Touch Me Not
Apr. 26th, 2026 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hat_writes_stuffTitle: Touch Me Not
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Blurr, Shockwave (Mirage, Sentinel, and Damus haunt the narrative)
Word Count: 1,620
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: Standard Spellbound Suicidal Ideation Warning, so so so much negative self-talk, if I need more you tell me
Author's Notes: As I go revisiting earlier Spellbound events, once again we are warning for impending suicide-- not the viewpoint character's, but he's supposed to be assisting with it, and doesn't want to. Like, he really doesn't want to. He loses his cool about how much he doesn't want to, here.
Shockwave (whose suicide is being so carefully planned) doesn't want to die, either, he just wants to be out of Sentinel's reach, because Sentinel is a vicious little glitch and I hope he steps on a Lego once a day, minimum, for the rest of his life, preferably on a hard surface so even if it doesn't hurt or get caught in his robot joints and crevices, there's a solid chance he'll slip. I have seen the hydraulic press struggle with Lego, I firmly believe TFs wouldn't have a good time stepping on them either.
Also, the aquatic driller is called The Hat, huh? I accept The Hat as my namesake. Hats are important.
ADDENDUM TWO DAYS LATER: ... Despite everything, it is this note that really shows I wrote this instead of sleeping (the weather and my sinuses were having a fight, sleep was impossible anyway and then Keferon sicced the muse on me).
Summary: Keferon, no, I have other things I need to be doing.
Looking back on an older update with some authorial info that made me go, "Yeah but Blurr's rageventing wasn't just about knowing bad news was coming, it was also about whatever his situation with Mirage was, we just didn't know that was haunting the narrative yet."
So now I'm back on my Spellbound bullshit.
It wasn't eavesdropping.
Blurr was going to announce himself, he was, just-- just in a moment.
He'd left Shockwave for a little while (that was fine, that was safe) and had to go looking for him, after, and found him where he'd least expected-- down a back-alley, with another demon, tracing magical runes in the dust and patiently explaining their uses.
Shockwave was a teacher, and Blurr thought it was by nature. Something in his spark that drove him not simply to learn, to acquire knowledge, but to spread it as well. And this-- this was--
It was charming and beautiful and Blurr had hoped for this, in a backwards way. He'd brought Shockwave to his own memorial statue thinking along these lines, and part of him, even knowing they were one step away from the end of Shockwave, part of him still hoped for exactly this. Shockwave had changed the world for magically-gifted mechs, for beastformers, so maybe, maybe with time and care, maybe he could want to try to change the world for demons, too.
And Shockwave had found it himself! Blurr hadn't had to suggest it! Shockwave had found another demon and, for some reason Blurr would ask about later, just sat down to teach a lesson about runes!
It was a perfect, beautiful, wonderful moment, and Blurr would announce himself very soon.
He just wanted another few moments to bask in the sight of Shockwave doing what he loved, what he was meant for, to fix it in his memory forever.
That was all.
Then Shockwave said, "You're a death-bringer," like a tolling death-knell, and suddenly, the scene before Blurr wasn't adorable anymore.
Shockwave had the bottles.
Because they couldn't count on speed when negotiating with death-bringers, and Blurr could be easily destroyed from the outside, if one took offense. Shockwave could only be harmed from the inside, and so Shockwave would collect the death-bringer magic they found, and so Shockwave had the bottles.
Blurr was out of time, and out of options, and didn't want to hear anymore, didn't want to know, didn't want to witness.
He crept away.
Cowardly.
And then, of course, of course, Blurr did what he was meant for, the only thing he was always good at, never failed at.
He ran.
Running, running properly, felt good. Speed was the natural shape of his magic, and running with it-- the motion of his frame, the flow of power through him, when there was no other motive in it, no destination or thought, nothing to outrun, running was the best thing in the world. He became his frame and his magic and everything else fell away, meaningless against the perfection of running.
This wasn't like that.
This was a desperate attempt to escape.
Except half of that escape was from a situation, and the rest was from knowledge in his head ("You're a death-bringer,") and the emotions spinning his own spark.
There was nowhere, really, far enough to escape those, Blurr knew.
(Too well.)
There were things even he couldn't run away from.
So he settled for distance, stopping in-- he would have called it a field of purple, if not for the ruined town crumbling into it, the pavers beneath his feet shoved aside by sapling trees and bordered all around with little weedy flowers--
Touch-me-nots.
("Legend says the mech who created them enchanted them to disappear when touched by any living creature, because they were meant for their dead lover.")
Blurr scuffed his foot, brushing against one of the stems.
The flower, predictably, fizzled away in a tiny burst of magic.
Quite a feat, really, making something so consistent, so self-sustaining.
Something that could never be touched, never be reached, without being apparently destroyed.
Isolated.
Alone in all of nature.
Other flowers might be eaten by mechanimals, pollinated by tiny insecticons, might live normally, growing and blooming and going to seed and fading away, but touch-me-nots couldn't truly be part of anything, could they? It might not be magic that let them grow, but it had to be magic that sustained them, that let them keep going, as impossible as it was for any other living thing to connect with them.
Pretty little things.
And all alone, disconnected, because some mech with more magic than compassion was obsessed with a lover.
Blurr wondered how the lover felt about that, if the dead could feel anything.
Spark suddenly feeling far too heavy for his frame to hold up, anymore, Blurr let himself sink to his knees, little tiny enchantments flaring up around him as he landed on someone else's memorial. Someone else's love.
Nothing stayed.
Nothing ever stayed.
Nothing was permanent, his to keep, his, he couldn't protect the mortals and couldn't explain properly to the demons, and Shockwave was perfect, smart and soft and kind and powerful and safe, a demon Mirage could never, ever touch or take from him, someone who could be a companion, a friend, a partner... And Blurr couldn't keep him, wouldn't keep him against his will, because that would be breaking his word and it would be cruel, and while Blurr could keep on gently showing Shockwave that life was worth living, that people could be kind, that the world could be changed, in the hope Shockwave would change his mind, release Blurr from his vow, Shockwave had the bottles and the other demon was a death-bringer and Blurr was out of time.
Out of time with Shockwave.
("I would be happy if you stayed," he'd said, because he couldn't say anything else, anything that could be an order-- or worse, a manipulation.)
He should have known better.
"Stupid," he muttered at the flowers, at himself, because he should have known better. "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid..."
He should have known better, should have remembered, that Blurr didn't get to keep anything important, anyone important.
Anything that made him feel whole, feel real, feel worthy, anything like that was temporary and Blurr only got to keep it forever in his memory, and he knew that.
He'd just... hoped.
And wasn't that the stupidest thing of all?
He knew better, experience had taught him over and over again, and he'd hoped anyway. Nothing in his head but the sound of the wind as he raced by, stupid, silly little Blurr, hoping for a safe, permanent connection to anyone who wasn't Mirage.
With every shift, every movement, flowers vanished away from him, and Blurr--
Blurr turned on them.
How dare he hope? How dare he want? How dare he try to live, to belong to himself, to find happiness instead of hollow pleasures?
How dare the stupid, stupid flowers flinch out of existence at his touch, how dare they only get tossed around first because Blurr could move faster than anything else, how dare some obsessive enchanter put them in Blurr's path to mock him, to remind him, how dare they exist if he couldn't pick a posey of them and give them to Shockwave, how dare someone else love hard enough to change the world, to scatter proof of their love in blasted, isolated, lonely, dead places?
How dare anyone be so bold, so reckless with their feelings as to leave evidence of them all over the world, for anyone to see, for anyone to use against them?
How dare Shockwave be so perfect, so easy to love, and so ready to die and leave Blurr alone again?
How dare it hurt so bad that Mirage would take me back was a thought Blurr could almost bear to have in comparison?
He had been getting along. He'd been doing fine. No spending too much time in any one place, with any one person. No getting too attached.
But Shockwave was perfect.
Shockwave was perfect and Blurr had known from the start, before Blurr had even put his grimoire down, that Shockwave wanted to die.
Blurr had just... hoped he could be enough.
Blurr wasn't enough.
Blurr was out of time, grubby and tear-stained and drained and sitting in the middle of a barren circle he'd furiously swept clear of touch-me-nots, sending them wherever they went when they vanished. His rampage had uncovered a predacon skull-- a small one-- with a single touch-me-not stubbornly growing in a tiny portion of soil cupped in an eye socket.
They needed so little to survive, touch-me-nots.
He wondered how long they lived if left undisturbed.
There were things in the world that didn't need much at all to keep on living, keep on existing, for a very long time, if nothing stopped them.
He stood up, eventually, and went back to town, went to look for Shockwave. If he were tired-- and he was tired-- it would be easier not to fight the news that it was over, that his time with Shockwave was done. It was important to accept that gracefully. It was important that Blurr not hurt Shockwave with his reactions, with his feelings.
He should have been thinking ahead the whole time, really. What to do next. Where to go to ground before he summoned his next demon. That it was worth it.
That what freedom he had was worth it.
That he'd given enough and shouldn't have to keep losing pieces of himself.
That he could keep going, after, that even though Mirage would take him back, it wasn't worth it to go back.
That his memories were precious. His memories were enough, they'd have to be enough, because he didn't want to give them up.
Blurr couldn't mark the world with memorial flowers.
His memories would be all he could keep, of Shockwave, in the end.
He'd have to make them last.
End Notes: So the process here went:
- See post from Keferon
- Go "Is that the Doylist or the Watsonian parallel, because it seems to me--"
- oh shit The Muse is upon me
- I wrote this instead of sleeping
- Write sleep deprived, edit rested, though, so, came back to the draft a couple days later
- My end notes are a mess, wtf, don't write your notes sleep deprived
- Rewrite end notes entirely
- Post
Hokay so.
Keferon posted this, in which they say that Blurr's tantrum among the touch-me-nots and Shockwave's because Shockwave's raging that It's Not Fair protest are parallels in both of them realizing that what they want is not what's needed, that it's both of them realizing that what they've been building can't last. Blurr has to let Shockwave go, and Shockwave has to face that there's no other (known) escape for him.
And I found myself... not disagreeing, but drawing a different angle on that parallel. Both of them are crying out in anger and pain and fear, but Shockwave's "It's not fair" is directed outwards, reasonably, because it's not fair, because he believed what he was going through (not just being a demon, but spending much of his time as a demon being Sentinel's favorite victim, being a weapon aimed at those he'd rather protect) was the will of Primus. It's not fair, it's not just, this cannot be the act of a loving god. Shockwave screams out his defiance and asks his knight to send him somewhere neither Primus nor Sentinel can touch him.
Blurr, on the other hand. When he's raging, Blurr's only intelligible lines are, simply, "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid..." and that is a direct quote, eight repeats of the word stupid before trailing off into mumbles and inarticulate angry scrawls. Blurr's rage is turned inward before he aims it at the flowers.
So I don't think Blurr is realizing, there, that he needs to let Shockwave go. He's known for a long time that Shockwave wanted to go, and he's always going to connect touch-me-nots to understanding why Shockwave wanted to die. From an audience point of view, on a Doylist level, Touch-me-nots make for a fantastic piece of consent symbolism, but on an in-universe, Watsonian level? I'm not at all sure that's what they mean to Blurr, personally. Because Blurr already gets the consent thing, and he shows that to us with, "I would be happy if you stayed." I'm gonna be cheeky and point out that Blurr's understanding of consent, of his power over Shockwave, of how careful he has to be not to take Shockwave's choices from him, is one of the very first things that really inspired me, Spellbound-wise.
So Blurr doesn't need the touch-me-nots as a demonstration of 'trying to MAKE him stay will only hurt him,' and with the benefit of more recent updates? I'm more than willing to say he learned that through bitter experience.
Bitter experience, you say, what bitter experience? Blurr's head would be useless if it didn't have a pretty face attached to it. Racing was the only thing he was good for. Not at, for. And no matter how much I like to use Mushroom Blurr to hurt my own readers (I love you all) before the switch to Kill It colors-- That idiot. Your little moron. But all of it, all of it, is wrapped in "You come back home with me."
You belong with me. You belong to me. I will keep you with me forever and ever. Mine, mine, mine.
Hey. Hey. Hey. What was the Matrix originally made for in this continuity, again?
Whether it's done out of love or hate, with good intentions or bad (and don't Rung, Mirage, and Sentinel make three neat points on those scales), making someone change in order to keep them is doing harm. Positive change cannot come purely from an external source.
And we, the audience, the readership, need to see that, to have that demonstrated by narrative symbolism and surprise tools that will help us later, because it's a theme that goes thrumming through all three main strains of the Mystic Tales AUs, but Blurr has Mirage's fingerprints all over him the way Shockwave has Sentinel's. So instead of 'you can't force it, you can't change them, you have to stop and think it through,' Blurr sees something else in a field of touch-me-nots.
Mostly himself.
But I may be taking "if you think 'huh was that a parallel?' yes it was" a little too far.
Or maybe not! This is a fanfic of a fan comic, if I wanna say "to Blurr, touch-me-nots represent the isolation of staying one step ahead of an extremely dangerous stalker, among other things," nobody can stop me!
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Blurr, Shockwave (Mirage, Sentinel, and Damus haunt the narrative)
Word Count: 1,620
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: Standard Spellbound Suicidal Ideation Warning, so so so much negative self-talk, if I need more you tell me
Author's Notes: As I go revisiting earlier Spellbound events, once again we are warning for impending suicide-- not the viewpoint character's, but he's supposed to be assisting with it, and doesn't want to. Like, he really doesn't want to. He loses his cool about how much he doesn't want to, here.
Shockwave (whose suicide is being so carefully planned) doesn't want to die, either, he just wants to be out of Sentinel's reach, because Sentinel is a vicious little glitch and I hope he steps on a Lego once a day, minimum, for the rest of his life, preferably on a hard surface so even if it doesn't hurt or get caught in his robot joints and crevices, there's a solid chance he'll slip. I have seen the hydraulic press struggle with Lego, I firmly believe TFs wouldn't have a good time stepping on them either.
Also, the aquatic driller is called The Hat, huh? I accept The Hat as my namesake. Hats are important.
ADDENDUM TWO DAYS LATER: ... Despite everything, it is this note that really shows I wrote this instead of sleeping (the weather and my sinuses were having a fight, sleep was impossible anyway and then Keferon sicced the muse on me).
Summary: Keferon, no, I have other things I need to be doing.
Looking back on an older update with some authorial info that made me go, "Yeah but Blurr's rageventing wasn't just about knowing bad news was coming, it was also about whatever his situation with Mirage was, we just didn't know that was haunting the narrative yet."
So now I'm back on my Spellbound bullshit.
It wasn't eavesdropping.
Blurr was going to announce himself, he was, just-- just in a moment.
He'd left Shockwave for a little while (that was fine, that was safe) and had to go looking for him, after, and found him where he'd least expected-- down a back-alley, with another demon, tracing magical runes in the dust and patiently explaining their uses.
Shockwave was a teacher, and Blurr thought it was by nature. Something in his spark that drove him not simply to learn, to acquire knowledge, but to spread it as well. And this-- this was--
It was charming and beautiful and Blurr had hoped for this, in a backwards way. He'd brought Shockwave to his own memorial statue thinking along these lines, and part of him, even knowing they were one step away from the end of Shockwave, part of him still hoped for exactly this. Shockwave had changed the world for magically-gifted mechs, for beastformers, so maybe, maybe with time and care, maybe he could want to try to change the world for demons, too.
And Shockwave had found it himself! Blurr hadn't had to suggest it! Shockwave had found another demon and, for some reason Blurr would ask about later, just sat down to teach a lesson about runes!
It was a perfect, beautiful, wonderful moment, and Blurr would announce himself very soon.
He just wanted another few moments to bask in the sight of Shockwave doing what he loved, what he was meant for, to fix it in his memory forever.
That was all.
Then Shockwave said, "You're a death-bringer," like a tolling death-knell, and suddenly, the scene before Blurr wasn't adorable anymore.
Shockwave had the bottles.
Because they couldn't count on speed when negotiating with death-bringers, and Blurr could be easily destroyed from the outside, if one took offense. Shockwave could only be harmed from the inside, and so Shockwave would collect the death-bringer magic they found, and so Shockwave had the bottles.
Blurr was out of time, and out of options, and didn't want to hear anymore, didn't want to know, didn't want to witness.
He crept away.
Cowardly.
And then, of course, of course, Blurr did what he was meant for, the only thing he was always good at, never failed at.
He ran.
Running, running properly, felt good. Speed was the natural shape of his magic, and running with it-- the motion of his frame, the flow of power through him, when there was no other motive in it, no destination or thought, nothing to outrun, running was the best thing in the world. He became his frame and his magic and everything else fell away, meaningless against the perfection of running.
This wasn't like that.
This was a desperate attempt to escape.
Except half of that escape was from a situation, and the rest was from knowledge in his head ("You're a death-bringer,") and the emotions spinning his own spark.
There was nowhere, really, far enough to escape those, Blurr knew.
(Too well.)
There were things even he couldn't run away from.
So he settled for distance, stopping in-- he would have called it a field of purple, if not for the ruined town crumbling into it, the pavers beneath his feet shoved aside by sapling trees and bordered all around with little weedy flowers--
Touch-me-nots.
("Legend says the mech who created them enchanted them to disappear when touched by any living creature, because they were meant for their dead lover.")
Blurr scuffed his foot, brushing against one of the stems.
The flower, predictably, fizzled away in a tiny burst of magic.
Quite a feat, really, making something so consistent, so self-sustaining.
Something that could never be touched, never be reached, without being apparently destroyed.
Isolated.
Alone in all of nature.
Other flowers might be eaten by mechanimals, pollinated by tiny insecticons, might live normally, growing and blooming and going to seed and fading away, but touch-me-nots couldn't truly be part of anything, could they? It might not be magic that let them grow, but it had to be magic that sustained them, that let them keep going, as impossible as it was for any other living thing to connect with them.
Pretty little things.
And all alone, disconnected, because some mech with more magic than compassion was obsessed with a lover.
Blurr wondered how the lover felt about that, if the dead could feel anything.
Spark suddenly feeling far too heavy for his frame to hold up, anymore, Blurr let himself sink to his knees, little tiny enchantments flaring up around him as he landed on someone else's memorial. Someone else's love.
Nothing stayed.
Nothing ever stayed.
Nothing was permanent, his to keep, his, he couldn't protect the mortals and couldn't explain properly to the demons, and Shockwave was perfect, smart and soft and kind and powerful and safe, a demon Mirage could never, ever touch or take from him, someone who could be a companion, a friend, a partner... And Blurr couldn't keep him, wouldn't keep him against his will, because that would be breaking his word and it would be cruel, and while Blurr could keep on gently showing Shockwave that life was worth living, that people could be kind, that the world could be changed, in the hope Shockwave would change his mind, release Blurr from his vow, Shockwave had the bottles and the other demon was a death-bringer and Blurr was out of time.
Out of time with Shockwave.
("I would be happy if you stayed," he'd said, because he couldn't say anything else, anything that could be an order-- or worse, a manipulation.)
He should have known better.
"Stupid," he muttered at the flowers, at himself, because he should have known better. "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid..."
He should have known better, should have remembered, that Blurr didn't get to keep anything important, anyone important.
Anything that made him feel whole, feel real, feel worthy, anything like that was temporary and Blurr only got to keep it forever in his memory, and he knew that.
He'd just... hoped.
And wasn't that the stupidest thing of all?
He knew better, experience had taught him over and over again, and he'd hoped anyway. Nothing in his head but the sound of the wind as he raced by, stupid, silly little Blurr, hoping for a safe, permanent connection to anyone who wasn't Mirage.
With every shift, every movement, flowers vanished away from him, and Blurr--
Blurr turned on them.
How dare he hope? How dare he want? How dare he try to live, to belong to himself, to find happiness instead of hollow pleasures?
How dare the stupid, stupid flowers flinch out of existence at his touch, how dare they only get tossed around first because Blurr could move faster than anything else, how dare some obsessive enchanter put them in Blurr's path to mock him, to remind him, how dare they exist if he couldn't pick a posey of them and give them to Shockwave, how dare someone else love hard enough to change the world, to scatter proof of their love in blasted, isolated, lonely, dead places?
How dare anyone be so bold, so reckless with their feelings as to leave evidence of them all over the world, for anyone to see, for anyone to use against them?
How dare Shockwave be so perfect, so easy to love, and so ready to die and leave Blurr alone again?
How dare it hurt so bad that Mirage would take me back was a thought Blurr could almost bear to have in comparison?
He had been getting along. He'd been doing fine. No spending too much time in any one place, with any one person. No getting too attached.
But Shockwave was perfect.
Shockwave was perfect and Blurr had known from the start, before Blurr had even put his grimoire down, that Shockwave wanted to die.
Blurr had just... hoped he could be enough.
Blurr wasn't enough.
Blurr was out of time, grubby and tear-stained and drained and sitting in the middle of a barren circle he'd furiously swept clear of touch-me-nots, sending them wherever they went when they vanished. His rampage had uncovered a predacon skull-- a small one-- with a single touch-me-not stubbornly growing in a tiny portion of soil cupped in an eye socket.
They needed so little to survive, touch-me-nots.
He wondered how long they lived if left undisturbed.
There were things in the world that didn't need much at all to keep on living, keep on existing, for a very long time, if nothing stopped them.
He stood up, eventually, and went back to town, went to look for Shockwave. If he were tired-- and he was tired-- it would be easier not to fight the news that it was over, that his time with Shockwave was done. It was important to accept that gracefully. It was important that Blurr not hurt Shockwave with his reactions, with his feelings.
He should have been thinking ahead the whole time, really. What to do next. Where to go to ground before he summoned his next demon. That it was worth it.
That what freedom he had was worth it.
That he'd given enough and shouldn't have to keep losing pieces of himself.
That he could keep going, after, that even though Mirage would take him back, it wasn't worth it to go back.
That his memories were precious. His memories were enough, they'd have to be enough, because he didn't want to give them up.
Blurr couldn't mark the world with memorial flowers.
His memories would be all he could keep, of Shockwave, in the end.
He'd have to make them last.
End Notes: So the process here went:
- See post from Keferon
- Go "Is that the Doylist or the Watsonian parallel, because it seems to me--"
- oh shit The Muse is upon me
- I wrote this instead of sleeping
- Write sleep deprived, edit rested, though, so, came back to the draft a couple days later
- My end notes are a mess, wtf, don't write your notes sleep deprived
- Rewrite end notes entirely
- Post
Hokay so.
Keferon posted this, in which they say that Blurr's tantrum among the touch-me-nots and Shockwave's because Shockwave's raging that It's Not Fair protest are parallels in both of them realizing that what they want is not what's needed, that it's both of them realizing that what they've been building can't last. Blurr has to let Shockwave go, and Shockwave has to face that there's no other (known) escape for him.
And I found myself... not disagreeing, but drawing a different angle on that parallel. Both of them are crying out in anger and pain and fear, but Shockwave's "It's not fair" is directed outwards, reasonably, because it's not fair, because he believed what he was going through (not just being a demon, but spending much of his time as a demon being Sentinel's favorite victim, being a weapon aimed at those he'd rather protect) was the will of Primus. It's not fair, it's not just, this cannot be the act of a loving god. Shockwave screams out his defiance and asks his knight to send him somewhere neither Primus nor Sentinel can touch him.
Blurr, on the other hand. When he's raging, Blurr's only intelligible lines are, simply, "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid..." and that is a direct quote, eight repeats of the word stupid before trailing off into mumbles and inarticulate angry scrawls. Blurr's rage is turned inward before he aims it at the flowers.
So I don't think Blurr is realizing, there, that he needs to let Shockwave go. He's known for a long time that Shockwave wanted to go, and he's always going to connect touch-me-nots to understanding why Shockwave wanted to die. From an audience point of view, on a Doylist level, Touch-me-nots make for a fantastic piece of consent symbolism, but on an in-universe, Watsonian level? I'm not at all sure that's what they mean to Blurr, personally. Because Blurr already gets the consent thing, and he shows that to us with, "I would be happy if you stayed." I'm gonna be cheeky and point out that Blurr's understanding of consent, of his power over Shockwave, of how careful he has to be not to take Shockwave's choices from him, is one of the very first things that really inspired me, Spellbound-wise.
So Blurr doesn't need the touch-me-nots as a demonstration of 'trying to MAKE him stay will only hurt him,' and with the benefit of more recent updates? I'm more than willing to say he learned that through bitter experience.
Bitter experience, you say, what bitter experience? Blurr's head would be useless if it didn't have a pretty face attached to it. Racing was the only thing he was good for. Not at, for. And no matter how much I like to use Mushroom Blurr to hurt my own readers (I love you all) before the switch to Kill It colors-- That idiot. Your little moron. But all of it, all of it, is wrapped in "You come back home with me."
You belong with me. You belong to me. I will keep you with me forever and ever. Mine, mine, mine.
Hey. Hey. Hey. What was the Matrix originally made for in this continuity, again?
Whether it's done out of love or hate, with good intentions or bad (and don't Rung, Mirage, and Sentinel make three neat points on those scales), making someone change in order to keep them is doing harm. Positive change cannot come purely from an external source.
And we, the audience, the readership, need to see that, to have that demonstrated by narrative symbolism and surprise tools that will help us later, because it's a theme that goes thrumming through all three main strains of the Mystic Tales AUs, but Blurr has Mirage's fingerprints all over him the way Shockwave has Sentinel's. So instead of 'you can't force it, you can't change them, you have to stop and think it through,' Blurr sees something else in a field of touch-me-nots.
Mostly himself.
But I may be taking "if you think 'huh was that a parallel?' yes it was" a little too far.
Or maybe not! This is a fanfic of a fan comic, if I wanna say "to Blurr, touch-me-nots represent the isolation of staying one step ahead of an extremely dangerous stalker, among other things," nobody can stop me!
