shadow_vector | What Lights the Moon?

PG
IDW, post Chaos Theory, pre Megatron Origin
Impactor, Megatron, Wing
for tf_speedwriting prompt 3 New Moon in the Old Moon’s Arms

“Don’t worry,” Impactor said, in that flat way that was his sense of humor. “I’ll find us a party.”

Party, in Impactor’s lexicon, meant ‘a place we can get overcharged for free with enough privacy or loose enough manners we can frag in the hallway’. It was a good definition, clear and true to who Impactor was. Megatron nodded.

“You look like you could use one,” Impactor said, with one last backward glance as he headed along the night-wrapped boulevard.

So do you, Megatron thought, watching Impactor move off. Their last leave together, and half of it, it seemed, already stolen by Personnel, with their long lectures and big words. Big words Megatron knew, but he knew as well their intent was to drown out reason with syllables, so he sat, quiet and dumb, letting them pour over him. ‘Dangerous associates’, and ‘employability’ had been hammered in a dozen times, the upshot being that they were considered too dangerous to work the same mine. Next workcycle, Megatron was getting shipped to another mine; Impactor, whose new frame still needed the heavy armoring that had kept him safe underground, would be sent to an ore-sorting facility.

Neither had liked a single word they’d been fed, but both knew better than to gag on the taste.

The neons of signs caught on Impactor’s armor, his headlamps bobbing through the darkness, and Megatron found himself alone in the plaza, wondering why they’d even come. Except, of course, that the only option was to stay on the mine and right now, both of them realized that would prove every negative tic they’d seen in their files true.

He wasn’t looking forward to tonight, but didn’t want it not to happen. One last night, stumbling home against Impactor, one last time taking each other fumbling and hard, sensors dulled by high-grade. The worst thing about last times is knowing they’re the last. He wanted, suddenly, the dulling numbness of the high-grade.

He turned, and saw a statue: an enormous interpretation of some Prime or another. He moved toward it, almost listlessly. Like coming down here, it was just…something to do. Strange, and uncomfortable, how time not working seemed empty. He remembered filling it with poetry, with essays, reading and writing and thinking.

And he still remembered, he could still feel the hard blow across his helm as Whirl taught him how useless words really were.

He moved closer, staring up at the statue. Larger than life, larger than anything, posed one foot forward, chassis lifted, as though on the threshold of something magnificent.

And not, Megatron thought, a dirty boulevard on the edge of the red-light district of Kolkular.

“Nova,” a voice said, below and left. Megatron ‘s optics found a small white jet, guidelamps off, perched on one of the ornamental benches. Another thing out of place here. The jet offered a smile. “Nova Prime, the one who disappeared.”

“I know the story.” A flash of optics, acutely aware of the miner’s chromium and black striping on his armor, how it marked him out, set him apart. The jet had no such markings.

“Some say,” the jet continued, “he left the Matrix here. Others say it was lost with him.” Gold optics tilted up to his lowlight-red. “It seems to me that the spark is gone from this world.”

Megatron snorted. “A poet. I have no more time for poetry.” Not anymore. Useless words, a blanket of denial he had wrapped himself in for too long.

The other tilted his head, audial flares catching in Megatron’s headlamps. “Philosophy, perhaps? Metaphysics, definitely.” He scooted over on the bench, blatantly making room.

Megatron glowered for a long moment, before dropping into the seat, cutting his own headlamps, letting the night settle in around him, aware of Nova Prime’s statue looming over him. “Wastes of time, all of them.”

“And what is not?”

“Work.”

“Work.” A flicker of a smile. “It seems to me work wastes something else. Why be sentient if work is all there is?”

A growl, because the comment stung, tearing through a weld a bit too new. He folded his arms over his chassis, staring down the converging lines of the boulevard, knowing that the only answer down there was Impactor, high-grade, and the cheap pleasures of a rough interface against a wall somewhere. Sentience seemed wasted there, too. “Mine to waste,” he said, sullenly.

“If it makes you happy,” the other said, airily, and then a moment later. “Does it make you happy?”

He felt his fists clench. “It’s not your business.”

The white mech seemed surprised, for a beat, and then moved, fast and agile, and Megatron found the white helm in his lap, gold optics smiling up at him. Megatron’s hands hovered, startled, over his occupied lap. The jet wriggled his shoulders against Megatron’s hip, and the chin tipped up. “Look up. What do you see?”

He frowned, but obeyed, turning his helm upward.

The night sky was clear, spangled with stars and the larger shine of Orbital Tori in the jagged negative space left by the buildings, and one of the moons hung, rimmed with silver light, low and large in the sky. “It’s the moon,” he said, shrugging.

“What lights the moon?”

Megatron snorted, wanting to shove the jet’s head off his lap, stand, find Impactor and wrap himself in the drunken null-ness of another—one among thousands—empty/full nights of leave. “Solar light.”

“But this,” the jet pointed, hand stirring idly upward. “This is a reflection from our planet, off our seas, off our roofs, light cast back into the sky.” An almost dreamy tone. “On the moon, they are looking at a beautiful, glowing, full Cybertron.”

The line of light on the moon’s bottom was almost blinding, white and clean, like the edge of a blade. And Megatron felt a strange pang near his spark, the part that used to foam with words, ideas, emotions.

He hated it, wanted those emotions and ideals quelled forever. “It’s the moon,” he said, harshly. “And light. Reflection.” He frowned.

“It is,” the jet said, agreeably. “Science has its story.” Another shift of the white armor against his, the jet’s sleek with polish. “In Altihex, where I’m from, we call it the ‘new moon in the old moon’s arms’. A signal of change, of hope. Renewal.” A smile, distant and fond.

“So.”

“So,” the jet said. “Science has reasons. But reasons aren’t a thing’s entire meaning.” He tapped his crest with one finger. “Science speaks to this. But…,” the hand moved, brushing the broad, square plate of Megatron’s chassis, “something else speaks to this.”

He trapped the smaller hand against his chassis, smothering it with one of his own. He could feel the smooth, undented plates under his own battered palm, as he gripped, hard enough to hurt. “Why are you telling me this?”

The gold optics tilted, the hand still under his grip. “Because you understand.”

What Lights the Moon?

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