The Shower Gift (Transformers Predacons Rising)

Love is a matter of give and take.

Most seem to think love is all give. You give to me, I give to you. They fail to see the taking, even as they take. They tell themselves they still give. They ignore the burden of their faith.

I never realized what I gave. I knew what I leveraged, but I never saw what I gave for free.

And giving from a not inexhaustible well, expecting nothing, gaining nothing… it’s addictive, the withdrawal sweeter than my former vice. Now I understand why you did it so much... Why now you do nothing else.

I sit in the ruins of Iacon, sunlight shining on twisted metal. None will rebuild here. They speak of ghosts, like humans do. Ghosts are dead. One cannot be haunted by that which still lives.

As I wonder where you worked, where you played, where you laughed… I hear another cry.

I find him easily. He weeps openly like the humans, thinking himself alone. He even smells like them, sweat and tears without blood. Vulnerable. A vorn ago I would have slain him.

“Why do you weep? Is this not what you wanted?”

He looks up at me, cool optics shocked, hunching in shame like a human laid bare. He stands exposed. I suppose he knows now that he need not fear me.

“What are you doing here?”

I sit on a fallen beam next to him. “Once I envied what they had here. I wanted to take it for myself.”

“I said ‘What are you doing here?’” he grumbles, the fire creeping back into his voice. “Present tense.”

I smile. “Why ask when you know the answer?”

“I’m trying to think of what to tell them back on Earth.” he confesses.

“Consider the truth.”

“That’s rich from a Decepticon.” He sits with me. Once we would have been too close. “I don’t know what the truth is.”

“You know enough.”

He looks heavenward, leaning back. Part of me is astonished at his openness, surprised he shares with me. More of me is astonished we had ever fought at all.

“They’re going to want to know everything. And I’m not sure myself. Sometimes… sometimes at night…”

I know where this path leads.

He shakes his head. “It’s madness. Sensor glitching, I’m sure.”

“If you were sure, you would tell your friends.”

“Do you ever hear his voice?” He looks into my optics, desperate. His face reminds me of his child companion’s. “At night, when it’s quiet… or, do you see him?”

I nod. “Not often… but when I do, he smiles.”

That seems to satisfy him. He looks away, sinking in relief.

I know that you are there; I need not see you. I feel you in everyone I pass. I see your smile on their faces.

Your friend needs me to be haunted, so haunted I am. You have given everything you are; now I give him what you cannot. Let him take it.