His gauntlet grip around her bladed wrist was harsh. Up the elevator and onto the bridge, she took point as she was shoved forward under his arm, and when they reached the bridge interior he let her go with such a force that she stumbled forward onto the center console.
"How DARE you?!" Silverbolt's trumpet voice crescendoed in rage.
Blackarachnia had to turn to face him; she backed around, then backed up, keeping herself flush with the console that had tripped her up at the sight of his flame-tinted optics. She felt sickened, horrified.
"How dare you lie to me this way?! For this long? I TRUSTED you! I LOVED you!"
Past tense, past tense? Don't you, don't you say that word in the past tense! "I-- I--"
"Other Maximals INSISTED I would regret you! I believed you too honest, that if I didn't watch you, I would be RUINED loving you! And I INSISTED you would NOT betray me. Now you've come to make me a liar?!"
"Silverbolt...please, listen!"
"I want to listen, Blackarachnia. I want you to tell me the truth."
Seeing her opening narrow, she collected herself, fought back the fluid threatening to leak from her optics. "I knew… I knew Tarantulas was...from Unicron. And I knew Tripredicus had him working for them, and knew all about him. When I confronted them, when I talked to them, it was accusations, not..." She choked. "I never intended to mention blackmail. And I didn't know what they WERE...just that HE WAS. But it was enough to frighten them. And pretty soon they were making promises and I guess that Cheetor..." Her voice hardened. "But I didn't betray you, Silverbolt; I didn't. I did it FOR YOU. Did you... Did you honestly think YOU were corrupt enough to get a Maximal Council position?! DID you? They needed someone GOOD in there and if I had to do something BAD to make it happen-"
She'd been advancing on him as she'd found the courage to speak again, and she found herself close enough now to wrap her arms around his body. She was upset enough to need the comfort, but he did not return the embrace as she wished. Instead, he grabbed her by her upper arms, held her away. Only calmness now, in his eyes, but a cold calm. And she began to cry.
"I'm not the hero you are, Silverbolt! I never was. This is the way I HAVE to do things."
"Yes, of course." He nodded once, still meeting her gaze. "You are, after all, a Predacon."
Her spark froze to solid ice. "I am NOT! Am NOT a Predacon! I--"
He let her go, now, and dropped his arms. "Perhaps you yet should be, if we Maximals are so corrupt. If this is how we continue to treat one another."
He turned and walked away, back to the exit, to the elevator. "I might still forgive you, Blackarachnia, my midnight beauty. I know that we might still set things right. All the same, I think... I think that I, for the first time I can remember, would prefer to be alone tonight."
She watched where she had walked long after he had left, waited for his scent to fade from the air. She finally left the bridge in a teary stumble, hoping to avoid letting the other, approaching Maximals, see her cry.
Waspinator peeked around the side of the heavy R-chamber, only after he was entirely certain she was gone. THAT had been SERIOUSLY messy!