shadow_vector | The Cusp of Return

Title: The Cusp of Return
Rating: PG
Continuity: IDW, set mid Chaos
Characters: Rodimus, Drift
For weekly request prompt "Rodimus/Drift dead hearts"
Notes (and possibly spoilers) at end.

Rodimus stepped up next to the viewscreen. Cybertron, after all this time, spread beneath them again. And unlike last time, their last glance a backward one in flight, this was a slow approach, and the planet below glittered feebly with signs of life. A lot had changed, apparently. Down there, and up here. “Been a long time, huh?”

Drift shrugged. “Long enough.” Non-committal, holding back. Well, Rodimus supposed, he had reason. The Autobots hadn’t been exactly welcoming.

“None of us wanted this. Not even the Decepticons.”

The other’s mouth pulled down. “No. Megatron wanted it all to burn.”

Rodimus considered. Drift had never been exactly forthcoming about his past, but he’d never really hidden it, either. Was this an invitation? “What do you think he’s thinking?” He jerked his head back to the center of the ship, the core of Omega Supreme, where Megatron was held, immobilized.

A shrug, but not a hostile one. “Been a long time since we spoke.”

“Did you used to?”

Another shrug. “A long time ago.” A repetition, but an admission as well.

“Not afraid to, are you?” Halfway between teasing and testing.

A shadow crossed the silver facial plating. “Just…,” Drift shook his head. “Not right.”

“What’s not right?”

The helm turned, the finials carving a helix in the dimness of the room. “Him. Here. Any of it.”

“You don’t think we should let him go, do you?” Rodimus remembered—a little too well—his own last meeting with the Decepticon. If his repaired body had forgotten, his memory core could still remember, vividly, the hot burning agony of the fusion cannon’s blast, the sneer on the hard face, and the bitter pain of failure. He’d gone to redeem himself, and had failed. He was perfectly okay with Megatron, surrendered, neutralized and immobilized.

“Don’t know. Just…the VVH.”

Drift’s telegraphic style was hard to get used to. Rodimus wondered how Perceptor had stood it for so long. Then again, Perceptor had changed. “He’s Megatron. We have to have something to keep him controlled.”

“Not that. I mean…Optimus.”

Rodimus nodded, his own mouth pulling to one side. Yeah, he hadn’t been happy with that either. Optimus using the harness’s current. They’d just been talking. That was all. Talking. And Optimus had lost control. That’s not what heroes do. Rodimus could see the temptation, sure, but…that’s not what heroes do. It just wasn’t.

Still, Optimus was the leader, right?

“Megatron could push a saint past his limit,” Rodimus said. A half-hearted defense, but a defense nonetheless.

Drift bowed his head, taking a step back, as if closing off again. As if aware he’d said something wrong, unacceptable.

Heh. Rodimus was all about unacceptable. “Must be hard to watch another idol fall.” Rodimus remembered Cybertron and Drift from before—it seemed every time the white mech spoke, someone shut him down. And yet Drift still kept trying. Holding his words quietly, weighing them as if measuring to see if they were worth the resistance he'd get.

A bitter snort. “Not an idol. I think that’s the problem. Feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t believe.”

“Believe in what?”

A struggle. Drift really didn’t want to answer. But it was a direct question and something in the mech’s strange code of honor won out. “Optimus.” The jaw tightened and then Drift suddenly turned his attention to the glowing net of lights of Cybertron, scattered below them like a spangled dark carpet.

“What do you believe in?”

“Hope. A future better than now, better than the past.” A pause. “That’s what I’ve always been fighting for.”

“The past wasn’t so bad.”

The blue optics hardened as Drift turned, and for a klik, Rodimus could see Deadlock—the scowl, the gaze like a weapon, the entire body taut with violence. “It was for some of us.” He mastered himself, with visible effort. “Fighting was better, because you were doing something.”

“Kind of easy to do the wrong something, though.” It didn’t sound blaming, he hoped. Rodimus had learned a little too well, a little too personally, that action for the sake of action sometimes went wrong. He could feel Drift tense, then loosen.

“It is,” Drift said, quietly. “Wrong thing for the right reasons.”

“Or the right thing, for the wrong reasons.” Like himself, how many times? This last time, haring off after the Matrix to prove…something to someone. He could still feel where the Matrix had rested, a memory of some powerful bliss. He’d learned so much, floating on the liminal edge of death, as space slowly cooled around him, the Matrix taking him, showing him himself, the war, their kind, with a kind of vertiginous depth-of-field.

Drift nodded, staring through the screen, through the planet itself, it seemed, until he could see the heart of the planet, struggling underneath the weight of their war. Staggering on, as they all did. He said nothing, but it wasn’t a hostile silence, just one of knowing, and knowing that words didn’t help sometimes, words did nothing but cheapen and attenuate. “Didn’t see it,” Drift murmured, raising one hand to the cool glass. “I didn’t see any of it. Had to die to see it.” A rapid blink of the optic shutters, his other hand reaching to stroke the Great Sword’s hilt, as though finding some comfort in it.

“Me too,” Rodimus said. Like Cybertron—a dead heart crusted over with ego and history. Something drastic needed to happen to start beating again, start living again. He managed a grin. “Funny how that works, huh?”

NOTES: the VVH (variable voltage harness) is what's keeping Megatron immobilized. Before leaving Earth, Optimus had become so upset after sharing histories with Megatron that he activated the harness. It was only Omega Supreme's cutting of the current that prevented Optimus from killing Megatron outright with that action.

Hot Rod had left Earth after the debacle with Swindle in order to find the Matrix, figuring this would even the score. His motives were mostly selfish. He got his comeuppance--hard--at the end of Megatron's cannon and was left to float in space with the Matrix, a 'useless bauble'. When he returned to Earth he'd undergone a considerable change in attitude, handing the Matrix over to its 'rightful' owner, Optimus.

The Cusp of Return

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