Hen to Pan: The Ouroboros

For Tams—feel better lady! X3

Disclamer: Right. I own Transformers. Just like how I own the moon and France… -_-
~~

Optimus and Magnus stood to one side in one of the many large hallways inside Autobot City, speaking together in low voices. The day was nearly over and Optimus felt the weariness it brought pressing upon his shoulder struts. So engrossed in his conversation, he was surprised at a firm touch on his arm. Surprised, but not startled. Prime knew instantly it was Rodimus.

He didn’t have to look up or turn around to realize it was his fellow Prime pass by. Just as he knew himself intimately, he knew Rodimus. The relationship between the two was a complicated one.

Rodimus and Optimus: They were co-leaders, revered and respected by their people. They were brothers both by race and by circumstance. Some, trying to explain their connection, even said that they were lovers.

All mere shadows of what they really were.

They were Prime.

And though the word, the tile, was whispered with half awe the extent of what was truly meant by the statement couldn’t be fully known to anyone. Not even the two Primes themselves.

Sometimes, when they were near one another and all was calm, they would catch a glimpse of it reflecting in each other’s optics, glistening off the back of their minds: A glowing wheel that encompassed all of existence.

When they were closest, minds Touching, they could see it fully, though the experience was always fleeting—memories of it turning to vapor the moment it was exposed to conscious thought. It was in those moments, connected so completely to one another, the Primes could clearly see what this relationship was. What they themselves truly were.

And it happened, as it always did, in that instant, as Rodimus opened a compassionate link to Optimus—giving the other’s arm a gentle squeeze; they experienced themselves...


Somewhere beyond time, a giant thread, a snake-like being, curled in a single huge loop, its immeasurable body circling the all of existence until its head came back around to where it began. It grasped its tail in its huge maw, swallowing it, consuming itself for sustenance. It was both a beginning and an end, the moment of destruction and the instant of creation. They were the nexus. Optimus gasped in Rodimus’s arms as the head bit down on the tail, Devouring. Rodimus’s groaned, forehead buried in Optimus’s neck as the tail was consumed, Sustaining. They were an eternal circle, a self-eating being destined to destroy and recreate it’s self. And yet it was their dichotomy that intertwined them so, allowing them to be one—two sides, two halves, a duality connected in a perfect primordial unity, beginning and ending for all infinity. Rodimus keened, digesting Optimus’s essence, taking inside himself what had already been absorbed. Optimus roared, offering what he was for Rodimus even as Rodimus was destroyed and recreated inside of him. They were a paradox that did exist because it had to exist.  Here they were I, and they were We, and they resonated in flawless synchronization and they were perfect, as they were intended to be. Together they sang Their name and were lost to the euphoria of completion.

A Magnum Opus.

Unfortunately, their mortality demanded a maintained separation…
A single beat of existence—


—and Rodimus’s hand slipped from Optimus’s arm.

“Sir?” Ultra Magnus was saying.

Optimus started, finding his focus somewhere beyond the present and quickly brought his attention back to his city commander.

“I apologize, Magnus,” the leader intoned with a weary exhalation of his vents, “I seem to be doing that a lot lately,”

Ultra Magnus smiled sympathetically at his leader. “Don’t worry about it. I know you’re tired,” The city commander raised his optics to glance at something over Optimus’s shoulder, “You and Rodimus both.” he added.

Shuttering with an odd sense of eternity, Optimus turned his head and followed Magnus’s line of sight.

Rodimus’s magenta and yellow form was slowly retreating down the hallway joking with a short femme walking at his side. He turned his head mid laugh and looked back at the two behind him. His optics caught Optimus’s and for a brief moment a burning wheel manifested itself in Optimus’s minds eye.

The moment passed. Rodimus turned back to his companion and Magnus continued his report. Optimus found his optics turned back to the city commander, but his mind remained far away. He couldn’t help but idly brush the spot on his arm where, moments earlier, Rodimus had companionably grasped him as he walked past. He couldn’t place the feeling, but he it felt as if something very important had happened in that instant, but it was now nothing more than a hazy half sensation somewhere in the core of his being.

~~