shadow_vector | Dark Paths

PG
Dreamwave (I know WTF?!?)
Jetfire
spoilers for (like anyone's even read it, right?) War Within, Dark Ages, issues 3-4.
written for

tf_speedwriting prompt 'choosing a path'

Jetfire frowned, calling up another overlay. These attacks could not be random. The universe itself was not random, science was not random. No military commander would, then, simply randomly throw his soldiers into battle. There was a pattern. He just wasn’t seeing it. Yet.

The frustration gnawed at him. Jetfire considered himself a patient mech. He’d endured the suspicion of the Autobots, the quiet doubts, the murmured insinuations. He’d taken ‘too long’ to decide. He had ‘no moral struts’. He had gone about his business in silence, bent on proving them wrong in deeds.

And that had not worked: Megatron and Optimus were both gone and their former armies, instead of coming together in peace, had splintered into factions, dividing Cybertron into warlord territories with border skirmishes as each faction attempted to incrementally grow their stronghold and resource base. Hardly the ideal vision the Autobots had pitched. Even then, he refused to succumb to cynicism. He did his job. He had patience. It was sometimes all he had.

And his job right now was to discover the causes of these new attacks. Not the predictable assaults of rival territories. Something different that…felt different. Felt sinister.

Jetfire did not like going by such intangibles as mere ‘feelings’. Hence, he sat here, when he knew there was a battle on, when he knew his military prowess could possibly turn the tide of combat. He sat here because he was also, he believed, the only one who could figure this out. Science would give answers that combat could not.

And he knew his choice to stay, and not go and fight, would be additional evidence for his enemies, more proof that he was not a ‘true’ Autobot. More proof that his jet frame made him forever an outsider, a boundary crosser.

And at worst, a betrayer, turning against his own side, his own frametype. He had chosen: chosen the Autobots, chosen their vision of the future. It was hope. It was life and freedom. He chose it over his own...small wants and needs. He chose even knowing that it would eventually lead him to face his dearest friend in combat. This was the only small consolation of these dark days: that with so much at stake, so many factions, he might never have that awful burden of confronting Starscream. Who would ask him (because nothing, not even the war’s now fractalized chaos, would change Starscream) if it had all been worth it.

A question he could not answer.

He had chosen his path. And now he faced another question that needed an answer. One he had to answer. Because with hope guttering, science was all he had left.

He studied the overlay, called up a map of Kaon. Where it had all ended—so they thought. Really where the dark ages all began. And there. A rift in the ground, a chasm, like a gaping open maw. Blackened and twisted, its edges ragged and clawed.

Something…had gotten out.

They could not afford these petty squabbles any longer. Not that they ever could. They had an enemy larger than all of them, one who could claw its way out of the heart of Cybertron itself.

And he had another choice to make. Another path to choose. Another…betrayal.

He reached for the comm, numbly. “Shockwave,” he said, quietly. Hoping his voice could uphold the burden of all his choices.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ooh, I do like War Within, although comics don't "stick" in my head very well for some reason, so it's mostly hazy impressions rather than any clear storyline for me, but I think you've captured Jetfire and his inner musings very well here.

Poor guy, refusing to blindly support a side can really suck *pats*

I had to re-read the wiki before writing this, honestly. But the art for DW was so pretty I remembered Teh Awesome.

Trust me to find the angstiest character in any continuity, right? ^_____^

(I need a Jetfire icon! o_O)

Dark Paths

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