Title: Love Takes Hostages
Author: Ebony Kain (Ithilgwath)
Rating: totally worksafe (for now. Rating subject to change as the story progresses)
Disclaimer: Sadly I don't own Transformers (well, I own a couple action figures, but…). Nor do I own the Endless. Alas!
Notes: Written for the Transformers Anonymous Kink Meme. As the planet-sized bunny pounced me, I realized that I could work a story idea in with the fic I wrote before, A Mug's Game. So I am. For those interested, this is the address of the original prompt: tfanonkink. livejournal. com /10462. html? thread =9517022 #t9517022 (remember to delete the spaces)
"I know how gods begin, Roger. We start as dreams. Then we walk out of dreams into the land. We are worshipped and loved, and take power to ourselves. And then one day there's no one left to worship us. And in the end, each little god and goddess takes its last journey back into dreams, and what comes after, not even we know."
Ishtar, in The Sandman #45: Brief Lives #5
Deep within the labyrinth of his own body, Primus dreams. He dreams of real things—ancient memories, shadowy echoes of his creations going about their daily lives, riddle-like conversations through the Matrix and Vector Sigma. He dreams of fantasies—walking amongst other living creatures of a size with him, holding someone precious, being held, talking about things as common and mundane as the weather, economics, art.
Primus dreams of loneliness. He dreams of creation. He dreams of enslavement, dreams of rebellion, of victory and dreams of freedom. He dreams of the spark that isn't from his, coming and going and coming back, over and over again, raging at him for his silence, his sleep. The spark cajoles him with affection, begs him with love, threatens him with hate, with indifference, with anonymity—until finally, it stops coming back.
After the first aeon, Primus' dreams grow darker. After the second, the loneliness begins to sink back in. A third, and he ignores the calls of the Matrix and allows Vector Sigma to generate random patterns. The fourth brings dreams of disharmony, vice, decadence and squalor. The fifth is full of nightmares of death and pain and loss and sorrow. The sixth aeon is full of silence, and Primus' spark stirs restlessly.
The advent of the seventh brings a most peculiar dream.
Primus dreams he walks. Surrounded by creatures on all sides, some larger, some smaller, some of a size—Primus walks. They step in time, down a long path and through a gate. At the opposite end of the courtyard that is somehow both enormously huge and very small at the same time is a mausoleum. And Primus suddenly understands why and how they are all here.
And in the midst of The Dreaming, where people, and places, and concepts and dreams all come together to stand vigil at the Wake, Primus takes the opportunity to search for someone he lost aeons ago.
He is polite in his search, begging pardon from those his jostles, scanning the shifting crowd for one particular person—visually inspecting each face and body, parsing through snatches of conversations, hoping, hoping, hoping that the spark isn't lost to him forever.
"Please," he whispers into the crowded night, "please."
He stops, then, arrested by the beautiful creature standing in front of him. Pale, elegant, dark of hair and yellow of eye and clad all in white. It watches him, smiling a strange, not-quite-real smile.
"Well, and here you are," it's voice is a strange pitch. For one so organic-looking, Primus cannot decide if it is male or female. "My brother won you, back then. But, well, he is gone now, isn't he? If I want to, I can finish what I started, can't I?"
Primus finds he cannot move as it approaches, something in him both thrilling and quailing at the soft threat of its tone.
A pale hand caresses the side of his face plate, and he can't see anything but those yellow eyes.
"Yes. I could make you lay waste to whole solar systems looking for him. I could make you hurt him, break him, all in the name of keeping him," it murmurs, the yellow of its eyes flashing. And Primus can see it, can feel it deep inside like a magnet pulling him.
"I could make you do so much," it leans in, breath shockingly hot against his mouth plates. "...but why bother?" It steps back, hand leaving and the loss of that eldritch heat was enough to leave Primus swaying on unsteady legs.
"I win by default now," it continued. "You're already mine."
As it steps away in the direction of the mausoleum there is an opening in the crowd, as though the people had parted deliberately to give him a path to see down.
And there he is, in a form unfamiliar and familiar at the same time—vibrant red, silvery white, sweetly accented in blue. The wings are broad, held high and proud, fluttering lightly in attentive conversation with the creature he faces—another like the one Primus just escaped from but blue-eyed and clad in red. The form of his dearly missed spark is not one he's seen before, though it seems similar to those of his winged creations. But the face is the same—that dark, much adored face has not changed in a thousand thousand physical bodies that his spark has worn.
The female standing beside that spark notices Primus looking, and smiles warmly, though there is something sad clinging to her. She says something, and the spark he has been missing for aeons turns, and sees him. Primus expects anything from joy to fury—but to his bafflement, there is nothing. No reaction. The spark that he's loved and missed and desired simply looks at him, blankly, as if he cannot recognise the other half of their equation: You merged with Me equals We.
But before Primus can call out, before he can run to him, everyone is turning. The opening in the crowd that had allowed him to see closes. There are people between Primus and the spark he longs for, and he cannot push his way through.
And the night was over, and the day begins.
The stone doors of the mausoleum open (apparently of their own volition, for there was no one to open them) and the people, and the dreams, and the gods, and all manner of other creatures and beings, go in, each one after its fashion.
And already the conversations and indiscretions and intoxications of the night before begin to vanish, like the mists of night, in the heat of the morning.
The mourners take their seats, one by one, without hesitation or question. No one directs them, but they walk into their own seats and sit down, as quietly and efficiently as if they'd been rehearsing for this moment all their lives.
The people move as if their every move were foreordained, as if they have no true will of their own.
As if every action were written long ago, in a book.
But deep, deep inside his spark, Primus knows that at the end of this dream, he will do something he has been sorely behind on getting around to.
He will wake up.