The Silver Lining

Chapter One

Optimus wished for the hundredth time that they had solvent. The First Light didn't have the space available for solvent reserves, but he could still dream. Pressurized air just didn't get the grit out from between his plating or in his joints. And he had a lot of grit. 

They'd been stationed at Theta-26 for three deca-cycles now, commissioned by the resident mining colony to drill around a large obstruction in one of the main tunnels with a specialty-type drill head. That wasn't the frustrating part though. The frustrating part was the debris clean-up. The tunnel ran parallel to a vein of kyrolinium - a common ore that, when processed correctly, had a probability of becoming kurite, an essential metal used for high-grade armor on battleships. Because of this, they couldn't simply shovel the rock away once it had been broken off. Oh no. Optimus and the others had to manually sort through all of the debris for any traces of kryolinium. 

It was a long and grueling process that left his entire frame aching and lethargic. The lack of proper wash racks and reduced rations certainly wasn't helping either. It left him feeling worse than he'd ever felt before, even after the most difficult days of boot camp. He grimaced at the memories of doing transformations for mega-cycles at a time. He was almost certain his T-cog was going to melt by the time they were released. On those days, even Elita's gentle teasing couldn't brighten his mood. 

Optimus still visibly winced when he thought about Elita-One. 

The investigation didn't last very long after Sentinel and Optimus were rescued from Archa Seven - partially because of the ship's records of their trip and the lack of a third spark signature, but also because Sentinel had no problem whatsoever throwing Optimus under the bus. And Optimus had just... let him. Maybe it was his way of punishing himself, or maybe he had genuinely believed it was his fault at the time. 

But the damage had been done. Ultra Magnus expelled Optimus from the Autobot Academy and stripped him of his rank, placing a marker on his permanent record that would exclude him from any federal job positions. It felt like a blur whenever he tried to remember the details of it all. He could recall the smug smirk on Sentinel's face when Ultra Magnus had delivered the verdict, along with the Magnus' look of disappointment and shame. 

The worst part had been when he'd packed up his things. He'd been given a single container to place all of his belongings in, and he'd been forced to leave behind a lot of the small trinkets he'd collected in favor of taking more practical things with him. His optics had stung with the optical fluid gathering in them when he'd had to leave behind a palm-sized seashell that Elita had gotten for him. When he'd finished filling up the box, he'd been escorted out of the dormitories by two large officers who never bothered to meet his eye. As Optimus had made his way to the exit, he'd felt the collective energy of everyone's EM fields running along his armor plating, stinging with disdain and hatred. Other cadets poked their helms out of their dorms to watch as he was escorted off campus grounds. 

Someone had muttered out a venomous "Murderer" as he passed by. It might as well have been a slap in the face. The shame and humiliation of it all had nearly destroyed Optimus, and it had taken every ounce of control he had to not break down crying.

The officers had taken him as far as the front gates before leaving him alone. For a while, Optimus had just stood there, looking around in a lost sort of daze. It wasn't until the guard at the front gate snapped at him to move along that Optimus was able to gather himself enough to start walking.