Spoilers for Heroic Nonsense Chapter 23:
Optimus forces a laugh. He’s still unsure. Ever since her forging age hit—practically overnight—Sari’s become more unpredictable. She keeps secrets now.
She sees his discomfort and gives him a friendly wink. “It’s normal, Optimus. He is charming. You’re not totally crazy about him, right?”
Optimus doesn’t answer. Sari raises a brow.
“…Wait. You are crazy about him?!”
Optimus feels the heat coming back again, spreading across his faceplate like a menace.
“No, I’m not. Would you cut it off? Please, Sari, I want to go to sleep.”
Sounding a little grumpy, Optimus gently pushes Sari to the side of the narrow corridor, as he walks towards his quarters. But the girl calls his name from behind.
“Optimus! Don’t leave so soon! I’ve got some news that you might want to hear!”
Optimum stops in tracks and sighs. “If it’s about Blackarachnia, I’m not interested, really.” He turns to the direction of his berthroom, but Sari already sneaks up in front of him, crossing her arms and giving him a pouting look. “It’s not about the Bug, or any bug.” She mutters, “will you let me finish first? It’s Megatron— I saw him wrote this.”
Sari raises a servo, showing Optimus a little picture on the touch screen of her communication module. It’s a photo of a datapad. Optimus recognizes the handwriting. Big, scribbled Cybertronian-decepticon letters with sharp edges. It’s his writings. Optimus frowns at Sari before he reads the actual text.
“You looked into his stuff?” He asks. His tone tainted with undeniable disapproval. Sari withdraws her arm with an immediate angry face.
“Oh, alright, Mr. Righteousness. I’m sorry I looked into a few data pads your crush accidentally left on the library table, and just for your possible interest, took pictures of the one on top that seemed like a love poem. But if you’re not interested, I’ll delete it right now!”
She begins clicking on her servo-screen like crazy. Optimus’s spark sinks. He immediately reaches lut and grabs Sari’s hand. “No! Please, Sari! Let me see it! I’m really sorry.”
It took quite a while for the teenager-bot to finally calm down and cooperate, so Optimus can read the said poem written by the bot in his dream. It turns out that it’s not Megatron’s poem— he didn’t wrote it, only translated it from a human writer. But the content makes Optimus’s spark shiver. It was one of his favorite poems. The poem he was reading before he fell into the decepticons’ haven and one of the first poems he recommended Megatron to read. The lines lie neatly in the decepticon’s scribbling letters, the rhymes were changed to meet the needs of Cybertronian language, but the meanings do not change. Optimus reads out the familiar lines under his breath:
“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art---,
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night…
…No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever---or else swoon to death.”
Optimus stares at the screen, silent.
Of all the poems. Of all the memories.
Megatron had chosen this one.
Does it mean that Megatron longs for a love like the one in the human’s writing? Not eternal life. Not long-lasting fame.
Something that lasts — not in time, but in meaning.
Just like what Optimus longs for.
Or… does Megatron actually care?
Enough to remember which poem Optimus once loved.
Enough to write it down. To translate it into his own tongue.
Or—are these just Optimus’s own fantasies? Is Optimus just grasping for something that’s not there?
Maybe Megatron was only practicing translation.
Maybe it meant nothing at all.
With conflicting thoughts filling his mind, Optimus returns to his quarters. He lies in berth, tossing and turning, not able to fall asleep. At one moment, he springs off the berth, sits in front of his small desk and takes out a clean data pad, wanting to write something down, a diary, a letter, or a poem— for Megatron, the bot that keeps haunting his mind— but at last he fails. The words escape his pen like shadows of the two moons shatter in the Argon sea the minute you touch the liquid surface. He hates himself for not having Megatron’s ability to express freely in literature. Look at him. A miner, a warlord, and a poet. How in the name of Cybertron can Optimus, a humble autobot engineer and small fraction leader, get him to like him— it doesn’t matter how Optimus feels. If Megatron wants it, he’ll get it, and if Megatron thinks it’s wrong— Optimus clinches his spark in berth, feeling himself completely at the mercy of the decepticon leader. Yet he loves every minute of the sweet torture, the temptation.
