Chapter Text
The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
-
The crew of the Lost Light decided that it was Christmas Eve. This was, as per usual, a spontaneous decision but spontaneous by necessity perhaps; they were still strangers in the new universe, unable to tell how they were supposed to measure time and space in relation to their past universe. For all they knew, holidays as a concept did not exist at all in this new place and time.
Magnus had tried broaching that very idea with Rodimus, and he tried his best to not mention that he thought a universe without such raucous, materialistic celebrations would make perfect sense and sounded lovely, but of course Rodimus had rolled his optics—fondly—and rejected the possibility outright.
“It doesn’t even matter. Our world, our rules, Mags,” Rodimus had said.
“This universe is not our possession, Rodimus,” Megatron interjected quietly.
“You’re lucky it’s just us three right now because the irony of you saying that—” Rodimus had cut himself off. “Sorry, sorry, back to the point,” he continued. “I meant, just because we’re somewhere, some when, whatever you want to call it, new doesn’t mean we have to leave everything from the old universe behind. If the crew wants to keep Christmas, let them have it.”
Magnus did not want to argue, exactly, but a couple hundred concerns about allowing the crew of the Lost Light to do whatever they pleased surfaced in his processor nonetheless.
“And I thought you two liked putting up Christmas decorations together?”
It was silent after that.
Magnus wished they had given him more time to physically and mentally prepare. The last-minute timing of this decision made it appear to Magnus that he only really had two options for how he should spend that Christmas Eve, and he agonized over them both, and when his mind whispered another third option, he felt even more anxious. He decided, with a great bit of reluctance, to go and hover around Swerve’s bar that night where the main Christmas party for the crew was to be held.
Magnus presented the few gifts he had managed to scramble together—clearer labels for Swerve to use on the air filters of his bar, new locking mechanisms for Ratchet and Drift’s hab-suite—and then occupied himself by watching over everyone else drinking and laughing and yelling while the compulsion to break the entire party up trembled beneath his armor.
Magnus was not one for hyperbolic imagery, but even he could almost see the nervous wonder still electrifying the air of the ship. The success of their jump to a parallel universe and the resulting high of that breakthrough, the curiosity about this new world, and the excitement of their future had not worn off for most of the crew. Maybe “worn off” was also too strong of a word choice because Magnus could not say he had lost that strange lifting sensation he too felt knowing that he could still be with the Lost Light crew, but with each passing day, concerns crept into his mind and conditioned his earlier hope into something more ambivalent.
He felt comfortable with Rodimus, Drift, and Ratchet around him, all acting as happy as they’d ever been, but he could not help his impulse to squirm just a bit in his seat, to look up and around the bar as if he would see someone in particular. His recent ambivalence always unsettled him, he supposed. He felt as though he was waiting for something he could not describe, and that ambivalence weighed most heavily on him that night for some reason, molding a sort of emptiness inside him that was on the verge of being filled—but being filled with what?
Magnus clutched his memo pad to his side and wondered if he had drunk too much already.
“Where is Megatron?” Magnus heard himself ask.
Rodimus shrugged and downed another shot. “Don’t know. His hab-suite, I guess.” He snorted and then said, “Probably doing something mopey. Old habits die hard.”
“Maybe,” Drift added. Magnus glanced at the space where his and Ratchet’s arms touched and then looked away.
“I think old clichés like that die harder though,” Drift mused. “It’s a new day in a new universe. No more of the old rules. We can try our best to becoming whoever or however now, old, new, or something else. Right?” He raised his glass up a bit, and the others cheered loudly. Magnus looked down at his memo pad `and frowned harder. The third option that had crept into his processor earlier reared back, and without panic or relief, he quickly typed out a message.
The prompt reply was familiar and prodded him into telling his friends that he would have to excuse himself for the night. Their (mostly) sincere well wishes made him think about what Drift had said about everyone becoming who they wanted to be with the new universe, and that made him—well, Magnus, was certain he was tipsy now at least.
That realization should have made him turn back around to go to his own suite and call it a night, but he found himself firmly planted in front of the doors to Megatron’s own hab-suite, his frame still and expectant.
Megatron came to greet him immediately, his expression as serious as ever, but his face was filled with that cool warmth it always seemed to have ever since Magnus had heard him utter the words, “I’ve not seen you in centuries.”
“Minimus,” he said. “Come in.” And Magnus did without hesitation.
“I have to apologize for not being with the rest of the crew tonight,” Megatron admitted slowly. He was walking towards a personal storage unit, his gaze purposeful. “I was completely unprepared for anything like this, unfortunately.” Magnus was not a smiling type of bot, but he did sometimes feel the impulse to smile; this was one of those times.
“As did I,” Magnus replied. He stood in the middle of Megatron’s room and once again found himself thinking about the emptiness-yet-to-be-filled as he watched Megatron search through his storage unit for something. “I had so little time to plan that I had to gift Rodimus one of my volumes on the history of Nyon. He did not seem very appreciative. I suppose I should not have expected him to suddenly be interested in reading anything besides gossip news, though.”
“Let me guess,” Megatron said dryly. “He also didn’t give you or anyone else any gifts either.” He shook his head while still carefully considering whatever he was looking for. “I’m not much better, considering I couldn’t get anyone any gifts either. Except—” and by the way he straightened, Magnus could tell he had found whatever he was looking for, “I actually do have something I have wanted to give you.”
Megatron held out a small device. It was, Magnus realized gradually, a pad, but it looked slightly different to the ones he was used to reading from and writing on; it was a bit weathered, rounded in strange ways. He took it from Megatron, careful so that they would not touch, and opened the content to see the title, A Compilation of Earth’s Poetry.
Magnus could not hide his surprise. “When did you get this?”
Megatron opened his mouth and then closed it quickly. There was something in that cool warmth Megatron put off that Magnus could not identify.
“Actually,” Megatron said finally, “I compiled it myself—while in the Functionist universe.”
Magnus knew he should have felt gratitude, or happiness, or some form of affection he had continually considered professional. Instead, a sense of doubleness momentarily overwhelmed him. Was he somehow back at the Worldsweeper, hearing a voice in his ear rumbling, “Were you expecting someone else?”, and his spark flaring with a passion—righteous anger and confusion, he’d thought at the time—it had never had before?
That sensation numbed quickly, thankfully. “Oh,” was all Magnus heard himself say. “Thank you.” He kept his optics focused on the surface of the pad and swiped through the different entries without really digesting them.
“Minimus,” Megatron said quietly. It sounded like he wanted to say something else, but he did not. Magnus continued to swipe through the poems and remained stiff, not looking at Megatron. Vaguely, Magnus was aware of Megatron moving and sitting heavily on a chair.
After some time, Megatron said, “Coincidentally, there’s a poem in there I’m quite fond of that is a sort of Christmas poem. Alfred Tennyson wrote it quite a while ago—at least in that universe. It was called In Memoriam A. H. H.”
Magnus quickly found the poem he was talking about. It was long, and by the first couple of lines Magnus could tell it had much to do with Earth’s religious culture. Yet some of the first lines also made his spark jump a bit; “Forgive my grief for one removed” melted into the lines “Forgive these wild and wandering cries,” and for a brief moment Magnus remembered Mederi, a convenient image of Dominus, and the bittersweet ponderings of second chances. He felt himself tremble under the armor again and had to remind himself to stay steady.
Magnus took a deep breath and said, “By what criteria do you judge this a Christmas poem?”
Megatron huffed out a chuckle. “Perhaps it was not correct to call it a Christmas poem, no. Christmas does figure into the plot, however.” He gestured at Magnus to hand him back the pad, and Magnus did so, still as careful as ever. Megatron swiped to a particular section and handed the pad back to Magnus gingerly. Magnus picked up from the spot Megatron had focused on.
This year I slept and woke with pain,
I almost wish'd no more to wake,
And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:
But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controll'd me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.
“Hm,” Minimus hummed softly. He circled the words “sorrow touch’d with joy” with a finger and murmured, “You’ve been thinking about that today, then? The Functionist universe?”
Megatron’s optics widened then relaxed as he stared into space with resignation.
“Among other things,” he answered.
Minimus looked closely at Megatron for the first time that night.
“Who did you think of when you read this?” Minimus asked.
Megatron did not answer.
“I think of,” Minimus said, thoughtful, “Verity. Verity Carlos. She introduced me to Earth’s poetry in the first place, after all. She was not a fan of any of it, of course. She considered it a waste of her time, a form of torture devised by her world’s education system. She also introduced everything Christmas-related to the Autobots, to my great misfortune.
“I wonder if she ever had to—if she ever will—read this poem. I also wonder if she is also celebrating Christmas. Or…”
The emptiness waiting inside of him felt suspiciously similar to Minimus waiting to see if Megatron would answer his question, he realized. Yet Megatron still had not interrupted, although he did appear to be listening attentively to Minimus’s ramblings. And speaking of ramblings—
“I suppose the more obvious person I think of has to be Dominus. At least I know I’ve lost that and can’t get it back. Even if we did run into an alternate version of him, everything was said at Mederi—but I guess you don’t know that—and that wouldn’t be my brother anyways, would it? It hurts, of course it does, but it’s a hurt that’s past, and one that I’ve lived with even before I knew he was really gone.”
Minimus found it hard to stand upright in the armor and slumped down into another chair. Megatron appeared concerned and lurched forward slightly in his seat as if to help him sit but did not actually touch him.
“It’s hard to explain, but I also think about everyone else now—the Lost Light, Rodimus, all of our friends—our family. We’re alive and fine now, but isn’t it strange to look back and think that who we were originally might not be—indeed, almost certainly aren’t fine? You are—well, you would be dead like Dominus.”
There must have been something accusatory in Minimus’s tone because now Megatron rushed to say, “I hurt you. You have every right in the world to be angry at me until the end of time, and I know I have to accept that.”
Megatron stopped again. Minimus wondered what his expression—what Ultra Magnus’s expression—looked like.
“Neither of us,” Minimus said, at first shaky and then after a pause, he began again more firmly, “neither of us broke the morality lock. Why is that, you think? Why can everyone else on board still be so—so happy? But we can’t?”
They could only stare at one another, and Minimus searched Megatron’s red optics—always so lonely, and always all-too much like a mirror—and then abruptly felt himself return to reason. The specter of ambivalence had evidently chosen to end its possession of him without any notice, and now Magnus was suddenly much too hot, and he had to take a moment to keep himself from sputtering in his apologies.
“I must have had too much to drink tonight. This has been terribly unprofessional of me, if you will excuse—”
“I thought of too much,” Megatron cut him off. “I thought of everyone on the Lost Light, even the bots who put everything on the line just to see me dead. Especially them, perhaps. I wondered if Rodimus would ever really try to come back for me, until it seemed to be the only thing I could think of, and then it wasn’t. I thought about what it would look like if you all ever reached Cyberutopia, but more often I thought about what would happen if you didn’t.
“Time passed, and I began to think more about the bots I had to see die under my hands, but this time not from my own violence, but instead from my own ignorance, or my own bad timing, or my outright helplessness. I had to think of—of Terminus, and then Impactor. Orion…”
Megatron shook his head, and Magnus wondered if this was the kind of dully surprised, aching look of appearing just-a-little-lost he also projected whenever anyone brought up Dominus. It really had been centuries. He relaxed back in his seat at that thought, but then quickly tensed up again at Megatron’s next words.
“Of course, I thought of you.”
Magnus could not tell now if he was either too warm or too cold looking at Megatron, who held his gaze steadily, with the distance between the two somehow latent.
“I wondered,” Megatron began quietly, “if you and Rodimus decided together to have left me there. That thought confused me, but I tried to accept it. We had an excellent professional relationship, but of course that did not obligate you to—well. It would be too hypocritical of me to hold it against anyone who thought it was best if I didn’t exist in the world I had caused so much pain in.”
Magnus realized, with a start, that he had hurt Megatron, too.
“I had moments where I would think I was forgetting to send you something important: an updated daily schedule, a report on the latest infraction policy, or a reply to a memo; then it would come to me that you weren’t there with me. I wondered if I would ever find someone like you to listen to me recite lines again, or if I’d ever have time to talk about verse with anyone ever again.
“After so much time, I was horrified to realize that I couldn’t completely remember what your face looked like. I could at least always call to mind your facial insignia, but I wished I could form in my mind your mouth as it spoke with me, or your eyes looking to mine.
“That thing you were telling me before that you said was hard to explain—it is hard to say to others who do not feel it, I know, especially now on this ship. I felt it on the Last Light as we came out of the portal, and I realized where we were but could not be sure of the when and the how.
“Then I finally got to see you again, the face that was slowly slipping away.”
Megatron finally looked away from him, and for a moment, Magnus had the absurd thought that Megatron felt as skittish as he did in that moment, that he too could sense that something waiting in the air in his hab-suite.
“Maybe,” Megatron said, “that something that kept us from opening the talismans is something we’ll never be able to change about ourselves. Maybe…”
They looked at each other again, briefly this time, both most certainly shy.
It will be, Minimus decided.
“I have a gift for you as well,” Minimus announced. “If you would like, I have it just wrapped back in my hab-suite…”