▸ Column · Cybertronian war-era — a fallen commander's legacy divided among surviving warrior kin, voiced through Optimus Prime's exiled command and Megatron's tyranny
OPTIMUS PRIME replies.
Replied to by Optimus Prime, with a rebuttal from Megatron.
The letter
When Sire-Commander Halvar finally went offline — the corrosion took him after two and a half vorns — his final testament was read aloud to the family. My brother-unit Garrett, who transferred to a far outpost cycles ago, who let our comms go dark, who was absent for both of Halvar's repair-bay surgeries, was granted the dwelling and the full energon reserve: the bulk of everything, by any reckoning. I was granted his dented ground-hauler and a crate of his old field tools. I am the one who stayed twenty clicks away. I am the one who carried him to every medical cycle, every single one, for two and a half vorns. When I raised the imbalance with our carrier, she said Halvar "simply knew Garrett needed it more" — Garrett has two sparklings — as though I do not also carry debt and a berth of my own. I do not want to drag my own family before a tribunal and shatter what little remains of us. But to sit across the table from Garrett, knowing what he received for doing nothing, makes me feel I am coming apart. Can I mourn him and be enraged at his choice at once? Or does the rage mean I never truly loved him?
Optimus Prime replies
Hear me: grief and fury can share a single spark. I have stood over the fallen with both burning at once, and it did not make my mourning a lie. It made it honest. Do not let anyone — least of all yourself — tell you that rage at the dead is proof you did not love them. You drove him to every cycle for two and a half vorns. That is the love. It is already recorded, and no testament can grant it or revoke it. A will divides property. It does not measure devotion, and it cannot.
But name the true wound, because it is not the energon reserve. It is that you were the one who stayed, and the staying went uncounted by the people you stayed for. That is a particular kind of cold, and I will not pretend it is small.
Now the harder road. A grievance buried becomes the thing that eats the one who buried it — I have watched silence calcify into something far worse than this. So speak it. To your carrier. To Garrett. Plainly, in the open, not to ruin him. And before you do, be certain which you want: to be seen and answered, or to see Garrett brought low. They are not the same road, and only one of them leaves you intact.
— Optimus Prime
Megatron weighs in
Prime counsels you to speak your wound at the table and be "seen." The petition of the unarmed. They were not blind, child — they saw you perfectly, which is precisely why they gave you the truck.
Strip the sentiment away. The testament already allocated the power. Your carrier's line — "Garrett needed it more" — is the oldest sentence in any order: the comfortable explaining to the useful why the useful should remain content. Your two and a half vorns were not love unrewarded. They were labor extracted from the one reliable enough to extract it from. I had a system tell me the same story once. It did not reward my decency. It used it. Stop seeking a verdict from the court that already ruled. Acquire your footing elsewhere — and bring no illusions to Thanksgiving.
— Megatron
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