Work Text:
Megatron was a prolific producer of poetry before the war began, artfully expressing his thoughts and feelings on many of the matters that touched his spark through the medium of the written word. Identity was a point of obsession in his work, as he attempted to delve into the truth of himself at depths beyond the suffocating shallows he had been shackled to by the exploitative society he yearned to transform. That society was another major subject of his many works; with his words he struck blows against this hegemony of subjugation and exploitation to make it crumble apart into its vulnerable components, which he had then laid out to expose and damn for the evil they had come together to create. Having used his writing to condemn the wicked and sickly society of his present, Megatron then wrote adoring odes to the world of the future he longed to forge; one in which he would finally be able to flourish into everything his spark told him he could be. Sometimes Megatron wrote these words of love not for the world he envisioned, but for a partner he could share that world with, who would see the truth within his spark, while he would see the beauty within theirs.
After the war began, Megatron no longer wrote poetry; now he lived it. He had finally found the truth that lay within the deepest part of himself, and that truth had shown him that tearing down the wretched world around him could not be done with words; violence would have to be his new medium, and Megatron embraced it with all the same passion and more. He wrote his magnum opus across the stars in the energon and oils of his enemies; his war was a piece of art and act of self-expression that could not be ignored. His voice would no longer be censored and confined to the dark, dank depths of a mineshaft; now the whole galaxy would hear his ecstatic scream of rage.
Having destroyed the corrupted world that had chained him, Megatron finally forged the new world he had dreamed of, where he could flourish as his true self; a paradise of pain and domination, rich with the delights of his enemies’ agonies and the sweet symphonies of annihilation. This was a world where the deepest and most authentic part of himself could be expressed with complete liberty; it was absolute freedom – the antithesis of the claustrophobic mine and claustrophobic identity he had been imprisoned in before the war’s welcoming embrace. It wasn’t the vision of the world he had written back when words were still his medium; it was so much more beautiful than anything he could have envisioned back then.
All of Megatron’s desires were being realised in ways he hadn’t anticipated; he even had the partner he’d dreamed of to share in this new world with – someone who he could know and could know him in so many intense and intimate ways. Before the enlightenment of the war, Megatron never could have known that the future lover he addressed in his amorous odes would be his arch-nemesis, but now Megatron could never dream of a sweeter reality. Optimus Prime was his perfect opposite, and when they came together it was like the meeting of matter and anti-matter: a violent and brilliant burst of overwhelming intensity that annihilated everything in its wake.
Megatron hated Optimus Prime more truly and deeply than he had ever hated any being. Megatron loved Optimus Prime more truly and deeply than he had ever loved any being. There was absolutely no contradiction in this, for Megatron now knew that love and hate were both but manifestations of the same sublime primal force that lay at the centre of the sparks of all mechs. While it was the driving force of all passion, very few people had actually tapped directly into this source and seen it for what it truly was. Megatron was one of the enlightened few, and because he understood the reality of his love and his hate, they burned brighter and purer than anyone else’s desires. Optimus was deeply fortunate to be the object of such sublime passions.
Ultimately Megatron’s life was now his war, and the war was his poetry, and this poetry was a love poem, a love poem for Optimus Prime. Across the galaxy, worlds burned with the fires of Megatron’s love for Optimus; every war crime Megatron committed was a sonnet in the Prime’s name. His passion for Optimus outlived the rise and fall of civilisations; this passion was the downfall of civilisations, and the extinction of species, all obliterated in the explosive coming together of two perfect enemies. Their deadly dance across the universe would continue, annihilating everything in its wake with the white hot fires of their all-consuming desire for each other, until the entire heavens would be sacrificed on the altar of their love and their hate. Then it would finally just be the two of them together in the void they had created, at which point the final sweet annihilation would be at hand. Neither of them would be able to exist without the other, but neither of them would be able to exist without trying to destroy each other, and in a final destructive climax, their ultimate drive would finally be satisfied. The perfect ending.