Ep 1 - Would you? Could you? - Closed

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Optimus closed his eyes. “I should not have asked you that.”

He pushed away from the wall, his EM field empty around him, controlled down to a neutral void around him. He wasn’t, however, able to keep the regret – unfathomably sharp and ugly – from his face though he tried, because his regret didn’t take back the question or the fact that his train of thought had led him, however unintentionally, to the asking. And he knew he couldn’t take it back and he’d just hurt Ironhide. Optimus turned away, clearly meaning to walk away and give Hide a moment away from him. He wasn’t thinking clearly still and obviously Ironhide did not deserve to get the brunt of his thoughtlessness. Being sorry didn’t take it back but…

“I’m sorry, Hide.”

And still, some cold and faraway part of him: Well, there’s your answer.

And he couldn’t remember hating that part of himself any more than that moment.

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Walking away. A low 'sorry', as though that answered or explained a Primus slotted glitch of a thing, and then walking the frag away which had been Orion's answer to interpersonal social issues as long as Ironhide had known him, and he'd hated it just as long. Snarling a low note, pure anger and frustration, he grabbed at the larger mech's wrist to yank him back around. "Slag that, an' where th' FRAG d' yeh think yer going? Scrap yer 'sorry', get yer aft back here an' EXPLAIN - what in Primus' name made yeh ask meh that? What th' frag does it have t' do with anything?"

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“Megatronus,” said Optimus, forcing himself to look at Ironhide, though he knew his expression was giving him away in every way now. He kept him EM field close, trying to control it, knowing the edge of his energy still seethed ragged.“I asked him… why, if his goal was a diplomatic solution through peaceful rhetoric… why he readied an army. Why he cut ties with me on the Senate floor that day, why that victory was not enough. And he told me.” Prime tensed a moment, the part of him that didn’t want to speak of it giving way to the part of him that had to make up his words to Ironhide. “He had cohort before the war, before I knew him, before he was a gladiator and before he ever conceived of taking the name of a lost Prime as his own – this cohort was a spark-child, like Bluestreak.”

The glyphs in his tone framed the meaning: a sparkling, innocent, beloved, innocent, innocent.

“He died because there was no public coverage for sparkling frames at his caste level. He died because some mechanoid, utterly the tool of this system, could not spare a procedure to save that child and Megatronus watched him die. I cannot imagine it.I have watched my soldiers die, my brothers, my friends time and again, but that I do not know So I wondered…” He had to look away then. “I wondered if you might understand better than I.” He kept his face averted, optics fixed on some far away point down the corridor. “That did not give me the right to ask if you might understand Megatronus, not like that. I am sorry. I would not have asked that if… I had thought even a second longer than I did.”

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Ironhide's hand was trembling, hydraulics locked so tight the tension was arcing through them, until his fingers slipped from his Prime's wrist and he hadn't the control to keep them from it. Venting, he let Optimus go, sagging back against the wall where the cool pressure of solid organic rock felt alien and solid against his backplates all at once.

A sparkling. Megatron - Megatronus - had had a sparkling. He couldn't parse it, couldn't slot that ghost image of the mech against the ruthless warlord and come up with anything but irreconcilable errors.

But... a sparkling. A sparkling dead not through accident or chance but through deliberate neglect. Bald faced horrific deliberation of action. Ironhide tried to imagine it and found it overlaid with terrible clarity against the memory sensation of a tiny sparkling that fit neatly into the palm of his hand. He had to suck in a deep cycle through his systems to keep from purging, the spark deep sickness of the idea crawling under his plates to burn through his endomass.

Deep in the archive depths of his memories he could still recall the horror and pain when the news had first filtered down to the squadrons of the Guard that they were cut off - budget cuts, resource allocations, all wrapped up in the official glyphs of far distant bureaucrats on a world they all lived for but rarely stepped pede on. It had been very formal and succinct but the rippling shockwave of horror that those orders had spawned had struck them all as death had, suddenly, abruptly, become a livid finality. No new sparks to be sent to the Guard. Request denied, and in that denial they had watched some of their oldest spark lineages pass into the Well with no hope of renewal. The bereft, broken pain of that loss had been a terrible thing and it was a pale, misty shadow against the immediate Pit fire that he could all too easily imagine in Bluestreak's death, or Shadowrunner's, or the tiny still-forming frame that rested inside Cleaver's chassis.

His plates were shaking, a low dischordant rattle of metal on metal. "Yeh needed t' know," he managed, gritted out on a dull rasp of static. "Ain't had it yerself, needed a perspective from someone who had." It was an excuse, of sorts, but a viable one, a true one, even if the end result still left him with a deep pain through his systems. It put a tactical face to it, labeled it as necessary and therefore knowable.

The rock at his pedes was dusky rust red, chipped and dusty. Ironhide drew his gaze away from it slowly, forcing himself to look up at Optimus' face. "Ah can't... Ah can't say Ah'd have done what he did. Ah hope Ah wouldn't have made it war. But... Ah can't rightly say Ah'd have left any of th' Primus forsaken slag alive, either, so long as Ah could get mah hands on 'em."

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“Leave it, Ironhide.” Optimus laid a hand on the other mech’s shoulder.

“The question wasn’t mine to ask and, as has already been said, it changes nothing of the present, only my understanding of how we’ve come to this. Megatron answered a question, Hide, nothing more. Whatever Megatron’s current condition: either the Decepticons will aid him or their cause will suffer as it always does when Megatron is relieved of command.” And even though the next part was not, for him, 100% true, he continued, “It is no different than any other time he has been damaged during the course of this war. His acolytes will come for him, the fighting will resume as it always has. There was no negotiating to be done here and the only question I asked of him was… personal. And if it has disturbed me, then that should have no bearing on how I command or treat my allies.”

Optimus regarded Ironhead steadily.

“You and the Autobots are my brothers and sisters in arms. Megatronus is a ghost.”

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"He's always riled yeh up so it affects yer command," Ironhide managed, though it was a ghost of his usual acerbic jibe. "'s what he does."

The hand against his shoulder was steadying, rare and linked in mass memory mostly to countless times of patching and hauling each other up on the battlefield. It settled a little of his internals, enough that he could draw himself up with the semblance of cohesion and keep himself from leaning into it. "Megatronus may be a ghost, but he ain't one yeh can blow off," he noted heavily. "For now, here - he is th' mech yeh remember. An' maybe it won't change anything once he's back t' himself, but chances are he'll remember what happens now."

It twisted his tanks to say it, but tactically, strategically, there were reasons and if he, who was no tactician, could see it then he could only hope Optimus, who was, could see far enough past the immediate emotional tangles. "Ain't many of us as gets a chance t' go back t' who we were," he told the Prime, gaze steady. "But if anyone could use a little remindin', Megatron might be top of th' list."

He pushed away from the wall, systems cycling heavily. "Do what yeh gotta. We've got yer back." It was his own reminder, a verbal hand pressed to his Prime's plates, and as much as he could manage with his internals twisted into knots. Leave it, and there wasn't any choice, not when going back over it would only rip them both up more. Nodding, the barest ghost of a salute, Ironhide forced himself up and away.


<fin?>