"Boulders of a different kind"
Clarification: words within the brackets are Optimus's innermost thoughts that are bleeding into his narration.
It began as a simple mission.
Go to the underground energon deposit, grab as much as one can manage and leave.
Unfortunately Megatron and his people showed up not thirty minutes later, forcing a retreat, which was only slowed down by Bumblebee getting his leg stuck between some rocks.
Optimus, the furthest away from both his bots and the portal back to base, did the only thing he could to ensure the safety of his people.
He shot the ceiling causing an avalanche of rocks and debris to fall down on the surprised Decepticons.
It allowed his friends to escape though he himself got caught in the middle trying to ignore the small, though not entirely insignificant, surge of relief when a giant boulder was heading right for him, and subsequently crushed beneath a great rock (trying to ignore how he just… stood there, unmoving, waiting, wishing to be dead.)
Which he discovered not long later, when he woke up to the enraged screams of his best friend enemy, sounding entirely too close for comfort.
It seemed they were both stuck here, barely a few meters away, and it feels like a metaphor of sorts, of how when things fall apart, they're always in the middle of it. Together. (And he hates it.)
The enormous weight pressing his back to the rough ground beneath him makes it hard to move or breathe but he makes do (he always makes do), wiggling a bit to make sure Energon gets to all the important parts, and wonders if his team is okay, if they made it back safely.
The only thing he can hear on his communication line is static, and without the use of his servos he can't do anything to change it.
He'll just have to hope for the best then.
Megatron, for his part, continues to rage and scream (as he always does it seems), letting his frustrations be known to all who would listen.
Frustrations towards Starscream, Earth's surface, and even Optimus himself filled the air for what seemed like an eternity, before the Mad Tyrant finally stopped to retain his energy.
Uncomfortable silence fell between them, only broken by the screeching of crushed metal and the crackles of moving rocks.
It stretched like a spring pulled to its limits, ready to snap at any moment and drown them both in the all-encompassing darkness.
"This is all your fault, Prime." Megatron bites out, his voice barely ragged from all his previous screams.
Optimus doesn't answer at first, staring at the dark abyss that stretched above him (it feels disturbingly familiar).
It was just now, when he was finally forced to lie down, pinned by a heavy boulder, that he realized just how… exhausted he was.
With the war, with Megatron, with himself …he's just tired of everything (and wishes he could just go to sleep and never wake up).
"The silent treatment? Really now, Optimus?"
It is ironic, really, how it takes a terrible situation for what used to be his best friend, to finally want an actual conversation with him.
It would be funny if they both weren't drowning in the Energon they spilled.
"Do you ever get tired of this, Megatron?" He finally speaks up though his voice has lost all its usual strength and power. For once in his life he sounds exactly how he feels. Hollow. "Of the constant… fighting and death (of pain and misery and loss) and destruction?"
It's not what he wanted to ask, it's not even what he wanted to say, but it will have to do he's heard enough of Megatron's screaming for one day.
"No." Came the barked out reply. "Why would I when I flourish in it?"
'You would.' Optimus thought bitterly, but didn't say. 'And this, I fear, is why you will never let it end.'
"I believe this is the closest I've gotten to rest since the conflict began." He saw fit to share for some reason. (How strange that it's easier to talk about such things with your arch enemy than with your medic friend). "It feels… (wrong) odd."
"Night visions plaguing your mind, oh mighty Prime?" Megatron asks in a mocking tone (and, if he closes his eyes and drowns out everything else, it almost feels like he's back on Cybertron listening to his best friend gently tease him about silly nightmares, and it actually takes his breath away how much it hurts to miss it, to miss him) .
"Yes." And Optimus has no qualms about admitting to it for it was no secret between them.
Megatronus always knew he was a (coward) soft-spark.
"Such a brave admission for someone so weak." The tyrant responded much like expected. "I don't know whether to pity or applaud you."
"Honesty is not a tool of weaklings, Megatron." The Prime reprimanded, wishing he could stop sounding so tired for but a moment. "It is its lack that separates the truly strong from the truly weak."
"Bravo, well done." It is almost impressive how he manages to sound both complementary and full of contempt at the same time. "Spoken like a true Prime of Folly, Optimus, very good."
The Autobot, for his part, didn't respond, unwilling to reveal that the nickname struck an unexpected chord within him.
About how… fitting it seemed, more so than the illustrious Prime of Hope that Alpha Trion preemptively dubbed him in his section of the Wisdom of the Primes.
Though he supposed neither are fully wrong.
Hope can push people to overcome immense odds, there are records of it doing so in both Earth and Cybertron. Working like a secret source of energy that gives them the strength and will to keep pushing, keep trying.
But it can also turn into the most devastating feeling of all if not rewarded.
Optimus cannot guarantee that he will win this war, he can only promise (that they'll be able to overcome these impossible odds, that they'll all get out if it alive, that no one else will suffer and die) that he will try.
And that is what makes him the most foolish Prime of them all.
Prime of Folly, indeed.
"And what, pray tell, did the great Optimus Prime dream of that would make him too frightened to recharge?"
"The end of the war." He said, voice soft and raw and tender. "But it was just us."
"Just us?"
"Just us (and countless, immeasurable corpses)." Just saying it, verbalizing it bringing it into existence in any way causes his spark to drown in dread (and guilt and shame). "Fighting, unable to stop (unable to be rid of each other)." He doesn't want to think about it (but it keeps him up at night).
It reminded him too much of what Bumblebee saw within Megatron's mind.
Just Optimus getting slaughtered over and over again on the flaming lands of New Kaon.
Megatron's darkest dream was his darkest nightmare.
How fitting.
A low chuckle escaped the con.
"A future worthy of us both." He admits, the sharp smile evident in his voice. "Something to strive for, perhaps?" The smile grows ever wider.
It is moments such as these that bring to mind how different Megatron is to the Megatronus he knew, how self-centered and egotistical he is in comparison to the bot who wished for equity for all bots.
The contrast is staggering.
(In reality, however, it is not the contrast that staggers him.
No.
It is a feeling that appeared not long after his little stunt as Orion Pax.
A quiet yet nauseating suspicion that, given how things turned out, he never really knew Megatronus at all.)
"What if your Decepticons, fickle as they are, decide you are no longer worth the effort to keep around?" He asks suddenly, wishing to change the subject.
A low growl answers him.
"My Decepticons know better than to cross me in such a way." He says but Optimus knows Starscream has left his mark, whether the bigger mech wishes to admit it or not. "What about you, oh beloved leader of the Autobots? What if your loyal dogs decide you are no longer worth the energy it takes to save you?"
"I would not blame them." He says easily, almost too much so, and it feels like betrayal. "Perhaps… we would do the war some good if we were both to remain here."
And there it was, a chance for peace at last.
"Why are you suddenly so resigned, Optimus?" Came the surprisingly agitated voice of Megatron. "Come now, Prime. Where is your burning desire to protect? Your passion for righting my wrongs? The power, the strength, the pride?! Was it all little more than a facade to bewitch your followers into believing in you?"
"Would it really be that surprising if it was?" He sounds small now, younger than he has any right to be.
"You, a Prime, using a Decepticon trick to rally the masses?" Megatron's sharp teeth are back in the smile. "Perhaps your return to the Autobots has been too hasty?"
"Not everything we say reflects that which we feel." Optimus said, the nausea creeping up on him again. "Something I'm sure you are well aware of."
To which Megatron just snorts and, surprisingly, lets the matter drop.
"Tell me something, Megatron."
"What is it now, Prime?" As annoyed as he now sounds it was still worlds better than cutting insults, and senseless violence that Optimus is usually met with.
"What will you do once you win?" He threw out of his chest, as if it wasn't a question that kept him up at night more than any nightmares do.
"Oh? Is it surrender I hear?"
"It is a purely hypothetical question." At least for now. Primus only knows how it all ends.
"Of course." The Decepticon leader chuckled before wiggling a bit to get more comfortable. "Naturally I will return to Cybertron, and take my rightful place as its ruler!"
"And after that?"
"What kind of question is that, Prime? I shall rule it as I always should have! Under my guidance Cybertron will enter a new Golden Age, one even more glorious and prosperous than the one before!"
"And how will you keep the peace?"
"Oh there will be peace, or whoever is disturbing it will have to learn how to live without their voice box."
"Peace through fear, then?" Through tyranny he doesn't say but it's there. It's always there. "I see."
"Fear will keep them in place. It is a natural order of things."
'Perhaps.' The Prime could not disagree. The archives had enough evidence to prove him wrong. 'But we were supposed to be different.'
(It was all supposed to be different.)
"...will they be happy?" Optimus asked, voice small.
"What?"
"Our people." He continues softly, looking up in the abyss and drowning drowning drowning. "Will they be happy under your rule?"
Silence.
Such unsettling and very telling silence.
"I don't see why that matters."
And with that, what little remained of Optimus's shattered spark broke a little more.
"We will be free." Megatronus vowed to his fellow slaves on Kaon. And the gladiator kept his word. Leading these desperate men to their freedom through the vicious blades of their enemies, and the merciful ones of their friends. Free in death like they never were in life.
"We will be equal." Megatronus swore to those who could barely afford to function. And the gladiator kept his word. From the important politicians of Iacon to the deprived occupants of the Pits, they were all equal pigs for slaughter in the mad game that was his war. Equal in death like they never were in life.
"We will be happy." Megatron promised him when young naive stupid Orion, bewitched by his powerful words and charisma, agreed that he was right and that something needs to be done. The gladiator lied, and the naive archivist will find no release in death. His ghosts will eat him raw.
We will be happy.
"It used to." He whispered out into the all-encompassing black void. "Once."
"Once." Megatron agreed equally quietly.
The void remained silent.
"And whatever shall you do with my Autobots?" Optimus asked, looking over to where Megatron should be located. "Will they find a place in your new perfect world?"
"That is so typical of you Prime, so concerned about your pitiful underlings when you should really be worried about yourself." Another toothy smile graced his words. "Aren't you curious what I have in store for you once I take charge?"
"I am under no illusion that you would allow me to function that long." He said with a sigh. It is the one thing he could possibly take comfort in.
That, even if he fails, Megatron wouldn't risk him remaining online to witness his glory.
He's come back too many times.
"Please, Optimus." The warlord chuckled, the sound haunting, like a living nightmare. "What would be the point in winning if I cannot rub it in your faceplate, and make you live with the sheer magnitude of your failure every single day?"
And that is the truth of the matter, isn't it?
The war was never about equality among Cybertonians, or even about getting rid of the rigid caste system.
It was always about them.
Him and Megatron.
The gladiator's hate, and the archivist's hope.
It was all little better than a game of war played by sparklings, and that knowledge stung.
So many died for one mech's anger, one mech's inert yearning for ruin.
One mech's desire to spite, to hurt the one who wronged him.
Using the promises of equality and freedom as disgusting smokescreens to cover his true motives and feed hope to Cybertronians that yearned for something to fight for, to believe in.
"Revolution is a cruel mistress. It often takes much more lives than it ends up serving." Alpha Trion once told him, and oh how right he was.
In the far future, when a new generation walks upon the devastated Cybertron lands, is that how he'll describe this horrendous conflict?
As something petty and childish with no deeper meaning? No righteous cause, no noble goal, just…
Just anger.
Just hate.
(Just a Prime's unending cowardice and fear.)
…
How pathetic.
A few hours days weeks minutes later Optimus breaks the silence.
"Do you know what I realized after all these years, Megatron?" He throws into the dark void above him,
"What?"
"All those accusations you throw at me; about stealing your position, deceiving you, using you… they were never really about me." Or rather they were just… not in the way Megatron intended them to be.
"...what in the world are you talking about, Prime?"
"Someone was indeed betrayed that day, but it was not you." Optimus, and Orion before him, was many things, but not a traitor, and never a deceiver.
"Has a boulder hit your head and scrambled your processor, Optimus?" Came the accusing question.
"Tell me… what happened in the council chamber, Megatron."
"You know what happened, Prime, or is your memory still faulty?"
"My memory is fine. But I do want… to hear how you remember that day."
"There are two sides to every story, young Orion." Alpha Trion admonished whenever he verbally condemned one side of a conflict he saw written down in an entertainment or history pad. "History is written by winners, dear student, but that does not mean they were right."
"...fine. You betrayed me in the council, swaying them to your side with pretty words about peace and equality. You convinced them that you were a better candidate for Primehood, and they gladly bestowed it upon you. I don't need to say what happened later, do I?"
"...you and I remember that day very differently then." He said into the void, not surprised at all that his old friend remembered his speech in such a negative light.
"How so? We were both there."
"I did not speak up that day with the intention of betraying you, Megatron." Optimus explained softly. "I only wished to show our appeal in a gentler light so they would be more inclined to listen."
"They were already listening to me."
"They heard your message of violence and force, but they failed to notice the one about equality among our people." He could still remember the faces of those that watched, their fear written clearly in wide optics and hushed whispers.
It is a miracle the hearing lasted that long without both of them being escorted out by the elite guard.
"And so you stole their attention with your honey words and saccharine voice." Came the hissed response full of ageless hurt that festered into a fine concoction of hate and spite that never lost its sting.
"To propagate your ideals, Megatron. Or, at least, what I foolishly assumed were your ideals." The night before the meeting they even discussed how Megatronus was going to present his case to the council full of conservative elderly bots that shivered and scoffed at mere implications that their perfect system was flawed.
Orion foolish foolish Orion had an entire speech prepared with hints on how Megatronus can breach every controversial subject he wanted to present, in a manner that wouldn't immediately turn the entire room against his gladiator friend.
(Only for Megatronus to walk in, stand before them and disregard everything)
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"If you really wanted equality among our people, if you really wanted to bring down the caste system, then you wouldn't have cared which one of us was chosen to be the Prime." It was the first thing Ratchet told him back then.
When Orion, not yet Optimus, distraught and confused, wondered how something so carefully planned could go so wrong.
"He lied to you, Orion. No, you will let me finish." Ratchet said cutting off any defense the archivist could have spoken up in his friend's name. "I know the truth hurts, old friend, but you need to hear this." He didn't want to. Primus, he never wanted anything less. "Megatronus- Megatron never wanted any of those things, Orion. Moreover, he was never your friend." The medic kept on talking despite the archivist's weak protests and pleas to stop. "If he really trusted you, if he truly considered you a friend, a brother, then it wouldn't matter which of you received the Matrix because you both want the same thing." And suddenly Ratchet is right.
"But you didn't want the same thing, did you, Orion."
He's right, and it hurts so much.
"Wouldn't have cared?! That honor should have been mine!"
"Perhaps that entitlement was the reason the council did not see you fit for the position." Or it would have been, if Megatronus was demanding a seat on the council as a representative of the Pits of Kaon.
But he was demanding something sacred, something reserved for the very few.
"No slave was ever named Prime." Grindtrack, a representative from Iacon would say. "It is simply not done." He was one of the first to die in the upcoming revolution.
"It would go against tradition to bestow the Matrix upon a war-built." Crossflare, a fembot old enough to recall the grandness of the Golden Age, would stare, shaking her ancient head. "A candidate's servos should not be covered in energon." She does not live long enough to witness the upcoming slaughter.
"A Prime should never desire war." Speedglider, a retired captain of Energon seekers from Teletraan I, would explain. His wise blue optics already seeing Megatronus much clearer than Orion ever did. Megatron rid him of those perceptive orbs the next time they met. "It shines in your friend's eyes like a beacon, little Archivist."
"We already had a Megatronus Prime." Trident, one of the archivists considered for the position of Head Overseer of the Hall of Records if Orion, Alpha Trion's chosen heir (Primus what a lie this was), did not pass his exams. "And Cybertron was not better for it."
Orion would know.
It's what they told him all those eons ago when he still believed the Gladiator's choice in naming himself 'Megatronus' after the Fallen Prime wasn't a warning sign about the carnage that will be committed in his name.
"What?"
"Only those who do not seek power are qualified to wield it." "Those not obsessed with power will not be controlled by it." His mentor explained when Orion asked him why he, among the few of the council, turned down a bot named Vigor's candidacy for Primehood. "Someone worthy of being a Prime does not seek to be one." (It is just now, when he's thinking about that conversation many years later, that he remembers the meaningful look Alpha Trion sent his way. One that Orion noticed, but did not question further.)
"I did not seek power, I was owed it." "For all the pain I had to endure, all the lives I had to end, all the freedoms I was cruelly denied." Optimus read between the lines.
"No, Megatron, you were not." He sighed, suddenly feeling more tired than ever before. "But that is of no consequence."
"And what are you on about now?"
"Even if you had managed to convince the council of your right… they would not give you permission to ascend into Primehood." And, had Megatron still been Megatronus, his trusted friend and confidant, Optimus's spark would ache for him. As it is, all of his feelings are at the former gladiator, not for him.
"...You cannot know that."
"I… learned something after accepting the Matrix." The Prime admitted softly. "Something about my old mentor that I was unaware of before."
"And what kind of secrets could that old bucket of bolts be keeping?" A part of him, the one that still felt vaguely like Orion, wanted to leap to his mentor's defense. It was quelled, however, by Optimus reminding himself that the dead no longer have any honor to defend.
And neither do they have any lingering feelings about secrets they kept in life.
So he may as well be honest.
"He was a Prime." And there it was.
The secret Alpha Trion kept to his very grave, one that not even Orion Pax, his prized student, learned of before it was far too late, now hung in the abyss between empty air and suffocating rocks.
"...what?" It was almost comedic how small Megatron sounded at this very moment.
"Before he became the Leading Archivist in Iacon, Alpha Trion was one of the thirteen original Primes." He finally said it to someone, it is no longer something caged up like an animal in his chassis. "And, because of that, he had the knowledge to know who was meant to inherit the Matrix."
It hurts to say as much as it hurts to just know about.
Because that means he was lied to (Primus Alpha Trion told him he was going to be an archivist), that his trusted mentor and confidant kept something this important from him the entire time.
How different would things go if Orion knew about his destiny?
(The most damning of all is the little voice in the back of his head saying that it wouldn't change a thing.)
"It was never going to be you, Megatron." He added, quieter still. "...I'm sorry." And it feels like his new favorite word.
For, ever since that fateful day, that's all he ever was.
Sorry.
Sorry for secrets kept by his mentor.
Sorry for the loss, the pain, the misery, the deaths…
For this entire ugly mess of a war.
(So many people to apologize to… both human and Cybertronian… more of them dead than alive…
He'd burn his lungs out trying to repent, and the ghosts would laugh and weep.)
He wonders if Alpha Trion was being cruel by calling him the Prime of Hope when all he ever accomplished was death and death and death.
(Prime of Ruin. That should be his name. For everywhere he goes, it follows.)
"...Shut up, Prime." Megatron says revealing nothing about his current feelings but the ever present anger.
So Optimus does.