"Can you really blame me when you tell me, to my face, that you risking your life isn't that deep? How are you not hearing yourself?! "We're miners, Dee!" Orion laughed in disbelief. "We could die at any point, from low energon levels, to being crushed in a collapsing cave. What's one more risk?" D-16 stared at him long enough that Orion began to feel oddly self-conscious. "Do you really believe that. Do you really believe that the things you do to threaten your life are just. One more risk." "I..." Orion's flare of anger had quickly been extinguished. "That's, that's not what I said." ‧───────────────‧ There is a very fine line between sitting with your thoughts, and repressing them. Orion, via D-16's influence, is forced to confront them. Or, Orion struggles with severe depression.

Orion, who used to be the most sure mech ever, suddenly realized that he wasn't sure of anything at all. Deep down, where his memories and identity blurred further, he didn't know where Optimus Prime began and Orion Pax ended, or if they were ever separate at all. Everything that happened seemed so far away now, as though it were just flux during recharge. It was almost comical that he entertained the thought that it ever happened at all. The thought that D-16 had ever... Orion abruptly crashed into the wall and, in an instant, pain bloomed everywhere on his left, pricking his inner circuitry and then leaving burn marks on his spark caging. ‧───────────────‧ Orion is forced to confront the (literal) excruciating pain of being alive after dying to D-16. Or, An introspection of what death-via-loved-one and revival into Cybertronian Jesus can do to a mech. REWRITTEN 08/23/2026