Chapter Text
The cog was a mech of firm loyalty, stubbornly defending the Autobot cause, even when it beat him down more than anything. He’d been programmed to do this—to fight against Decepticons and to be a good cog in the Autobot machine. But a broken system is bound to have cracks and eventually that good little cog will realize he never was meant to fit.
There were plenty of times when the cog was hammered back into place by the system that created him: when he asked too many questions and his teacher threatened to fail him. When his classmates refused to pair up with him in fear of looking stupid or when his best friends dragged him to an off limits planet only to blame him when one of them died. When the cog was expelled from the academy but still given the title of Prime and was ordered to lead a Spacebridge repair crew in the outskirts of Autobot space. Even when he found the All Spark, a national treasure that went missing over a million stellar cycles ago, the cog was reminded of his place in society and to stay in line.
It didn’t stop there though.
Every action he took after that was judged and ridiculed, reminding him that his place in society was at the bottom. That he was not a hero, merely a replaceable cog that kept having to be hammered back into place. But each time that happened, the cog bent and cracked, threatening to crumble under the pressure of the society around him. But the cog held strong, if not for himself, but for his team who relied on him. The cog kept functioning to keep them safe from the harsh hammer that battered him. Until the solar cycle came, the hammer did not come down, but instead a spear, which shattered everything that was left of that cog.
Now the broken cog was left to pick himself up, but it was the servo of his enemy that gathered all of his pieces.