Work Text:
Memory weighs heavy on the mind. It settles and compresses like sediments, and new layers bury the old until they've cemented into something distant and deep.
Metroplex can retrieve them. It is a slow, gradual process, and sometimes, when he delves deep enough, he finds only the thinnest grains of memory and impressions faintly etched in the stone, the audiovisual components lost to the slow grind of time. Those who are not born cities, he understands, can more rapidly access memories - [lampyridae], like little, volatile stars, too quick and too fragile and too bright to block out - but are more susceptible to that creeping fatigue.
He remembers that he was first.
-
When he walks, the weight of him shakes the ground for hundreds of miles around. When he speaks, the words have the same impact, with aftershocks that will reverberate for millennia after. Metroplex chooses them with care. By the time he wakes, the Knights are nothing but myths an eon old; if he is reticent with what he shares with those who approach him for answers, it is because he does not know what will happen if he tells them everything. He can run simulations to try to predict what effect his words will have a thousand years down the line - a million - more - but it would take another millennia to finish analyzing all of the potential variables. His processor can bring vast, deep reserves to bear, yet by the time he finishes, the consequences would already be felt in the swift, rushing lives around him.
-
He finds them on the Rhoedeion shores of the vast nitrogen sea, in the south.
The urge to travel is a strange, impulsive thing. Almost all the Titans know the patient ebb and flow of the need to travel the stars - they were built for the stars as well as the earth. Once settled in city form, however, they balk at movement and prefer to think gradual, measured thoughts.
(The risk is always there - the torpor of hibernation - [inertia]. Time elapses and the world grows over you as you lay immobile, drowned in deep dreams, until you are buried and forgotten in sleep.
- nox est perpetua una dormienda -)
[unfailing] Metrotitan and [proud] Chela have established themselves elsewhere; close enough to send small voices with messages between them, or for tempestuous Chela to transform and stretch a wing over Metrotitan's austere halls. Neither are heavily inhabited yet, visited most often by curious pilgrims, and the Prime who has so intrigued Chela of late. He doubts their positioning will last - Chela is restless and territorial, quick to enfold his citizens and relocate to claim new ground for his own, and Metrotitan has loved him with patience and good humor from a distance more than once through the long years, their spacebridge beacons pulsing in sync.
Out of the three, only Metroplex still walks. He does not know why. It's not the known, familiar urge to leave Cybertron and return that has driven him in the past. He walks, and knows by the increase in the number of paved roads, and bright-shining optics that follow him as he waits patiently for them to clear the next place his foot will land on the ground, that he nears a city.
Two, as it happens. The subglyphs tagged onto their designations identify them as Metroplex quietly pings their beacons: [vivid] Caminus, [protective] Vigilem. He knows them indistinctly, by name but not by song, and they ping him back with a similar lack of familiarity. They are young, as Titans go - all are younger than Metroplex - but host a thriving populace that speaks to their skill and care. Caminus sends a wave of avid greeting to Metroplex at once, amicable and open; it is Vigilem who is cautious, his response muted and encrypted.
Vigilem wraps around Caminus like a living shield, their streets and structures interlaced in such a way that Metroplex can only tell where one ends and the other begins with a well-practiced optic. To enmesh themselves in such a cohesive way must have been the work of an age. They overlap perfectly, filling in each other's gaps. Their paint is a shared, contiguous work of art - the whorls and curves and rich lines run seamlessly from one section of Caminus to the adjacent one of Vigilem, to form a striking whole that gleams with bright golds and blues and red under the high sun. Caminus supports more sprawling silver parks and beautiful, spiraling towers, his architecture open so that Cybertronians of any alt mode can easily access whatever they wish. Vigilem provides the bulk of the fortifications necessary to guard their joined metropolis against raiders, and it is most likely thanks to his watchfulness that Metroplex arrives with an escort of twenty small sentries that came to investigate his approach ten days ago.
Understandable. Caution is never unwise. After surveying the surrounding region, Metroplex settles himself a polite distance away: far enough not to encroach on their resources or disrupt their rooted connections, which extend deep into the mantle of Cybertron. He reaches out to request his own link to the core far below their feet.
-
It takes (slightly) less than an age for Caminus to become [beloved]. The process of courtship negotiations takes a long time even for Titans, because to court Caminus as amica is to court his conjunx, too. Metroplex has no wish to disrupt such a stable bond. Both Caminus and Vigilem captivate him in a way he has not felt since the first moon chose to leave. Caminus sends envoys painted like him, sweet-singing voices who offer to paint Metroplex with Camien designs and fill his empty halls with dancing and song and movement, and Metroplex gradually accumulates the resources necessary to return them with gifts of his own.
Vigilem remains guarded over the long vorns. But Metroplex came uninhabited, not carrying a city-full of potential invaders that might threaten the stability of the region, and eventually Vigilem relents. They may never be amica, perhaps, but the scouts who patrol the land between the shore and Metroplex's secluded valley eventually visit to inspect and repair Metroplex's vast plates of armor where age and old battles have left dents and rust-edged scars. They build roads to link him with Caminus and Vigilem. Better a strong ally than a weak hanger-on, Vigilem sends in a rare, direct comm, and his voice is deep, rough counterpart to Caminus's laughing joy.
Metroplex has not attempted to court anyone as amica since Metrotitan, so long ago now that it's one of those faintly engraved impressions on the stone, more a fact of life than a conscious memory. Younger Titans have more practice with these things. Metroplex simply leaves the beacon of his spacebridge open, and sends quiet, subtle requests through the deep circuits of the planet - fresh coolant wells for Caminus. Nodes of strong alloys for Vigilem.
- (he regrets that, later, and
[my regrets follow you to the grave]) -
Vector Sigma responds to his requests for fresh ore as promptly as the living core of a planet can - that is to say, on a geologic time scale that tests the patience even of Metroplex. Metroplex suspects that this is because Caminus takes priority in the region. He has requested hot spots of his own to carry to the stars someday, a voyage millions of years in the making, and the natural mechanisms of Cybertron ferry fresh sparks up through the layers of the planet in gradual waves for Caminus to nurture.
It does not strike Metroplex as odd, in that moment, that Vigilem is not making similar preparations. Lightyears between Titans generally mean little; with the singing link of their spacebridge, distant sparks are never truly beyond reach. Even a pair as closely coupled as Vigilem and Caminus might not travel at the same time, if the need to leave struck one before the other.
(But hindsight is Metroplex's oldest burden.)
-
If he had seen Liege Maximo on the road that day as he walked toward the twinned cities, would Metroplex have stepped differently?
-
The night that Caminus rises up out of citymode is cold, the wind cutting through Metroplex's towers with piercing clarity. Metroplex registers Vigilem's shift into an active stance to scan the horizon for potential threats; he remains motionless as the calm, careful tremors of Caminus's footsteps roll toward him. Several months of Camiens gradually evacuating to Vigilem's living spaces in preparation for this gave Metroplex some advance notice, yet it is still with astonishment and joy that Metroplex sends notices to his own scarce, scattered inhabitants to remain indoors as he shifts into rootmode and waits.
Caminus reaches him at astronomical dawn, when the sky is still dark, and the only light for miles creeps out from the seam where his chest parts to reveal the vibrant, hot white-blue of his spacebridge and spark. Tell me of when you were young, Caminus murmurs, his red-painted mouth curved in a gentle smile and his optics full of warm fondness as Metroplex draws him close.
Even with the forewarning, Metroplex's plating takes longer to transform out of the way. They spend the hours watching dawn bloom across the sky and talking of things and people long gone, until both their sparks are bared in the early morning light. Metroplex shares the oldest of his memories through the resonating pulse of the spacebridge, so that no one can hear but Caminus. Caminus tells him of the future he hopes to forge, of the planned colony that fills him with such hope.
In the distance, Vigilem scans the stars and reports nothing that could harm them.
-
He needn't have bothered. The danger was already with them.
-
The Primes are curious, significant beings. Metroplex knows this. All Cybertronians are bright, precious things, but rare are the ones on whom the whole timeway turns; who walk with such intensity of vision and purpose that others gather and swear loyalty on bended knee; whose choices can bring peace or loose chaos upon the world.
Those are the ones to be most cautious with. The consequences of their choices, if compounded by the influence even a single Titan can bring to bear, could prove catastrophic. Metroplex recognizes Alpha Trion for what he is and holds the Prime at a subtle distance, like a satellite that swings around in an orbit too close for comfort. But the others -
He cannot say it is because they are young. Chela pledges loyalty to Onyx Prime with such hunger and fervor that it blazes through the resonance network, and Chela is (almost) as old as Metroplex. Something in these Primes inspires intense loyalty not just in their fellows but in Titans as well, and they fragment and clash and spin apart under the weight of contradicting loyalties -
(not yet)
-
When Caminus chooses Solus Prime, Metroplex concedes that it is a good match.
Perhaps that is an understatement. Solus Prime burns like the heart of a star: of all the Primes she is perhaps the most potent, a master of her craft. She can forge anything from raw elements, a creative force the likes of which Metroplex has not seen in an age (and will not see again). And when she walks with nameless grace through Metroplex on her way to Caminus, her steps light but sure, her still-smoldering Forge carried easily in one hand, Metroplex wonders how so luminous a spark found its way here. An artificer of such unparalleled talent comes along maybe once in a lifetime - and Metroplex of all Cybertronians knows how long a lifetime can be.
Liege Maximo[prime][?] comes from Vigilem to greet her on the road with an elegant bow and a slow smile, his horns canted backwards as he gazes up at Solus Prime. He stands barely as tall as Solus's hip; the fall of his mantle and the breadth of his shoulders are still slight and slim in comparison to the strength of Solus's arms. She inclines her head in return, the cables that hang loose around her helm cascading over her shoulder, and accepts his arm when it is offered.
(…When did he arrive?)
-
(Liege Maximo arrives, and Vigilem says nothing. Metroplex can only infer the Liege's presence in hindsight. A consummate diplomat - tactful, discreet, persuasive, always with a personal touch - he brokers peace with the local raiding tribes one by one, and soon the strong, observant warriors who call Vigilem home walk with silver tongues of their own. They reach out at Liege Maximo's direction as ambassadors, ranging far abroad to ensure that the ties that bind a unified Cybertron under the Primes remain solid and true. Potential feuds between Primes are settled before they can erupt into war; trade contracts and treaties always pass beneath the practiced scrutiny of a Vigilant diplomat. Traffic in the area increases - between those who come to pay homage to Solus and the legion of trained diplomats, the region becomes a hub of activity to rival Crystal City itself.
The culture of Vigilem shifts to accommodate this transformation so smoothly that from afar, still isolated in his remote valley, Metroplex notices nothing amiss.
Perhaps, at first, nothing is amiss.)
-
Metroplex watches the two Primes go. When Alpha Trion visits the next year, full of his usual stories (which he looks to Metroplex to confirm, with an unsubtle eye), he brings word also of Solus's many creations. Metroplex listens with a sliver of his processor, but Caminus's constant, excited stream of chatter interests him far more.
Ever quick to love, Caminus adores Solus without reservation from the moment she arrives - he rearranges an entire segment at the very heart of his citymode to build a suitable space for Solus to work. Her every need and comfort is attended to with the seamless, unspoken care dedicated to a Titan's favorite. Atmospheric controls automatically adjust themselves to her preferred temperature wherever she walks, and her energon is always prepared to her liking. Caminus requests rarer elements for Solus to work with in any way that strikes her incredible, ever-churning mind, and in return Solus outlines her eyes with red in Caminus's familiar loops. Her optics are almost the same shade of bright, energon-fuchsia as Vigilem's, and when she turns to her Forge in a creative fugue, they flare like the sun itself.
Reality itself seems to bend to accommodate Solus's creations. Her only limit seems to be her imagination; with her Lathe attuned to her will, she always strikes true. Sometimes, she creates in a sudden rush of inspiration, and Caminus's elation floods the resonance that links him with Metroplex; at other times, one of the Primes will make the pilgrimage to visit her here or in Crystal City with a specific request, and without fail Solus rises to the challenge. No matter how strange or impossible the idea, Solus can forge it.
Metroplex almost grasps the shape of what is to come. It takes as long as any predictive model would, when working with as many variables and vast, far-reaching consequences as a Titan's mind must deal with. But out of the deepest channels of Metroplex's processor, a tide of intuitive certainty rises - Solus Prime will be key. She is the crux of something greater, a Cybertronian forged with the brilliance needed to save them all. In Cybertron's time of need, she will heed the call.
-
(Liege Maximo persuades Vigilem, and Vigilem says nothing.)
-
She dies.
Caminus falls terribly, frighteningly silent.
-
(And far below the surface, Vector Sigma stutters and begins to fail -
- and there is no one left alive who can save the Forge in the core of the world.)
-
It means war, of course. Metroplex remains sequestered at first - too many Titans have already flung themselves headfirst into the fray, and the world shudders under the weight of them all. He intends to move only once he can be sure he won't make things worse. Chela has broken with Metrotitan for reasons unknown in order to side with Onyx Prime, and while it may not be the first time the two have separated, Metroplex fears it will be the last. [inquisitive] Tempo flatly refuses to participate, not with a hold full of burgeoning hot spots and the last of her fuel tanks filled in preparation for interstellar travel: she gathers up all who would come with her, her philosophers, her Prime, and lifts off, the first of the Titans to leave in an age. Her spacebridge is augmented by some of Solus's last work, at the request of Vector Prime, and Metroplex senses odd stutters in the flow of time as they depart.
(Why Tempo?)
The fact that Caminus remains on the edge of the sea, silently mourning long after Vigilem and Liege leave to try to restore peace, is also something Metroplex must consider before moving. Keep him safe, Vigilem asks, his battle-mask muffling his low voice as he strides past Metroplex, his Prime safely ensconced on his heavily armored shoulder. It is one of those rare moments in which Metroplex and Vigilem are perfectly in tune, and Metroplex sends a pulse of reassurance before Vigilem crosses the mountains and carves his way through the chaos like the Star Sabre itself.
-
Leaving his people behind is the first mistake Liege Maximo makes, and his last. Vigilem's warrior-diplomats split - a single troop leaves with Liege Maximo, while the rest of the warriors and citizens stay to protect Caminus with millennia-old devotion. With Caminus grieving, his inhabitants slowly paint him in mourning greys and muted blues. Metroplex offers space for those who Caminus just cannot support.
It is one of Vigilem's cityspeakers, one of Liege Maximo's own apprentices, who creeps into Metroplex's processor chamber and tells him in hushed whispers of what she knows.
Veritas is the first. But all of Liege Maximo's followers monitor the progress of the raging war with a voracious intensity, and all of them are well-trained enough to realize what their Prime has done. Has trained them to do. Is doing.
He is not trying to bring peace.
He is making it worse.
-
(Liege Maximo manipulates the Primes into war, and Vigilem says nothing.
He helps.)
-
This much is known:
- That Solus Prime and Liege Maximo lived in closer proximity to each other than any of the other Primes, seemingly at ease with one another. A [forge] and a [forger], Metroplex's processor murmurs, the glyphs overlapping in his mind with terrifying harmony.
- That Megatronus visited Solus many times in the years leading up to her death, courting her as a rival might, and that fiery, amused Solus permitted it.
- That, unbeknownst to any but his closest followers, Liege Maximo recently formed a pact with Megatronus. That they spoke often - the Liege with his silver tongue, and Megatronus of few words (but always listening) - and that Megatronus stormed into Solus's quarters after one such conversation.
- That they fought, and Megatronus's wild accusations only caused Solus's own temper to flare in return.
- That Megatronus murdered her in a sudden paroxysm of rage, and escaped to carve a bloody swathe across the continent and challenge Prima immediately after, launching the chaos that continues to splinter the tribes.
- That Liege Maximo, even after all this, has not renounced Megatronus and their alliance, and now seems to slip in and out of the war with unerring steps. Everywhere he and Vigilem go, fresh hostilities erupt, and the Primes go for each other's throats while Liege Maximo walks free with unnatural impunity.
Never again, the Vigilant pledge in Metroplex's streets, grim and shaking with rage beneath their sweet, diplomatic masks. In Caminus, they are more discreet out of respect for Caminus and his mourning children. But nonetheless, the news spreads. How can it not?
Metroplex opens more space for Vigilem's children to gather in his halls and come to terms with how they've been used. Those who travelled with Liege Maximo were those who embraced his philosophy: lying for the 'greater good,' for their own advancement, for their Liege's personal power, for whatever unknown goal Liege Maximo and Vigilem hoped to achieve with these inexplicable acts. Those left behind feel betrayed and guilt-ridden at the same time. In their minds, they are just as culpable for this world-shattering treachery as the rest. Some are more ashamed to have harmed Caminus than to have provoked civil war, but the end result is the same.
Metroplex hears their grief and vows - never again never again never again. With sufficient evidence, he understands how Liege Maximo has betrayed them. But it takes…significantly longer to accept what Vigilem has done. He chose loyalty to Liege Maximo over love of Caminus, and even as the Vigilant stir in the streets, line their eyes with black paint, and prepare to march to war with bleak, unforgiving purpose, Metroplex struggles to understand where it went wrong. How it could be that so many Titans have come to cross purposes in this war of Primes.
Perhaps it was broken from the beginning.
-
Veritas, his [Truth-voice], asks Metroplex to come with them. It would break his promise to guard Caminus.
The night before the Vigilant plan to fight their way across the planet and find their Liege, Caminus stands and walks to Metroplex. The Camiens who can fly place the final touches on his mourning paint while Caminus is in motion; those who cannot fly ride within or drive in the safety of his wake. As he nears, Metroplex can hear Caminus's spacebridge resonate and echo with the piercing song of the hot spots layered into his frame. Like Tempo, Caminus is almost ready to leave. The deep, metal roots that Titans transform out of their back plates to absorb resources from the mantle jut from Caminus's shoulders like sharp thorns - a sign that he needs a few thousand years still before his starship mode is fully supplied and colony-ready.
Caminus's face now stands out starkly against the solemn, dark grey of his armor, his eyes painted like tears. His mouth is a pale, unreadable line. Let's go, he says, full of quiet, spark-broken sorrow. Metroplex modulates his frequency to send comfort to Caminus, but it is only a brief respite from the rawness of the wound.
-
Vigilem fights as though inspired by Ferīre herself. Metroplex, who has lived and fought alongside the Knights and their Titans, cannot say for certain whether any one of them would have proven a match for Vigilem. He is matchless and deadly - this is his art.
Chela arrives first, after Metroplex sends the call rolling through the spacebridge network - he leaves Onyx Prime and engages Vigilem with a shriek, his sharp wings scything through the air but finding no purchase in Vigilem's heavy armor. They clash for a day and a night before Metroplex and Caminus arrive, but all of Chela's proud strength and experience cannot match Vigilem's ferocious, indomitable zeal. He laughs as he batters Chela aside with ease, and, incensed, Chela retaliates in a blind, reckless rage that makes it easy for Vigilem to control the battlefield.
Then Vigilem sidesteps to let Chela's next dive smash against the ground, and the pleasure he takes in the fight dies at the sight of Caminus across the field.
He narrows his optics, shutters his battle-visor down over them to conceal his emotions, and launches himself at Metroplex in earnest. Vigilem was never one to make things easy.
Another six days pass before they pull Vigilem down. He bleeds them for every inch and thrashes against his bonds long after the battle ends. The disdain in his optics as he sneers up at Metroplex and Chela transforms his face into someone Metroplex does not recognize. He protects Liege Maximo - [loyal] to the very end - by sequestering him within his body, where the justice of their children cannot reach.
Instead, Veritas brings her forces separately, after the battle is done. She infiltrates their security and beseeches Vigilem to let her help. Vigilem guides her to the innermost chamber, with the promise that she and the other Vigilant followers who are still free will take Liege Maximo somewhere safe.
Veritas steps into Vigilem's processor chamber instead, and seals Liege Maximo in. He is safe, and the world will be safe from him, Veritas says, her hands folded over her spark, resolute. My promise is kept.
When Vigilem realizes his own children have forsaken him, the disdain in his eyes turns to sharp shock - and then to hate.
-
Chela, imperious and unforgiving, calls for death.
Caminus, subdued, gazes at Vigilem and pleads quietly for mercy.
And Metroplex does not have it in his spark to inflict yet more pain on his beloved friend.
His friends.
[I should have killed you then.]
Once Chela leaves, his pride offended and his golden feathers riled as he turns his back on them, Caminus kneels before Vigilem and cradles him close. He presses their foreheads together with his optics off, keening deep in his spark, and Metroplex looks away to give them what privacy he can. But Caminus asks for him to witness, so Metroplex watches as Caminus kisses Vigilem and begins to chip the paint from his love's face, leaving only dark cracks behind. [- numquam ego te, vita frater amabilior, aspiciam posthac? at certe semper amabo -] Caminus sings, while pale optic fluid trickles down Vigilem's face.
It takes Veritas and a hundred of her fellows to sever Vigilem's higher processes from the rest of his frame and shut him down for good. They leave Cybertron for the stars not long after, Vigilem and all his Vigilant children to serve as sentinels in their penance. The sight of Vigilem's sluggish body transforming with no mind driving him is enough to make Metroplex want to purge.
-
Caminus says he has to go. He makes his choice. Metroplex smiles for him, and traces the familiar, [beloved] pulse of his resonance deep into the depths of space.
(Metroplex does not realize, then, that he is never coming back. That he left too soon, distraught and still grieving.)
The Primes vanish or die, one by one. Metroplex is too exhausted to pay much heed to it. Most of the Titans have withdrawn from the war in the wake of Vigilem's great betrayal; almost all of them gather what they need for colonies and leave, until only Metroplex and Metrotitan remain.
Metroplex rests and the world buries him. He wakes, and another age has passed.
When he reaches out, he cannot hear Caminus.
[I will keep my soul in a place out of sight, far off, where the pulse of it is not heard -]