ime seems to be a meaningless thing inside the Arctic Circle. There is, on the one hand, a frigid, endlessly unchanging quality about the place. Nothing intelligent lives here, so nothing is available, save for the capricious elements, to alter the landscape. Yet, the Arctic is also a place of truly bizarre extremes. When one is there in the depths of winter, the days are, instead, endless nights. One never sees the sun; all is unending, unchanging darkness, broken only by cold, forbidding stars and the occasional lurid splash of a colorful aurora here and there. Indeed, the Arctic winter is a dark and frigidly cold thing, something best avoided and forgotten. When one happens to be in the Arctic in high summer, however – as I was, currently – the story is quite different. Then, the days are endless days. There are no nights. The sun never sets; its light simply mutates from dim to blindingly bright and then back to dim again over the course of a single day.
As such, time quickly ceases to be meaningful in both of the extreme seasons in the Arctic. Either one endures an endless, bitterly cold night or one enjoys a slightly milder endless day. There is very little in between. If one were to stay in the Arctic long enough, I could easily imagine that one would begin to measure time in entire seasons rather than in days and weeks, much less in mere hours.
So it was that I had no idea how long I'd been perched on the desolate, forbidding, wind-whipped little outcropping of blue-white ice upon which I was sitting. I was somewhere in the middle of the Arctic Circle, huddled in my chosen spot with my knees drawn up to my chin. It might have been mere hours that I'd been sitting there. It might have been entire weeks or years. I really had no idea. All that I was aware of was the constant, bitingly cold wind blowing in from the distant, surrounding ocean and the pallid sunshine streaming down through tiny breaks in a sky that was, for the most part, full of depressingly-grey clouds. And, of course, there was the flat, glaring expanse of blue-whiteness that was the icepack. It stretched out around me in all directions, all the way to the horizon on all sides; I could almost believe that it was endless. Almost entirely devoid of life, the Arctic landscape was stark and blinding in its simple, primal purity.
It was pure. I was…not. I hadn’t been for a very long time, indeed…But, out of long habit, I pushed that thought aside almost as quickly as it had managed to surface, determinedly returning my attention to the wandering musings that I had been contemplating before those niggling thoughts had intruded upon my musings.
I didn't know precisely what it was that had drawn me to the Arctic, specifically to the very spot upon which I was sitting. Perhaps it was the memories that haunted the place. It was as if they had been frozen within the ice beneath me, as if the feeble heat from the sun was slowly melting away the ice and releasing the memories entrapped within it. They wafted about the area like a lingering, long-forgotten perfume: familiar, comforting, yet at the same time vastly conflicted and utterly confusing.
It was very near to my current position that Skyfire had crashed, by my own hand, a single Earth year ago. He had been buried under tons of Arctic ice afterward, and it had been the Autobots who were now his friends that had subsequently freed him from that imprisonment. Looking out across the ice from my current vantage point, I could see the deep, jagged-edged pit that they’d heedlessly left behind after they had rescued Skyfire. It was a testament – a monument, even – to my own self-absorption, my own lack of trust and understanding. For long and self-recriminating minutes, I stared across the ice at that pit, and I fancied that I had been drawn to the Arctic simply so that I could gaze upon my own dubious handiwork…but I knew that really wasn’t the reason that I was there at all.
No, I knew that I had been drawn to the very spot upon which I sat because, about fifty meters precisely beneath where I was sitting, Skyfire had laid dormant for millions of years, entombed within the Arctic ice. The damage he’d sustained in the crash had left him deactivated, and everyone who had known him had thought him dead…except for me, of course. I had known that Skyfire wasn’t dead at all…but that knowledge hadn’t at all lessened my despair shortly after I’d lost him. Indeed, it had only made me feel worse. Guiltier. Leaving Skyfire behind had he been dead would have been forgivable; leaving him behind when I’d known beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was still alive – and, worse, never returning for him – was nothing less than reprehensible. And the mountain of guilt associated with that reprehensible act had most assuredly been my downfall. It had been guilt and a bewildering yet deep-seated craving for punishment for my part in Skyfire’s loss that had slowly drawn me to Megatron, like a moth to a flame, all those years ago…
When I left Skyfire, I had done so all the while assuring myself that I was returning to Cybertron merely to get help. So that I could come back for him and search the planet where he’d crashed more thoroughly. So that I could rescue him. So that I could return to him. But it had been a long flight back to Cybertron, and it had been a journey that I had barely survived, for various reasons. And when I had finally arrived…Cybertron was a very different place than it had been when I’d left it, beginning to be consumed by what became known as the Great War. Sending rescue parties out to retrieve lost explorers when there was a war to be fought and glory to be gained was not very high on anyone’s priority list, no matter how often and how passionately I had pleaded my case.
So, unable to rescue Skyfire by myself and becoming tired of beating myself up both for that and for the choice to leave him in the first place, I had slowly managed to forge within myself a quantum shift in direction and purpose and attitude. I had determined that rather than wallowing in guilt over a situation that I had not the power to change, I would make a completely new life for myself, so that no one – me included – would remember my previous one and the grievous mistakes that I had made. Especially that one horribly wrong decision I had made. I had resolved to put aside my old life and embrace something boldly new and different. I rewrote my past history – which had been laughably easy to do – and applied to the War Academy.
For the most part, I had succeeded in erasing my old life and starting a new one…but not quite entirely so. I had been accepted into the War Academy, and I had excelled there, almost instantaneously absorbing every fact and piece of knowledge put in front of me…but the guilt was still there, too, no matter how much I tried to put it aside. It was sublimated, buried deep down in my psyche, but it was still very much there…and it often surfaced to taunt me, usually at the very worst possible time.
And I had discovered over the next several years, while becoming ever more deeply involved with the Decepticons – and with Megatron – that I felt strangely better about the entire episode when I was enduring some type of punishment, even though I was always being punished for something completely unrelated to what had happened with Skyfire. I felt so much better that, strangely enough, I had begun to crave punishment, so much so that I would often find myself doing things that would invite such punishment. I had lost myself for more years than I wanted to count in the cycle of guilt and punishment in which I still found myself deeply mired. I had thought that my situation would never change…and on some strange, twisted level, I actually hadn’t wanted it to change. I wanted, instead, to continue to suffer the consequences of my actions because I had thought that that was the only way to expiate my myriad sins.
But then, against all odds and after millions of years, I had found Skyfire again, and he had been reactivated. My guilt over having abandoned him instantly evaporated – for a little while, at least – once I could talk to him and simply be with him again, once I knew that he was free of the eons-long imprisonment, the length of which had been entirely my fault. And I had at first thought, without giving much consideration to all that had happened to me in the intervening years between Skyfire’s loss and his rediscovery, that he and I could pick up just where we had left off when I had lost him. Never once did it cross my mind that I wasn't quite the same person that I had been on the day of Skyfire's loss.
Of course, Skyfire hadn't understood all of that at all. Skyfire hadn’t changed at all. He had had no conception of the vast expanse of time that had elapsed between his crash and his reactivation. For him, at least at first, his crash had only just happened. And of course he had had no idea what had happened to me during that long stretch of time. He had had no idea that I was a different being than the one that he had known, so he simply couldn’t comprehend the person that I had become in his absence. And of course my reaction to his lack of understanding had been anger and a deep – although, in hindsight, misplaced – sense of betrayal. And since that perceived betrayal had come from the one person in the universe who knew the real me, it had hurt more than anything that Megatron had ever done to me.
And I had reacted badly to it all, of course. Suddenly, it had seemed to me as if I was no longer good enough for Skyfire as I was, and that was a feeling that, although familiar, I didn't like at all. And so I had lashed out at the one person in the universe who I knew, deep down, didn't want to hurt me. But this, sad to say, was what I had learned from Megatron. It had been drilled into my head – almost literally, in fact – that I should view everything through a malevolent veil of hate and anger and deep suspicion, that I should lash out at and try to destroy anyone who didn't automatically see things my way. Oh, yes, that was Megatron's influence, indeed, and it was perhaps the cruelest injustice of them all…
Without thinking about it, I sighed regretfully, deeply, and in response a knife-sharp stab of pain lanced through my severely damaged flank. It was a painful reminder of what had driven me – once again – from Decepticon Headquarters. He knew that I'd be back, of course...Worse than that, I knew that I'd be back because even though I knew, on some unconscious level, that it was crazy to return, I still felt that pull, that need, to do so. So, even after Megatron had…disfigured me in a way that he’d never attempted before, I knew that I would return to him, and I knew that I would return soon. No one, I knew, would understand why I would do so. Not even me, really. But I knew that I’d swallow what little pride I had left and return. I would go to the med bay for repairs, and then I’d be back at Megatron’s side again as if nothing at all had happened.
Because, really, what had happened? Everything that had happened, I had brought upon myself. I deserved the punishment I received. In this case, I had caused Megatron to lose Nightbird, whom he had valued for some reason that I couldn’t at all comprehend. But of course that wasn’t all that I had done over the years. Megatron’s punishments were reminders to me that I deserved all that I was receiving, indeed. Besides, I knew that I belonged with him. If nothing else, I knew that no one else would have me…
…Except, perhaps, for Skyfire…
I had thought that I’d lost him. I hadn’t been thorough enough in my search for him after his crash. I hadn’t conserved my energy well enough so that I could comprehensively search the entire planet for him. I’d only been able to search half of it before I’d had to leave and limp the long journey home or otherwise crash myself, which would have done neither Skyfire nor I any good at all. And once I returned to Cybertron, I had gotten caught up in the war…and of course I’d fallen under Megatron’s spell. And once that had happened, I had all but forgotten about Skyfire. There were rare times, even, that I forgot that he wasn’t dead and that we still shared a bond. But usually, I did remember ; I just resigned myself to the fact that I’d lost him, that I would never see him again, and that my own actions had been what had sealed forever the fact that I had lost him…
…Except that ultimately I hadn't lost Skyfire, had I? He was back. He was alive and well somewhere on the face of this Primus-forsaken planet on which I was trapped. And, during this latest “episode” with Megatron, taking my punishment for bringing about the loss of his precious energy chip and for Nightbird’s capture and imprisonment by the Autobots and her human creator, all that I had been able to think about was that Skyfire would never have done to me what Megatron had been doing to me…
Those were exceedingly dangerous thoughts, of course. Thinking of Skyfire and me and what we had once had while…attached…to Megatron wasn't exactly safe for Skyfire or for me. Or maybe it was safe for Skyfire, at least…Because, of course, I had driven Skyfire away. He was now safely out of Megatron's grasp, and I couldn’t imagine him not remaining that way. He was an Autobot now, and he seemed quite happy to be one, from the little I’d seen of him since he’d made his decision as to his allegiance. And I was sure that he hated me now. No doubt, the other Autobots, all held in Optimus Prime's thrall, had already poisoned his mind against me, told him of all the things I’d done while he had slept on Earth, unaware and at peace…
Indeed, I knew that Skyfire could never love someone like the person that I was now, not after all I’d done. I knew that he would never be mine again. I knew it all with a sudden, dreadful, sickening certainty, as I replayed over and over in my mind all of the things that had happened between Skyfire and me after he’d been revived. As I sat there, I realized fully, for the first time, that by repudiating Skyfire at that time, I had well and truly slammed closed another door, burned another bridge, and blocked another escape route. I had irrevocably severed another lifeline that someone had generously and selflessly offered to me. I had done that. Me. No one else. And I had done it quite deliberately, too. I still couldn't figure out why…
Ultimately, I supposed that was why I had found myself heading here once I had yet again slipped out of Headquarters after having recovered well enough to fly from Megatron’s latest round of “affections.” Here, I could relive my mistakes over and over again. Here, I could punish myself just as surely as Megatron had punished me. Here, I knew that I could do worse damage to myself than Megatron could even dream of doing to me. And this, I realized was what I wanted. Yes, I knew that I was only making myself feel worse. Yes, I knew that I was plummeting down a steep spiral of self-recrimination with nothing below me to break my fall. Still…I somehow felt as though I belonged there, on that cold outcropping of ice, as if being there somehow allowed me to be close to Skyfire…although, at the same time I told myself that wanting to be close to him wasn’t a healthy desire for a large number of reasons.
So above all, I was…confused. Torn, definitely. In fact, I often felt as if I had a split personality and that the two “sides” of me were constantly pulling at me, fighting for dominance, yanking back and forth in some sort of bizarre tug of war. There was a half of me that was, for lack of a better term, the “real me.” It was the person that I had been millions of years ago, the person that, deep down, I still wanted to be, that I fervently wished that I could be. But that side of me was the weaker one, one that only surfaced at odd times, when I was deliberately being introspective, as I was now. The other side, though, was so very much stronger, if only because it was the persona that I always presented to the world and, as such, was the person that I had been for so very long that I often forgot that I had ever been any different than I was at present. On occasion, the two halves of me would mesh, live harmoniously in peace, and it was only at those times that I felt truly stable, truly sane. But those occasions were exceedingly rare; far, far more often the two halves of me would either be in direct conflict with each other or one half would simply completely dominate the other. And usually, it was the stronger half that dominated, and without fail it was always the side that I showed to the world. Because as much as I might secretly like to be the person that I had been all those years ago, I knew now that that side of me was weak, vulnerable, easily manipulated, and that it was therefore dangerous. It had to be kept to myself because I had vowed that never again would I be so weak and so vulnerable as I had been right after I had lost Skyfire. Never again would I allow emotional attachments to destroy the position that I now held or threaten the fragile semblance of sanity that I had, with great effort, managed to forge from the tattered remnants of my life after I’d lost Skyfire.
And, as if having that sort of “split personality” wasn’t confusing enough, there was also the additional complication of Skyfire’s reappearance in my life. So in addition to being faced with an entirely inward conflict between who I had once been and who I had been forced to become in order to survive, there was also an outward conflict, one that made me feel as though, at once, I belonged to two people, one real and immediate and demanding and the other a pleasant, though ultimately phantom, memory.
I had no idea what to do about any of it. It was far too much conflict, far too much turmoil, for me to handle all at once.
So, all that was left for me to do was to sit and think…And to remember, even though the memories that my mind seemed to want to contemplate were less-than-pleasant ones. So I sighed, sank into the memories, and simply let my mind wander…