When the Great War is consigned to history, Medic Ratchet thinks to himself, they had better tell the story of this night, too – of a night of stillness and frost, gaggles of boys barely more than children playing football in their contrasting uniforms in No Man’s Land, of the night when we all remembered we were human before we went back to turning each other into sausage meat.
He starts a little as the big, grey-haired sergeant in enemy colours settles in next to him, then relaxes and accepts a cigarette, and offers a swig of brandy in return; there’s a little schoolboy French on one side and some scraps of workaday German on the other, enough to bridge the barrier, enough that Ratchet understands when the sergeant sighs and reflects, “The charade seems cruel, does it not – if you would try to kill us, then do it, do not taunt us by playing at friendship.”
Ratchet bristles, but the sergeant’s voice is so unutterably weary that he finds himself softening, and only replies, “Perhaps the rest is the charade, and this is real.”
When Megatron first said, “I don’t fear you,” he meant it as defiance, and he was unprepared for the sheer delight, the sheer longing, that emanated from the being in front of him, ploughing into Megatron’s EM field like a physical wave.
“What do they call you?” he murmurs now, much later, his claw-tips gently stroking a tendril of dark matter that is there and not there; the being doesn’t speak, but an idea presents itself in the forefront of his mind: I Am First And Best, and Megatron would scoff, were it not for the sadness that accompanies the words, as if they are a burden rather than an honour.
“I will call you something new, more befitting a protector rather than an emperor,” Megatron muses, then offers, “What about Hunter of Peace – Orion Pax, in the old tongue?” and the dark void, so black it gleams with a kind of reverse light, settles happily against his frame, and tangles its essence around him.
it’s kinda cool seeing Megatron with poems we learned in school. 😀 😀 😀
I love that particular fourth wall break where the Cold War origins of Megatron’s character come up. A romantic Russian dissident, like the historic characters the poem features, turned bloody but still romantic revolutionary, and then – well, we know where that story is going.
Cybertronian Database 