her already re-pressurized spike. Her hands grasped his abdominal plating, digits extending into the gaps for purchase as he lowered her enough to take his tip within of her.

"So slagging big," she gasped out the obvious, her frame never having been with someone outside of her own class. She willed herself not to squirm as her valve adjusted, calipers gripping and then relaxing to their widest setting, and even then it was like every sensor along the first ring was firing at once.

"Careful," Optimus groaned as she squirmed to take in more of his length. He tightened his grip, forcing her to be still, to adjust. When he felt a wash of slick lubricants running down his length, he began to slowly, slowly pull her down onto himself, sensors firing wildly until his tip hit the curved back wall of her valve, his deep groan joining her cries and and gasping vents to aid her struggling fans.

"Oh scrap, that hurts, don't you dare slagging stop!"

"I don't wish to hurt you, Arcee" he moaned, locking his joints to keep from thrusting into her or moving her onto himself.

"You're not... you're not, slagging need this so much. Scrap, just let me move." Her digits dug further beneath his plating, and without his iron control, he would have jerked into her as he let out a static hiss.

He released his tight grip of her aft, not daring to trust himself to unlock his other joints, not with how tight she was around him His optics blazed, watching her. Her helm collapsed onto his chest, and one of his broad hands caressed it while the other continued to cup her aft that was now moving rhythmically on him. The nodes of his spike fired so rapidly it was like some incendiary heat, scorching his systems. All too soon, she was writhing and jerking, losing her rhythm as the input became too much. She lifted her helm, her optics locking onto his as overload took her. The beauty of her frame, looking so alive as it lit up with the plasma of her erupting charge, along with the pulsing spasms of her valve tight around him made his own heat burst within her.

After a time, he pulled her gently off of him, bringing her small, but not delicate frame back up to his chest so their sparks could be close. He wished to never need to stop running his hands lovingly along her strange angles and unique curved lines.

"You are not alone, Arcee," he murmured when he finally felt her stir.

"Mute it and face me again," was her response as her data cables emerged.

He smiled and complied.

Postlude

It was not the same. Nothing could ever be the same as even the half-formed link she'd shared with the sisters who created her. But she was no longer alone in her spark. Even as they began losing members of Prime's cohort, whether to deactivation or distances too vast for even their sub-quantum connections to bridge, the bonds that remained and the new ones forged were enough.

Enough to remind her that she was alive, to give her a reason to fight for love rather than revenge, to hope for survival rather than a blazing end.

The grind and horrors of such a long war took their toll on the one they called Prime, the one who to her was only a mech she loved and respected. Even his own cohort often were too in awe of his station and the Matrix within him to truly anchor him, and as time passed, it was more often Arcee reminding the mech, Orion, that he was alive and had a spark that could feel and love. And she did so, just as she would have for her Elita and other sisters.

It was not the same, but in time, it was all she could actively recall, the other memories too ancient to dwell on when there were present bonds to hold her to functioning within a cohort that needed her, on a new planet, that though not alive the way hers had been, was full of life to protect.

It was not the same, but it was enough.

Notes

Arcee, as a lone femme in Prime's unit, intrigues me. Femmes as a "gender" does not work well in my head canon. However, I am very intrigued by the idea of femmes being a specific, frame-class with their own distinct culture, history, and social hierarchy. They were troubleshooters, designed to work deep in the innards of Cybertron, and developed their own highly insular culture, having little to do with the other frametypes who inhabited the surface and the skies. In the war, femmes became assassins, saboteurs, and fierce team fighters.

In my head canon for this story-verse, femme circles, like Seekers, are able to create new sparks without the AllSpark or Vector Sigma. Other frame types, even within their cohorts, are not able to do so, leading to a great veneration among most frametypes for the Prime who is the Emmisary of the AllSpark and has the key to bringing forth new sparks from that artifact. Seekers and Femmes do not share this veneration.

Femme circles are something far more intense than the cohorts I've been developing in other stories along with Mefilly. If Cybertron was originally a hive with a singular consciousness, then both cohorts and circles hearken back to that strong need to be connected with others. However, circles have a far stronger link, and can function in a gestalt-like manner, though without combining into a single form. They have individual identities, but when they combine consciousness, the member with the greatest expertise in whatever they are accomplishing takes over and weaves their consciousness and skills into a cohesive whole. Normally this is the Elita-founder of the circle, but the Elita will delegate that responsibility to another member if she is better suited. And yes, for me, Elita is a title, like Prime. Each circle has an Elita. Elita-1's circle has the longest continual history of any circle on Cybertron, and she is the current "founder" of that circle.

As to the use of "she" as a pronoun, like Tainry in Borealis, I imagine that Cybertronian is complex enough to have a different pronouns for every different class and subclass of mecha. At the very least, I would imagine different pronouns for Femmes, Seekers, Minicons, Transports, City and Structure formers, Minibots, and whatever you'd call an average sized Mech grounder. When human beings encountered the aliens, femmes had voices and frame structures that suggested a feminine pronoun to some. Arcee does not object to this, because she certainly had a distinct pronoun in her own language, and like women on Earth, her frametype has a history of having their ferocity underestimated and has a processor-set at odds with the frametypes who dominated Cybertron's politics.