Warnings: Potential for AU, considering that the damned series won't start until December and the prequel comic is still not out *is impatiently awaiting it from Amazon*
Notes: This is partially inspired by a comment from TGL about a month ago in one of my dorky journal posts. It burrowed in my head and... well, my midterm is over, and I've not started on my term paper yet so...
Before the war, she hadn't really given much thought to... well, anything, really.
She was nobility, the only creation of Arclight and Specter, and doted upon as such. She'd had many suitors, and she reveled in the attention. In what would become the final days of the Golden Age of Cybertron, she had chosen a mech who seemed to be as loyal to her as her sire was to her bearer.
They had made a pretty pair, Mirage and Spanner. And she had been certain that, even with the threat of civil war looming on the horizon, they would all remain safe in the towers of Crystal City.
That illusion was shattered the instant that the Decepticons arrived.
Her creators refused to bend, refused to kowtow to Megatron and his army, and had perished for their 'disobedience.' Others followed her creators' lead, falling before the weapons wielded by the invaders; a few broke under the pressure and swore loyalty to the Decepticons only to perish as well for their perceived betrayal to their former way of life.
And Spanner... she still felt fury well up in her when she recalled what her intended had done.
The mech had not only sworn fealty to Megatron, but had actually offered to give Mirage herself to the warlord as a consort. The femme had hidden herself away – she'd always been horribly good at slipping through shadows and hiding when necessary – and nearly given away her location at the betrayal.
The only thing she would ever credit the Decepticons for was having some sense of honor; Megatron's aerial commander had literally torn Spanner to shreds for even making the offer without a care as to his betrothed's thoughts on the matter.
She was never really sure how she managed to slip from the city with so many Decepticons still roaming about, but she did. She survived, and she made her way to the city-state of Iacon in short order.
The first order of business was to track down the Autobots' base of operations and join their army; the second, coming almost immediately after the first, was changing her identity. There was no guarantee that the Decepticons would remember the name of the femme who'd been offered as a whore by her betrothed, but she wanted to take no chances. So Mirage became Arcee, in honor and memory of her lost creators, and she made a promise to herself that she would never give her spark to another.
Many vorns after that, she met Cliffjumper. Or rather, she was assigned to work with the mech on several recon missions.
Her first impression of the mech was that he was big, he was dedicated to the Autobot cause, and that he was stupidly sweet in his own way. Nobody she'd ever spoken with after learning who her new partner was going to be had anything bad to say about him aside from the fact that he didn't know the meaning of the word quit. And with how many times they'd had to yank one another out of a potentially dire situation, Arcee found she viewed that flaw as a positive aspect. In fact, over time, she found that she rather liked the big lugnut.
But until less than an orn ago, she would have expected that Cliffjumper would leave her behind if she suffered too much damage to complete a mission. It was to be expected, after all; the mech she'd been betrothed to had all but sold her to the Unmaker Himself, and more than a few Autobot infiltration teams had come back a mech-or-femme shy.
Yet even when she had all but ordered the mech to leave her behind and get to safety, Cliffjumper had stubbornly refused. All she'd done was slow down his escape, but the mech just kept ignoring her commands or saying he couldn't hear her over Breakdown and Starscream's weapons. But it was his words right before they were buried online that stuck with her most, that had nearly shocked her to the core and still had her mental processors reeling for so long afterward:
"I'm not gonna leave you, Arcee."
One short sentence and it was as if the world as she knew it had been tilted on its axis to spin in a whole new direction.
Now, after they'd been found and repaired and slipped into their respective positions under Optimus Prime's command, she found herself looking at her comrade in a whole new light. Cliffjumper was still big and dedicated and stupidly sweet, but now she realized how often he seemed to look for her whenever either one of them would enter a room. It was never much, just that silly little smile and a nod towards her before resuming whatever he'd been doing prior to spotting her, or a quick ping over her comm link to see if she was up for company, but it made her feel... well... special for the first time since her youngling days.
And although Arcee had sworn that she'd never just give her spark away to anyone again, she'd never made any stipulations against someone winning it instead.
End Note:...yeah. I'm that much of a dork. A few comic scans and I'm shipping them hardcore.