We know you named yourself after the fallen, but did you ever wonder what your name would have been if they didn't give you just a number?
… did you ever wonder what your name would have been if they didn’t give you just a number?
Optics narrowed and his frame became still. What had prompted the question? To what end, or game, did it portend?
Megatron’s optics moved. His gaze cast slowly about, though focusing on nothing in particular, before they finally returned to the creature who asked the question. His pause had been only that; a pause. A few seconds of indecision and to some extent, a tipping of his balance. Difficult to see, or to detect. Confidence returned in a swift wave and a smile – one managing to be both sincere and insincere at once – graced his facial plate. Almost mocking, but perhaps there was something lost within it.
“What living being would not wonder?” A question to answer a question. It was only logical. Would not the creature wonder what its name should be if it were not graced with the dignity of one? “What individual would not wish to make themselves known, to have a means by which to declare one’s self. Their identity.”
“Yes,” his answer came now, a bite to his voice that went unnoticed by the one speaking, but perhaps not to the listener. “Yes. Once I wondered. I questioned. I knew that I was myself upon exiting the Well. I knew that I could think, that I existed. I had ideas, a future. I could see within all those with me the potential, and I understood they had an identity. Reasoning led me to understand and to know, that by recognizing this in others I must have a self to reason and to observe with.”
“Reason, the ability to think critically is the marked difference between sapient life and sentient life. To think beyond one’s self and to reflect upon the self, belonging to you.” His words began to take on a more reasoning tone, a hidden passion and depth long since forgotten. Forlorn in the depths of his spark. Very nearly extinguished by the war, by a world that wished only to place a label upon that which he felt it did not understand. Little was it that he understood; the answer had lain before him throughout the war.
“But only once did I wonder what my name was. Who I was,” his voice was bitter and angry followed by a narrowing of the optics and a twitch of the fingers before his hands slowly closed into fists, and then loosened once more. A hidden battle. Berating and questioning, but not shown externally. Too much pride stiffened his spine. There would be no show of weakness despite the questions boiling within.
“Upon the lip of the Well I stood. Understanding that I was an individual because I recognized the individuality in those around me. I cherished,” he paused, no doubt suspecting the disbelief of his listener, and his words held a slight growl, “yes: cherished the diversity and the understanding that within each of us was a unique being. An entity that viewed and observed the world in a manner of which could not be perfectly replicated.”
“There would be no more wondering.” His words fell flat. His countenance far fiercer as though daring anyone to ask why not. “There would be no more curiosity.”
“I am Megatron because I choose to be Megatron.” He stepped forward, a slightly more fevered intone to his voice, a hint of the passion from before only stronger now. “My choice, my right. I ripped it from a system that would have me toil within the dark and perish to feed their gluttonous desires. To lavish themselves with the luxuries of our world. To prey upon those they deem lesser.”
But did he still feel the same now? Did he not wonder, at least a little bit, now that he knew Optimus was gone? Now that Cybertron was reborn? Did he not question how different it may have been if he had known who he was? Understood his very spark?
It did not matter. Who he was, what he could have been, or was meant to be, was lost, twisted and warped. Ultimately destroyed. Perhaps once a noble soul had existed, but no more.
“I have answered your question,” he said in a softer voice; almost hollow and distant. “Do not ask it of me again.”
