Drift (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sword_redemption) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
re_alignment_logs2012-12-13 08:52 am
sword_redemption) wrote in re_alignment_logs2012-12-13 08:52 am
Entry tags:
Symbols and Signs
who: Drift and anyone who wants to?
what: Drift doesn't really do grief
when: After departing for the badlands again
where: the Arena
warnings: none
Megatron had always been one for symbols. He'd always understood that language was one weapon, but that symbols, physical and tangible, were another, one that spoke at a deeper register than mere words.
Mere words. What had Megatron done with 'mere words'.
Drift shakes his head, standing in the churned up ground of the Arena. He didn't know what he'd thought he'd find here. He didn't know what he'd thought he'd find out in the Badlands, either. Closure, peace, something.
All he'd found was bits of metal, stains of energon, and char.
The site where he'd been killed had been easy enough to find: he remembered their basic departure vector, and driven on, his tires finding the path with a haunting ease, until he'd come to the end: the ground torn up, bits of it blackened and blasted. This is where he'd died. This is where...it ended.
He didn't know--he couldn't remember--who had done it. Rodimus? Ultra Magnus? Each of them unbelievable, for different reasons. Rodimus was his friend--he'd thought. Ultra Magnus didn't kill. All he knew is he'd died here. Rodimus had died here.
Everything had died here.
He'd found what he'd thought he was looking for: a tiny scrap of metal, chromium gold. But it said nothing to him, felt only like metal and nothing more.
So he'd come here, next, where Megatron had died. It made sense: he'd died where it had all, in a sense, started--in an Arena, fighting for his life, his honor.
He found another scrap of metal, the matte titanium he remembered from all those ages ago, when Megatron had singled him out, picked him out of a crowd and given him a focus and a name and a destiny.
Two scraps of metal, one in each hand, leaders he'd followed, perhaps blindly.
It wasn't just a myth, that Decepticons, at least in the beginning, when they were recruited, not created, had their insignia formed from part of their spark casing. He remembered that, all too well. You forgot pain, but you never forgot that you felt it: he remembered that he'd sworn he wouldn't cry out, he wouldn't show pain.
He had. He'd screamed, fighting against the restraints, his body convulsed with white-hot agony as the small panel had been excised from his spark chamber's casing. And then he'd told himself that it was the end, the bleeding off of final weakness. That Drift had screamed, writhed, but that Drift had died there, and Deadlock had been born.
He'd thought at least Ambulon would have understood what he'd meant to do: an honor, a symbol, keeping part of Rodimus's armor, making it part of himself. Symbolism, probably childish. 'Till all are one' a little too literally. But no one understood and he had to wonder why he was the one out of phase.
This hurt, but in a different way, a pain that seemed to tear and gnaw, worse than the random flashes of fire and pain he had when he tried to recharge. And he had no idea who he was becoming, this time.
what: Drift doesn't really do grief
when: After departing for the badlands again
where: the Arena
warnings: none
Megatron had always been one for symbols. He'd always understood that language was one weapon, but that symbols, physical and tangible, were another, one that spoke at a deeper register than mere words.
Mere words. What had Megatron done with 'mere words'.
Drift shakes his head, standing in the churned up ground of the Arena. He didn't know what he'd thought he'd find here. He didn't know what he'd thought he'd find out in the Badlands, either. Closure, peace, something.
All he'd found was bits of metal, stains of energon, and char.
The site where he'd been killed had been easy enough to find: he remembered their basic departure vector, and driven on, his tires finding the path with a haunting ease, until he'd come to the end: the ground torn up, bits of it blackened and blasted. This is where he'd died. This is where...it ended.
He didn't know--he couldn't remember--who had done it. Rodimus? Ultra Magnus? Each of them unbelievable, for different reasons. Rodimus was his friend--he'd thought. Ultra Magnus didn't kill. All he knew is he'd died here. Rodimus had died here.
Everything had died here.
He'd found what he'd thought he was looking for: a tiny scrap of metal, chromium gold. But it said nothing to him, felt only like metal and nothing more.
So he'd come here, next, where Megatron had died. It made sense: he'd died where it had all, in a sense, started--in an Arena, fighting for his life, his honor.
He found another scrap of metal, the matte titanium he remembered from all those ages ago, when Megatron had singled him out, picked him out of a crowd and given him a focus and a name and a destiny.
Two scraps of metal, one in each hand, leaders he'd followed, perhaps blindly.
It wasn't just a myth, that Decepticons, at least in the beginning, when they were recruited, not created, had their insignia formed from part of their spark casing. He remembered that, all too well. You forgot pain, but you never forgot that you felt it: he remembered that he'd sworn he wouldn't cry out, he wouldn't show pain.
He had. He'd screamed, fighting against the restraints, his body convulsed with white-hot agony as the small panel had been excised from his spark chamber's casing. And then he'd told himself that it was the end, the bleeding off of final weakness. That Drift had screamed, writhed, but that Drift had died there, and Deadlock had been born.
He'd thought at least Ambulon would have understood what he'd meant to do: an honor, a symbol, keeping part of Rodimus's armor, making it part of himself. Symbolism, probably childish. 'Till all are one' a little too literally. But no one understood and he had to wonder why he was the one out of phase.
This hurt, but in a different way, a pain that seemed to tear and gnaw, worse than the random flashes of fire and pain he had when he tried to recharge. And he had no idea who he was becoming, this time.
no subject
no subject
He lets out a heavy ventilation.
"The world that shaped me, and the world that shaped you and him, they are similar, yet so vary different. Not just in polarity but in fractions of possibilities and paths. Those differences small as they my seem at first, inexorably produce vast changes in us. I do not want to judge anything, but I wish to understand what factors shaped him the way they did, so that I might understand my own self better."
no subject
"More than that," Drift says. "I go back, and think about it, and I wonder what went wrong, or if it was all wrong from the start, what we wanted. Where we went astray."
no subject
He looks down at Drift, contemplating the words. "In my world the war became because one mech wanted change in a stagnant society. He was not wrong, it was change that we needed. But my disagreement rose from the methods he used, fear and violence, to encourage support. Those who didn't join him were punished, often killed, including the university I worked at."
"I can not judge him though, perhaps to him the only method to create that change was through violence. I disagree, but that doesn't make either of us wrong. A war that is fought because both sides want thing done or dealt with differently, especially when they see that the outcome should be the same in the long run, is a very difficult one to judge right from wrong. At least, in my opinion."
no subject
"Your world sounds like mine, in a way. Our society was corrupt: mechs like me starved and suffered and no one cared. Megatron was the one to finally get them to listen. And they tried to stop him, too, but they failed." He shakes his head. "It's still hard to see where we went wrong. Because I still believe in our cause." Things he doesn't often admit: it's a sign how rattled he is that he's saying anything.
no subject
"For me I hold to my morals as a way to tell if something is right or wrong, but I am also just one person, who am I to say that my morals must apply to everyone?"
no subject
"I wish I had faith in my own morals. I've...chosen wrong."
no subject
"Have you learned from those choices? Often times we make mistakes, but so long as we are willing to learn from them we can succeed where we failed before."
no subject
"I've learned that I was wrong, but, well, I want to know that I've learned the right things."
no subject
"What makes you doubt the things you have learned?"
no subject
He frowns. "I doubt because I've made mistakes before, and not realized it until too late."
no subject
"Do you have anyone you can go to and ask for their opinion about things you do?"
no subject
He worries about this, especially because it's Wing, who died for him.
no subject
Everyone has intuition and Megatron is certain that if they listen to it, it will guide them right.