Prime's Intermission
In which Prime's lawn is so emo it cuts itself! and he's a fraud. A big fat shiny fraud. ;__;'
rainlightautumn: Aw, man, Optimus needs to go sit in a corner and change his paint job to black, the color of his soul. :(
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10.b It both repulsed him and was agonizing to see such power ... gone. The shard wasn't even as long as one of his fingers, when it would have once dwarfed even the largest of his people. He turned it over and over between his fingers, trying to sense something -- anything, anything at all -- but there was nothing. With a dismal murmur at the continued lack of proof that there was something to relay to his people ... something to give them hope ... he turned his optics back up to the universe, unveiled by the sun having been eclipsed by the Earth. Filtering and sharpening his visual field, he searched it too for something, but like the All Spark shard, it remained as unforgiving and hopeless.
He forced the pressure in his coolant lines to recede, frustration and stress causing the minor pumps to overwork and flood the lines. What was he to tell the others? That their source of life had been destroyed -- that he had endorsed such an act? That he had wanted ... to also be destroyed? They had all been fighting so long, and so many had died ... to know that after trusting him to protect the All Spark (their promise, their future, their hope), after he had lost it to the stretches of the universe ... that he had it destroyed ...
The truth was that even after so many years and a war, he still couldn't bring himself to carelessly take Megatron's life. He had deactivated many mechs in his time, his blade pulsing with a disruptive energy that wiped out memory files if he could get it in contact with the central processing circuits, but he hadn't been strong enough. It didn't seem to matter what new horror that Megatron committed, or how depraved he became, he was ... he was like family. Humanity had such a perfect concept for it -- family. Optimus had never asked to have Megatron given his own file in his attachment circuits, but it was there, and he certainly never desired such an outcome in the war. Though he loathed what Megatron stood for, it did not change the fact that the two of them were connected ... first, by the power given to them, and then as figureheads for two opposing sides of a war.
Optimus was fairly good at hiding it, but hiding software doesn't change it's existence, doesn't stop it from being used. Doesn't stop it from working. Complex attachment programs ... he just hadn't been strong enough to do something like taking Megatron's life. His attachment meant that he would sooner sacrifice himself than destroy his 'brother'.
(That which he did not wish to be connected to, but also could not deny and could not kill.)
He curled his fingers around the shard, the only thing left of the All Spark. They were a doomed race, now. Research had been done ... when he had finally tried to make the others understand, hundred of thousands of years ago, that they might one day lose the All Spark, he had urged them to try to find a way to make sure that their future wasn't lost. Never having been alone ... the thought that someday, there would only be one of them, lost and alone in the universe ... singular, was a tragedy. So he urged them to do research, but despite being gifted by the All Spark, their Sparks were barren, and no mech was better than a drone without a Spark. No better than what these humans had ...
And they trusted him. All of them -- the Autobots. They trusted him to take care of the All Spark, to protect it, and when he knew he couldn't, that he'd only fail them, he made the decision to destroying using his own Spark. (Sometimes he felt it was only himself that actually looked past the hope in the future and the possible reality. So far, he feared he was right.) He thought that the human Sam might have been willing to do it. He was, after all, just an organic, just frightened with no sort of training for conflict at all, being chased by Megatron -- he should have done it. Optimus should not be standing on this hill in this organic world, staring at the solar system beyond the reach of it's thin atmosphere, waiting the survivors to come down and trying to figure out how he was supposed to tell them that their age was over ... that there would be no more Cybertronians, that they were the last.
(A dying race, now, destroyed by one mech's greed. Optimus did not regret instructing the boy on how to destroy the All Spark ... for as long as Megatron lived, and as long as the All Spark existed, there would be war. Their age was at an end, perhaps a mistake that had run its course. Nothing should live so long as they did ... a mechanical life that was singular for as far as their scientist could search.)
The fact remained, however, that it should be Optimus that had died, put to rest. Their age was at an end, but most importantly, his age was at an end. He had not wanted to be there to be the one to tell his people ... he wanted them to have a little while without acknowledging the bitter truth. If he were not here to be responsible in telling him, they might not have to actually consider for a while that they were the last of a dead race. The human boy should have done it, should have killed him, and instead ... instead he had done what the Prime himself did not have the power to do, and slew Megatron. (A part of him resented it, and a part of him was guiltily relieved.)
(It had hurt, and he cursed himself for it, because Megatron had been mad with power, his circuits shaken lose, it had been a mercy, but it still hurt. One more dead, one less ... and with no hope for the future and more of their people, every last life was precious and a tragedy to lose.)
And now, the human boy, Samuel Witwicky ... well, they would have one more. One more life, to replace that one taken, but who could tell what would come of it? What would an organic do when placed in charge of the sort of power that the average Cybertronian wielded? Optimus believed in Sam ... he truly did, but he had to look beyond the immediate future. He had to look past what sounded good now and figure out how things would be in a few hundred vorns. (Megatron had, at least, taught him that.) He believed in Sam, knew that Sam had the 'spirit' was good, that his heart was in the right place.
But he also knew that a lot could happen ... and that this change might simply be too much for him. Ratchet had kept him up to date, and he knew that Sam was having a hard time adjusting to the knowledge that he would no longer be organic.
(Had he slayed Megatron only to become the next?)
They were too far stretched, too tired of war ... Optimus desperately wanted peace now. He was tired of fighting. The loss of the All Spark and Megatron all in one (was a blow from which he might not recover) was such a sudden shift ... the war not over, surely, for Megatron had constructed an army and made them hungry. They wouldn't remain without a head for long ...
In a future that every life counted, Optimus had to consider every last one ... such as the one laying unresponsive in one of their hangers, cold and unmoving. Jazz's Spark had retreated deep into the laser core, until all that was gaining any power from the waste energy of the Spark was the core itself. When Ratchet had first developed the measures to counter Megatron's cruelty ... ripping mechs in half, they hadn't known that would cause Spark withdrawal. Then again, being ripped in half was a terrifying experience. The point was that they had learned that it could take vorns for a mech to finally come out of that state.
The last thing that Optimus wanted for Jazz was to wake up vorns later to hear that they were the last. Unfortunately, there was only one way to waken Jazz before he was ready ... and that was an influx of All Spark radiation. The humans would consider it a mother's caress, even though it wasn't ... not really. It was only a taste of home so imprinted in every mech that even those who hadn't set foot during those golden times could be roused. It was only fooling the mech into thinking it was safe. The radiation from a newly Sparked mech was often similar enough, though.
Another dismal murmur escaped his ER transmitter as he opened the small storage unit in his chassis and carefully placed the shard inside, where he had been keeping it since he had first plucked it from the molten metal of Megatron's chest. Ironically, it was not what amounted to a 'glove box' in his alt form.
Optimus was his people's Prime -- their First, there to lead them and care for them. It meant that he sometimes must do what he would rather not -- and if he must tell them that they were the last, he wanted to tell them all.
-+-
For a moment, when he lifted the hand that Sam had climbed upon -- he thought he felt something. Something ... anything ... he thought he sensed --
But guileless fluid-filled orbs looked up at him, and Optimus knew that it was nothing more than a pathetic guilty ghost in his codes, an attempt to escape the loathsome duty he had of being the leader of a dead race, and he ruthlessly crushed the thought. It was only the radiation of a new-sparked mech, even if he did look rather organic at the moment.
(... just another case of escapism, from a mech often too weak to truly face things as it were.)
-+-
- IN SHORT: Optimus Prime feels trapped and is suffering from major depression. He also beats himself up when he feels like he's being weak.
- Now I must address what everyone must address when dealing with Optimus and Megatron -- was there foeyay? HMM. Well, I can pretty much guarantee you that Optimus probably wanted to interface with Megs when they first met and Megatron was made of Shiny and Revolution. (LOLZ: "Revolutionary Mech Megatron!") Whether they did or not is completely up to you. In other words: NO STRAIGHT ANSWER FOR YOU.