Choosing My Name, And Other Mistakes: Ch 24

-XXIV-

Sensations told me things were happening to my body. There were footsteps. The persistent beeping of a monitor. The clink of tools. I felt the warmth of a welding flame; the tug of pliers; the pressing tremor of a buffer. Scents of hot solder and melted ducting wafted through my olfactory sensors. Thundercracker’s arms held me through all this, held me tightly against the arrhythmic, panicked flaring of his spark. I tried not to listen to any of it. Not to feel. Mostly, I tried not to think. Not to remember what I’d lost.

Sometimes – the worst times – there were voices.

Suntreaker’s voice, disbelieving: “She’s broken, Prime! How could you let this happen?”

Prime’s voice, shaken: “I made a mistake. I am sorry.”

Megatron’s voice, outraged: “As usual, you think it’s all about you, Prime. But I’m the one who didn’t hold her back.” (Something metallic spanged across the room) “I am the one who didn’t keep her safe.”

Thundercracker’s voice, cold and brittle as iron in liquid nitrogen: “Sir, if I had known she was so closely partnered with you, I would have forbidden it.”

“Wait – really?” Sunstreaker moved to stand beside Thundercracker and me, and put his hand protectively on my helm.

He was followed by another footfall; but Thundercracker drew me back sharply. “Don’t you touch her!” he hissed. “You don’t get to touch her ever again!”

Optimus Prime spoke evenly, but with some effort. “Megatron is not responsible for what was done to your daughters. And he has always been circumspect in his partnership with Rainbowsparkles.”

“Don’t you defend him, Prime. You’re tainted.”

“Thundercracker? What’s going on?” Sunstreaker sounded anxious now.

“I found a datapad she left. It was full of his poetry.” Thundercracker winced, his arms tightening around me. “She likes him, Sunstreaker. Likes him. And I know too well where that leads.” He spat a curse. “I know what that mech does to bots who like him.”

Sunstreaker hesitated. “But he’s your leader. Don’t you—?”

“Was my leader. Back when I was too weak to make any other choice. Here.” (Thundercracker’s arm moved.) “Download this. It’s some of the slag he did to Starscream. And that’s just what I saw myself.”  

Sunstreaker gasped. I felt him lunge away. “You bonded with this mech, Prime?”

No one answered.

“You let him, Elita?”

“Do not speak to me of sacrifices you will never understand.” There was broken glass and heartbreak in her voice. “The war is over. Isn’t that enough?”

Thundercracker snorted. “If I had a bondmate and he brought home a mech like Megatron, I’d… Well, I’d...” He wavered to a halt.

“See?” Elita cut in. “You’re not sure. And Primus-willing, you’ll never have to make that kind of choice. For now, enjoy the fruits of our decision. No one is shooting at you; no one’s asking you to fight. You’re free to build a family with an Autobot. Save your righteous anger for your daughters – for all the femmlings so defiled by Octane and Swindle.”

Megatron spoke quietly. “They’re not defiled.”  

“You shut up!” Thundercracker spat.

There was a stifled moan, but not from me.

“All of you shut up! Can’t you see you’re hurting him?” I heard my makers gasp. Elita wasn’t often one to shout.

“Him?” Thundercracker was still angry. “What’s Prime’s problem?”

Prime’s voice was weary as he murmured to his bondmate. But I was a practiced listener. “I can handle it. Don’t burden them.”

But Elita shushed him. “No. They need to understand.” She spoke sharply to my makers. “Imagine Primacron gave you a continuous link to every spark-core on Cybertron.”

Thundercracker shifted like there was sand under his armor. “Prime’s new matrix. Everyone knows about it.”

“Fine. But now all of Cybertron is grieving. And almost 200 femmlings had their sparks torn open. Imagine you can feel all that. Imagine the weight of it on your spark. Would you like to trade places with him?”

Beside me, Sunstreaker muttered, “No...”

“I didn’t think so.” I imagined Elita taking Prime’s hand, the way she often did. “You fight now to protect your daughter, which is only proper. I’ll fight to protect my bondmate. And this fighting hurts us all. Rainbowsparkles looks offline, but she sometimes returns to partial consciousness. She may be listening right now.”

I froze. Elita could read energy. What was mine telling her?

“Go,” she ordered. “You have another daughter here who needs you. Fighting and recrimination will not help either of your girls to heal.”

(Half of me bristled that Elita said ‘your girls,’ like we were property. But the other half knew we would always be a part of Thundercracker and Sunstreaker’s family. I also knew that wasn’t a bad thing.)

Sunstreaker grumbled. He stroked my brow with an artisan’s careful hand, and whispered something tender. Thundercracker laid me gently down on the repair berth, and followed him out of the room.

Their footsteps faded. A door closed. Megatron sounded desperate (something thumped against the wall). “Dammit, Ops – Primacron must have given you that matrix for a reason! Can’t you do anything to help them?”

“You think I haven’t tried?” I was surprised. I’d never heard Prime snap like that before. “If you know how I can restore the sparks of 177 newlings, plus the others who were kidnapped before this, speak by all means.” Prime’s venting was ragged, his voice sandpaper-rough. “I know you think it’s my job to heal them. It just so happens, so do I. But I can’t, old man. I’ve tried and I’ve tried. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

Nobody spoke for several minutes. There was only the sound of straining engines and strained friendships.

“Come, my love,” Elita said finally. Her footsteps, brisk and businesslike, pulled Prime’s weary feet out of my cubicle.

Only one bot remained with me. He stepped close, but didn’t touch me. (Thundercracker’s words must have hit home.) “I’m sorry, little one,” he whispered. “More than I can say.”

A squeaky wheel horrid enough to raise the dead heralded Ratchet’s return now. I heard him jostle the rolling tool cart in through the narrow door. I heard him curse its wailing axle, its unwieldy frame, and for some reason, its parentage. I heard Megatron whirl on the medic. “She’s still refusing to wake up. Fix her, dammit!”

Ratchet snorted. “I’m a good medic, but not blessed with magic powers. That’s the Command Triad’s department. What can you do to help her, old man?”

“Me?” Megatron sniffed derisively. “Ratchet, Primacron just gave me something shiny to shut me up for a while. I’m useless to her.”

“I suggest you find some way to be of use. Or leave.”

He left.

I was alone.

I slunk back to the refuge of mindless oblivion.

* * * * *

I woke to an alarm I could not shut down without getting up to push a button. I cursed Ratchet’s name, rolled over, and smashed the alarm to bits. My chronometer insisted it had been two weeks since my abduction. Internal readouts told me I had a rebuilt vocoder and new optical ducting. I didn’t care. It was my spark that worried me. It felt hollow and lifeless. I looked down at my chest and groaned in frustration. All I could see were the usual swirls of purple-copper-teal titanium. Fine. I ripped my chestplate open, roaring words that would have shocked my makers. My spark was in there all right, pulsing erratically. But where before it had flashed every color of the rainbow, now it only shone a taunting peppy yellow.

At birth, I’d been bombarded by the content of my makers’ sparks. Back then, the sight of so much history had almost killed me. This was worse. But I was older now. My systems had hardened. So I did not fall into an unconscious, twitching heap when I saw what was missing from my spark. I stayed online and bore the pain of loss.  

I curled my body tight around my open wound. But all the pain was in my mind, not physical. I think I would have preferred it to hurt. Or if there’d been some scar that I could see. Or even if my spark had been some dark and brooding color. Yellow? It was mockery.

I lashed out at the mech who’d stopped in the doorway behind me. (He was venting very quietly in hopes I wouldn’t notice him.)

“Happy now, Megatron? I’m blind. Your spark’s secrets are safe from me forever.”

He said nothing. Just stood there.

So I cried. Or maybe I should say I screamed and howled. I turned to flaunt my injury, raging that I’d always disliked yellow. (Sunstreaker, who had painted all my joints the same yellow he wore, could go smelt himself.) I sobbed that I’d once thought my rainbow spark was silly, somehow weak; and now felt rotten that it had been taken. I grieved for that small gauzy bit of me that had been ripped out, put into a jar, and lost. I fumed that I’d always resented seeing sparks, but felt desolate now without their shining company. I cried that if I returned to my makers’ house, it would feel like nothing I’d done had mattered. Like I’d have to be a child again. Cried that I didn’t know who I was now, or who I ought to be.

“I know who you are, Sparky,” he said quietly, when I stopped to hiccup. “At least, I like to think I do.”

I called him every word I’d ever heard drunk mechs use when Tankor or Roadbuster threw them out of The Hub. I even made up a few new words all my own.

Megatron didn’t speak up to defend himself. I heard his servos whining to take action; but he just stood there and took it. When he finally did speak, it was more to himself than to me. And it wasn’t angry. It was sad.

“I never was a mech to pine at bedsides. Never spent time in the medbay waiting for a lieutenant to heal. I always thought that kind of thing was silly. Let the medics do their work, and stay out of the way.” He let out a long hiss of pressure. “Then Starscream almost killed Prime and Elita. I was devastated. The mech I’d just opened my whole spark to – the new family I’d been given after a misspent lifetime alone – it was being taken from me, and there was nothing, nothing, nothing I could do to stop it. It unmade me. I spent so much time in the medbay Ratchet threatened to put me into cold-storage. But I was there when Prime came back online. I got to yell at him for making me afraid.” He gave a mirthless grin. “I guess that made the whole thing almost worth it.” He looked at me then, and his optics were two deep red pools of fire. “This time, the threat is my own fault, not Starscream’s.” He slumped onto the stool beside my berth, and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’ve come here almost every day, Rainbowsparkles. Whenever I can get away. Whenever nothing interesting is happening upstairs. I waited. To see if I’d lost you.”

I did not know what I should say to all this. It was like being dropped into deep space, without a warning or return-plan. I felt dizzy.

“May I hold you?” Megatron asked, in a strained, hopeless sort of voice I’d never heard him use before. “It’s all I have to offer you to say I’m sorry that I didn’t hold you tighter back when it could have saved you from Octane.”

I thought about what Thundercracker had said about Megatron. I thought about the things I’d seen on my ill-fated dive into his spark – back when I could see things in sparks. But then I thought about how Megatron had acted since I’d known him. I noted both Ratchet and Prime left him alone with me without any apparent qualm. It was as if there were two mechs with the same name… and one of them was my Mystery Mech. I gave up. “Sure. Hold me if it makes you feel like you’re doing something.”

I wondered if he’d snap at me for that. But all I got for my cheap shot was a swift catch in his venting. Megatron moved with an uncertainty that wasn’t like his usual brash confidence. He sat down gingerly beside me on the slab; then turned, and held his arms out. Grateful (though I’d never say it) I crawled up onto his lap.

“How did you know it was me at the door?” he asked. “I thought I was so stealthy.”

I scoffed. “I’m quite good at listening to people who don’t want me to hear them.”

“Was it the footsteps?”

“No. Your smell.”

He froze. “My smell?”

“Hot crude oil, ozone, nitro-glycerine. It’s always you. No one else has that combination.”

“Heh. Perhaps you’ll become an olfactory spy now,” he remarked.

I wasn’t amused. “How dare you?”

“It’s spite the world or cry, sweetheart. I never give myself that second option.”

“Slag you, Megatron. I choose to cry.”

“I don’t want you to. I want you to be happy again. Honestly, Sparky, I think your life will be better without seeing sparks. I’m glad, for instance, that you’re in no further danger of seeing mine.”

I sighed, too worn-out from my fit of crying to do more. “I knew you would be.” I leaned against his warm chest, and traced a finger over the purple mark engraved on his armor. “But I miss seeing them, Megatron. Sparks are beautiful.”

“I never paid attention. I was usually more focused on snuffing them out.” He huffed and shifted position. “Prime’s spark is beautiful, I guess. I’ll give you that.”

“They were like friendly stars around me every day. Sure, they could burn me if I got too close. But they were stars, Megatron. They were friends. I feel so alone now without them.” I dug the heel of one hand into my useless optics. It did no good. “If I could look into your spark right now, I would. Even if it was agony. Even if it might wreck the trust I’ve come to have in you. It’s not smart. It’s not rational. But it’s how I feel.” I shrugged. “It’s like I’ve woken up to find I’ve been imprisoned in my body, cut off from everyone else. I don’t know how you all stand it.”

Megatron absorbed this in silence. He rocked me slowly back and forth for several minutes. But I knew he was distracted. His arms tensed; and he exhaled sudden sharp blasts of heated engine-air. He was obviously wrestling with something. At last he stopped, and sat up straight.

“Sparky, turn your optics on. I want to show you something.” Megatron unclasped his thick chestplate, and let it fall heavily to the floor. “Be careful,” he warned. “But I thought, maybe you can read a spark if there’s no barrier.”

I looked. Looked hungrily, desperately, clinging to a dubious scrap of hope.

And there it was. Mounted above his main engine, nestled in knots of neural-ducting and flanked by – was that really a carburetor? – his red spark pulsed with a ponderous, ancient rhythm. I strained to read it. I peered at that fist-sized, swirling ball of light until my optic servos whined. But it was just a swirling ball of light. It told me nothing. All I could say was that it seemed familiar, like something I’d glimpsed once on a long drive. I reached out to touch it.

Megatron flinched and grabbed my hand.

“Sorry,” I said, embarrassed. “Wasn’t thinking.” I folded my arms tight to hide my disappointment. “It doesn’t tell me anything. But thanks for trying. Want to put your armor back on now?”

He shook his head. “That was just a shot in the dark. What I really wanted to show you was all the things you can read in a spark without some special ability.”

I looked at him, surprised.

“Watch,” he ordered.

I watched.

Megatron’s spark whirled like a lightening storm in an ominous, dark-red morning. Every so often, though, there was an unexpected flash of blue. I gasped.

“That’s Optimus,” he said. “My bond-brother these last ten years, to everyone’s surprise. Now keep watching...” Much darker, clawlike patches curled over the spark to smother its red light, and hide the bits of blue. Megatron swore and fidgeted. “That’s some of the slag I’d have warned you away from, if you could still eavesdrop into my past.” He sighed. “Those are the times I lost myself. But here. And here...” He pointed to intense bright flares of vivid red that pulsed with life. “I like to think these are times I spoke the truth. Maybe some of my better writings.” He shook his shoulders like he was dislodging something. “Ah! There it is. This is what I wanted to show you. Prime noticed it earlier this morning.” Megatron pointed to a tiny wisp of flame. I gasped. It was yellow.

Reflexively, I looked down into my own spark, still open from when I’d ripped my armor off. Sure enough, a thread of red now darted through it. I raised my wide-eyed face to Megatron. “What does it mean? Can sparks reflect each other?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? I just thought it might help you feel less alone.”

I stared a long time at that tiny hint of yellow fire, as it whirled amid the lightening-storm in Megatron’s red spark. At last I asked him, “Why me? Why my spark?”

He pursed his lips and looked away. “About a million reasons, little one. All of them complicated, some not pretty, and a few probably wrong.” He smiled, but not his usual sharp, toothy grin. This smile contained a tired acceptance that I’d never seen before. “I’m scared, Sparky. Scared that I’ll hurt you someday. It’s an old, old, ingrained habit.”

Once again, I ran through all my Megatron archives. “I’m too new to be scared of you,” I shrugged.

“And I’m too old and too selfish to send you packing.” He squeezed me tight. I tucked my face into his shoulder and felt safe as a diamond. “Mostly, Spark, I am grateful. Grateful enough to go down right this moment to Primacron’s chamber and grovel before them on the floor.”

“Is that where you got this?” I tapped the one thing that did not fit neatly in with all his other tangled internals: a square blue crystal cased in twining silver metal that curved outward into two sharp points. “Primacron gave you something, right? When Prime got his new Matrix and Elita got her key?”

Megatron raised an eyebrow. “You certainly pay attention.”

“Professional collector of dropped information,” I confirmed.

“It’s meaningless. Just a consolation prize. They called it a ‘Matrix of Leadership’...” He snorted. “Ha! It doesn’t do anything useful. Oh, it pushes at me sometimes. Like the time I stayed at Spangle’s and was there when Flashpoint knocked. Lately it’s been bothering me to make Prime use his matrix to heal the new femmlings. But whenever I suggest it, he gives me this look like I’ve just torn his heart out. He says he can’t, and I believe him. Prime would donate all his limbs to save them if he could...” He stopped, and looked at me with some concern. “I shouldn’t have told you all that. Ignore my complaining.”

“The femmlings – what happened to them?” I asked, finally turning my attention to someone besides myself.

He slumped, and looked at me from under black brows drawn together. “Are you sure you want to hear this right now?”

I tapped the casing of my single-color spark. “I’d like to know if this was worth it.”

His lips tightened. He stared at me intently. Then he said, “We found a lot more newlings than we had expected.”

I knew that much. “Will they survive?”

He looked away. “Mirage and Skywarp have a well-established detox facility. They developed an effective program over the years since the Ceasefire. We sent all the femmes there, in case they need it.”

“Do they?”

“I’m afraid so. But—” He smiled and shook his head. “You should have seen all the medics converge. Everyone wants to help the femmes. For once, First Aid had the advantage over Ratchet, because his main practice was already set up at the Detox facility. He was the one to greet the newlings when they first arrived.” He gave me a wry smile. “I must say, First Aid has a much gentler bedside manner than our Ratchet does. Don’t tell him, but I think it’s for the best that he’s been stuck here caring for you and your sister.”

I had forgotten all about Andromeda. “Is she all right?”

“Your makers are adjusting to her personality unsoftened by that charm-filter. But yes. She is recovering quite well. Better than you, by a long shot.”

I sniffed. “If that was meant to be a taunt, it didn’t work. I’m glad Andromeda’s recovering. Though I do kind of wish...” I stopped; but the pressure was much much too great. I spewed the words in one big rush: “I sometimes wish I’d left her there, and escaped with my spark intact.”

He chuckled. “Spoken like a true Decepticon.”

I tried to remember. “Those are the purple badges, right?”

He laughed outright. “Sparky, you are a precious jewel too good for this poor world. Yes, those are the purple badges. I was quite proud of the design, I’ll have you know.”

I stiffened as a nightmare memory intruded, of a purple badge I’d seen as I lay paralyzed on Swindle’s operating table. Octane’s emblem had been right above me, as he had ripped my spark-sight from my open soul. A shudder clattered through my body.

Megatron frowned, missing none of this. He reached to the  nearestcounter, and grabbed the cube of distilled White that had stood there since I’d woken. “Here. Take some of this, before I tell you any more. Sip slowly,” he ordered.

I sipped obediently. It was good.

“What was that all about, just now?” he asked.

I vented a hot blast of pent-up air. “Just memories. I have some of my own now, and won’t need to see the nightmares from other mechs’ sparks to have a bad flux now.”

He pulled me tight against him – against all that intermeshed structure beneath his armor. He swore softly to himself. “It’s small comfort, but you don’t have to worry about Octane and Swindle any more,” he said.

“Tell me.”

Megatron exhaled a hot, leaden vent. “Swindle and Octane are both dead.”

“Executed?” I asked. “Is that a thing you do?”

“Nothing so clean as execution, I’m afraid. Skywarp teleported them back here. But instead of warping straight into the brig, he dropped them at the foot of the Citadel. Outside. Where an angry crowd was waiting to hear if we'd found you and the other femmlings.” He stopped and looked into my optics. I made no comment. He went on: “There were close to a hundred bots down there. Skywarp himself only survived by phasing out.” I felt a blast of heat as he ex-vented sharply. “We can’t verify his story now; and honestly I wouldn’t want to ask you to look into it even if you still could. We’ll never know if Skywarp landed them outside because he guessed what would happen. He swears he’s sorry; and perhaps that’s true. But cleaning drones are still picking up bits of Octane and Swindle. The oil-stains are going to be there even longer.”

I wanted to feel vindicated. Wanted to revel in righteous rage. But all I felt was sick. My tanks boiled over, and I fumbled blindly for something to catch the purge in. There was not even a bucket. I bent over and heaved hot fuel on the floor.

Unperturbed, Megatron patted my back softly until I was finished. Then he handed me a well-worn cloth, so I could wipe the foamy purge off of my face and hands.

“There is one good thing,” he said, resuming as if there had been no interruption. “It was Skywarp’s tech that Swindle used to make the teleporters he and Octane used. Skywarp was outraged by that, let me tell you. But he was able to follow the warp-signature back to all the portals they’d set up. He made sure there are no more femme newlings hidden.”

“How?” I asked. “I mean, I know that he can teleport. But how did he know where to go?”

Megatron paused. “He, um… He kept hold of Swindle’s hand in the melee outside the Citadel. It was the one with the teleporter.”

I tried to ignore the images that sprang up in my mind at this, and asked the first question I could think of. “Are you saying Skywarp can tell where a teleport has taken someone, just by holding it? How does he do that?”

Megatron smirked. “If Skywarp had any ambition, he’d have taken over Cybertron millions of years ago. His power is unique, and all our imitation teleporters came about after we studied him. So don’t ask me how he does what he does. He told me he followed the warp-trails, whatever that means. He made it sound like pathways through the air, like all he had to do was follow them. I guess it’s just something he recognizes. Something he knows because it’s a part of him. Like—” Megatron choked as if his vocalizer had clogged up. He looked at me. “I just had an idea.”

I waited. I waited some more. I lost my patience. “Are you going to tell me this wonderful idea?”

He looked at me. And I saw through the red-lit lenses of his optics, down into a deep sadness. “If you could have your spark-sight back, would you take it?”

“Of course!”

I’d spoken without thinking. So I vented once or twice to give my second thoughts a chance. Did I really want to be assailed daily by all the memories of traumatized, gazilion-year-old war-vets? “Yes,” I said, and meant it this time.  

“Just to be clear...” (Megatron’s voice was like a bar of steel in testing, just before it reached the breaking-point.) “You’d choose your spark-sight over being safer around mine.”

I looked at him, focused on optics that were now my only window into what he felt and thought. “What are you trying to say?”

“Just answer the damn question.”

I sighed. “Yes, Megatron. I would. Not that it matters. Why ask me about it now? It just hurts both of us.”

He clenched a fist. He looked away. He shifted underneath me. “You read Prime’s spark.”

“A little, yes, but what does that have to do with—”

He cut me off. “So you know him. How well does he know you?”

I wasn’t sure where this was heading. “Um, well, he always makes me feel as if he understands and cares about me. But doesn’t he do that to everyone?”

Megatron grinned sardonically. “Even his enemies.” He exhaled a long sigh, like he was letting something go. “One final question: If you had your spark-sight back, would you use it to help restore the other newlings’ sparks? If that was possible, I mean.”

“How can you even ask that?” I demanded, thinking of poor Flashpoint. “Of course I would. No matter if it took a thousand years.”

He looked at me, red optics burning like two dying suns, and stood, with me still in his arms. “Come, then. I think I know what remains to be done.”

Hurrying now – as if afraid his doubts would catch up to him if he stayed – Megatron kicked his chestplate angrily aside, and surged out of the medbay. Up the empty midnight elevator he bore me, to one of the middle floors of the Citadel. He leaned forward to bring the hand beneath my shoulders close enough to knock, and pounded on an unmarked door.

“Open up, Optimus!” he bellowed. “I finally know what Primacron’s been trying to tell us.”