Work Text:
and your potential shall wither
like a flower’s petal
and your promise will be broken
like a cheap piece of metal
and all that will be left
is you and regret
Megatron is stretched across his berth, trying as best he can to ignore the invasive medical technology that he has to connect to in order to recharge. The Fool’s Energon saps his strength at a greater rate than it sustains him, so the machines ensure that he gets something out of recharge instead of slowly spiraling into fatigue and, eventually, Emptiness.
In one hand, he holds an old data pad, running a casual optic over some of his old works in hopes of sparking a new muse. As of yet, he now has a few scattered glyphs, a handful of phrases meant to encapsulate Prime and the end of their war. They're unrefined and some of them a little heavy-handed; ultimately, nothing worth sharing.
Ravage is curled primly on his chassis, three paws tucked under them and the fourth hanging casually. Mostly hidden by their combined bulk, Megatron has palmed the paw with his free hand, and the two of them have been trading slow messages in Hand for joors.
(Rodimus and Ambus had insisted—demanded—that Ravage’s communications systems be dismantled for as long as they were on the Lost Light, ‘just in case’. Where Ravage claimed to have arrived of their own volition, the rest only heard ‘spy’.
But Megatron knows Soundwave, and he knows Ravage. The symbiont is likely not only here against Soundwave’s interdiction, but more out of the need to look after Megatron than to spy on the Autobots. The war is over, after all. What need is there for spies?
But, of course, the rest of them don’t want to hear it. Why waste his time trying to explain?)
Anyone monitoring them—and he would be a fool to believe that he is not being monitored, for he is still a prisoner, no matter what Prime and Ambus say—will only see two mechs sitting in cold silence, despite the proximity of their bodies. Let them think what they want.
What can we do, with only one of them? Ravage asks, pedes flexing lazily.
We won’t know until the opportunity arises, I suppose, Megatron answers.
Ravage is quiet, and then:
I meant it, you know.
I know.
Then why stay here? With them?
Megatron lets loose a long, slow vent.
I am no longer that mech. Neither the one you loved nor the one you followed. I don’t know that I could face my Decepticons. I don’t know that I would like what I see.
It is a kinder way of saying that he is afraid of what he might be responsible for. Decepticonism was born an idea, a dream, in the aching, embittered heart of a miner.
The Senate has long since been dismantled, and functionism is only a barely-remembered relic in the minds of Cybertronians, and all but unknown to the younger ones. But even so, even so, he fears to look too closely at his kin. To look into the optics of those who follow him and see nothing familiar... Or would it be worse, to see himself, perfectly reflected? To be confronted with how he has changed?
Ravage turns their head away, but does not pull their paw from Megatron’s grasp.
We would stand by you. You gave Soundwave purpose. There is little you could do to diminish that.
He knows that. And Soundwave is perhaps the most loyal, but not nearly the most fanatic. There are so many mechs, doing so many different things, all in name of him and his vision. And that is perhaps the most troubling thought of them all.
For all its absurdity, falling into a routine on the Lost Light is easy.
He is woken by his internal chronometer a handful of cycles before his shift; this gives him time to stretch out all the kinks in his plating, detach all the medical equipment, apply a thin coat of wax, suffer his way through a cube of Fool’s Energon and go over Ravage’s reports, usually in that order. Despite the fact that the crew is always keeping an eye out for Ravage’s presence, the feloid did not make it through countless vorns of warfare to be found so easily. Most mechs don’t bother to look pede-level, and there are enough shadows and high ceilings for Ravage to patrol the ship undisturbed and unseen.
After he goes through the reports, sent via data packet, he confers with Ravage and asks the feloid to complete a few more tasks. He always receives a sharp look for that—for asking, and not demanding, commanding, as is the right of Warlords—but Ravage has yet to call him out on it. Megatron is equally grateful and guilty about that.
Finally, he tries his best to wash the taste of the foul, spark-sucking concoction that is the Fool's Energon from his glossa, ultimately fails, and then reports to the bridge for duty.
Minimus will greet him cordially—he’s slowly starting to wear the Magnus armor less and less—and Rodimus will make a combination of vague gestures and low vocalizations as he departs that only make him seem more like the sparkling he frequently acts like.
“It looks to be a slow shift,” Minimus will tell him, without fail.
It never is.
There’s always something.
Either contraband, or a squabble gotten out of hand, or something has exploded-imploded-malfunctioned or, worse yet, Brainstorm has created some Unicron-damned horror that has managed to escape. Every time a crew member pings the bridge with another problem to be solved, Megatron has to take a moment to offline his optics and ask some higher power—Primus, the All Spark, whoever will hear him—for patience.
Patience rarely comes.
Hectic shifts or not, Megatron is usually still able to take a joor or two for himself. It doesn't look too different from his usual motions of slogging through paperwork, so Minimus pays him little mind. Megatron, after all, is very good at looking the part of ‘Model Behavior’. That he learned from Terminus, from Messatine.
The poetry is still stuck in some liminal space, full of glyphs that mean nothing and mean too much all at once. It's fitting, because that's Orion all over, filling Megatron's processor and eclipsing all other thoughts. Optimus Prime who was impetus and victim both, who blessed and damned Megatron by turns.
His polemic, on the other servo... It's embarrassing, a little, to read Towards Peace some six million years after the fact. To see the naivety in his younger self, the obliviousness. Megatron of Tarn, stuck in the nucleon mines of Messatine and frothing with just rage, would never have believed his writing would spark off a movement as infamous as Decepticonism, let alone the War that followed. That miner, who wrote because he had a way with glyphs and a lot to say, would be horrified. Is horrified, in some small part of Megatron's patchwork spark, hidden away somewhere in its depths. It's something he's always ruminated on, though much more frequently these days, considering his current... situation. Affiliation.
When had it happened? When had Decepticonism deviated from the revolutionary movement he had once imagined and turned so sour? He's thought about it, deeply, and no matter how he tries, he cannot seem to find that one pivotal moment. He—no longer a Warlord, no longer confined to neither the mines nor the Pits, no longer that mech—cannot pin down that singular moment. That instance of “Yes. This is when everything changed. This is it.”
Was it the brief touch of the mnemosurgeon's needles against his helm, plucking the thoughts from his very processor? The day the Senate toppled? The death of Cybertron? Unicron? Galvatron? The countless battle against Optimus, trading blows and philosophies? Earth? The cyberforming?
(All of it? None of it?)
You are being deceived, he had written, and soon the phrase had been scrawled across walls and buildings, covering billboards in bright colors. Decepticonism began as that need to tear the veil of docility from his eyes and the eyes of the likeminded mechs around him, and from there it had grown. But when had it changed? Where is that moment, when was it that he looked upon his legacy and realized that it was not what he set out to do? That it was not what Terminus died for?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He hates that he cannot force the epiphany.
A few joors into this particular shift, Ravage comes slinking in with their plating clamped down close and a rattling annoyance in their EM field.
“If one more mech tries to pet me,” they snarl, sliding underneath the Captain’s seat and curling up there. “I will destroy this ship myself, Peace be damned.”
“I would tell you to give it time,” Megatron begins dryly, filing his current report on Yet Another Incident in triplicate. “But they seem particularly obtuse on this point, even for Autobots.”
It’s a little bewildering, from an objective point of view. Ravage is clearly sapient—not to mention older than a good majority of the crew—but despite the fact that it’s been more than a stellar cycle, some of the crew members keep treating them like a particularly stubborn pet: speaking loudly and slowly, or using that condescending babbling speak often reserved for sparklings and protoforms, and that’s only if they deign to address Ravage directly at all.
Then there’s the petting. Ravage allows physical contact from very few mechs and those dominant actions of petting or ear scratching from no one, not even Soundwave. Ravage has been exceeding vocal about what will happen to the next fool who attempts either.
And yet. The Autobots persist.
“Any ideas?”
Ravage does not answer, but Megatron knows he has been heard. At his own station, Ambus is politely pretending not to hear a word. It’s unlikely that he’s following the conversation in its entirety, given that they’re speaking the Tarnian low-caste dialect, with bits of Kaonite slang, but there’s enough standard Neo-Cybex in it to derive some meaning. It would be foolish to assume that they are not being watched, even and especially here and now.
“They can always bring it back to you,” Ravage grumbles after a breem, a hiss to the words. “Anything I do, they can punish you for instead.”
“True,” Megatron concedes with a nod.
And it would be quite the Autobot thing to do; to claim Ravage nothing more than a dumb beast and punish Megatron in their stead. Most of the crew wouldn’t even need the excuse to see him brought down.
“I don’t know how you can stand it,” Ravage spits, and Megatron can feel their field tremble and stutter, expanding and constricting with rage.
“It’s hardly a surprise,” Megatron points out, thinking of the Necrobot and that field full of blue flowers sprawling beyond even the scope of Ravage’s modified and refined optics. He thinks of what the Decepticons have wrought, mechs like Turmoil and Overlord and Bludgeon. The Decepticon Justice Division, which culls its own ranks in the name of his vision. He thinks of his war, his and Prime’s, that carried on even with their numerous temporary demises. Their war, that crushed entire worlds, including their own.
No, it’s not a surprise at all.
(Some part of him aches like rusted hinges, agonized and sounding of sorrows and laments:
Where did it all go wrong? When did it become this—?)
Ravage huffs, dismissive, and there’s a clang as their tail strikes the bottom of the chair.
“I don’t know how you can stand it,” they repeat, before subsiding into a sullen silence beneath him.
If they were in his quarters, still monitored but at least alone, he would twist their servos into something like, I don’t stand it. I just refuse to bow for them.
But they aren’t alone, and Tarnian isn’t so different that he would risk such a statement out loud, right in front of Ambus. So he says nothing.
But something in his field must reach, because while Ravage remains hidden beneath the Captain’s chair, they push the flat of their nose into the back of his struts, softly.
The shift is long and arduous, but Megatron endures. Inanity after inanity, he soldiers on. At least there is reason to be found in Ambus’ filing system. It’s similar to Soundwave’s, if far more lax. Most would quickly tire of filling out forms in triplicate, but given that Soundwave had been responsible for not only the entire Decepticon communications system, but their information network as well, the mech had always gone above and beyond to ensure that every single byte of data was encrypted, triplicated and routinely backed-up.
By comparison, Magnus’ system is riddled with vulnerabilities; though, Megatron won’t be the one to bring that up.
“Rodimus,” he dips his helm at his co-captain as he leaves the bridge. And Rodimus is his co-captain, for all that Prime made up the position on the spot to appease the younger mech. He’s even been acting like it lately, which is surely a sign of another oncoming disaster.
Ravage skulks from beneath the captain’s chair like a wraith, their EM field a poised like an aggressive snake. Rodimus gets this… gleam in his optics sometimes, like he wants to cuddle Ravage to his chassis. The feloid would maul him to death and bathe spitefully in the spilled energon, but if Megatron were to tell him that, it would surely be taken as a threat.
Through some miraculous discovery of common sense—Megatron doubts it will last the orbital cycle—Rodimus acknowledges Ravage and Megatron both with a tilt of his helm, and nothing more.
“You are the only thing on this ship that I would not pitch out the airlock,” Ravage mutters, still looking for all the world like an earth cat scorned, tail stiff and body hunched.
“They’re not all that bad,” Megatron lies through his denta, making sure to keep his tone light as they turn from the bridge and head back to his rather desolate quarters.
Ravage rumbles low in their throat, and then, begrudgingly adds, “The scientists aren’t irredeemable. Better than Shockwave, at least.”
When they realized that Brainstorm had travelled into the past not to kill Prime, but to extinguish Megatron’s spark before it even left the factory, Megatron had punched Perceptor in the face hard enough that there would’ve been paint transfer, if Megatron were the type to wear paint. Instead of taking it personally, Perceptor had more or less told him to shut his mouth and sit his aft down somewhere out of the way.
Megatron had, after calming down, shut up and sat his aft down somewhere out of the way. And Perceptor had come through.
(Though, if he is honest, Megatron owes a debt that can hardly ever be repaid to Whirl, of all Cybertronians. Even so, he finds he can’t regret the creation of Decepticonism. Such irony, to owe two such pivotal moments to the same mech.)
At any rate, it isn’t much of a comparison; Shockwave has always been more loyal to his own interpretation of the Decepticon tenets than to Megatron himself. Though loyal, to some degree, he’s always had his own agenda to further, regardless of what sacrifices were called for. Primus knows what he would’ve done to Megatron in those earlier vorns if he’d thought he could get away with it.
Look at what he had done: Megatron has little else but this new-old body that barely holds his spark, full of Space Bridge and poison to serve as a reminder that Shockwave is best kept close at hand, where he can be watched. Closely.
The Autobot scientists, on the other hand: Perceptor is a consummate professional, willing to engage with Megatron but rarely seeking him out; Brainstorm, after the murder-attempt-that-wasn’t, has come to treat him with an amiable disinterest; Nautica, strangely enough, seems genuinely amicable towards him. Her kindness makes him wary, and all the more ashamed, knowing that he should be able to just accept it, but also well aware of the many object lessons in why he never will.
“Little point in arguing that,” he muses.
They reach his suite, and with vorns of practice, he ignores the graffiti scrawled across the door. No one had ever seen fit to properly clean it, and he doesn’t even bother to check if there are any new messages. He’s been cursed and called the spawn of Mortilus far too often to take it to spark by now.
(Perhaps young Megatron of Tarn, before Kaon, chipping away in the mines of Messatine.... perhaps that mech might've taken those words personally, might've grown disillusioned.
He had been so impassioned, but so unsure, always feeling hunted, haunted, knowing that every word was a knife, aimed at the Senate but equally posed above his own spark. He’d needed to be believed in, to have enough mettle behind him so that even his death would've served its purpose.
But, well... that mech is no longer he.)
“I’ll be back before you wake,” Ravage promises as he keys the door open, gliding away and disappearing between one shadow and the next. There’s hardly a whisper of sound, and despite being attuned to it, Megatron can’t even sense their EM field anymore. That’s how good Soundwave’s ilk are. He’d pay good shanix to see security try and keep up with that.
Megatron hums to himself and steps inside, the hab suite door locking behind him. He strides to the berth and scoops the data pad up from where he left it.
One of lines from this morning, about the breadth of Prime's shadow and the soft spark of Orion Pax, leaps out at him. He could... yes, and if he rearranged a few of the glyphs, maybe something with homophones?
Another quiet night.
Megatron’s optics flare online with a snap, battle protocols humming beneath his plating with no outlet, as disabled as he is. No weapons, and what feels like a sparkling's strength.
What woke him?
He is still plugged into the berth, machines humming and clicking softly. The door to the hab suite is silent. It is dark, and he checks his chronometer; his shift isn’t for another dozen cycles or so. He stills and strains his audio, but can hear nothing, not even Ravage’s soft breaths. And—
Ravage.
I’ll be back before you wake, they’d said. It was not quite a code—because code phrases were obvious and Ravage was well above that level of skill—but it meant, in its own way, that Ravage had only been going to have a quick look around the ship. Yet it's been cycles, and still they are gone.
If they had found something interesting, or something worth watching, he would know. If something has happened to them… he would like to think that he would know. But just this morning, Ravage had rumbled, They can always bring it back to you.
Megatron fears little. But just the thought of what an entire ship full of Autobots could do to a lone Decepticon symbiont...
Megatron tears himself from the berth, uncaring of the way the sensor nodes pull and snap at his plating. The hab suite door barely opens in time, and he doesn’t bother slowing down as he sprints for the bridge.
It’s empty.
He pivots on his pedes and sprints for Minimus’ quarters, too frantic to bother with ringing the bell politely; the door shudders under the force of his knocks.
“Megatron?” Minimus’ voice is confused, and staticky. He wasn’t awake, then. That might mean something later, when he has the wit to think about it.
“Where is Ravage?”
“Ravage?”
“They're not—they're missing, gone, and—”
“What—?”
He turns from Ambus’ door, and takes off running again. Useless. So useless. There are words—glyphs and sigils—twisted up inside his processor, aching desperately to come out, but he holds them back. Taking the time to yell now will mean taking longer to find Ravage. And he will find Ravage, even if he has to pull the Lost Light apart bolt by bolt with his bare servos.
One of his most loyal, second only to their Carrier. Ravage, who is still confident in Megatron, when Megatron himself is not. He will not lose them.
Not now, when his war is meant to be over and done with.
He slams his fist into Rodimus’ door so hard that it bends in its frames, beeping sadly. Rodimus has to pull it open from the inside.
“What the frag—” Rodimus takes one look at his face and holds his servos up, optics wide. “Whatever it was, I didn’t do it.”
“Where is Ravage?”
“Dude, I’m not in charge of your cat,” Rodimus begins, faceplates scrunched up in irritation, but Megatron has had it.
“I do not have time for your jokes, Rodimus. Someone has taken Ravage. Where.”
It is no longer a question, but a demand, his vocoder strained and his field heady and full of pressure.
“You wanna back off?” Rodimus challenges, crowding in further and pushing his own field against Megatron’s.
Megatron makes a low sound of anger, of frustrating. He doesn’t have time for Rodimus’ brand of ego and posturing, moreover, Ravage doesn’t have time for this—
He exhales, slowly. His chassis is heaving with every vent and he can smell the thick ozone of his innards heating. He breathes, in and out, and comes to a decision: he will find Ravage, or he will destroy the Lost Light, even if it costs him his spark. He doesn’t have much more else to give, lately, but he would give it gladly to see Ravage safe. He would give all that he has and more—
“We have it,” a small voice says, from behind him.
As he turns around, he plays back that last snippet of audio, and knows his EM field is simmering, heady with the depth of his disgust, his loathing. 'It'? 'It'? Ravage is worth more than all the Autobots on this Primus-damned ship combined.
For all that he fears to look at what the Decepticons have become… Even more than that, more than the truth of his legacy brought into the light, stripped of his subjective bias, he fears meeting Soundwave’s optics and seeing nothing but betrayal. Of all the mech who have stood beside him, to meet the gaze of his most loyal and only see disappointment or hurt? He could not bear it; he can hardly bear to imagine it.
He will find Ravage. And the feloid damn well better be safe.
It’s the minibot who spoke. The white one. Pointed a gun at him once, puffed up on past deeds. Something about Tyrest. Megatron strides forward and stops—before Rodimus can even call out—to peer down at the mech. Not looking so confident now, though.
“Excuse me?”
His voice is a low rumble. Dangerous. He feels the same charge under his plates that he used to in the Pits. Knowing that once he starts, once that first drop of Energon is spilled, he will not stop until every last drop is spilled, until his spark wavers and flickers in his chassis and he can lift his fists no longer. Knows that when he stops, another mech will be dead, a ruin of twisted metals and alloys, and the shape of his hands will forever line their plating.
Pacifism might've been his vow on Messatine, when he wrote dreams of a Cybertron without weapons, without class. But he was equally shaped by Kaon, by its merciless trials. He does not have to start a fight, not when he is fully capable of ending one.
The minibot—what is their designation? Tail-something? Trail-something? No, no, that’s the big one that the DJD slaughtered, right before Brainstorm sent them on a wild turbofox chase into the past—shakes, pedes rattling against the ship floor.
“Megatron,” comes Minimus’ voice—he must’ve followed, a realization that Megatron tucks away for further contemplation at a later time—sharp with warning. Megatron doesn’t even bother to look back at him, or at Rodimus, whose field is flaring high with poorly-concealed panic and uncertainty.
“I would hear this mech,” he murmurs, audials pinging him that his voice sounds utterly sinister. All three Autobots quake away from the sound of it. Were he not so rusting furious, he might’ve smiled.
He’s been playing nice with the Autobots up until this point; there’s no need to get angry, and all the better to throw them off-guard by being polite and composed. It is harder to reconcile ‘Decepticon Warlord’ with a mech who was soft-spoken, who was polite, who did not fight back. And it was not a lie, only the trace remnants of a soft-spoken miner brought to the forefront because in times of ‘peace’, there is more use for a wordsmech than a warlord.
But now. Now.
Now, Ravage is missing and Megatron woke frantic in the dead of night, like the hand of Mortilus Himself had gripped his spark and roused him. Now, this minibot calls Ravage a thing and claims to have taken them. Now is not the time for niceties, for soft words, for calm.
“What did you say, minibot?”
His battle protocols are running hot, all of them. He can think of four different ways to incapacitate Rodimus and Ambus and find a nice, quiet corner to further question this minibot. Little thing seems a touch frightened.
“… Tailgate?”
That voice is familiar. The warrior. Cyclonus. Galvatron's, once. No one's, now.
That’s right, the minibot is Cyclonus’ suitemate and… conjunx? Or is that not right? Matters little, in the end.
Cyclonus is at the end of the hall, optics steady on Megatron, or perhaps the minibot he’s towering over. She had not yet reached for the Great Sword at her back, but only just.
“Cyclonus! I… um,” the minibot—Tailgate—stammers.
“Megatron?” Cyclonus calls, steady. Not calming, the way the way Autobots do it, but firm. Placing herself in his line of sight, weaponless but armed nonetheless. More than anyone else present, Cyclonus can likely see the violence building in Megatron’s frame. Cyclonus was one of the few who had seen the creature Megatron had become in the Pits of Kaon, and the warlord that had risen from the dust in the aftermath. “Has Tailgate offended you in some way? I can assure you—”
“Ravage has been taken,” Megatron’s voice sounds booming in the sudden, shocked silence, and he can only feel all the more angry for it. “The minibot said ‘we’.”
Cyclonus’ servos fall slack. Her field pulls in tight, and her pauldroned shoulders draw up sharply.
“Tailgate,” she hisses, “Tell me you didn’t.”
“I didn’t! I mean, well, Getaway said—”
“Getaway said—?”
“I have long since run out of patience. Where, minibot?”
Cyclonus takes another step forward, frame tense, as though to step between them. But the minibot peers up at him, face mask and visor offering no tells, and… defies him.
“I’m not telling you.”
Bold mech. Stupid.
It is one thing to challenge Megatron. Megatron, the Autobot. Megatron, Traitor to his own Primus-damned cause. Megatron, Adrift. Unfortunately for the minibot, with each passing moment, Megatron has gone further and further from the present, has fallen back on centuries-old protocols. Megatronus, Champion of the Pits, has risen from the dust yet again.
Megatronus knows, like he knows the grit of spilt Energon beneath his pedes, that he could crush the minibot's helm within one hand with room to spare, and revel in the viscera. But Megatronus is no mere brute; Megatronus was the Primus-damned Lord of the Pits. He knows when to strike and when to wait.
Dead bots tell no tales, after all.
“Tailgate!”
“I’m not! This is—This whole thing is wrong, and I won’t!”
Cyclonus and the minibot begin to argue, and after a beat, Rodimus involves himself. But Megatronus is not listening. Because—
His internal comms turn themselves on, full of white noise and reverb. And then, Ravage.
:MEGATRON—DON’T COME—DOWPL—RUN:
Ravage’s voice is a howl, full of pain and anger and Megatron—he is Megatron again, Megatron who is so afraid—is already pinging back the signal, trying to get a location. Ravage had to have hacked one of their aggressors to get that message out. Ravage is alive, and fighting. He starts to run again, ignoring the cries and shouts from behind him. Nothing matters now but Ravage.
Time seems to drag, kliks into breems as he tries to narrow down the signal. He's never been much of a tracker, only has his own internal compasses and chronometers to rely on. Eventually, what feels like joors later, the ping back leads him to a door almost directly across the ship from his own quarters and it makes him seethe. It’s not so early that no other mechs would be up and about, but of course if they saw Ravage in danger, they would turn a blind optic. If not join in themselves.
He doesn’t bother with knocking. Fool’s Energon or not, he was made to break things, by the weight and shape of his frame alone. He slams one heavy pede into the door and it buckles, metal crumpling inward. He takes a half-step back and then rams his shoulder into it, and it flies from the doorframe, disappearing into the dark of the room. By the curses that follow, he hit someone. Good.
The room—not a hab suite, but perhaps a storage room of some sort—is dark, and cold. It has fallen quiet, but he can hear the steady drip of some liquid, can feel the muted pulse of a vaguely familiar EM field. He steps inside, just past the doorway.
“Return Ravage to me unharmed and perhaps I will not crush your spark chamber beneath my pedes,” he announces to the darkness, shifting his weight.
His answer is a displacement of air and he ducks underneath the storage crate that comes flying at his head. Two more crates follow the first, and he dodges and slides forward, wishing that he at least had a blade. Wishing that he was at full strength. There’s a crash and then a flash of light. Flares? Explosives? He avoids them all the same.
Another flash of flame, more than enough light to see by. There, towards what he thinks is a corner. The reflective shine of a paint job. Reds and yellows.
He’d think Rodimus, if he didn’t know better. No, it’s the other one. Keeps getting all those weapons confiscated. Slag it all to the Pit, who?
Another crate. Instead of dodging it, though, he grabs it, lets its momentum swing him and then flings it back. Another curse, and the loud crash of a mech hitting the ground.
Moving quick on his pedes, he begins to stalk forward and—
Between one step and the next, lights. So sudden, so bright, his optics stutter and he has to pause while they reset.
“What the frag is happening on my ship right now?” Rodimus demands from the doorway, but still Megatron doesn’t look his way.
Right now, because on the table—
He waits, even though he knows his field must be flaring, smothering, choking, with the sudden visceral rage that fills him. He waits. He has known patience since Messatine, since Impactor, since Terminus.
He relearned patience in Kaon. Strike only when you are ready. Make it count.
There.
The slow but steady rise and fall of Ravage’s chassis. Still alive.
That confirmed, it takes but two quick steps for him to have Atomizer—that’s the name—by the neck and up against the wall.
“Hey, hey, Megatron—”
Rodimus, again. Now, of all times, he chooses to play Prime, peacemaker, mediator.
Megatron does not want peace, or empty words of non-aggression. Megatron wants this mech—Atomizer—gray and broken beneath him. Megatron wants Atomizer’s empty shell prostrated before the rest of these damned Autobots until they understand that whatever else he might be now—Autobot, traitor, murderer, monster—he is not to be trifled with.
Megatron starts to squeeze. Atomizer’s optics—still dazed from that last blow—flare bright with panic behind his visor and his hands come up to scrabble desperately at Megatron’s wrist, trying to snag a cable or snatch a plate, and are those needles—?
They are. Mnemosurgery needles, glinting and flashing in the light as Atomizer flails. Megatron wants to flinch back, wants to get away, but he holds steady, for Ravage. He squeezes, slowly, but with an increasing pressure, until Atomizer begins to spit static and—
“Megatron, back off,” Rodimus barks, voice too loud in this quiet, quiet room. He is right next to Megatron, has to be close, for how tight he’s gripping Megatron’s wrist and trying to wrench it away.
Still, Megatron does not look at him. He meets Atomizer’s optics—through a visor cracked and losing opacity—and holds them.
“Thank your god that they live,” he whispers, letting his fingers unfurl one by one. There will be some nice ligature marks there, for at least a deca-cycle. It is not sufficient—not by Kaon’s Laws, not by the Law of the Pits—but it is revenge enough, for now. “Or not even Primus himself could’ve saved you.”
Rodimus declares him to be under arrest and sentenced to the brig.
Megatron goes along placidly, because he knows he needs a joor to cool his processors, to come down off the battle rage. He stops, though, right before the cell and waits for Rodimus to stop, too.
He finally turns and looks at his co-captain and says, calm and even, as though it were any other cycle and he had not nearly strangled a mech to death, “I would like to see Ravage.”
Rodimus only eyes him. Assessing, now that he has seen how much strength the Fool’s Energon cannot take away. He waits until Megatron is seated within the cell, and the bars are activated and humming threateningly, before he nods.
“I’ll tell Ratchet.”
Then he leaves.
By his chronometer, it’s only been a few cycles before the heavy steel door to the brig opens. Minimus and Rodimus both step inside.
“Ravage will be up in a few joors,” Rodimus relays, without being prompted. Megatron nods.
“And Atomizer?”
“We’ve got both him and Getaway in holding. Atomizer says Whirl was in on it, too, but…”
Minimus picks up, “Cyclonus found Whirl in her hab suite with a fritzed processor, so we’re holding charges on that front.”
“And what, precisely, are the charges?”
They exchange glances and then Minimus frowns, and Rodimus looks away.
“This isn’t a conversation to be held here. Come,” Minimus gestures, and the cell door dissipates.
Megatron climbs to his feet slowly; he’s stiff, from sitting so rigidly, and there is still a bit of anger in him. But the battle high has worn off and every few astroseconds, another process error appears on his HUD, warning him of strain and tense struts. His anger, his actions, were all wholly justified, but they cost him.
Consequences. It has been quite some time, he thinks wryly, since he had to take such meager things into consideration.
They go to Minimus’ office, and seat themselves around the Magnus-sized desk.
“The charges?” Megatron asks again, impatiently.
Minimus crosses his arms over his chassis and sits back, dwarfed by the chair made for a mech of Ultra Magnus’ size. “From what we’ve gotten so far, they had planned to move against you directly, but changed their minds and went after Ravage instead.”
Rodimus leans forward, fingers folded in front of his face, “They were gonna use mnemosurgery, try and hack Ravage’s data cores. At best, gain access to Soundwave. At worst, stop Soundwave from gaining access to us.”
Megatron stares at them both.
It takes everything he has to remain still, and unthreatening.
“… You would be better off with bars between myself and the rest of the crew,” he finally allows, barely able to push the glyphs out past his denta. He wouldn’t be surprised if they could hear the pistons in his jaw groaning from how hard he’s clenching it.
“You were in the right, technically,” Rodimus admits, “Even if you almost jeopardized your co-captaincy with Atomizer.”
“Co-captaincy is hardly worth Ravage’s spark,” Megatron spits. Rodimus scowls at him, but doesn’t protest.
He knows—they all do—that Prime naming him co-captain was as much for his safety as it was to pander to Rodimus’ pride. While most of the crew wouldn’t think twice about extinguishing his spark—or at least, trying to—the punishments for violence against a Commanding Officer are severe.
Rodimus slumps back in his seat, helm tilted towards the bright halogen lights.
“The idea… isn’t without merit,” he mutters, almost musingly, almost too soft to be heard.
But not that soft.
This time, Megatron does not bother to stop the rising anger in him, and he feels a great deal of satisfaction when the desk shudders under the weight and force of his fist. Minimus doesn’t even chastise him, too busy staring at Rodimus.
“You Autobots and your Primus-damned Shadowplay,” Megatron growls, with a real hatred festering in him. Whatever burgeoning goodwill he might’ve had towards Rodimus has vanished, utterly destroyed.
A small part of him, old and weary, is so damn tired of misplacing his trust in rusting Primes—
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Rodimus backpedals, finally taking note of not only Megatron’s scorn, but Ambus’ disapproval as well. “I didn’t say I was gonna let them do it!”
“You might as well have,” Ambus points out, tone flat, “And you know how your co-captain feels about mnemosurgery.”
“C’mon, we know Ravage is passing on info to Soundwave! It’s just a little reprogramming,” Rodimus tries, but Megatron will not let him make light. Not about this. To say nothing of Rodimus’ dogged insistence that Ravage is here for some duplicitous purpose, when Megatron has told him, has sworn otherwise.
“Just a little reprogramming?” Megatron’s voice rises with every syllable, until he’s all but roaring. The desk groans beneath him, as he leans across it to snarl in Rodimus’ face, “No. Self-modifications are ‘just a little reprogramming’. Messing around with backup protocols is ‘just a little reprogramming’.”
Rodimus opens his mouth, though whether to contest that or to defend himself, Megatron will never know. He keeps talking, voice hard.
“Do you even understand what Shadowplay is? Can your self-absorbed little processor even conceptualize that horror? Being held down and knowing that when those needles draw away, you will never even know what’s been taken from you? The idea that you could awake as someone else—someone they created—and never know any better? And on top of that, you would condone amateur Shadowplay? They would’ve left Ravage in pieces, and you would allow it, over a badge?”
My rusting War is over, he wants to shout, to rage. It is over, and yet it just does not end.
Rodimus’ optics narrow, “You know, you keep going on like you’ve forgotten just which badge you’ve got pinned to your chassis right now—”
“This is not about me,” Megatron bellows, his fury nearly beyond words. “This is about you condoning the torture of a mech because you can, because you think a Decepticon deserves it.”
“’Torture’ is a little strong, I think—”
“One day you won’t be able to talk yourself out of your own mistakes, Rodimus.” Ambus intones heavily.
Rodimus flinches, but the sight of it brings no joy.
Megatron cycles his optics in and out, venting a harsh breath. The ozone of Space Bridge in his throat, alkali lining his glossa.
“I know now, what kind of mech you are,” Megatron spits into the following silence. Rodimus looks cowed, but that means nothing. The words of an Autobot, of a Prime, mean nothing. The damned badge on his chassis feels twenty tons heavier and rotten, like curdled energon.
(how dare he, how dare he force Megatron to denounce all that he worked for, when his own forces are just as mired in sin and treachery and malice, how dare he call them righteous, when they are all forged from the same Well, how dare they play at Virtue, how dare he—)
“Though I shouldn't be surprised that a Prime would suggest such a thing,” He adds, and this time Rodimus and Ambus both draw back. He finally eases up on the desk, and isn’t surprised when it gives one last creak and then collapses in on itself. He surveys Rodimus and Ambus both, and has to stop himself from sneering.
“I’ll be in the medbay,” he tells them, and doesn’t bother waiting around for a response.
Ratchet scowls at him, optic ridge raised and arms crossed.
“Are you here to visit or to check yourself in?”
Another error message pops up on his HUD, about the compromised integrity of his leg struts. He dismisses it; he already knows, given that his leg almost gave in on the way down to the medbay. He’d stood in the hallway outside for a few breems, forcing himself to stay upright.
“If you have a moment,” Megatron dithers, optics sweeping past the medic to hone in on Ravage, looking small and broken on one of the medical berths.
Megatron likes Ratchet well enough. They're both older than the war, old enough to remember what Cybertron was before and old enough to feel the bitter, wry irony of the war being the better bargain, in the end. They're both mature enough to let the war sit between them, a heavy specter that haunts their interactions but doesn't oft shape them.
He's not that fond of medics, though. For all that he once aspired to be one, his own check ups were few and far between during the war and now the invasiveness grates. And that's not even getting into Ratchet's own particular brand of… berthside manner.
“Sit down, you're making my struts ache just looking at you,” Ratchet huffs, but he begins setting up the berth right next to Ravage's. Brusque, but a soft touch.
“How is Ravage?”
Megatron sits. Pistons in his legs whine shrilly, finally relieved of pressure. He dismisses another handful of error messages.
There's a hum as Ratchet begins to scan him. It prickles against his EM field, a buzz humming behind his denta.
“There’s evidence of blunt force trauma and a few ligatures. Everything looks to be running smoothly, though. I never got a good look at Soundwave’s setup but they look to be doing a soft reboot; should up in a few cycles.”
Megatron says nothing, only keeps his optics on Ravage. Ratchet lifts one pede and immediately sets upon the outer bolts with a small wrench.
“You need to be more careful,” the medic chastises under his breath, dropping one pede to heft up the other.
“The Fool's Energon hurts more than it helps.”
It's true: hunting down Atomizer had scraped the bottom of his reserves. The only reason he hasn't yet collapsed is because his battle protocols provide a false high. They're old subroutines, common amongst pit-fighters and laborers alike; they run hot and fast and then start his auto repair as slower, longer background processes so that his entire processor doesn't crash until the last moment possible. The best solution would be a good defrag, but the Fool's Energon keeps him hovering just at the line of energy fatigue that a defrag could crash his processor completely.
Ratchet grunts, but doesn't contradict him, which Megatron supposes is as good as an agreement.
“You're staying here until your next shift,” Ratchet declares, two scans and a handful of breems later, stepping back from the medical berth and wiping his hands down with a rag, “You're lucky those bolts haven't been shorn away with how hard you’re riding those struts. Give your self-repair some time to work, for Primus’ sake.”
Megatron concedes with a hum that promises nothing, and allows himself to lean back fully on the berth. Ratchet huffs, mutters something under his breath about stubborn afts, and retreats to his office.
Megatron waits. A few kliks, a handful of breems, a joor.
“Ravage.”
One bright optic immediately lights up, though their body remains still, chassis moving lightly with faked unconscious breaths.
“Better than Hook, at least?” Ravage offers, aiming for light and falling flat.
“What happened?”
Ravage gives a little flutter of a noise, not quite a hum and not quite a sigh.
“Mm, they sent the little one after me. Had some kind of high density light, caught me blind in the shadows. The chopper—Whirl?—was arguing with the other two about involving the minibot. The red one shot her with… something? Some kind of cerebral weapon, I would bet. The red one sent the minibot to you; some neighbor passed along word of you stomping through the ship proper. The sneaky one—Getaway—nearly fritzed my processor, but I managed to piggyback off the red one and ping you.”
Ravage relays the procession of events with a flat tone, almost uncaring. But it’s a choppy summary, full of holes and with no mention of the mnemosurgery, and Megatron can hear the soft accusation there, underneath.
“I would never have asked you to stay had I thought they would do this,” The words come slow and penitent, and his field quivers, faltering.
“You did not ask at all. I chose.” Ravage denies, sounding almost annoyed.
Megatron twists on the berth until he can prop himself up. He dismisses the subsequent error messages without pause.
“You are here because of me. What they have done has spit upon my name, my pride, my hospitality. They—”
“I don't care about them,” Ravage hisses, voice choppy with static. A head injury, Ratchet had said. A nearly fritzed processor, Ravage had admitted. They probably shouldn't be arguing so vehemently, then.
“Ravage, please, you shouldn't—”
“I never thought that you would leave me behind,” Ravage tells him, lowly. “But I never thought you would throw yourself into an Autobot trap, either. I told you to run.”
“I refuse to see you hurt in my care.” Megatron replies, caught a little off-guard. Is that what they're upset about? Not that the Autobots planned to use mnemosurgery, to brutalize Ravage’s system under the thinnest of pretenses, but that Megatron himself came to their aid?
“And I will not see you hurt at all! You might have forsaken the Decepticons, but we will not forsake you. I told you. You gave us purpose. Your life, even as an… Autobot, is worth more than mine.”
The quick flash of anger that lances through his processor makes his fingers curl into slow, heavy fists.
“You would have me be your false idol, your figurehead?” he bites out, and Ravage’s field ripples in shock, in denial.
“That’s not what I—”
Megatron bares his denta, slashes one servo through the air, “You should know better than most why I fight, why I must fight. Why I will not sit quietly as others die in my name, for my cause.”
“Megatron…”
This isn’t working. Hasn’t worked for some time. Once upon a time, vorns and lifetimes ago, he thought himself a craftsmech of words. Hadn’t he been, for the Senate to fear him so? For them to send their rusted mnemosurgeons after him, to tear his mind from his frame and silence his deluge of writings? They hadn’t realized, until the very end, that every blow against him only martyred him, made him stronger. These days, it seems like he can’t go a cycle without inciting ire and misunderstandings.
“They need me alive, in the end, to save face,” he tries, modulating his voice low and soothing. He lets his EM field settle around them both like a shroud, “You have no such protections. And I will not see you hurt.”
“Your rightful place is not here, with Autobots. I only wish that you would stop giving them the means to castigate you.” Ravage tries, not quite meekly.
How can he explain it? Are there even words enough to describe the humility and strength that he draws in equal parts, knowing that he still has Ravage’s favor and belief? His war—this damnable war, fostered by him and Prime both—has dragged on far too long. Even at its end, he can do little more than reflect on all that he has lost and thrown away. His body, his mind, his pride… such things mean so little here and now.
And still, Ravage had come. Still, Ravage finds worth in him, as unnatural as Shockwave has made him. Still, Ravage has hopes that Megatron will once again become that mech that gave Soundwave and his symbionts hope and a purpose.
(when did it all go so wrong…?)
The ceiling and walls of the medbay are worn, aged. It makes him think of days long gone, on Messatine, on Kaon. Staring up into nothing, into the darkness, and imagining better things. Sunlight warming his chassis. A life free of drilling holes into the dense layers of Messatine, surrounded by other ailing, aching mechs, dying slow cycle by slow cycle. A life unburdened, unbothered by the Senate, their functionism, their mnemosurgeons, their classes and castes. A life where a mech like him—built for breaking, for labor—would be able to go to Iacon to learn medicine and healing.
Ravage is quiet for a long moment, and Megatron languishes in the silence. He dismisses even more error messages; all of his combat protocols have terminated, and now his system is running hot trying to make up for the expenditure of energy. He has so little to expend, these days.
“I did not mean to make you out to be some kind of… martyr. But I will not place myself and my safety above your own.” Ravage says, eventually, each glyph picked with care. Megatron turns his helm, and can see that Ravage too is lounging as best they can on the medical berth. Their optics gleam in the low lighting of the bay, and their body casts shadows like the long gone towering spires of Tetrahex. Ravage has always been so much more than they knew.
“I figured you wouldn’t.”
“You dismiss yourself,” Ravage argues, in a low, wry voice. And then, almost jokingly—but never mockingly—they add, “I had not realized you were so fragile, Megatronus.”
Megatron laughs, a sharp, short noise. Then he sobers, the mirth fades and leaves behind the same empty nothing that he has felt for far too long.
(how long? how long has he been adrift, directionless, lost? where did it all go so wrong?)
“Your faith does me more good than you know,” He confesses, because it is true, and because he wants Ravage to know. He wants Ravage to understand that here and now—on this Autobot ship, in this Autobot medbay, with the Autobot sigil pinned to his chest, thousands of millions of lightyears away from the Cybertron he once meant to liberate—he is so far removed from both Megatron, who incited the Senate’s ire with his words alone, and Megatronus, who clawed his way out of Kaon and became a Warlord, that it is pitiable.
“I know.” Ravage’s voice is a rasp, staticky and inundated with diacritic glyphs. They know. Their belief does not—will not—waver. Even as aged as he is, as fallen as he is. Made a fool by Optimus yet again, having denounced and vilified the entirety of the Decepticon cause—his cause, his writing, his will—by his own word.
Still, they believe. They will continue to believe.
He is tired. Let him be done with ruminating on the past, for now. Let him center himself in the present, in Ravage’s favor and faith; one last buoy of purpose and connection as he flounders.
“Thank you.” He whispers, and then he offlines his optics.