He walks across the empty land. Rust, dust, and powdered crystals cover everything, the darkened planet surface shimmering like the starry sky overhead. A fragile breeze sweeps the vast expanse of nothingness, twirling around broken and decayed structures devoid of shape or purpose anymore. A morbid caress, a mournful moan and an airy giggle all in one, for a world long forgotten.
He knows the pathways like the back of his hands. Yet, there are no paths or roads to follow, nothing but the faintest tinges of his imagination. Large husks flank him, dwarfing everything still around. Some are solid, smoothed by ages long past and cracked by inclemencies long lost to abandoned memories. Others are hollow, and the wind whistles through their carcasses to rip out the last echoes of laughter and tears still clinging to their bones.
He feels the earth beneath his feet. But, at the same time, he doesn't. Dirt, dry and as fine as cloth woven out of stardust, covers most of the ground. Where the wind has blown it away, cold metal polished by shifting sand glimmers like glass as it reflects the stars above. Dipping and cresting, the land rolls like a sea frozen in time, the power it once harbored still present in the fossilized waves it left behind. Remnants of a past that has no one left to remember it.
He sits by the river and he is made complete. Under the dark sky and the bright stars. In the shadow of the shining giants that still manage to stand, long after their makers became the dust that clings to their base. There is no liquid in the gorge, carved over many lifespans to reveal layers of colorful sediment that, if he tilts his head, almost seems to dance at the edge of his vision. But the breeze whispers, an invisible caress, and he can almost hear the murmur of the creek and the leaves whispering and tinkling over his head.
Oh, simple thing, where has it gone? For no matter how much he tries, there is neither river nor boughs, no laughter or tears, no songs, giggles, or moans. The giants stand still, true, but they stand alone, empty, devoid of the life that once had flittered through their passages and played joyfully at their feet. Rust, dust, and powdered crystals, dark as the sky and strewn with reflective shards that mirror the starry sky.
He's getting old and he needs something to rely on. He can feel it, just as he can see it all around. In the giants, crumbling with the sigh of a departing soul, standing strong yet as dead as those turned to dust. In the gorge, with the echoes of the water that once carved it, but which now holds naught but an illusion of days long lost. He can see it, and, in a sense, he realizes that this is him. Giants crumbling, rivers running dry, strong winds brought to but a whisper. And, like this world, he has nothing left.
So, he waits to be told when he'll be let in. In to where, exactly, he doesn't know, but he knows enough to be sure of it. Sand and metal, dirt and rust, bent giants and empty gorges. This is an echo of a world long gone, long lost. Beautiful, magnificent, and he feels the truth of it even with no proof to support it. He looks at what is left, and knows that it was great. But now, it is no more. It has already gone.
He's getting tired and he needs somewhere to begin. For, like this land, like this world, he has ended, and so nothing is left for him but to begin again. Like this land, like this world, with its mirrored sky of sand shifting with the whispering breeze. A world of giants and rivers, turned into a caress of rust and dust and powdered crystal. A world of dirt covering metal, of layers peeling back under the caresses of water, of giants growing under new hands. A world of endings and beginnings.
He comes across a fallen tree. It lies, unlike the giants that still keep their heads high. Small and brittle, yet here still. It is cracked, dry, crown devoid of the precious colors that once granted it grandeur equivalent to that of the metal giants. Small and brittle, yet here still, lying on the starry sand as if merely resting, waiting for an unseen sign that it is time to rise and bloom once more. So much younger than the giants and the gorge, yet still a husk of long-lost memories.
He feels the branches of it looking at him. Devoid of leaves, of color, and yet they stare, observing, guarding. Is it hope? Is it longing? Is it his own yearning, projected on this remnant of the ephemeral that has somehow managed to survive alongside those that were made to be eternal? Yet even the giants have broken down, and the gorge has gone dry, so not even eternity lasts forever.
Is this the place he used to love? He looks at the giants in the distance, at the waves of a world frozen in time, at the scars the water drew on the plains, at the paths that are gone yet that he can still see brightly as if they had been painted on the dark sand. And he wonders about what this world was like, about the hollow echoes whispering in the breeze, and realizes he doesn't know.
Is this the place that he's been dreaming of? There are metal giants, rolling hills, deep gorges, clear-cut paths, fallen trees. There is rust, dust, and powdered crystals. There is sand and uncovered metal that reflects the stars. There is breeze, which steals the echoes left behind eons ago. In the dreams he does not have, there are none of the many things that this world has, nor any that it used to have.
Oh, simple thing, where has it gone? He knows not the answer, though he's sure there is one. There is a pleasant simplicity in this world, with its forgotten memories and long gone past, but he is sure that, somewhere in there, there was another even more alluring. Something so complex that it appeared simple, something so intricate that it looked plain, something so chaotic that it was reliable. Something almost peaceful.
He's getting old and he needs something to rely on. But there is nothing to hold on to in this vacant world, in this beautiful mirror of the starry sky, in this gorgeous memory of what none can recognize any longer. The sands shift, the giants crumble, the gorges languish, the breeze slips away, and all that was this world is beyond anyone's grasp.
So, he waits to be told when he'll be let in. Nothing remains, for him or for them. For the giants, the gorge, the sands, the breeze. Nothing not even for the fallen tree, for that flicker in the endless tapestry of time, which had still stubbornly held onto its existence to wait for a day that would never come. But, unlike them, he can go. He just needs to wait.
He's getting tired and he needs somewhere to begin. But, still, he waits, because that is all he can do. Hold on, like the stubborn tree, like the echoes clinging to the giants' bones. Like the paths that have been erased, but whose ghosts still hold onto memories that have been long forgotten. All that begins has an end, and all that ends has a beginning. This is his ending. He just needs to wait.
And if you have a minute why don't we go. But he knows his mind, knows himself, and ignores the treacherous thought, the trickle that comes out of nowhere and everywhere, that is and isn't himself. Time is no longer of importance. Time has long become nonsensical, a meaningless word, an outdated concept. Time is inconsequential, a variable that does no longer belong to the equation. He won't go, he won't leave. He will wait.
Talk about it somewhere only we know. But he ignores that thought as well. There is nothing to talk about, just as there is no thing to talk about. Rust, dust, and powdered crystal. Metal giants, dry gorges. Erased paths, fallen trees. They are but an echo of that which is lost and forgotten, and so he has no words to speak. Not about them, not about their past, not about their future. And this world, with its sand mirroring the starry sky and its abandoned echoes, this world is someplace only he knows.
This could be the end of everything. But it isn't. No beginning goes without end, and no end goes without beginning. It is not a line, but a circle, a cycle, and he needs only to wait for it to catch up to him. Like the giants crumbling into dust, and the dust filling the gorge, and the breeze tripping the sand back onto the frozen waves of the plains, which piles against the giants to keep them standing tall. Like them, he has ended, and, like them, he will begin anew.
So, why don't we go somewhere only we know? Because this is it, the ending to his beginning, and the beginning to his ending. The place, the one place, only he knows, for not even those who built the giants and created the memories are around anymore. This world, this mirror for the sky, is as forgotten as those that once called it home. This is the place.
Somewhere only he knows.
And he sits down by the gorge, next to the fallen tree, under the dark sky strewn with stars. In the shadow of the giants, by the unmistakable paths that have long since been erased. With the breeze bringing him echoes, whispers of song and cheer, of pain and mourning. In this metallic planet under a layer of organic sand, with the echoes of a spark as powerful as any star still permeating its empty core.
In this world, long lost, long dead, long forgotten, he waits for a call to let his incorporeal form go, so he can finally rest.
AN: Inspired by Reneé Dominique's cover of Keane's song Somewhere Only We Know. You can find it on YouTube. Not necessary to listen to it, but will definitely help.
So, yeah. This happened. I heard the song while listening to YouTube's recommendations, and I was immediately assaulted by the bunny. Originally, this was nowhere near as depressing as this turned out to be. But I decided to listen to the song in a loop while writing this, and just let it, and the bunny, take over. This is the result.
This is set way past the G1 cartoon iteration, the one that ended with Beast Wars and Beast Machines, in the far far far future, where the Cybertronian race, and Cybertron itself, have died out. Even Primus/the Oracle is gone.
And poor Starscream, so old he no longer has any memory of his self, is still waiting to go home, to join the Matrix. Only, there is no home to go back to. Not anymore.
And no, using the 'we' in the 'thoughts' is not a typo. Whether Starscream's going/gone insane, or these are the 'echoes'… I leave that to your interpretation.
Sorry, everyone. Blame the plot bunny.