No, no, I mean in general. When I was second-in-command of a crew, I tried my best to enforce order only to be seen as a joke by everyone. [His shoulders hunch.] Or they were complaining about my putting a stop to dangerous activities, or offering advice [read: correcting their grammar], and other such things.
I think I figured out how to make myself liked by a group, but it's not entirely enough.
[It's the echo of a struggle he's heard before, that of someone seen as too serious and set apart for that reason. It isn't exactly the same, but it's close enough to tug a little at his heart. Minimus is perhaps the kind of person who takes some rules very seriously, but he's a hell of a lot more than just that.]
Well, you give me homework, make me study, and sometimes tell me about rules and I like you just fine. If that's not enough for others, maybe the problem is theirs.
You're right. [It makes so much sense when someone else says it.] Megatron was one person who liked me for those qualities. So did Verity, and a few others. They're rare but they exist.
It's just difficult when everyone else around me has an easier time making friends.
[It isn't a sentiment he can relate to as it's always been a simple thing for him to make friends, but it is a familiar sentiment, having heard angrier, grumpier admissions of the same sort from his brother for his whole life. Jiang Cheng had always struggled to be likable and even Lan Zhan struggled to convey himself to people. He pauses for a moment before he speaks again.]
I don't know if I ever told you this, but when we first began to get to know each other, you reminded me a lot of a man back home who was my most precious friend.
He's quiet and reserved, and he'd been brought up to uphold following the rules above all else. People respected him, but he didn't have any friends aside from his elder brother. [And he remembers how he'd seen something else in Lan Zhan right from the start, something more than just the rule enforcer. Someone who wanted friends. Someone who wanted to be understood.]
I wanted to be his friend and eventually I bothered him into it. And as I did I learned that he was kind, patient, and that his love of rules was driven by a deep desire to be just and to be good. [He turns a warm smile on Minimus.]
That friendship was the most important one I ever had back home. If there are people in your life who appreciate you for you, then that is all that matters. Hold onto them.
[Minimus lowers his eyes and grows quiet at the mention of an older brother. As frustrated as he was with Dominus's popularity, he was his only friend - and vice versa. That changed when Dominus met Rewind and fell in love, then his time was devote to fighting for his soulmate's freedom. Rewind became his research partner; they spent more and more time together until Minimus couldn't reliably socialize with him.
And he assumed he wasn't needed anymore. He drifted away from his brother, and their last words to each other were meaningless pleasantries, and Minimus's brother-in-law was furious when they met each other again.]
It's eerie how similar he sounds to me. [Minimus folds his hands on the desk.] The brother, too - I wasn't close to anyone else apart from Dominus before the war. Much to my detriment, I didn't think it was worth sharing anything about myself with anyone else.
[Before the war. He knows only a little of Minimus's world and knows that there had been a war, but almost nothing about the causes or the stakes. For a moment shame passes over him for how little he's asked after his friend's world, but he sets it aside for another time. Another time he'll ask Minimus to share more if he's willing, but not now.]
Do you think it's a simple thing to cast fault one way or another? [The question is sincere and his eyes drift to the window in the library overlooking the sky.]
Maybe a part of it was you, and maybe it was circumstances, and maybe it was a dozen other things too.
But I don't think that's who you are anymore, do you? We're friends, aren't we? [He grins.] And you are worth knowing. Do you think I make friends with just anyone? [Despite his overall friendliness, there were precious few Wei Wuxian felt truly close to. It was easy to share drinks and a laugh with someone.
If only the world was as black-and-white as I wished it to be. It was easy to think there was a simple solution to every problem. Joining Rodimus and getting close to Megatron taught me much about the greys of the world. Metaphorically. [He sure learned about a certain grey mech in a worldly manner.] It's a change that I was required to undergo if I were to be more comfortable around others.
[A shrug.] I guess you make friends more easily than I do. You have the personality for that.
I make more enemies too. There are two sides to everything. And as for that change, isn't that just the way of things? When we're young we see the world one way, and the more we grow and the more we experience the more we understand our own limitations.
It would certainly be easier if the world was black and white, but I suspect if it was, you wouldn't like me at all. [He dips his head, smile losing some of its mirth.]
I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. A friendly personality can't make up for that.
[A laugh gets caught in Minimus's throat.] "Young" - I was alive longer than humans existed when the war began. It's our nature as Cybertronians to stagnate for eons and change in a matter of years. You've done better than most of my kind.
Who knows if we would be enemies? If we agreed upon the rules of what is right and wrong, we could have become friends. Some laws are consistent across cultures. [Murder, theft...but the details differ.] Actually, no, we might not have.
How old are you? [Wait.] Are you an immortal then? [It would make sense, he supposes, considering his non-organic nature. Still, he's never known this about his friend before and he's delighted by the knowledge.]
Regardless, age is relative. What is young for me might not be young for you, but you were still young once.
[He grows quiet then, thinking on the rest of Minimus's words.]
We'll never know. What I do know is that no matter the mistakes I've made, or your difficulty making friends, we are friends, and I'm glad for it. We met exactly when we were meant to exactly how we were meant to.
No, not immortal. We can die of age-related illness if we aren't killed. [Even if he hadn't experienced it, Drift notified him of Ratchet's funeral not too far in the timeline. Not even a great medic can stop old age.] I'm over five million years old. Some of my colleagues were only a few hundred years old. Few remain from the earlier days of Cybertron. But compared to many organics, it does seem like immortality.
[Unfortunately, this does not translate to maturity and many Transformers are stuck in dramatic teenager and young adult mindsets.]
Better that we met now than earlier, I take it? Or could we have changed knowing each other?
Most humans tend not to judge us by our age, so we don't tell them. [But he supposes the same could be said of Wei Wuxian.] Speaking of ages, how old are you? I assume that your are a young adult, but I have trouble with the exact year. We Cybertronians mature quickly.
Me? [He laughs and shakes his head.] Certainly not five million.
I'm twenty years old. [He pauses.] Though I'll be twenty one soon.
[Which is weird as hell considering he'd died at nineteen. It's always felt strange counting the time that passed after, but it's still time lived isn't it?]
I'd be considering an adult where I'm from, if a younger one as you guessed.
And at 15, a teenager is considered not to be fully independent. How quickly things change for humans. [Makes sense, for how short their lives are.] For years, I traveled with a runaway of that age who I believed was mature enough to live on her own. It was quite a surprise to learn later that her stowing away on my ship should have been cause for alarm.
[But they became good friends anyway, and Minimus misses Verity dearly centuries after her death. How quickly humans age.]
[He raises an eyebrow at that. It's true that fifteen is still young, but it's not that young. Plenty of people that age struck out on their own and he'd been on the front lines of a war at sixteen years old. Then again, Gwen seemed to have different ideas on age so perhaps that sort of thing was perceived differently in different places.]
I didn't know you'd met humans before! Is your world shared between Cybertronians and humans?
[She seemed very mature, if brash, but the adults around her were concerned for her safety and expressed how she should have had a guardian for more of her life. That, and she was in the middle of an Autobot-Decepticon warzone. So, she picked Ultra Magnus to look after her.]
We share the same universe, but not planet. Earth is just another inhabited planet, like those the Ximilia encounters. Whether Cybertronians are friendly or hostile to smaller organic life forms depends on the individual. From what I can see, humans are a constant across all of our homes universes. Odd, since they inhabit only one planet.
Ah, I see. [Like some of the others whose worlds already incorporated space or universe travel. It's a concept he can picture a lot better now but one that is still very difficult to imagine for his own world.]
Definitely odd. [He agrees.] Of all the lifeforms and sentient beings out there, that humans should be the most common...I wonder why that is.
They aren't the oldest life form in existence, nor are they the most powerful. Humans haven't mastered interstellar travel in my universe, they were just fortunate enough to live on the planet where our war ended.
[Perhaps the war was about to end anyway, and the abundance of Ore-13 on Earth sped up the dissolution of the army structures. Perhaps it was a coincidence that so many parties converged onto the same place.]
Perhaps this ship picks up life forms with with is is familiar - particularly human.
It does make walking the halls and blending in on most mission easier I think. [He throws Minimus a sheepish smile, aware that the man often has to disguise his true form like he's doing now.]
Practically speaking, it makes sense.
You know in my time on Earth, we don't even have automobiles yet. We use horse pulled wagons. [He chuckles at it, a strange idea now that he's been exposed to so much more.] They're slower but I can't say I mind very much.
They're charming, in a way. [A vehicle pulled by animals is unique when most of your kind can turn into vehicles.] You humans learned to adapt quickly despite the situation. We Cybertronians are stagnant beings. Perhaps that's why your kind survive in almost every universe.
Hmm maybe. Who knows. [From where he's sitting, humans don't have anything more going for them than any of the other people he's met know, but then he knows he's probably biased, what with all of the terrible ones he's met. In a way it's nice to hear that maybe they have something going for them after all.
His eyes fall to the books beneath his hands and he runs a hand along one of the open pages.]
Here I promised to actually work and all I've been doing is distracting you, isn't it? [He laughs.]
But distracting you with good conversation I hope. [He knows he's enjoyed it at least.]
Energon. [The same thing that the ship dispenses for all of the Cybertronians.] Or engex, if the aim is to be inebriated. It works the same way as your alcohol does.
[And they can get drunk the same way, unfortunately.]
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I think I figured out how to make myself liked by a group, but it's not entirely enough.
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Well, you give me homework, make me study, and sometimes tell me about rules and I like you just fine. If that's not enough for others, maybe the problem is theirs.
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It's just difficult when everyone else around me has an easier time making friends.
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I don't know if I ever told you this, but when we first began to get to know each other, you reminded me a lot of a man back home who was my most precious friend.
He's quiet and reserved, and he'd been brought up to uphold following the rules above all else. People respected him, but he didn't have any friends aside from his elder brother. [And he remembers how he'd seen something else in Lan Zhan right from the start, something more than just the rule enforcer. Someone who wanted friends. Someone who wanted to be understood.]
I wanted to be his friend and eventually I bothered him into it. And as I did I learned that he was kind, patient, and that his love of rules was driven by a deep desire to be just and to be good. [He turns a warm smile on Minimus.]
That friendship was the most important one I ever had back home. If there are people in your life who appreciate you for you, then that is all that matters. Hold onto them.
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And he assumed he wasn't needed anymore. He drifted away from his brother, and their last words to each other were meaningless pleasantries, and Minimus's brother-in-law was furious when they met each other again.]
It's eerie how similar he sounds to me. [Minimus folds his hands on the desk.] The brother, too - I wasn't close to anyone else apart from Dominus before the war. Much to my detriment, I didn't think it was worth sharing anything about myself with anyone else.
...I feel like not having many friends my fault.
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Do you think it's a simple thing to cast fault one way or another? [The question is sincere and his eyes drift to the window in the library overlooking the sky.]
Maybe a part of it was you, and maybe it was circumstances, and maybe it was a dozen other things too.
But I don't think that's who you are anymore, do you? We're friends, aren't we? [He grins.] And you are worth knowing. Do you think I make friends with just anyone? [Despite his overall friendliness, there were precious few Wei Wuxian felt truly close to. It was easy to share drinks and a laugh with someone.
It was a lot harder to share pieces of himself.]
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[A shrug.] I guess you make friends more easily than I do. You have the personality for that.
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I make more enemies too. There are two sides to everything. And as for that change, isn't that just the way of things? When we're young we see the world one way, and the more we grow and the more we experience the more we understand our own limitations.
It would certainly be easier if the world was black and white, but I suspect if it was, you wouldn't like me at all. [He dips his head, smile losing some of its mirth.]
I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. A friendly personality can't make up for that.
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Who knows if we would be enemies? If we agreed upon the rules of what is right and wrong, we could have become friends. Some laws are consistent across cultures. [Murder, theft...but the details differ.] Actually, no, we might not have.
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How old are you? [Wait.] Are you an immortal then? [It would make sense, he supposes, considering his non-organic nature. Still, he's never known this about his friend before and he's delighted by the knowledge.]
Regardless, age is relative. What is young for me might not be young for you, but you were still young once.
[He grows quiet then, thinking on the rest of Minimus's words.]
We'll never know. What I do know is that no matter the mistakes I've made, or your difficulty making friends, we are friends, and I'm glad for it. We met exactly when we were meant to exactly how we were meant to.
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[Unfortunately, this does not translate to maturity and many Transformers are stuck in dramatic teenager and young adult mindsets.]
Better that we met now than earlier, I take it? Or could we have changed knowing each other?
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He exhales his shock and shakes his head, chuckling.]
Maybe we would have. I do know I'm better for knowing you. [He turns a grin on Minimus and then rests his head in one hand, shaking it again.]
Five million years old. I can't believe I didn't know that about you until now!
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I'm twenty years old. [He pauses.] Though I'll be twenty one soon.
[Which is weird as hell considering he'd died at nineteen. It's always felt strange counting the time that passed after, but it's still time lived isn't it?]
I'd be considering an adult where I'm from, if a younger one as you guessed.
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[But they became good friends anyway, and Minimus misses Verity dearly centuries after her death. How quickly humans age.]
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I didn't know you'd met humans before! Is your world shared between Cybertronians and humans?
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We share the same universe, but not planet. Earth is just another inhabited planet, like those the Ximilia encounters. Whether Cybertronians are friendly or hostile to smaller organic life forms depends on the individual. From what I can see, humans are a constant across all of our homes universes. Odd, since they inhabit only one planet.
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Definitely odd. [He agrees.] Of all the lifeforms and sentient beings out there, that humans should be the most common...I wonder why that is.
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[Perhaps the war was about to end anyway, and the abundance of Ore-13 on Earth sped up the dissolution of the army structures. Perhaps it was a coincidence that so many parties converged onto the same place.]
Perhaps this ship picks up life forms with with is is familiar - particularly human.
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It does make walking the halls and blending in on most mission easier I think. [He throws Minimus a sheepish smile, aware that the man often has to disguise his true form like he's doing now.]
Practically speaking, it makes sense.
You know in my time on Earth, we don't even have automobiles yet. We use horse pulled wagons. [He chuckles at it, a strange idea now that he's been exposed to so much more.] They're slower but I can't say I mind very much.
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His eyes fall to the books beneath his hands and he runs a hand along one of the open pages.]
Here I promised to actually work and all I've been doing is distracting you, isn't it? [He laughs.]
But distracting you with good conversation I hope. [He knows he's enjoyed it at least.]
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[It's a conversation with a friend, not an annoyance. Even Minimus needs a few minutes of social interaction each day.]
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Nevertheless, I'd be remiss if we didn't get anything at all done, especially when you received special permission to do this. [He pauses.]
But we should do this more often. When we get back, we'll make plans to share a drink, hmm?
What do you drink anyways?
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[And they can get drunk the same way, unfortunately.]
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