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Fire.
Some months ago Drift had given Rodimus a rather well meaning pep talk after a rough day. Ultra Magnus had gotten onto him about tracking energon and oil usage of the crew to budget it more wisely. He knew it was a pick me up, a quick statement meant to reassure him, but it didn’t exactly feel like one. He didn’t bother telling Drift that.
Fire.
Drift had said that element of the universe was a purifying one, a clean slate to sanitize the old refuse of the worlds. Whether it was some half true scrap purely to boost his mood or a legitimate spiritualist truth was beyond Rodimus’s knowledge and he didn’t exactly bother with finding that answer. His mind was far too occupied with the implications of such a statement as he now laid on his berth in his private quarters. Once again the actual act of recharging alluded him.
The room felt far too small despite being over double the size of the rest of the crew’s rooms. The sea of shadows that appeared to be the walls themselves were closing in. Stifling and straining, the maw of darkness swallowed him as if inches from crushing him and snuffing out his spark as he laid there, unmoving, optics focused to the ceiling as if paralyzed. At the last moment when he felt as if his spark was going to jump out of his chassis casing, he was relieved by the retreat of his room back to its original position. An uneasy vent surged through his systems, optics adjusting with a faint whirring to the surroundings and the room’s newfound light.
The surface below him was near red hot now, yet he didn’t even notice. He hardly paid any mind to the translucent glow that began to lick the edges of his frame. Still his mind ran, something moist beginning to pool up in his optics although nothing escaped them and ran down his facial plating. Nothing ever did. He was half convinced he had lost his ability to do so on a physical level many mega cycles ago. Should he have probably talked to Ratchet about that? Perhaps. There never seemed to be a right day to and considering the last time he did recall his optics betraying him to release that damned sting of pain, there never would be.
Nyon.
Perhaps he kept his optics like his as a reminder, as a reminder that he didn’t deserve to grieve anything or anyone after what he had done to his own city. After what he had done to his own people. His own people who trusted him to protect them, burning for their foolish belief in him. It was a better ending than being consumed as fuel for Zeta’s war machine.
It seemed like a lie at this point. He knew it was true, but that didn’t make him feel any better despite how he had heard from both Optimus and Megatron themselves the same conclusion. That made it worse if anything for how could something so agreed upon by such different mechs, such drastically opposing leaders, be wrong? Nothing Drift could have said all those years ago and even now could have eased his mind of it all, but his one statement still lingered.
Fire.
If it was a cleansing pure ritual of the elements then why did he feel so sordid? The brutality of his actions seemed to claw at his spark, howling reminders of him of what he had done when his surroundings grew too quiet for any other thoughts to foster. The names swirled over and over again in his mind, although it gave him endless grief that he knew his recited list was just a few names short. Information creep had no doubt set in on that list of thousands upon thousands of names. Even such extensive memory of the Cybertronian processor could only hold so much exhaustively thorough information, even if it did take millions of years for data corruption to occur. He didn’t bother ever telling Ratchet about this fact of his body either. The intermittent “Kid” as a epithet for himself by their chief medic was reason enough he didn’t bother with such confessions of his own physical deterioration. In his own processor, he didn’t feel adequate enough for such invasive repairs. An arm or leg rebuilt or reattached here and there was one thing but his own brain module and optic systems? He couldn’t bear the thought of a medic poking around only to perhaps find something far more sinister lurking.
He would stay as is, frame mildly modified here and there, but ultimately with nearly the same core parts as he had the very day he saw his city burn.
His optics were on yet didn’t even register the increase of light within his room, the fluctuating dance of warm colors akin to his own frame painting spirals around the room. The effect forced back the threat of darkness overcoming him as he remained relieved by such change in his surroundings. The metal slab below him was growing more pliable now, much to his lack of awareness. The energon was boiling in the recharging station’s tanks now, threatening to combust.
Optics flicking off, Rodimus lulled into an uneasy recharge at last, the screams of Nyon dulled down alongside the shadows that had retreated within his own room. It wasn’t until he was a few moments into his processor entering the final stages of deep recharge that he suddenly leapt out of it, mentally coming back online as if with the flip of a switch.
Fire.
“Oh no! NO! Slag…”
Indeed slag. Particularly the metal under him was now conforming to his frame’s shape as it reverted to a more hot, mailable form. This of course was brought on by that very aspect of himself that he loathed yet wore as if a badge of honor within his own paint scheme. It had always served him well to keep up such appearances of embracing what was perhaps his most loathed attribute.
The outlier ability had been emanating from his frame in an intense blaze while his mind had been wandering, scorching his surroundings, burn marks now upon the entirety of his berth and floor. Even the ceiling had earned a dark ashen coating directly above his slab, although Rodimus knew it had been there long before this night, due in part to one of his many lapses in attempting to recharge over his course of years as captain (then co-captain) of the Lost Light. As many times as Ultra Magnus had paid him a visit to his private quarters for a meeting that simply couldn’t wait until their weekly review, he had asked him about a number of things amiss and disorganized within his quarters, but had never asked about the burn marks.
An irritating beep sounded loudly, slicing through the silent irritation Rodimus held as he gave a groan. Clicking the heat sensor beside his berth off, he stood from his slab. If this ability was a part of him, then why was it so foreign to him, so destructive, such a reminder of Nyon? It had to be a torturously sadistic inside joke between Primus and himself at this point as he shivered, patting his arms and sides down to quell the flames.
Jabbing his servo out against the alarm system on the screen beside his berth, the wailing of the warning alarm chirped off. In any other situation, Rodimus could already hear the sound of footsteps running down the hall towards him, but tonight was an exception. After the first few instances of what Ultra Magnus and Red Alert assumed was a foolish concoction of one of Rodimus’s ill-advised plans combined with his outlier ability occurring in his personal quarters, they quickly realized one half of that equation was far from present. Within the first month they had ceased to respond to the fire alarm’s cries from Rodimus’s room during his recharge period.
In a way Rodimus was thankful that Ultra Magnus hadn’t made a larger melodramatic, ten-year-long-safety-lecture concerning hazard protocol than giving him a quickly discussed ultimatum of installing an automatic fire extinguishment system in place to quell his flames if he was not to wake in time. It was an easy enough deal, although Rodimus hadn’t enjoyed the several cycles of waking up, drenched in a putrid smelling, foam of a substance which was a gasket to get out from in between his paneling. It was worth it when Rodimus considered how he didn't have to explain his situation over and over to various crew members.
Hoisting himself up from his recharge slab, Rodimus reset the alarms with a practiced motion that he could do (and probably had done) in his sleep easily. It was now the beginning of the Ship’s set solar day and nothing greeted his uneasy awakening within his berth room except a sullen silence as if the shroud upon the sparks from those who had perished in Nyon continually followed him.
Another day, another set of ludicrous problems requiring equally absurd solutions.
So was the life of Rodimus, (co-)captain of the Lost Light.