User blog:RoboHobo77/Shiftlock's Notes To Self II

((IC thoughts presented for OOC enjoyment. None of this is useable in game unless she talks to you about it.))

Meditation: Session #2

Music for the meditation: Zack Hemsey - Slave

I know things are going bad around me, I heard that Elita One might be terminal after the assault on Rhetoris, and I know the war is picking back up. It's a whirlwind of trouble, of demands for attention, for retribution, for taking up arms and getting our hands covered in oil and energon. Jazz is drinking to take his mind off all of it, and when Jazz is drinking, you know things are going south.

But it's all still just wind and noise. Even a tornado is calm in the eye, you just have to find your way into it. I can't help them right now, I can't help anyone, unless I get my head together. I got a message saying I was promoted to sergeant. I don't know why, I didn't do anything to deserve a promotion, but if command says I need to shoulder more responsibility, I'd better damn well be mentally fit to do it.

I was an Empty. I had nothing, I was nothing, I would never be anything. I was a hollow shell just driving through life, running from everything that frightened me. If anyone finds this, I'm sure they'll be surprised, considering how I fight like I don't have a definition of fear, but the truth is, I'm afraid all the time. I just know how to blow smoke well enough to make it look like I have some kind of plan, that I'm some kind of hero. I'm no hero. I'm just looking for the right time to die so that my life isn't a total waste.

That bothers me more than anything; everyone else has this purpose, this function to their life - I don't. I'm hollow. If you ding my chassis it'll sound like a bell. I want more than just living. I want to ,,,,

... I want to serve. To protect. To bear the pain of others so they don't have to. Even Decepticons. Not all of them want to be where they are. Some of them want freedom, too.

A badge is a mark of slavery. Red, Purple, slag, it could be green or blue or puce, who cares? - but it says you are owned. You are owned by command, you are owned by ideology, you are owned by missions, you are owned by duty, you are owned by rules and regulation, you are owned by war. I give the Autobots credit in that they make that slavery a choice: It's not called an Auto-branding ceremony for nothing.

I decided to let them put on the collar, put on the shackles, and pull alongside the other beasts of burden in this faction. Terrans had these creatures called 'oxen' - big, powerful four leggged creatures. They could crush a terran, gore them with horns, and yet, when they were gentled, their work allowed the terrans to have greater food production. Strength, yoked to purpose, yields life. I decided to become an oxen so that my neutral brethren could have life. Sometimes the other Autobots don't understand why I fight so hard for the neutrals. I can hear the contempt creeping up in the way they talk about them - 'newts', they call them in jest - and some of them only fight to help neutrals because they're worried that they won't have good PR if they don't. I fight because I'm not just an Autobot - I'm a NEUTRAL.

They keep forgetting... I watched the history vids. Optimus Prime was a ''neutral dock worker. '' True, a lot of neutrals are just scared and complacent; they don't want to fight, and who can blame them? I resisted taking a side for three million years, because I wanted nothing to do with the endless destruction of war, but looking the other way and retreating is not strength, it's fear. Strength is active resistance, not passive reluctance.

There's strength in the neutrals that they don't realize they have, and if I have to be the only lit match in that tinder, I'll start that fire myself. I know some will never be able or ready to fight... but I love my people. I love my planet. I love my home, and what better way to give that love, than to fight, struggle and die so that they can live?

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Meditation Session Music #3: Zack Hemsey - Teachings of a Ronin

I'm hollow. That means I can be filled. All the suffering in the world? Pour it into me. I'll drink it down and fill up on more. An Empty has plenty of room.

I can't know if you'll forgive me, Longslide, Dirt Drop, Clutch Kick. I can't know if, when the Decepticons came to kill you, you were waiting on me to save the day. I can't know if you felt like I failed you. When the trucks emptied into the smelters, I can't know how betrayed you felt, Brunt. I promised I'd help you, and I sent you to your deaths. You'll never know that I was deceived, but if there is something beyond this existence, if the Afterspark is real and you're looking down on me now, I hope you know that I never meant to hurt any of you, and your deaths are the heaviest chains this slave wears.

Chains.

Chains work both ways. They can pull you... or you can pull back. They are meant to hold you down, but you can use them as weapons to free yourself.

I accept, now, that I will never be rid of my grief, just as now, I will never be rid of my chains... so I will make them a part of me. I will let the rage of the dead fill me and give me strength. The Autobots are so very right on one thing - we all pull together, we all help each other, we all give our best for each other, or we all die alone. A rope is made of many strands, and the more there are, the harder it is to cut or break.

I'll be the voice of the dead, so that they are never forgotten. I'll let them fill this Empty, and give them a second chance at justice through my hands.

The tombstones are behind me and part of me, now. Grief is an expression of loss... and I've lost nothing. As long as I remember them, they will exist inside me forever. Death and Life are halves of the same whole.