Lacrimosidus

CONTAINS SLASH. Takes place way before Ambrosia

  .o

  Space.  

  Emptiness.  

  Nothing.  

  Unicron stared blankly ahead as the universe itself pressed down upon his consciousness. Filaments of matter surrounded him, yet all he saw was the voids between them. Nothing beautiful existed here because beauty lost its meaning when the light faded from little Welder's eyes.  

  His Mini-Cons--his children--depended on him and he failed them. He failed them. Self-awareness chose the worst moment to make them sentient. Never again would their minds require his instructions. Never again would they wait for his advice. Never again would they look upon him with the loving innocence of helpless children.  

  They were kind enough to grant him one more moment with Welder.  

  Unicron remembered kneeling next to his little white body and petting his smooth cheek. He cradled his firstborn against his chest just as he always had right before lying him in his recharge pod.  

  The rest of the Mini-Cons looked on coldly when he wept over Welder's lifeless remains. Pain welled through him in burning waves with endless crests. Irrationally, he reached for the pitcher beside his own internal energon pool and tipped it to Welder's mouth. The carbonated liquid merely ran off the corners of his parted lips. It struck him that Welder would never squeak and run to him at the mere mention of "bubbly stuff." He'd never smile, laugh or do handstands. He'd never come charging in with a brand new diamond to show off.  

  "Welder...please--just smile," Unicron's whisperings echoed off the darkened walls. "Please...just one more smile for your father."  

  No answer came. No answer would ever come.  

  Unicron's face pulled in a rictus of agony. It was his fault the most beautiful creature in the universe now lay dead in his arms.  

  He could remember the day he brought Welder online for the first time. His eyes were shattered and he only had his sense of touch to go by, so it amazed him to hear those tiny hisses and clicks and know he created the being making them.  

  "I am here to serve you, master," Welder had said.  

  No, Welder, don't call me master. Unicron replied.  

  "Why not?"   

  Master is the word of a frightened slave created only to suffer. You are not my slave. You are my son and I made you out of love.   

  "Oh..." A brief pause. Servos clicked as Welder sat up. He giggled, "What do I call you? Huh? Huh? Hehe! I wanna know!"   

  Call me... Unicron smiled and stroked Welder's cheek. Already, he adored him. Father.   

  "Father..."   

  Unicron nodded his head.   

  Welder kicked his feet and his heels pinged noisily against the table on which he sat. "Hello, father!"   

  The innocence of those two words made Unicron laugh and embrace his firstborn creation. He stiffened when fingers poked right into his shattered eye sockets.  

  "You're broken!"  

  Ouch! That hurts!   

  The fingers withdrew. "What's 'hurt?'"   

  That stopped Unicron in his tracks. He thought he programmed common knowledge into Welder's databanks before bringing him online. Maybe his systems were still too primitive to retain that information. He'd have to learn.  

  Hurt is... Unicron grasped Welder's wrists and held his hands. No...he couldn't taint this newborn innocence with his pain. ...something I hope you never have to feel.   

  "Oh. Okay." Welder took the explanation for what it was and didn't question it. He leaned closer, practically in Unicron's face, and his little whistles bubbled around him in an audible smile, "I think I can fix you so you don't hurt no more. Can I try? Can I? Can I? Please, father, can I?"   

  Ah, Welder, Unicron found it impossible not to return the expression. He patted Welder's head and marveled aloud, In some ways, you already have.   

  Then Unicron slipped back into the present and lamented. What liar he proved himself to be. Up until the day he died, Welder never fully understood pain. To him it was just an unpleasant sensation that only happened when he tripped or got his hands caught in something. He never knew what sadness, disappointment or anger felt like. He never knew the horrors of unwanted touches on the most private areas of his body. He never went through fear, hunger or loneliness.  

  Yet for his final three seconds of life, he endured betrayal, terror and pain. The ugliness of sentience.  

  And he spoke the only standard language words he would ever speak in his lifetime:  

  "Father, why did you hurt me?"  

  "I didn't mean to," Unicron whispered, "I-I didn't mean to."  

  Welder would never know that. Without a Spark, death became a permanent oblivion without thought or dream and utterly deaf to the prayers of the living.  

  Unicron forced himself to lay Welder's body down on the ground. Torn wires glistened between his broken neck bearings. His head dangled at an unnatural angle. Trembling, Unicron kissed his tiny hands and brow. The universe wrapped painful wires around his Spark that shattered him inside when he released his firstborn from his grasp. His self loathing and pain were too great to hold his avatar together.  

  When he checked again later, Welder and his Mini-Cons were gone. They left while stasis numbed his senses.  

  Distraught, Unicron assembled Sideways and programmed him with information on what happened. He sent him to Cybertron in a stasis pod--so he didn't have to bear looking into eyes too much like his old master--and watched in silence while data regarding his Mini-Cons was relayed to him from afar.  

  Not long after the Mini-Cons left, Unicron's ring array detected a ship passing nearby. He scanned it only to find two occupants and no weapons. Cybertronians...what were they doing this far out in space?   

  Unicron looked closer. One of them had a mind almost as blank as a Spark-ling and the other...loved that mech. The mech with the blank mind stared at him through the cockpit window. His optics were red and curious.  

  And Unicron warped away, bitter. For many more millennia he slipped through cycles of sleep, waking only to feed. Sideways was always ready with new information--though Unicron numbly wished he could cut off all communication when he learned his children became war machines. They were surrounded by hate, pain and death...everything he didn't want.  

  Primacron's jeering bore across his mind.  

  You are nothing but a sex toy to this universe. No one cares about your misery. You are nothing to me. Want to know why? I MADE you to be nothing. I am the void in which the universe grows. I am the Dark and you may only accept my empty embrace. </i>     

  Cruel words clouded his perception until the glory of Creation lost its luster. He saw only the emptiness and felt the infinite weight of loneliness.  

  Sideways relayed images to him and his eyes were always drawn to the bonded pairs walking hand in hand in the streets. They felt things he lost all right to the moment he took Welder's life.  

  Maybe Primacron was right. Maybe he really did mean nothing to this universe. What point was there in staying in it? All he felt was pain and it made him weary.  

  Sideways.   

  Unicron?   

  I am going to self terminate in one hour. Your instructions are to locate my children.  Tell them everything. Tell them I still...love...them.   

  You... Sideways choked--amazing how he could choke up telepathically while remaining absolutely apathetic on the outside. Probably for the better, seeing as he was in contact with a certain figure named Megatron.  

  Unicron recognized Megatron. The one with the blank mind in the ship...a person now twisted, bastardized and trapped in cycles of envy.   

  If only he'd known then that he was staring at the bridge to his destiny...  

  Don't try to change my mind. Unicron hung his head, his wing array trailing lifelessly around him in the void. I must do this. Thank you for your loyal service, Sideways.   

  Unicron--   

  Then he broke off contact to all but Sideways' visual relays. Might as well take a last look around at his grand failure. He turned completely inward to his true, tiny Mini-Con self where the neural wiring that kept his Spark bound to this plane tangled around him like choking vines. All he had to do was pull them out and he'd sever himself from his agony forever.  

  There is no beauty here. Primus...if there is anything worth living for...anything at all... he sagged, his emotions so frozen he couldn't even cry. Nevermind.   

  Unicron pulled out the first neural line and his legs went limp. He crashed to the floor of his central core. The next wire left most of his torso useless. Only his arms and head still functioned. Yanking those last lines out would be his painless end and the universe could do what it wanted with his remains.  

  He paused to observe Sideways' visual relays one last time, and that is when he saw a cloud of crimson so brilliant it broke through the apathetic veil between his eyes and reality.  

  Sideways, what is that?   

  A holo-painting. This guy paints a lot, but he's been doing it while you were asleep. I've never seen anybody like him.   

  Get closer. Unicron ordered--he figured he could leave this world looking at something colorful.  

  The person responsible for the painting was...he was just a child! Barely out of his Spark-ling form!  

  This boy knelt between the four pillars of his holographic canvas with his hands flat on the ground. Sunlight glistened across the blue of his scratched chassis and short wings. He was a mix of curves and points built just for flight.  

  Suddenly, the young mech arched up as if in overload. He lifted himself like fluid to twirl around on one foot. One pirouette, two pirouettes--and then he left gravity behind as color wicked off the silver rods attached to his fingertips. Stars appeared in the painted nebula. The artist curled his body into the most perfect spiral Unicron had ever seen and whirled his way around all four corners of his canvas.  

  He was ecstasy unbound, dancing to his own silent music. Then he spun to glance at Sideways and his face caught the sun. Sunset red offset by droplets of silver reflection. He bit his bottom lip and smiled in naked glee and it brought back fond memories of Welder. Innocence wove itself into every movement he made as he created utter beauty.  

  Unicron found himself plugging his neural lines back in. Once he could move again, he immediately noted the young artist's signature and ran a search for every single image bearing that mark. Then he stood within the confines of his own mind and called them forth. Many works lined invisible walls before him to peruse at his leisure.  

  Unicron studied every single image.  

  Sky-scapes. Star charts. Fantasy worlds. Nebulae, planets and even people. There was nothing the young artist could not do. Everything spoke of beauty and feeling and anyone could sense this artist loved the process as much as the results.  

  His signature was Ancient Cybertronian--a language long dead to all but scholars, archeologists and those who grew up in the Eastern cities. He paused on the artist's self portrait--an image of himself in profile, reaching towards a distant star. The painted blue form floated like ghostly veils in the blood red seas of Unicron's optics.  Freedom was its title. The young lad appeared taken by the sky--and how strange that this image didn't look quite finished. Something was missing, but Unicron wasn't sure what. All he knew was when he looked upon the images this artist painted, he felt.  

  Beauty still existed. He saw it through that wonderful boy's eyes.   

  What would it be like to touch those magnificent hands? What would it be like to have those pillars of creation hold him? Those hands and the vistas they created sent ribbons of feeling straight to his Spark. He would give anything just for one moment with that boy...one moment to look into his eyes and know what allowed them to see the gloriousness of the universe...one moment to thank him for sharing his incredible talent.  

  Of course, that scenario was highly unlikely. Unicron considered himself unworthy to touch, speak to or even stand in the presence of such greatness.   

  But he could admire and imagine because now, now he had something to look forward to again.   

  The dark god's eyes drifted to the signature floating in the bottom of each painting. It was little more than a squiggle with slashes drawn through it.  

  His signature...is it his real name or an alias?   

  It's real, Sideways remarked from a distance. He's got a strong Eastern accent, so...yes, the name is real, but he seems to prefer its standard translation. Nobody from this area can pronounce it right.  

  Lacrimosidus, Unicron said it without stumbling on a single syllable. A beautiful name befitting such raw and natural talent.  

  And when you translate it, it's--  

  Unicron turned his attention back to the svelte blue figure whirling through sun and shadow. His lips twitched in an almost-smile as he whispered the name of his reason for living.  

  ...Starscream.