Author's Notes: Although seen in only in two episodes, Elita One has made quite a ripple in the community. But for what reason? Because she is Prime's girlfriend? But what was the REAL nature of her love for him? A very twisted look at Elita One.
Warnings: Darker themes, some adult references.
Spoilers: Search for Alpha Trion, War Dawn, and the TF movie.
Obligatory Disclaimer: I own no part of Transformers or any of its characters.
Dolly Doesn't Want to Play
"...And you have always been so kind to me. But
our house has been nothing but a play-room. Here I have been your
doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa's doll-child. And
the children, in their turn, have been my dolls. I thought it fun
when you played with me, just as the children did when I played
with them. That has been our marriage..."
-Excerpt from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House
I suppose when this war is over, when all is at rest, when transformer society finally reaches that Golden Age it desires, I will be remembered. My name will appear in the history books alongside those who fought, struggled, and sometimes died in this terrible conflict. Perhaps even a memorial will be constructed to our memory.
But I'm not foolish. I know I will not be remembered as I desire. Not as Elita-One, commander of her own squadron. Not even as a warrior or soldier who built herself around war. But as Elita-One, the daughter of Alpha Trion, and the darling lover of the mighty Optimus Prime.
...Is it so much to ask that I be known as something more? That it be expected for me to play a role much grander than that of the Autobot's commander's ever faithful companion? I think not. I believe it is something any transformer would want. Am I not a commander of my own brigade for any reason at all?
But there's a significant difference in what I wish to be...and what is expected of me.
I am expected to be the commander of a femme 'bot brigade whose reputation is to match their male counterparts while hindered by the noticeable lack of importance placed upon my troops. I am expected to assess situations and make proper decisions, yet it is unwritten law for me to first answer to Alpha Trion or Optimus before putting them into action. I am expected to be strong yet subservient. To be every Autobot male's dream, and every other's companion. To command because it is the chosen road, the one for which my mentors have spent countless hours training me. I am dependent on Alpha Trion and the other Autobots for their help and protection because it is my expected role that they have created.
I love Optimus...because it is expected of me.
I shouldn't be so bitter about it, I suppose. After all, never once has he been unkind or rough with me. He's always been to support my actions, no matter what they might have been. And never once, not once, has he openly denounced me for what I am.
...It could have been worse. I could have ended up with a stuffy politician or Elder. Worse--one who constantly reminded me of the second class position I held among my fellow Autobots.
Yet I cannot dispel the fear that I would eagerly embrace any of them if I had been given my right to choose.
It was not my choice to be with Optimus; it was a matter settled long before I ever opened my optics and saw the world anew as the remodeled Elita-One. My past incarnation had been lovers with Prime's own first; therefore, by both law of legacy and society, it was expected that he and I be together. I never had a voice.
And because it was expected of me, I came to him that day, not so more than a few years after my awakening, with a tight smile etched across my features to tell him that I would always be there for him.
I played their game; I performed the role assigned. I flirted and giggled and smiled when we talked. I reacted when he did, agreed with his every word. I clung to him as if I were a little child who would lose her way if she let go. Slowly, I left my own circle of acquaintances to befriend his. I moved from the western city of Cybertron to where he resided. As time wore on, it came to a point where I had amalgamated myself so much with his own that I hardly even knew who I was anymore.
And then he left.
I played the part then, too, pleading with him not to leave, tugged on his arms and constantly fluttered around him. Then I had put on my greatest show, my deepest deceit. I should have felt guilty about it. Optimus was in no way at fault for all that had occurred. In no way did he have any more choice than I did.
But at that point, I'm not sure he knew that. I'm not even sure if I entirely was. At the time, I was only aware of what I wanted--liberation from that overbearing weight that was his presence in my life.
When he did leave, I was allowed my first taste of freedom. Primus, how I reveled in it. I left my home and visited old friends. I traveled through Cybetron and learned and experienced and saw things I had never been allowed when he was there. That's not to say I completely destroyed the clean cut reputation I had as Prime's lover. I just...tarnished it a bit.
But then time passed...and he never came back.
When news of the Ark's disappearance reached Cybertron, I didn't know what to do. How was I to grieve when all I had been playing was a role cast by others? What sorrow was there when my emotions had been only hollow masks? I knew then that I would never be free: I was still chained to Optimus. Not because I had somehow fallen in love with him by some ironic twist of fate, nor was it connected with any inherent grief or misfortune on my part. It was because of possibility, of chance, of that ever burgeoning hope that burned deep within the sparks of many.
They could have survived. Perhaps the ship had crashed on some foreign planet were unable to make contact, or maybe they were fighting the war elsewhere while we fought here.
Whatever the reason, I wasn't free. As I was expected to be Optimus' significant other, so was I expected to mourn his significant loss. I couldn't move on; I had to stay where I was and remain as I had been. Nothing had changed. I was still a slave to their expectations.
For four million years I watched the universe evolve around me. First in moments, than by longstanding cycles, and finally in far-stretching years. And still, the monotonous routine.
Four million years and I stood unmoving. By Primus...
I began on my own legion of fighters in order to do something, to assure myself that I wasn't stuck in one moment, that time hadn't stopped or moved forward and left me behind. I fought because I had nothing else left.
I went first to Alpha Trion for guidance. Not because I considered him the most knowledgeable transformer in guerilla warfare, but because he was one of only a few that I had really known in my life. My programming had been formulated in his mind; I had been built with his own hands. Every iron casting, every screw, every bit of physical being that was me came from his ingenuity. I owed him my life, however stagnant an existence it was. And thus it was to him that I expected to turn.
Physical training came first, then mind. I sharpened and honed my skills even outside of his classes. I poured through the limited military knowledge available to Autobots, desperately sought those who had tasted battle more than once.
With time, came patience. With patience, came wisdom. And with wisdom came an understanding of my limitations.
My learning came to abrupt end as soon as my once plentiful resources exhausted themselves of information. Autobots were not warriors by nature, but were instead slaves, and captive would I remain to memories of the past.
Unlike Optimus, I had not been programmed for leadership. My spirit was strong, but my body was not. What skills I gained were those I suffered and strove for through endless tribulation over millennia. If there was a problem that I couldn't immediately solve, I was to turn to those who ranked higher than me, who were programmed to do what I could not. Wartime had forced people like myself into a position of an unwritten lower rank. Though we could learn and study all we wanted, because we were not creatures of warrior protocol, we were still behind the front lines.
And even if we had succeeded in bridging the gap in someway, I know our efforts would have been futile.
Stories will tell you of how the Ark's inhabitants spent four million years in stasis before reawakening to fight for a future that seemed even more bleak than before. They will tell you of how Optimus Prime rose from depths once again to claim victory for his Autobots, how he bridged the gap between hope and despair, how he opened a new door for Autobots everywhere.
They will even tell you, perhaps somewhere among the rusty, abandoned microchips of Cybertron's electronic archives, of his grand, sweeping return to Cybertron to rescue his fair lover, Elita-One, when Decepticons threatened her life.
They will not tell you of Elita-One's slow rise to leadership as she scoured the planet for followers courageous enough to fight for her cause. They will not tell you that she and her fellow warriors battled Decepticons with as much skill and bravery as her wayward lover.
They will not tell of how he abandoned her in the first place.
Legends will not forget the name Optimus Prime, but the memory of a small battalion of struggling femme 'bots will simply be glitches in the computer chips. A miracle, perhaps, if even their dust remains.
And I? Again the supportive role. Prime's lover, follower, his ever present companion. Humans called them spouses. We call them life mates. To me, the word has meant slave. Not because all in my position are oppressed, but because I can never escape his memory. Not now, not then, not ever. His shadow is there. In rooms, memories, people, places, patterns in the stars. And his shadow is made stronger by the shadows of others. Alpha Trion, Ariel, Orion Pax, Autobots...
He returned. The Decepticons brought him. They used me as bait. Because I was a shadow he could not dispel with any light. He watched, he came, he saved me.
But he did not free me.
And then he left me alone again.
I remember the night before he died. My femmes and I had left Cybertron and were on the moon base with him. He had taken me with him that night, wrapped his arm reluctantly around my shoulders and led me off into the darkness. I don't know why. Maybe to assure himself one last pleasure before he died or find some comfort in the bleak reality of it all.
Subconsciously, it could have even been a move on his part to rally the troops. Perhaps if they saw us together they would be inspired to fight, reminded of what it was they were fighting for. If so, we were doomed to begin with. Because they were fighting for nothing. What we had was hollow, a lie, a blasphemy to the memory of sacrifices made by Orion Pax and Ariel in their love for one another. A love that was strong; a love that was honest; a love that should have died with them.
But then a miracle among miracles occurred. Oh to irony that such a night would be the one remembered! Not for the shallow feel, the unyielding gaze, the eyes of thousands, but the touch! That singular, burning, ethereal touch that has no equal in my long memory of so many like it.
Sitting in his quarters, drowning in our mendacity, pressed close together on his bed, not knowing what to say, too deeply embedded in the lie to free ourselves of it...how spectacular, how astounding, that such a touch within the iniquity of it all should light in our darkest hour.
A sigh sounding from his lips, and then a shifting of gears...and his hand, gentle yet strong, sliding over the bed to place itself upon my shoulder. And in that instant, an epiphany, a breath of truth...
"I'm sorry."
Nine million years, and at last an honesty! I paused in my routine, halted the lie. I trembled with grief and joy and a thousand unwritten emotions. Alas, he knew! The pain, the sorrow, the loneliness, the utter dishonesty and futility of it all...
But with that knowledge, the most terrifying of realizations: the understanding of why he had not freed me, the reason why I had remained a slave all these years.
Because he was a slave as well.
My soul wept tears my body could not. My spark went out to him, and in the fleeting, transient moment that followed, I felt the faintest flicker of that fire Ariel had once harbored for her beloved.
But it was too little, too late. Nine thousand millennia had passed without a voice denouncing the lie, without a touch equal in sincerity, so even as I turned to kiss him, to wrap my arms around him and give hope to chance, the flame had extinguished, the moment shattered.
Then there was no more honesty. Only more lies. Of the hundred touches that came to be that night, none matched the intimacy of his hand brushing my shoulder.
...He is gone now. The legend begins to move. He died as we all expected him to die--in battle, fighting his adversary to the death, fulfilling society's prophecy. Alpha Trion's schematics have proven true--Optimus had no equal in that battle. His fall came only because of a child's interference.
And now that child is the newfound Chosen One, holder of the Matrix and all its terrible lies. Another has risen so that we may topple his pillar. Another has survived only to drown again...
I can't help but feel that he and I have been robbed of something terribly significant, as if whatever we had wilted long before it had the chance to blossom. If there hadn't been those expectations already placed for us, then maybe we could have gotten to know one another better. First as friends, and then maybe, as time went on and we grew closer, I could have fallen in love with him. Just as Ariel had loved Orion Pax. Maybe, just maybe, we could have been more than dolls simply playing the roles desired of us.
And I don't hate any of them, even though I should. They took away my world, my love, my life and gave me nothing in return. They shattered my dreams and killed my hopes. They clipped my wings and replaced them with a puppet's strings, so that I could be twisted and manipulated in whatever way they desired.
I should hate them, but I cannot. It's not in my programming. I shouldn't be here, but I am. I was built that way. I shouldn't have done it, but I did. They expected it of me.
I should have died, but they wouldn't let me.
I should have died.
There is a memorial being built in the capital. Rodimus has ordered a statue of Optimus to be constructed, along with a nearby archive withholding information on every soldier that fell that day.
That poor, pathetic child. Does he even realize how they use him even now? Does he honestly believe that the war is over? That all will be healed?
Foolish, ignorant soldiers, all worshipping an idol that wasn't worth their sacrifice. There is weeping on the streets, a collective mourning for his loss. What loss, I scream, what loss to any of us if it was all a lie?
A hollow, empty, useless lie.
Fools. Ignorant, stupid, gullible fools. Even Optimus eventually understood in the end. There is no Utopia awaiting our race in some Golden Age that will never come. Look upon our works, all ye mighty, and despair. For in nine million years of war, we have accomplished nothing but an empty dream.
If I am to remember Optimus, then I will do so according to the one sincere moment of love he and I ever shared: that night we sat together, and he placed his hand on my shoulder comfortingly and apologized. The one time he hadn't acted on emotions expected by others. The one time I almost could have loved him.
Almost.
The days come faster now, and time is cruel to me, as if it has stranded me in one place all over again. And in this sad reflection on what this stagnant, fruitless existence has given to me, a new dilemma has arisen that I cannot ignore any longer.
Because this dolly doesn't want to play anymore. With the coming of a new leader, her strings are finally detached. She is free of the burden she's carried for so long. Her wings have begun to spread again.
But...
Now she has nowhere to go, knows not what to do. It is not in her programming nor has she ever been taught. She has never tasted life outside of expectation. In this doll's house has she remained, manipulated by others' hands to interact with her fellow puppets, but while they have come and gone and seen life outside of walls, she has not. And while her strings are cut, a new understanding has descended upon her. One that plunges like a knife deep into her soul, driving her mad with despair and anxiety, that which keeps her awake in the darkest hour of night, conscious drifting, gazing at the stars, whispering, wondering...
What purpose does a doll serve after she's lost her use?