[IDW] Neverland
Jul. 29th, 2019 06:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22a/n: The post-LL piece I wrote because I had a lot of feels to do something with, and they spilled out into this.
Title: Neverland
Universe: IDW, post LL25
Characters: Rodimus, Drift, Megatron, others in passing
Rating: T
Warnings: Author Chooses Not to Warn
Description: There are things Rodimus meant to say, and so he risks everything to say them, no matter the consequences.
Rodimus wakes and most of the time, he doesn’t know what universe he’s in.
He knows when he’s back ‘home’. What he considers the ‘prime’ universe. Because time hasn’t changed at all, and he’s blinked back into a familiar space.
He itches to go back, to blink somewhere else, to find it again, to find them.
(there’s a place where he can be happy he knows there is he just has to find it find it keep searching and find it)
He hates every moment he has to spend in the prime timeline. He hates Prowl’s smug face, and the way his crew, his team, his family starts to crumble, bit by bit, bit by bit. They stay together, and they stay apart, and they’re happy, and they’re miserable, and Primus, but Rodimus can relate.
He wants to go home.
He can’t find home.
He’s lost his home all over again, standing on a precipice watching as it burns, burns, burns to the ground, hands shaking and a trigger tumbling from his fingers. He makes the worst decision a mech can make, and fools himself into thinking he did the best he could.
He doesn’t know what his best is. Maybe he doesn’t have it.
He tries again.
Rodimus finds a universe where the Functionists win, where no one can open their Matrix, where they fall one by one by one. Rodimus tries to save them, even though they’re not his, but he blinks too fast. He’s gone, back to prime, and for once, he’s glad to be back.
He lies on the floor, gasping for a ventilation, optics crackling with unshed emotion, his knuckles pressed to his teeth, and his spark aches, aches, aches. It’s as if they are dead, even though they’re not his, and he relives their deaths over and over again.
He tries again.
Rodimus finds a universe where Optimus and Megatron are brothers, and still they hate-hate-hate, and they fight, and Cybertron falls, and everyone dies, and Earth is their final stand. Where Megatron dies, and Optimus dies, and Megatron dies, and it’s an endless cycle of death, death, death.
Cybertron crumbles around them. Autobots fall, and Decepticons bleed, and mechanicals rust, and still they exist, Optimus and Megatron, fighting, fighting, fighting. Ad infinitum.
Rodimus comes back, and he hates. It’s a visceral emotion, potent and consuming. He hates the Megatron and the Optimus of that universe, so wrapped up in each other, they can’t see what else there is.
He tries again.
There’s a place where Hot Rod never has to destroy Nyon, where the Senate and the Prime never get that far, where a young Hot Rod can be a hero rather than a murderer. The hope rises up from the pit of Rodimus’ belly. It claws up and up, through his midsection, his chassis, into his chest, nestling around his spark.
For a moment, Rodimus is tempted. He wants to stay and see where it takes him. He wants to know what it’s like not to hate himself for a lifetime.
But that time is still not home, it’s still not where he’s happy, so when the blink pulls, he doesn’t fight with denta and claw. He gives into it, and winds up back on the bridge, watching Thunderclash captain a ship, while he sits in the shadows because it’s better that way, isn’t it? That’s the way things were always meant to end.
He tries again.
And again.
He searches. He searches, and he searches. He ignores the tiny voice at the back of his head telling him he’s never going to find it because it doesn’t exist. It didn’t work. There’s no duplicate Lost Light on a never-ending adventure.
Five-hundred years pass, and Ratchet dies, and Rodimus is the aft late to his funeral because he’s lost in a universe that isn’t his. Time doesn’t pass in prime, but he’s disoriented when he pops back in, especially when he’s been venturing for too long. When he lingers. Sometimes he can control the blink, sometimes he can’t.
And for a moment, Rodimus hesitates.
He sees the concern in Drift’s optics, and he wants to give in. His best friend is hurting, and Drift can see the pain Rodimus’ carrying, and he wants to take Drift’s hand. He wants to admit what he’s trying, what he’s desperately believing.
(drift believes in him he’s the only one who ever has and rodimus wants to reach out for him so badly but he can’t because he’s not drift’s burden to carry he never has been)
He doesn’t.
Rodimus lies and is ashamed of himself for how easy he finds it. He can ask a lot of things of Drift, but not this. Not right now. Not when Drift is saying goodbye to the mech he’s loved for a lifetime, no matter how his allegiances fell.
He lies, and he goes back to The Exitus and his quarters, and he tries again.
And again, and again, and again.
He finds a universe where Optimus is a young cadet fighting against Decepticons who outpace him in size and experience, where Earth is a battleground, and Prowl isn’t even half as much of a prick as the Prowl Rodimus has come to loathe.
Rodimus doesn’t linger there long. Politics are complicated and it’s definitely a world that doesn’t need him or what he might have to offer, and anyway.
It’s not the right home.
Neither is the next one. A place where the Autobrand is treated with such hatred and fear, where Ratchet is a maniacal surgeon, and Optimus tears apart his own soldiers as much as he does the Decepticons. Where Megatron and Starscream are best friends, fighting the good fight, losing the good fight.
It hurts Rodimus in a way he can’t quantify. He doesn’t once consider staying.
He’s happy for the pull, when it comes.
It’s not home.
(he can find it he knows he can find it if he keeps looking it’s going to be there it has to be there if there’s one thing he believes it’s that his home is still somewhere out there)
He blinks back, and Captain Thunderclash asks his opinion on their next destination, and Rodimus stares blankly at the starmap like he’s never seen one before. He can’t remember, in that moment, why he’s on this ship or what their purpose is.
He can’t remember his own purpose anymore. Cybertron doesn’t need him, hasn’t needed him in quite a while. He left on the Lost Light and politics kept spinning without him, rising and falling and clashing and fighting, and he’d come back to find nothing had changed, and the madness had only waited for him.
“Or maybe it’s time we go home, eh?” Captain Thunderclash asks with a jovial grin, with assurance built like a mantle on his massive shoulders, like a mech who’s never had to wonder about his place.
“Sure,” Rodimus replies. He smiles, it’s getting easier to fake it these days for those who don’t know where to look. “Captain.”
(drift has always known always always like all of that supernatural pitslag he spouts actually means something and rodimus wishes he could have been more convincing)
Captain Thunderclash chuckles and it sends a shiver down Rodimus’ spinal strut. He can’t really identify why. It has nothing to do with lust or desire or anger or hate.
It just is.
“I’ll never get used to hearing you call me that,” he says. “You’re a Prime, you know.”
“If everyone who ever had a Matrix shoved into their chest was a Prime, there’d be a lot of us running around. Including you, eh?” Rodimus yanks a playful laugh out of his tank, raps his knuckles over Captain Thunderclash’s chestplate, hears the tink-tink-tink of his thin armor.
(it’s getting easier/harder/softer to pretend these days and he worries he’s not going to remember what he’s searching for because he’s going to lose himself to pretending is this what Jazz feels like all the time every time no wonder he stayed on Earth)
He walks away from Captain Thunderclash with a wink and a smile and a little shimmy that’s an echo of the idiot who used to co-captain the Lost Light. Rodimus has a duty aboard this ship, probably, but he can’t remember the last time he did work. Is it yesterday? This morning? This afternoon? Hours ago?
Days and weeks and years and months blur together, blinking in and out and in and out.
He finds a universe where Optimus and Megatron could have saved Cybertron together. When they were Orion and Megatronus, when they were in love, before the anger and the resentment poisoned them. They’d had a chance, and Rodimus screams at the rusted history books.
They had a chance, why didn’t they take it?
Their Cybertron is bleak and lifeless, almost worse than the Cybertron Rodimus keeps running away from, but Rodimus lingers anyway. He takes a moment to watch Ratchet grump his way around the pitiful excuse for an Autobot base. Rodimus isn’t really here, and their Earth-based tech can’t detect him anyway, and his spark hurts, his spark aches.
Primus, he misses Ratchet.
He blinks back before he can decide whether or not he’s going to stay. He blinks back into a universe, into ‘prime’ where Ratchet is dead, and Rodimus is such a shitty friend that he left Drift to deal with it on his own.
(he never deserved to take drift’s hand anyway)
He blinks back in his berth, his optics wet and leaking, and his vents shuddering, and he’s not sure if he started on his berth when he left, but here he is now. He thinks, maybe, he’s losing time.
(they’d warned him what would happen if he played with the quantum matter too much but he hadn’t cared and he doesn’t care maybe one day he’ll blink away into nothing maybe that’s better)
Rodimus shutters his optics and the world slants sideways.
It’s nauseating. It’s disorienting. It’s a different situation. Rodimus reaches for something to hold, and grasps at wisps of thought-stream. Sound and sensation streak past.
He hits the ground. Hard.
He gasps, optics snapping online.
The char-marks of an unfortunate game of ‘pass the grenade’ streak across the ceiling above him. Familiar pale blue walls wrap around him.
Rodimus jerks to his feet and spins around, processor dancing. It’s the Lost Light, he’s sure of it. But which Lost Light? He doesn’t know. It’s been a long, long, long time since he’s managed to land on a Lost Light.
He’s in the crew quarters.
He takes off running, straight to the bridge, spark pounding in his chassis. The matter converter pulses once, twice, and Rodimus slams his palm against it. No, more time. He needs more time. He needs to know.
His knees wobble; he missteps when the pulse draws on his spark, grasps with duryllium-strong fingers to pause.
The blink lingers. Trembles. Stands on a precipice.
He darts past Riptide, deep in conversation with Velocity. Their words are mere whispers to him, but they’re laughing, and their happiness is like a knife to the tank.
Rodimus runs faster, vents panting, condensation slicking his frame. He’s not in fighting shape. He’s not in any kind of shape.
He skids onto the bridge and is immediately set with vertigo, a fierce stab of pain radiating through his temple. He staggers, hisses a vent, and has to catch himself. The universe spins around him, and there’s a sharp tug.
“No!”
Rodimus slams against the wall, shoving back against the tug. He’s not leaving until he’s sure. He doesn’t care what price he has to pay.
The world stabilizes.
Rodimus lurches forward, one step, then two, before he breaks back into a run. The hallways pass in a blur. He’s not entirely sure he’s actually taking them, or fizzling out of one place and into another.
He slows as he approaches the bridge. He’s afraid of what he’s going to find. But he hasn’t come this far to hesitate.
He doesn’t have a lot of time.
Rodimus moves into the bridge, and his spark aches at the familiar beeps and clicks and low murmur of noise of the Lost Light mid-flight. He sweeps through the perimeter of the bridge first, seeing Blaster and Mainframe, Inferno and Hoist.
The blink taps on his shoulder.
Rodimus brushes it off, ignores the shock of cold drizzling through his spark. He steps further in, finally letting himself look at the command platform in the center.
His spark misses a cycle.
Oh, Primus.
Megatron sits at the helm, flicking through a datapad, occasionally commenting down to Blaster. His voice rushes over and through Rodimus, deep and rumbling and alive.
Rodimus’ knees threaten to weaken beneath him. He approaches the platform, space wavering around him, shimmering like a heat mirage. He fights the wave of dizziness to get close enough to taste Megatron’s field, if he were actually on the same plane of existence.
“--not go past the Galax Waystation, if you please. I think we all remember what happened last time,” Megatron says, and Rodimus aches.
He knows that tone, knows the half-curve to the edge of Megatron’s mouth, the barely concealed mirth dancing at the back of his optics. He’d pretended for so long to hate the Autobots aboard the Lost Light, so long he missed the moment he became one of them.
Rodimus’ vents hitch.
The matter converter tugs. He stumbles and catches himself, dismissing the warnings, shunting more energy toward the system.
He’s finally here. He can’t leave. Not yet. Not when he’s sure he finally found them.
He climbs the platform, maneuvers until he’s in front of Megatron, taking in the tired lines of the former warlord, the creaking of his aged frame. He’s still so massive, so imposing, and the Auto-badge on his chassis is there, same as always.
Rodimus is so sure. This has to be his Lost Light.
This is home.
“I don’t have much time,” he murmurs, his vocals croaking, as his internals tug again, sharper and more painful this time.
He doesn’t usually have to wrestle with it so much. He wonders if it’s because himself is here somewhere, and everyone knows, two of the same universe can’t occupy the same space. Or something like that. Rodimus still doesn’t understand how this works.
He doesn’t need to understand.
“I have to make this quick,” Rodimus says as Megatron looks up, looks through him, and it hurts far, far more than he should.
(he pulls himself together because he’s too much of a coward and he hadn’t done what he was supposed to do and he’s risked everything all of it everything for this one last time)
“I should have said this to you when you could hear me, when I had a chance in the Pit of getting some kind of answer.” He pauses and cycles a shuddering ventilation, ignores the screaming alerts rising in the corner of his HUD. “It’s too late now. So I’m just going to say it now. That way I know I’ve said it once even though it doesn’t matter.”
His optics burn, and his knees tremble, and his hands shake, and his spark quivers and pulses, and the fierce whine of the warnings echo in his audials, blocking out all else.
“I love you,” Rodimus says. “I don’t know when it happened or why or how, I just know that it is, and it’s this thing inside of me, this thing that keeps growing and festering because it has nowhere to go.”
It hurts. It aches. It wants to spill out of him in a mighty tide.
“So there,” Rodimus says, looking at Megatron looking right through him, and hating that he’s saying this far, far too late. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m glad you’re here, and you’re alive, you bastard. Now don’t you dare die.”
His words fall on deaf audials.
He feels heavier and lighter all at once.
The blink tugs. His systems shriek at him. The world dulls around the edges, shades of gray surrounding him, and this time, Rodimus doesn’t fight it.
(he can’t anymore truth be told he stretched too far and too long and if it’s a mistake it’s not one he regrets making)
He stares at Megatron as long as he can, soaking in the sight of him, the small smile, the curve of his lip, the way he talks without anger or derision, the shine of his armor, the bulk of his chassis, the gleam of the Auto-badge, his effortless command…
Rodimus watches until it grays away, and he comes to on the floor of his habsuite, aching from head to foot, feeling as if someone is trying to claw his spark out of his chassis. He coughs and tastes energon and coolant, gritty and sour on his tongue.
Too long. He’d pushed it too long.
He’s running out of…
Rodimus claws his way to his feet, stumbles over to his communication console. He keys in a comm code he’s long since memorized with trembling fingers, having to start over twice because he keeps missing keys. His ventilations rasp. The edges of his vision start to gray, and he fights the encroaching black with steely determination.
He waits.
The console beeps the slow trill of connecting.
He waits. And waits. And waits.
(and prays drift isn’t so mad as to ignore his calls, as to block his comm, as to wash his hands free of the mad not-prime who isn’t worth a thing in a post-war world)
He’s clicked over into a message system.
Rodimus sinks. He clings to the console with iron will, spoiler halves drifting down behind him.
A message is better than nothing.
“Drift,” he starts, and his intake closes up, and the heat behind his optics grows to a blaze. “I’m sorry I missed you. I should have commed you sooner but there were things I had to do, and anyway, it doesn’t matter. I want you to know that it worked. Okay? It worked.”
His screen fizzles gray and white, static clarifying into Drift’s face, his dim optics and the arrhythmic flutter of his biolights. Oh, he’d been recharging. What time of the cycle is it where he is? Rodimus hasn’t a clue.
He doesn’t know what time of the cycle it is where he is, much less someone else. What day is it? What year?
“Roddy?” Drift cycles his optics and squints at the screen. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong? Why do you--”
Rodimus shakes his head. He braces his hands on the counter. “I don’t have any more time, Drift. Just listen to me. You asked me a question, and I didn’t have an answer, but I have one now.”
He cycles another ventilation, and it shudders through him, vents catching and grinding. His knees are wobbling, and he doesn’t know if his perception is off, or if his spark really is sluggishly cycling from one beat to the next.
“It worked,” he says, and would be alarmed by the static streaking his vocals if he wasn’t prepared for it. He looks up at Drift, and forces a smile on his lips. “It worked, Drift. They’re out there. Our Lost Light, our friends, they’re still off on an adventure. It worked.”
Drift looks more alert now. He’s glancing past Rodimus and back to Rodimus again, and his face gets that pinched look of worry.
“Roddy, where are you? Are you still on The Exitus? You look--”
(awful he knows he looks terrible he can feel the juttering of his chestplate the prismatic light spilling from behind it and the clatter of his armor he’s falling apart literally and he wishes this isn’t the last thing drift’s going to see of him but he had to keep one promise he has to leave drift with a smile)
“It worked,” Rodimus repeats, because despite it all, joy bursts and bubbles in his spark. “They’re out there, and they’re happy, and we might have fallen apart, but they didn’t.” His fingers scrape furrows into top of the console. He swallows over a lump in his intake, cycles his optics around the heat banking at the back of them.
“I can’t go back there,” Rodimus continues, and he’d be embarrassed at how his vocals crackle, if he cared. “I can’t because I’m already there, so I can’t stay with them. And I guess I pushed myself too hard because now I can’t stay here either. But it was worth it.”
Drift leans closer to the screen, and there’s alarm in his optics. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t. I’m going to comm Thunderclash right now. We’re going to fix this, Roddy, I promise.”
“There’s nothing to fix. It’s too late.” Something hooks its fingers in his internals and yanks.
Rodimus hisses, shoulders hunching, electric fire racing over his armor, out through his seams, sparking through his protoform. His spark shrinks and shrinks into a tiny ball, feeding a thirsty machine.
“It’s already done,” he admits.
The world flashes gray.
Drift is still busily moving around the screen, looking for something, saying a slew of things Rodimus isn’t hearing.
He’s out of time.
“Thank you,” Rodimus says, and the lump in his intake gets thicker and thicker. “And I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”
(it’s a habit with him this running out of time this not doing things when he should have and only following through when it’s far too late)
“Rodimus, stop it!” Drift’s hands slam on the counter, and the screen fizzles with static, and his optics are so bright and pained.
Rodimus is an aft. So close after Ratchet, to do this to his best friend, but it would have been worse, he knows, to vanish without a word. There are things he’s never said, but this, at least, he does.
“This isn’t funny. Let me fragging help you!”
Gray swallows him. Sound flickers in and out of existence, muted and then too loud and back to silence.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
“Rodimus!”
A blink. A tug.
The last thing he sees is Drift yelling at him, fists slamming down, optics streaking with fear and worry and desperation.
The world shifts sideways.
And it’s nothing but gray.
*
Title: Neverland
Universe: IDW, post LL25
Characters: Rodimus, Drift, Megatron, others in passing
Rating: T
Warnings: Author Chooses Not to Warn
Description: There are things Rodimus meant to say, and so he risks everything to say them, no matter the consequences.
Rodimus wakes and most of the time, he doesn’t know what universe he’s in.
He knows when he’s back ‘home’. What he considers the ‘prime’ universe. Because time hasn’t changed at all, and he’s blinked back into a familiar space.
He itches to go back, to blink somewhere else, to find it again, to find them.
(there’s a place where he can be happy he knows there is he just has to find it find it keep searching and find it)
He hates every moment he has to spend in the prime timeline. He hates Prowl’s smug face, and the way his crew, his team, his family starts to crumble, bit by bit, bit by bit. They stay together, and they stay apart, and they’re happy, and they’re miserable, and Primus, but Rodimus can relate.
He wants to go home.
He can’t find home.
He’s lost his home all over again, standing on a precipice watching as it burns, burns, burns to the ground, hands shaking and a trigger tumbling from his fingers. He makes the worst decision a mech can make, and fools himself into thinking he did the best he could.
He doesn’t know what his best is. Maybe he doesn’t have it.
He tries again.
Rodimus finds a universe where the Functionists win, where no one can open their Matrix, where they fall one by one by one. Rodimus tries to save them, even though they’re not his, but he blinks too fast. He’s gone, back to prime, and for once, he’s glad to be back.
He lies on the floor, gasping for a ventilation, optics crackling with unshed emotion, his knuckles pressed to his teeth, and his spark aches, aches, aches. It’s as if they are dead, even though they’re not his, and he relives their deaths over and over again.
He tries again.
Rodimus finds a universe where Optimus and Megatron are brothers, and still they hate-hate-hate, and they fight, and Cybertron falls, and everyone dies, and Earth is their final stand. Where Megatron dies, and Optimus dies, and Megatron dies, and it’s an endless cycle of death, death, death.
Cybertron crumbles around them. Autobots fall, and Decepticons bleed, and mechanicals rust, and still they exist, Optimus and Megatron, fighting, fighting, fighting. Ad infinitum.
Rodimus comes back, and he hates. It’s a visceral emotion, potent and consuming. He hates the Megatron and the Optimus of that universe, so wrapped up in each other, they can’t see what else there is.
He tries again.
There’s a place where Hot Rod never has to destroy Nyon, where the Senate and the Prime never get that far, where a young Hot Rod can be a hero rather than a murderer. The hope rises up from the pit of Rodimus’ belly. It claws up and up, through his midsection, his chassis, into his chest, nestling around his spark.
For a moment, Rodimus is tempted. He wants to stay and see where it takes him. He wants to know what it’s like not to hate himself for a lifetime.
But that time is still not home, it’s still not where he’s happy, so when the blink pulls, he doesn’t fight with denta and claw. He gives into it, and winds up back on the bridge, watching Thunderclash captain a ship, while he sits in the shadows because it’s better that way, isn’t it? That’s the way things were always meant to end.
He tries again.
And again.
He searches. He searches, and he searches. He ignores the tiny voice at the back of his head telling him he’s never going to find it because it doesn’t exist. It didn’t work. There’s no duplicate Lost Light on a never-ending adventure.
Five-hundred years pass, and Ratchet dies, and Rodimus is the aft late to his funeral because he’s lost in a universe that isn’t his. Time doesn’t pass in prime, but he’s disoriented when he pops back in, especially when he’s been venturing for too long. When he lingers. Sometimes he can control the blink, sometimes he can’t.
And for a moment, Rodimus hesitates.
He sees the concern in Drift’s optics, and he wants to give in. His best friend is hurting, and Drift can see the pain Rodimus’ carrying, and he wants to take Drift’s hand. He wants to admit what he’s trying, what he’s desperately believing.
(drift believes in him he’s the only one who ever has and rodimus wants to reach out for him so badly but he can’t because he’s not drift’s burden to carry he never has been)
He doesn’t.
Rodimus lies and is ashamed of himself for how easy he finds it. He can ask a lot of things of Drift, but not this. Not right now. Not when Drift is saying goodbye to the mech he’s loved for a lifetime, no matter how his allegiances fell.
He lies, and he goes back to The Exitus and his quarters, and he tries again.
And again, and again, and again.
He finds a universe where Optimus is a young cadet fighting against Decepticons who outpace him in size and experience, where Earth is a battleground, and Prowl isn’t even half as much of a prick as the Prowl Rodimus has come to loathe.
Rodimus doesn’t linger there long. Politics are complicated and it’s definitely a world that doesn’t need him or what he might have to offer, and anyway.
It’s not the right home.
Neither is the next one. A place where the Autobrand is treated with such hatred and fear, where Ratchet is a maniacal surgeon, and Optimus tears apart his own soldiers as much as he does the Decepticons. Where Megatron and Starscream are best friends, fighting the good fight, losing the good fight.
It hurts Rodimus in a way he can’t quantify. He doesn’t once consider staying.
He’s happy for the pull, when it comes.
It’s not home.
(he can find it he knows he can find it if he keeps looking it’s going to be there it has to be there if there’s one thing he believes it’s that his home is still somewhere out there)
He blinks back, and Captain Thunderclash asks his opinion on their next destination, and Rodimus stares blankly at the starmap like he’s never seen one before. He can’t remember, in that moment, why he’s on this ship or what their purpose is.
He can’t remember his own purpose anymore. Cybertron doesn’t need him, hasn’t needed him in quite a while. He left on the Lost Light and politics kept spinning without him, rising and falling and clashing and fighting, and he’d come back to find nothing had changed, and the madness had only waited for him.
“Or maybe it’s time we go home, eh?” Captain Thunderclash asks with a jovial grin, with assurance built like a mantle on his massive shoulders, like a mech who’s never had to wonder about his place.
“Sure,” Rodimus replies. He smiles, it’s getting easier to fake it these days for those who don’t know where to look. “Captain.”
(drift has always known always always like all of that supernatural pitslag he spouts actually means something and rodimus wishes he could have been more convincing)
Captain Thunderclash chuckles and it sends a shiver down Rodimus’ spinal strut. He can’t really identify why. It has nothing to do with lust or desire or anger or hate.
It just is.
“I’ll never get used to hearing you call me that,” he says. “You’re a Prime, you know.”
“If everyone who ever had a Matrix shoved into their chest was a Prime, there’d be a lot of us running around. Including you, eh?” Rodimus yanks a playful laugh out of his tank, raps his knuckles over Captain Thunderclash’s chestplate, hears the tink-tink-tink of his thin armor.
(it’s getting easier/harder/softer to pretend these days and he worries he’s not going to remember what he’s searching for because he’s going to lose himself to pretending is this what Jazz feels like all the time every time no wonder he stayed on Earth)
He walks away from Captain Thunderclash with a wink and a smile and a little shimmy that’s an echo of the idiot who used to co-captain the Lost Light. Rodimus has a duty aboard this ship, probably, but he can’t remember the last time he did work. Is it yesterday? This morning? This afternoon? Hours ago?
Days and weeks and years and months blur together, blinking in and out and in and out.
He finds a universe where Optimus and Megatron could have saved Cybertron together. When they were Orion and Megatronus, when they were in love, before the anger and the resentment poisoned them. They’d had a chance, and Rodimus screams at the rusted history books.
They had a chance, why didn’t they take it?
Their Cybertron is bleak and lifeless, almost worse than the Cybertron Rodimus keeps running away from, but Rodimus lingers anyway. He takes a moment to watch Ratchet grump his way around the pitiful excuse for an Autobot base. Rodimus isn’t really here, and their Earth-based tech can’t detect him anyway, and his spark hurts, his spark aches.
Primus, he misses Ratchet.
He blinks back before he can decide whether or not he’s going to stay. He blinks back into a universe, into ‘prime’ where Ratchet is dead, and Rodimus is such a shitty friend that he left Drift to deal with it on his own.
(he never deserved to take drift’s hand anyway)
He blinks back in his berth, his optics wet and leaking, and his vents shuddering, and he’s not sure if he started on his berth when he left, but here he is now. He thinks, maybe, he’s losing time.
(they’d warned him what would happen if he played with the quantum matter too much but he hadn’t cared and he doesn’t care maybe one day he’ll blink away into nothing maybe that’s better)
Rodimus shutters his optics and the world slants sideways.
It’s nauseating. It’s disorienting. It’s a different situation. Rodimus reaches for something to hold, and grasps at wisps of thought-stream. Sound and sensation streak past.
He hits the ground. Hard.
He gasps, optics snapping online.
The char-marks of an unfortunate game of ‘pass the grenade’ streak across the ceiling above him. Familiar pale blue walls wrap around him.
Rodimus jerks to his feet and spins around, processor dancing. It’s the Lost Light, he’s sure of it. But which Lost Light? He doesn’t know. It’s been a long, long, long time since he’s managed to land on a Lost Light.
He’s in the crew quarters.
He takes off running, straight to the bridge, spark pounding in his chassis. The matter converter pulses once, twice, and Rodimus slams his palm against it. No, more time. He needs more time. He needs to know.
His knees wobble; he missteps when the pulse draws on his spark, grasps with duryllium-strong fingers to pause.
The blink lingers. Trembles. Stands on a precipice.
He darts past Riptide, deep in conversation with Velocity. Their words are mere whispers to him, but they’re laughing, and their happiness is like a knife to the tank.
Rodimus runs faster, vents panting, condensation slicking his frame. He’s not in fighting shape. He’s not in any kind of shape.
He skids onto the bridge and is immediately set with vertigo, a fierce stab of pain radiating through his temple. He staggers, hisses a vent, and has to catch himself. The universe spins around him, and there’s a sharp tug.
“No!”
Rodimus slams against the wall, shoving back against the tug. He’s not leaving until he’s sure. He doesn’t care what price he has to pay.
The world stabilizes.
Rodimus lurches forward, one step, then two, before he breaks back into a run. The hallways pass in a blur. He’s not entirely sure he’s actually taking them, or fizzling out of one place and into another.
He slows as he approaches the bridge. He’s afraid of what he’s going to find. But he hasn’t come this far to hesitate.
He doesn’t have a lot of time.
Rodimus moves into the bridge, and his spark aches at the familiar beeps and clicks and low murmur of noise of the Lost Light mid-flight. He sweeps through the perimeter of the bridge first, seeing Blaster and Mainframe, Inferno and Hoist.
The blink taps on his shoulder.
Rodimus brushes it off, ignores the shock of cold drizzling through his spark. He steps further in, finally letting himself look at the command platform in the center.
His spark misses a cycle.
Oh, Primus.
Megatron sits at the helm, flicking through a datapad, occasionally commenting down to Blaster. His voice rushes over and through Rodimus, deep and rumbling and alive.
Rodimus’ knees threaten to weaken beneath him. He approaches the platform, space wavering around him, shimmering like a heat mirage. He fights the wave of dizziness to get close enough to taste Megatron’s field, if he were actually on the same plane of existence.
“--not go past the Galax Waystation, if you please. I think we all remember what happened last time,” Megatron says, and Rodimus aches.
He knows that tone, knows the half-curve to the edge of Megatron’s mouth, the barely concealed mirth dancing at the back of his optics. He’d pretended for so long to hate the Autobots aboard the Lost Light, so long he missed the moment he became one of them.
Rodimus’ vents hitch.
The matter converter tugs. He stumbles and catches himself, dismissing the warnings, shunting more energy toward the system.
He’s finally here. He can’t leave. Not yet. Not when he’s sure he finally found them.
He climbs the platform, maneuvers until he’s in front of Megatron, taking in the tired lines of the former warlord, the creaking of his aged frame. He’s still so massive, so imposing, and the Auto-badge on his chassis is there, same as always.
Rodimus is so sure. This has to be his Lost Light.
This is home.
“I don’t have much time,” he murmurs, his vocals croaking, as his internals tug again, sharper and more painful this time.
He doesn’t usually have to wrestle with it so much. He wonders if it’s because himself is here somewhere, and everyone knows, two of the same universe can’t occupy the same space. Or something like that. Rodimus still doesn’t understand how this works.
He doesn’t need to understand.
“I have to make this quick,” Rodimus says as Megatron looks up, looks through him, and it hurts far, far more than he should.
(he pulls himself together because he’s too much of a coward and he hadn’t done what he was supposed to do and he’s risked everything all of it everything for this one last time)
“I should have said this to you when you could hear me, when I had a chance in the Pit of getting some kind of answer.” He pauses and cycles a shuddering ventilation, ignores the screaming alerts rising in the corner of his HUD. “It’s too late now. So I’m just going to say it now. That way I know I’ve said it once even though it doesn’t matter.”
His optics burn, and his knees tremble, and his hands shake, and his spark quivers and pulses, and the fierce whine of the warnings echo in his audials, blocking out all else.
“I love you,” Rodimus says. “I don’t know when it happened or why or how, I just know that it is, and it’s this thing inside of me, this thing that keeps growing and festering because it has nowhere to go.”
It hurts. It aches. It wants to spill out of him in a mighty tide.
“So there,” Rodimus says, looking at Megatron looking right through him, and hating that he’s saying this far, far too late. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m glad you’re here, and you’re alive, you bastard. Now don’t you dare die.”
His words fall on deaf audials.
He feels heavier and lighter all at once.
The blink tugs. His systems shriek at him. The world dulls around the edges, shades of gray surrounding him, and this time, Rodimus doesn’t fight it.
(he can’t anymore truth be told he stretched too far and too long and if it’s a mistake it’s not one he regrets making)
He stares at Megatron as long as he can, soaking in the sight of him, the small smile, the curve of his lip, the way he talks without anger or derision, the shine of his armor, the bulk of his chassis, the gleam of the Auto-badge, his effortless command…
Rodimus watches until it grays away, and he comes to on the floor of his habsuite, aching from head to foot, feeling as if someone is trying to claw his spark out of his chassis. He coughs and tastes energon and coolant, gritty and sour on his tongue.
Too long. He’d pushed it too long.
He’s running out of…
Rodimus claws his way to his feet, stumbles over to his communication console. He keys in a comm code he’s long since memorized with trembling fingers, having to start over twice because he keeps missing keys. His ventilations rasp. The edges of his vision start to gray, and he fights the encroaching black with steely determination.
He waits.
The console beeps the slow trill of connecting.
He waits. And waits. And waits.
(and prays drift isn’t so mad as to ignore his calls, as to block his comm, as to wash his hands free of the mad not-prime who isn’t worth a thing in a post-war world)
He’s clicked over into a message system.
Rodimus sinks. He clings to the console with iron will, spoiler halves drifting down behind him.
A message is better than nothing.
“Drift,” he starts, and his intake closes up, and the heat behind his optics grows to a blaze. “I’m sorry I missed you. I should have commed you sooner but there were things I had to do, and anyway, it doesn’t matter. I want you to know that it worked. Okay? It worked.”
His screen fizzles gray and white, static clarifying into Drift’s face, his dim optics and the arrhythmic flutter of his biolights. Oh, he’d been recharging. What time of the cycle is it where he is? Rodimus hasn’t a clue.
He doesn’t know what time of the cycle it is where he is, much less someone else. What day is it? What year?
“Roddy?” Drift cycles his optics and squints at the screen. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong? Why do you--”
Rodimus shakes his head. He braces his hands on the counter. “I don’t have any more time, Drift. Just listen to me. You asked me a question, and I didn’t have an answer, but I have one now.”
He cycles another ventilation, and it shudders through him, vents catching and grinding. His knees are wobbling, and he doesn’t know if his perception is off, or if his spark really is sluggishly cycling from one beat to the next.
“It worked,” he says, and would be alarmed by the static streaking his vocals if he wasn’t prepared for it. He looks up at Drift, and forces a smile on his lips. “It worked, Drift. They’re out there. Our Lost Light, our friends, they’re still off on an adventure. It worked.”
Drift looks more alert now. He’s glancing past Rodimus and back to Rodimus again, and his face gets that pinched look of worry.
“Roddy, where are you? Are you still on The Exitus? You look--”
(awful he knows he looks terrible he can feel the juttering of his chestplate the prismatic light spilling from behind it and the clatter of his armor he’s falling apart literally and he wishes this isn’t the last thing drift’s going to see of him but he had to keep one promise he has to leave drift with a smile)
“It worked,” Rodimus repeats, because despite it all, joy bursts and bubbles in his spark. “They’re out there, and they’re happy, and we might have fallen apart, but they didn’t.” His fingers scrape furrows into top of the console. He swallows over a lump in his intake, cycles his optics around the heat banking at the back of them.
“I can’t go back there,” Rodimus continues, and he’d be embarrassed at how his vocals crackle, if he cared. “I can’t because I’m already there, so I can’t stay with them. And I guess I pushed myself too hard because now I can’t stay here either. But it was worth it.”
Drift leans closer to the screen, and there’s alarm in his optics. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t. I’m going to comm Thunderclash right now. We’re going to fix this, Roddy, I promise.”
“There’s nothing to fix. It’s too late.” Something hooks its fingers in his internals and yanks.
Rodimus hisses, shoulders hunching, electric fire racing over his armor, out through his seams, sparking through his protoform. His spark shrinks and shrinks into a tiny ball, feeding a thirsty machine.
“It’s already done,” he admits.
The world flashes gray.
Drift is still busily moving around the screen, looking for something, saying a slew of things Rodimus isn’t hearing.
He’s out of time.
“Thank you,” Rodimus says, and the lump in his intake gets thicker and thicker. “And I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”
(it’s a habit with him this running out of time this not doing things when he should have and only following through when it’s far too late)
“Rodimus, stop it!” Drift’s hands slam on the counter, and the screen fizzles with static, and his optics are so bright and pained.
Rodimus is an aft. So close after Ratchet, to do this to his best friend, but it would have been worse, he knows, to vanish without a word. There are things he’s never said, but this, at least, he does.
“This isn’t funny. Let me fragging help you!”
Gray swallows him. Sound flickers in and out of existence, muted and then too loud and back to silence.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
“Rodimus!”
A blink. A tug.
The last thing he sees is Drift yelling at him, fists slamming down, optics streaking with fear and worry and desperation.
The world shifts sideways.
And it’s nothing but gray.
