"...I've been there," Tarantulas says quietly. "But I chose differently...to be feared, since I could not be loved. I made myself into a monster, then...to take by force what should have been mine by right."

He laughs bitterly. "I cannot say it worked well, or at all. And so now I find myself trying to reverse that course. Who can say whether I might have gotten better results if I'd chosen your path instead?"

Would Prowl have accepted him back, if he'd presented himself in some pitiful guise? So hard to say. Prowl's moments of pity came and went like quantum flux, gone as soon as they were observed. But Springer, on the the other hand...oh. Things might have been very different indeed, if Springer had been moved to pity for his sake.