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Prime. This is Wheeljack. We have crossed paths before. I am... I suppose I am my lord Megatron's SIC in absence of anyone else better suited. I have questions that I will not ask the Prime from my universe. You shall have to do.

I understand from overhearing talk about you and those from your reality that you were tangled up in some sort of organization that actively harmed you and other Cybertronians, and yet you resisted detaching yourself from it. How did it start? Why did you resist leaving? Did you always know what they were? And how did you-

[A pause]

Ignore the latter questions. Focus on the first, if you please.

Wheeljack. It's good to hear from you. [it's clear in his tone he means this, too. optimus hasn't interacted with wheeljack much, and feels a little guilty for it. perhaps he should've checked in on the young decepticon after the fight in megatron's base room or even after the ill-fated trip to that school. it's hard to say-- his instinct is always to protect, but his actions don't always result in that happening.] These are some... interesting questions.

[this message comes about an hour after wheeljack's original is sent, as optimus has gone out his way to find a spot that megatron or elita won't find him or overhear him.]

Yes... originally I destroyed the space bridge on Earth to bottleneck the war effort and make it unsustainable for both sides. It worked, and the war came to an end. At a great cost, but it would've been greater had we continued. It would see Earth rendered uninhabitable, and we would've come one step closer to destroying ourselves in the process.

[he invents slightly.] ...Unfortunately a lot of damage was already done to the planet and it's people, and the organization I struck a truce with were the only ones who were willing to work with us. In truth, we had no real option.

[optimus wants to say it wasn't bad from the start, that it was one bad person that poisoned it, but he knows that won't help wheeljack. he knows why these are the questions being asked. sometimes he's not all sure if it started with croft or if there was always so much boiling under the surface he was just too naive and desperate to see.]

That organization was vital to the truce we held with the humans. If I had made the decision to suddenly cut away from it completely, everyone I stranded on Earth would be considered a danger to humanity, and responded to as such.

[Wheeljack has been restlessly pacing outside Megatron's old throne room, which he regularly returns to when he needs to think or wants comfort. Today is both, paradoxically]

I see. So you felt that it was worth being damaged in one way, to avoid far worse damage being taken in another.

[He keeps drifting closer and closer to the door into the throne room until he's leaning against it. He wishes he could go inside again]

What happened when you finally made the choice to leave? And did you regret it?

Yes. [part of it was also a sunk cost fallacy, but that's not something he wants to say aloud to anyone.] That is unfortunately a choice many of us have had to make in the rare times we even get the opportunity to make one.

[there's another awkward pause before the the next answer, as optimus stands up and starts to pace in the cargo hold he's hiding in. he's not thinking of their minds and bodies being taken from them and he's not thinking of trying to crush twitch and hashtag. it's fine. he's fine.]

...We never actively left. GHOST collapsed once their betrayal and exploitation of our vulnerability reached a point where it could no longer be reasonably hidden or explained away by them. [he invents a few times, reminding himself that wheeljack, specifically, may benefit from hearing this. that it was down to his failures anyway, and continuing the lies and deception about it does no-one any favours.] I'll never know if not leaving them earlier was the right choice to prevent further damage or not. Not unless a version of me who did so shows up through the space bridge, haha...

[Wheeljack makes a sharp, involuntary noise before he manages to silence himself. He's not sure if any of this is what he wanted, any more than he'd been when he'd messaged Quickman to learn what his lord had done to him. Every word is troubling. Painful. But he can't just stop. He's never been good at that, for good or ill]

What if- [He swallows hard] What if that final moment of collapsing under its own weight had never happened? If it just kept going the same way forever? You said you kept it going because you were trying to protect everyone. What if-

[He sinks down against the door, and buries himself under his doorwings]

What if it was just you? What if it wasn't so easy to pick out all of those bad things you spoke of, because there were so many good things, too?

[he falls quiet again for a long few moments as he considers what he would've done if it was just him-- none of the answers are particularly great, so optimus settles on pretending that he would've done the same.]

It was my hope I could find out where things were going wrong and work with them to correct it, as I had suspicions for a long time before things came to a head.

[often, he wonders if croft was truly the turning point or if it just would've happened no matter who was in charge-- he had not made the choice to send bumblebee into hiding fifteen years ago on a whim, after all. he also, predictably, thinks he should've seen it all so much earlier and acted much faster and then maybe things wouldn't have ended the way they did.]

There was good, too. [megatron, mostly. optimus doesn't think all of the GHOST agents were culpable, either. many of them remained in service because they genuinely believed in the goals of the organisation and many of them are good people. he hopes whatever happened to all of them didn't hurt the human agents.] ...But I understand, it can be difficult to see these things in the moment. This is where it's best to seek out the assistance of those around you.

[he exvents.]

I did not, and it ended badly.

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