Rung's Reports: Drift, Sessions 16 & 21

[bumblemusprime]

Rung’s Reports
Drift: Session Sixteen

“I love the energy in here.”

Drift looked up at the ceiling, brushing his hand across some imaginary pillar of connection, some plug or piston or rooted server for the invisible machinery of the universe. It was all ‘energy.’ Rung had taken notes on Drift’s many explanations of said energy, but he retained little, save a sense that for Drift, a space always carried energy, and a bot needed to be aware of the role of said energy, and how exactly the bot was supposed to control or channel the energy was really, truly crucial, and ill-defined. Talking about energy seemed comforting to Drift, so Rung encouraged it. Though he often needed to reroute his pain sensors away from his head after Drift’s sessions.

“Really, you’ve channeled that healing energy so well. It’s no wonder you made a full recovery.” Drift leaned over, looked closely at Rung’s head. “And they even got the eyebrows right!”

“Ratchet is a miracle worker, as they say.” Rung smiled broadly. “Why don’t you sit down? Last I heard, Rodimus was busy, and not likely to interrupt.”

Drift relaxed into the slab. Most patients preferred to sit—lying down was something left over from Froidian stereotypes. Drift enjoyed such things, though. He lay on his back and smiled up—at the energy, probably.

The door whistled closed.

Drift’s face changed. The smile lines sagged, became creases. The eyes shifted; they had been bright and open, now they were hollow and haunted. His hands rested on the hilts of his swords, closing and opening by reflex.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“Are you saying… Drift, are you still having thoughts of suicide?”

He didn’t answer.

“I can give you another shot of engeniphon before you leave. There’s no shortage.”

He was silent.

“I know it must have been difficult with me gone. I had hoped that you broached the subject with Rodimus, like we talked about in case of emergency.”

Times like these, one could see the shadow of Deadlock in Drift. Rung would never say the name around his patient, but he could tell, in that haunted, broken look, how this gentle soul, so devoted to restraint and wonder, had once turned that devotion to violence.

After all, the violence had filled a soul that had, beforehand, filled up with syk. “We can deal with syk withdrawals. Have you been exercising?”

Drift lay silently.

“Drift, I cannot help if you don’t talk to me.”

“It’s just—I don’t know what there is to talk about. I’ve done something bad.”

“Hold on,” Rung said. “Are you focusing on your past mistakes? Deadlock’s mistakes? We talked about dealing with guilt. You told me that the Circle of Light—”

“Not that.”

He shifted on the bed. Rung noticed that Drift was wearing his sword. No one else seemed to take this as portentous—the war over, and he clung to his weapons. Others wrote it off as something similar to Brainstorm’s briefcase, or Ultra Magnus’s datapad.

Rung worried. More than one of the Circle of Light had fallen on the sword for dishonor. How they defined ‘dishonor,’ he could not say.

“On Delphi, when the red rust set in?” He looked at Rung. “I told Ratchet to kill me, before the D.J.D. would. It was honestly kind of a relief to say it.”

“Drift, I don’t understand. You’ve often expressed this idea that you are at peace with your actions as Deadlock. Yet you seem immeasurably guilty this session. You have done so much in the last few years to advance the cause of good. Perhaps if we talk again about the idea of the war ending…”

“I… I can’t.” He looked away from Rung.

“Surely you can here, if nowhere else…”

“It’s classified.”

“All right,” Rung said. “Have you spoken with—” Rodimus was apparently a poor choice. “Ultra Magnus?”

Drift shifted, stared up at the ceiling. “Have I told you my new theory about the Knights of Cybertron?”

“No, but I don’t think that’s a useful subject right now.”

“I have a theory that—crazy as this sounds—that we are the Knights of Cybertron.”

“Drift—”

Drift turned and gave Rung the closest thing he must have had to a dirty look—eyes narrowed, face pinched. There was no real menace in it. “I’m sorry I brought anything else up, because I’m not authorized to talk about it. Let’s talk about the Knights.”

“All right, if you wish.”

“There’s a concept organics have. They don’t have a spark, you know—they grow inside other bodies. In a way, you could say they’re all forged and constructed cold at the same time. So they talk about a soul. You ever heard of it?”

“It’s a religious idea, isn’t it?”

“Not just religious. Even their atheists, their Ratchets, speak of the soul. It’s the eternal part of you. The part that makes the self the self.”

“Like the spark.”

“Like, and not. The soul can exist independent of the body.” He looked at Rung, and a hint of his earlier enthusiasm came into his face. “I believe that we all have a soul—a kind of spark within, and without the spark. The Knights of Cybertron are each a reflection of our own souls. Spiritual, energy beings. And when we meet with them, and we allow our sparks to merge with our souls in their forms, we will—”

“I’m sorry—energy beings?”

“Energy! Created out this spiritual reflection of our own souls. We have two-part souls, Rung! Energon and energy. Think about it. How can we be called Transformers simply because of a physical process of change? One day we are meant to transform into creatures—creatures of a beautiful white light. Energon joins energy.”

“I see,” Rung said. Swerve’s long-winded description popped into his head. Syk-addict-turned-Decepticon-turned-Autobot-ninja-turned-flaky-spiritualist. To which Drift would now add turned-luminous-soul-reflecting-white-light.

“Drift, does this notion give you hope?”

“It does.” His voice fell. “It makes me think that in the future, that I will finally be at peace.”

“Drift, you seem to be shifting between extremes. That tells me that you are trying to find some way of balancing a darker feeling with a lighter—rather than resolving your darker impulses, facing them, understanding them, as the Circle of Light taught you to do.”

Drift stared at Rung. Just stared. His face fell, and rose again, and finally settled into an unfamiliar hard, cold expression that seemed to come straight from a Decepticon playbook. Rung actually felt himself shifting, uncomfortably, in his chair. Deadlock was closer to the surface now.

He rose and palmed the doorway. “I’ll talk to you later, Rung.”

What had Drift done?

End of Session Seventeen

#

Drift: Session Twenty-One

The badgeless figure in the doorway sagged. “Now you know.”

“I know that Rodimus blamed you for Overlord,” Rung said. “I don’t think I know the full truth.” He walked to Drift, put a hand on his arm. “It could not have been simply you who brought Overlord on board. You did this to preserve the integrity of the crew.”

“Rodimus doesn’t deserve to take the fall,” Drift said. After a moment he added, “Not, ah, not that Rodimus had anything to with this.” He waited another moment. “You’re too smart not to have figured that out, right?”

“You should have told Ultra Magnus,” Rung said. “The minute you left my office.”

Draft’s eyes went to the ground, at the same time his hand twitched on the hilts of his swords.

“You don’t deserve the fall, though.” Rung wasn’t sure how to say this. He would like Drift to have realized it for himself. But he had learned, in twenty sessions, that Drift was still too guilty over his entire life—wasted on syk, descended into darkness as a Decepticon—not to take the blame easily. He looked for justification for self-blame. In his core, he was an addict seeking a way to drown out his own sense of himself. And he projected an image—bloodthirsty Decepticon, perky spiritualist, mysterious silent warrior—to make up for the inner Empty.

So he went with “How do you feel?”

“I feel relieved, really,” Drift said. “I don’t have to carry this secret. I’ll miss our sessions, for what that is worth.”

“What will you do?” Rung asked.

“Continue the quest, I think,” Drift said. “Look for the Knights of Cybertron. See if my theory is true.” He turned from Rung, moved out of the doorway, about to end their last session.

“May I make a suggestion, Drift?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t quest.” Rung tried to let it sink in. “Just live.”

“Just live.”

“No changes. Don’t look for a transformation. Don’t look for epiphanies, moments of blinding forgiveness, interference from Primus. Just be…” and here, Rung couldn’t help putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder, “Drift.”

“I’ve never just been Drift.”

Rung could tell they were both thinking of the same Swerve-coined description now. “I know. Try it.”

He turned—and then turned back, and drew his short swords. “Here. Keep these.”

Rung’s eyes widened, and he felt his considerable eyebrows shoot nearly to the top of his head. “Drift—in case you come back?”

“In case I want them back.” He smiled, a real smile, for once not a fake glow of ‘energy.’ “If I come looking for them, remind me. Just live.”

And there he went, syk-addict turned Decepticon turned Autobot ninja turned flaky spiritualist turned… himself.

End of Session Twenty-One

[Computron]

This is all canon to me I hope you realize, and totally satisfying my MTMTE cravings.

I can not wait for the next one, not to put any pressure on you.

[bumblemusprime]

You're the best, Compy.

Next week is, for a shake-up, Adventures In Verity's Outbox. Watch for it.

[Computron]

Adventures In Verity's Outbox. Watch for it.

That seems naughty somehow.

[bumblemusprime]

[Best First]

IT IS FRIDAY WHERE IS MY ALMOST IMPERCEPTABLY FAKE MTMTE FIX????

[bumblemusprime]

Oh, you know I like it when you beg.

[Best First]

That's not begging - that's shouting at you for being slow.

So basically i just treated you like George RR Martin.

[bumblemusprime]

That's not begging - that's shouting at you for being slow.

So basically i just treated you like George RR Martin.

I could live with that. Time to watch audition tapes for HBO.

[Denyer]

This is all canon to me I hope you realize, and totally satisfying my MTMTE cravings.

Likewise.