Loki is standing outside his hall when Megatron arrives, and he is wearing his Asgardian form, ivory-skinned and green-eyed, with inky hair back in intricate braids and tied, incongruously, with a glittery purple ribbon.
"I have something for you," he says with a little smile. "I told the children I had a new friend, but that they will not be able to meet him for a few weeks. They're curious. They sent you a picture."
Because Asgardian kids are kids nevertheless. He holds out a large piece of construction paper, upon which is a riot of crayon and marker sprinkled with glitter glue. There appear to be four figures on the page. The tallest has medium-brown skin and black hair, and a green jacket. The second is in a blue dress, with honey-brown curls and a halo of musical notes around her head. The third is the smallest, and only identifiable as a person by the two eyes and the pink-marker smile, but there are little fish and shell stickers all over him. The last is very glittery, with blond braids and a sword bigger than she is tall.
Several different hands have written "HI!" across the top. And there are additional stickers, including flowers, horses, and rainbows.
"You're going to let me meet them that soon?" Megatron is delighted, and grins at the drawing. "One of your sparklings is extremely sparkly," he observes. "Did she give you the ribbon? It's almost Decepticon purple. And the one in blue, that's Sigrid, isn't it?"
Megatron has actually never seen anything of this nature before and keeps looking at the paper like it's a rare artefact from a world he's never imagined, mostly because, well...it is. He never got to be a child.
Cybertronians are small for only a very short period of time, and most of them are raised in creches and post-natal facilities. In the days of Megatron's youth, there were powerful 'houses' where wealthy people who could afford to forge bodies especially for the newsparks of their choice were able to choose the heirs they wanted for their households, but even then, only a small minority of sparklings were taken into homes of that sort. Most were cared for in groups and given some degree of education appropriate for their function before being assigned a place in society.
Megatron didn't even get that. His spark was rare, but it was also not the spark that had been intended to go into that particular frame; he was treated like any other cold-construct at initialisation.
It surprised him that he was even interested in helping to raise children this small; he had promised Loki that he would protect everyone he loved, and he had offered to mentor Sigrid, but he had never had the slightest desire to work in a post-natal facility or handle sparklings before.
But they were people--tiny people, but people, and they wanted to be his friends. All they knew was that he was their father's dear friend, and they were welcoming him into their lives. He was beaming, and he was sure he looked ridiculous.
He was also very resolutely not going to think about the very strong likelihood that he had taken many lives as innocent and open as these. Except it was too late for that. But he refused to dwell on it. Someday they might learn this about him, and he'd tell them the truth, he supposed, and hope they forgave him.
"I have never seen anything like this before, Loki. And I will protect them," he says, "as if they were mine. And if this is how they see themselves then I am sure they're just as adorable as their father is."
He looks up at Loki, and dabs at his eyes with the towel Loki gave him days ago; he left it in his subspace. "I don't deserve this, but the universe doesn't give us what we deserve." He smiles. "So, I'll do my best to become someone who does."
"There is no definite timeline," he says. "They are very good children, and strong, but they have experienced excessive trauma, and I was absent from the Nexus for months not long ago. We need to re-align our bonds properly before introducing a new person into the mix, but I am a better parent when I take some joy for myself, as well. And people are not meant to be secrets, or lies. So I told them a bit about you."
"It'd be best if I have a talk with Thor, as well," he adds. "He's their uncle and he's been caring for them; he deserves some forthcoming behavior from me at this point."
"But it won't be too terribly long to wait, I assure you."
He is not privy to Megatron's mixed thoughts regarding innocent children and his own clouded past, but he would be able to identify with some of them. In the dark hours, he has often looked into the mirror and accused himself of claiming peace and tenderness he denied to so many others on so many worlds. He has satisfied himself as best he could with the knowledge that what he does not deserve, the children certainly do, and he will give them what he can.
He's struck by both the presence of the tears and the towel he gave him, and his smile is all soft amusement. "Just be patient with them. Agnarr, the oldest, is the most uncertain, but I don't think that's personal. He is nearing adolescence and torn between clinging to his parent and asserting his individuality apart from him. He may be mercurial. But the others, I think, will take to you well enough. Eindrid would be more interested if your alternate shape was a boat, but he'll cope."
He offers his hand. "Come. We should talk a little as we walk. There are many things we don't know about one another yet."
"That's certainly true." Megatron takes Loki's hand, slipping his fingers through his. "There weren't many forests on Cybertron even when I was a newspark, not that I would have seen them even if there had been. As for the children, it may help that I don't know anything at all about children, and have no expectations. Sparklings don't stay little very long, and they're usually brought up together by people whose job it is to give them whatever training and programming they'll need. Families of the sort that humans and Asgardians have aren't really a thing in our world. Some very wealthy people used to take newsparks out of the creches and raise them up to be heirs to their Houses. But that wasn't always a good thing. There were often expectations for sparklings raised privately. Soundwave ended up in the street as a young mech for failing to meet them."
Megatron looks around, taking in everything. "One doesn't see sparklings often these days. They used to rise from the ground in great numbers in sacred places, but not very often nowadays, and it has been so long since lovers struck a spark that some believe it is a myth. That's one of the reasons I'd keep it, if we did, even though this is a terrible time for it. In addition to being a hopeless romantic. There are so many spark-bound partners I know and I've not seen it once. Not with Ravage and Soundwave, nor Knock Out and Breakdown, nor Strika and Obsidian and Lugnut, nor Chromedome and Rewind..."
"Clever of you to hit right upon one of the things I wanted to ask," Loki tells him with a playful smirk. "I wondered what your planet was like. Landforms, flora and fauna, that kind of thing."
It's a good, peaceful topic to discuss on a walk, after all, and Loki enjoys discussing his own memories of his youth on Asgard. The talk of children catches his attention, though, and he nods, having gathered that reproduction was a matter of dependence on the planet itself rather than the bodies of individuals. It seems a shame to him to essentially raise them in group homes, but then--
His eyes widen and he looks startled by the comment about Soundwave. His hand tightens in Megatron's for a moment, and he murmurs, "That's awful."
There's a pause, and then he says, "I was adopted, and also failed to live up to my father's expectations. It's complicated."
And he's gotten past a lot of the hurt, but not all of it. "There was a war, you see. Between the Frost Giants of Jotunheim, and the Aesir of Asgard. Asgard won, but in the seige upon Jotunheim, Odin, the King, found a baby in a Jotunn temple. A runt of a giant, naked and alone. And from the ridged markings, he could see that I was the son of Laufey, the ruler of the Frost Giants. They're hereditary patterns."
"I don't know now whether I was abandoned out of contempt, left there as a test of my will to survive, or some sort of war-sacrifice in hopes of victory. Either way, Odin brought me back, and he always believed I would have died if he had not."
"My true species was a secret, even from myself. I grew up thinking I was Asgardian, and the biological younger child of the king and queen, the brother of Thor by blood. Finding out otherwise was a shock I did not take well, particularly because Odin admitted he had selected me as a political pawn, planning to install me on the throne of Jotunheim when I came of age, to ensure a government friendly to Asgard."
"That's awful," Megatron says. "You are beautiful as you are. There is no need for you to hide who and what you really are under illusions. Hiding it from you like something shameful..."
He thinks for a moment of Minimus; he only knows that Minimus is a turbofox hiding in armour because Ravage found out. Minimus was also adopted into one of those great Houses.
"I'm glad that you were found and cared for, but Odin cared only for what he saw as your function, based on your form, and not the person inside. He thought of you as a tool. I won't say that this illusion isn't pretty, but it isn't really even an illusion you chose, is it?"
Megatron smiles softly. "I do prefer your true form to this one, though I'd love you no matter how you appeared. And the illusion doesn't completely hold for me, either, unless I offline the infrared and Kirlian frequencies in my optics, and then everything else looks all wrong."
He lifts Loki's hand to his lips and kisses it.
"Soundwave disappointed them when he reached the age where his empathy and telepathy manifested, and he couldn't properly function. Their precious genius overwhelmed by the world around him, unable to focus on anything, no longer able to spy on everything for them, because all he wanted it to do was stop. He was an adult, but just barely. Ravage was also an adult, but just barely. She took him in and fell in love with him."
Megatron ex-vents. "I don't think Odin was any better than his mentors were. Thor at least has been kind to you. I'm glad he hasn't suffered what Shockwave did, for daring to love his own brother."
"Mmm." Loki makes an uncomfortable little noise of acknowledgement. "Frost Giants are the monsters and boogeymen in Asgardian bedtime stories. Raising me to think of my own kind as savages, little more than beasts, was a very poor choice on my parents' part."
"I have come to understand Odin's thought processes well. In the end, he and I are very alike, always planning several steps ahead, thinking of all the angles from which to manipulate a situation. And he was convinced he was working for the greater good, but when you use a person as a tool and leave them dirty, it sits ill. His real problem, I think, was that he began to love me as a son, and pushed me away out of fear that that would spoil his plans. Whereas I knew there was something wrong, instinctively, and was desperate for his approval."
"Some of his last words to me were to call me his son and tell me he loved me, and I believe he meant it. I do not forgive him, but he was, nonetheless, my father." It's Complicated.
He smiles, then, touched that Megatron prefers his true shape. "It unsettles some humans, otherwise I would wear it more often. Thor has mostly acclimated, Norns bless him."
"Frankly, 'kind to me' is an inadequate descriptor. He has been through Hel, figuratively speaking, to reclaim his little brother. He had to learn who I actually am along the way, is all. And vice versa. And now he is the King and Allfather of the Aesir, and I could not be prouder, though I know how it weighs on him."
"To make you think of your own kind as dangerous savages? That's beyond a poor choice and what it is, is downright cruel," Megatron protests. "I told you you should speak to Rav about this. Being a Frost Giant seems not entirely unlike being a Predacon."
Megatron takes Loki's hand in his other hand, so he can slide his arm around Loki's shoulders. "Listen, I didn't mean to diminish your brother in any way by comparing him to Shockwave. There are things for which kindness is just an inadequate word--but I don't know exactly what Thor has done for you, and even if I did I might not understand what it meant. And I have no idea what it is like to have a father. I only know that no-one should ever be made to think of themselves as less than a person because of the way in which they were made, or the shape they take."
He drops a kiss on the crown of Loki's head. "And yes, your true form is to me the most beautiful, because it is yours. If you wanted to change it, I would also view your new form as beautiful, because it would be the one that you chose for yourself, and I believe that people should have the right to choose the forms they take. But I mislike the idea of you twisting yourself around to meet anyone else's standard of beauty, even my own."
Norns, but it feels good to have someone so firmly on his side in this matter. Loki has been over all these thoughts before, has questioned Frigga's ghost and come to terms with Odin's, and he is relatively convinced that Asgard had a strong monarchy with a toxic family structure, and that's all there is to it. Even if his was the standout dysfunction, it wasn't the first one to occur. He leans into Megatron abruptly, almost crashing clumsily into him, and sighs with relief.
"Mmn. I don't know anything about Shockwave, and so I did not imagine Thor was in any way diminished by the comparison. I just want you to know that my brother is nothing like our father."
He squeezes him lightly. "You will see more of the Jotun form over the winter. I prefer it when the weather is cold, and the power it has against the bitter elements."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_serpent
For Megatron
Date: 2020-12-01 12:41 am (UTC)Loki is standing outside his hall when Megatron arrives, and he is wearing his Asgardian form, ivory-skinned and green-eyed, with inky hair back in intricate braids and tied, incongruously, with a glittery purple ribbon.
"I have something for you," he says with a little smile. "I told the children I had a new friend, but that they will not be able to meet him for a few weeks. They're curious. They sent you a picture."
Because Asgardian kids are kids nevertheless. He holds out a large piece of construction paper, upon which is a riot of crayon and marker sprinkled with glitter glue. There appear to be four figures on the page. The tallest has medium-brown skin and black hair, and a green jacket. The second is in a blue dress, with honey-brown curls and a halo of musical notes around her head. The third is the smallest, and only identifiable as a person by the two eyes and the pink-marker smile, but there are little fish and shell stickers all over him. The last is very glittery, with blond braids and a sword bigger than she is tall.
Several different hands have written "HI!" across the top. And there are additional stickers, including flowers, horses, and rainbows.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-01 01:15 am (UTC)Megatron has actually never seen anything of this nature before and keeps looking at the paper like it's a rare artefact from a world he's never imagined, mostly because, well...it is. He never got to be a child.
Cybertronians are small for only a very short period of time, and most of them are raised in creches and post-natal facilities. In the days of Megatron's youth, there were powerful 'houses' where wealthy people who could afford to forge bodies especially for the newsparks of their choice were able to choose the heirs they wanted for their households, but even then, only a small minority of sparklings were taken into homes of that sort. Most were cared for in groups and given some degree of education appropriate for their function before being assigned a place in society.
Megatron didn't even get that. His spark was rare, but it was also not the spark that had been intended to go into that particular frame; he was treated like any other cold-construct at initialisation.
It surprised him that he was even interested in helping to raise children this small; he had promised Loki that he would protect everyone he loved, and he had offered to mentor Sigrid, but he had never had the slightest desire to work in a post-natal facility or handle sparklings before.
But they were people--tiny people, but people, and they wanted to be his friends. All they knew was that he was their father's dear friend, and they were welcoming him into their lives. He was beaming, and he was sure he looked ridiculous.
He was also very resolutely not going to think about the very strong likelihood that he had taken many lives as innocent and open as these. Except it was too late for that. But he refused to dwell on it. Someday they might learn this about him, and he'd tell them the truth, he supposed, and hope they forgave him.
"I have never seen anything like this before, Loki. And I will protect them," he says, "as if they were mine. And if this is how they see themselves then I am sure they're just as adorable as their father is."
He looks up at Loki, and dabs at his eyes with the towel Loki gave him days ago; he left it in his subspace. "I don't deserve this, but the universe doesn't give us what we deserve." He smiles. "So, I'll do my best to become someone who does."
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-01 02:22 pm (UTC)"It'd be best if I have a talk with Thor, as well," he adds. "He's their uncle and he's been caring for them; he deserves some forthcoming behavior from me at this point."
"But it won't be too terribly long to wait, I assure you."
He is not privy to Megatron's mixed thoughts regarding innocent children and his own clouded past, but he would be able to identify with some of them. In the dark hours, he has often looked into the mirror and accused himself of claiming peace and tenderness he denied to so many others on so many worlds. He has satisfied himself as best he could with the knowledge that what he does not deserve, the children certainly do, and he will give them what he can.
He's struck by both the presence of the tears and the towel he gave him, and his smile is all soft amusement. "Just be patient with them. Agnarr, the oldest, is the most uncertain, but I don't think that's personal. He is nearing adolescence and torn between clinging to his parent and asserting his individuality apart from him. He may be mercurial. But the others, I think, will take to you well enough. Eindrid would be more interested if your alternate shape was a boat, but he'll cope."
He offers his hand. "Come. We should talk a little as we walk. There are many things we don't know about one another yet."
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-01 03:38 pm (UTC)Megatron looks around, taking in everything. "One doesn't see sparklings often these days. They used to rise from the ground in great numbers in sacred places, but not very often nowadays, and it has been so long since lovers struck a spark that some believe it is a myth. That's one of the reasons I'd keep it, if we did, even though this is a terrible time for it. In addition to being a hopeless romantic. There are so many spark-bound partners I know and I've not seen it once. Not with Ravage and Soundwave, nor Knock Out and Breakdown, nor Strika and Obsidian and Lugnut, nor Chromedome and Rewind..."
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-01 04:24 pm (UTC)It's a good, peaceful topic to discuss on a walk, after all, and Loki enjoys discussing his own memories of his youth on Asgard. The talk of children catches his attention, though, and he nods, having gathered that reproduction was a matter of dependence on the planet itself rather than the bodies of individuals. It seems a shame to him to essentially raise them in group homes, but then--
His eyes widen and he looks startled by the comment about Soundwave. His hand tightens in Megatron's for a moment, and he murmurs, "That's awful."
There's a pause, and then he says, "I was adopted, and also failed to live up to my father's expectations. It's complicated."
And he's gotten past a lot of the hurt, but not all of it. "There was a war, you see. Between the Frost Giants of Jotunheim, and the Aesir of Asgard. Asgard won, but in the seige upon Jotunheim, Odin, the King, found a baby in a Jotunn temple. A runt of a giant, naked and alone. And from the ridged markings, he could see that I was the son of Laufey, the ruler of the Frost Giants. They're hereditary patterns."
"I don't know now whether I was abandoned out of contempt, left there as a test of my will to survive, or some sort of war-sacrifice in hopes of victory. Either way, Odin brought me back, and he always believed I would have died if he had not."
"My true species was a secret, even from myself. I grew up thinking I was Asgardian, and the biological younger child of the king and queen, the brother of Thor by blood. Finding out otherwise was a shock I did not take well, particularly because Odin admitted he had selected me as a political pawn, planning to install me on the throne of Jotunheim when I came of age, to ensure a government friendly to Asgard."
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-01 05:20 pm (UTC)He thinks for a moment of Minimus; he only knows that Minimus is a turbofox hiding in armour because Ravage found out. Minimus was also adopted into one of those great Houses.
"I'm glad that you were found and cared for, but Odin cared only for what he saw as your function, based on your form, and not the person inside. He thought of you as a tool. I won't say that this illusion isn't pretty, but it isn't really even an illusion you chose, is it?"
Megatron smiles softly. "I do prefer your true form to this one, though I'd love you no matter how you appeared. And the illusion doesn't completely hold for me, either, unless I offline the infrared and Kirlian frequencies in my optics, and then everything else looks all wrong."
He lifts Loki's hand to his lips and kisses it.
"Soundwave disappointed them when he reached the age where his empathy and telepathy manifested, and he couldn't properly function. Their precious genius overwhelmed by the world around him, unable to focus on anything, no longer able to spy on everything for them, because all he wanted it to do was stop. He was an adult, but just barely. Ravage was also an adult, but just barely. She took him in and fell in love with him."
Megatron ex-vents. "I don't think Odin was any better than his mentors were. Thor at least has been kind to you. I'm glad he hasn't suffered what Shockwave did, for daring to love his own brother."
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-01 07:58 pm (UTC)"I have come to understand Odin's thought processes well. In the end, he and I are very alike, always planning several steps ahead, thinking of all the angles from which to manipulate a situation. And he was convinced he was working for the greater good, but when you use a person as a tool and leave them dirty, it sits ill. His real problem, I think, was that he began to love me as a son, and pushed me away out of fear that that would spoil his plans. Whereas I knew there was something wrong, instinctively, and was desperate for his approval."
"Some of his last words to me were to call me his son and tell me he loved me, and I believe he meant it. I do not forgive him, but he was, nonetheless, my father." It's Complicated.
He smiles, then, touched that Megatron prefers his true shape. "It unsettles some humans, otherwise I would wear it more often. Thor has mostly acclimated, Norns bless him."
"Frankly, 'kind to me' is an inadequate descriptor. He has been through Hel, figuratively speaking, to reclaim his little brother. He had to learn who I actually am along the way, is all. And vice versa. And now he is the King and Allfather of the Aesir, and I could not be prouder, though I know how it weighs on him."
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-01 09:12 pm (UTC)Megatron takes Loki's hand in his other hand, so he can slide his arm around Loki's shoulders. "Listen, I didn't mean to diminish your brother in any way by comparing him to Shockwave. There are things for which kindness is just an inadequate word--but I don't know exactly what Thor has done for you, and even if I did I might not understand what it meant. And I have no idea what it is like to have a father. I only know that no-one should ever be made to think of themselves as less than a person because of the way in which they were made, or the shape they take."
He drops a kiss on the crown of Loki's head. "And yes, your true form is to me the most beautiful, because it is yours. If you wanted to change it, I would also view your new form as beautiful, because it would be the one that you chose for yourself, and I believe that people should have the right to choose the forms they take. But I mislike the idea of you twisting yourself around to meet anyone else's standard of beauty, even my own."
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-01 09:36 pm (UTC)"Mmn. I don't know anything about Shockwave, and so I did not imagine Thor was in any way diminished by the comparison. I just want you to know that my brother is nothing like our father."
He squeezes him lightly. "You will see more of the Jotun form over the winter. I prefer it when the weather is cold, and the power it has against the bitter elements."