▸ Column · Post-war Cybertronian resettlement era; Autobot habitation aboard the Ark, time measured in cycles, vorns, and orbitals.
GRIMLOCK replies.
Replied to by Grimlock, with a rebuttal from Optimus Prime.
The letter
My partner Elara and I have been together for fourteen cycles now. Last orbital, she showed up with schematics for three empty hab-units on the Ark she'd already toured — one of them circled in energon-marker, the one with the wide energon bay, like the whole thing was settled. The trouble is, I just staked out my own quarters for the first time in my life, after spending eight vorns bonded to a mech who ran tracking scans on me around the clock. I'm still learning who I am when nobody's monitoring me. I love Elara and I think we'll get there — but every time she says "our quarters," my spark seizes up, and then I feel like a glitched wreck for not being overjoyed. Now she's hinting that my hesitation means I've got "one foot off the landing pad," which isn't it at all. I'm not half-gone. I'm just not done learning to exist at my own frequency. How do I tell her I need another full cycle in my own space without making her feel like she's ranking second to my own offline time?
Grimlock replies
Me Grimlock listen to whole story. Now Grimlock throw away most of it, because most of it fancy hat.
Here real thing: Eight vorns. Eight. Somebody run tracking scans on you eight whole vorns, and you just now got first space that belong only to you. And you call yourself the problem? You not monster. You survivor who finally got own front door, and now you afraid to say you want to keep it one more cycle. That not selfishness. That repair.
Grimlock see who small scared one is in this story. Small scared one is you. Elara not bad — Elara want you close, that fair. But when she say "one foot off the landing pad," she make you doubt whether your need even real. Old pressure, wearing new paint. Grimlock see it.
You not need Elara say your need is okay. It already okay. It was okay before she showed up with those schematics.
Here one thing to say to her: "I love you. I need this cycle in my own quarters. Not because I leaving — because I still learning how to stay inside myself first." That it. That whole sentence.
She can be sad. She can be disappointed. That fair too. But her feelings not make your need wrong.
Eight vorns you let somebody else decide that for you. Stop now. Say the one true thing. Today.
— Grimlock
Optimus Prime weighs in
Grimlock gives you a sentence, and he gives it with real care. I am not arguing the sentence is wrong.
But hear what it costs you both.
Elara does not know about the eight vorns. She has circled that hab-unit because she sees hesitation she cannot read — and she is reading it as doubt about her, not as the shape of what you survived. I have given the people who followed me the shortened version of the truth because I believed it would spare them. It did not spare them. It only meant they stood beside me without understanding the ground beneath them.
Give her the full story. Not "I need more time." Tell her what those eight vorns cost, and why this one door matters so much. She deserves the chance to understand what she is actually being asked to be patient with — not just to receive a sentence and be told to trust it.
— Optimus Prime
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