Chapter Text
“Why are you surrendering now?” he asks, optics meeting the red of the silver warlord that he has opposed in battle after battle for millennia, optics filled with hate. Hate for everything. “Over the whole time of the war, you had ample time to stop this carnage, sit down and talk. Why is it now that you wish to do so?”
“Rephrase your question, Prime,” the mech across from him states plainly. Optimus frowns at the other behind his mask.
“Do you regret all the sparks lost over the war?” Optimus tries again. He could give anyone a second chance if they deserved it. Not everyone could stay on the path without deviating slightly. Vorns of being an Enforcer in Rodion proved that. Leading an army is not much different.
“My only regret is not doing more,” Megatron rumbles in a growl. Optimus frowns at the mech; what does he mean by more? Could he possibly mean that he’d rather things had gone differently, that there was less spark loss? If only. His dismay goes spark deep with Megatron’s next words. “Not killing more.”
“Megatron, lives have been considerably altered by your course of actions. Does that not concern your—”
“The war made you the Prime you are now. Without it, you’d turn out just like those who wish to ground us into the rubble beneath your foot. Without the start of the war, you might have never even been made Prime, and some other dimwit would have made even more of a mess of Cybertron. You should be grateful to me. I am the one who made you, come to think of it. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have had the thoughts I had. If not for that first time we met, I would be talking to some other mech I’d be trying to kill right now.”
Optimus frowns slightly. When did they first meet? When would he have even spoken with Megatron? Surely, he wouldn’t have even associated with someone who had planned on starting a war filled with such loss.
“I actually want to thank you for making this pivotal decision. You are as much to blame as I in starting this war. The first battle may have started in another city-state, but the war was created in Rodion. On the very steps leading to the building touting the promise of justice and fairness.”
Frown deepening ever so more, Optimus thought of the Rodion Enforcers. Did Megatron somehow take his words out of context then and go to the extreme? Was there some kind of miscommunication there? Did he not stem the flames of Megatron’s drives enough to only allow a smolder instead of a refinery fire? Could this have all been prevented? Was he actually the cause of all—
A knock at the door jars him out of his spiral, pulling Optimus from his thoughts. He will need to further investigate this, and go over exact memory files to find where something happened. If Optimus could find the moment of the misdirect, he could get Megatron’s sentence, a second chance, to be swifter and more lenient.
Optimus stands, following the mech who’d interrupted them through the door as he learns of another pressing matter that needs dealing with. Megatron will have to wait for his verdict.
After the matter is taken care of, Optimus returns to the office in his quarters to figure out Megatron’s problem. With only a data-pad in front of him, he offlines his optics to find the memory files of his query. All the files from the Rodion Enforcers cases come up, and he finds Megatron’s. He copies everything to do with Megatron to the data-pad.
Megatron was arrested for a bar fight and inciting violence.
Frowning slightly at his notes of the release, Optimus’ optics scan them over. A Pacifist rhetoric of political reform. Not a violent candidate and unlikely to produce frame damage.
He finds the timestamp on the file before delving into his memories around that time.
He was a newly appointed captain of the Rodion Enforcers. Most of his fellow Enforcers made fun of his ‘hunches’ on cases. It wasn't his fault that he was a pretty good judge of character and wanted to see the best in his fellow Cybertronians. Orion wasn’t such a naïve spark as to think everyone was good and strove for good, though
There were a great deal of terror organizations back then, and every Enforcer unit had to be primed in dealing with them. Many of the calls were suspected to be of those groups, but there were plenty of times when they were just civilians who acted out. He was sure Megatron was the case at that time. Had Optimus known what would happen, would he have made a different decision in keeping Megatron locked up? Would he have kept a closer surveillance on the suspected terrorist?
Would that have made a difference? Would anything have made a difference short of completely neutralizing the threat?
Could sparks have been saved, or forgone the bereavement of their lost loved ones?
Could he have done more?
Propping his helm up on the desk with his servo, Optimus’ optics start flicking slowly as the day’s events catch up to him and slowly recharge overtakes him.
Optimus stands in a field; a blue glow surrounds him as he looks out over the flat horizon. His spark seems to know this place, and seems to be at peace here. It’s inviting and warm; he could stay here forever. Yet, a tingling danger resides in his spark. This place is inviting, but it doesn’t feel welcoming. At least not yet.
Glancing down before taking a step, Optimus notices the glow comes individually, and leaning down, sees they are flowers. Blue flowers, and they pulse calmly like sparks. Reaching down to trail his digit along one of the petals a noise startles him from actually touching one.
“What?” Optimus asks to the empty space. Glancing around, he sees a shimmer of a mech.
“They are beautiful, are they not,” the mech says, solidifying and seemingly wading through the sea of blue flowers. How could there be so many? Weren’t they overcrowded? How could they grow on top of one another? “You seemed troubled, young spark.”
Young spark? Optimus frowns at the mech approaching him. One of the blue flowers in the other’s servos glide down to the ground when he drops it.
“You have a question for me, my creation, how may I assist you?” the mech says, only causing Optimus’ frown to deepen. Who is this mech? Why is he here? Why is either of them here? Where is here? “You are in the field of sparks, or the Allspark, as you on the surface like to call it. You are only visiting, though, not to stay. I am Primus.”
Primus? Allspark? That can’t be right, those were just stories everyone told. They aren’t real. They can’t be real. Could they? Was this just some sort of stress-induced cry for help? He didn’t believe in this stuff, why was he even seeing it?
“Whether you believe it or not doesn’t make it real or not; it is real regardless,” the apparition named Primus says, chuckling a little. The form seems to fade in and out of solidity. Great, now his subconscious is making fun of him. But if this was the Allspark, that meant these blue pulsing-like sparks flowers were actually sparks. After all of the loss from the war, why isn’t Primus mourning them? Why isn’t he outraged at having one of the two perpetrators of the war here before him? “My dear, little spark, everything happened for a reason. All of these sparks would have returned here eventually. Some just arrived earlier than if there was no war. Sparks are never lost. They are always reused and rejoined on the surface eventually.”
“Is there no way to prevent the loss and grief of the sparks that still continue who are tied to all of these lost to war?” Optimus frowns. For every one flower, there could be at least four other sparks attached to it, mourning and wishing to hold the other in their arms once more. Surely, Primus couldn’t be so cold as to want his supposed creations to suffer.
“Suffering is only in the perspective of the individual. Here, there is no suffering, just existing,” the mech says, smiling at him. “You worry for things that are out of your control. What is done has been done. Sparks will continue to return here until the last one joins. There is nothing you could have done, just as there is no way to do anything other than live your function on the surface and return here to me.”
Optimus frowns as the glow slowly fades, and he’s left in the darkness of a void. He expects to online any moment and see his desk and data-pads, or the ceiling of his berthroom. Instead, he sees a faint glow off in the distance. Walking towards it, there is most likely a saying of not following an unknown light source, but with light comes something and something most assuredly gives information.
The light doesn’t seem to grow larger or brighter in the time Optimus travels towards it. Was he even moving? Was it moving away? How could he catch it if it was always moving? Just as he begins to give up hope of ever catching it, the light ball moves to the side. It is far closer than he thought it was.
The light is a sphere about the size of his fist; actually, it seems to be the size of his spark. It gives off a calming pulse, something he’s only felt once before. When he was named Prime. When he received the Matrix. Optimus really must be dreaming if he thinks this object is the Matrix. The bauble is securely placed in his chestplates, nestled next to his very spark. It’s a trinket, nothing magical or religious or special, no more so than a common data-pad. It was and is only something other’s make-believe is special.
“The skeptic,” a voice chuckles from all around. He frowns at the light. He heard of this story. Being visited by three ghosts, three aspects to change his ways. “Whatever you must tell yourself, as long as you get the information, it makes no difference to me. Unlike Primus, who cares very little of what happens to the sparks from when they surface to when they return, I do. They create experience, they create emotion and information. I thrive on that. That is what life is: the continuation of information and development to something higher and ever-exceeding.
“All life is precious because of this. All sparks create a branch on the tree of knowledge. When one spark is snuffed, the branch is pruned and ends. It fails to continue living. You have seen Primus to know what comes after, but what if there was no after for those sparks? What if they continued the tree?”
As the ball of light speaks, a tree seems to materialize behind the ball of light, the Matrix. Optimus’ optics follow the branches as it continues to climb, and frowns, many of the branches are stunted while others seem to grow longer and longer. The tree curves after a while of growing and slowly stops as if catching up to present time.
“The short branches are the sparks you saw as flowers,” the light, the Matrix says. Optimus’ spark constricts at the thought of all the suffering the continued branches endure. “You are a curious spark. You seem pained by the pruned branches and pain for the continued ones. Are you . . . would you change things? If you had the ability to prevent those branches from ending, would you?”
“There’s no way to do that,” he says. The other, Primus, was right. He couldn’t step back in time and prevent the war from starting. He couldn’t go back and reason with Megatron. That was a fantasy, one that led him right here in this bizarre dream that his processor conjured up to deal with his stress and guilt. “If time travel were real, everyone would be doing it.”
Optimus frowns as he realizes that he said the last part aloud. Of course, his processor would come up with some outlandish retort to that.
“Do you believe in time?” he frowns at the Matrix’s question. Of course, he believed in time, the passage of a measurement and changing of systematic phases. True time was intangible, but the effects could be seen everywhere from seasons to experiences. “Do you believe the branches are from beginning to end?”
What kind of question was that? The bottom had to be the start, and the end had to be the end.
“The branch is not linear, the branch is your entirety,” the Matrix says, floating up to the tree and tapping on one of the branches. It lights under the touch, and he can’t help but inch closer until he sees a whole scene playing out on the branch. He frowns when he sees himself and Megatron in the Rodion Police Headquarters. “A spark is living concurrently through this branch, every pulse inches it a little by little but not without thickening it. The branch is one, not segmented, not separate from its other part.”
“Are you saying my spark now is connected to my spark then?” he frowns. That seemed more fantastical than Primus and the Matrix and all the other religious nonsense and propaganda.
“Are you denying that your spark is one and the same since you arrived on the surface?” the Matrix counters, causing him to frown at the ball of light. This has got to be the strangest dream he’s ever had. Someone must have done something to his Energon, or his processor must have broken. “Your processor is fine, Optimus Prime, your spark on the other side, is in turmoil over possibilities. What, if you had the ability, would you give to go back and stop the war from happening. Stop the tree from looking like this? Would you readily change things? Would you have the strength to do whatever it took for the sparks to continue on, even if it cost one spark in doing so?”
Surely the Matrix wasn’t speaking of him killing Megatron. Megatron, back then, was only aspiring for change. Peaceful change. Change that would make a full tree. If he could go back, if it was a definitive possibility, would he? What would he do? What would he say to Megatron to change the other from turning down the path of violence?
“I will give you one chance, Optimus Prime,” the Matrix beams warmly, and it radiates within his chestplates. The warmth rises so high that he has the thought that it would melt him from the inside.
Darkness of recharge fills him. He feels as if he’s floating in a timeless void. Could Orion have cared more for Megatron? Could Orion have followed up with Megatron’s ideas and steered them down less violent paths? Could he come to tell Megatron that he cared for the other. That he was fond of the other.
Somewhere else in a pocket of time, an orb of light seethes, the ripples start slow but gain in momentum and frequency. Nothing set in stone as the ripples and waves move, Primus peers into the timestream to see the change. It’s subtle at first until the cascading effects reveal themselves. If sparks could gasp, Primus’ would rival the ripples surrounding the area. Something is changing the war, changing the Prime.
~Who would dare take away my Prime?~ the spark pulses angrily, watching as events unfold and is appalled at the results. Primus likes the Prime that was, Optimus Prime is a very obedient spark, bringing back all the wayward sparks back to Cybertron or back to the field of spark flowers. Either way they returned to Primus, to make the once damaged spark whole. Without Optimus being Prime, a new Prime, one less willing to be molded to perfection means less reliance of sparks returning.
Who are these sparks to think that they can go out and explore the universe? Their place was on Cybertron, returning to the very metal coating Cybertron. Sparks returning to the one that made them. How dare they travel so far and get lost on their way back. As it stands in the ripple, there is no skirmish in the bar. Everyone parts in one piece, amicably and without change. The abnormally bright and obedient spark fantasizes about writings from the darkened spark from afar, never meeting.
That will not do, that must be changed, but what was changed? Looking deeper in the time bubble, there’s a slight flare, only if there were audio.
”Hey, don’t forget the straw!” the flame-covered imbecile says towards the bar when they get their drinks. How dare Matrix change things with an avatar. Perhaps there needs to be some manipulation to an equally present avatar.
The frame that currently holds the sliver of the currently angry pulsing spark, dips his helm slightly, optics blinking offline for just a moment before relighting. Those optics follow the curly straw sticking out of a glass on its way to a certain white waste disposal bot. Within a nanosecond, the servo reaches out to pluck it out, no one the wiser. The straw gets tucked into a crevice of the orange and white frame as a smirk appears on the faceplates. Two could play at this game.
”Where’s my straw, Riptide?” Tailgate asks. “I asked for a curly straw.”
“I’ll get it!” Rung says, making his way to the serving counter.
“Chill, Rung’s getting you one,” he hears another say at the table. Yes, little wayward spark, everything will be right as soon as he claims the straw.
“Sorry, do you mind if I—” Rung says leaning over the service table, bumping into a nearby mech. The bright spark slips from the avatar’s frame just as servos grab the frame and toss the mech across the bar to land on a patron’s table. A very hot-helmed patron.
All is as it should be now. The ripples slow and ease. The war continues, and the wayward sparks return to the field once they’re extinguished.
Onlining his optics, he frowns at himself as he feels like he fell into recharge at his desk. In all his functioning he has never done so. Glancing around at the brightness of his office, his frown continues to linger. When did his office have so much light? How did natural light reach so deep within the ship?
His optics land on gleaming golden medals within a glass case. Those weren’t in his office. At least not the office he knows. Memories flood his processor.
Megatron
Function: Manual Laborer
Creation Date: 1st cycle 012
Serial Number: 071-980
Batch Code: N/A
Arrested: Inciting violence within a civilian recreational establishment with major frame destruction to a fellow patron.
Released Notes: Pacifist rhetoric of political reform. Not a violent candidate and unlikely to produce frame damage.
The timestamp of the release is only a few astroseconds old. Megatron should still be on the premises. He could do something about it.
Standing from his desk, he walks to the office door. His fellow Enforcers glance up to him but otherwise stay out of his way. If only he could catch the other. Memories of him making this same path to go after Megatron to learn more about the thoughts and how to peacefully reach a, what the other claims to be, utopia.
Opening the door, there’s a split second, jarring overlap of memories and he reaches his servo up, catching something. He glances to his servo to see the data-pad. Memories deviate, the one where the data-pad flies into the sign, cracking it slowly fades. He glances to the silver-framed mech walking away. Grabbing the silver arm, Megatron pulls away slightly, but his grip is firm, and he pulls the other’s servo up to hand the data-pad back. He winces when the force of impact is slightly stronger than he intended.
Red optics meet his blue, and his spark nearly stops when there’s barely any hate within the lights of the other’s gaze. This is the Megatron he remembers. The Megatron he grieved for at the beginning of the war. The Megatron he wanted back.
“Thanks,” Megatron huffs, his spark continues to stutter at the voice missing the growl he’s used to hearing. There’s a hint of it all, but not as much as what he had just seemingly left behind. Is this a recharge flux? Did he will this fantasy within his processor to help him cope with his own failures?
“I don’t completely agree with all that you write about, but you do have valid and insightful moments in your writings. You’re doing something which most of the populace isn’t even thinking about. You should keep it up.”
It feels like he’s repeating himself and there’s no memory fade like the data-pad.
“I wouldn’t mind helping you, if you needed someone to talk to,” he quickly adds. The other’s red optics seem to glance over his frame.
“As long as it’s not in that building,” Megatron says, glaring at the Enforcer station, he can’t help but snort. “I’d rather not meet at a bar.”
“What about the café down the street?” he says, motioning to the left. It was on his way home, and he always stopped to get himself something from it. His spark seems to flutter slightly at Megatron’s small, nearly unnoticeable smile.
“Tomorrow?” Megatron nods and starts walking down the right side of the street. He starts to turn around before glancing up at the sign. He frowns. The sign, which was destroyed with a data-pad in pieces by memories is still destroyed. If the data-pad didn’t get thrown to the screen, how did it get damaged? Are things not going to change? Is this truly only a fantasy?
Will he online and Megatron will still be in the ship ready for his punishment?
The spark pulses hard in anger, why couldn’t Matrix stop messing with the timeline? What point was it all when things were going to change anyway? Whether it be the data-pad hitting the stupid Rodion billboard or a cyberhawk, the war is going to happen, and Optimus will be Prime. Every change will be thwarted. No one can stop the inevitable.
He onlines on the berth, staring up to the ceiling. He frowns when he doesn’t recently remember the ceiling pattern. It isn’t the one from his quarters, but he does remember them from before. His apartment in Rodion. As he lies there, the sound of mechs on the streets reach his opened window. He stays in berth relishing the sounds of a pre-war Cybertron. Sounds of life, of the living and joy make his spark pulse happily. Frowning slightly, his spark pulse feels different, there’s no echo of the Matrix.
Why would he even have the Matrix? It’s a relic the government waves around appointing a Prime. He’s no Prime, just an Enforcer.
Sliding out of berth, he pours himself a cube of warmed Energon, he was meeting Megatron later in the orn to talk about his writings. Frowning into the cube, he feels a ghost pulse after his own. The Matrix? Right, he was preventing the war from starting up. He needs to convince Megatron to go about rebelling through peaceful avenues.
Sipping the cube, he steps out onto the balcony. The streets are full of mechs traveling to and from their destination. He would gladly trade everything for this to continue without the war. Without the loss.
Setting his cube down to be washed later, he leaves his apartment. Memories of sitting on the couch with a data-pad reading for leisure slowly fade as he steps out onto the sidewalk. If things truly don’t change, he will gladly take in this guilty pleasure of watching and mingling with the past. With a culture that is slowly fading.
He has many regrets of not doing things, thinking back to everything he’d hoped to do. Go to Six Lasers over Cybertron, watch the starset over the Sonic Canyons, so many things that he put aside for his career. And for what? Nothing to matter because of the start of the war.
Optics glancing over the mechs and femmes he passes, he doesn’t recognize any of them from newsreels of lost sparks, or any of the ones he’s said a few words over their greyed frame. Somehow, though, that makes his spark fall even more than if he had seen them grey. These were the forgotten, the nameless.
Wandering the streets of Rodion, a few passersby wish him a pleasant orn, others steer clear of him. At the end of his walk, he reaches the café with an ample amount of time until his meeting with Megatron. The echoing pulse brings him out of the wonder of why he was meeting with an activist.
Why does he keep forgetting his plan? Is that a symptom of time travel or is there something else happening? Sitting down, he orders his usual, a slightly sweet, foamy Energon with a few sprinkles of magnesium along the rim of the cube. He watches the other patrons in the café. Everything looks so normal.
He smiles slightly as he takes a sip, he should head home to curl up and read the new data-pad novel he bought. The first few pages were promising. Setting down his partially empty cube, he pauses when a large silver miner class steps into the café. The mech garners a few odd stares, and red optics meet his blue. With the echo of a pulse, conversations die, and the silver mech makes his way to his booth and sits across from him. He smiles, spark doing strange pulses in his chest.
Why does this mech cause this reaction in him? He’s only read a few of the activist's works, so he shouldn't feel awkward around him.
The echo of a pulse jars him out of his stare; right, he’s helping Megatron be peaceful. Perhaps he should write down his mission. Wait, it’s said you can’t read in dreams. Well, he’s soon to learn as Megatron hands him a data-pad after the waitstaff takes Megatron’s order.
Onlining the data-pad, he sees glyphs and not some cloudy fuzz or squiggles he expected. This is not a dream. He’s so engrossed that he doesn’t even notice the café getting emptier until Megatron’s chuckle breaks him out of his reading.
“You really are a data-worm,” Megatron chuckles lightly. “You should have been a librarian.”
He snorts, if only in another life. He wouldn’t mind practically living in the archives of the planet. All those tomes of information. He would grow bored of it though. “You’re a really good writer.”
“For a miner?” Megatron grimaces, he frowns.
“No, just as a mech, I think you could publish some of your work,” he says. Megatron snatches the data-pad out of his servo.
“Wait, that’s not what I gave you to read,” Megatron frowns at him. He smiles slightly.
“I finished that before you ordered your second cube,” he glances down to the data-pad.
“You’ve been reading everything else since then?” Megatron’s optics brighten, scrolling through the history of the data-pad. “And you liked them?”
“Yeah,” he says, holding out his servo for the data-pad. “I wasn’t done though.”
“Well, the café is done for you,” Megatron says, glancing around. Optimus follows the other’s gaze and sees the café is empty and the staff is starting to close down. His cheekplates flush slightly. He’s only ever lost track at home before. He frowns slightly, looking at Megatron. This mech started the war, killed countless sparks, battled him numerous times, yet he feels comfortable enough to lose his sensors to a data-pad. How does he manage to let his guard down that long? “We can meet back here in two orns?”
“It will have to be after my shift,” he says, walking out of the café with the silver mech. Megatron nods to him.
Megatron starts online, the dimly lit area cold and lifeless, the steel walls are illuminated by the Energon bars. He stares at the ceiling. A snort leaves him as he remembers his dream.
“Librarian.”