#okay overlord thoughts done tarantulas + springer thoughts next

[coalballbaby]

Wreckers Trilogy Overlord and MTMTE Overlord are two completely different animals to me. By the way. I have a lot of thoughts on him and what he represents in the stories he’s in but if you asked for my personal thoughts on the matter I’d say I enjoyed him a ton more in Wreckers. His inclusion felt purposeful as this incomprehensibly competent and brutal antagonist—he felt more force of nature than character, and honestly? I felt he worked way better that way, especially in opposition to who the protagonists are in the series he’s involved in. Specifically in Last Stand, when we have this direct contrast between Ironfist; somebody who plays an objectively small, background role in the story of the war, and somebody of the likes of Overlord; a general, infamous in both name and nature to everybody on both sides of the war. Last Stand has and always will be a story about hope and (our concept of) “human” perseverance, and Overlord never needed to be a particularly fleshed out character to serve his purpose in getting that message across. Overlord’s presentation in Last Stand made him feel like a metaphor for the senseless violence that comes with the war, and the impersonal cruelty he extends towards the Wreckers made him feel like… just… brutality? Itself?

In MTMTE, Overlord is still dangerous, still horrifying, but he becomes something a lot closer to a “character.” He’s got more dialogue, expanded motivation, plans, grudges, errr idgaf he bites off Rewind’s head. We see more of his interiority, especially through his obsession with Megatron and whatever convoluted desire he had to best him. Which. I’ll be honest I don’t think was totally necessary. And sure, there’s merit to that exploration— especially as MTMTE focuses a lot more on the complexity of individuals, i.e Rewind and Chromedome’s reaction to his death—but I think that approach ultimately softens him. He stops being an abstract manifestation of war’s cruelty and becomes more of a person, villain or not, and that personhood somewhat undercuts the dread(?) that came with him that made him so effective in Last Stand. I don’t know if this makes sense. Awesome

[ckret2]

Hand In Chelicera

Fandom: Transformers IDW, post-Requiem of the Wreckers Pairing: Prowl/Tarantulas Characters: Tarantulas, Prowl, brief appearances by Springer and Pharma Words: 4500 Summary: Tarantulas, on the verge of death, requests to be left in his lab in the past to die. He doesn’t expect to find Prowl there. He expects Prowl to save his life even less. And now—waking up on a hospital bed with Prowl, here, sitting beside him—he’s beginning to consider that maybe his plan to win Prowl back used the wrong strategy. Notes: I’ve owed @fiveboos this fic since TFCon last October. Never let it be said I don’t keep my promises. Eventually. Warnings: Remember how Tarantulas looks at the end of Requiem? He still looks like that.

###

"One—" Tarantulas grasped pleadingly at Springer's arm. "One last request. I don't—want to—die, here."

Springer nodded, optics warm and focused on Tarantulas, giving him his full attention. He was so good, such a good person, and Tarantulas had made him. "Where?"

"M-my lab," he said. "On Cybertron. Where—where you were born." He smiled, and only felt half his face move. "After my last visit, but... before Thunderwing. I'll g-give you the date and coordinates." He'd lived in his lab; it was fitting for him to die there, to be entombed until Cybertron was reborn.

Springer nodded. "Okay," he said. "Your lab."

###

The pain increased as Springer worked out the controls and put in Tarantulas's coordinates, until it was dazzling in how excruciating it was; and then it faded, rapidly, to nothing. And that was more alarming. "I—h-haven't got much—"

"I know," Springer said grimly. Tarantulas could hear the time machine powering up, and the shadows on the ceiling above him shifted in the light of the portal. "Okay, got it. Let's go."

Tarantulas felt Springer's arms under his shoulders and legs. "N-no..." He pushed weakly against Springer's chest. "My lab, is—irradiated. And, c-corrosive gasses. If you come through— I don't want to h-harm you."

Springer paused; Tarantulas's one working optic kept focusing and unfocusing on his face, and the optic band over it periodically flickered out. "Okay. I'll carry you as far as the gate. Then what, you want me to throw you through?" He smiled.

Tarantulas laughed; it wasn't a full cackle, but it was enough to rattle something in his chest that shouldn't be rattling. "Set me on the floor. I can—manage a few feet myself."

"All right." He settled Tarantulas sitting upright, leaning against the frame of the portal. It hurt far more than laying down—he could feel the weight of his remaining spider legs pulling down on his back, ripping at already-damaged armor and struts in his blasted shoulder—but it would make it easier to get through the portal.

"Goodbye—S-Springer. Ostaros."

"Goodbye, Mesothulas. And... thank you."

Tarantulas smiled at Springer—or tried to, with his face shattered and half his mandibles missing—and for a moment, he was tempted to stay here, spend his remaining seconds with his creation.

But somehow he didn't want to force Springer to watch his maker die. And so, laboriously, he turned toward the portal, and dragged himself through with one arm and the awkward help of four spider legs.

The portal turned off.

Wounds already stinging from radiation, Tarantulas collapsed to the floor of his old abandoned lab and waited to die.

###

Except, the second he collapsed, a very close, very familiar voice said, "What the hell?!"

Tarantulas forced his fading optic band back on. There was someone in his lab. His abandoned lab, millennia after his own final visit to it. His vision swam, trying to focus on the hulking figure next to him—and then all at once it was crystal clear: a mech covered head to foot in the Autobots' preferred anti-rad armor. It was impossible to see who was inside it. But Tarantulas knew. He'd heard his voice. He'd know his voice anywhere.

"Pr—" he wheezed. "Pr—o—"

Prowl stepped back, slinging a gun off his back that, even with the added bulk of his anti-rad armor, looked ill-suited in his hands. "What the hell are you? How did you get in here?" He sounded angry, the same way millennia in the future he would sound angry to be trapped in Tarantulas's web, angry to be manhandled and blackmailed and bargained with; and only now did Tarantulas realize that the anger was actually fear.

Tarantulas realized with a jolt that Prowl had no way to recognize him. This was so long ago, Prowl undoubtedly still thought Mesothulas consigned to the Noisemaze. He hadn't seen Tarantulas's new body—or a natural tarantula, for that matter—hell, for all Tarantulas knew, Prowl had never seen an organic in the flesh before. And now here was a massive technorganic in front of him, mangled so badly he was probably hard to identify even as bipedal, who had tumbled out of a mysterious glowing portal in an abandoned radioactive lab—

"It's m-me," he wheezed. "Don't shoot, P-Prowl, please—I can'tzz h-harm..." He hacked up a mouthful of green energon, rapidly congealing. "Please."

The last time Prowl had seen him, he'd tried to murder him, and surely nothing about Tarantulas's appearance looked less worthy of being murdered now; and yet, Prowl lowered his gun. "...Mesothulas?"

"Zzyes. I'm... s-zztso sorry to... die in front of you, like this—" He laughed, coughed, and choked at the same time. "It's n-not what I zzzt wanted... you to..."

Prowl took a step toward Tarantulas, knees bending like he wanted to kneel next to him; but then he stopped, and backed up. And without a word, he turned and ran away from him. Sprinting at top speed, fighting against the clunky suit to move as fast as possible.

Tarantulas tried to call to him to stay—please, Prowl, don't leave him again—but all that came out was a dispirited, staticky hiss. Tarantulas's optic froze a moment, and when it rebooted, Prowl was gone.

Well, he'd come here to die alone, hadn't he? But it was worse now. Merely being alone was far different from contemplating the Prowl-shaped void in his life. He wished Prowl hadn't been here. He hated Prowl for being here.

He stared dully down the path Prowl had taken away from him, and listened as his systems shut down one by one.

And then there was Prowl, sprinting back for Tarantulas as fast as he'd left.

Tarantulas's spark surged joyously; he felt himself die a little faster. "Przzkl... Y-you came b..."

Prowl shoved him roughly onto his back, ripped Tarantulas's chest open wider—the metal screamed—and shoved a rusty, clawed weapon into the gap. Tarantulas tried to grab Prowl's wrist, but couldn't lift his arm. Why? Why?

Tarantulas dimly recognized the weapon as his own prototype spark extractor.

He felt his soul sucked inside-out.

Then nothing.

###

The first thing Tarantulas was aware of was the bright lights on the ceiling above him.

No. No, that wasn't the ceiling.

That was a face.

It was grinning at him.

It wasn't Overlord's face, and Overlord's was the only face he expected to be within five miles of him. Where was he? What was going on? He'd been dying, hadn't he?

Tarantulas stared at the face, blearily, as it swam into focus. And then croaked, "Primus?"

"Close!" the face said. "Pharma. And I am delighted to meet you, Mesothulas. I've got so many questions to ask about your body."

Tarantulas stared in fuzzy befuddlement at Pharma. "Ah?"

"I want to know all about where you got it and how it works," Pharma said. "It's so unusual, I was barely able to patch you up! Me! And the flesh that's grafted onto the surface—it's ingenious. Disgusting, but ingenious. Who made it? I'm convinced someone did make it—Prowl thinks you were somehow mutated in, oh, some parallel dimension, he wouldn't explain it, kept saying 'classified information'—"

It took longer than it should have for Tarantulas to register the name. And then he bolted up—or tried to. He was still missing half his arms and spider legs, apparently, and ended up instead sort of sliding sideways. "Prowl!"

"Pharma," the mech over him corrected.

"No! Where's— Where's Prowl? He was with me, where did he..."

"Ah." Pharma pointed across Tarantulas's berth. "On your blind side."

Tarantulas's head whipped around ("Careful," Pharma scolded), and there Prowl was. Sitting there, looking at Tarantulas, as though that was a perfectly natural place for him to be. By Tarantulas's side. On a chair. Looking at him. By his side.

Tarantulas stared at him.

Prowl looked away.

"Spark rpm kicked up," Pharma muttered. "I told you you'd make him anxious, Prowl. Out the door, I won't have you disturbing my patient."

"No!" Tarantulas cried, twisting to give Pharma a pleading look. "No, please, let—let him stay. I want to talk to him."

Pharma stared at Tarantulas. "I did plug your brain module back in right, didn't I?"

"Pharma," Prowl said crossly. "I told you I'd need an opportunity to debrief Mesothulas once he was conscious and stable. Is he medically stable to your satisfaction?"

Pharma sighed, and circled around to Prowl's side of the berth, so he could lean in and... Tarantulas presumed he was examining his wounds, although he was still blind on that side. He could see the edge of a hole still gaping on the left side of his chest, but couldn't quite bend his neck enough to see how much of him was still missing.

"Welds still holding," Pharma said. "For now. If you absolutely must interrogate him immediately..."

"Welds," Tarantulas said dumbly, as if it had only just occurred to him that he must have had some repairs done to him in order for him not to be dead. "How—how am I still—? I was dying. How in the world—"

"Prowl hauled you in with your frame already going gray and your spark preserved in the most jury-rigged excuse for a spark extractor I've ever seen," Pharma said. "Your spark decayed slowly enough in the extractor that I was able to repair enough damage to your body to get your spark home and reignite it."

Tarantulas's gaze jerked back to Prowl, who was looking somewhere past him. He'd saved Tarantulas's life. He'd saved Tarantulas's life? He'd snapped to save him the moment he recognized the damage he was in, the moment he recognized who he was. He'd run to save him.

And with a spark extractor, of all things! Tarantulas breathed, "Ingenious."

"Yes, I know," Pharma said smugly.

Prowl glanced up at Pharma. "If you don't mind..."

"Yes, yes, I'll get out of your way." Pharma fixed Tarantulas with a sharp look. "Don't let him force you to do anything strenuous."

"Don't worry, doctor. I'm not going to do anything more strenuous than talk."

"Talk with Prowl," Pharma said pointedly. Looking at Prowl, he said, like it was a threat, "I'm going to be monitoring his vitals remotely."

Prowl nodded. "Of course."

Pharma gave Tarantulas one last critical look, then turned to leave the room. The door swung shut behind him. His footsteps disappeared down the hall. Tarantulas simply looked at Prowl, reveling in the knowledge that he was here, at Tarantulas's sick bed; and Prowl looked back at him. For several seconds, they were silent.

Then they both started talking at once.

"How did you get out of the Noisemaze?!"

"What were you doing in my lab?!"

"What did the maze do to you?!"

"Why did you save my life?!"

"I'm sorry."

"Where in the universe did you take— Wait. What?"

Prowl couldn't look at Tarantulas. He looked down at his hands, laced in front of him, elbows on his knees.

"Repeat that," Tarantulas commanded.

"I asked you a question first," Prowl said. "And, as you pointed out, I saved your life. Answer my questions first."

"Saved it?! You tried to end my life," Tarantulas snapped. Prowl half-shrugged, grimaced, and tilted his head, as though to say, fair point. "Answer to me, Prowl. Repeat what you just said. I want to hear it clearly."

Prowl frowned. "I'm not—"

"Say it!"

Prowl flinched. For most people, flinching was a sharp cringe back, submissive and avoidant. Prowl's flinch made his expression harden and his back straighten.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For locking you in an experimental torture prison without a trial and leaving you there to die."

"And?"

"'And'?"

"And 'I'm sorry for kidnapping'...?"

"Oh. I wouldn't call it a kidnapping. He was incapable of any autonomous activity, much less of taking care of himself. If I hadn't taken him along—"

"Prowl."

Prowl huffed. "All right. From the perspective of, say, the beginning of the day, it’s understandable that my actions might have been construable as a kidnapping; and on those grounds, I apologize for the perceived—“

“Prowl."

He fell silent for a moment. Then looked down again. "I'm sorry for kidnapping Ostaros."

"Sorry," Tarantulas muttered. "Sorry. Everything I went through—everything you put me through—and all you have to say is sorry."

"Sincere question," Prowl said. "Is there anything else I could say that would help you?"

And there wasn't. So Tarantulas said nothing.

In truth, it was a marvel he had even gotten that much out of Prowl. He certainly hadn't gotten that from Prowl in the future, millions of years later, when he descended upon him with the evidence of what Prowl had turned him into—what he'd turned himself into for Prowl. What was the difference? Had Prowl lost his remorse over Mesothulas in the intervening millennia? Had Tarantulas been fortunate to jump into the past at one of Prowl's periodic dips into higher morality?

No—Tarantulas doubted it. Something else had to be different. What had changed—or would change, as the case may be—between this meeting and the one in which Tarantulas had kidnapped Prowl?

... Well. "Kidnapping Prowl" was a rather large detail, wasn't it. Kidnapping him and blackmailing them. In retrospect, Tarantulas supposed that would rather keep Prowl out of any sort of reconciliatory, remorseful state of mind, wouldn't it.

Is that all it would have took? God—did he waste all that time, all those years preparing the perfect trap to dazzle and intimidate Prowl, when all along, all he had to do to receive an apology was—was—was nothing? Just turn up? Just show up with a hole blown through his spark and collapse at his feet?

It burned to think that he had—that he'd wasted all of that, for nothing.

And for a moment, he wanted to make Prowl burn too. Just a little. "I'm surprised you bothered to save me," he snipped. "When you could have far more easily just left me to die—and ensure that your little secret about you-know-where would no longer have anyone left who could spill it."

He'd expected—he'd hoped—that Prowl would look scared, or hurt, or guilty. Prowl looked none of those things. What he didn't expect was for Prowl to look confused. Was he more callous than even Tarantulas had thought? To have forgotten Carpessa? To have forgotten which secret he'd thrown Tarantulas into hell to keep?

Then something clicked on. "You think I locked you up as a—as a cover-up? To keep a secret? You weren't going to tell, you didn't have anybody to tell." (It was so true that Tarantulas couldn't even be offended.) "That's—all these years, that's what you've believed?"

Tarantulas stared at him. "... Well, I did."

"That wasn't my objective," Prowl said hotly. "I was—" He paused; and there was the guilt and shame that Tarantulas had hoped to see. Now that he had it, he wasn't so sure he wanted it after all. "I—my objective was to... to remove the thing that... caused me to make decisions like that."

Tarantulas gaped at him. "You tried to kill me because you thought I was a bad influence?" He laughed harshly, angrily. It hurt to laugh, pained the parts of him that were missing. Prowl didn't look at him. "Why would—Why not kill me again, then? If my presence is so very terrible for your decision-making capabilities? Why did you save me this time."

"Because—you weren't what was causing me to do the wrong thing." Prowl's already guilty face twisted further, into something that looked uncomfortably close to self-loathing. Somewhere in Prowl's mind must have been self-reproaches compounded upon self-reproaches: the knowledge of the crimes he'd committed—and the knowledge that he'd martyred Mesothulas for those crimes, for no reason.

Tarantulas could have told Prowl that Tarantulas was never the one making Prowl's decisions. No one had ever guided Prowl's decisions except for himself. He was too stubborn, too proud, too beautifully distant and independent. Hearing Prowl admit it, Tarantulas should have wanted to gloat. It was what he'd always wanted to hear Prowl confess: that regardless of whatever high ideals he tried to serve, his stabs at performing morality were a sham; that he could be just as wicked as Tarantulas; that he was just as wicked. Tarantulas was never the one who dragged Prowl off his pedestal of moral purity and down into the dirt: no, they had each inspired the other to dig. Tarantulas should get to gloat over this.

Instead—to his surprise—he found his anger toward Prowl softening in empathy.

Since he'd started lurking in Ostaros's—Springer's—life, Tarantulas had found himself aching inside, like acid softly eating him from the spark out, whenever he thought on all the little things he'd done to help make the world Springer lived in worse—and all the much larger things he might do yet. It was one of the reasons that, even though he'd agreed, eagerly, to collaborate with Overlord, he'd decided that they would only dissect the specimen with a time machine: any incisions they made to the past could be effortlessly sewn back shut once they'd made their observations. Springer wouldn't have to suffer for the changes Tarantulas made. Tarantulas had changed; he thought he understood what guilt felt like, now. And now he couldn't mock Prowl for feeling it. Of course he felt vile for having done little things to help make the world a little worse. He understood.

Maybe, he'd considered, guilt wasn't the weakness he'd thought it as, but a warning sign—a signpost to help guide you away from doing something you ought not do again. A defense against stupidity.

Tarantulas was beginning to fear he had been very stupid.

It was no wonder Prowl hat shot him down when he'd tried to offer the power to conquer the galaxy.

"I'm—for what it's worth," Tarantulas said, "I'm no longer interested in—trying to talk you into doing things you'd rather not. Or, trying to convince you that you want to do something you don't think you do." Was that true? Tarantulas didn't know; but he thought Prowl would probably like for it to be true.

He didn't look like he liked it. Bitterly, he said, "I don't need your help to make decisions I don't want to." And then sat up straighter, smoothed his face from guilty to professionally neutral, visibly changing the topic. "I don't know how you got out of the Noisemaze. But, whatever your trick was—I'm—glad that you did."

Tarantulas perked up. "Oh? Did you miss me?"

"Do I have to have missed you to be glad you didn't die?"

That wasn't a no. "Did you miss me?"

Prowl harrumphed. "I wouldn't say that."

Tarantulas tilted his head toward him, smiling. The gesture hurt. "What would you say?"

"That..." Prowl tipped his head back, looking up at the ceiling, choosing his words carefully. "That—I have—been unsuccessful in finding an inventor to collaborate with who has—been as... responsive to my requests as you were. Do not mistake me, the Autobots have a plethora of scientists, engineers, and inventors more than competent enough to meet any requests I make—but they don't tend to innovate on my proposals the way you did. That's all."

Which was clearly, blatantly intended as a brush-off. I didn't miss you; all I missed was the things you made for me. But Tarantulas's spark spun faster anyway; his spark monitor undoubtedly would indicate an increase in the rpm again. Millennia in the future, Tarantulas would say to Prowl, I miss the way that you inspired me; and here, now, millennia in the past, Prowl had said to Tarantulas, I miss the way that you were inspired by me. The statements made a Möbius strip out of their mutual longing, each infinitely flowing into and looping back around to each other. Each the muse to the other.

And with that realization, he wondered, suddenly, what this strange new Prowl that paralleled Tarantulas's words and didn't cringe away from him would do if Tarantulas touched him. If Tarantulas reached out, took his hand, or cupped his face and pulled him in...

He tried to roll onto his side to stretch his one functioning arm toward Prowl; but doing so rolled him onto the wounded ruin of his shoulder and chest, and he curled in on himself, hissing in pain.

"Mesothulas!" Prowl's hands were on him, on his chest and shoulder, pushing him to roll flat on his back. "Don't do that." Prowl was standing to lean over Tarantulas, frowning down at him—annoyed or worried? It must be worried. Please, let him be worried. "Haven't you seen how bad your wounds are?"

In wonder, Tarantulas said, "You're touching me."

Prowl paused. "Of course I am." As if there were anything "of course" about this.

"Tell me again," Tarantulas said, "that you didn't miss me."

Prowl didn't. He looked away, lifting his hands off of Tarantulas's body. Tarantulas grabbed the wrist of the hand leaving his chest and pulled it back into place. Prowl didn't try to withdraw again.

"I missed you, Prowl."

"I can't imagine why."

"Can't you?" Tarantulas ran the fang at the tip of his chelicera-thumb in the gap between Prowl's wrist and hand.

Tarantulas wasn't sure whether Prowl shivered or shuddered. "That—whatever is protruding from your armor—"

"It's called setae."

"Does it—spread? Is it contagious?"

Tarantulas chuckled wheezily, at the same time as he found himself wondering whether Prowl, this Prowl, this younger Prowl had yet to set foot on an alien world and see organics for himself. "It is wholly contained to my own body, never fear."

"We can remove it while you're here getting all your other repairs."

"No, no." Tarantulas started to shake his head and immediately regretted it. "It's supposed to be there. I'm keeping it."

"Why? What's—What is it for?"

They were drifting frustratingly far from their original topic, and just when Tarantulas felt he was on the verge of persuading Prowl to admit something—something Tarantulas hadn't thought was there—something he so desperately needed to have confirmed. "If you don't like how it feels, then touch me somewhere else." He let go of Prowl's wrist, allowing him to withdraw completely if he wanted to. He felt like he was taking a deadly risk—but he'd already tried to force Prowl into choosing him, and see how that had all fallen apart. See how he'd said I want you, I want us, and Prowl had said you're asking if I'm frightened to face the repercussions of my terrible judgment: no. What he needed now was to see whether Prowl would choose him if he was free to make the choice, free of fear and blackmail and hostages and kidnapping.

For a moment, Tarantulas was terrified he wouldn't. Prowl bristled at the dare, pulling his hand back quickly; but then leaned back in, and closer, and cupped Tarantulas's face in his hand. His fingers fit perfectly in the corrugated grooves of Tarantulas's cheek. Tarantulas felt light enough to float.

"I shouldn't be doing this," Prowl said. Tarantulas had never heard him speak so softly before. "You're so injured."

"I'd be even more gravely injured if you pulled away from me now."

"Difficult to imagine. I can see your exposed brain module."

"Then I'm glad you get to see my best assets."

Tarantulas could have sworn that Prowl's face almost shifted, like he wanted to smile. "Stop that." He bent closer to Tarantulas, optics dimming—Tarantulas's vents hitched—Prowl's lips ghosted softly over the tips of Tarantulas's outstretched mandibles—

Footsteps pounded down the hallway. "I don't know what kind of torture you normally put your agents through, Prowl. But as long as this one is my patient, I will not stand idly by while his spark RPMs give off readings better suited to pulsars than to—" Pharma opened the door, took one step in, immediately backpedaled, and slammed the door.

Prowl jerked back, and when his lips left Tarantulas's face it felt like being paralyzed with a rush of icy wind. For a moment, there was silence.

"I'll check in on Mesothulas later," Pharma said through the closed door. His footsteps hurriedly vanished down the hall.

Tarantulas gave Prowl the best pleading look he could with half a visor and a broken optic. Prowl shook his head, and sank back into his seat. "You're injured," he said, yet again. "I shouldn't risk exacerbating it."

"I won't always be injured," Tarantulas said hopefully. "Then...? Or, when that day comes, will this be—just another mistake you've made with me?"

Tarantulas tried his best to keep the question gentle. Prowl winced anyway. "I hope not. But I don't know," he said. "I'm tired of making mistakes. It's going to keep happening, I know, that's life, but—I don't want you to be one again."

"What do you want me to be to you, then?"

Tarantulas was disappointed but he supposed he wasn't surprised when Prowl didn't answer.

"We can figure that out," Tarantulas offered. "Together, with time." Prowl at least nodded in agreement to that—oh, the relief. Tarantulas was getting a second chance. This one he wouldn't squander. He'd do anything Prowl asked, make anything Prowl wanted—that was all Tarantulas had desired in the first place, after all. He had knowledge of technologies that wouldn't exist for millions of years—he could become their inventor, dazzle Prowl with designs he'd never dreamed of. He had just enough knowledge of the war that he could steer Prowl away from the actions Tarantulas knew he would regret, oh, how grateful Prowl would be to Tarantulas for that—imagine! Tarantulas playing the part of Prowl's conscience! And soon enough the war would end—

The very fuel in Tarantulas's lines froze.

The war would end. And then the other Tarantulas would storm in, brimming with blackmail and greed.

He was out there already, no doubt. At this point in history he'd already escaped the Noisemaze, begun his long pilgrimage across the universe to learn from the luminaries of science. How long was it yet until he turned his attentions back to Prowl? If Tarantulas went through with his plan to provide Prowl with the wonders of the future, how long until his younger self deduced that Prowl had adopted a new pet scientist, and became fiercely jealous?

"Prowl—" Tarantulas reached for him, chelicera weakly pointed toward Prowl's hands. By now, Tarantulas had no idea whether or not to expect Prowl to take it.

But he did. Prowl scooted to the edge of his seat, and took Tarantulas's hand in both of his. He even ran his thumb, lightly, over the back of his chelicera, as though studying the way his setae bent under the pressure and then snapped back into place.

He'd deal with his younger self. Perhaps he'd teach him how to make a time machine of his own, and let him shunt himself off to another branch timeline where he could claim a Prowl for his own. But he'd kill him if he had to. He could do that. He was sure he could.

Tarantulas squeezed Prowl's hands, looked in his optics, and said, softly, "I'm not going to lose you again. I refuse to lose you again."

The look Prowl gave Tarantulas said that he was thinking the same words.

###

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