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Continuity: Beast Wars/Machines, with mentioning of past-tense Generation One (G1)
Characters: Optimus Primal
Warnings: Spoilers for Beast Wars episode, Optimal Situation.
Author's Note: Criticism encouraged, technical points preferable. (post-Optimal Situation.)
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Data discs did not do them justice.
Primal meandered, a misplaced and awkward stranger, amongst the mingled bodies of Autobots and Decepticons, marveling at these slumbering leviathans. He wandered, though his crew had been – under his express mandate, no less – ordered to keep far from the Ark's flight deck, lest the Maximals further disrupt the time-stream. In spite of his own command, Optimus found himself here, abandoning the ancient Tele-traan and its simulated replicas to peruse this living museum himself.
He was small, less than them, and he felt more than humbled beside even the lowliest among them. He knew the names of some – Autobots, mostly, though there were stories always of the most notorious Decepticons that not even the Council could keep at bay – figures far detached from him, staring back through a void of incomprehension. He ghosted reverent fingertips just over their frames, not bold enough to bring his fingers close enough to touch the deified beings, the stuff of myth and piecemeal parable.
Occasionally, he would pause over one or another, staring with perplexed awe at whichever of the two exotic, ancient sigils they bore, straining his databanks for a name, a deed, to pin to the individual. There were many more than the records spoke of, beings who had lost their designations to imperfect documentation and well justified uncertainties on the part of the Imperium. Precursors to Maximals they might have been, but even in his own time they were potent symbols, rallying points for those who would begin again the ancient war.
The old records had been locked for fear of a repetition of the past, designations and dates and situations changed to protect new identities. Even the most well-educated of Maximals knew little precisely of the war; most free information was mere suggestion and generalization, stripped down to the driest, most passionless terms. Sometimes it was difficult to see what they had fought for, to imagine such epic battles when so much was gone.
Or had been. Standing among them, he could well imagine how tremendous those conflicts would have been, how dwarfed he was in size and act.
These titans – there were no more of their like, nor would there be again. The old build types were terminated, downsized, downgraded, stunted, and deleted from all databanks. He had only ever known them as husks, hollowed out for display. Modern Cybertronians might come to admire these relics, and scoff with quiet politeness at such wasteful, grand bodies, but even the shells held a sense of raw power, and all voices were hushed in their presence.
Even now, he was closer in stature to the primitives than to his ancestors. Even now, he was less than they.
And though they slept on… they were here, alive, waiting in potentia to be reactivated to begin their war anew, at peace until they could play their parts once more, and fight for what had already been decided, unknown to them.
He wondered what they were like, how their voices would sound. What their stories were. Would the Autobots be as wise and noble as the chronicles had implied? Could they have felt as he did, over his head, frightened and uncertain or were they above such failings? Would the battle-scarred Decepticons be as vicious and mindlessly cruel as he had been told, monsters given spark? It was almost difficult to believe such things, looking at them, dormant and docile, sculpted faces composed and still as any statue. But the gleam of weapons gave a lie to the thought, the hard-angled designs of their motionless bodies screaming predator, and he did not walk close to them.
His optics drifted away from the inert behemoths, to softer-edged bodies sprawled unevenly across the floor. Quiescent in stasis, they seemed only resting, more reclined than collapsed.
Were they like him, these Autobots forbearers, or were they so utterly removed as to be alien to modern Cybertronians? In the future, in the past – he wondered if this was how it had always happened, or had he inadvertently changed history? A part of it? Removed from it?
He doubted he would ever know. Their celebrated idols had disappeared, one by one. Some had fled into the void – unable to comprehend a world so peaceful and slow, different from their own fractious origins, unable to let go of the bitter war that had so irrevocably altered them – while others had been reformatted, clumsily sliding into new lives and new names, leaving behind the things they had fought so long and hard for. A few had simply perished, fading slowly and steadily into deactivation. These heroes, his predecessors, these hard-used war-mechs of legend, were long past, a thing barely understood, and he had stood among them, and taken the best of their number into his spark, had been one with the greatest of Primes and touched the lost Matrix to himself.
He felt unworthy. He felt elated. He felt changed.
Optimus touched a hand to his chest, uncomfortable in his own body, unwelcomed by this chimera form.
Prime was still a part of him, though he had returned his spark to its rightful place. Slow and steady and awfully, terribly vast, the Prime overshadowed the parts that made up this simple Maximal. He was too much, more than Primal could be – Matrix-bearer and war-born Prime. To many, the last true Prime, the last real Autobot. The epitome of that honorable race.
Were they truly bound now, he and Optimus Prime? Would this venerable Autobot hero feel him, know him, even though he would not yet even exist in the Prime's timeline? Would he note, or care, such an intrusion, insignificant as it was? Could he be aware of his lesser namesake, of the future he would create?
But here, in this moment, they existed simultaneously. Past and future, present and present parallel to one another.
Optimus halted before the slumped Autobot leader, still imposing and stately, even in this graceless stasis-repose. There were statuettes aplenty on Cybertron, countless artists striving to capture the essence of this regal, larger-than-life figure. Rough-hewn sculptures or magnificently rendered effigies, small keepsakes and renditions large enough to rival the skyline, he was an icon recognized by all, still tremendous, splendid in even the coarsest interpretation.
Standing here, now, Primal doubted very much they would ever come near such imperial dignity, Primus given form and life.
For a moment, laden with possibility, Optimus felt the queasy excitement of chance well up in his spark, the ability to do what was forbidden. It would not be so difficult, to awaken them. A small surge of power, and those blackened optics would blaze with life, awareness. They would rise, and he could stand among them, see them, hear them, witness what no other modern Maximal could claim.
He could know, if he wished. He could bring again the era of the Autobots, raise them from obscurity, and fill in the missing blanks in their – his – history. Could decide the ancient Great War here and now, before lives were lost. Could be more than what he was.
His trembling hand reached up, on the verge of brushing the hallowed metal of his progenitor, finding a handhold to haul himself up, connect the Ark to its crew and end the tragedy of that terrible, senseless war ere it came to a head.
He could be more.
But the feeling, the temptation, passed, subsiding with regret into the back of his mind.
He stepped back, hand falling to his side.
With one last, lingering stare, Optimus retreated to the door, closing it firmly and resolutely behind him. Struck the lock sequence, turned back to his own time and his own people and his own self.
And in the still dark, silent giants slept on.