A moment of our choosing (Optimus and Cassandra)

Optimus Prime was an autobot by his very design. Right down to his spark he was an autbot and nothing in this universe or the next would ever be able to change that about him. His conviction was too strong; his memory core too hard-wired to follow the path of the autobots.

To follow the path of a true Prime.

But despite being an autobot of unequalled dedication... he was a bot first and foremost. A male one too.

And as such his core, his spark, ached for two things. To see the autobots win the war and bring peace to Earth... and to find the one femme who would make his core feel truly complete and his spark would flash and spark in time with.

He believed he had found the beginnings of such a connection in Cassandra.

He needed to know for certain though, which was why he had called on her to meet him here. Here being the very edge of the grand canyon, where he was sat with his legs dangling over the large fall.

As he waited he just used his telescopic vision to observe the fish in the river even as his sensors kept him updated of his other surroundings.

Cassandra had been asked to meet Optimus and of course she had consented to meet with him, they had a great many things to discuss and she was only too keen to get started on doing them. They needed to know where they both stood.

In her spark she knew that she loved Optimus, she had born his child Belle and raised her on her own, protecting her the best way that she knew how to, being a bot without the strength or intellect to match Optimus. The only way to protect their child was to take her, and their sparkling away from the war as soon as she could.

Hopefully, he would understand that when she told him. She hoped he would be happy to know that he had a sparkling of his own, and that she was safe and happy.

Approaching the location, she too sat down with her legs dangling over the Grand Canyon and placed her hands down on the rock next to Optimus' so that they were only a few centimetres away from touching each other.

"The human world is a beautiful place." she stated with a soft smile on her lips "I'm sorry I am a little bit late, Belle was being a little troublesome in asking for advice."

Optimus had to admit that he had almost zoned out by the time Cassandra arrived but his sensors went off and alerted him to her proximity so that he could zoom his vision back to regular zoom as opposed to x300. As he blinked a few times to let his scanners adjust, he turned to Cassandra with a small smile.

The red sunlight of the near-sunset was reflecting off of her body beautifully and he had a hard time thinking if there was any time he had ever seen her looking anything other than absolutely beautiful.

But of course that had been back on Cybertron.

"Yes the Earth holds many things of value... it's natural beauty is one that is not to be under-estimated." he agreed before pausing a little bit, "It must feel nice to have a sparkling looking to you like that..."

He had never had a sparkling... and it tore a part of him up inside.

He had so wanted a sparkling and not just any sparkling... he had wanted to have a sparkling with Cassandra. Back on Cybertron he had been preparing to broach the subject with her when she had left the planet to avoid the war.

Not something he could blame her for doing,

"We need to talk about some things... rather emotional and personal things."

Cassandra thought that the way that Optimus was looking at her was a hopeful one, she wanted to think that they could have a future together, that they would be able to move on from their relationship like it had never ended. The fact was though, it had done, and it had been ended by herself, she just hoped that he would understand her reasoning behind it.

He would have wanted it for his sparkling she was sure of it.

The fact is it just made her spark hammer in her chest to think that there might never be another chance between her and Optimus. On Cybertron she had accepted and pursued everything that needed to be done in order to bond with a Prime, there had to be personal sacrifices made on certain levels and Cassandra had done them all.

Maybe Optimus would remember her dedication, and she hoped it had reassured him that her departure was nothing short of necessary.

"It is nice to have her looking for advice from me, however it was about something of a rather embarrassing subject, namely about a certain Mech of yours." Cassandra grinned, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively "And I do enjoy it, but only when I am not already late for something that I need to do."

The expression on Optimus' face said it all, he had wanted someone to be close to she knew that. Cassandra wanted to be that person, she really did, if he would let her back in. Biting her lip softly she looked out over the canyon, out to the vast expanse of desert and she nodded her head in response to him;

"I know we do. I've been waiting for this conversation." she admitted with a rueful smile.

Optimus had never wanted anything more in his life than he had wanted to have his Cassandra as his sparkmate and he had had her in his spark for many years on Cybertron. She had known everything about him and... and he thought he had known everything about her but apparently he had been wrong in that regard. After all, she left him. She left not only the war and the planet but she had left him too.

He liked to think that she had some excuse that would make what she had done seem either necessary or, at the very least, of benefit to someone other than herself. But... but it was hard to keep thinking that when she hadn't even tried to find him after the war had been lost.

It didn't fit with what he knew of her at the time of course. She had been so dedicated to him, and he to her, that it wouldn't make any kind of sense for her to run from him. And yet she had done so and done so rather obviously,

"Yes I imagine that Belle is currently enjoying some of Bumblebee's sound-bites." he teased her a little bit before pausing and adding, "I wonder what her father would have to say about Bumblebee being with her? He is a good mech it has to be said."

He paused as he realised he had no idea how to start... so he just went straight into something he had been thinking hard on for a long time,

"Why?" he asked her quietly but firmly, "Why did you leave me Cassandra? What did I do?"

Cassandra's circuits were thrumming with nerves, she knew that she needed to tell Optimus the real reason behind why she had left and she would be happy to do so. Any other time than this time it would seem though. Why was she suddenly becoming so afraid to tell him what she had done, and why she had done it?

Was it because she thought that he would be so disgusted with her he wouldn't even want to be around her, to look at her? Although the Prime would never admit it, it was a sound possibility that something like that could happen.

Worrying her lip between her teeth, Cassandra tried once again to get everything sorted in her head, how she wanted to tell Optimus, the wording she had spent to many nights agonising over and trying to get just right. It seemed now however that just getting the information out of her vocal chords was going to be good enough.

"It was nothing that you did Optimus." she answered softly "I felt that it was best that I leave because I had something that I needed to protect."

Sighing softly, Cassandra decided that she would just tell Optimus out right what had happened, and let him take it from there.

"I left Cybertron because, after that last time that we...mated together, we created a sparkling. A Prime. I had to leave the war immediately to protect our child, I knew that Megatron would have wanted her to die as well as you, none of the Primes could live as an Autobot peacefully as you know." Cassandra stated passionately "I thought that you would have wanted the child to be safe, and if I had told you I was carrying, I knew you would have never let me leave, or you would have abandoned the war to come with me."

Gently she moved her hand to cover his; "We both had our paths to take, you needed to fight this war, and I needed to care for our sparkling."

Optimus knew that explaining this was likely going to be very hard on Cassandra but he had been waiting and wanting for this knowledge for ages now. He needed to know... he needed an answer even if it was an answer he didn't want to hear about. Even bad news, even terrible news, was better than no news at all!

It was torture!

She was just sat there trying to think of the best way to tell him, he knew that, but right now all he could think about was the impossible idea that she was trying to keep it from him to spite him for something or something like that. He... he just wanted to know why his sparkmate had left him, finding something more important to her than him,

"If it was nothing I did then why did you leave? Why punish me?" he asked in a whisper before sighing a little bit and nodding, "Protecting something... I can understand I suppose."

When she told him the truth... well to be honest, lots of emotions rushed out to encompass his processor. Each of them was massively powerful. He wanted to fall to his knees as they wobbled and he wanted to scream and rage in anger too,

"I... you... we have a sparkling?" he asked her with a thick and heavy voice, "You... you took our sparkling away without even so much as a goodbye... justified or not... that is a knife to my core."

It was true.

It felt like a betrayal, for whatever the reasons she had done it. Sighing a little bit, he stood up and began to pace slightly,

"So... who is our sparkling? Is it Belle?"

Cassandra knew that she had done wrong by leaving Optimus in the dark about everything and leaving him but the fact was that she couldn't tell him about their sparkling because it would have lost them the war even quicker with his unclear thinking, and his attention being put onto her and the sparkling, protecting them, instead of fighting against the Decepticons.

When he stated that he felt betrayed by what she had done, Cassandra was ready to bite back with a retort but she didn't see the point in doing that. She had done what she had done with the best of intents and if Optimus wanted to see it as a betrayal then he clearly didn't know her as well as she would have liked him to.

He knew that she wouldn't have betrayed him, hurt him on purpose. She had acted in the manner than she thought was best.

As Optimus stood, ignoring the way that she had reached out to him for some sort of comfort, Cassandra recoiled into herself and frowned softly, it seemed that she was right, it wouldn't be possible for them to continue as mates after all.

"Yes, Belle is our sparkling. I brought her back to you as soon as she had somewhere to be brought back to, not just a shell of a planet destroyed by war." Cassandra stated gruffly.

Optimus stopped moving at the tone of voice Cassandra was using with him. So this was his fault was it? Was he supposed to feel nothing about the lack of trust she had had in him? Was he supposed to just accept that she had decided to deprive him of the chance to know his daughter? And all of this done without his knowledge... behind his back.

He turned to look at her,

"I do not doubt your intentions and I agree with your reasoning." he told her honestly, trying not to let his processor leak some of his emotions into his vocal speakers, "However... you couldn't tell me? You couldn't tell me any of it?"

His eyes softened a little bit in sadness at this,

"I would have trusted you to take care of our sparkling in that way because I love and trusted you Cassandra." he told her honestly, "War was no place for our child and I would have done everything I could to support the decision... had it been a joint decision made by the two parents. You..."

There was a pause as Optimus struggled with controlling his processor to keep him from sobbing a little bit,

"You did the right thing Cassandra. I just hate the means you used to come to something we would have both agreed on." he told her honestly before pausing and asking, "Does Belle know?"