Work Text:
“–and may his sacrifice never be forgotten so long as our kind continues to function. Till all are one.”
The crowd echoes the prayer. Till all are one. Till all are one. Till all are one.
Megatron’s high-grade is down to measly drops by the time he’s done chugging it. With narrowed optics – more for visual clarity than animosity, because everything is spinning and he can’t see shit – Megatron watches the memorial procession play out on one of the massive display screens plastered on the high towers.
Till all are one. Till all are one. Till all are one.
“Till all are one my aft,” he grumbles into his empty cube. Swerve sighs as he watches Megatron refill his drink. “He’s in a million pieces actually. Not so one if you ask me.”
Swerve looks like he wants to be anywhere but serving Megatron intoxicants during Prime’s memorial service. Megatron turns to pin his wavering gaze on him.
“Because, you know,” Megatron waves his wrist in a flippant gesture, “he got blown up. Into a million pieces. He’s not in one piece anymore.”
Swerve grimaces.
“…right.”
“I found most of his helm intact,” Megatron continues, planting his elbows back on the countertop and taking a deep swig. The highgrade is a shade of pink that’s almost white, shimmering in the low light. “It’s sitting on my berth-side table. It’s not the right shade of blue anymore.”
“I…that’s not…”
“I wonder if it would look better on my desk?”
Swerve carefully slides the high-grade bottle away from Megatron’s reach.
“I think that’s enough high-grade for tonight,” he mutters. “Ain’t no shanix worth this right now.”
The screens showcase a huge murmuring mass, all moving their servos in time to each other. A physical prayer, a parting gift for Prime’s spark. They’re still chanting that stupid line. Till all are one. Till all are one.
Megatron finishes his drink, tries to stand, fails, and tries again with marginally better success. Swerve watches him go with no small amount of trepidation.
“You’re right,” Megatron scoffs over his shoulder, stumbling toward the bar’s exit. “It would look better on the desk.”
“You really think we can do this?”
“Do what?”
“Fix what we broke,” Optimus stares at ground, covered in dust and debris, cycles upon cycles of violence layered at their pedes. He shuffles, and some of the decay clings to him. “Heal cycles of war scars?”
“We do not scar,” Megatron says softly, and by some strange compulsion, brings a servo up to brush the deep gouges in Prime’s battlemask. It had been Megatron’s doing, not even a few stellar cycles ago. “You know this.”
“You don’t have to see scars for them to hurt.”
“Scars…” Megatron murmurs. There is so much destruction all around them. Two lone bots responsible for all this. The loss of a people. The loss of a world. “That’s not of Cybertronian origin. We have welds.”
“Welds don’t last forever.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
Optimus finally looks up from his pedes to survey their surroundings. It’s dark, and the once towering city of Iacon has become a wasteland of broken ruins and decaying metal. Optimus looks like a foreigner in his own home. A smudge of red and blue amongst ashes. Megatron thinks it’s so sad, how fitting it all is.
“I don’t know,” he admits after a while, and he looks at Megatron with big big optics. Blue like energon. Blue like the sky. Blue like the stars. “I think they haunt us. Even if we can’t see them. Even if we think they’re gone.”
Megatron thinks it’s a foolish notion. But he doesn’t voice it. Optimus Prime is already walking ahead, a blip of color, of life, amongst desolation.
“CR118 is now live. I’m your host, Blaster.
“It’s a bleak cycle, my fellow Cybertronians. CR118 is live for you all today, here to say that I’m with you; all of Autobot – and now, Decepticon – High Command are with you. We understand your pain. We know how difficult this is gonna’ be.
“But we owe it to Prime and his courageous sacrifice to keep playin’ our tune. He may be gone, but his spark ain’t quiet just yet. His song continues to play in each and every one of us, and we ought to honor that.
“I’m supposed to say that this message comes from your new leader and Lord High Protector of Cybertron, but…feels off right now, so I’ll leave it at that.
“Soundwave will go live again sometime tonight, and he’ll have more information on questions regarding what to do with the pieces of Prime’s frame bots are still findin’ lyin’ around. I’ve been told that, for now, you can leave ‘em with Jazz, who’s located at the base of the High Towers.
“This is your radio host, Blaster, signing off for the rest of the cycle.”
Optimus Prime died in a blaze of glory. Literally.
Megatron still didn’t really understand what had happened. He’d been busy fighting with the vanguard against Unicron’s cronies, pushing back the onslaught of the undead. Bots had been screaming, his forces being torn down by the seemingly endless battle. Megatron’s HUD had been alight with warnings, low fuel alerts, injury lists and a small pop-up in the very corner counting down just how many breems he had left before imminent shut-down.
And then somebot had screamed.
Louder than the battle, louder than the cackling undead, louder than even Unicron’s blasted engines. Megatron still doesn’t know who had drawn the attention. Only that, in the midst of a losing fight, somebot had screamed, loud and long, a keen so piercing that time itself seemed to pause.
And then the quiet came. The silence. The frozen air. Megatron remembers looking around, confused, because he hadn’t been the only one frozen. The undead had stopped in their tracks, their helms pointed to the sky, entranced.
Entranced by starlight. Entranced by Optimus Prime.
His spark had burned so bright that even on Cybertron’s surface, it had scorched through Megatron’s optics. A blistering comet shooting into the air, a line of white parting the grey smoke wafting up into the atmosphere in plumes of dark acid. Prime had flown up and up, his chest plates parted, spark light spilling into the sky like a second sun.
Flying up and up. Right at Unicron the Destroyer himself.
Megatron, against his better judgement, had watched the whole thing. Even with Autobots wailing around him, with Decepticons muttering awed prayers, with the cackling of the undead echoing around him as Unicron’s army crumbled to dust.
Prime flew straight into the end. His spark light – the Matrix, the Allspark, and that small glowing ball of blue that was Optimus – exploding out like a supernova.
Megatron will live a long long time. And may all his memory files deteriorate and vanish into static, but he will never forget the moment when Prime lit Cybertron’s sky on fire.
He doesn’t know the technicalities of what had happened. Shockwave speculated that the Matrix’s power was able to cast Unicron into another dimension. Perceptor claimed the Allspark banished Unicron to the edge of the universe. Some whisper how Unicron’s hunger was finally satiated, and he vanished on his own.
All anybot really knows is that Optimus Prime flew into the end, into Unicron’s one looming eye and the Destroyer cried. Cried as he burned. Cried as Optimus Prime’s frame went up in flame and his spark exploded so brilliantly, Cybertron's sky became a kaleidoscope of color.
And all the while Megatron had watched. He had watched as Prime flew off and died. He had watched as bits of his frame floated away, while others plummeted to the ground like small condemned asteroids.
That cycle marked the first cycle of Cybertron’s freedom against Unicron’s devastation. That cycle marked the beginning of a new era of peace and prosperity and hope. That cycle marked Megatron as the new ruler of a crippled people, a ruler that, before the threat of Unicron had breached their borders, had been written out as a position amongst two.
Megatron often wonders if, because of his sacrifice, Optimus Prime ever ended up joining the Allspark. He wonders if Prime knew he had been forsaking himself. Megatron wonders, late at night when he cannot recharge, if there had somehow been another way.
“You should smile more.”
“And you should eat slag, you good for nothing scraplet-spawn Pit-forsaken exhaust pipe.”
Prime rolls his optics.
Megatron forgoes wringing Prime’s neck cables into a neat little rope to instead stare back at the massive holovid of the Peace Accords being played on the High Tower displays. The image of both faction leaders shaking servos and sharing energon is plastered over the entire screen, showing off every miniscule detail in every single slagging line of metal on his frame. His armour looks poorly waxed and littered with battle scars, both new and old, hastily welded and then even more hastily covered. The screens do a great job of revealing it all to the public optic.
What’s even more infuriating is the fact that, by comparison, Optimus Prime looks as regal and flawless as always. His armour is shiny and seamlessly waxed, making the microscopic nicks and scratches more of an aesthetic rustic warrior vibe rather than the just-barely-survived-long-enough-to-sign-this-peace-treaty that Megatron is giving. His battlemask hides his uneven smile, so the only thing that the crowd sees is pretty blue optics scrunched into crescents; the illusion of a smile.
Megatron scowls up at himself. He looks like one of Unicron’s fabled undead. His face is a mess. Sure, Prime’s got a lop-sided smile, but at least he can hide it behind a mask. At least it’s still sort of cute, in a stupid cog-sucking idiot kind of way.
Megatron’s face speaks of cruelty. It’s an ugly look. Megatron thinks it’s fitting.
He doesn’t even register that he’s touching his face until his claws brush against the sensitive metal. It looks uglier than it feels. The huge scar tears right through his faceplates, across his nose, and piercing just above his optic. Gashing so deep that it rips right through his mouth. In the holovid Megatron isn’t smiling; he isn’t even doing anything beyond barely-scowling, his go-to look, and yet he looks hideous. Sharp teeth peek out past torn mesh. The scar looks nasty, barely healed and healed wrong. And it did. It kept rusting. The welds upon welds mangled his face. Megatronn had never really given it much thought until now. Until appearances went beyond just being a menacing warlord over a battlefield.
There are no more battlefields. He is no longer a warlord. And yet his face lingers in that past. Megatron hates that he cannot truly hate it.
“What’s with that serious look,” Prime probes, snapping Megatron out of the hateful staring contest he’d been having with himself. He glances at Prime from the corner of his optics. His servo lingers on his face.
“It’s a good thing you kept that battlemask on,” Megatron muses instead of answering. “If anybot saw your dopey expression, they’d never take the Peace Accords seriously.”
Prime’s optics become crescents again. He’s smiling, and it’s so obvious, even with most of his stupid face covered. He looks good even if you can only see half of it. No wonder bots gravitate toward him.
“Not everybot can have such a menacing aura,” Prime jokes, nudging Megatron with his elbow. He goes back to looking at the screens. “And we kind of balance each other out. You promise death to all who disagree with your choice in flooring plans, and I look like I’m uncaring of the flooring plans.”
“Ah, yes,” it’s Megatron’s turn to roll his optics, “whatever would our people do without us.”
“I guess I can agree with you a bit,” Prime continues, tilting his helm. His finials twitch a bit. This is the first time Megatron has seen them move in millenia. “You could have smiled a little. It’s like you’re shaking my servo at gun-point.”
“It felt like it,” Megatron scoffs before turning back to the holovid too. He watches himself. So war-torn. So brutish. Maimed. Fitting. “And anyway, I’d have looked even more sinister had I smiled.”
Prime turns to him, and Megatron is expecting another quippy remark, maybe a joke, a snide agreement. Prime is full of this witty sarcasm. It wouldn’t have surprised him.
What does surprise him is when Optimus turns to him and instead of doing any of that, he squints his optics, and they don’t turn to crescents, and if Megatron had been a more courageous mech he might have said that whatever is swimming in his gaze looks suspiciously like concern.
“What do you mean?”
Megatron snorts, turning to pin Prime with an unimpressed look.
“Really, Prime? Don’t act obtuse now.”
“I’m not acting like anything.”
“Sure,” Megatron mocks, “I’ll believe that. I’ll believe that you think I wouldn’t look like a scraplet scraped from under-pede and pasted on the wall if I had chosen to so much as grin. It would be Autobot nightmare fuel for stellar cycles.”
Prime, if possible, squints further.
“You…you don’t have a horrifying smile, Megatron.”
“Oh please, spare me the theatrics."
“I’m not acting. I’m being serious.”
“Sure.”
“I am,” Prime presses, fully turning to him. His face radiates a seriousness that mirrors his expression mid-battle, clashing axe with sword. Except there is no axe, there is no sword, and there is no battle. Just two bots. Just Megatron and Optimus Prime. Megatron and Optimus. “I’m being serious.”
“Prime,” Megatron gives Optimus an almost pitying glance. “Look at my face. It looks like a Sharkticon tried to gouge my processor out with its teeth.”
“Everybot has scars.”
“Not like this.”
“Perhaps not,” Prime inches closer, and he raises his servo, as if to touch. “But…Megatron, you’re not hideous. You’ve never been hideous.”
“I don’t say it out of self-pity. It’s a fact,” Megatron stares down at Prime’s reaching servo. It lingers in the air between them. Not-touching. Almost-touching. “I don’t care.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Prime’s looking at his face. Taking in that huge mangled scar. The torn mesh. The misalignment of his mouth. “But I do. I think you…”
Millions of cycles ago, Orion Pax had once told Megatronus that he looked beautiful.
Optimus Prime does not tell Megatron he looks beautiful. He doesn’t actually end up saying anything at all. He just lets his servo brush over broken, uneven metal, softly, gingerly, like one would caress an open wound.
Optimus Prime does not tell Megatron he is beautiful. He smiles, drops his servo, turns back to the screens, and simply murmurs:
“You should smile more.”
“Well, I’d consider that a success.”
“Coming from you, that’s not something to be proud of.”
Starscream sneers at that, but Prowl has his helm buried in his datapad, and either doesn’t notice or, more likely, doesn’t care.
“Don’t get your engines in a twist just because–”
“I dare you to finish that sentence,” Jazz cuts in. His visor glints a dangerous blue, and his smile is anything but kind. Megatron has never seen the little Spec Ops bot look so unkept before. “I dare ya’.”
Starscream opens his mouth, pauses at Jazz’s blistering glare, thinks better, and turns away from Jazz with a scoff.
“We cannot progress in these meetings if you Autobots continue to shut down any conversation due to your personal grievances,” Shockwave points out. “It’s illogical. This is for the betterment of Cybertron.”
“Sure, yeah sure,” Jazz leans back in his seat. His plating is dull and there are still dents from the battle littering his armour. His visor is fever-bright. Megatron idly wonders if the prissy little car recharged at all since…since…
“So is that a signal that we can continue a professional and productive conversation?” Starscream drawls.
“Of course,” Jazz nods, all business. Nobot believes his act one bit. His glyphs are laced with grief, with angry additives that paint whatever he says in anguish. He’s supposed to be Commander of the Autobot Special Operations and the Autobot TIC. He’s slipping. It’s sloppy work. When he tilts his helm and grins he doesn’t even try to make it look friendly. “Just keep my Prime’s name out of your filthy little intake, and we’re all good.”
Starscream bristles, wings shooting straight up and thrusters growling.
“I ought to have you–”
“Starscream,” Megatron cuts in. Starscream whips around to face him instead, baring his fangs and claws and posturing like the short-tempered glitch he is. What Megatron wouldn’t give to be plastered right now. “If you are going to be a nuisance I’ll throw you out of this room myself.”
“Through the window?” Slipstream pipes in hopefully.
“He can fly,” Knockout points out. “Are you stupid?”
“I should throw you out the window, impudent ground-pounder,” she snaps back. “See if switching to flashy wheels was worth it when you–”
Megatron sighs wearily, running a servo over his face before gesturing for Starscream to continue his report.
“As I was saying,” Starscream sniffs haughtily. Beside him Thundercracker tries to hide his second-hand-shame behind his servos. “Before being rudely interrupted by sensitive little Auto-pricks–”
Prowl’s frown deepens. Jazz’s visor will probably blow a fuse if it gets any brighter.
“We have burned the remaining frames of the undead. The Wreckers are in charge of that, thank Primus. It’s filthy work. Fitting.”
Slipstream rolls her optics.
“What about the smog?” Prowl asks.
“Ah,” Starscream grimaces. “The smog.”
The cycles that followed Unicron’s departure had been eerily quiet, but not completely unpeaceful. That was, until a strange, thick blanket of smoke began rising from the deep canyons of the planet. The acidic quality and heavy nature of the fog made it nearly impossible to navigate, and, according to Wheeljack, had some sort of natural magnetic disruptor that screwed with compass directions too.
The smog has made it difficult to expand from the ruins of Iacon to neighboring city states. If they don't find a solution soon, then they will start facing issues with resource rationing.
“It’s a work in progress,” Starscream admits, though it looks like it pains him to do so. Thundercracker pats his trinemate on the back for moral support. “My seekers were able to locate Ankmor and Nova Cronum, but that’s not much help considering Ankmor is just more slag and Nova Cronum is worse off than Iacon.”
Megatron sighs deeply, one part for the bad news, and another part for the pounding helm ache that’s making it difficult to pay attention. He should really stop drinking so late and instead drink right before these blasted meetings.
“Finding Tesarus is our best move right now,” Prowl points out, optics never straying from his datapad. “The last mining operations to shut down before the Exodus had been in Tesarus. There’s a chance our teams can find some useful materials down there.”
“Agreed,” Starscream inspects his claws, “for once. When I figure out how to fly without being able to see a damn thing, I’ll let you know.”
Prowl doesn’t bother rising to the jab beyond an unimpressed optic-roll.
“Our science division is working on that,” Megatron finally speaks, leaning back in his chair to try and alleviate the Primus-forsaken ache battering at his cranial unit. “Shockwave: anything to report on that front?”
“No, m’lord,” Shockwave shakes his helm. “Although Wheeljack proposed a massive suction apparatus to filter the smog into orbit.”
“A fucking…he wants me make a fucking vacuum cleaner?” Slipstream chokes.
“The frag is a vacuum cleaner?” Ironhide whispers to Ratchet, who shrugs.
“It’s that…that cleaning thing,” Jazz gestures uselessly with his servo. “To clean carpets.”
“What the frag is a carpet?”
“A vacuum suction, yes,” Shockwave nods. He seems excited about the idea. At least, as excited as one can look with nothing but a giant red optic for a face.
“Well, whatever solution you come up with, make it a top priority,” Megatron rubs his nasal bridge. “Otherwise Starscream will blow a fuse waiting for the skies to clear. Peace and quiet will become a luxury, and I will regret letting Shockwave burn through the last of the dark energon.”
“Try driving in a pool of mud, you intolerable insolent ground-pounder–”
“Is this Megatron’s relapse era?” Jazz jokes under Starscream’s yelling.
“Try it!” Starscream hisses, slamming his recently manicured claws onto the table. “Try it! See if you ever complain about my valid concerns again!”
“Starscream…” Thundercracker laughs nervously, tapping his trinemate on the pauldron. “He’s a tank. He can drive through the mud.”
“I would know,” Knockout scowls, “I’ve had to clean mud from junking up his treads for millenia.”
“And this is why flyers are superior,” Starscream tuts, ignoring the several optic-rolls that occur around him. “No need to clean slag from my exhaust pipe.” Then he pauses, considerate, before a slow smile creeps on his face. “I guess that’s what crawls up your afthole before every meeting, huh m’lord.”
Megatron barely refrains from wringing Starscream’s neck. Barely. He makes due by throwing Starscream out of the window instead.
“You should be kinder to your mecha,” Prime sighs. He drops his stack of metal piping and stretches his arms above his helm. His back arches, and his struts quiver, and his plating rattles, and Megatron does not stare at the long line of Prime’s abdomen. He doesn’t. “It’ll do wonders for productivity.”
“I don’t think you’re one to talk,” Megatron scoffs, tearing his optics away from Prime and refocusing on straightening out the pipes for a bot to weld. Based on the flashy paint of the mech, he wants to assume it’s an Autobot. But none of them have badges, and some of his ex-Decepticons have questionable tastes. Megatron turns from the little bot to pin Optimus with a critical look. “Your mecha break as many things as they fix. They just do whatever they want.”
“But they’re happy,” Optimus insists.
“Yeah,” Megatron rolls his optics and straightens out when the little maybe-Autobot gives him a thumbs-up. He glances up at the sound of throttling engines, and watches as two blurring race cars weave through the crowded centre near the High Towers, making hazardous turns and earning a storm of curses from everybot they almost crash into. Bright blue and red. Definitely Autobots. “A little too happy.”
Prime winces when the blue bot swerves too late to avoid two mechs carrying support beams. They all go crashing into a nearby stall full of glassware. The red bot is still driving in circles, engine laughing.
“Okay,” Optimus admits, side-eyeing the mess, “maybe a healthy dose of both is best.” Then he turns back to Megatron with a frown. “But still, a little kindness can go a long way. Just look at Starscream–”
“Let’s not look at Starscream actually.”
“–he’s super resourceful and extremely intelligent. If given the right motivation,” Prime nudges him with a grin, “you know, a little praise here and there, he could really do numbers.”
“Starscream has conducted more assassination attempts on me by himself than the entire slagging mercenary order this side of the galaxy.”
“And whose fault is that,” Prime huffs. “You’re always antagonizing him.”
“He deserves to be antagonized.”
“Well,” Prime brings an arm up to wrap around Megatron’s shoulders. The little bot welding up the pipes drops his blowtorch and gapes. Megatron can’t really blame him. They must make such a surreal sight, two titan-class war machines talking and touching like a whole war hadn’t happened between them. Like they hadn’t almost led their entire people to extinction. Megatron is tempted to rip Prime’s arm off and shove it down his throat. He doesn’t.
“Well what?” He snaps, glowering. Prime taps his digits along Megatron’s opposite shoulder.
“Well,” he grins, “I guess you don’t have to worry about ruining your bad-boy image–”
“What the frag is a bad-boy, you slag-eating pipe-sucker.”
“–because we’re partners now! I’ve already had some great chats with Starscream–”
Megatron squints at him.
“Since when do you have chats with Starscream.”
“–and you can continue to brood away while the rest of us have lovely conversation over midday rations.”
“This must be some kind of recharge influx,” Megatron mutters to himself. “Starscream and Prime having… having midday ration chats.”
“Ever the diplomat.”
“I’m leaving this planet.”
Optimus’s laugh echoes loudly in Megatron’s audial.
Megatron usually brings datapads back to his habsuite at the end of the work shift because there’s so much slagging datawork that has to be done. He’s sure that had he known the consequences of ending a four million cycle war was going to be countless sleepless nights dedicated to data work, he’d probably keep the war on principle.
It’s unavoidable, and it’s distributed to everybot in the new High Command that’s not already out on the field. Megatron would prefer overturning toppled structures and building housing to sitting at his desk and reading datapads until the glyphs start blurring together.
They blur together now, swimming until they make hazardous shapes and blobs, and Megatron finds himself drawn to them. Drawn to the nonsensical images that play before him, in the writing of what is probably another complaint by the scavenging team regarding ration distribution. Or maybe it was another thinly-veiled threat from the Galactic Council? Megatron has whole sections in his shelf dedicated to those.
He can’t really remember what it is that he’d been reading. All he knows right now is that the writing mixes, like oil paints and glitter dust and what the sky had looked like when Optimus Prime had lit it on fire. When he had lit himself on fire.
Megatron dimly remembers the cycles from before Unicron had arrived. A tentative peace between two opposing factions, full of taunts and insults and getting up early every cycle to face the wrath of not one indignant High Command, but two. And late nights much like this one, but instead of sitting here on his own there’d be another bot right beside him. A bot of red and blue. They’d talk a lot during those restless cycles, about war, about peace, about war and peace and the fragile thing that can come after it all.
“Would you…like to have rations together?”
“Idiot. If you try to act all innocent like that I’ll bash your face in.”
“That’s not a no.”
“No, it’s not a no.”
Megatron is intimately aware of what it’s like to sit in a dark room and pour over data work for cycles on end. He’s intimately aware of how it had felt with a partner to work alongside. He’d been intimately aware of Optimus Prime. Prime was terrible at datawork. Always getting distracted. Always talking more than reading. Distracting Megatron with his stupidity. He had been a terrible work partner.
“You’re always working.”
“And you’re never working.”
“No wonder you were always so angry every time we fought. If I had been cooped up doing datawork as diligently as you I’d snort dark energon too.”
Now Megatron sits here alone, and Optimus Prime is a million pieces of metal scattered across the sky, and there’s a chunk of his helm sitting in the corner of Megatron’s desk.
It’s grey, and not the kind of grey that you can paint. It’s dead grey. The grey of a corpse. If he hadn’t known it was Optimus’s, he’d have mistaken it for Unicron’s dead.
But he is intimately aware of Optimus Prime. Was. He knows. He knew. He would know every curve and every strut and every wire, down to the smallest of nanites.
“Some peace and quiet,” Megatron hums to himself, though he’s no longer looking at his datapad. His optics have strayed to the piece of Prime’s helm that sits on his desk. Not blue enough. An ashen color. Soon it will rust. Soon it will turn to dust. “It took you offlining yourself to finally give me some peace and quiet.”
Optimus Prime’s helm, unsurprisingly, doesn’t say anything back.
“You’ve always been so dramatic,” Megatron scoffs, but he can’t look away now. Even after death, Prime has him enraptured. Unable to pull away from his gravitational pull. Even his stupid fucking helm piece that doesn’t even have the right blue on it anymore. “‘Course you couldn’t frag off and take a walk like a normal mech. You just had to blow yourself up. In front of everybot. You’re worse than Starscream.”
It’s a lie. He’s lying. Starscream’s insufferable. Prime had had his own brand of insufferability, but it had been tolerable to an extent. Tolerable to him anyway. How far the mighty fall.
Megatron tears his gaze away from the crumbling helm piece back to his datapad and forces himself to read the rest of it. He doesn’t have any distractions around him now. There’s nothing stopping him from efficiently completing all his work. It’s quiet. He’s by himself.
(It’s silent, and he’s lonely. But he’s not going to admit that, because that’s pathetic.)
The glyphs on his datapad flit away from him when he tries to pay attention. He knows it’s time to give up and recharge when the glyphs start looking like a stream of apologies written in an achingly familiar scrawl.
“Your subordinates are worse than scraplet spawn,” Megatron scowls, watching as Jazz turns the far corner of the corridor and finally, finally vanishes from view. “I was starting to gather rust standing here.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Prime laughs, letting the door swish shut behind him.
Megatron doesn’t think he’s being dramatic. Anybot would begin to worry about rusty joints if they had to stand around for breems waiting for Prime to finish chatting it up with his stupid clingy High Command. It had been Jazz tonight, and it’s usually Jazz who somehow finds time amongst all his responsibilities to chat with Prime right before he retires for the dark cycle, but there have been others. The ever stoic pain-in-the-aft Prowl who Megatron simply cannot fathom spending any amount of optional time conversing with. He has the emotional output of an especially bumpy rock for Pits sake! And yet Prime and Prowl can talk for joors without a single sign of stopping. Usually Megatron has to pry Prime away like a sliver of dry paint for Prowl to get the hint and frag off.
There’s also the grumpy medic who is somehow grumpier than Megatron, which is a feat in itself considering that Megatron has to marinate in Prime’s rays of optimism most of the time. Then there’s the Autobot Weapons Specialist, and then the nervous-breakdown-around-the-corner Security bot, and then the spritely obnoxious little racer bots, and then Elita-1, and then, and then, and then and then and then.
The list goes on and on. And it’s infuriating.
But it’s usually Jazz, which is somehow more infuriating. Because Jazz always fucks with Megatron’s already razor-thin patience on a good day. And Megatron seldom has good days.
“I’m not being dramatic,” Megatron sneers, plopping down on their office table, his energon ration already set by his usual spot. “I’m a glorified shadow while you chat away with idiot bots who hate me just for venting in your presence. That would get anybot’s engine going.”
“Oh please,” Prime rolls his optics with a grin, and slides into his seat across from him. The table is small and dingy and one of its legs is being held up by three pieces of a berthframe. It quivers when Prime leans his elbows on it, but holds. “Just say you’re jealous.”
“Of who, the fucking wall?” Megatron sneers, ignoring his warming engine.
“Of the fact that bots like me more than they like you,” Prime smirks, leaning his helm on a servo. His optics are so blue, and they compliment his face well. They compliment his smile and they compliment his long nose when it scrunches with each laugh and they compliment the near spotless expanse of metal that has been hiding away behind a battlemask for four million cycles. Does Prime know he’s got a lopsided smile? Well, Megatron knows. And Megatron remembers. Megatron watches for it every time Prime laughs.
“Plenty of bots like me,” Megatron huffs.
“Sure,” Prime snorts.
“They do. Ask Soundwave. He has a record of every Decepticon traitor that I’ve ever caught. Nobot doesn’t like me and gets away with it.”
Prime squints at him.
“That’s…okay, you know what, I’m not going to dive into that,” he sips his ration, and Megatron watches it happen. He watches a lot of what Prime does. For future reference. Of course. “I think you’re just jealous I have friends.”
“If friends keep you from recharging during your extremely limited rest cycles, then I’m good without,” Megatron grumbles.
He expects a tacky response. The power of friendship can do anything, or some equivalent bullslag that will make Megatron want to purge. But instead, his glyphs are followed by silence. Surprised, Megatron glances up from his cube, optics trained on Prime’s face. His exposed face. No wonder he’s worn a battlemask for his entire military career; the bot wears his spark on his metal.
And he’s wearing something soft right now. His optics are distant, a soft blue that glows like the earliest break of dawn when the moons are still bright spheres in the sky. Softer than any mesh blanket, softer than an organic material. It’s a color that Megatron hasn’t seen a lot, because usually Prime’s optics are a fervent blue that blaze like fire, like a storm that pulls Megatron in and leaves him to drown. Usually he’s so full of energy that his optics can’t help but shine like twin stars.
But right now they are soft. Soft blue. The softest color that, were it to pale any further, they’d be white.
“I don’t know what I’d do without them,” Prime admits, smiling a small and tender something into his cube. “Jazz and Prowl and Ratchet Bumblebee and Elita and all my other friends. They are so dear to me.”
Megatron doesn’t know what to say. So he doesn’t say anything and stays silent.
“You know, I’ve known Jazz and Prowl for a long long time,” Prime huffs a little laugh. “Almost as long as I’ve functioned. Jazz fell through my pantry one cycle and Prowl was trying to arrest him. He kicked the door of a bar down to try and arrest me too.”
“How cute,” Megatron rolls his eyes. Prime chuckles.
“We’ve been inseparable ever since. We moved in together once I was relocated to the Hall and Prowl at our sector’s Enforcement Department. Jazz used to take us drinking every stellar cycle. He made an Anti-Fun-Things-That-Are-Banned list. I wasn’t allowed to clean when we were all at home. Prowl wasn’t allowed to bring casefiles to the table. We had a coolant tub in the storage closet for when Prowl overheated. He hated the taste of it. He still does, no matter how many sweeteners Jazz adds.”
“Aren’t those two conjunxed?” Megatron dares to ask.
“They’ve got a secret third thing, actually,” Prime grins. It’s lopsided, and Megatron is enamoured. “I took nice long walks more often than not. Sometimes I got roped into it.”
Megatron gags. Prime laughs again. He’s got a nice laugh. Megatron considers recording it, but thinks better. After all, he’s going to be co-ruling with this laugh for the rest of their functioning.
Instead he, too, leans his elbows on the table, and puts his helm into his hands, mirroring Prime, and mutters, “taking walks to avoid walking in on your roommates fragging. Sounds almost as exhilarating as getting fragged by your roommates.”
“They have their moments,” Prime grins. “They all do. They never left my side though, no matter how bad things got. They have followed me through war. They have followed me through everything. And, I’ve been thinking actually…”
“What a novel surprise,” Megatron jokes. But Prime doesn’t rise to the bait. He’s suddenly got an uneasy edge to him, where he draws his servos together, clasping one over the other. Where his finials dip back, apprehensive. When he looks at Megatron, his optics are bright bright blue.
If…if anything happens to me–”
“Prime…”
Prime pauses, takes a deep in-vent, and then continues. “If anything happens to me, promise me you’ll take care of my Autobots. Please.”
Megatron pauses at that, taking in the tense line of Prime’s struts, the way his lips press together, the way he’s looking at Megatron with something dangerously close to desperation.
“We are co-leaders,” Megatron says slowly. “You can take care of them yourself.”
“I know,” Prime agrees, sighing, and it seems to melt all the tension in his frame. He relaxes, dipping his helm back into his servo to match Megatron. “I know, and I pray to Primus that everything works out. But…Megatron, please, just… promise you’ll look after them if I’m not around. Jazz and Prowl and Ratchet and all of them. Please.”
Megatron’s spark stills in his chest when a loose thread in his tactical unit whispers about a potential future without Optimus Prime in it. He manually ejects the thread into a mental shredder and shakes his helm. His spark sputters back to life.
“Moronic Prime,” he grumbles, reaching over the table to flick at Prime’s crest. “If anything is to happen, it will be your tactician bashing your helm in for avoiding datawork to go help with scavenging instead.”
Prime laughs at that, and it’s a good look on him.
“Just say yes, will you?”
Megatron hums, but Prime has already moved on to talk about something else.
“So he was just… sitting there?”
“I would say more like laying there, really,” Knockout purses his lips, “seeing as he wasn’t moving on the berth and all.”
“Well, he was propped up against his berth,” Skywarp points out. “That would mean he was technically sitting.”
“What difference does it make?”
“You’re the one who brought up specifics!”
“Who’s the medic again? Right, me, and I say he’s–”
Megatron heaves a long grated sigh under his breath.
“I do not care if he was standing, sitting, laying or hanging from the ceiling by his fuel lines; what happened to him?”
“Pits if I know,” Knockout shrugs. “Thought he was junk until he tried biting Skywarp’s servo off.”
“He’s been whining about it,” Starscream grumbles, sauntering into the room with his wings hitched low and twitchy behind him. “Blasted fool was begging for it, but still.”
“Hey!” Skywarp bristles, cradling his injured servo and batting Starscream’s wings with his own. Starscream scowls at him. “You told me to shake him!”
“And you’re the idiot who listened.”
“To the point,” Knockout continues loudly, “he was functional, though his fuel tank was one-hundred and thirteen percent high-grade. And according to the acidity level reading I got, it’s been corroding his tanks for cycles..”
“How was it beyond one-hundred percent, moron?”
“You can corrode your tanks from high-grade? Are you for real?”
“He’s been like this for cycles?”
“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter now,” Knockout ignores the several outbursts. “He’s still alive, though how he’s out and about is beyond me,” Knockout muses, turning to Starscream. “His tanks were still leaking, which means his lines were still pumping toxic slag. He was walking fine though, slagging medical miracle, that bot.”
“You…” Megatron blinks, irritation spiking into a flaring heat. “You let him leave?!”
“What were we supposed to do?!” Starscream gapes, wings twitching upright behind him. “Bring him in for a meeting?”
“You let that bot leave the medbay? Where the fuck is Ratchet? I thought you said he was two cycles away from corroding!” Megatron hisses, and ignores everyone’s open maws to glare specifically at Knockout, who is just as shocked as everybot else.
“He’s–” Knockout sputters out static and resets his vocalizer. “He’s just the Autobot tactician. Why are we crying over the Autobot tactician!?”
“Ratchet was sedated after sixteen straight stellar-cycles without recharge,” Skywarp offers excitedly. “It was so rad. You should have seen the way he fought. He almost kneeled over.”
Skywarp is ignored.
“There are no more Autobots anymore, you imbecile,” Megatron seethes. “There are no Decepticons–”
“There could be,” Starscream drawls, “considering you’re alive and, well…Prime isn’t. Just one small Decepticons! Rise up! and we’ll–”
“–not to mention we cannot afford to lose such powerful processing capability!”
Knockout purses his lips and grimaces.
“For reference – and just to make sure everybot is on the same file here – this is the same bot that planned and almost successfully overthrew you from several light years away multiple times for eons and who is the bot most likely to lead us all to slag in a sick sort of revenge for his beloved late leader.”
“Sound observations, Knockout,” Megatron drawls, unimpressed. “Relevance would be almost divine were you to provide it.”
The red bot opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and clicks out nothing as he closes his mouth and simply regards Megatron like he is the one that’s lost his mind.
“He’s lost his mind!” Starscream shrieks.
“Agreed,” Knockout nods.
“Give the lord some credit Star–”
“No, no, no, his processor must be corroding or something. Don’t look at me like that,” Starscream snaps at Skywarp, who raises his hands – both the uninjured and crumpled one, which spasms uncomfortably – in defeat. “I haven’t tried to poison him in megavorns. Ever since that ridiculous cease fire. Skywarp, open your optics!” Starscream, gripping his trinemate’s shoulder in one servos and brandishing a claw at Megatron’s scowling face with the other. “He cares for the Autobots!”
Skywarp mournfully rubs at his audials.
“Would you be willing to come in for an examination, my liege?” Knockout asks, already beckoning to the doors. “It has been a while since you conducted a psych exam. When was the last time you had one done?”
“When I dug myself out of a collapsed mine and killed my superior officer,” Megatron deadpans. “As a miner. Several million cycles ago, when they wanted to determine if I could fight in the–”
“Ah, right,” Knockout winces, “this is going to take a while.”
“I’m not–” Megatron heaves a heavy ex-vent and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I do not require a psych evaluation, Knockout, thank you very much. What I need is for you idiots to go back down into the high towers and find–”
“You can’t be serious,” Starscream hisses, practically fuming from his exhaust. “Knockout, I’m taking over command of the Decepticons; see to it our precious lord is put into stasis immediately.”
“Nothing of the sort will happen,” Megatron grits out, “because there are no more Decepticons, and because my psych is fine. Now someone go get Pro–”
“He does seem more stressed,” Skywarp muses, tapping at his chin, wings fluttering behind him as he continues. “Have you defragged at all recently?”
“Excuse me?!”
“Why are you asking about Megatron’s defragging, you idiot,” Starscream rolls his eyes, hitting the purple seeker over the helm. “Creep.”
“A good point, actually,” Knockout points out, and turns back to Megatron without a single care for the warlord’s seething outrage. “When was the last time you were up-to-date with your backlogged defrags? And don’t give me that look, I know those are piling up.”
Megatron gives him a dirty look.
“So it is settled!” Starscream claps his servos.
“Nothing is settled!”
“I say it’s settled,” Knockout shrugs.
Megatron, having reached the limits of his patience, clangs Knockout over the helm with the underside of his fist.
“SLAG IT!” He shrieks, clutching at the super-teeny-tiny-barely-there-extremely-miniscule dent now adorning the plating above his audial. “I just got that buffed, you heathen! Do you know how hard it is to find a good buffer in this post-apocalyptic slag-hole?!”
“You’ll be smoothing out more of those if you don’t shut the frag up and go get Prowl back on berthrest!”
Skywarp winces and whirls around to race Starscream out the door, injured servo forgotten. Knockout mutters curses under his breath as he limps behind them with two perfectly functioning legs that require zero limping.
“He really needs that psych eval.”
(“Take care of my Autobots. Please.”
Megatron wants to scream. Wants to fire his cannon until it burns right off of his arm. Wants to fly straight through the smog and into where the colors of Optimus Prime’s sacrifice dyed the sky for cycles after his death.
He wants to scream, curse you, Prime! Curse you to the Pits! You ask me, you curse me with your promise, and then you die. You died and you left me all alone with all of your burdens.
He wants to scream this isn’t fair! This isn’t fucking fair! until his voice box explodes and kills him. But he can’t be that selfish. They can’t all be like the damned Prime.)
“Cybertron Revived 118.11: now live. Current host: Soundwave.
“New High Command: experiencing turmoil. Ex-Autobots: experiencing turmoil. Soundwave: reminding New Iacon of the weight Megatron carries. Megatron: Cybertron’s lone leader. Megatron: has much responsibility.
“Co-host Blaster: previously conducted inadequate observation of Megatron. Soundwave: here to provide insight. Soundwave’s insight: Truthful. Unlike idiot co-host: Blaster.
“Ex-Autobot High Command: causing unneccessary struggle regarding cooperation. Cybertronians: hold grief over Optimus Prime. Soundwave: understands. However: progress is being hindered. High Command: responsible for New Iaconians. High Command: cannot become compromised.
“New Iacon: consider. Today’s headline: Root of Discourse: Megatron or Ex-Autobots?
“Soundwave: requests bots to think critically. Meanwhile: CR118 music station now playing: See Reason, by anonymous party 50undwaV3.”
Turns out Prime’s High Command…isn’t holding up so well.
Beyond Prowl drinking so frequently – moreso than Megatron, which is impressive. Prowl doesn’t have the tank size of a literal tank – that his lines became acidic enough to start corroding his metal, Megatron is soon swamped with countless complaints regarding the rather destructive nature of Prime’s bots.
Ratchet avoiding any sort of rest until he starts slipping during intensive surgeries because his lights keep flickering.
Ironhide’s supervision being so strict that most scavenging teams under his command have put in numerous requests to shift leadership to somebot else.
Elita-1 taking a ship off-world without so much as a glyph on when she’ll return. Scouting, she had submitted in her report, right before hightailing it off of Cybertron.
Red Alert flagging everything that so much as vents in his direction.
The young scouts that used to drive excited circles around Prime now fighting like scraplets with each other and destroying property in the mix.
Even the science division is slowing on progress due to lack of maintenance on the Autobot scientists’ part.
Jazz…hasn’t acquired many complaints, though he’s rarely around enough for anybot to complain about.
Megatron is dealing with a faction full of grieving bots who don’t know how to grieve properly. Even after eons of war.
“Take care of my Autobots. Please.”
Megatron gathers his fraying resolve, steels his spark, and starts toward the medbay.
The Autobot SIC (former Autobot SIC, he reminds himself, seeing as there aren’t any more Autobots to be a SIC to) is stony still where he’s sitting on a medical berth. A single feeding tube connects to his secondary line and pumps energon lighter than medical grade into his system. He hasn’t tried to escape yet, though that could be because of the fact that his limbs have been cuffed to the berth railing. Maybe he had tried to escape. Of course Knockout would resort to imprisoning patients in his ward.
“Prowl,” Megatron greets, nodding to the small Praxian. Prowl glances at him, his optics an icy blue that almost look white in the pale lights of the room. His armour is wilted and the paint is dull and chipped. His chevron, usually a bright red when plotting to destroy the Decepticons or mercilessly killing on the battlefield, is now so muddy in color that it appears almost brown.
He looks like one of Unicron’s undead.
“Megatron,” Prowl greets back anyway, as etiquette dictates.
This…is so awkward. How does one broach the subject of the death of a leader you followed for eons to an enemy that you spent said eons fighting against? By the Pits, it sounds terrible just trying to label it.
“I see you’re…recuperating well,” he starts slowly, eyeing the length of the medical feeding tube slotted directly under Prowl’s chassis.
“Don’t bother,” Prowl snorts. “My tank is fried. I can’t drink anything stronger than medical grade.”
“And who’s fault is that?”
“Mine, I supposed,” Prowl sighs, tilts his helm, regards Megatron with those icy blue optics of his. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I’m not here to act like your carrier,” Megatron scowls. “You are deplorable and wasting invaluable tactical resources by–”
“I used to go drinking with Prime.”
Megatron’s intake snaps shut with an audible click. Prowl never stops looking at him. It’s a piercing gaze that reminds Megatron of the planets made entirely of white ice. It rains anguish no matter the season, so far from the sun. It reminds him of the softest blue he’s ever seen, and a smile so tender it makes his spark dizzy just thinking about it.
“Jazz used to take us drinking every stellar cycle.”
“It was Jazz who would drag us out,” Prowl continues softly, an echo of familiarity in Megatron’s mind, and so unlike the unshakable SIC that’s haunted the battlefield across star systems. He sighs heavily, and his vents rattle. “Me, Jazz and Pax. Now Jazz doesn’t drink. And I drink too much. And Pax isn’t even here. Prime isn’t here. You’re here.”
Megatron doesn’t dare give his spark an ounce of attention. It’s doing its best to burn right through his casing, and he won’t give it the satisfaction of knowing that he can feel every morsel of heat.
“You are a citizen of my planet,” Megatron frowns. He can feel his anger pool into his tank like a corrosion of its own, eating away at the fickle little energon he’d managed to drink. “I am your leader now.”
“I never said you weren’t,” Prowl says without a single inflection. “My tactical unit is yours to use as you see fit.”
“It better be,” he bites back. His engine rumbles. He doesn’t try to tamp it down. He’s no goody-goody Prime. “You will not waste Prime’s sacrifice by corroding your frame because you can’t handle yourself.”
“I am compiling an alternate building schedule that will align better with the scavenger groups. Materials have been running thin during certain cycles because of a clash in resource input versus output. I have also revised a tentative–”
Prowl rattles on about work, about law, about rations, about function. Megatron stands there and barely listens.
“You are banned from ingesting high-grade until the seekers get access to better energon refineries.”
It’s to make sure they’ll have enough medical grade to compensate when bots inevitably drink up their high-grade reserves like morons. The medical team can’t afford to keep pumping Prowl’s systems like this.
Prowl hasn’t looked away from him since he came inside his little ward. He doesn’t look away now. But he doesn’t do much more than look. He’s not known to be the most expressive bot, and during the war his icy spark was nearly infamous. Right now though, he simply looks at Megatron, and he looks a little lost.
“We can allocate twelve-point three percent of our warping ships’ energy to restart the refineries once the seeker force finds them–”
“I shouldn’t see you in this state again, understand?”
“–and I’ll have a compiled list of all the micro materials we are currently running a shortage in while–”
Prowl continues to talk. He continues to stare. And Megatron wonders if this is what grief looks like to a bot who refuses to admit they're grieving.
“–and his detailing really is something to behold. I mean, Sunstreaker is excellent, don’t get me wrong, but his tastes are…a bit much if you ask–”
Megatron’s sigh merges into a drawn out groan, effectively cutting off Optimus’s tangent. In the rare klik of silence, Megatron tosses his datawork on the desk and leans back against his chair, rubbing his optics with digits he’d much rather be using to tear through Prime’s vocal components.
“Do you ever,” Megatron grunts, glaring between his claws, “shut the frag up?”
Optimus tilts his helm and taps at his chin as he thinks.
“When I’m refueling, sometimes.”
Megatron is so tempted to throw Prime through their high-rise window and lead Cybertron all on his own. He settles for chucking his Very Important Datapad full of Very Important Information right at Prime’s smug face.
“Insolent little glitch,” he mutters as Optimus laughs, gingerly picking up the datapad from where it’s fallen. “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”
“Tough luck,” Optimus tuts, still grinning as he slides Megatron his datapad back. “Lost your chance.”
“If I’d known signing a slagging peace treaty was going to mean having to listen to you even my fucking sleep–
“I don’t think you can sleep and fuck,” Optimus muses. “Unless you can. That would be mildly impressive.”
“–without enough space in my head for my own thoughts, I’d have never ended the war!” Megatron heaves, steam trickling through his vents. “And no, you stupid fucking moron, I can’t frag and sleep at same time, what is wrong with you?!”
“You said it, not me!”
“You pointed it out!”
Megatron throws his datapad back at Optimus, who has yet to learn his lesson and gets another facefull of datawork.
“Stop throwing shit at me,” he huffs, this time thinking better and keeping the pad in his servo.
“Stop saying stupid things,” Megatron shoots back.
“I was just asking a question,” Optimus pouts, honest to Primus pouts. “You are such a toxic co-worker.”
“Watch your back, Prime,” Megatron scoffs, crossing his arms. His spark thrums, content. Peace times have done the little light some good. Even if it means having to survive a bot who would rather combust into a million pieces than shut up and leave Megatron with some peace and quiet. “There’s time for a secret coup and your untimely demise yet.”
Optimus huffs, rolling his optics. Their work is scattered between them, tentative trade agreements with neighboring worlds, scavenging and seeker schedules, medical staff and supplies, everything that one would expect from an attempt at peace after millions of cycles of war. They had to forcibly partner Autobots and Decepticons to make sure bots got the memo. Megatron is one such bot. He shares an office with the most infuriating Autobot of them all. He lives down the hall from him.
“Perhaps,” Optimus hums, running a flat digit over the edge of Megatron’s datapad. His optics are dim and blue, a soft blue that glows like stars in the low light of their office. When he looks at Megatron with that little cheeky smile of his, Megatron’s very spark leans against his chamber to listen. “You won’t get rid of me that easy, though. If you kill me I’ll never leave you alone. I’ll haunt you for the rest of your cycles.”
Megatron snorts and pushes Prime’s head down against the desk. Gently, of course. He’s not about to restart the war. He’d only been half-joking about the coup anyway.
That cycle, Megatron returns to his habsuite without any work for once.
He’s tired, and it’s the kind of exhaustion that lingers down in his struts, in the very mesh of his protoform.
So, early into the dark cycle, he’d called it a night, left the high towers, and went home.
And for once, he’s looking forward to simply collapsing in berth and recharging. He’s tired of carrying around a heavy spark, and he’s tired of leading Cybertronians that are just as tired as him.
So here Megatron is, allowing his habsuite security lock to scan his signature, waiting for the finicky system to accept that he’s not some shoddy assassin, and then walks into his room.
It’s a disaster.
For one, his single shelf is toppled over his hastily-built table, and the datapads that had lined it are strewn all over the floor. Some are even embedded into the walls, as if somebot had played mercenary a little too aggressively. There’s even one dangling from the ceiling. The other small trinkets he’d had are thrown all around in aimless directions to match the chaos of his table breaking under the pressure of the toppled shelf. The rations that he had half-drunk now paint ugly stains over the floors and counters, and even the single barren mesh blanket he uses for recharge hadn’t been spared from the disaster. It sits, soaking up the discarded energon like a washing towel.
Megatron’s processor takes nice long kliks just trying to process what’s happening before him. When it does finally load in, he feels the strongest urge to throw himself out of the nearest airlock and straight into Primus’s afthole.
“What the frag…” he mutters, maneuvering around a shattered vase near the entrance. “That was my favourite slaggin’ vase.”
Several datapads are broken beyond repair, most of which are the ones thrown into the wall like throwing knives. The one on the ceiling falls just as Megatron starts inspecting said newly-decorated wall.
Heaving his shelf off the floor, Megatron balances it back upright. The table beneath is split right in two and will need a solid welding job to fix. The little crystal flower Prime had gifted him on the eve of the cease fire is half crushed to dust beneath it.
He takes the potted shards with careful servos and gently places it back on the shelf.
The energon will need to be soaked with solvent, of which they don’t have a whole lot right now, so he’s going to be subjected to a room that smells like stale energon for the foreseeable future. There isn’t enough functional furniture, however scrappy it’s built by the construction teams, to replace anything in his habsuite. He’s going to have to spend time carefully piecing everything back together.
If somebot wanted to inconvenience him, they sure found the best way to do it.
With a heavy ex-vent, Megatron turns around and begins picking up his datapads.
When he finds his room a mess for the third time that megacycle, Megatron no longer finds it an inconvenience. Now he’s tempted to announce it as a call for arms.
He enters his habsuite, finds it almost as bad as the ruins of Praxus, and then marches right back out with murder on his processor.
There’s only one place where he can hail a planetary message, if you can call it a planetary when the message only really extends to the edges of New Iacon. He stalks toward the Security Division located at the top of the high towers, practically throwing the doors to the security room open when he enters.
Red Alert spits static when he barges in, the little lights on his helm and chassis firing off like crazy. He shrieks and warbles high-pitched squawks and communicates in a language of panic Megatron cannot even begin to understand. Not that he cares much about parsing through whatever the Security Director is screaming at him.
“Shut the fuck up,” Megatron growls, grabbing the fritzing red bot by the helm and bodily turning him back to the communication’s array. “I need you to – stop fucking screaming, I haven’t even hurt you yet – I need you to connect me to the planetary hail right now.”
“W-what?!” Red Alert shrieks, optics spiraling to their widest setting. Megatron wonders if the bot is about to short-circuit. Wouldn’t do their security team much good. Or maybe it will? Megatron shakes his helm.
“Connect me to planetary comms. Now.”
“Why?!”
“I am the ruler of Cybertron,” Megatron grits through clenched dentae. “I can do whatever the hell I want. And I want to be connected to the planetary signal. So either connect me now or so help me, I’m going to blow this tower to bits.”
Red Alert’s plating rattles so loudly against his frame that it can probably be used as some sort of comm disruption. He ducks out of Megatron’s servo and quickly starts typing out gibberish on the panel, his dentae chattering throughout it all. Megatron holds back against knocking the loose screws in the red bot back into place.
“All connected sir!” Red Alert squawks, giving a too-sharp salute.
“Good,” Megatron mumbles, and shoves past him to connect his comms to the panels. His systems take a moment to connect, and then when his HUD lights up with the accepted frequency, he begins speaking. “Greetings fellow Cybertronians. This is Megatron, your leader, speaking.
“I have one message for you all, and one message only. Stop fucking up my habsuite! It was cute the first time. Now?! Now I’m going to start announcing public executions–”
Red Alert lets out a panicked eep.
“–for anybot I suspect with even a sliver of involvement. Stop. Messing. Up. My. Room! I’ll paint the walls with your entrails if I catch you, and then I’ll use the rest of your empty husk to serve as an example for those who insist on demonstrating how to be a public nuisance by stringing it up on the high towers! Got it?!”
His yelling echoes through the small security room, where Red Alert and Soundwave simply stare at him with mixed expressions. Megatron doesn’t wait around for any answering comms. He disconnects the line and then, after a moment of consideration, puts his helm into his hands and starts screaming.
Once he’s done, he turns to Red Alert.
“Not a glyph to anybot, understand?”
Red Alert looks one wrong vent away from collapsing.
“Yeh-yes sir!”
Soundwave shifts, drawing Megatron’s attention.
“Megatron: unwell?”
“I’m well,” Megatron seethes, steam rolling up from his vents. “I’m so fucking well.” He turns to Red Alert with a scowl. “Do I not look well?”
“I, uh…”
“Advised: psych eval,” Soundwave suggests.
“I do not need a slaggin’ psych eval!” Megatron snarls, throwing his servos into the air. “I’m perfectly sound! Now if I hear any rumours about this,” he gestures to the communications panel and then himself in hazardous circles, “milling about the populace, Cybertron’s security will be the least of your concerns.”
As Megatron stalks out of the room and slams the door behind him, Red Alert cautiously turns to Soundwave.
“He really needs that psych eval.”
“... affirmative.”
It seems his public announcement does the trick. He doesn’t face a disaster whenever he enters his habsuite for the next few megacycles. Times become peaceful. Megatron feels his spark calm. Cybertron continues its slow trek to revival. His floors don’t smell of stale energon as badly anymore. The little potted crystal flower begins to grow a tiny sprout once more.
Things are looking up.
That is until somebot gets creative and starts messing it up while he’s recharging.
He jolts upright in a panic, his battle protocols lighting up like the slagging Prime-vs-Unicron fireworks that still haunt his recharge fluxes. His cannon is already warm, and his integrated sword embedded in his armour glints in the silver light of Cybertron’s two moons.
“Who’s there?” He demands, pushing himself off of the berth. He crouches low, switching his visual feed to nightvision and scanning his surroundings. Nothing pops up, but he hasn’t survived as long as he has by being complacent. He creeps over to the source of this disruption; a single datapad that had fallen from his shelf.
Keeping his external scanners open, he gingerly crouches down to pick up the discarded datapad. It’s just a copy of some manual. He glances up and spots the empty space between the other datapads from where it seemingly fell.
He slams his fist over the switch panel, and the lights of his habsuite flicker to life. When he adjusts his optical feed, he is met with his empty room.
“What the slag…”
Megatron ends up searching every possible escape route, from the window to the tiny vent above his berth that even Ravage wouldn’t be able to slink through. But he can never be too careful. It’s only when he goes through his door’s log history does he allow himself to calm down; the last time his door opened was when he had entered it.
Maybe I really am losing my mind, Megatron thinks blearily as he drags himself back to berth. The fallen datapad is pushed back into place, as if nothing ever happened. Maybe nothing had happened. Maybe it just fell. Normally.
He flops back on the berth, offlines his optics, and goes back to recharge.
For a total of three breems before another datapad clatters to the ground.
Megatron finds that, against his will, he spends a lot of time watching Optimus Prime.
And really, who doesn't? The symbol of Primus and his distant good-will in the metal, Prime is something to behold. Huge, towering stature, bright red and blue plating, silvery detailing and an almost other-worldly aura blanketing his field.
Most bots look at Prime with awe. It’s not surprising. This is a mech that has led an entire faction for four million cycles, the one who Primus’s forsaken Matrix chose before all of Cybertron to witness, a bot who makes mecha feel like everything is going to be alright. Because Prime is here now. Prime will take care of it.
Most bots look to see Prime.
Megatron looks to see Optimus.
Optimus hadn’t always been so intimidating. Without his battlemask he loses half of his stoic demeanor, and the other half melts away the moment the mech starts laughing. And he laughs at everything. There isn’t a single thing Optimus doesn’t find worth laughing at, with a smile like an easy parting gift on his face.
Megatron looks at Optimus Prime and sees the first half, Optimus, without the added title. Without battle between them Prime feels stifling, because Megatron has never said the title of Prime without molten hatred in his mouth.
Megatron looks at Optimus and sees a bot with obnoxious red and blue plating, optics that are so wide and so impossibly blue, a bright grin that tilts a bit to the side, lop-sided and uneven and so un-Prime-like. Megatron tries to remember if he’s always smiled like that.
The memory files are filled with static.
Megatron makes new ones by drinking the sight of Optimus every chance he gets.
He watches the way he walks, talks, the way he dips down, presses his finials low whenever he’s speaking with smaller bots. The way he smiles with his optics. The way his servos, those massive servos built to break things, gently cradle a small potted crystal flower that he holds out to Megatron. Gentle. He’s so very gentle.
Megatron tries to remember the time of before, when Optimus had been gentle by nature. He supposes that Optimus has always been like that, probably since the dawn of his activation. It’s in his programming. Orion Pax had been a small civilian who used to duck under Megatronus’s arms like it was a game. Optimus Prime The Chosen Before The Senate Floor had been upgraded to a Prime-frame. But Prime frames weren’t always warframes, and a lot of bots tend to forget about that.
Megatron can’t remember it very well. One too many hits to the helm. One too many poisonous energon cubes flushed out of his system. His memory files are shoddy at best, and Optimus from the past has a shadow of Optimus Prime from the present.
Not that it matters much. Orion Pax, Optimus Prime, and Optimus Prime; they are all the same bot. The same bot with the same shade of red and blue that Megatron, despite having terrible memory captures, will never forget. He would recognise it even after death.
“Hellooooo New Iacon! How’s my favourite race of technological transforming alien robots doing this fine post-apocalyptic morning?
“As you all know, this is your lovely host Blaster, now live; speaking to you from Cybertron Revived 118.11, Cybertron’s one and only radio channel this side of the planet! Here to bring you the latest hot topics from all over New Iacon so that we all have something to look forward to in these bleak times.
“And mecha, do I have some juicy bits for you all. Today’s headline features: Megatron: Magnificent Leader or Malevolent Lunatic?! And, let’s be real now, we all know which side our glorious High Protector is leaning toward. I don’t care what my stupid slaggin’ co-host says; I know an off-beat when I hear one!
“I mean, did you all hear that last broadcast? Who the frag calls everybot on a planet-wide emergency hailing system to announce a threat of nation-wide execution just because his beauty recharge is out of tune? What happened to Hi? Hello? How are you? Let’s restore Cybertron in peace and harmony. Let’s hold hands and stop snortin’ Unicron’s stale, crumbling pipe lining together.
“I’m tellin’ ya, it’s giving Stir-Crazy Malfunction; maybe it’s the lack of helms being popped off. Only Unicron knows! It’s his corrodin’ rust that Megatron’s been sniffin’ up, after all.
“Well, that’s a beat to ponder about for the rest of the cycle! I’ll leave y’all with some upbeat bops to combat the looming threat of our Lord High Protector losing the rest of his bass and blowing us all to bits because he ran out of his special brand of Unicron-originated Syk! Now playing: Get Your Shit Together, by our local legend, Jazz of Staniz.”
Megatron is seeing doubles by the time he drags himself to yet another High Command meeting for the cycle.
His HUD is filled with defrag requests that take up most of his maintenance inbox, and it takes a manual override to make them stop popping up in his visual feed every few breems. All because of his stupid slagging shelf and the stupid slagging datapads that kept flinging themselves out onto the floor whenever he so much as shuttered his optics.
When he sits down for the meeting, his frame sags like it’s weighted with stone. He hopes that whoever is reporting makes it quick. Then he’s got a world to lead, datapads to sign, and a new shelf to make.
“Blurr, reporting in for the Special-Operations-Turns-Scouting-Crew!” The little bouncy blue Autobot exclaims, saluting high and wide. He’s so damn bright, with his neon blue paintjob and sparkling optics. Were Autobots allergic to being normal? “At your service!”
“Nice ta’ see ya’, Blurr,” Jazz grins, waving at the blue bot. He’s a rare sight himself. Usually Jazz is hiding away in shadows playing hide-and-seek with his responsibilities. He only really shows up for meetings that have to do with him. Megatron wishes he could do that too, but unfortunately, everything involves him. “What do ya’ got for us?”
“Well, the ground force wasn’t able to make it through the smog,” Blurr starts, talking so fast Megatron has a hard time keeping up with him. “Bumblebee led the expedition to try and find Nyon, but we had to pull back quicker than before because the smog is scrambling our sensors worse every time, let me tell you. The seeker patrols are sayin’ that it’s thickening up and all that. They haven’t managed to find Hydrax yet but Bluestreak and Smokescreen reported being able to uncover a ground route between New Iacon and Ankmor though, which is a plus, because the seekers can’t fly through the smog anymore. Beachcomber is trying to construct a hardlight map right now, and–”
“Wow,” Starscream mutters into his servos. “Does this bot ever shut up?”
Megatron doesn’t answer him.
“He does if you scratch behind his crest. He’s like a cybercat.”
Prime does.
Megatron snorts at that. Then jumps in his seat and does a double-take to where Prime is standing by Blurr across the table. He looks down at the spritzy little bot with fond optics, and without his battle mask on his smile is on full display. It looks painfully tender.
He whips his head to every other bot around, but nobot seems to see Prime just standing there. Prowl watches Blurr report his information with dulled optics. Jazz’s smile is painfully tight, and Megatron suspects he’s probably hitched on something with how bright his visor shines. Ratchet is back on forced berthrest. The Autobots still silently mourn.
They mourn for a bot who’s standing right fucking there.
Megatron gapes, and he probably looks stupid, because why else would Prime glance at him and start laughing? By Primus, Megatron really is losing his mind. He’s seeing things now. He’s seeing a dead bot who was supposed to lead Cybertron with him. He’s seeing a bot that sacrificed himself to save their planet. He’s seeing a bot that got blown into a million pieces, whose deteriorating helm chunk is still sitting on his desk.
He shutters his optics once, twice, shakes his helm around and, finally daring himself to peek an optic open, finds that the space behind Blurr is empty.
Megatron lets out a long ex-vent and sags into his seat. From beside him, Starscream eyes him critically.
“Are you infected or something?” He asks, inching away from him and closer to Shockwave. “Why are you malfunctioning?”
“I’ll make you malfunction if you don’t shut up,” Megatron growls.
“Never mind then,” Starscream rolls his optics. “For a klik I thought I saw a genuine will-to-live in your optics. My bad.”
Megatron ignores him, mostly because he’s gone back to staring at the strangely empty spot beside Blurr, where he swears he can still see the glimmer of familiar red and blue, where he swears he can still hear laughter.
Megatron’s recharge continues to be plagued by falling datapads.
It’s driving him crazy. He’d emptied his shelf two cycles ago, but that didn’t help much. If anything, it gave his invisible perpetrator more to work with, because instead of pulling out one or two separate datapads, now, whoever’s breaking into his habsuite gets to knock a whole tower of them down in one fell swoop.
With less than a few breems worth of proper recharge and visions of Prime’s red and blue frame appearing in his optical feed – he’s fucking hallucinating now, by the Pits – Megatron demands new quarters the following stellar cycle.
“We cannot accommodate your request,” is what Prowl hits him with when he brings up his demands in the metal.
“What do you mean you cannot accommodate my request?” Megatron seethes, slamming his servos over Prowl’s desk. It dents the metal, but unfortunately, doesn’t put a dent in Prowl’s deadpan look. Abstinence is not a good look on the mech.
“I used basic glyphs, Megatron,” Prowl frowns at him like a disappointed school teacher. “It’s pretty simple language comprehension.”
“I’m the leader of Cybertron!” Megatron bellows. In the corner of Prowl’s office Hallucination Prime has his helm in his servos. His plating is the perfect shade of red and blue. Megatron shakes his head. “I’m Lord High Protector!”
“And I’m Prowl.”
Megatron makes to swipe at the potted crystal flower sitting on Prowl’s desk – it looks suspiciously like the one Prime gave Megatron…had Prime given everybot this side of the fucking galaxy the same damned flower? – but Prowl snatches it away before his claws reach it.
“Don’t you dare,” Prowl snarls, and his vents puff out steam through his mouth as he says, “don’t you fucking dare.”
“Prissy Praxian,” Megatron scoffs, but backs off. It’s embarrassing really. He’s got his own duplicate potted crystal flower covered in the taped-up pieces of his broken vase, just in case his invisible tormentor decides to start attacking something more precious. Which is ridiculous. Prime’s stupid duplicate flower is anything but precious.
In his stupid little corner, Prime facepalms so hard Megatron practically hears the clang in real time.
Prowl gingerly puts the potted flower back on his desk, right beside his elbow, and eyes Megatron like one would watch out for a wild animal. Megatron bares his teeth to match the vibe.
“We don’t have enough living quarters to grant you a new one,” Prowl continues, back to his regular insufferable monotone he’d adopted since going cold-turkey. “And we can’t switch your room out anyway; High Command stays in the high towers.”
“High this, high that,” Megatron grumbles. “I should take the hint and hit something up myself to deal with this slag.”
“You should,” Prowl agrees, tapping his datapads together to make them neat and tidy in his servos, “hit the nearest asteroid and die.”
Megatron’s cannon itches for action. It’s only Prime’s aggressive arm swiping in a universal “don’t do it you idiot” sign that he refrains from blowing Prowl into the next life alongside his annoying Prime.
“You’re lucky Prime likes you so much,” he grits out. Prowl’s optics turn icy, but with something unbearably sad, like Megatron just stepped on the ridiculous reptilian pet that he keeps in his room.
Prime doesn’t disappear when Megatron turns to look at him. Instead Prime is focussed on Prowl, looking at him with his stupid round optics that look almost as sad as Prowl’s.
“Soft-sparked fools,” he mutters as he leaves Prowl’s office. Prime doesn’t appear to him for the rest of the work cycle.
“Oh,” Optimus perks up, tall finials standing straight on either side of his helm. “You’ve kept it.”
Megatron turns to where Optimus is looking, taking in the sight of the little crystal flower sitting neatly on his side of their work table
“What did you think I was going to do with it?” Megatron squints at Optimus.
“I don’t know…” Optimus shrugs. “Crush it? Burn it? Crush it, burn it and snort it? Typical Megatron-esque behaviour?”
“By the fucking Pits,” Megatron curses, bashing his knuckles into Prime’s crest before he can do something even more infuriating like run away without consequence. “I am not a slaggin’ junkie! Stop talking like I’m a junkie!”
“Shockwave told us that dark energon is like Syk on Syk,” Optimus giggles, honest to Unicron’s crusty aft giggles. Clutching at his dented crest like a fool and giggling. How in slag had Megatron spent four million cycles fighting such a loser? “That would, by definition, make you a junkie.”
“I’m going to rip your blasted voice box out and shove it so far down your–”
“Did you snort it though?” Optimus asks, tilting his head, a slag-eating grin on his stupid face. Megatron wants to bash his helm in. “A very human thing for you to do. Inspirational, really. Sentient beings, connected across the cosmos by means of doing drugs–”
Megatron launches across their shared work table with a roar, catching Optimus by the shoulders just as Prime attempts to flee. Optimus cackles the entire tumble down, pushing and scratching and shoving and fighting Megatron in a tussle that keeps knocking stuff off the walls and desks. Optimus ends up catching Megatron under the chin with his crest, sharp curses exploding from both of them as they retreat to clutch at their respective wounds.
“Moron!” Megatron hisses, brushing a claw against the prominent crest-shaped dent now in his face. “Idiot! Moronic idiot!”
“I’m pretty sure those are the same thing,” Optimus groans, cupping his crest with tentative servos. “Frag, why is your face so fucking hard?”
“Why are you so fucking stupid?”
“You know, you could have just said you liked the flower!” Optimus shouts, shoving Megatron’s pauldron. Megatron, who had been precariously balanced on his heels, topples over and knocks their chairs askew. Megatron barely looks up before Optimus pounces on him. “You could have just said thank-you like a normal mech! Just admit you like the things I get you!”
Megatron would genuinely rather die than admit he has never thrown away a single sliver of junk Optimus has given him.
“You accused me of being a booster junkie!” Megatron roars back instead. He gets a solid kick in against Optimus’s side, but the stubborn idiot doesn’t falter. “Is that your thing? Being delusional?!”
“I’m not delusional!”
“You just called me a junkie!”
“Aren’t you?”
“NO!” Megatron bellows loud enough that their windows rattle. He frees one servo to grab at Optimus’s face, trying – and failing – to pry him off. “I’m NOT! Eat slag and die!”
“A thank-you!” Optimus practically shrieks. Megatron gains enough momentum to throw them both into another struggling roll across their office floor. Something crunches against his back. He thinks it might be a datapad full of medical stock “Would it kill you to just say thank-you?!”
“I’ll kill you, you annoying prissy glitch!”
They end up getting lectured by Prowl – whose office is a mere floor beneath, and subsequently had to deal with the shaking of his ceiling and, a few kliks later, the massive hole they made while falling through said ceiling – on work-place etiquette and how shaking the entire high tower just to “tussle and let off steam” is inappropriate and immature.
Optimus sticks his glossa out at him when Prowl turns his head.
Later, Megatron moves his potted flower to his side of their office, for safe-keeping, after Optimus threatens to throw it out to keep Megatron from relapsing.
It comes as sort of a short-circuit to know that Megatron isn’t the only one who has uncovered Optimus Prime bits floating in the stratosphere.
Megatron’s only assuming when he says Prime is a million little pieces now. Truthfully, nobot even knows how many parts remain intact versus what got incinerated in the explosion. Megatron has Prime’s helm, which is, arguably, the most important – and sentimental – part. If he were to keep any body part, he’d prefer the helm over ventral armour or, Primus forbid, an aft plate.
He doesn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to him beforehand to fly up into the stratosphere and look for more of Optimus Prime’s grey frame. Prime’s memorial service hadn’t even felt right, knowing that they were burning bits and pieces without doing the honour of freeing him of his frame in its entirety. And also, Megatron couldn’t bring himself to let go of Prime’s helm. Not yet.
Regardless, Megatron should have known better. He’s Lord High Protector of Cybertron now. He should be aware of the ins and outs of New Iacon’s market. Such as what the going trade for high-grade is, how the scavenging for aluminium panels is coming along, and also, how expensive Swindle is charging for Optimus Prime’s charred body parts.
He’s got a big fucking sign too, right at his make-shift storefront. Prime PRIME Parts Here! Megatron stares at it from across the shoddily-rebuilt street, rubs his optics, shakes his helm, and then stares again. The sign does not change.
To his credit – and Swindle’s got a lot of credit hidden around, as per his namesake – Swindle does scream in fright when Megatron materialises in front of his little shop. Megatron pays the little bot no mind, because he’s still staring at the abomination of a sign welded half hazardously to the wall.
“Ah ha, my lord!” Swindle greets cheerfully, having recovered from his near spark-attack at seeing the Lord High Protector of Cybertron walk up to his shady and frankly illegal business with a nervous chuckle. “It’s good to see you! Between all the ‘fighting for the fate of Cybertron’ and ‘balancing world peace on your shoulders’ I barely got a glimpse of ya’!”
Megatron ignores the conversation trap and instead nods to the sign. Swindle’s optics pale a little bit.
“Is this for real?” Megatron asks.
“What, the sign?” Swindle takes great lengths to study the sign very carefully, as if he hadn’t put it there himself. “I believe so m’lord! Real steel and alloy, with authentic blue and red detailing paint – might I add that my trading partner, Knockout, requested I push word about his new–”
Megatron slams his fist against the stall table, glowering. Swindle screams again, jumping back and raising his servos to guard his face.
“I’m sorry!” Swindle shrieks as Megatron glares at him, the light of his red optics so bright that he can see the edges of the table shimmer in crimson cuts. “I’m sorry, okay?! It’s been real good business and you already know that every post-apocalypse situation needs a trusted and enthusiastic trades dealer! At least I’m not giving them out for free!”
“That’s what you think the problem is?!” Megatron roars, throwing his arm to point to the sign. “Swindle, you Pit-spawned rust-infected glitch, you are selling Prime’s frame on the black market!”
“It’s not technically a black market,” Swindle mutters, still hunched over himself. “The market isn’t big enough to branch into a black market.”
“Shut up!” Megatron snaps, optics raking over the visible merchandise Swindle has displayed in his shop. It’s more of a stall, with objects hanging from the cruddy ceiling and along the pillared wall with strings and welding metal. He’s got rations, energon goodies and snacks, building material, glassware, and trinkets of all shapes and sizes stored away in compartments with labelled prices. Labelled prices being a list of what Swindle is willing to trade for his items, because they are currently in post apocalyptic slag. And one thing that they never tell you about war is that your currency turns to slag too. Megatron’s just lucky that Prowl manages the trading system for High Command, and that his rations come to him in the form of thinly-veiled threats that run along the lines of “come get your rations or die, see if I care.”
Swindle has energon as a common form of trade for most items, including energon itself. However, the only section of his mini market that doesn’t have any sort of written price is the long shelf at the very back of the shop. It’s got multiple rows with half of the small cubicles covered in clear protective casing, showing off the goods within.
The goods being charred pieces of Optimus Prime.
Realistically it can be any bot; the pieces are so blackened with ash and rust that it’s hard to make out any color that survived the nanite purge after the offlining. However, Megatron’s spark lurches painfully in its chamber when his optics land on those seemingly random chunks of armour. Almost like it wants to reach through his metal and snag the broken frame bits and hoard them close, because it’s Optimus, he can tell. He doesn’t know how, and he couldn’t confirm it even if his life depended on it. But he can tell. He knows.
Megatron’s spark overrides his instincts to bash Swindle’s helm in for committing such a heinous crime, and he’s moving before he even registers what’s going on.
“How much?” He rasps, pointing a claw at the shelf behind Swindle. Swindle himself follows Megatron’s digit until he spots the shelf. Then he appropriately whips back around to gawk at him.
“Are…are you ill?”
“Don’t fuck with me right now,” Megatron snarls, and then points harder, jutting his claw further into the store by an inch and glaring some more. “How. Much?”
“I, uh…” Swindle looks between the Prime Parts (frag, it sounds horrible even in his head. Who came up with that slag?) and Megatron several times, processor lagging. When Megatron bares his fangs and revs his engine, it does the trick of rebooting the stupid little bot.
“A-A wonderful optic you have, m’lord!” Swindle exclaims just a tad bit too loudly, bouncing two paces back to pat at the shelf. There aren’t that many pieces left out on display, with smaller SOLD OUT signs stuck up on some of the empty slots.
Megatron’s spark goes white hot when he thinks about how somebot out there has Prime Prime Parts too. He thinks about what he’d do to the bot he spots with them in their possession. Why the fuck would they need Prime Prime Parts? They probably didn’t even know Prime beyond a military figure. If anybot has the right to Prime Parts, it’s Megatron and Megatron alone.
“Some of these…exclusive antique items have already been traded for, but the bidding is fairly high for them. Looks like everybot wants a piece of Prime at home!”
Swindle laughs loudly. Megatron sneers. Swindle swallows thickly and continues with a wide grin.
“But for you, my lord, I will make an exception! It’s only fitting after all; you are the Lord High Protector of Cybertron! My shop is your shop, for a certain price!”
Swindle prattles off a list of things he’d be willing to part the Prime Parts for, not limited to rations from the High Tower – “we all get the same rations, you fucking idiot” – gossip from the High Tower, extra shanix lying around in the High Tower – “you never know! Recession might end any cycle!” – and finally, Megatron’s signature.
“Why do you want my signature?” Megatron squints, suspicious. Swindle simply shrugs and hands over a datapad to Megatron with one of his sly blithe grins.
“Why wouldn’t a bot want your autograph?”
Megatron glances at the datapad, looks at the Prime Parts waiting for him on display, thinks about how he’s probably going to regret this sooner or later, and then scrawls his signature onto the clear pad. Swindle snatches it back, hums approvingly, and bounds to unlock the displays showcasing Prime’s frame pieces .
“How many did you want, m’lord?” Swindle asks from over his shoulder once Megatron agrees to bring extra rations from the High Towers. Megatron thinks for a klik before nodding to himself, processor made up.
“All of them.”
Swindle falters, and almost drops what Megatron is confident is a piece of Prime’s smokestack.
“…eh?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Megatron grits out. “I want all of them. Every single piece. The ones you have, the ones you’ve hid, and the ones you’re going to find. If I find that you sell any piece to anybot but me, I will either blow you to bits and sell you on the black market, or sell you out to Prowl instead.”
Swindle turns around, probably-a-smokestack still gripped in his servos as he regards Megatron with a narrowed look.
“If you sell me out,” he starts slowly, “then everybot will know you were planning on buying these yourself.”
Megatron raises an optical ridge, unimpressed. The two of them lock in a strange staring competition for a few kliks before Swindle lets out a long low whistle.
“Slag mech,” Swindle chuckles, turning to pull out the other parts. Megatron’s spark preens as Swindle places them in a large box one by one. “You’d fuck us both up for your dead archnemesis’ greying frame. At least tell me what you plan on doin’ with them?”
Swindle hands the box to Megatron, who gingerly takes it in his servos and holds it close to his chassis, simply admiring the scrappy box like it contained the most valuable jewels in all the universe. In a sense, it did.
“Good doing business with you, Swindle,” Megatron tosses over his shoulder as he turns around and starts making his way back. He hadn’t had any plans for the late cycle, hence why he’d been wandering aimlessly in the fresh New Iacon market, but now he’s excited to get back to his habsuite. Now he has plans that he cannot wait to execute. “Remember our deal.”
“Will do m’lord!” Swindle waves him off, flipping his Prime PRIME Parts Here! sign over. Megatron doesn’t bother turning around, optics still glued to the precious cargo in his arms.
“Hmm, okay, what about a human?”
“Ugh, don’t bring those fleshbags into this.”
“Don’t be a xenophobe.”
“I’m not. Any self-respecting sentient creature ought to know that anything trumps being tied to an organic body full of liquids. Optimus, they are literally walking bags of fluids. That’s disgusting. I stepped on one once; had to pick out red goo from my pede for cycles.”
“…I’m not going to dive into that, but please consider Rung.”
“I will not.”
A long exasperated sigh.
“…well?”
“Well what?”
“You never answered my question. What about if I was a human?”
“No.”
“Awww, don’t be mean to me.”
“What, did I hurt your Primely feelings?”
“Some Lord High Protector you are. You know, if you reincarnated as a human, I’d figure you out. Your sunshine and rainbow personality is impossible to miss.”
“If you were reincarnated into a flesh bag I wouldn’t even want to step on you, because you’d be hideous and annoying and you would choose to spread your liquid innards all over my plating. You would die, and then I would die.”
“You’re such a fraggin’ drama queen, Don’t talk like that. Unicron might curse me and actually do that. And for the record, I would know if it was you, even if you were a small fleshy organism…I’d…I’d always be able to tell if it were you.”
“Prime…”
“…what are you–?”
“I…would recognise you, were you a room with no light and I were a mech with no sight. The dark could eclipse you, and I could be blind, and…and I’d still sing about your shade of black.”
“…I…Megatron, that’s…did you write that? Of-of course you wrote that.”
Nervous laughter. Something shuffles. The room is warm.
“You…you always had a way with glyphs. Let me think. Ah…you…you were a miner and a gladiator and a revolutionist and a war titan, but…but I think I had fallen in love with the poet.”
“That’s pretty poetic, Prime.”
More laughter. It sounds soft and private.
“You…”
“Don’t get shy now.”
“You think we’ll ever work this out? You and me? You think we can repair eons of fighting and betrayal and going back and forth and you know, sometimes, during the fighting, I really hated you. I really really hated you, real deep in my spark and I remember it and it would feel so strong and I would think, I hate him. I hate him, how could I have ever fucking loved him? I remember that, Megatron, I remember it and that feeling and I just need to know if it’ll be possible, between us, after all that, whatever this is. It doesn’t have to be what it used to be, I don’t think it ever will, but…but…”
“You say you know me so well. Tell me then, Optimus, if you think we can make this work.”
“…I want this to work. I want it to. Does that make me foolish?”
Metal brushes metal. The barest of touch. Tentative becomes shy.
“You are the most foolish bot I know.”
“Wow, thanks. You really do inspire the best in bots.”
“Shut up. Idiot. Pipe-sucking Pit-spawned slag-stain.” A deep in-vent. “Do you know what they call the fool’s shadow?”
“…what do they say, High Protector?”
“I don’t know.” A pause. It’s soft, somehow. “They don’t have a name for it. Maybe they should give it a poets’ designation.”
“See, this is just ridiculous,” Megatron rants, running a servo over his helm. He turns to Prime and gestures to the datapad on his desk. “Is he serious right now?”
Prime shrugs.
Megatron goes back to the datapad, optics roving over the section of demands Starscream implemented on behalf of his seeker force.
“Extra rations, he wrote. As if we have enough rations to even stick up his exhaust pipe.”
“They are seekers,” Prime points out, “their thrusters burn through fuel faster.”
“He’s made no progress on locating Plurex,” Megatron argues, tapping his digits against his chin. “We need some sort of system; this aimless wandering will get us nowhere. It’s a waste of energy.” Then Megatron scowls. “That treacherous jet is probably syphoning energon just to hoard it. He’s been prattling about the seekers need this and the seekers need that.”
Prime hums, not an agreement, but some vague thing that never fails to piss Megatron off – wonderful little detail you imputed, imagination matrix – before going back to inspecting Megatron’s trinkets.
Now, believe him or not, but Megatron is aware of how compromising this situation is. If somebot were to walk into Megatron talking with his hallucinations, they’d shoot him in the helm with a stun gun right then and there and lock him up for an extended psych eval. Which he doesn’t slagging need, thank you very much.
But it’s like talking with the manifestation of his tactical unit. It is like talking to the manifestation of his tactical unit. He can go back and forth with Hallucination Prime like they’re having an actual conversation, and he has found that solutions to problems he’d been stuck on have come easier to him. So what if it looks like he’s talking to himself? It’s not like anybot can see.
Anybot except the image of Optimus Prime.
(So what if his spark burns that much hotter every time he goes back and forth with this memory file brought to life?
Nobot will know except Megatron himself.)
“These are cool,” Prime says, pointing to the numerous old helmets he’s adorned over the eons hung on his office wall. “I didn’t know you kept these.”
“You never changed yours, so you wouldn’t know that frames do go out of style every few millennia,” Megatron scoffs. Prime turns to him with a grin. It’s such a strange thing to see on his face. Megatron needs to give his imagination matrix some credit; it’s almost like Prime is right here, in the metal, like he’d never even left.
“I didn’t know you kept up with the trends during wartime,” Prime snorts, then perks up, indignant. “Hey, are you calling me outdated?”
“By several upgrades, yes,” Megatron shoots back. Prime yells something, a stupid come-back that doesn’t really make much sense. This moment feels like a recharge flux. He shakes his head and smiles ruefully. “Not that it matters. Look at you. Fraggin’ imbecile. Distracting me from my memory files. You don’t even need to be here to ruin my attention.”
Prime’s face twists in a strange way, and his brow ridges furrow and his optics cycle, and all these minute details are so intricate and so specific; Megatron wonders if he ought to give up his position as Lord High Protector and go back to being an artist.
“Megatron…” Prime starts slowly, taking a step toward him, and then another. His plating is the perfect shade of red and blue. “I’m right here.”
“Yes yes,” Megatron waves him off, ignoring the twinge in his spark-chamber. Oh how his spark liked to remind him of what he lost. Of course Prime is right here, his spark seems to taunt, he never left your mind, did he?
“No, listen to me,” Prime bounds forward until he’s right across from Megatron, with only his desk in between them. Megatron’s spark aches a foul thing. “Listen to me. I’m right here.”
“I know,” Megatron says softly. “You never left me.”
Prime’s face twists, and this time it hurts to look at. It looks like it hurts Prime to look like that.
“I never did,” Prime whispers. He plants his servos on his desk, but it doesn’t make a sound. “But that’s…that’s not what I mean. Megatron,” he stresses, leaning closer, closer enough that Megatron can see the tiny fibrous material that stretches when Optimus’s optics spiral. “Megatron, I’m–”
Megatron’s office door bursts open, Red Alert screaming up a storm that might just put Starscream’s designation to shame with only one pede. Megatron jolts, tilting to the side to watch the little red bot lose his shit from over Prime’s shoulder.
“We got an incoming hail from out of orbit!” Red Alert announces – more like cries – as he waves report pads above his helm like a flag. Some of them fly out of his servos and make a mess of the floor. “We need an urgent meeting! Like now! Urgent urgent! Super top fucking tier urgent!”
When Megatron stands and walks behind Red Alert – “everybot up! Up up up! Right now, right this very klik or we’re all slagged to the Pits! We need to initiate the highest security protocol! Wake up wake up wake the fuck up!” – to call a meeting, he makes sure to glance at his desk. As expected, Prime is nowhere to be seen.
“Let’s go to the market together!”
“Mmm,” Megatron has enough thoughtfulness in him to make a show of considering the idea. “No.”
“Come on,” Optimus urges, trotting across their shared habsuite to tug at Megatron’s shoulder. “It’s teeming with new stuff. Scavenger teams are bringing in new finds every cycle!”
“It’s all the same slaggin’ junk,” Megatron murmurs, optics trained on his datawork. The glyphs are a little blurry and hard to read. He should ask Knockout for new sight aids. Prime broke his last pair when he’d short-circuited so hard finding out Megatron even had optic aids, that he accidently threw them out the window. Megatron still cannot fathom how somebot can accidentally throw something out of a window.
“It’s not,” Optimus insists. “You’re just being a loser.”
“I’m being a responsible Lord High Protector and making sure that the Necrulon’s aren’t scamming us.”
“They wouldn’t scam us,” Optimus pouts. “The ambassador had been so polite.”
“And this is why I’m Lord High Protector, and you’re not.”
Optimus rolls his optics, taking a meagre two klik break from harassing Megatron, and then begins harassing him all over again when he must realise that Megatron is having some semblance of peace.
“Will you stop it,” Megatron hisses, finally looking away from the trade deal to glare up at Optimus. “I’m working. You should be working. Your prissy pain-in-the-aft Praxian is working.”
“Terrible example, Prowl is always working,” Optimus huffs, and then, under his breath, “I should probably get him to go for a walk or something too.”
“Yes, do that,” Megatron scoffs. “Go bother him and leave me alone.”
“Mmm,” Optimus taps his chin, smirking. “No.”
“I’ll incinerate you.”
“Do it where the fumes of my frame won’t clog the vents,” Optimus hooks an arm under Megatron and hoists him up despite his protests. “AKA: outside in the New Iaconian Marketplace!”
“Primus give me patience,” Megatron mutters as Optimus drags him through the hall, their arms still hooked together, warm living metal on warm living metal, close enough that Megatron can feel the hum of his engine. “I think my Prime is a dolt.”
“You need to get out of this room more often.”
“Your suggestion is duly noted… and rightfully discarded.”
Prime pouts at him from across the table.
“You’re so mean to me,” he whines, so damned un-Prime-like and more like one of the little Auto-brat racers that won’t stop crashing into newly forged habsuites. In fact, over the cycles that he’s appeared in Megatron’s visual feed, Prime has slowly been losing his…his Prime edge. Maybe it’s the deteriorating memory files that Knockout claims comes from a lack of self-care. Or maybe one of Starscream’s several attempts to poison him have finally started having some negative long-term effects.
Maybe it’s that as the time crawls slowly away, from a period where Optimus Prime had been alive and functioning and at Megatron’s side, Megatron is losing Optimus.
Because now Optimus looks less like Optimus Prime and more like newly minted Optimus. The Optimus that rose from the Senate floors all those eons ago, with a glowing Matrix held snug, shining through glass windows in his chest, was a mockery in Megatron’s face. This Optimus is starting to look like the Optimus that hadn’t changed himself, hadn’t cut away his armour and forged himself into a battle titan. Optimus Prime the Autobot leader died fighting Unicron. Megatron has his evening ration with Optimus Prime the civilian frame, who had never really lost those big blue optics that had once belonged to a little bot named Orion Pax.
“Megatron?” Optimus murmurs. Megatron externalises his attention in time to catch Optimus tilting his helm to the side, as if to catch Megatron’s optic. His tall finials sway back a bit, resting at a dipped angle that Megatron knows – knows from personal experience, from eons of knowing a bot in ways that you can’t even know yourself – means Optimus is curious. He wants answers. His optics are so round and so wide and so damned blue.
“What is it?” He mutters, taking a deep sip of his ration. It’s sweet on his glossa, and he wonders why. Megatron has always found rations to taste bland and bitter.
“You look distant, is all,” Optimus smiles at him. For a bot conjured by Megatron’s processor, he looks so real. He feels real. Megatron’s spark reacts in real time whenever Optimus flashes his smile at him.
“I have to cajole around a bunch of moronic Pit-spawned glitches and our sad excuse of a High Command through a post-apocalyptic world-eater-turned-to-slag situation. You don’t get to talk.”
Optimus winces at that.
“It sounds terrible when you put it that way.”
“There’s no other way of putting it. That’s literally it.”
“I’m just saying,” Optimus raises his servos in surrender. “You need a hobby, Megatron.”
“I have hobbies,” Megatron frowns.
“Sitting here and talking to me isn’t a hobby.”
“I never said it was,” he sneers, “because I’m not stupid. I know what a slagging hobby is. I have plenty of those.”
Optimus snorts.
“Sure.”
“Don’t even start.”
“I’m not starting anything!”
“I can’t believe this,” Megatron mutters, rubbing at his nasal ridge. There’s a deep groove in the sensitive metal, a gift from the undead that his nanites can’t seem to fix. A scar that he knows stretches from over his whole face in one ugly jagged line. It feels rough to the touch. Megatron wonders how soft Optimus’s face would feel beneath his digits. “I’m being mocked by my own hallucination.”
Optimus’s face falls at that. Just like a few cycles ago. Just like every time Megatron mentions the state of his existence. He hadn’t known hallucinations could be so sensitive.
“I’m not in your head, Megatron,” Optimus starts slowly. “I’m real. I swear it.”
“Not with this slag again,” Megatron groans, getting up and taking his cube to the make-shift sink. It’s really just a divet in the counter with a washrack and a bottle of solvent beside it. Optimus follows after him like a tittering shadow. “You need to change up your linear. It’s getting boring.”
“I’m not changing anything ‘cause I’m not making it up!” Optimus huffs. “Pull that exhaust pipe out of your aft and listen!”
“Maybe I should visit Rung. He might teach me how to keep my delusions in check.”
“I’m not a fucking delusion! You don’t need to see Rung – well, okay, maybe go see Rung, you need some major help mech – but you don’t need him for this because I’m not a–!”
Megatron cuts Optimus off by slamming his dripping cube onto the counter.
“You’re not a what, huh?!” He yells back, spark molten hot, steam curling in his thunderous engine. “What are you, then, if not my delusions brought to life? You’re fucking dead, Optimus. You died in front of all of Cybertron. I have your helm on my desk–”
Optimus squints at that.
“You have what?”
“–and your frame is in a million floating pieces up in orbit, so don’t tell me you’re something you’re not! Don’t lie to me even after death!”
“If I really was your delusion, it’d be you lying to yourself, moron!” Optimus snaps back. “But I’m not part of you, or an extension of you, or anything that has to do with you! I’m real.”
“Get out,” Megatron hisses, bringing a servo up to clutch at his helm. “Get the fuck out.”
“Megatron…” Optimus takes a step forward, reaching up, as if to touch him. Megatron reels back.
“Don’t you–” His engine roars like thunder, and steam pours out of his mouth in dark plumes. It illuminates red. He wonders if his optics look like entrance to the Pits. “Get. Out. Of my head.”
“I can’t,” Optimus stresses, taking another step forward. “Megatron, I–”
With a battle cry worthy of a gladiator, Megatron unsheathes his sword from beneath his cannon and strikes. One long, clean streak that cleaves Optimus right in two. He’s been dreaming about this moment for eons. Of destroying Prime and his Autobots, killing him with a blow so personal his spark would never recover. He’s stabbed Prime in his recharge fluxes in every way possible.
So he tears the image of Optimus Prime in two, and watches as the image of red and blue shimmers into dust. His floor is clean. He cannot hear a thing. He turns, dries his cube, cleans his apartment, and drops for recharge.
No datapads fall that dark cycle.
Megatron’s arm remains cold the entire night.
Megatron doesn’t know what compels him to pause when he hears Optimus’s voice float through the door of Prowl’s office.
Maybe it’s the empty hallway, barren but for Megatron himself, standing with reports in one servo and a ration cube in the other. Not for him, obviously. He doesn’t miss his rations. He’s not stupid like that. But he’s got a ration in his servo, and he’s on his way to his office, his shared office, which sits right above Prowl’s office.
And it’s a rare occurrence for him to be walking down this desolate hall. Bots avoid it like a plague, mostly because Prowl’s office is in this hall, and it’s a Pit of a place to be caught. Usually Megatron just flies through the office window that Optimus keeps open for the breeze to waft through, during long work cycles.
The breeze is more smoke and ash than air, so Prime is full of slag for trying to cover up the fact that he probably keeps the window open just so Megatron can fly through it.
But today Megatron is holding reports in one servo and a ration cube in the other, and he’s walking instead of flying, because he can’t fly and hold a ration cube. And Optimus, for a bot so determined to waste Megatron’s working cycles by distracting him, is quite terrible at remembering to take his rations. Not that Megatron notices or anything.
So Megatron is walking through Prowl’s hall, and he’s passing by Prowl’s office door when he hears voices. He usually ignores voices. Most are trivial, and he’s a busy mech. Well, until he hears Optimus say something, and then all of a sudden there is nothing more important than stopping right outside that door, with layers of metal muffling Optimus’s glyphs. It doesn’t matter though. Megatron is a bot who preaches freedom, yet he’s a slave to his spark’s treacherous molten heat.
“–saying that,” Optimus says, laughing, and Megatorn can picture it in his processor. It’s wide and shameless, with an awkward tilt that makes his face look wobbly and lopsided. “There are going to be rumours.”
“There are already rumours, idiot,” Megatron is confident that it’s Ratchet who’s grumbling. “My medbay is full of loose-lipped glitches.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Jazz, probably,” Prowl cuts in. There's an inflection in his glyphs. Rarely used around anybot else. Megatron has certainly never heard them before. The barest hints of comfort and ease. “He likes lying. It’s his only hobby.”
“It’s always the bots closest to ya’,” aaand that would be Jazz. There’s the sound of metal falling on metal, and Prowl’s muttered cursing. Megatron can only guess what’s happening. “An enemy can’t betray you. They’re already tryin’ to bring you down.”
“Did…is that a human saying?” Ratchet asks, perplexed.
“Maybe.”
“Get off of me before I tear your hinges to shreds,” Prowl threatens in his signature monotone-with-a-hint-of-animosity.
“Hey, don’t say that in front of our medic!” Jazz whines. “Raaaaatchet.”
“Don’t fraggin’ Ratchet me, moron. I’ll tear your hinges before he does.”
“I’m surrounded by spark-ache.”
“You poor poor thing,” Optimus coos. Megatron pretends that his spark doesn’t jump at the sound of his voice. “Everybot’s so mean to you.”
“Right?” Jazz sniffles. “It’s always Jazz, infiltrate the Decepticon warship! Jazz, sneak into enemy headquarters! Jazz this! Jazz that! Guess we see what loyalty and love really gets ya’.”
“Loyalty gets you friends that will sit around and listen to you talk like you’ll lose your voice box tomorrow,” Ratchet huffs. “Which you might. Recharge with an optic open.”
“Hey! That’s a human saying too! Daaaw, you soft-spark, c’mere!”
“Shut up! Get your filthy servos off of me!”
Optimus is laughing again. It’s not an elegant sound, not by a long shot. It crackles with static and it’s loud and, from an objective standpoint, it should be annoying.
It’s become Megatron’s favourite sound.
The four of them talk some more, murmuring between them, and Megatron is reminded that he’s technically being a creep by standing in front of Prowl’s office door, eavesdropping on a private conversation that has nothing to do with him, Lord High Protector. He’s never been more grateful for the fact that they still haven’t set up a security system yet, or else he’d have to blow up the high towers to avoid incriminating evidence.
He’s about to walk off when he hears Prowl speak up again, glyphs altered the slightest bit, inflection heavy with importance. Megatron presses against the door, spark spinning so wildly it almost drowns out Prowl when he says:
“I’m happy for you, Prime.”
There’s silence for a long moment, filled only by Megatron’s racing spark. And then–
“He’s right,” Jazz says, and there’s so much…so much adoration in his glyphs, they’re dripping with it. Heavy and soft, layered with additive upon additive. So thick that they could have painted metal. “He’s so right, OP. I wasn’t sure before, but fuck, mech. You look good smilin’ again.”
“I–” Optimus chokes out static. “Where’s this coming from? Are you guys infected?”
“Don’t piss me off,” Ratchet snaps. It’s so affectionate. Autobot sentimentality, or some slag like that. Megatron can’t think straight. “The war is over. We’re all done fighting. And thank Primus for that. We needed this. You needed this.”
“Even if it’s that blasted war-mongerer,” Prowl seems to deadpan. Jazz snorts. “Of all the evil slag-festering mechs out there, Prime. You just had to pick the worst one.”
“He’s getting empty nest syndrome,” Jazz snickers. “Between you and Bluestreak–”
“Bluestreak is a quarter my slagging age! Don’t compare me to him!”
“–his chevron might go grey. Don’t blame him. It’s a Praxian thing.”
“That’s it,” Prowl hisses. Something scrapes against the floor hard, and then metal clangs against metal, a heavy thud shakes the floor, and several voices start yelling.
Through them all, Megatron can hear Optimus laugh like there’s no tomorrow.
“CR118: now live. Current and better host: Soundwave.
“Recent popularity polls: now broadcasted at city centre. Soundwave: pleasantly surprised. New Iacon: has experienced shift in view of Lord High Protector. Some: have expressed positive reviews.
“To uncertain populace: Soundwave advises visiting New Iacon Marketplace. Mingling: offers objective insight. Most popular stall: currently Swindle’s Stock. Soundwave: highly recommends visiting.
“More information regarding New Iacon Marketplace: at New Iacon Marketplace. CR118 music station now playing: Fine Furnishing, by Swindle.”
“I didn’t know you were a merchant,” Optimus grins as he watches Megatron exchange steel panelling for some more glassware. Turns out throwing shit at the wall is only really good for breaking glassware. Then again, throwing shit at the wall is the only way he knows how to deal with all the swelling irritation that lives in his spark whenever Optimus Fragging Prime shows up in his life.
“I’m not,” he mutters, ignoring the seller’s strange look.
“Merchant Megatron,” Optimus chuckles, following after him as he moves through the crowd. “It’s got a nice ring to it.”
“I’ll give you a nice ring. Right through your face if you don’t shut the fuck up.”
Optimus looks too smug for his silence to give Megatron even a sliver of satisfaction.
Megatron goes through the marketplace with vague interest, letting Optimus prattle on about nonsensical garbage while he browses through whatever these Cybertronians have managed to salvage. He’d arrived with only two destinations in mind, but wandering around is a better alternative to having to listen to Starscream caw on and on and on until his audials malfunction.
“Oooh, Beachcomber always has the loveliest glass work.”
“Ah, is that Sunstorm? I didn’t know he had a talent for detailing too!”
“Swerve transferred his bar! Oh, that’s wonderful!”
“Is that…is Strika really offering frame massages? Wait, Megatron, get closer, I’m curious.”
“Of course Sunstreaker is competing for Best Detailing Mech in New Iacon, I shouldn’t even be surprised. Not even the end of the world could stop that mech.”
…yes, Megatron much prefers this to Starscream’s complaining.
The two of them – or really, Megatron and his hyper-realistic nearly-worryingly-accurate delusion – make their way through the teeming New Iacon Marketplace. It’s definitely taking shape, with some of the stalls being reinforced with proper panelling, tables and ceilings. It’s the busiest centre in New Iacon, other than the grounds around the high towers, with most mecha’s habsuites being arranged in between the two points. It’s…nice, to see so many bots bustling around, not a care in the world.
Well, beyond finding fuel, shelter, and rebuilding their home after eons of war and then the subsequent defeat of a world-eater that they barely survived by the metal of their dentae.
Optimus takes it all in with wide optics, much like how Real Optimus would. Real Optimus would probably be able to appreciate how far they’ve all managed to progress. Unicron had razed most of their work to ashes, and they’d had a hard reset nearly twice due to the volatile weather. But if Cybertronians are anything, they are tenacious. Megatron wonders what Optimus would think now. Resilience. It had been his favourite aspect of life, after all.
“Where are you going anyway?” Optimus asks, breaking Megatron out of his musing. Megatron turns and glances to where Optimus is looking at him, helm tilted, optics wide and blue. “Not that I’m not glad you’re finally outside.”
Megatron hums.
“That’s…that’s not an answer.”
“It wasn’t.”
Megatron spots Swindle’s shop a little ways away, and instantly changes trajectory. Optimus, the ever faithful hallucination, follows at his heels, glancing from over his shoulder every now and then, curious.
Ever since that first disastrous encounter, Swindle has kept that horrendous sign advertising Prime’s Prime PartsTM hidden away, thank Primus. Megatron doesn’t know what he’d do if he saw it again, honestly. Probably blow a fuse. Or blow something up. Most likely he’d blow Swindle up.
Instead, Swindle has another sign up, this one bigger and more brightly colored than the last. It has a familiar scrawling signature at the bottom – fuck, is that Megatron’s signature? What the slag? – with bolded glyphs reading HIGH PROTECTOR TRUSTED AND APPROVED! written above a scowling image capture of himself, and an obviously edited servo pointing toward Swindle’s open stall.
Megatron neither trusts nor approves of Swindle and, by proxy, his sketchy business. Clearly, the sign and the mechs looking between it and the approaching Megatron don’t think so.
Behind him, Optimus snorts very very loudly.
“Ah, my favourite warlord-turned-Protector!” Swindle greets him cheerfully, raising his arms and waving. “How are you this fine midday, my lord?”
“Marginally worse since you opened your intake,” Megatron grumbles. “What in the Pits is that sign?” Optimus chastises him. Swindle just laughs.
“Ah, just a little trade secret,” Swindle waves him off. “Really brings in business, ya’ know?”
“I will shove my next signature down your throat. In the form of a blade. I’ll trace it along your tanks so that you never have to reprint it again.”
“Ever the avidly descriptive comedian, my lord,” Swindle laughs instead of doing something normal, like begging for his life. He wipes sparks from his optics. “I take it you’re here for your usual?”
Megatron, unable to muster enough energy to go through with his threat – and probably pulling his reputation through the mud while he’s at it – simply grunts a semi-intelligible reply
“Your usual?” Optimus asks, brow ridges furrowing. “What’s your usual?”
“How many pieces did you find?” Megatron asks, ignoring Prime.
“Three, your highness,” Swindle announces over his shoulder. He pulls out a box from underneath a meshtarp, sealed with cheap welding with Megatron’s designation scratched into the lid. “On the house. Because…ya’ know!”
He nods at the sign, where a minibot poses for a photo in front of the scowling image of Megatron.
Optimus’s vents wheeze as he cackles.
“That will be all, then,” Megatron grits out, using every nanite of self-control not to pop Swindle’s helm off when the little purple bot has the audacity to salute at him. It’s the little things like this that act as physical milestones for how far along Megatron has come. Usually he wouldn’t even think twice before blasting insubordinate bots through the stratosphere.
…maybe it’s the company. Who knows?
Optimus bombards him with questions the entire way back to his habsuite. He barely vents, not that a hallucination would need to. His imagination matrix is pretty detail oriented.
“–and I swear if it’s some slag like an off-brand version of dark-energon–”
“Shut up, idiot,” Megatron grunts, heaving the box onto his table. He double-checks to make sure his door is locked, shutters his window – read: pushes his shelf to cover it – and when he’s sure the only witnesses in the room are Primus, himself and his delusions, he opens his box.
Optimus makes a loud, interesting noise ranging between a squawk, garbled static and a very loud scream.
Swindle’s finds this time end up being another piece of Prime’s smokestack, a long narrow piece of plating that, when Megatron glances up at Hallucination Prime, looks like it could be a forearm guard, and lastly, a mangled ball of wires and pipes that might be part of Optimus’s internal pistons.
“Huh,” Megatron murmurs, turning the probably-piston-among-other-things in his servo. “Not bad this time. What do you think?”
Optimus’s optics are cycled so wide that Megatron is sure they’re going to fall right out of their sockets. He looks vaguely ill. Like he’s just watched something grotesque and disturbing.
“Whuh–what the fuck?” Optimus whispers, horrified. “Megatron, what the fuck! What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck–!”
“Helpful,” Megatron rolls his optics. He bends down, reaching for a component beneath his berth. When he finds the slight nook in his flooring, he removes the panelling and takes out another box from within the secret compartment. It’s bigger, and sturdier and, most importantly, holds all of his precious merchandise.
“Oh my fuck,” Optimus is still cursing, his vents out on full blast despite the fact that he doesn’t need a single breath of air. He’s not real. “Megatron. Megatron, is that…is that…are those my frame parts? My–I think I’m gonna’ purge, I think I’m gonna’ purge out my whole fragging tank and die a second time–by the slaggin’ Pits, Megatron, what the actual fuck?”
“You’ve asked that already,” Megatron deadpans. “You’re in my head, Prime. Read the room.”
“I can’t fucking–I can’t read slag because I’m not in your slagging head, you jacked pipe-sucking Pit-spawned piece of scrap! Are you crazy?” Optimus laughs. It sounds deranged. “Are you crazy?! Put those back! Stop putting me in a box, oh my fuck–”
Megatron, who has been ignoring Prime’s meltdown, closes the lid of his Prime Prime PartsTM, hiding away the latest addition to his growing collection.
“What’s wrong with you?” Megatron asks, scowling, as he watches Optimus pace metaphorical holes in his floor.
“Me?!” Optimus shrieks, throwing his servos into the air. “The frag!? ME?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“Stop breaking down on my carpet–”
“You don’t even own a slaggin’ carpet–!”
“–and calm down. We never had a proper memorial service. I’m collecting the pieces.”
“Yeah right,” Optimus drawls, wheezing. “For sure. Swindle is just selling…by Primus, Swindle is selling my grey parts on the black market–”
“The market isn’t technically big enough to branch into a black market.”
“–and bots are–bots are buying that shit! You’re buying that shit! Soundwave recommended his slaggin’ stall on the radio! HE HAD YOUR SIGNATURE!”
“Shut up!” Megatron yells back. His engine revs loud and angry, almost loud enough to drown out Prime’s own volatile engine. “Shut up! You don’t get to talk! You don’t get to be angry, you slagging traitor!” Megatron heaves an in-vent, ignoring the static rushing up his vocal components straight from his aching spark. “I wasn’t the one who died. I wasn’t the one who left everything to go off and be heroic and moronic and selfish and so slagging stupid–.”
“Megatron–”
“You’re the one that gave me these pieces to collect! You’re the one who left me to piece you together!”
The silence rings loudly in the absence of sound. Megatron’s vents roar, pumping heat in the form of curling steam through his chassis, his seams, trailing between his teeth and up into air. His spark is an incinerator waiting to burn something. Maybe itself.
Optimus doesn’t look any better. His optics are cycled to their widest setting, a blazing blue color that Megatron would usually see across a battlefield, energon streaked across his battlemask. Except right now there is no battlemask, and there isn’t any energon streaked over his face.
Instead, it’s an insurmountable amount of grief; etched into every plate, every fold, every divot and every line. He looks so fucking sad, standing there.
“Megatron…” Optimus starts slowly, carefully, his glyphs laced with such heavy sorrow that they catch in Megatron’s intake and choke him. “Megatron, I…”
“Get out,” he rasps, taking a step back. The scene is painfully familiar. He draws out his sword. He doesn’t think this is a battle he can win.
“I’m right here,” Optimus says, softly, broken glyphs filled with static, like crooked welds made with a broken torch. His optics are so fucking blue. “Megatron, please, listen to me. I’m right. Here.”
“You’re dead,” Megatron snarls, brandishing his sword out. It trembles. What a pathetic sight. “You died. Right in front of me. Don’t pretend. Don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying,” Optimus whispers. He takes another step forward. Megatron takes another step back. His back plates hit the wall. He feels like a mech waiting for his execution. His executioner, painted in red and blue, comes closer still, his axe nowhere to be seen. “Please. Please Megatron, I can’t keep doing this. I’m not in your head. I’m real. I’m here. I’m real.”
Megatron’s sword pierces right through Optimus’s chest plates with each step he takes. He walks right into it, letting it push through him and out the other end as he walks. One step in front of the other. Megatron plasters himself against the wall, a coward, afraid, his sword a puncture in Prime’s frame, a grey obstruction digging straight through his spark.
When Optimus is close enough to touch, to touch without the sword sticking through his body, he does so gently. Brings a servo up to caress Megatron’s face. His digits…aren’t there. He can’t feel anything. It’s simply cold. Frigid, even. As if being kissed by polar winds so bitter that his plating cracks under its grief. Megatron feels like he’s cracking beneath Optimus’s cold cold grief.
He doesn’t know when he’d closed his optics, but when he opens them, half of his face plating is numb. His HUD warns him of temperature imbalance, cold pressure warning, offlining nanites in his arm. He feels so so cold.
And Optimus is still here. Touching him. Not touching him. Not-touching him.
“See?” Optimus whispers, pressing his servo into Megatron somehow, like something that isn’t real, isn’t solid. A hard-light projection. A hologram. An apparition. A–
“You’re…you’re…”
“I’m real,” Optimus begs, without having anything to beg for. “I never left.”
“You’re going to pace holes in your metaphorical carpet.”
“Shut the frag up.”
“Hey, it’s your metaphorical carpet I’m trying to look out for,” Optimus rolls his optics with a huff. “Primus forbid a mech cares now-a-days.”
“You,” Megatron seethes, throwing a jagged claw at Optimus – fuck, a corporeal version of a dead Optimus, what in Primus’s ever-loving half-blown rusty exhaust-pipe–
“You don’t exist.”
“Clearly, I do.”
“You shouldn’t slaggin’ exist!” Megatron clutches at his helm. “You shouldn’t be here! You’re dead! You died! I have your frame pieces–”
“Yeahhhh,” Prime’s features twist, “we really need to address that actually.”
“–you blew up into a million pieces–”
“And counting!”
“–I must be malfunctioning or something, because this isn’t possible–”
“I just proved it’s possible. Are you okay?”
“NO!” Megatron practically bellows, hot steam escaping through seemingly every seam in his frame. He spits out smoke. His processor must be frying in his helm. “No, I am not the slightest bit fine. How is this even possible?!”
“Pits if I know,” Optimus shrugs, like he isn’t a walking talking hard-light version of himself post-offlining via exploding straight into Unicron’s aft. “I’m still figuring out what to label myself.”
“You’re supposed to be dead!”
“That’s a pretty boring label.”
“You’re dead. Are you an idiot? Go back to being dead.”
“Huh,” Optimus Prime – who is very much not dead – muses, and he looks at Megatron like he’s the one being unreasonable. As if Megatron is the one who’s supposed to be dead and who's supposed to stay dead instead of haunting him like some…like a–
“Ghost,” Not Dead Prime says. “I think I’m a ghost.”
Megatron’s processor stalls just long enough for his mouth to spit out–
“The frag is a ghost?”
“Humans believed in them,” Optimus explains, somehow leaning against the wall despite being able to walk through Megatron’s physical body. “Well, some of them did. Dead humans would haunt alive humans as these white thingies that can walk through walls and make weird noises. Hey!” Optimus perks up suddenly. “I can do that! Wanna see?”
“Absolutely not.”
Optimus turns around and walks right through the very wall he’d been leaning on. Megatron stares, processor conjuring countless error messages, most of them being warnings on over-heating, and he just barely clears his HUD in time to watch Optimus walk right back into his room, digits waggling in the air while he makes stupid woo’ing noises.
“Is it working?” Optimus whispers mid-woo. “Does it feel like I’m haunting you?”
Megatron stares for a klik. Then two. Then three. Then he walks into his dingy kitchen, pulls out a bucket of solvent, and dunks his helm in.
The solvent does wonders to cool his hot metal, with the added bonus of muffling whatever Ghost Prime is harping about. Megatron takes his sweet sweet time simply existing in this little safe space of his, musing on things like what he’ll have for breakfast (rations) what he’s going to do to avoid being in another meeting with both Starscream and Prowl (probably fake his death) and also what to do about the fact that Optimus Prime – who, in case anybot forgot, exploded into a million pieces and counting – is haunting Megatron post-offlining as some apparition dubbed by pathetic ooey gooey alien organics.
Megatron slowly rises from the solvent, not because he wants to, but because his hot helm has managed to warm the solvent to an unpleasant lukewarm temperature. When his optics shutter clear, Optimus Prime is, unfortunately, still present in his room.
“You’re still here,” he notes distantly.
“Yes,” Optimus nods. “I never really left.”
And then there’s that whole fact to parse through. Apparently every time Megatron thought he’d seen a flash of red and blue armour and dismissed it as him going insane, it had actually been Optimus, not just some avid hallucination. Actual dead Optimus Prime walking through walls and giggling through High Command meetings and–
“You rust-licking Pit-glitched scrap heap,” Megatron glares, furious. “You were the one knocking shit off my shelf–!”
“Ah,” Optimus has the decency to look sheepish. “Yeahhh, I was still figuring out this whole…ghost thing.”
“–and refusing to let me recharge–”
“I was getting lonely!”
“You’re dead, you moron!” He seethes. “Dead bots don’t get lonely!”
“I think I would know more about being a dead bot,” Optimus huffs, crossing his arms. Megatron wants to wring his neck and kill him a second time. “Since I’m the ghost.”
“And stop calling it that stupid slag.”
“Mmm,” Optimus makes a show of tapping his chin. “No.”
“Fuck you.”
“Noted,” Optimus snorts. “Now, do you want to hear about ghosts or not?”
Megatron whirls around – he’d been pacing more holes in his metaphorical carpet – to glare, but Optimus-who-looks–a-little-less-like-a-Prime is unfazed. There’s something else in his expression too. Something that resembles the times when Optimus would get a stupid idea and let it marinate in his processor, before bestowing the tidbit of moronic wisdom on Megatron to suffer through. Red warnings are already flagging his system, but it’s too late to tell him to shut up; he would never listen to Megatron, and also, his mouth is already moving.
“–like my spark is being pulled somehow, and it matches with the–”
“Wait,” Megatron frowns, lost. “What?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Optimus huffs, more exasperated than annoyed, and repeats himself. “I said, when I woke up it felt like my spark was being pulled by something. Like merging or–”
Megatron’s vents heat up.
“Don’t talk about bonding with me, you fragger!”
“I’m not talking about bonding or fragging,” Optimus deadpans. “I’m talking about merging.”
“That’s still provocative.”
“Only if you make it provocative!”
“This isn’t making any sense,” Megatron’s frown deepens, and he lets himself continue pacing at a less violent speed, cradling his chin with his servo as he thinks. “Let’s assume you’re telling the truth and I’m not losing my logic centre–”
“If you are, blame the dark energon.”
“–and that you are, in fact, a fragmentation of a spark lingering outside the Allspark. The pull of the Allspark after a bot’s offlining is known to surpass any sort of lingering attachment a spark would have while in-frame, and that’s the only thing that could possibly keep you from joining it.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Optimus nods, completely unhelpful.
“That's the only way of putting it,” Megatron sneers. “And by that definition, this little situation of yours is impossible. No spark can escape the Allspark’s pull.” Then, under his breath, “maybe it is the dark energon.”
“For once, I’m not inclined to agree,” Optimus rolls his optics. “Mostly because this is obviously not impossible. I’m standing right here, very possible and in the metal. Or…not metal, I guess. Half-there-metal.” Then he smirks. “Ghost metal.”
“Even after death you are insufferable.”
“So you agree! You agree that I’m real and haunting your spark!” Optimus claps his servos together, and it’s a bit strange to witness, because Megatron watches him slap his servos together but no sound comes out, no ping of metal on metal. It’s only when he notices this that he begins to notice other things, like how Megatron only hears one engine rumbling, and one frame hissing and clicking as he moves, and only one pair of pedes that walk around his room. Optimus Prime exists with only his voice. And Megatron wonders if…if–
“I’m the only one who can hear you,” and then, quieter, “I’m the only one that can see you.”
Optimus wilts like decaying organic material. His expression drops, optics cycling big and pathetic, his expression falling to something pitiful, like a sparkling that’s been kicked in the faceplates. His pauldrons sag, his metal presses against his frame. He doesn’t make a single sound, and his movements are silent, but Megatron can practically hear the stupid whine of his saddened engine, the way his plating would rattle. His finials, usually perched tall and straight above his helm, sink past his chin.
Optimus-who-looks-more-like-Optimus-than-Prime seems to express with every single nanite in his build. It does wonders in making Megatron feel like total slag despite having done nothing but state the truth.
“It's…” Optimus purses his lips together before trying again. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re the only one I’ve been able to talk to. I’ve…I’ve tried.”
Megatron doesn’t need Optimus to tell him exactly who he’s tried to talk to. Megatron has seen Optimus linger in Prowl’s office, trail after Ratchet like a lost scraplet looking for its nest, watch Jazz from across the meeting room with longing in his optics.
Megatron has assumed Optimus had been a hallucination just because of this; because nobot seemed to sense that there was a Primal apparition milling about.
Well then.
“So you are a leech whose urge to bother me is so strong you’re able to resist the pull of the Allspark,” Megatron huffs, ruffling his back plates to settle and chase away the unsettling chill lingering in his struts. “Right. Okay, let’s say I believe you.”
Optimus brightens just as visibly as he had sunken. Megatron’s spark does a strange aerial maneuver worthy of a Seeker Ritus.
“That still doesn’t explain much of anything,” Megatron hastily tacks on to ignore his warming engine. “You exist – okay, sure, fine, let’s go with that – it still doesn’t explain this whole…”
He gestures his servo in a loose wave. Optimus pouts. Honest to Primus pouts.
“You just pointed to all of me.”
“Exactly,” Megatron stresses. “Wayward sparks aren’t a thing. It’s not supposed to happen. It’s never happened in Cybertron’s known history!”
“Actually…” Optimus pauses, optics brightening. He’s got that familiar look on his face, one that spells an impending headache that will linger in Megatron’s cranial unit for cycles. “It has happened before.”
“Oh really,” Megatron drawls. “Let me guess: another blithering human tale?”
“Not quite,” Optimus snickers. It might just be the low gloom of the dark cycle, but Optimus looks so solid and real, standing before him now. His plating glints, as if the metal is really there. His optics sparkle like starlight. It might just be the shadows, but Megatron swears the space where Optimus stands is just the slightest bit brighter. Maybe it’s the lighting. Maybe he really is delusional. “But you won’t like what I’m about to say nearly as much as if I had talked about human folklore.”
“Is it too much to ask for you to blow up a second time?”
Optimus grins, bright and wide and kind of dopey-looking.
“There’s only one mech I know who’s come back to life. Twice, may I add. He really is impossible to one-up once he’s put his mind to something.”
Megatron’s spark plummets to his tanks. Realisation hits him like a shuttle at full speed; zero drag and maximum over-drive.
“You cannot seriously be considering–”
Optimus brandishes his arms out as if announcing Megatron the winner of a lottery.
“Your invaluable and ever loyal former SIC, now faithfully inaugurated Supreme Sky Commander and New High Command Councilor!”
“Starscream,” Megatron groans into his servos. “Of all the corroding slag-eating self-servicing prissy glitches out there, it just had to be Starscream.”
Of course, the moment Megatron is actively looking for Starscream, the blithering nuisance-on-wings is somehow nowhere to be seen. Starscream doesn’t take living up to his designation lightly, and can usually be heard through the entire high tower for the entire duration of the work cycle.
So the vacant Starscream-shaped silence permeating through the halls is more than a little suspicious.
“He should have been back from that scavenging flight cycles ago,” is what Slipstream throws over her shoulder, voice flat and uncaring. “Should be in the west wing, unless he crashed and died.” And then, under her breath, “if only Primus were that kind.”
“Saw him tethering some jet into medical,” Dirge offers when Megatron checks the west wing, where the fliers stay during off-cycles.
“Oh, I do remember seeing him,” Ratchet muses when Megatron asks, servos-deep in an offline bot’s chassis. He looks mildly bored, like he could be doing this in his recharge. “Threw a fit when I tried doin’ my fraggin’ job to look at the mech he was dragging in, though. You’d have better luck asking Knockout.”
“Hm, Starscream?” Knockout taps a gleaming claw along his chin thoughtfully before lighting up when Megatron brings his predicament up. “Ah, yes! He came in here a few cycles ago with Thundercracker.”
“Thundercracker?” Optimus asks, brow-ridges furrowing, concern swimming in his optics.
“He hasn’t bothered reporting in for cycles?” Megatron asks, brow-ridges furrowing, irritation swimming in his optics.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Knockout huffs, waving at Megatron with his wrist. “I’d suggest sitting that prissy jet down to talk, though. Slagger almost ripped my tires off.”
“That’s just Starscream being Starscream,” Megatron pointed out.
“Usually I’d be inclined to agree,” Knockout nods. He cocks his hips to lean on one leg, crossing his arms over his chassis, something sombre on usually sharp features. “I don’t know. He just seemed pressed. Was a pain to maneuver around during surgery. Kept, well, screaming at me.”
“Surgery?” Optimus cocks his helm.
“Well where is he now?” Megatron presses, ignoring Prime’s question.
“I recommended the sick bay, or the RCU, but I haven’t seen either of them there during shift, so it’s Unicron’s best guess where Starscream took them.”
Megatron ex-vents hot air, frustrated, and leaves the medical ward with a scowl.
“The one time Starscream gives me some peace and quiet and it’s when I need him to be useful for once,” he growls, making his way through the winding halls of the east tower. The only other place that Megatron can think for Starscream to be is the seeker’s personal habsuite. It’s barred from entry and Megatron’s half-convinced Starscream’s booby-trapped the corridor, but Megatron’s running out of ideas. The fragger even has his comms blocked.
“Calm down,” Optimus tuts, jogging to catch up. “He’s probably resting up after a long flight.”
“Impossible,” Megatron sneers, “that pretentious jet will fight through anything just to drag a Council meeting through slag. He hasn’t attended one since he left.” Then, after a small thoughtful pause. “Maybe this is Primus smiling down on me. Maybe Starscream’s dead.”
“Don’t be a convoluted glitch,” Optimus makes to wack at his pauldron, but his servo just passes right through his metal. A vivid chill explodes within his plating, and he can’t hold back the full-frame shiver that wracks up his struts. Optimus, to his credit, looks more than a little sheepish. “Sorry.”
“Once I find that Pit-spawned menace I’m going to tear his wings off for wasting my time.”
“Megatron…”
“Or maybe get him kicked off the Council once and for all. Neglecting his duties must have some sort of penalty.”
“You’re such a problematic drama-queen.”
“…the frag is a drama-queen?”
They arrive at Starscream’s quarters relatively quickly, mostly due to the decrease in leg-traffic. Much like the hall that crosses Prowl’s office, the corridor leading to Starscream’s habsuite is devoid of all life. Even the shadows seem to cower away from the innocent-looking door built into the far-off wall.
“Right,” Megatron takes in a deep-invent, steeling his resolve. “Pray for my success.”
Optimus rolls his optics.
He gets no response when he knocks once, then twice, and then a third time just in case the first two weren’t heard. The door is either soundproof – probably is, considering this is Starscream’s room – or there isn’t anybot home, because Megatron can’t hear the slightest hint of movement.
“Maybe he’s not home?” Optimus tries. Megatron turns to glare at him.
“Can’t you walk through his door?”
“I mean, technically I can, yes,” Optimus answers carefully, and then at Megatron’s smirk hurriedly continues, “not that I’m going to just…walk into Starscream’s room just like that! This is a private space!”
“You had no qualms about doing that to me!”
“You’re different!”
“That doesn’t even make sense!”
“I’m not disrespecting Starscream and sneaking into his hab,” Optimus huffs, crossing his arms and sticking his nose in the air like a snob. “Be normal and polite.”
“Starscream!” Megatron shouts, narrowing his optics at the door. It definitely looks tampered with, probably reinforced and then rigged up to spontaneously combust any mech stupid enough to try and break into his room. “Starscream, I demand you answer my hail and open this door! As your leader and as Lord High Protector; and so Primus help me, if you’re trying to make my life difficult–”
The door swings open so fast that Megatron barely has time to duck away from being hit square in the faceplates. He doesn’t have much time to recover before Starscream sticks his head out from the fraction of the open space to glower up at him.
“Keep your voice down, you inconsiderate ground-kissing cog-licker–”
“Ground-kisser and cog-licker,” Optimus whistles, “impressive mouth use.”
“–or I’ll rip your voice box out and feed it to you from up your aft,” Starscream hisses through his fangs, yelling with ferocity and rage despite doing so in lower-case glyphs. His glare is something to behold, a bright, piercing crimson that resembles smelting pools. “What. Do you want?”
“I wanted to…” Megatron flounders a bit, unsure of what to say, unsure of how to get Starscream’s story without seeming suspicious. He glances at Prime, who shoos him with his servo in a “go on” motion, completely useless.
“…talk.” He finishes lamely.
“Talk,” Starscream mocks, deadpanning. “Right, and I’m the new Prime.”
“This isn’t a joke Starscream,” Megatron growls, taking a step forward. Starscream’s wings instantly shoot up, and his lips pull back into a vicious snarl. Megatron scowls right back. “What crawled up your tailpipe and died, anyway?”
“Watch it, oh glorious and sacred High Protector,” Starscream sneers, “or the last thing you’ll be worried about is what’s up my tailpipe.”
Megatron feels his engine rev, and he takes another step forward. Starscream hisses, a subsonic rumble matched with a high-pitched grating noise. His wings hitch higher and fan out, taking up space and blocking any view of what could possibly be happening behind the door. Not one to be out done, Megatron hunches down and braces his weight, claws flexing. Behind him, he hears more than sees Optimus slap his palm against his helm.
“Primus-forbid you use your big-mech glyphs and actually communicate instead of posturing,” Optimus mutters. “Primus-forbid you utilise manners.”
“He started it,” Megatron rumbles, baring his fangs. Starscream stares at him like he’s crazy.
“…what?”
“Really?” Optimus deadpans. “What’s next; an energon goodie for good behaviour?”
Megatron whirls around to thrust a digit into Prime’s face.
“You shut up, you good-for-nothing virus-addled leech! I don’t wanna’ hear it from you!”
“Riiight,” Optimus rolls his optics. “Because I’m the one throwing a tantrum right now because somebot values their own slaggin’ privacy instead of letting you barge into their personal quarters demanding answers for questions you haven’t even had the decency to ask. I thought your raging warlord cycles were behind you.”
“And I thought your days of being an irritating little scraplet-spawn stuck to my aft plating would be over, but nooooo! Guess nobot really gets what they want.”
“Uh,” Starscream doesn’t even flinch when Megatron whips back around to face him, optics a fuming red and steam pouring out of his mouth and all. “Right. That was…are you high right now?”
Megatron wrings every thread of patience in his frame – “Megatron, come on, deep vents now, I know you can do this like a grown mech” – when he relaxes his threatening posture and straightens out. To tame the very real and very adamant urge to punch Starscream’s “what the fuck is wrong with this guy” look right off of his faceplates, he crosses his arms.
“No,” he grits out instead of screaming bloody murder. Primus better be fluffing up a nice throne room for him up in the Allspark for this. “Now, stop being stubborn and come with me. We have things to discuss.”
Starscream, whose wings have lowered to a relaxed stance during Megatron’s outburst, quickly repositions them high and threatening. Megatron doesn’t even speak wing-speak, but even he can read the bristling indignation.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” he spits, defensive. He’s clutching the door handle like it’s about to run out of his grip. “Unlike the rest of this Pits-forsaken New High Command, I have important matters that require my attention. Go frolic with that blasted Praxian and eat slag.”
Starscream moves to slam the door. Megatron, quick as lightning, sticks his pede in between and barely hides a wince when the resulting impact nearly dents his armour. He bites back a retort – and it has nothing to do with the way Optimus says his designation slowly, like it’s a warning – and instead dodges under the vicious swipe Starscream takes at him. This close, Megatron can practically hear the seeker’s plating rattling out of anger.
“What is going on in here that’s so important, you pompous jet,” Megatron asks, trying to peer past Starscream’s high wings. It’s dark, and that’s about all Megatron can make out. “Is this another treacherous scheme for my deactivation? Demanding an election for a presidential figurehead wasn’t enough?”
“This may come as a surprise to you, but I don’t actually think about you a whole lot,” Starscream sneers, trying to slam the door closed through Megatron’s pede when it becomes clear that he isn’t going to move away. “I’d rather rust away in Unicron’s afthole than let you occupy any of my conscious threads.”
“So then what is it?” Megatron presses, wincing when Starscream shoves the door particularly hard and a crinkle appears in Megatron’s pede armour. Starscream most definitely notices, if the miniscule glimmer of glee in his optics is anything to go by, and he moves to slam the door again. More out of self-preservation than temperament – because slag, his pede is starting to hurt, dammit – Megatron grabs the edge of the door to keep the seeker from slamming it again. The moment his servo touches the metal, Starscream hisses loud and angry, plating flaring, looking just about ready to bite Megatron’s helm off.
“You better move your servo before I re-move it for you, you insolent Pit-spawned ground-pounding–”
“Star?”
It is a novel experience, watching Starscream freeze up like he’s been shot with a stun-gun, left to stand idle and useless. His optics widen, and he straightens out, wings hitched high above his helm.
Then, to Megatron’s growing surprise, Starscream disregards him completely, whipping around to whisper over his pauldron, tension mounting upon his shoulders. Where he had appeared angry and ready to fight mere kliks ago, now Megatron’s ex-SIC looks ready to…to…Megatron’s isn’t even sure what Starscream looks like. A scared animal? A terrified sparkling? It’s an uncanny scene, something Megatron isn’t used to seeing. Starscream, in all their long long centuries together, has only ever looked this frightened exactly once. A long long time ago. Back when Skywarp had almost–
Somebot shuffles around in the darkness, and Megatron tries peering through the gaps between Starscream’s wings. Not that it ends up being much help. A klik later, Skywarp appears by Starscream’s side, optics hazy and dull. He’s obscured by his trinemates shadow, but it does little to hide how pathetic he looks.
“Wow,” Optimus comments softly from behind him. “That’s a first.”
“What are you doing, you imbecile,” Starscream hisses, though it’s nowhere near as scathing as when he’d directed his glyphs at Megatron. “I told you to–”
“I know,” Skywarp whines, “but then he started to shiver all over and–”
“Quiet,” Starscream snaps, optics darting to Megatron before going back to Skywarp. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what Starscream’s trying to do. “Go back inside. I’ll be there in a klik.”
“Megatron?” Skywarp says instead of doing what he’s told. He tilts his helm, as if only now noticing the lumbering warlord at his doorstep. “Is that Megatron?”
“No,” Starscream says.
“Yes,” Megatron says louder, and pushes himself into this little crevice of opportunity. “I need to speak with your prissy Air Commander, but he won’t leave this blasted room. What is going on in there?” And then something crosses his mind, a particular memory file that he’s tried to purge on numerous occasions to no avail. His tank twists. He feels no need to relive that particular moment. He shakes his helm. “You can frag later. This matter is urgent.”
Starscream looks downright murderous. In comparison, Skywarp takes on the expression of kicked hydrohound.
“I should rip your spark out,” Starscream spits through gritted teeth. “I should rip it out and hang your grey frame right outside of–”
“It’s Thundercracker,” Skywarp cuts in. “Something’s wrong.”
“You idiot–”
“Thundercracker?” Megatron asks, surprised. “What’s wrong with him?”
Starscream mutters expletives and Skywarp looks at him and narrows his optics, and it’s only after a few kliks of awkward silence that Megatron realises the two of them are talking through their comms. He exchanges a confused glance with Optimus, who shrugs.
After a moment, Starscream’s wings sag, and Skywarp’s hitch up, and the red seeker retreats further into the room while Skywarp takes his trinemates place by the door.
“TC’s sick,” he starts quickly, pinning Megatron with an unwavering stare. “Something’s wrong with him. We don’t…Knockout said–well, I forgot what Knockout said, but he said something about how TC’s grounded until he gets better, which hasn’t been happening because nothing’s changed with him and being stuck in berth is making him upset but he can’t get out of berth because he’s sick and–”
“Skywarp,” Optimus cuts in gently. Obviously, this doesn’t work, so Optimus turns his optics to Megatron with a pleading look. Megatron relents after a klik, ex-venting long and loud.
“Skywarp,” he cuts in, harsher than Prime, “what’s wrong with Thundercracker?”
Skywarp glances at Megatron, then glances behind him, and repeats this a few times before finally admitting:
“TC’s sick,” he murmurs. “He’s sick.”
The habsuite Starscream had claimed – and subsequently decided to share with his trinemates, as Megatron is only now becoming aware of – is lit by a handful of fluorescent crystals that glow in dull colours. Most of the ceiling is actually a large circular sky-door which Starscream personally oversaw in its construction. Megatron hasn’t been inside of the Elite Trine’s habsuite before, but he imagines that had the sky-door been open like it probably normally is, then the room would be bathed in bright light.
Right now, the room is stifling, small, and dark. The fluorescent candles cast everything in an eerie orange glow, and the low light does wonders in bringing out every scratch and dent in Megatron’s plating. The air filters through his vents thick and hot, like vapour, or perhaps more like the burning air above a fire. Megatron vaguely wonders if Starscream is trying to imitate the closest representation of the Pits as possible.
If he is, then Thundercracker’s greying frame fits the picture.
He’s…well, shivering doesn’t feel like the right description, because the room is near boiling, and Thundercracker’s vents glow bright orange. Despite this, his plating rattles with the force of his shaking, making this awful chattering noise that sounds like a hoard of scraplets, a chilling symphony brought together with the high whine of Thundercracker’s overheating systems.
His ex-vents come out as smoke that runs over his dull metal in snaking patterns that might have looked impressive, as if emerging from a flight with clouds clinging to his armour. Except Thundercracker lies prone against the large berth pushed into the furthest corner of the habsuite, he’s not-shivering, and his blue looks greyer than grey.
It’s not the most gruesome sight Megatron’s been subjected to. Far from it, actually. It takes his processor a few kliks to even realise that something is inherently wrong with this scene. There’s a lagging period where his logical matrix tells him this is fine, Starscream will make a fuss about Thundercracker for a couple of vorns and then he’ll get his helm back in gear and keep fighting, it’s not like losing Thundercracker is a major loss to their seeker force, and he’s far from the most valuable outlier in their ranks, Megatron will simply have to coerce Starscream into adopting a new trine member–
And then it hits him like a shuttle, that no, he cannot coerce Starscream into doing anything, and that the last time something like this happened, it had been Skywarp, and Starscream had been worse than an Autobot armada, and it had been the vorn where Megatron had been so close to losing the war simply because the treacherous seeker threatened to reveal every single Decepticon outpost to public broadcast if Megatron didn’t find some way to bring his trinemate back from the brink of deactivation.
His processing threads scramble to recategorise the threat level. Because Starscream cannot be considered anything less than a threat, and he needs a category of his own. Except these calculations are interrupted with the very abrupt and chilling realisation that yes, Thundercracker is deactivating right before him, greying, overheating frame and all. It only now occurs to him that…that…
That this shouldn’t be happening at all.
They’re in peace times. Bots don’t deactivate in peace times. Not like this.
“Have you seen Ratchet?” Megatron can’t help but ask.
“Have you seen Ratchet,” Starscream mocks, in grand contrast to the way he cradles Thundercracker as if he were a sparkling straight out of the well. As if his blue armour that has withstood showers of gunfire were now as vulnerable as new protoform still fresh from the forge. His claws clink softly where he caresses Thundercracker’s helm, only moving away from his invisible patterns when Skywarp moves to replace a cooling seal along Thundercracker’s frame.
Starscream’s venom is familiar where he laces it along his glyphs, but it is foreign against the tender care displayed in every strut, every length of metal. Tenderness so clear along the edges of his wings that even Megatron, who barely understands Wingspeak, can read it.
“Did you get him to see Ratchet?” Megatron asks again. He must sound harsh, because Optimus frowns at him. Like any of this is his fault.
“I’m not about to let some imbecile Autobot medic stick his servos in my trinemate’s gears,” Starscream snarls. “If Thundercracker offlines I will sever Knockout’s helm myself.”
“The war is over, Starscream,” Megatron sighs.
“For some of us,” Starscream scoffs. He readjusts the cooling patch stuck along Thundercracker’s vents before resuming his ministrations. “Some bots still think that success is built off of the greying frames of those deemed lesser. Long live the Decepticon empire.”
Megatron narrows his optics.
“What are you spinning up now, you treacherous slint.”
“Me?” Starscream’s optics flash a vivid red, and his wings fan out wide and defensive. Despite this, his hold on his trinemate is gentle, and Megatron has to wonder how his ex-SIC can exist in so many contradictions. “You did this, oh great and powerful Lord Megatron. You and that high-helm you’ve managed to paint silver ever since you got everything that you wanted.”
Megatron spares a glance at Optimus, who’s already looking at him. He’s frowning, brow drawn close, as if tasting energon gone sour. Megatron fights not to wilt under his disapproval.
“Cut your accusations, Starscream,” Megatron snipes, irritation bubbling up his tank. “Don’t blame me for your own incompetence. He’s your trinemate, not mine.”
“You did this!” Starscream snarls, wings snapping up so fast they clang together. Behind him, Skywarp does a spectacular job of watching Megatron like a hungry scraplet just waiting for him to slip up. Megatron turns to the bristling seeker before him, because he can only face one of them, and he’d rather face Starscream’s fury than the other two.
“You did this! Unicron’s spawn! You kept sending him on those stupid scouting missions that we all knew were complete slag but you did it anyway! You sent him anyway, and you kept sending him! Did he do something to piss you off? Did he speak out of line? Did you do it to spite me?”
Starscream barks out a bitter laugh.
“Of course you would. I never let you rest during war, why would you ever let me live in peace?”
“Shut up,” Megatron bites, taking a step forward despite the way the two seekers hiss at him. “Stop painting me in your delusions. Stop blaming me for something I have no part in. If you’re going to sit there and curse me, then I’ll gladly let you and your Pits-forsaken trinemates grey out in this room.”
Optimus huffs, and it’s a soft sound, barely audible above the whine of Thundercracker’s engines and the angry thrum of everybot else’s. However, it does wonders in drawing Megatron’s attention. Like a magnet against a wall of iron, Megatron’s optics flicker to Prime’s, to the sharp turn of his downturned lips, the way his optics cycle wide and sad and pathetic, the unhappy slope of his pauldrons.
“Or,” Megatron straightens up, forcibly loosening the tight coil of his struts and cancelling the red warning flags that flare up when Starscream bares his fangs and Skywarp flexes his claws. “Or, you can tell me what happened, and I can bring it up in council on your behalf.”
Starscream, to his credit, does a great job of hiding his shock. The gloom makes it nearly possible to hide the widening of his optics. And the gloom makes it impossible to miss the way Optimus’s faceplates light up, how he looks equally surprised but is terrible at concealing it.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Starscream narrows his gaze. “What do you want?”
“An explanation,” Megatron nods to Thundercracker’s prone form, struggling to push air through the furnace of his systems. “We are in peace times. I am your leader. You will do as I command, because as Lord High Protector you are under my rule.”
Starscream looks at him for a long moment, searching his faceplates for something. Megatron doesn’t know if he finds what he’s looking for, but whatever he sees, it’s enough for him to turn his head and scoff, a semblance of a grin peeking past his lip plates.
“Pretentious,” he mocks, but there isn’t that same heat in his glyphs. If anything, he just sounds tired now. The lighting brings out the scratches and dents and chipped paint that Starscream would usually rather be caught dead than in such a state. Megatron hadn’t known Starscream could care so much about a bot. “But I suppose it would be a bad stain on your record if your first vorn as the singular leader of Cybertron was marked by such a tragic deactivation."
Megatron snorts at that.
“Well?”
“No need to sound eager,” Starscream muses. “It’s not as–”
“It’s the smog.”
Skywarp does a commendable job of not cowering beneath the two (three) pairs of optics that turn to him.
“Insolent brat,” Starscream mutters. Skywarp ignores him.
“It’s the smog,” he repeats, looking back at Thundercracker. “He’s been out there the longest, because his radars are the best and everybot knows that, but we didn’t know there was anything wrong out there. He came back from the last scouting mission coughing up his energon and complaining about the heat but we didn’t….we didn’t know anything was wrong so we didn’t say anything until he–”
“Until he started frying his circuits,” Starscream cuts in. “He can’t fly. He can barely walk. His processor is this close to burning right through his helm.”
“The smog…” Megatron frowns, thinking. “The science team declared it harmless.”
“The science team is incompetent and should be hung by their helms over the high towers,” Starscream scoffs. “They were wrong. That slagging smog is toxic. How did they not notice? How were their readings so fucking off? Even an over-clocked moron with half a functional fragging cranial unit could’ve–”
Thundercracker coughs, pitiful and painful sounding, more of a wheeze than anything. Starscream snaps his intake shut. Quiet but for the furious firestorm of his optics, somehow louder than anything he could have said.
“The smog is toxic,” Megatron repeats slowly, eyeing Thundercracker’s prone form. “It’s…it’s what, burning him? What made him all…” Megatron gestures lamely at Thundercracker, and then snaps his servo back when Skywarp threatens to bite it off for getting too close.
“Nova Storm is experiencing the same thing,” Starscream explains, though he sounds like he’d rather punt Megatron out of the high towers than do so. He sounds just about ready to recharge right beside his dying trinemate. “Knockout said it’s affecting their engines. Corroding their thrusters. It’s like killware with fire.” He turns to pin Megatron with an unwavering glare. “Burning them up from the inside. He may as well have flown straight into a smelter. And he just kept going. You kept demanding they fly.”
The last time any of them encountered a gas this deadly had been Shockwave’s merry doing, and that had been a millenia ago. It had done more harm than good, burning seekers out of the sky like insects alongside the aerial Autobots. But Shockwave can’t be blamed for this; the smog had arrived stellar cycles after Unicron’s defeat, rising from the depths of their planet like an ominous warning. The science team, Shockwave included, had assured them that the gas was harmless. That the several tests they’d conducted had all come back as negative.
“It’s the friendly version of smoke,” Wheeljack had shrugged when he handed in his report.
Megatron watches Thundercracker shruggle to vent, steam pouring out of his seams that glow a dull amber, like hot coals stuck between his plating. Some friendly smoke this is, Megatron thinks absently. Thundercracker’s engine gives a painful wheeze, as if in agreement.
Because that’s how they have all been thinking about the smog up until now, Megatron included. Just some harmless smoke that does a great job of getting bots lost in its haze, messing with internal maps and chronometers and secluding New Iacon to itself. Prowl had frowned a whole bunch when the scavenging reports came in all the same; obscured by smog, unable to locate destination.
Steadily pouring out of the deep canyons of Cybertron, Megatron hadn’t given the smog more than a single processor thread, finding it more of a nuisance than anything else. “Might need to worry about recalibrating everybots filters once it reaches New Iacon,” Ratchet had mused during Wheeljack’s report.
Might have to worry about bots burning alive once it reaches New Iacon, Megatron thinks now. His spark drops to the depths of the Pits.
“This is…this is really bad,” Optimus murmurs. “All the…all that fighting and struggling to make everything work out, and it’s…it can’t be all for nothing.”
“This was all for nothing,” Starscream snarls, an angry echo to Optimus’s trembling glyphs. “That smog is going to reach New Iacon, and we allocated all our resources to rehabilitation and we don’t have enough energon to get to Pits-forsaken Luna II.”
“Star…” Skywarp gives his trinemate a look.
“Don’t,” Starscream snaps, and then turns back to Megatron. In the low light, his optics burn hotter than Cybertron’s sun. His exhaustion vanishes, warping into that familiar anger that has accompanied him for so many centuries.
“Well, oh glorious leader? Don’t you think it’s fitting? Was this how you envisioned your reign to end, when you rallied us down in the Pits? We travelled across the whole universe for four million fucking cycles to end up at square one, and now we’re only moving backwards.”
He lets out a laugh, high-pitched and grating and half-crazy and bitter and maybe just a little bit sad. He sounds bitter and sad when he mutters, “All that slaggin’ work, all that slaggin’ everything and those damned Functionists ended up winning anyway. From the Well we rose, and to the smelter we return.”
“That’s not true,” Optimus murmurs. “After all this, it can’t be true.”
Nobot listens.
Megatron’s habsuite is overly bright when the door slides open. He’s got all the shutters set to automatically open at the first hint of sunlight, and usually it does a great job of making his living quarters feel like there’s still some life to it.
Coming from Starscream’s dreary cave of a room, the natural sunlight nearly burns.
He pings for the lights to dim and the screen shutters to darken, though it does little to soothe him. If anything, the gloom reminds him of Starscream, and his trine, and how one of them is dying and they’ve got no idea why.
He’s always known that being a leader meant dealing with the lives of other bots like playing a strategy game. He’s done…less than savoury things with his pawn pieces, less than savoury things with all of his pieces actually. He’s stopped feeling bad about it over the near endless cycles. When the Peace Accords were signed, it had been a bit of a struggle to let that sort of morbid mentality go.
Being leader of the Decepticons had felt natural, like part of his coding. It lit his engine on fire to write that very first poem, down in the depths of Cybertron, without having ever seen the sky. It brought fire to his spark when he would rally the mob of the arena down in the Pits, speaking to the masses. He loved the thrill of the fight. The thrill of battle. War hadn’t been a terrible thing, in the end, for a bot like Megatron.
But despite all of the struggle and strife, the pressing loneliness of leading a faction on his pauldron and knowing that if he failed, it would be the end of everything; throughout it all, he had never been alone. Not really.
Not until now.
Not until Optimus Prime fulfilled his martyr wish to die a hero, leaving Megatron – for the first time since that very first poem – all alone. He is the leader of his kind, Lord Protector of Cybertron, and he’s never been lonelier.
Alone and responsible for the shitshow that is his post-war victory. If he had known that this is what signing the Peace Accords would result in, he’d have shot Prime in the face during the negotiations himself.
“Well,” Optimus sighs, trailing into the room behind Megatron like the despondent ghost he is. “That was…depressing.”
“Really?” Megatorn snorts, sinking into the sofa with a weary sigh. “I hadn’t noticed. Was it Starscream’s docile nature or Thundercracker’s dying one?”
“Not funny,” Optimus frowns, disappointed. He even has the audacity to put his hands on his hips like some teacher admonishing an unruly sparkling.
“I wasn’t trying to be, it already is.”
“Your fliers are burning up from a corrosive smog that’s slowly inching toward New Iacon and you think it’s funny?”
“Cosmicly,” Megatron lazily waves a servo in the air, “or something.”
Prime’s frown deepens.
“Or something.”
“Yeah,” he slides a servo over his faceplates, sinking deeper into his cushions with the false hope that he can somehow meld into them and cease existence. “You have it easy. You just died and made it my problem.”
“Hey,” Optimus’s frown morphs into a scowl. “Don’t you dare try blaming your terrible leadership skills on me. I was trying to save all of you.”
“And what a great job you did,” Megatron bites back. “You saved us from being consumed by a giant planet-eating Pits-spawned deity and now we’re all going to shrivel up and burn anyway. You bought us all, what, a few stellar cycles? A vorn?”
“You are such a piece of slag,” Optimus crosses his arms. “You’re upset that you can’t solve this problem by beating it to a pulp of parts. You are so immature and bolt-headed and stupid–”
“Come up with any more relative names and I’ll think you unlocked a processing unit post deactivation.”
“You are so–” Optimus throws his arms up and curses. “You can’t wallow in self-pity over a job you literally fought me for! You almost torched Starscream’s aftplates when he brought up the idea of an election!”
“For good reason. That prissy jet would have us all forsaken to the Pits if it meant he could expedite construction of Vos and allocate all resources to his over-charged fliers.”
“Yes, well–” Optimus pauses for a moment, considerate. Then, “okay, well, that’s fair. But that’s besides the point. You wanted this. You fought for this. Lord High Protector.”
“You know, Optimus,” Megatron tilts his helm from the headrest to pin his glare at the apparition. “Never in the history of our planet’s function has there been a Lord High Protector without a Prime to protect.”
Whatever Optimus is about to say is cut off when he shuts his intake with an inaudible noise.
“I’m Lord High Protector of a dying race, without a Prime to protect, and of a planet that’s been torn to pieces.”
He stares at Optimus and he takes a moment to wonder if, at any point in his function, it had been written that he would be able to have what he had always wanted. A life where hard-work surpassed function, where bots could choose to be anything and nobot would have to die by an enforcer's servo for daring to dream about seeing the sky. A life where he functioned, and Optimus functioned beside him, and maybe, just maybe, they had had a chance.
Well, there’s no use in thinking about it now. As much as he hates to admit it, Optimus is right. He’s got bigger problems to deal with then wallow in the would-have-beens, and that includes Pits-spawned smog and a dead-brought-to-life Prime. Between the two, the smog seems like the easier task to conquer.
Heaving a heavy ex-vent, Megatron straightens out. He can still feel Optimus’s optics on his face, tracking his every move.
“For a bot who’s supposed to be resting in peace,” Megatron says, “you’re immeasurably concerned about the fate of the living.”
“Pieces,” Optimus points out, walking closer. “I’m technically in pieces – that you collect, mind you. I haven’t even forgotten about that. I’m in pieces and nowhere near any peace. You’d think I earned a few orn off, at least?”
“For all the trouble you’ve left me?” Megatron huffs, rolling his optics. He grabs a datapad at the center table and taps it on. Within his HUD, he activates his tactical unit. In his contacts, he scrolls until he finds Starscream’s ping. “Maybe, when all this is over, and we’ve finally cleaned the mess you’ve left us, Primus will grant you your slumber.”
“Maybe,” Optimus echoes, thoughtful. He sits across from Megatron, on the one-seater that’s missing an arm and is singed from the top. Megatron off-handedly wonders how it all works, being a ghost, and why he’s immune to slipping through furniture. Another question to add to the list of Why, Oh Primus? It’s a growing collection.
“I quite like being in the loop though,” Optimus shrugs. “It’s entertaining. It’s very much like in movies.”
“It’s annoying.”
“Tomato tomahto” Optimus waves his servo.
“…what?”
“You know,” Optimus grins, leaning forward to match Megatron. “It doesn’t matter what we think, at the end of the cycle it’s still the same. I’m here with you, and you can see me.” His grin widens, and his optics crinkle, and he looks so very much like Orion Pax. Like the civilian Optimus Prime. Without a scratch from war. Megatron almost envies him as much as he loves the look on him. “I find it fun. You find me annoying. Primus must think we make a good team.”
Megatron snorts.
“Because only Primus knows what we’re capable of.”
“Hey, don’t diss our leadership skills, we’ve barely even started!”
“Four million cycles wasn’t enough for you?”
“It clearly wasn’t enough for you,” Optimus shoots back. He pitches his voice deeper, and fritzes his voice box as he says, “no, Prime, I want to order bots around until the rust eats up my gears and I’m but a pile of spare parts. What else will I do with myself?”
“I do not sound like that,” Megatron tries frowning. It’s an embarrassing failed attempt.
“Do too,” Optimus says, in that same stupid baritone that sounds raspy enough to mimic Starscream. “See, you can see my anguish on my face at the prospect of not being able to terrorise everybot whenever I want. I’m allergic to retirement.”
“I’m not stooping to this level of immaturity.”
“What immaturity? This is not immaturity! How dare you accuse me, Lord Fucking Megatron, of being–”
Megatron throws the datapad at Optimus. It goes right through him, but that doesn’t matter. It has the intended effect. Optimus starts laughing.
“You are the worst partner ever,” Megatron shakes his helm.
“I do try,” Optimus snickers.
“Did you come back from the Allspark just to bother me?”
Optimus, in a bout of uncharacteristic meekness, lowers his optics, just slightly, as if something were staining Megatron’s mouth, and Megatron tracks their trajectory automatically. Countless centuries of battle makes the habit hard to curb. Usually he can ignore the protocol. But this time he lets it run its course, subconsciously, his processor mapping out where Optimus is looking, why his optics go glassy as he looks at–
As he’s looking at…
“Among other things,” he says quietly. Megatron pretends his spark isn’t burning like fuel on fire when he coughs to clear his equally hot voice box.
“Well, you could have procured some sagely advice while you were with the Allspark,” he says, picking up another datapad. He doesn’t look at Optimus as he continues. “Wisdom of the Primes and all.”
“I already gave you some wisdom of the Primes,” Optimus huffs, and the strange spell that had fallen on him vanishes as he leans back in his seat, crossing his legs and staring up at the ceiling. Megatron feels the weight of that stare leave his shoulders like boulders rolling down his arms. “I gave you sound advice, actually, but you totally blew it by getting side-tracked.”
Megatron frowns.
“What are you blithering about now?”
Optimus sighs, like Megatron is the one being difficult.
“I told you to talk to the one mech we know who has come back from deactivation,” he explains to the ceiling. “The timing of everything is just too close to be coincidental. I wake up after single-handedly defeating Unicron–”
“Humble much,” Megatron snorts.
“–right as this strange smog starts appearing? It just doesn’t add up.”
“What, are you saying you were brought back by Primus to save us from some smoke?” Megatron asks skeptically. “You exaggerate the willingness of Primus when it comes to bringing bots back from the dead. We’ve got four million cycles of war and only one other time it’s happened.”
“But that must have happened for a reason too,” Optimus argues, straightening up. His face is stern, brow plates drawn close, optics hard, and right now he looks like Optimus Prime the soldier, the leader of the Autobots and hero of Cybertron. The switch is seamless. He doesn’t even need his battlemask.
“Starscream?” Megatron asks.
“Yes,” Optimus frowns harder, squinting at his pedes. “Which is why we need to ask Starscream about what had happened. Because think about it! Right before Starscream had returned from deactivation, you had managed to flip the tides of the war during the Stagnant Cycles in just an orn. And then he comes back from deactivation during our greatest loss that century? He must have… I don’t know, but he must have had some kind of influence.”
Megatron doesn’t say anything. Because he knows Optimus is right, and the memory files he had hidden away deep in his processor are crawling up from the ashes, playing flashes of scenes that feel like influxes. Because it had felt like an influx, at the time, accepting battle commands from Thundercracker and Skywarp. It had felt unreal, when, through dead-Starscream’s instruction, the Decepticons had managed to flip the tides of a losing war.
His memory banks replay the way Starscream had come back an orn later, plating shiny, walking and talking as if he hadn’t been offline for nearly a vorn.
“Once he returned we experienced heavier losses. Had he not come back, we might have won the war. Your lot would have gone up in flames had Prowl had his way.”
“Maybe. Or that could just be Starscream being Starscream,” Megatron points out, even though he knows Prime is right. “Stubborn glitch doesn’t care for anybot but himself. And anyway, he’ll never willingly talk to me about something like that. Might think I’m trying for a power trip or something equally ridiculous. He has no reason to cooperate.”
It’s quiet for a few kliks, as they both think, and then Optimus cycles his optics wider, and he turns to Megatron, realisation painted over his face.
“Except he does though,” he says. “He does have good reason to play nice. This is the first time he’s ever acted like this. Thundercracker is sick and he’d… I’ve never seen him so… subdued. I’m tempted to even say sad.”
“The second, actually,” Megatron cuts in, his tactical unit spinning with each new piece falling in place. “He’d been like this before, when Skywarp had almost offlined. Starscream became…different, after that. Cunning. Quiet. Cooperative once I promised to help. I had thought my deactivation would follow soon, but…nothing.”
“Who knew,” Megatron glances up to see Optimus smiling softly, servos clasped neatly in his lap. “It seems even Starscream can love.”
“It does come as a shock, no?” Megatron muses. “But that prissy jet is fritzed. I’d say it’s beyond love. He’d do anything for those two imbeciles he calls trinemates. He’d have fought me down in the brig had I refused medical treatment. With his bare claws against impenetrable armour.”
“The things we do for love.”
Megatron looks at Optimus, but Optimus is already looking at him. His spark grows hot under that stare. As if the Prime were actually here, sitting across from him, in the metal. As if they had their second chance like everybot else.
He thinks that, if a chance existed – a lifetime out there, in the realm of realities, where he could have the things he wanted – he might just go to those extremes. He might have been able to look Starscream in the optic and understand the madness that seems to consume him when something happens to those precious few he treasures. He might have understood, and he might have done the same.
Yes, Megatron agrees. Easily. It’s frightening how much he agrees, actually.
“The things we would do.”
Megatron calls an emergency meeting joors into the next cycle. Starscream threatens to cut his feeding line and force it down his throat. They come to a peaceful negotiation where Megatron gracefully notes that if Starscream does not cooperate, he will be down a wingmate.
Optimus gives him that disappointed Creator stare. Clearly, Prime has no idea how anything got done within the Nemesis during wartime.
However, the emergency meeting can’t just be Megatron and Starscream throwing insults back and forth and hoping for some sort of conclusion to spontaneously occur. If they garner any insight from cross-referencing stories, then Megatron will eventually need a bigger team to flesh out a solution to their smog problem. That means pinging Shockwave, Prowl – and Jazz, by extension, because he’s nosy and will complain about not being invited, the little glitch – and Soundwave. Megatron would have preferred to discuss this with a general like Elita-1, but clearly she’s made herself scarce and left him with the slim pickings.
It’s always a strange disparity, watching the highest commanding officers of opposing factions file into the same office room for a (hopefully) docile discussion. They’ve been at war for so long that, had everybot not gone through with mandatory battle protocol adjustment, Megatron is sure his HUD would be spinning in red.
“Megatron,” Jazz hums as he slides through the door, flicking two digits from his helm in a faux greeting. He’s all lax and easy-going and dangerous and apparently, he’d once been drinking buddies with Prime. From before Prime had even been notable as Pax. Megatron idly wonders just how long Jazz has known Prime for. Megatron also wonders, not for the first time, just how these bots will take to the news he’s about to share.
“Jazz,” Megatron nods back. Prowl doesn’t bother saying anything as he sinks into his seat beside the little silver bot. Soundwave is already opening up the analogs and linking himself to the console. Shockwave is a silent foreboding presence beside him. Starscream saunters in a few kliks later, the doors to the meeting room shutting with a hiss behind his high wings.
“This better be worth my time,” Starscream drawls, hitching his pauldrons higher and throwing himself into the nearest chair. “I am very close to losing it.”
“Surprise surprise,” Jazz sing-songs. Starscream glares at him.
“Enough,” Megatron sighs, pinching his nose bridge. “Before any squabbling can happen, we have very important business to attend to right now.”
“Ah, yes,” Starscream waves a servo. “The End of the World, Volume III.”
Prowl squints at that, then turns to Megatron and pins him with his own cut throat glare.
“…what?”
“Didn’t you hear?” Starscream crows. “It is the catastrophe of the vorn. Sometimes I find myself wondering if tearing each other apart in warfare would have been a kinder fate.”
“Any time you wanna’ quit speaking in riddles, by all means, please do,” Jazz drawls. “It’s not a good look on ya’, mech.”
Starscream bristles.
“Who even invited you?!”
“Megatron, actually. Wanna’ see my invite ping?”
“If it means ripping the ping code from your helm, then for sure.”
“As always, thank you Starscream,” Megatron snaps, cutting off the two bots. “For making my job so much more difficult.”
Starscream gives Megatron a long bow, canting his wings to catch Jazz against the helm.
“I aim to please, Lord Protector.”
“He’s got the flair,” Optimus points out. He looks impressed, the fragger. “You can’t even tell his whole world is ending. Both literally and figuratively.” And then, because Prime is a moron, he tacks on, “wait, that was lowkey poetic. Megatron, did you catch that?”
“Alright, that’s enough, all of you,” Megatron ignores him, planting his servos on the table with a loud thump. “Time to get serious.”
“I’m always serious.”
“Shut up Jazz.”
“Yeah Jazz,” Starscream sneers. “Shut up.”
“Starscream.” Megatron seethes,
“Yeah Starscream,” Jazz sneers back.
“Let’s go back the ‘world ending’ bit,” Prowl cuts in. “Just for a klik. If you can spare the kliks, of course.”
“Was that…” Megatron pauses to squint at him. “Was that sarcasm?” He turns to Prime. “Was that sarcasm?”
“Nah,” Optimus waves him off, “he’s just like that.” And then, after a pause. “I think.”
“By the Pits,” Starscream mutters. “Our Lord’s lost his circuits.”
“Again, the ‘world ending’ bit? Seems important.”
“Soundwave: agrees.”
“Of course you would agree, pede licker.”
“Ooooh, Soundwave agrees! Who would’ve thought!”
“Scandalous!”
“Shut: up.”
“Come closer and I’ll show ya’–”
“Optimus Prime is alive.”
It seems rather unfair that in the midst of everybot talking over one another, it is at Megatron’s declaration that they all stop and stare. Starscream is half over the table in an attempt to strangle Jazz, for Pits sake! It isn’t even the craziest thing Megatron has ever announced in his functioning. Declaring war against the Council and Sentinel Prime, for one, is definitely up there on the list of Things That Deserve A Pause of Contemplation.
Surprisingly, it’s Shockwave that breaks the silence.
“Lord Megatron…” he starts cautiously, which is weird, because Shockwave doesn’t really have the cranial capacity for a lot of caution. “Are you unwell?”
“Thank Primus some bot is asking the real questions,” Starscream scoffs, clambering off the table. “Because what the fuck was that move?”
“It wasn’t a move, as you so eloquently put it,” Megatron growls. Optimus has his head in his hands, the traitor. “It’s the truth. Prime never joined the Allspark and I have been seeing his frameless apparition for stellar cycles now. He thinks he can help save Cybertron from mortal disaster.”
“Wow,” Jazz says through the following quiet. “You are so fucked up, mech. I’m going to kill you now.”
In between Jazz launching himself across the table, Soundwave and Shockwave intercepting the little silver bot, Starscream shrieking about Megatron’s ailing processor, and Prowl doing an impressive job of trying to drill holes in Megatron’s plating with his stare alone, Megatron feels that Optimus’ head-in-hands reaction may be…rightly appropriate.
“Fragger!” Jazz curses, looking very much like a rumpled minibot by the way Soundwave holds him up and away from solid ground. “You think you’re funny?!”
“I’m not being funny.”
“Good! ‘Cuz ya’ aren’t!”
“This is serious, Jazz.”
“Processor corrosion is detrimental to proper functioning,” Prowl monotones. His optics are overbright. He’s frowning so hard that Megatron is impressed his plates haven’t cracked. “I fear Soundwave’s speculation was correct. I advise a full check-up with–”
“I’m sorry, what?” Megatron cuts in. “Speculation? What speculation?”
“Speculation is a kind word,” Starscream drawls.
“High Command has been…worried about your mental state, my Lord,” Shockwave explains. His finials dip low, and he taps his claws to his massive gun arm as he continues. “You’ve been talking to yourself. Quite a bit.”
“No I haven’t,” Megatron grits out. “I’ve been talking to Prime.”
“You mention him again and I’ll rip your voice box out!” Jazz snaps. He’s still being held above the floor by Soundwave. That fact doesn’t make the knives in his servos look any less dangerous. Megatron is surprised the little saboteur hasn’t started throwing them at him.
“This is what you dragged me out here to talk about?” Starscream scoffs, crossing his arms. “To discuss your delusions? Or is this a sort of joke? If it’s a joke I must applaud you.”
“If this is a joke I’ll have your helm on a spike,” Jazz hisses.
“If this is a joke I’m going to let Jazz put your helm on a spike,” Prowl adds.
“If this isn’t a joke I’m urging you, my Lord, to seek professional help.”
“Soundwave: highly recommends Rung.”
“SHUT UP!” Megatron roars, slamming his servos against the table. “Imbeciles, the lot of you! I’m not joking, or losing my cranial unit, or letting mites eat at my processor, or any other stupid idiotic explanations you may have! Prime is here, right now, with all of us. He’s standing right here–” He throws a servo out to Optimus, who peeks out between his digits “–for Pits sake!”
“Right,” Prowl hums. “I’m going to shut off for a while, actually.”
“I mean, if you could make him appear, that would do wonders for your image,” Starscream says. “Some ancient Primus-ridden miracle that you can pull out of your tailpipe would really stick your act together, trust me.”
Megatron groans loudly.
“OH!” Optimus suddenly shrieks. Megatron jumps, bumping his knee joint into the table with a resounding clang. Whipping around, he pins Optimus with a withering look.
“He’s officially lost it,” Starscream huffs.
“A-fucking-greed.”
“What the fuck, Prime,” Megatron hisses, ignoring the others. “Want me to kill you a second time?”
“Shut up for a klik!” Optimus exclaims, bounding over to his side. He plasters himself close, close enough that the chill of his aimless spark cools over his armour, ringing up a note of temperature influx on his HUD. “Okay, okay, I’ve got the perfect idea!”
“Pray tell,” Megatron grumbles.
“Tell them to ask you anything about me. Anything that you wouldn’t know.”
“Why would I do that? To look even more of a fool?”
“Holy slag, he really has lost his screws.”
“‘Cause I’d tell you the answer,” Optimus explains. “Duh.”
“That’s stupid. It will never work. Where did you even come up with that slag?”
“He’s beyond even Rung. At this stage, there’s only one thing we can do for him.”
“Beheading?”
“I was going to say retirement.”
“I’ve watched human films, and it works all the time! It’s a cliché!”
“That’s it, I’m leaving–”
“Ask me anything,” Megatron cuts Prowl off. “Prime claims he’ll be able to answer anything I don’t know. And I’d like everybot to know in advance that I’ve said my piece about how stupid this idea is.”
“It is,” Jazz snorts, still hanging from Soundwave’s grasp. At least the knives are gone. “You’ve probably hacked into some personal diary of his.”
Starscream cackles.
“Prime kept up diary writing during intergalactic wartime?”
“Better than sticking it in a hole to vent out your–”
“Say that again, you junk-spawned bolt-fuck–!”
“I have a question.”
Jazz and Starscream pause in their arguing to stare at Prowl. The bot’s gone oddly still, not that he was ever very emotive to begin with. His optics are bright, brighter than usual, and Megatron has to wonder if the ex-TIC has been drinking again. He seems eager to stare at Megatron like maybe he can make him burst into flames by optic-contact alone. Even the micro-fibres of his optics barely move. He looks at Megatron like he’s energon, and Prowl’s a starving Sharkticon.
“I have a question,” he says again, leaning forward just the slightest, enough that he can lean against the table. His doorwings are dipped low, low enough that they look like a pathetic imitation of sad seeker wings. With his vocaliser thick with static, Prowl says, “I have a question for him,” and Megatron thinks, this is either going to go very very well, or this is all going to go straight to the Pits.
And oh how Optimus looks like he wants to melt into the Pits. He’d seemed ecstatic just a klik ago, excited to announce his existence. Now his finials dip so low they clink against his pauldrons, and his optics are bright, and his mouth is a spark-broken curve that decorates a spark-broken face.
“I used to go drinking with Prime.”
Some drinking buddies, to mourn so deeply when made to drink alone.
“Well?” Megatron says, crossing his arms so he can ignore the way Optimus’ shake. “Ask away tactician.”
“You are so adamant about this. You’re so determined to keep up this facade. Either you’re lying, or–”
“Or he’s lost his processor,” Starscream mutters.
“You can’t know this story,” Prowl presses on, like Starscream never even spoke. Prowl’s looking right at him, but speaking through him as if Megatron were the ghost. “It was too long ago. He hadn’t even known you. He’d barely been online a few vorn.”
Despite speaking softly, the heavy silence echoes Prowl’s words like bells in a cavern. Every glyph is clear. There’s not many additives, not many annotations in his dialect, because he’s keeping his tone nice and careful. Neutral. Like stating facts. His glyphs fall flat and empty. This kind of confession should be dripping in feeling, in emotion layered by notation after notation. His grief should be thick. But it’s not. It’s factual and nonfeeling, and Megatron isn’t even surprised.
“Orion Pax was onlined as a cogged archivist and was assigned the position of record keeper for the 22nd Southern District Iaconian Enforcement Agency. I was cold-constructed as an enforcer in Praxus and stationed at the agency during the Enforcement Insurge; we only met due to Jazz coaxing Pax into breaking into the agency vaults and corrupting files that tagged his signature as a wanted criminal.”
Megatron turns to Optimus, perplexed. Optimus has enough decency to look sheepish.
“Jazz managed to escape, but the corrupted code had Orion Pax’s signature all over it. So he was arrested. I was the one who arrested him.”
“Is this for real?” Starscream mutters. Shockwave shakes his helm in disbelief. “Even a sparkling can erase their own code. How the slag–”
“Turns out he left it there on purpose,” Prowl explains. “To give Jazz a chance to escape detection while the scrambling team cleaned out his muck. I was the lead on Jazz’s case at the time, and my promotion was on the line. So, I signed for Orion Pax to be thrown into the smelter or deconstructed for parts as punishment for his blatant disregard for the law, and, more importantly, as petty revenge for dragging me down a tier in the agency.”
Starscream slaps a hand over his mouth and starts laughing. Jazz snorts under his breath. Megatron can’t tear his optics away from where Optimus is looking at Prowl with such fondness, it’s like this very same bot hadn’t demanded for his offlining only a few vorn into his life.
“Jazz snuck into the holding cells that dark cycle and broke Orion Pax out. My TACnet had given me the probability numbers, so I had tagged Orion Pax before any of the investigation on his file corruption had even begun. That dark cycle I followed the two of them out into Polyhex. It was a terrible drive, because they didn’t take any main roads.
“But I followed them. All the way into Polyhex, into the tiny slums where minibots play music for shanix out on the streets. I ignored sixteen petty crimes while driving behind Jazz and Pax. The percentages pointed to a greater reward if I dragged Jazz and Pax back to the agency.”
“He was a loser before the war too,” Starscream snorts. “What a surprise.”
“I found them, eventually,” Prowl continues quietly. “Drinking at a bar. Not caring for the fact that they were bots on the run. I caused quite the commotion, breaking in the way I did, kicking down the door and demanding the two of them come back quietly to Iacon.”
Prowl’s optics adjust, and they brighten somehow, impossibly, into an icy blue-white. He looks at Megatron, and he looks mad, almost, as if somehow even millions of cycles before they ever met, all of his problems originated from Megatron.
“I almost shot him. It would have brought me back to my original tier, and dragging Jazz back would have gotten me promoted. But I didn’t. Orion Pax drove back to Iacon with me. I vouched for him at the agency; claimed he had been under threat of deactivation when Jazz entered the archival unit. I got demoted to street enforcer and Orion Pax got reassigned at the Hall of Records, under the Historical Unit, where he couldn’t cause any more trouble.”
“What is your question, tactician?” Megatron asks.
“I could have shot him. I didn’t. Only two other bots know why. And one of them is dead.”
Megatron turns to Optimus at the same time that Prowl looks into the empty space beside him. His searching is desperate, like he doesn’t want to let himself believe that it might be true, that Optimus is still here somehow, listening to his story with an answer on his glossa. They must have been good drinking buddies. Some of the best. To garner such a reaction without even having to be seen.
“I–” Optimus pauses, cycling his optics. He looks between Prowl and Megatron, back and forth, as if deciding on what to say. No bot seems to be in a rush to fill the silence. “I…”
He pauses.
“Well,” Optimus eventually starts, glyphs coming in slow. Like he’s tasting the memory file on his glossa. “I hadn’t actually done anything at all. Not really.”
He’s looking at Megatron, but Megatron knows that his glyphs aren’t directed at him.
“I was so overwhelmed by that cycle, after Jazz broke me out of the holding cells. I was probably one loose screw away from crashing, so Jazz bought me drinks. They were good, I think. It was a long time ago.
“And I remember Prowl bursting through the doors, and he’d been really odd back then. Built stocky and made from spare parts. Anybot could tell. They didn’t put a lot of effort into cold constructs. He looked so tired too, with his paint all scratched up, and his chevron cracked. He wasn’t built for long drives, and his tires were torn. But he’d driven all the way down to Polyhex anyway. I felt bad.
“He told me he’d shoot me and drag Jazz back to Iacon. I told him I’d always wanted to go see Praxus’ crystals, and that Jazz plays wonderful electrobass, and that Prowl could shoot me if he wanted, but it’d be nicer if he drank with us, and that I’d drive him back to Iacon on my truckbed, and then I’d let him shoot me once we got home.”
“That’s…” Megatron sputters. “That’s all it took? Really?”
Optimus shrugs.
“Jazz played a nice piece at the diner, and I helped Prowl fix the door of the bar. I think he’d shaken a few threads loose during the car chase. He told me I was a terrible criminal. Gave me a list of things I could’ve done better.”
“You are a terrible criminal. You can’t even lie for slag.”
“But I wasn’t trying to be a criminal!” Optimus whines. Honest to Primus whines. “I told Prowl that he could shoot me once he’d had something to drink, and then Jazz kept playing us music and Prowl kept reminding us that he’d have to kill me and turn Jazz in at some point. Clearly that never happened, because by then we were obviously friends and that new concept fried Prowl’s remaining circuits and he bluescreened. Jazz ran off after that and Prowl and I drove back to Iacon.”
“You are insufferable,” Megatron sighs. “I can’t believe that this slag is what’s going to save the world.”
“Don’t diss it till’ ya’ dish it,” Optimus winks. “Or…or something along those lines.”
“Well?” Jazz pries, impatiently drumming his digits against his crossed arms. “Done playing house-mech with your delusions?”
“Some of us have things to do,” Starscream agrees.
Megatron ignores them to instead look at Prowl. He’s still staring at Megaton, white-blue optics nearly sparking with intensity. He’s a sleek battle-rigged patrol car, with thick hover wheels and sleek door wings. His paint is dull but smooth, and his armour, though clunky thanks to war-time upgrades, fits his frame well. If Megatron had to guess just based on looking at him, he’d have never pegged Prowl as a cold-construct.
Because Optimus is right. Cold constructs were never pretty. They never sat right. Megatron would know. He’s a cold construct too. Spare parts never took well to being reused as whole, unbroken bits and pieces. Megatron’s legs used to tingle with unaligned circuitry that never took to his protoform.
He tries to imagine that awkward, ugly look on someone as refined as Prowl. He’s got a stern, mean look to him, black and white and straight-cut. Megatron tries to picture what Optimus had seen once. A clunky, box-cut enforcer half-fried and a misalignment away from bluescreening because he made some friends.
He can’t picture the look. Maybe that’s why Prowl chose to ask this question.
Mulling over his glyphs, Megatron settles on, “You’re processor couldn’t handle one dark cycle of music being played by a wanted criminal and a bot who offered to let you shoot him so long as you drank with him first.” And then, before anybot can say anything, he adds, “Which is pathetic, by the way. You bluescreened because he claimed you were friends and he drove you back to Iacon. Whatever happened to your idiotic musician anyway?”
“He…” Prowl’s voicebox fritzes and crackles with static. Beside him, Jazz’s visor has brightened to an uncomfortable degree. “He showed up to my-uh…to my habsuite. A vorn later.” His optics flicker to the space beside Megatron, where Optimus stands like a hopeful statue. “Told me… told me I was being reassigned to the 31st Eastern district. Where Pax lived.”
Megatron snorts.
“Some drinking buddies.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Starscream butts in, slamming a servo into the table. Prowl and Jazz are too busy staring at the spot beside Megatron to say anything. Soundwave is tapping furiously into his console. Shockwave seems to be holding back nonexistent tears. “That was fucking terrific. Now will somebot explain what in the slagging Pits just happened?!”
“I think…” Jazz starts slowly, helm turning from Megatron to Optimus, mouth hanging wide open. “I can’t believe I’m abouta’ say this in… my functionin’, but I think…”
“Megatron is right,” Prowl murmurs. He looks shocked. It’s the first expression beyond trembling anger that Megatron has ever seen on his face plates. “Optimus is still alive.”
“Well this is just fantastic!” Starscream harps, slapping a servo against the table as he cackles. “I can’t fucking believe this! Prime’s been haunting your sorry aft for stellar cycles and you never even thought to bring it up? Everybot thought your circuits were fried!”
“I’m glad somebot is finding some humour in this situation,” Megatron deadpans. Then he quickly turns to Jazz and says, “Optimus says that you should stop skipping out on recharge cycles by crawling through the vents. He can apparently phase through the walls and he follows you around like a creep during most dark cycles.”
“Aww, OP,” Jazz sniffs, touching his chest. “That really touches ma’ spark.”
“Don’t make me sound like a creep,” Optimus frowns from where he sits beside him. “I only did it a few times. For his benefit.”
“Okay,” Megatron rolls his optics. “Creep.”
“Wow, this is so messed up,” Jazz snorts, leaning back in his chair. He keeps glancing between the empty space beside Megatron and Megatron himself, as if he’s hoping that between one shutter and the next, Optimus will appear to him. If only he were that unlucky.
Between Prowl and Jazz’s constant questioning on little details about Optimus he had never been privy to – those glitches probably still think he’s delirious. Either that or the trust issues among these bots are insane – and Starscream’s heckling, his processor is starting to overheat.
“We had a point to this meeting,” Megatron sighs deeply, resisting the urge to sink into his chair like a puddle of hot oil. Hot oil sounds really nice, actually. Megatron can’t remember the last time he took a hot oil bath. He adds it to the list of Things That Will Probably Never Happen.
“Well, wasn’t that the point?” Jazz cocks his helm, waving a servo in Optimus’s general area. “This whole…ghost situation ya’ got going on, no?”
“That’s part of it,” Megatron acquiesces.
“I distinctly remember the end of the world being mentioned,” Prowl points out. “Twice.”
“No thanks to our Lord Protector,” Starscream harps.
“There is a reason I called you specific mechs into this meeting,” Megatron begins loudly, ignoring Starscream’s blazing glare. Instead, he turns and gestures to Shockwave. “Shockwave, if you would report your findings.”
Shockwave’s helm dips in acknowledgement, and his single optic flashes and he projects his readings onto the holographic display above the table.
“Per Megatron’s request, and Knockout’s submission of medical anomalies affecting the patrolling seeker populations, Perceptor and I went out for an expedition in hopes of analysing the smog.”
Shockwave pulls up scribed notes in Perceptor’s neat writing next to a three dimensional projection of the Lardit Canyons bordering the East of New Iacon; where Seeker’s have been patrolling in hopes of finding resources. The smog is painted in black pixels, the landmasses in contact with the smog highlighted a dull red. Shockwave plays a timelapse of projection, and they all watch as the smog pours out of the canyons like smoke from a furnace, spreading out onto the nearby land. A black-faced storm rolling towards the tiny blip of life blinking on the map; New Iacon.
“Previous testing of the smog had all come back with negative impact on our situation, beyond decreased visibility and filtration concerns. Up until Knockout submitted claims to environmental interference infecting the patrolling seeker populace.”
Megatron chances a glance at Starscream. The seeker looks impassive, uncaring as he watches the digital smog spread black digits across the landscape. It’s a crafted mask, Megatron knows, from thousands of centuries of practice. Megatron has watched the way it’s been forged, tiny intricacies in the delicate slopes of his face that have changed over time. At the start of the war it had been determination. The fall of Vos had painted him in shades of fury. Now, he looks…he looks tired. He looks upset. A different brand of upset that hasn’t quite settled on Starscream’s face yet. It’s a mask full of holes.
“Several seekers have been reported to have varying degrees of internal coolant failure. Knockout has also reported cases of engine failure, short circuiting of internals, and in extreme cases, an inexplicable lining of an ashen material that’s burning seeker frames from the inside.”
Starscream scowls.
“Upon receiving these reports, Perceptor retested smog samples carried back to New Iacon by Jazz’s department. Mirage was reported to have suffered from minor coolant dehydration as a result, but nothing to the extreme of Knockout’s reports.”
“And?” Megatron pushes. “Get to the point, Shockwave.”
“The point, m’lord,” Shockwave explains slowly, “is that the smog has, beyond our current understanding, evolved. Between the cycles following Unicron’s defeat up until the last test we ran, the smog’s composition changed from obstructive at best to near fatally lethal at worst.”
Prowl’s mouth is set in a hard line, a look so stern that it crinkles the mesh beneath his optics. Optimus doesn’t fare any better, but instead of the problem sharpening his edges he just looks worried. Endlessly worried.
“So you’re sayin’ that, what, this slag is another kill it before it kills us shtick all over again?” Jazz asks, crossing his arms. “Seriously? Again?”
“It would seem like Primus continues to bless his favourite creations,” Starscream drawls. “First an undead Prime, and then a death trap for us all to follow suit.”
“I do have questions about that, actually,” Jazz butts in, turning so Megatron can feel the distinct flare of his gaze on him. “Because you said that this was the second part of this meeting. Prime was obviously the first. And I’m sittin’ here, speculatin’ on why you would bring those two things up at the same time in the first place.”
“Astound observation, Jazz,” Starscream agrees, leaning forward to cross his claws against the table. “I’m so curious about it too.”
“The timeline is almost uncanny,” Prowl muses, frowning at nothing in particular. “Prime…offlines, and Unicron vanishes. A few cycles later, we have our first reports detailing the appearance of the smog. Prime appears as an apparition to Megatron, and now suddenly the smog is toxic.”
“Coincidence doesn’t necessarily mean correlation,” Shockwave points out.
“It begs some consideration, though,” Prowl argues. “All these events are unorthodox. It seems natural to slot them together.”
“I agree,” says Starscream. “It’s too…it’s exactly something some higher power would fuck us over with. Two unsolvable situations born from the same timeline, the same catalyst.”
“But that would that even be?” Jazz asks. “How is OP haunting Megatron’s spark and this Pit-smog creepin’ up on us connected in any way?”
“It’s now or never,” Optimus mumbles. “You have to hand over the reins, Megatron. I know it hurts you.”
“That is why…” a deep in-vent to keep from punching right through Prime’s untouchable chassis, “I invited Starscream.”
Starscream scoffs at him, likely gearing up for another loud complaint. Megatron beats him to it. “Because something like this has happened once before.”
“What, the smog?” Prowl asks.
“The dead coming back to fuckin’ life?” Jazz asks, with feeling.
“Both,” Megetron admits. He glances at Starscream, whose wings have dipped with consideration. “To a certain extent.”
He turns to Starscream then, because as of right now, he’s offered everything he can. Prime’s existence has been aired out, the dire situation of their survival has been presented, and now, Megatron is just as lost as everybot else. Because now, only Starscream can tell them more. Give pieces of this intricate puzzle they’re trying to solve with their servos tied behind their backs. And really, it’s not everyday a bot comes back from the dead.
“Are you for real?” Jazz gapes.
“Afraid so, ground-pounder.”
“For fuck’s sake…”
“Starscream,” Megatron pushes. If he sounds desperate, nobot comments. “Centuries ago, I know you remember. During–”
“It’s my story,” Starscream harps sharply. He rakes his claws against the table, drawing sparks. For the first time in millenia, he looks disquieted. Uncomfortable. Megatron almost feels bad for putting him in this situation, airing out a nasty history like this. “You don’t get to laude over my experience.”
“I’m surprised you're sharing it, Screamer,” Jazz snorts. From beside him, Prime face-palms.
“Oh, trust me, I wouldn’t normally retell such critical information to such a lowly audience,” Starscream sniffs haughtily. He settles rather quickly, however, and leans back into his chair as if resigning himself. He probably is. “But I can’t very well let my future subjects wither to nothing. This smog is in the air. My seekers cannot fly.”
“As selfless as ever,” Shockwave mutters.
A strangled silence falls over them for a few kliks. Every minute shift is heard, and everybot turns to stare expectantly at Starscream. Starscream, who is glaring at the table, wings hitched high and alert, a flash flurry of emotions swimming in his optics as he thinks.
“Come on Starscream,” Optimus urges, unheard. “While there’s still a Cybertron to save.”
Megatron opens his mouth to delegate Prime’s glyphs, but, unsurprisingly, Starscream cuts him off. The seeker opens his intake, and after a moment of hesitation, begins to speak.
It’s not every cycle that a seeker that’s not Starscream barges into his council room demanding something of him. Then again, it’s not every cycle that he appoints a new Air Commander, and Thundercracker, he muses, was hardly the first choice.
He’s meek, for one, especially for a bot claiming to be a Decepticon. Not the most loyal bot around either, if Soundwave is to be believed, which is always the case. A flimsy I’m-here-not-because-I-want-to-be situation. Megatron can probably tie that to Starscream.
And Starscream is offline now. He wonders how long it will take his trinemate to turn wing and flee.
Megatron doesn’t know what he had been thinking, appointing Thundercracker as the new Air Commander. Honestly, he hadn’t been thinking about it at all. He had meant for it to be for a temporary solution. Something to weigh the empty position down until he managed to wrangle his ranks back in working order.
And yet here the blue seeker is, barging into his Council room with the codes for entry that only High Command has access to. Megatron lets out a weary sigh. So much for his constant helm ache to have vanished alongside that nuisance Starscream. It seems he lives on in his trinemates’ most insufferable qualities.
“Yes, Thundercracker,” Megatron growls under his ex-vent, keeping his back to the seeker. “What could be so urgent that–”
“We need to retreat all of our forces and gather them to Cybertron. We need to pull a full frontal attack on Tessarus 3.”
“...excuse me?”
Thundercracker’s vents are deafening in the ensuing silence. He’s hunched over, his four massive wings tucked against his side and down his back in what Megatron recognises as a sign of respect. Or perhaps fear? He’s no expert on the matter. At the end of the day the gesture is meant to appease. He’s sure of it.
He doesn’t feel very fucking appeased right now.
“What.” He stalks forward one heavy pedefall at a time. “The slag. Did you just tell me to do? ”
“I–you–” Thundercracker takes in a shuddering in-vent. He seems to find comfort in a specific spot to Megatron’s right, his optics roving over the area as if to implant the memory of the Council room’s corner into his long-term storage unit. “I…I’ve–...m’lord, there’s no easy way of explaining–”
“How I should retreat all my forces?” Megatron offers in a tone he knows is menacing as it rumbles out of his chassis. “How I should command my whole armada to attack the Autobot’s most heavily guarded mining operation in the galaxy? Or is it that I should surrender? Run back to Cybertron? Give up? Perhaps give my helm to Prime on a silver platter? Would you like to join my late Second in Command, Thundercracker?”
“No!” Thundercracker blurts out. He quickly settles back when Megatron’s scowl only deepens. At least he’s got survival programming. “No, I’m not…I’m not suggesting surrender, my lord, or any of that. Only…”
He glances at the corner again. It’s starting to get annoying. Megatron’s got other things to be worrying about right now. Like the depleting rations of his armada. The lack of a Second in Command. The staggering losses of his frontline troops and garrisons on seemingly every outpost. The hopelessness in the bots under his command. The way he’s losing this war alarmingly fast.
“What is it then?!” He finally snaps.
“Starscream’s alive!”
Megatron’s processor nearly short-circuits.
“He’s alive! Well, not alive alive, but–” Thundercracker continues quickly, not giving him the chance to comprehend the nonsense he’s spewing. “He’s been talking to me and Skywarp ever since he went out in that–” his vents hitch “–in Galvatron’s fortress. He’s-he’s right there!”
Thundercracker throws a claw into the corner he’d been staring at. Megatron doesn’t bother entertaining him, and instead warms his cannon. Best to dispose of fritzed bots while they still had some sense in them not to fight back.
“Wait!” Thundercracker cries, seeing the glowing violet and stumbling back. Megatron doesn’t bother following him. “I’ll tell you anything! Starscream’s plans, your plans, anything! Just, just let me explain first, please, my lord. We don’t-I’m not fritzed. I’m not lying!”
“The coneheads should be able to cover for your trine until–”
“My lord–!”
“–the rain makers will have enough for a–”
“There’s an opening on Tessarus 3!” Thundercracker cries. Megatron hesitates for just a klik. It’s enough for the blue flier to steamroll ahead. “Star saw–uh, Starscream says that the Autobots are pushing at our fronts in all three quadrants because they know we’re low on fuel because their Special Operations managed to cipher through Soundwave’s firewalls and gain access to our records but–”
“Wait,” Megatron frowns. He hadn’t known that tidbit of information. “What?”
“–but because of that they’ve allocated most of their defensive forces to the frontlines too and left their deposit planets near the Plexar Belt unguarded because it’s near the back of the–no, sorry, north of the belt, sorry–uh, yes, north but not just Tessarus 3, it’s fourth moon too, just outside–”
“Thundercracker,” Megatron growls. Thundercracker’s intake snaps with an audible click. “What. The fuck.”
“My lord, I’m telling the truth,” Thundercracker tries near desperately. He’s still glancing back and forth between Megatron and that damned corner. “Starscream is right-he’s right there. He’s the one that told us to patrol the belt instead of the third quadrants frontlines–”
“You did what?”
“–and we saw it too! There’s no security behind their garrison fleet. Star–Starscream says they're getting cocky!”
“Tell your delusional Air Commander that they have every right to be; they are winning this war.”
“My lord,” Thundercracker presses, “please. Just…just look at the plans. Star made us write them down. Made us draw it for him. He’s–”
“Dead.”
Thundercracker flinches, but barrels on.
“The plans, my lord,” he repeats. “Just look at them. We…” in an uncharacteristic bout of boldness, he says, “you said it yourself, my lord. We’re losing this war. And Star…he can turn the tides. He told us how.”
Starscream is a cunning mech. Too cunning. Megatron is no fool to disregard the fact that without the seeker as his second, or even within his command, he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did during the early vorns of the war. He’s got a knack for betrayal, backstabbing, and scheming that rivals Prime’s wretched Second.
His trinemates, not so much.
Dim-witted and obedient, Megatron only really kept them as high in the chain of command as he did because a) of their extremely resourceful outlier abilities and b) Starscream refused to be of any help until the two imbeciles he dragged around were well established too.
He supposes, if all else, he will get to experience what Starscream did, hiding away in his room during off shifts. Planning Megatron’s undoing, no doubt, and dragging his two moronic underlings with him. He never got the appeal of why Thundercracker and Skywarp stuck around listening to Starscream treasonous whims; though he will never claim to understand how a seeker’s armada works.
Lowering his cannon, he slowly walks back to the head of the long table and sinks into his seat. Thundercracker doesn’t so much as twitch, watching him in trepidation. Megatron gestures to the holoscreen; nothing to lose, and certainly nothing to gain. Maybe this is Starscream’s way of mocking him from the Allspark.
“I hadn’t known Air Commanders could haunt their underlings,” Megatron snorts and leans back in his chair. He feels tired, suddenly, with the reality of his failing pursuit. Ever since that blasted devastation with Galvatron’s forces, and Starscream subsequent offlining, it seems everything is falling apart around him, slipping through his servos.
“What?” Thundercracker frowns, cocking his helm.
“Is he haunting the cone heads too?” he scoffs. “It would explain the absolute bombshow I witnessed last stellar cycle.”
Thundercracker hesitantly walks forward, fiddling with the console.
“Or is it some grand delusion? Seekers are fickle like that, I suppose. Maybe a connective misalignment–”
“We’re bonded,” Thundercracker blurts out. Then his vents flush bright orange and, under Megatron’s shocked scrutiny, ducks his helm and mutters, “uh, were… uh, we are bonded…my lord.”
“…are you serious?”
“I…” He glances at the stupid corner again. His act is convincingly uniform. “Starscream is…he never wanted – and doesn’t currently want – anybot to know. But…my lord, to trine, we bond. Seekers can’t be a trine unless we–”
“You were bonded?” Megatron asks incredulously. “With Starscream?”
“Yeah…” Thundercracker chuckles nervously. “It’s why… my lord, Starscream will probably explain it better once he’s back–”
“I’m sorry, what?” Megatron snaps. “What the slag? Is this some kind of joke?”
“No! Starscream has a plan. It’s going to work. He’s confident. He says it’ll turn the tides of this war, and he thinks… he’s determined to come back.”
“From the fucking dead?”
“Yes, my lord,” Thundercracker says, and he sounds so sure about it. Like it’s a fact foretold, and perhaps it is. Delusioned mecha will say pretty much anything; Megatron isn’t a stranger to hearing strange things from mad bots. But…he’ll entertain the plans Thundercracker is pulling up. He’ll entertain it, because he’s got nothing to lose, and then he’ll grace mercy by allowing Thundercracker to join his… his bonded, by the Pits. Maybe Megatron will have to do the same to Skywarp. It will be a staggering loss, with the offlining of two powerful outliers, but it’s better than letting them go fritzed.
“Alright,” Megatron pretends, leaning back and watching Thundercracker pull up foreign schematics. “Let’s hear what Starscream From the Beyond has to say.”
Most of the Decepticons retreated to Cybertron.
Within the same vorn, the Decepticons managed to overtake not one, but four deposit planets that had been fueling the majority of the Autobot frontlines within the Traxa Galaxy’s four main quadrants. They hadn’t expected the attack to come from behind them, and the Decepticon armada broke a clean line through the Autobot garrisons to join the diversion fleet distracting the Autobots. It was one of their greatest victories of the millenia, and pushed the Autobot ranks back. Turning the tides of the war.
A stellar cycle after the major victory, Starscream sauntered into the High Command room during a meeting, paint fresh and frame whole. As if he hadn’t been offline for nearly a vorn.
“Hey hey hey, what is up my homies? This is Blaster, the objectively better lookin’ host of CR118, here with top hits, top lists, and top of the line bits! Of! News!
“Our latest headline stars, as always, Cybertron’s Lord High Protector – alternate title Worst Leader Since Sentinel Prime notwithstanding; he recently made a city-wide announcement in regards to our late Prime – till all are one – and his floating chunks of frame. He even stole the trademark set up by the hot-spot attraction down in the market: Prime Prime Parts. Salacious old geezer…
“Anywayssss! The hot headline of the cycle? Sentimental Closure or Sacrilegious Kink? Ever since the broadcast, bots have been speculatin’ crazy theories, but can you really blame ‘em? Afterall, it’s not every cycle that your leader demands for every single piece of Optimus Prime’s greying frame to be delivered to his office. Makes a bot wonder…
“By popular demand, I’ll be readin’ out some of the theories bouncin’ around on our baby net. Soundwave threatened to eject me into space, but, heh, I’m a mech that aims to please!
“Up first, we have a submission from anonymous user S1desw1p3: I think he’s grinding that shit up ‘cause he finally ran out of Unicron’s lube–”
“CR118: now live. Soundwave: currently hosting.
“Soundwave: does not regret to inform populace of fortunate news. Blaster: has fallen… gravely ill. Soundwave: will be taking over for foreseeable future. Request: disregard previous cycle’s session. Blaster: was not in right processing.
“CR118 now playing: I’m Not a Drug Addict for Fucks Sake. Producer: M3gatr0n.”
“You have got to be kidding me…”
Megatron elects to ignore Prime, mostly out of necessity, because he is, in fact, not kidding.
Optimus kneels down to get a better look at the storage chest Megatron is trying valiantly to hide behind him. Not that it’s any use. The chest was replaced a while ago for a bigger one, because he was running out of space, and Optimus’ pieces seem endless.
Not that that stopped him.
“Primus…” Optimus mutters, like he’s about to purge. “How many pieces did you even find?”
“I didn’t find all of them,” Megatron explains, tucking another grey shard of armour into the box. It’s already crumbling, with fine dust coating his digits. He brushes those into the box too. “Swindle keeps finding most of them, somehow. I guarantee you that slimy little construction bolt is still running a business behind my back.”
“Megatron.” Optimus deadpans. “You can’t be serious.”
“And your stupid third-in-command isn’t cooperating either!”
“That’s–” Optimus slaps his servos over his face and groans loudly. “You are both unbelievable! What happened to healthy coping mechanisms! I know for a fact that Rung’s been on High Command’s aftplates about that! You were going to sessions for stellar cycles!”
“This is healthy,” Megatron states. “I’m not harming myself, or anybot else. Or anything for that matter.”
“My body is in pieces,” Optimus stresses, clapping his servos together and pointing them at him. “That you are collecting. I am rusting away under your berth. And Jazz’s pantry. And in Swindle’s storage room. What. The. Frag.”
“You make it sound worse than it is.”
“That’s just how it is!”
“Sensitive aft-pipe,” Megatron sniffs, stuffing the chest back under the berth. Optimus looks at him like he’s lost his processor to mites. “Listen, you said it yourself; if there’s a clue within your frame that can help us–”
“Yeah, I said that,” Optimus shouts, throwing his arms in the air. “But this is something else! This is a problem! A malfunction! And not to mention, you’ve been doing this slag ever since I offlined. This is almost worse than the–”
“Do not,” Megatron damn near growls. “Mention. The dark energon era.”
Optimus narrows his optics at him.
“The. Dark Energon. Era.”
Megatron scoffs and turns to leave his habsuite, ignoring Prime’s accusations. It’s not like he can jump him and start hitting the idiot over the helm, so this is as good as he’s going to get. Optimus, of course, follows like some wayward bitlet, lecturing in his audial about proper mourning and slag. Like Megatron doesn’t know what that is.
And just his luck that just as Optimus’s berating glyphs finally peter out somewhere down the hall, he manages to come face-to-face with Jazz of all mechs.
High Command all live on the same section of the towers, above the office stations and right beside the tower where the Communications Hub was established. Megatron had once enjoyed this feature because it meant that he could visit Optimus’s habsuite without having to sneak around like some sleazy one-night stand. This also meant that he had to play now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t with Prime’s annoying scraplets ever since his offlining.
Not that he has had to struggle much with the game in the last few stellar cycles. Prowl doesn’t seem to leave his office and Jazz is never around to begin with. Ratchet is a vague presence that is either on forced berthrest (read: chained to the berth and sedated by an all-too-gleeful Knockout) or constantly working in the medical camp situated on the first floor. Elita-1 is MIA. It’s been real quiet up here, in this long lonely hallway.
Megatron’s just been getting used to it, so of course now is the time for Jazz to ruin his routine and make himself a known nuisance.
“Meg-a-tron-a-lon!” Jazz sings, a bounce in his pede. “And I’m guessing OP is with you? Mech, this is so strange. Hey OP! Hi! Heya!”
“Shut up,” Megatron growls.
“Hello Jazz!” Optimus greets warmly. He taps insistently on Megatron’s shoulder despite not being able to touch him. His pauldron goes cold within kilks. “Megatron. Megatron, tell him I say hi.”
“Prime says to get lost and die.”
“Aw,” Jazz coos. “I hear ya’ OP, don’t’cha worry!”
“You are such a sour old bot,” Optimus sniffs, crossing his arms. “Retirement would do wonders for you.”
Megatron ignores him, because again, he can’t hit him, and that’s his usual go-to move.
“To what do I owe this displeasure,” Megatron grumbles, watching Jazz step in line to walk with him down the hall. The little bot is much too chipper for such an early cycle. He’s walking like he’s got places to be and bots to see, which he probably does, so Megatron can’t fathom why Jazz is here bothering him instead.
“Well, I was in the area,” Jazz starts, waving a servo around. “So I thought I’d drop by and see if ya’ came to your senses yet.”
“What are you blabbering about now?”
“Don’t play dumb, Tron-Kong,” Jazz barks a laugh. It’s an obtrusive sound at best. “I’m referring to the…hmmm. Prime Material, if you will.”
Optimus cringes at that. Megatron’s already acidic mood plummets to the Pits.
He tries walking faster, hoping to dislodge Jazz and his shorter strides. Jazz unfortunately compensates like a pro by jogging to keep up.
“Oi!” Jazz calls, pinning Megatron with a pointed look, despite the visor between them. He’s still grinning, but it’s canted sharper than what can be considered friendly. The top of his visor waggles like brow ridges. “C’mon mech. Just hand ‘em over, nice and easy. You know he wants me to have ‘em.”
“Actually,” Optimus’s face twists, like he’s bitten into something sour, “I don’t. I don’t want anybot to have them.”
“Prime says they belong to me,” Megatron lies breezily, optics still trained straight ahead. “As they should. I’m Lord High Protector.” Then he side-eyes the little silver pain-in-the-aft with a scowl. “I should have you publicly smelted.”
Jazz’s smile tightens.
“And I’m Jazz. Prime’s right-hand man.”
“You’re not, actually,” Megatron grunts. “That would be the equally irritating Praxian jamming my signal with all of his useless comms.”
“OP’s got two servos.”
“And you refuse to give me the other one,” Megatron whips around to scowl at Jazz. From somewhere behind him he can sense Optimus praying to Primus. “Which is bordering the line of treason.”
“Since when?!”
“Those pieces rightfully belong to me,” Megatron plows on. “Me. It’s probably written in Prime’s will or something.”
“It is most definitely not!” Prime squawks indignantly. “Are you for real right now?”
“Are you for real right now?” Jazz echoes, equally indignant, for some reason. “Dude, you are so fucked up.”
“I’ll fuck you up. Give me those pieces!”
“I’ll pass,” Jazz sneers, deftly dodging when Megatron makes a swipe at him. “On both fronts. Only Prime could eva’ like an aft like that.”
“You two are unbelievable,” Optimus mutters into his servos, face skyward. “Insufferable. Unbearable. Detestable.”
“This isn’t a synonym competition.”
“He’s slagging me out, isn’t he?” Jazz sighs, all the fight bleeding out of him. Like Prime calling him names is something straight out of his recharge flux.
“Don’t be self-centered, you prissy glitch. He barely talks about you,” Megatron grits, turning around to stalk back down the hall. Jazz’s laughter echoes behind him like a giddy curse. Over his pauldron, he yells, “And if you value your helm, I’d suggest giving me those Prime Parts if you want to keep it!”
He catches the tail end of Jazz flipping him off before turning the next corner.
It’s only after a blissful few kliks of quiet that Prime chooses to say, “Wow, you need so much help it’s actually insane. Have you considered couples therapy?”
“With you?”
“Why would I need therapy?” Optimus questions, squinting at him like he’s lost all his circuits. “I was talking about Jazz.”
“I’d rather shove my helm into a shredder and turn the switch myself than go to therapy with that degenerate no-good bolt-fuck.”
“Wow,” Optimus whistles, impressed. “That’s impressive, actually.”
By the time he’s reached his office, Optimus has detailed all the ways in which Megatron’s issues are so beyond Rung’s services that even Primus would have trouble parsing through his troubles.
Ratchet has a list of all the known Prime Parts – “I can’t believe that slag is trademarked.” – categorised by several sorting methods, of which include alphabetically, numerically, from top to bottom, anatomical function, Ratchet’s personal favourite to repair, and the like.
Megatron doesn’t know how Ratchet has these lists. He has no idea how the grouchy old medic even knew about the Prime Prime Parts™ existence, much less how many pieces each bot who found-slash-bartered them have.
And it’s by the medic’s own grace that he bestows this list to Megatron during the wee breems of his dark shift. It’s just the two of them, no Jazz or Prowl to back him up as he walks into the once-dual-office.
Megatron squints as Ratchet wanders in, holding several datapads and looking like he'd rather punt himself into orbit than be here. His scowl can probably rival Megatron’s.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on berthrest again?”
“Knockout forgot to cuff me this time,” Ratchet admits with a grunt, pulling out a chair from the side and settling on the opposite line of his desk. He settles his datapads along the surface. He looks exhausted, like the cycles of war and strife are finally catching up to him. “Slaggin’ glitchmouse. I should dissect him for parts.”
“I’ll…pass the message along,” Megatron mutters, still confused.
The two have this weird stare off where Megatron tries piecing together why Ratchet would bother spending his precious free time (before Knockout inevitably found him) hiding away in Megatron’s office. Ratchet looks like he’s trying to glare holes into Megatron’s plating until he’s but a pile of scrap for him to sort through.
Finally, Ratchet sighs, sagging into his seat. His armour – unkept with jagged edges and flaky paint; the definition of disrepair – wilts like all of Ratchet’s will to fight is seeping through his protoform. He stares at Megatron, and Megatron stares back, and then Ratchet starts talking.
“Prowl told me you were on the lookout for Optimus’s…” the old medic visibly hesitates, optics flickering. “His frame pieces. For whatever reason. He says it might clue in on some problem. I don’t know. I didn’t care to ask.”
Megatron wonders if it’s cruel to keep the secret of Prime’s existence from the grizzly old mech. He’s apparently been friends with Prime for a long time. Almost as old as the Decepticon rebellion.
He chances a glance at Optimus, who lingers in a chair beside him like he used to, back when he’d still been alive. It’s not surprising to find anguish painting his faceplates like a fresh coat; his big blue optics are shuttered wide, and his mouth is set into a broken frown, like he’s the one that lost a friend and not the lost friend himself. He’s given these same looks so nearly every Autobot they’ve passed. These sad looks that somehow appear so fond. As if that fondness hurts to feel, and yet Optimus chooses to feel it all anyway.
The news of Prime’s ghostly existence has been kept within the circle of bots who had been present for the reveal. They had all agreed that it’d be better to keep this whole thing under wraps, because rumours spread like oil fire and if bots catch wind of Prime’s supposed resurrection, who knows what would happen. Megatron knows the truth though. He knows that hope is as uplifting as it is dangerous.
If Optimus disappears once this is over, if he dies a second time, he might have some sparks join him in the Well.
Still, he’s tempted to share. Ratchet’s known for his blazing spark and unyielding will. He’s a feared medic, which is a strange juxtaposition to exist within. He’s probably the best medic Cybertron has left.
Right now he looks petered out and broken, like his spark has been reduced to wisps. His servos shake during surgeries, according to the reports. He can’t recharge without being sedated.
“Have you recharged at all?” Megatron asks, surprising even himself with how soft it comes out. Must be the pity stirring in his spark chamber. Must be Prime’s pitiful optics.
“Don’t play games with me, Megatron,” Ratchet scoffs. “I’m in no mood. This was a request. I fulfilled it.”
“What do you want?”
“Not everything is a barter.”
“This one feels like it is.”
“They’re on your desk,” Ratchet gestures to the datapads strewn before him. He leans back, and his helm looks heavy, the way it sags to one side. “For whatever you need them for. Are the rumours true?”
“There are many,” Megatron scowls, sliding the topmost datapad toward him. It’s the list that categorised Prime’s frame parts by function.
“Sentimental Closer or–”
“Oh,” Megatron’s mood sours. “That one.”
“Yeah,” Ratchet huffs a grating laugh, and it sounds like it hurts coming out, like stones tumbling through his vents. “You’re slagged, but not that slagged.”
“A vote of confidence from our fritzing internal surgeon,” Megatron mocks. He earns another gravel-filled chuckle. “Have you considered retirement?”
He means it as a joke. Obviously. Between the Decepticons, Autobots and the scattering number of Neutrals, medics are hard to come by. Most that help within the medical ward are field medics. Knockout is a special case, old enough to have graduated before the war. Ratchet is even older. Older than Megatron. Older than most. Old enough to remember the bleak greyscale of Zeta, even. And he’s the best medic on Cybertron. Was and always will be. He may not have an optic for aesthetic, but internal surgery? There isn’t a part he can’t fix.
According to Optimus, anyway.
So no, Megatron isn’t being serious when he offers up retirement. Maybe it’s Optimus’s constant semi-serious haggling about retirement that’s finally rubbed off on him. It’s a funny joke. It’s supposed to be a joke.
Ratchet looks at Megatron like he’s just offered a path to Primus himself.
“You know,” Ratchet starts slowly, optics roving over Megatron before dipping to settle onto the desk. His servos don’t shake, because he is an internal surgeon, but Megatron – despite not knowing the medic as well as Prime – gets the distinct feeling that it’s a near thing. “Optimus offered me retirement.”
Megatron isn’t even surprised. Prime preaches selfishness like it’s the new acrylic paint scheme. He’d never paint himself in acrylics if it were up to him, but he’d barter it out to everybot. All who are precious to him. The entirety of Cybertron.
“Did he?” Megatron muses, tone carefully neutral.
“You deserve some rest, he told me,” Ratchet says, glyphs painfully soft. “You’ve been fixing my mistakes for millenia.” He scoffs, but there’s a tired smile on his faceplates. It looks like it hurts. “Slaggin’ fool. I almost took the offer. I–”
Ratchet digs through his subspace and procures a lithe datachip pinched between his digits.
“I signed my contract. Was gonna’ give FirstAid my position as CMO.”
Ratchet inspects the little datachip, his signed contract, with scrutiny.
“Then Unicron showed up, and I stored this away. I thought, just this last thing. This one last conflict, this one last fight where I’ll pick up the pieces. And then I’m done. I’m done, and I’ll drag that damnable Prime right into retirement with me. I had a whole plan. I had a datachip for him too.
“And then he died. Because of course. I shouldn’t have been surprised.” Ratchet crushes the datachip between steady digits and lets the broken pieces fall into his lap. Megatron expects him to be angry. He had been angry. But Ratchet looks like a fire begging to be put out, tired of knowing that it still blazes, even if it’s just a measly little flame upon drops of oil and a fickle breeze.
“Optimus Prime was never meant to live,” Ratchet says, and he gets up slowly, the dust of his crushed future spilling from his lap and onto the floor. Ratchet watches it fall with disinterest, as if the disappointment is something he’s gotten used to. “And I guess that means Ratchet the Surgeon will never rest. Coinciding fates, or some slag like that. I don’t know. I’ve never believed in fate.”
Ratchet walks out of the room as quietly as he entered, his pedesteps heavy, almost as heavy as the spark-crushing grief piled atop his back. Megatron can’t bring himself to say anything. He can’t offer anything. He cannot mend. He’s no medic.
“Don’t bother giving those back,” Ratchet calls over shoulder as he reaches the threshold of his office. His optics are so dull and lifeless that they resemble a greyed corpse. “I don’t know why I kept them.”
When he leaves, Megatron is alone in his office, no CMO or Prime in sight.
It’s not surprising, looking over the reports, the detailed lists cataloging every known part of Prime’s frame that’s been found.
There are pieces of everything; his arms, his legs, his internal gears, his T-cog, his optics, his helm, his servos.
Everything has been discovered in small portions, little indications that the remaining pieces are still out there, somewhere in orbit or among the rubble.
Everything except for his spark casing.
Everything except for the Matrix.
And suddenly, things start making sense.
Starscream gripes no less than he did during wartime missions, and strangely enough, it brings Megatron a sense of calm. His comms being flooded with visceral complaints regarding his leadership and decision-making skills is a reflection of countless battles, and it’s…nice is a strong word, but… it’s nice to know the war never really changed Starscream. It never changed the fundamentals. And it’s the reason Megatron can delude himself into thinking he never changed himself, either.
War, he knows. Battle, he knows. Retrieval missions, he knows. This is familiar, the feel of rubble and rust beneath his treads and he drives through the Wastes. This is just another mission, just another objective to be accomplished. Megatron had been constructed as a bot of action; this is what he’s been built for.
Up above, in the eerily clear sky, Starscream and two other seekers fly overhead in a signature patrol formation. There isn’t a cloud in the sky, but near the horizon Megatron can make out the thick wall of smog rising from the nearby canyons. This clear pathway is one of the few remaining scouting patrol routes left that lead out of New Iacon. But it won’t be for much longer. There won’t be anything unless they fix this curse.
“Status report: for the thirty-second time,” Starscream drawls over the public comm line. Megatron hears several low-volume groans in the background. “Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. It’s been an exhilarating couple of joors.”
“Can it, will ya’?” Bumblebee barks, racing agitated circles around their search party. “I’d rather let Unicron grind my gears than have to listen to your slag.” He doesn’t know who invited Prime’s prickly scout bots, but Bumblebee and the annoying red race car are tempting Megatron into using them as target practice.
He doesn’t know who invited them to join this search party to begin with. They have done nothing but complain and argue with Starscream. He wonders if it’s too late to get Barricade to hunt them down for sport. He’s sure the grouchy enforcer would appreciate the entertainment. He’s been in competition with Sideswipe for the title of Who Would Rather Be Anywhere But Here More. He could do with a pick-me-up.
“It’s the truth, Bumblebrat,” Starscream snarls. “We’ve been out here for half a cycle and nothing substantial has come up. How do we even know we’re going in the right direction?”
“We are,” Optimus says. He’s driving right beside Megatron this entire time; a cybertronian truck with limited capacity, used mostly to transport stacks of datapads and storage boxes around the Hall of Records. Megatron would know; he’s seen this very bright red and blue vehicle greet him at the train station in Kaon every time Orion Pax visited him. He had seen this truck drive the long distances to meet during potential peace talks, back when Optimus Prime had been a civilian mech, a Prime built for the people. Back before he’d upgraded himself to fit the stage of war.
He’s driving beside Megatron now, with an alt-mode that Megatron hadn’t fathomed he’d see in his lifetime. Not again.
And yet…
“We are,” Optimus repeats himself, sounding so sure of himself. “I can…I can feel it. Like at the edge of New Iacon. I can feel it. This is the way.”
Megatron believes him. Realistically, he shouldn’t. Because Optimus is a ghost, something unreal, and yet he’s the one leading their search party. Just like he did the previous cycle. And the stellar cycle before that. Leading them towards the tugging where his spark should be. Because that’s what’s been missing; his spark chamber, and the Matrix. It’s the only lead they have, and it’s all they’ve got.
“Prime says we’re going the right way.”
And most importantly, Optimus is convinced that it’s the only thing they need.
The Matrix has solved problems before. Bestowing itself upon Orion Pax had startled liquid energon out from the deep surface, coaxing it to spout into long-since-dried wells. Miracle machine, the Council called it. A blessing for each Prime who wields it. Optimus Prime had been gifted energon. Megatron wonders what it will gift the next bot who finds it.
“Tell our lustrous and ever-elusive Prime–”
“That’s not fair,” Optimus pouts through his glyphs. “It’s an attained attribute.”
“–that he has driven us in circles!”
“And squares,” Sideswipe quips. “And a weird penta-poly shape. I’ve been keeping track.”
“Unhelpful.”
“Wicked.”
“Focus,” Megatron throws animosity into his glyphs.
“On WHAT?!” Starscream shrieks. “There is nothing out here but rust! At this rate we’re going to discover a new form of infection.”
“Don’t be vain,” Jazz snorts. “It might be a good look on ya’.”
“DYING?!”
Jazz comms out the glyph equivalent of a shrug. Starscream sends back a volley of vile slurs.
Megatron can’t exactly blame them for getting antsy though. Unable to see proof of what can only be considered divine intervention, following the words of an unseeable apparition through the instructions of a warlord is bound to make anybot question orders. Bumblebee makes another tight spin-turn and shoots away from the group, with Sideswipe following close at his tailpipe. Barricade’s field spikes with unsaid complaints. Jazz is oddly silent beside him.
A few breems of quiet driving later, and Optimus suddenly swerves so violently Megatron slams on his brakes to avoid clipping his treads against him. Not that it would do anything, but the alarm in his field has everybot else jumping through sharp transformation sequences, Barricade and Bumblebee’s integrated weapons already glowing in the ready.
“What the slag is happening?” Starscream harps over comms.
“What is it?” Barricade snarls, aiming his plasma gun this way and that. After some consideration, he points it at Bumblebee, who bristles.
“It’s Optimus,” Megatron explains, carefully transforming out of his tank. As his plating settles, he turns to the Prime, who is already walking away from the group. “Prime?”
Optimus doesn’t say anything for a few kliks. He just shuffles ahead, as if entranced, helm tilted to the ground, his audial fins quivering against a breeze he can’t feel. Megatron trails after him quietly, carefully, reaching out with an arm despite knowing it would go right through him.
Megatron idly wonders what it would be like, feeling whatever Prime is feeling. A tugging, he had described it before. A pull against my spark. Something guiding Optimus through this life post-offlining; divine intervention, sure, or a mission that has yet to be completed. An objection between Optimus Prime and the Allspark.
Of course, it’s only fitting that that objection is the Matrix of Leadership.
“Optimus…?” He tries again.
“We…” Optimus stops for a klik, tilting himself back to Megatron just enough that he can catch the soft blue of his optics. Civilian optics. A soft blue that never sat well on a Prime’s face. “I think…”
They are far from Iacon here, enough that the High Towers appear as tiny sticks embedded in the ground on the horizon. Opposite to New Iacon is the Lardit Canyons, where a wall of smog darkens the line where the sky meets the ground, an ashen strip of paint against the blue sky. This isn’t the furthest they have travelled from their home; scouting teams have gotten as far as what used to be Stanix and Ultrix. Based on Starscream’s readings they are close to the Hydrax Plateau. North of the volatile Rust Sea. South, where Optimus is facing. He’s looking South.
This has all got to be some kind of cosmic joke.
Starscream cants sharply down, transforming in a flurry of movement and landing with a harsh blast from his thrusters. He’s scowling when he settles, wings quivering above his helm as he stalks toward them.
“Why the fuck did we stop?!” He hisses, jabbing a sharp talon inches away from Megatron’s chassis. “There is nothing here. The patrols have covered this area before. Your dead disillusioned Prime is leading us in circles with no tact! No plan! He’s just wasting–!”
Starscream whirls around just fast enough to avoid the swipe Jazz makes at him with his own claws, little pricks of sharpened metal that extend past his digits. Huh. Megatron didn’t know the little bot could do that.
“Watch your trap, Screamer,” Jazz mutters, and he’s grinning, but nobot is foolish enough to think there’s anything nice and cuddly about his smile. “Or I’ll shut it up for real.”
“I’d like to see you try, you pathetic ground-pounding scrap-pit,” Starscream snarls, flexing his own claws and stretching his wings out. “It’s been a long time coming, drying you out by your exhaust pipe.”
“Aw, you’d do that? Get down and dirty for me? That’s so hot.”
Starscream bristles.
“Enough!” Megatron bellows, shoving himself against Starscream hard enough to send the jet stumbling back. Starscream snaps his fangs at him, but Megatron doesn’t pay him much heed, turning to glare at Jazz instead. “Enough, both of you. All of you! You’re no better than virus-addled scraplets straight out of the Well. We do not have time for you all to scrap at each other–”
“Oh please,” Starscream drawls, straightening up from where one of his seekers caught him. “According to Prime and his wayward compass, we have all the time in the world.”
Jazz looks three kliks away from ripping Starscream’s glossa out with his bare servos. Under normal circumstances, Megatron would probably just let him, but for now he simply steps between the two.
“Bumblebee,” Megatron calls to the little yellow scout, who jumps to attention. “Sideswipe. Barricade. Keep going until you hit the smog that way,” Megatron points east, where they had been going before Optimus stopped. “Report any and all findings; do not engage with anything.”
“But–”
“Let’s go, pipe-fuck,” Barricade grunts, grabbing Bumblebee’s flank armour and dragging the protesting bot away. “The quicker we get this done, the–”
“The quicker you can go back to polishing your aft plates in your rearview mirror?” Sideswipe offers, snickering when Barricade growls at him. “You’ve missed so many spots, mech. I’d offer, but you’re not my type.”
“Your type will be the dirt I bury you in when I kill ya’.”
“Sexy.”
“Shut. Up.”
The three of them transform and drive off, bickering between them. Megatorn watches them go and revels in the moment of silence once they’re out of audial range.
Up until Starscream opens his mouth.
“You and your seekers will go ahead down south,” Megatron cuts him off before he can start. “We’ll follow.”
Starscream shuts his intake and glowers at him.
“This is pointless,” he stresses, baring his dentae.
“It doesn’t matter,” Megatron snaps back. He glances at Optimus, who has yet to move. “Go south. We’ll follow. And may I remind you,” he leans closer, making sure Starscream catches every glyph. “I do not have much to lose. It seems, however, that you still do.”
The withering glare Starscream pins him with would send any lesser mech squabbling at his pedes. But Megatron is used to it. It’s a flavour that had adorned most of his rations, his meetings and, more recently, every time some bot so much as vented in Starscream’s direction.
It’s not nice, but it gets the job done. Starscream grinds his dentae and spins around, transforming harshly and shooting straight up into the sky. His seekers follow, leaving trails of white smoke in their wake.
Megatron watches the three jets fly off before finally turning to Jazz.
“And you–”
“I’m stayin’ right with you, big bot,” Jazz crosses his arms and grins up at him. “No way I’m leavin’ when the show's startin’ ta’ get hot.”
“You’re being unhelpful.”
“What did OP say?”
Megatron sighs out a long, deep exvent.
“Nothing,” he admits, chancing another look at Prime’s still form. “He’s just…standing there. He’s looking south, towards–”
“The Rust Sea…” Jazz fills in the blanks fast, and then he scoffs. Megatron understands the sentiment. It’s so unbelievably mocking, the way Primus has set them up. “No way. This ‘s some kinda’ joke.”
“You were with him, weren’t you.” Megatron asks but it’s not really a question. He squints at Jazz. “You went with him.”
“Ai,” Jazz sighs, rubbing under his visor with a servo. Despite the grin on his face, he looks worn down. “I was. It’s like a holofilm, this thing. Of fucking course it’s there, right where we found it, I bet.”
Megatron hums, turning back to Optimus. He’s looking down now, cradling his chestplates as if holding some invisible weight between his seams. He looks a little lost like this, a civilian deemed Prime by name alone. Before the civil war, before the bestowed title. Orion Pax wearing a fancy nameplate and an aching need to provide.
“Do you know where to go?”
“Yeah,” Jazz says quietly, looking right at Optimus without seeing him. He’s looking beyond, toward the simmering line of the horizon. To where the Rust Sea meets Iacon’s borders. “I have the memory file preserved. I just never thought–”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. Not that Megatron needs him to. It’s not like Megatron can blame him.
Who would think to look for the Matrix in the same place they helped find it, four million cycles ago, under the companionship of a bot who no longer exists?
The Rust Sea is as untouched as it had been when Megatron first laid his optics upon it eons ago. A vast stretch of copper-tinged land stretching as far as the optic can see. The winds here are harsh and biting, and there are spinning whirlwinds razing across the ground like prowling Sharkticons. Megatron can already feel the sting of acid in the air dig through the protective nanites of his armour, and the rough texture of foreign material beneath his treads.
Optimus has remained silent for a while, driving with single-minded focus through the first few hics of the sea, driven with unyielding purpose. Jazz hasn’t said much either, and the company is stony. Not that Megatron feels the urge to fill it. The howling winds more than make up for the silence.
The terrain is not unlike old Kaon, near the mountain range that blocked off cold drafts from the canyons beyond. The ground is sloping, creating deep valleys and high, steep hills that jut out from the ground like fangs. Massive ravines in the surface force them to manoeuvre in aimless patterns to avoid falling into the abyss beyond, where hot acidic air is pumped out in plumes from the impenetrable darkness.
It’s a miserable place.
It’s two degrees away from resembling the legends of the Pits, where Unicron is said to reside. Scorching heat presses against his armour and sinks into his seams like molten digits. His core temperature is already swelling under the intense smolten pressure. Like the surface of a sun. Like the legends of the Pits. Megatron wouldn’t be all that surprised to peer into one of the deep gorges and see the malicious god peering back up at him, exventing corrosion.
It’s joors into the dark cycle and joors of silent, steady driving before Optimus finally slows to a stop. The three of them are well past Iacon’s borders, and though the smog has yet to penetrate through the wild beast of the sea, Megatron can still make out thin wisps of smoke curling up from deep gulleys and pocket caves. It rises into the air and dissipates in the thick heat, but it is there. It’s present, right before his optics. A constant reminder of what lingers below the shallow surface.
Optimus silently transforms, stretching out slowly and taking in their hellish surroundings. This late, the sky is dark, with ominous clouds twisting together in a massive spiral above. The horizon is tinged a deep crimson, outlining jagged mountains that curve out of the land like the claws of a Predacon. It’s not a pretty sight. There’s nothing to look for out here.
The only place on Cybertron untouched by war, and it’s the ugliest place in the Universe.
Megatron is hard-pressed to call it quits and start the return journey home. His coolant is practically evaporating with how his systems are overheating. He’s dismissed more temperature alerts than he’s willing to admit. He’s sure his treads have enough wear-and-tear to match a drive across Cybertron. High above Starscream and his seekers fly in lazy circles, like voltures over a greying frame.
“Found anything?” Starscream asks mechanically. He lost his edge joors ago. Now, even over comms, he sounds tired.
“I’m not sure,” Megatron sends back. “Keep a look-out.”
“…yes, my lord.”
Jazz stops next to him, transforming almost as quietly as Optimus. He peers around, visor a blip of light against the backdrop of darkness.
“Where are we?” Jazz asks, looking up at Megatron. Megatron turns to Optimus. Optimus doesn’t look back at him.
“We’re close,” Optimus murmurs. Megatron doesn’t know how he’s seeing anything in this oppressive black. Even his night vision is affected by the heavy heat, wavering the pixels until it feels like looking through fog.
“How do you know?”
“I can feel it,” he finally turns to face him, and his optics glow like twin moons. He gently brushes his digits against his glass chestplates. “I feel…I can feel it calling. It’s more than that tugging. It’s…”
“The Matrix,” Megatron mumbles, and Jazz whips around to look at him. “It’s here, isn’t it.”
“It has to be,” Optimus nods, turning back around and starting off on foot.
“Does any of this look familiar?” He asks him, but it’s Jazz who answers.
“I swear it hadn’t been this hot,” he grimaces. If Megatron squints, he can make out faint wisps of steam pouring from the little bot’s vents, the condensation beading along his seams. “Or…or heavy. When we went to look for the Matrix it was…it was like it was waiting for us. For him.”
“Where was it?”
“Hell if I know,” Jazz mutters, looking around. “Pax had run off and we were stuck lookin’ for him and then, boom, two joors later he’s back and holdin’ the damn thing like a trophy. Said it was just sittin’ on a rock. Lucky bastard.”
Megatron raises an eyeridge. He hadn’t known the specifics of how the Council acquired the Matrix. Only that they appointed Orion Pax to lead a search team for it after he proved himself worthy. For standing within the realm of true justice, they had blabbered through the Grid. For not playing into the corrupt servos of Megatron the Tyrant.
There may have been a time where Megatron would have loved to witness those high and mighty Councilors see him now, leading a two (three) mech mission to find their beloved Matrix. He might have even sought it for himself. Forced himself to be worthy. But those bots have long since turned to dust and dirt, and the eons have etched away at Megatron like water over stone.
It’s funny, he thinks, following after Optimus through the dark. He’s done so much, so so many things. Travelled the stars, destroyed worlds, suns; set galaxies aflame. And yet it all has led to nothing. Here he is, once more, along the surface of the same world he left, following a Prime. Following, because at the end of it all, he had been programmed to follow.
He hadn’t done anything at all, in the end.
He wonders what the point of this joke is. He wonders if there is a point at all. He wonders if Optimus sees a point, a reason to all this that was missed somewhere along the edges of their war.
Is this supposed to be poetic? Is Jazz seeing verses he cannot? Ducking into a cave, being engulfed by the shadows of hot stone and watching the twin moons disappear from view; is this what Primus wanted? A redo? A version of history where Megatron didn’t storm out of the High Council and call to arms? A version of the past where Megatron lowered his sword and bowed his helm and followed Orion Pax?
“Where are you going?” Starscream quips, sharp and urgent. Megatron has lost sight of him past the lip of the cave. His comm comes distant and full of static.
“I’m following Optimus. There is no draft, so this cave can’t lead anywhere else. Stay put.”
A few kliks of silence, and then;
“If you don’t come out by the light cycle, I am the new leader of Cybertron.’
Despite everything, Megatron can’t help but snort.
The cave is somehow darker than it had been outside. Hotter too, the air seemingly stagnant and marinating in its acidic odour. It clings to his metal like tar, coating him in a blanket of sticky heat. His night vision crawls with waves of static, and he struggles to keep Optimus’s wavering back in view.
“Eugh,” Jazz grimaces. Megatron vehemently agrees. “This is so nasty. OP, are you sure this is the way?”
“It is,” Optimus murmurs. He sounds further away than he actually is, like a despondent echo.
“It is,” Megatron dutifully repeats. “At least, he’s convinced it is.”
“He better be,” Jazz sighs, flaring his plating. “Or I’ll haunt his apparition-ated aftplates.”
The further they walk, the deeper they seem to sink beneath the surface. The darkness is only abated by the light of their optics and their biolights, which do little more than illuminate the jagged stone surrounding them. Optimus walks onward like a mech possessed, the irony of which is not lost to Megatron. He barely utters a glyph while leading them. Megatron hopes that whatever managed to shut Optimus up like this is worth it; his silence is unsettling.
Almost as unsettling as the deep rumble that shakes the ground beneath their pedes.
Megatron jolts, and it’s only deep-rooted programming in his processor that he stays rooted to the floor and locks the pistons in his legs. He grips the wall beside him, watching dazedly as Jazz stumbles trying to keep his balance. He scrambles against the opposite wall, visor flashing in panic. Megatron whirls around to face Optimus, but he’s still walking ahead, as if unable to feel the quaking.
“Optimus!” Megatron calls, trying to march forward. He makes it one pedefall before angering the stone beneath. It rumbles again, louder, stronger, a deafening thundering battering under the surface. Jazz grunts as he tries to follow, clutching the wall like a lifeline.
“What the frag!?” He shouts, whipping around to look at Megatron. In the hazy light of their optics, Megatron can make out streams of dust and debris falling from the low ceiling. Can feel stones patter against his plating where they blindly fall. “Megatron!”
“Stay still!” He yells over the roaring fury of Cybertron’s underbelly. His HUD is pinging him with retreat suggestions, lamenting over unstable surroundings.
“What–” Jazz is cut off by a massive jolt from the floor, enough to throw the two of them off their pedes and go tumbling down. Megatron can barely hear anything over the booming rumble of stone and metal. Can barely make out Jazz shouting. “It’s collapsing!”
“Optimus is still going down!” Megatron turns back to face the bottomless pit of the cave, where distant flashes of blue and red are the only glimpse of Optimus he can still see through the falling debris.
“He’s a fucking ghost, Megatron!” Jazz yells, grunting when a large stone bashes into the side of his helm without warning. His visor flickers, the light flashing against the backdrop of tumbling rocks. “We need to get out of here!”
Megatron presses his lips together and glances back. He can’t even see Optimus anymore. He’s too far into the cave, blocked by plumes of ash and dust and rocks that cascade from the ceiling and walls. Megatron winces when one crashes down somewhere on his chassis, clanging loudly in the chaos.
Finally, he makes up his mind.
“Alright,” he agrees, struggling to his pedes. He holds the wall to keep upright against the shaking ground. “Alright, we need to go!”
Jazz turns around and starts back the way they came, clutching the wall and withstanding the cave falling apart above their helms. Pain alerts dance along his HUD, his injury list wracking up with dents and tears in his plating, torn piping and rocks wedging themselves into his sensitive seams. Jazz can’t be doing much better. His visor is half dead and he limps against the wall, barely keeping upright against the quacks.
Racing as fast as they can, Megatron catches a glimpse of that sinister red horizon through the lip of the crumbling cave entrance. It’s toppling fast, with the edges breaking like glass and collapsing in on itself.
“Hurry!” Megatron shouts. A huge stone crashes into the side of his helm, and his optic gives out in static. “Faster!”
“We–” Jazz’s voicebox fritzes. “We’re not gonna’ make it!”
The cave entrance is half in size and shrinking with each boulder that falls from the ceiling. The surface’s geometrical shifting plates narrow in on them, building upon each other like blocks and razing anything in their path. It clips against his armour, shrinking in closer and closer. Squeezing them alive.
“Faster!”
“We’re not gonna’–”
Megatron had once been the only survivor of a cave-in. It was much like this one, with an unstable natural structure and volatile formation. The walls had closed in and the ceiling collapsed and Megatron had only survived because a bot he had once been friends with pushed him out of the way to be crushed.
Megatron sees the way the ceiling falls in slow motion. Watches massive chunks of metal and stone smash into the floor and block their way to their exit. An exit that Megatron knows will snap him in half if he tries to squeeze through.
It takes a klik for Megatron to grab the kibble of Jazz’s ventral plating. It takes another two to haul him up from the ground, ignoring his surprised shout. They’re near enough to the entrance that one big push might throw Jazz through the shrinking hole and onto the other side mostly intact. It’s too late for Megatron, but…
(“Take care of my Autobots.”
Slag it all to the Pits.)
He throws Jazz with all his might. Jazz shrieks, plating scraping along the closing stone and creating a cascade of bright sparks. Megatron stumbles to a stop, barely snapping his helm up fast enough to make out Jazz tumbling through the cave entrance. Jazz’s visor flashes a panicked blue before being swallowed up by the dark.
What a way to go, Megatron thinks idly, feeling the press of Cybertron dig her claws into his metal. Bending it. Breaking it. Crushing him to dust. Dying underground. Saving an Autobot. Primus must be having a laugh.
He doesn’t feel himself getting crushed to death. A rock bashes his helm in and turns his lights off for him.
Megatron onlines to Optimus’s face hovering above his own.
It’s all he can do to ask;
“Am I dead?”
Despite swimming in static and hazy black shadows, Optimus’s smile shines down on him like Luna I.
“Not yet,” he whispers, leaning impossibly closer. “Nice try.”
Any semblance of peace shatters, and pain erupts over his frame like a cascading rockslide. He groans, blinded by the storm of warnings swimming in his HUD. It seems every possible thing that can hurt does hurt. He barely manages to sit up, leaning heavily against the wall behind him as he minimises his damage list. His processor aches fiercely, and he’s seeing more static than Optimus.
Optimus, who is sitting in front of him on his heels, arms crossed over his knees and watching him with his bright blue optics.
“Are you sure?” Megatron rasps, resetting his voice box to no avail.
“Nah,” Optimus waves him off with a grin. “Leave the martyr shtick to me. It doesn’t suit your tall, dark and brooding.”
“Did you…” Megatron squints, coughs out large puffs of dust from his vents. “Did you just make fun of yourself?”
“Perhaps,” Optimus hums, rocking on his heels. His optics are overbright in the gloom. “I was worried you wouldn’t online.”
“If I knew how miserable I’d feel, I wouldn’t have,” Megatron grimaces.
“Who would find the Matrix then?” Optimus asks, tilting his helm.
“You,” Megatron grinds out through the landslide of pebbles grating within his intake. “You seemed really enthusiastic about it. Missed the whole…” He waves his servo around before letting it drop back into his lap with a resounding thunk.
“Megatron,” Optimus whispers, inching closer, until the heat crawling along Megatron’s plating abates against his undead chill. “Megatron. We’re close.”
“Are you fritzed?” Megatron scowls. He coughs once, twice, and then slumps his helm back. “No, don’t answer that. You’ll just lie.”
“You don’t know that,” Optimus hums, smiling at him, untouched by dirt and rust.
“Don’t I? Tell me, dear Prime, are you in the right processor?”
“Hard to say,” Optimus lets himself ponder over it. He never stops smiling. “Being a ghost is strange. Did you notice I have a T-cog? Whose to say my matrices aren’t hard at work.”
“They were never hard-working units to begin with,” Megatron huffs. “Even before you blew yourself up. Waste of resources; you should have donated yourself for spare parts and spared us your mutiny.”
“Now that’s just you being jealous that I’m not scruffed half to scrap.”
“You know,” Megatron muses, letting his optics rove over Optimus’s untouched faceplates. They’re both old bots, but they had been young when the war started. Practically new sparks. Playing with fate like a sparklings’ toy. Optimus looks young now; Optimus the civilian, the Prime before the war, before the upgrades and the armour and the sword. Before Megatron. Back when he told a young gladiator…
“I kinda’ like it, I think you said. The knicks and cuts and scars. You were never very subtle. You have a thing for injured bots, Prime?”
Optimus just laughs, unashamed, because he’s shameless. How un-Prime-like.
“Maybe not this injured,” Optimus says, taking in Megatron’s battered armour. “Never liked seeing you hurt. Just the superficial look, ya’ know?”
“How touching. Just the battle scars then.”
“I never said I liked you hurt. I liked them when they didn’t hurt.” And then, softer, “I liked it when you weren’t hurting.”
Megatron has a feeling he isn’t talking about the scruffs.
“I never wanted to see you hurt. And…and I never thought that-that I would be the one to hurt you. I thought I’d clean your wounds forever, you know? Down in the Pits. That’s all I could ever picture. Putting you back together. Being there to put you back together.”
Megatron sags against the wall, against the weight of Optimus’s stare.
“I loved you, you loved me,” Megatron recites. “I hated you, you hated me. It’s a veiled difference. I don’t think I ever managed to untangle the two.”
Optimus huffs, and his smile is so tender. It doesn’t belong in a dark cavern, full of jagged stones and splatters of energon and Megatron’s twisted frame. His uneven spark.
“I never stopped loving you,” Optimus confesses into the quiet space between them. Megatron can’t tear his optics away from his face. “Even when I hated you. Even when I wanted to tear you apart and make you hurt. It’s so strange. I would have loved tearing you apart, would have hated that I loved it, and loved that I hated it. Loved that I hated you and hated that I loved you all the more for it.”
“Careful Prime,” Megatron murmurs. “You almost sound like a poet.”
“Worried I’ll usurp you?” Optimus grins.
“Perhaps. Mostly, I’m worried about how I’ll hate you when you’re gone,” Megatron confesses. “I hated you for leaving me to go off and save the world. I think it’s because I loved you so much. Isn’t that pathetic?”
“Sounds beautiful, actually,” Optimus says softly. “Now compare: a bot who loved a bot so much they couldn’t let go. They clung, even after their spark went out, worse than a curse. How does that sound?” He reaches out, servo coming to hover just above Megatron’s chest, where his spark burns behind a shield of silver. “Following. Clinging. Like a ghost. How does that sound, Megatron?”
“Absolutely pitiful. I mourn the love interest.”
“Self-centered prick,” Optimus chuckles. “Clearly you don’t need to hear my love confession to bloat your helm.”
“Is that why you stuck around?” Megatron can’t help but ask. He leans forward, as much as his creaking struts allow. “Stuck to me? Haunting me? All to tell me you…you…”
“It’s romantic, don’t you think?”
“Romance doesn’t end in tragedy.”
“I think,” Optimus gets up, slowly, uncurling himself to stand before him. His gaze is warm and fond and so unfitting, for a place so dreary and dark. A place fitted for Megatron’s kind of spark. Not Optimus’s. Not Orion’s. “I think a romance can only end in tragedy if it happens to the best kind of love of all.”
“Really?” Megatron scoffs, but it sounds unbearably tender. Like a lovesick fool. “Pray tell, Prime of Tragedy.”
“I think you already know,” Optimus grins, moving away from him. Megatron strains to get up, desperate to keep Optimus within his sights. His spark aches. He wonders why. “I think you’ll live through this and know exactly why a tragedy hurts so much.”
“I’ll hate you,” Megatron rasps. Already, Optimus is fading. Like a lingering vestige of a dream, wisps of red and blue dancing in the dark. Optimus walks away from him, backward, with his arms behind his back. Like how Orion Pax used to walk, guiding Megatron through busy streets. Wanting to keep each other in view. “I’ll resent you for the rest of my functioning. I’ll never forgive you.”
“That, my dear, is what makes this tragedy the greatest romance of them all.” Optimus stops walking, and it’s only then that Megatron realises the glow of his plating isn’t just his imagination matrix. Light spills from his chest in delicate beams of blue, like a star in the night sky. Megatron is but a comet in orbit, drawing closer against his will. Entranced by starlight.
“I’ll hate you,” he repeats. “Don’t make me hate you. Not again.”
“I really am sorry,” Optimus sighs, finally glancing down to his chassis, where the glowing light seems to pulse stronger by the klik. “I never liked tragedies. I always vied for the happy endings.”
“Because you’re a soft-sparked fool,” Megatron’s glyphs come out harsh and broken as he takes another step forward. He’s close enough to touch now, this apparition of a bot who's supposed to be dead. Close enough to feel a strange warmth permeate the air. Softer than the oppressive heat of the wastes. It’s kinder, brushing against Megatron like the caress of a wayward spark.
“Like you’re one to talk,” Optimus laughs. He gestures to himself, to the light shining beneath his chestplates. “Like you weren’t a sucker for happy endings.”
“There is enough tragedy in this universe. I never felt the need to subject any more of it.”
“And here we are, at an impasse,” Optimus looks up at him and smiles, wide and loving; the kind of smile Orion Pax would give Megatronus of the Pits. “It’s not very nice, making us lover bots play out a tragedy. I think I’d make a great lead in an epic romance.”
Megatron can’t help but snort, despite the despair working up his intake. There’s a timer, somewhere, ticking away like a warning. An inevitable fate of loss that he can only hope to delay, but never to stop. Never to conquer. Never to win. Because Megatron is a champion. He has always been a champion, but it’s only now that he’s realising he has only ever been the champion of losers.
“We were never winners,” Megatron sighs, drawing closer still. Close enough that the glow of Optimus’s brilliant spark illuminates his dull plating in splashes of blue. “And anyway, you’d never be able to keep face. You’d laugh too much. You’d ruin the play.”
“Megatron,” Optimus says, suddenly desperate. He stumbles back a step. What an inelegant ghost. Still trying to cling. Still trying to linger. “You…you need to know that if I had to choose, if I’d been given a choice, I’d have chosen–”
“Don’t.” Megatron takes a deep in-vent, and slowly, painfully slowly, he reaches. “Don’t make this a tragedy.”
“Megatron–”
“I’ll never really hate you,” Megatron whispers. His servos quiver as they close around the Matrix of Leadership. “I don’t think I ever truly did. I don’t think I was ever able to. I never will.”
Optimus looks at him for a long long time, and then, after an eternity, slowly brings his servos up. His plating dulls and his edges disappear and his optics fade away. He fades away, like a dream, like a ghost whose purpose has been fulfilled. But by some grace, he fades slowly.
Slow enough that he has the time to cup Megatron’s face with his servos, and Megatron can almost delude himself into thinking he can feel them.
Megatron digs his way through the rubble of what was once the cave’s entrance, and mourns over the loss of his mining equipment from millennia ago.
But he manages. His frame never really changed much throughout the eons. He had been built to survive, built to endure. So he digs himself through, and finally, after Primus-knows how long of digging, Megatron breaks through the surface.
There are servos on him immediately, before he even catches sight of the open sky. They haul him through the rubble, and Megatron uses the extra leverage to push the rest of his frame out of the collapsed cave.
He heaves a long vent of air, and finds that he can’t even complain about the acidic quality. High above, the sky is a bright blue decorated by the Rust Sea’s signature copper-coloured haze. But it’s daylight, and it’s open air, and Megatron counts it all as a win.
Up until Jazz punches him in the chassis. Hard. For a bot so little, he sure packs a mean right-hook.
“What. The. Fuck.” He hisses, punching Megatron again. Amongst the dents in his armour, it’s hard to find which one he makes worse.
“Thank you,” Megatron grits out, clutching his side and backing away from Jazz, who looks ready to swing a third time. “A thank you, you pretentious Pit-spawned fuck. For saving your sorry exhaust pipe.”
“You–” Jazz grinds his dentae together, and it’s a surreal sight, really. Jazz is usually so composed and well-kept. He’s never faltered under the most brutal torture. Megatron would know. But right now, he looks like a fritzing Insecticon ready to kneel over. “You can’t just pull that same shit as Prime! You can’t do that! That’s his thing!”
“Are you…” Megatron squints at him. “Are you trade-marking martyrdom?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Damn…” Another voice calls, and Megatron turns to see Starscream stalking toward them, wings canted down in displeasure and a scowl on his faceplates. “I can’t believe this slag. Why did you have to survive? Will nothing put an end to your miserable functioning?”
Megatron, despite his good mood, finds himself scowling right back.
“Why did you even bother staying, you prissy jet?” He grumbles back, gesturing to the sun with his unoccupied servo. “Clearly it’s mid-cycle.” Then, a smirk slowly spreads across his faceplates. “Don’t tell me you’ve gotten soft.”
Starscream bristles in outrage.
“Don’t you dare insinuate such falsehood!” He shrieks. The two seekers behind him wince. “I only waited around so I could collect your grey frame and parade it around New Iacon! I was waiting for my reward!”
“Well, I still function,” Megatron mocks. He finally removes his prize from his subspace and holds it up. “With my reward.”
The Matrix of Leadership shines an untouched golden hue, gleaming like a supernova in his servos. The glowing blue orb at its centre throbs like a spark, a near-blinding light that spins with the intensity of a miniature sun. Which isn’t surprising. Even without proper energy sensors, Megatron can pick up the massive surge of pure unadulterated power. His spark calls to it. He’s sure everybot else feels it too.
Allspark energy.
“By the Pits…” Starscream mutters, losing all his fight. He stares at the Matrix with his optics blown wide. It’s the nearest thing to reverence he’s ever seen on the seeker. “You…you found it. The Matrix…”
“And the Allspark!” Jazz exclaims, his smile almost as blinding as the artifact in his servos. He claps his servos together and cheers. “Fuck yeah! Oh Primus, this is…this is amazing! Oh, I can’t wait to tell everybot. Prowler will lose his door wings! OP! OP, you did it!”
Jazz waits. Starscream waits. Everybot waits for a few kliks. It becomes awkward fast, and Jazz quickly turns to Megatron, his smile faltering. “Megs? Well? What did he say?”
“Why are you asking me?” Megatron subspaces the Matrix and crosses his arms.
“Because…” Jazz glances around, looking lost. “He’s…what’s he saying? You’re the only one who can hear ‘em.”
“Not anymore,” Megatron scoffs. “Thank Primus.”
“But…” His door wings sag, and his shoulders drop, and he can see the exact moment when realisation cascades upon him like a meteor. The topic of Optimus’s lingering spark had come up plenty of times during their meetings. The possibility of him acting as Primus’s will was entertained. Prowl had been the one to bring up the very logical point that, once Optimus fulfils his task, he may very well be called back once and for all. Jazz hadn’t liked that conversation much, and neither had Optimus, even though resignation had kept him quiet.
It seems Jazz has started putting the puzzle pieces together. He looks so achingly sad, despite the visor. His lips press together. His plating quivers like a newsparks. His field whips around in a frenzied panic. It’s not a pretty look.
Megatron starts to feel a little bad when Jazz’s sparkbreak starts becoming palpable enough to feel. “I…he…you said that…” He stutters, more static than glyph making it past his voice box. “Did he…was this…”
Starscream looks uncomfortable, twisting away to look at the sky instead. You know it’s bad when even Starscream can’t seem to handle somebot’s grieving. Which is something to behold; Jazz grieving a second time, despite having never actually seen Optimus after his offlining. He hadn’t seen him as a ghost. He’s mourning a concept. Such a strange thing. Megatron wonders, for the umpteenth time, just how Optimus managed to make such loyal friends. Friends that will mourn you for a death you never even had.
“He’s no longer haunting my every online moment,” Megatron eventually huffs, tilting his helm toward the rubble. Jazz damn-near crumbles where he stands. There’s a high keen building in his engine. Megatron takes pity on him. “By the Pits, that moron can never shut up. I almost killed him a second time.” He rolls his optics at the shock painted on everybot’s face. “I left him behind because he was walking too slow. I’m sure he’ll be out any moment now.”
With timing that can only be born from Primus’s blessing, the hole that Megatron crawled out of shifts. All at once, everybot’s attention snaps to where the cave entrance crumbles a little bit more. A stone dislodges from the lip of the hole and falls into the dark. A klik later it clangs loudly against something very metallic, followed by an obnoxious yelp of pain.
Jazz jolts like he’s been struck by lightning. His door wings shoot right up, and his whole frame perks ramrod straight. His visor, the half that isn’t cracked, is over-bright. Megatron wonders if the little pain-in-the-aft will glitch out and die.
Not that he’s given much time to find out. Optimus comes crawling up from beneath the surface like one of Unicron’s undead. He’s mostly unharmed, but is somehow covered helm-to-pede in grime despite having contributed nothing in digging the two of them out. That had all been Megatron’s work. Optimus had just stood there and talked his audial off.
There exists a moment in time where nothing happens. Everything is at a standstill, down to the air that seems to freeze around them. Megatron watches – half irritated that Optimus gets such a drastically different reception, but mostly amused – as Optimus finally yanks his pede out of the hole. He stumbles to gain his footing, flailing his arms like a moron before righting himself. His smile is blinding, and he laughs sheepishly when he notices all the attention. He bashfully rubs the back of his helm and gives an awkward little wave.
Megatron face-palms so hard it makes a loud clang.
“Oh-Optimus…?” Jazz croaks, inching closer, spurred to action. The stillness follows him as he hesitantly creeps forward. There’s so much…so much hope in his frame, every strut lined with it, blatant and obvious. As if he’s afraid that this is all a dream, and he’s savouring the moment. Megatron can’t really blame him. Been there. Done that. He’s just lucky he got to do it in private.
Optimus turns to Jazz, and it’s a bit strange, seeing the two side by side like this. Optimus isn’t as big as he’s used to. Optimus Prime the ghost had been of civilian build, but he’d still been armoured as a Prime. Megatron has gotten used to the less-towering stature, the more delicate curve of plating.
But it surprises him now too, the frame of Orion Pax being illuminated by daylight. There is no semi-opaque nature to him or his armour, no strange light that makes him look otherworldly. He’s… he looks solid. Real.
Jazz slowly reaches out, painfully hesitant. Optimus meets him half way, and his grin looks borderline painful from where it stretches across his face. Where he watches their servos touch.
“Hey Jazz,” he says softly. It’s all he manages to say. Between one klik and the next, Jazz has encompassed Optimus in a hug so tight that Megatron can hear the creaking of metal. He internally winces. That bot is stronger than he looks. Not that Optimus seems to mind. He hugs back just as desperately, gripping Jazz’s kibble so tightly that his servos shake. He can’t make out what either of them are whispering. Can’t make out what Optimus says into Jazz’s audial that has him clutching at Optimus impossibly closer. Tucking his face into the curve of his neckplates. Melding armour. Megatron can’t tell where one of them starts and where the other ends.
Really, it feels like he’s intruding on a moment right now.
Looking away, Megatron instead turns to Starscream.
Starscream, who is gaping at the scene with open shock. Megatron sighs and leans over, pushing Starscream’s intake closed.
Only to mournfully watch it reopen. This time with noise.
“No. Fucking. WAY!” He shrieks loud enough to glitch out one of Megatron’s audials. Or maybe that was one of the things on his extensive list of repairs-to-be-had. Primus only knows. He watches, thoroughly exhausted, as Starscream throws his servos into the air, wings a violent ‘V’ shape above his helm as he spins around and screams at the sky.
“No WAY! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING. THIS CAN’T BE FUCKING HAPPENING. WHY ME? WHY DOESN’T THIS POETIC SHIT EVER HAPPEN TO ME?!”
Optimus starts laughing, patting Jazz down the back like trying to calm a clingy cybercat. Jazz does not abide and continues to hold him. Megatron can feel a processor ache blooming behind his optics.
“Are you done? Are you all done? Actually, you know what? I don’t care if you’re not done. Everybot roll the fuck out now before I test Primus’s patience and send us all to the Allspark.”
Optimus snorts. Jazz still hasn’t let go. Starscream still hasn’t stopped screaming. It’s an off-kilter reality.
“Grouchy old mech,” Optimus grins from over Jazz’s pauldron.
Megatron can’t wait to get used to it.
“–no, you can’t take this from me! Get your paws off of me, you glitch, or I swear I’ll punch you so hard you’ll be seein’ Primus–”
“Blaster: being irrational. Soundwave: scheduled host.”
“I don’t give a –OW, did you just bite me–?”
“Desist–”
“Fuck no! Give me the damn mic–!”
“Soundwave: will-FUCK. THAT: FUCKING HURT.”
“FUCK YOU!”
“Blaster: needs to–”
“BOTS OF IACON! BOTS OF IACON! THIS IS AN EMERGENCY BROADCAST! EMERGENCY BROADCAST, I TELL YA’. LISTEN CLOSELY–”
“News: supposed to be handled delicately–”
“OPTIMUS PRIME IS ALIVE!”
Megatron ex-vents deeply, sliding his datapad along the desk with a groan. His optics feel strained from reading all that fine-print – which, fuck you Perceptor, why the fuck are you writing in molecular lower-case font? – and science gibberish. Couldn’t the Science Division have just sent a Congratulations, You’ve Saved the World! (Again!) card and been done with it?
“I so feel you right now,” Optimus moans from beside him. Megatron lazily tilts his helm to watch him rub his optics. “Slag, if I knew this much paperwork was involved, I’d have stayed dead in that stupid hole.”
Megatron rolls his optics.
“Too soon, moron.”
“It’s never too soon to make dying jokes. I deserve it. I’m the one who died.”
“Yeah, and then proceeded to make it everybot’s problem,” Megatron snorts, leaning back on his seat. Optimus glares at him through the gaps of his digits. Megatron smirks at him. “Attention whore.”
“Hey!” Optimus perks up, pointing at him. “That’s human!”
“Stay on topic.”
“Dawww, that’s so cute. We’re picking up on each other’s lingo! That’s–!”
“I needed you to stop talking since…” Megatron makes a show of counting on his digits. “Four millennia ago.”
“Mean,” Optimus sniffs, crossing his arms. “I distinctly remember a certain gladiator telling me how he just loves hearing me–”
Instead of giving Optimus the satisfaction of noticing his warming vents, Megatron reaches over the scant distance between their seats and smacks him over the crest. The sound pings and echoes, solid and real. Optimus whines, clutching at his helm.
“If you’re done being a nuisance,” Megatron grunts, getting up and collecting all the relevant data work. “We have a meeting in two breems. Feel free to skip out and make yourself scarce."
“Nah,” Optimus grins, jumping from his seat and jogging to catch up with him at the door. “You’d miss me too much. Sentimental old grouch.”
“You’re older than me,” Megatron stresses. “You are literally older than me. We’ve been through this.”
Optimus laughs.
The meeting room is already full by the time they arrive. Soundwave has some visuals up on the holographic projector, and Starscream is already pointing things out on the display. Ratchet distractedly waves at them as they enter, in a heated argument with Knockout. Shockwave nods in their direction. Jazz is obnoxious and bodily gets out of his seat to throw himself at Optimus in a grossly affectionate embrace.
Megatron fake gags. Jazz flips him from over Optimus’s shoulder.
Once they take their seats at the head of the table, Prowl begins to speak.
“Since everybot is here, we may begin the meeting chords. Soundwave?”
“Analogues: recording.”
“Good. Shockwave, if you would start us off?”
Shockwave stands from his seat. The projection flicks through a few slides before settling on the climate report written in Wheeljack’s illegible scrawl. Between him, Perceptor, and Shockwave’s inability to write with a stylus, the Science Division is doomed.
“Following up from the last stellar cycle, the scouting teams’ reports have matched with Perceptor’s readings. It seems the smog is gradually dissipating into non-lethal sub-particles within the atmosphere. Following the return of the Allspark to the Well, we have also experienced an influx in energon uptake from our mining operation in the Hydrax Plateau. We’re still waiting for the team to update us on the current stellar cycles’ numbers.”
“Excellent, Shockwave,” Megatron nods.
Shockwave dips his helm and settles back into his seat. Megatron spies him going back to his datapad, where he catches a glimpse of a…is that a video game? Megatron shakes his helm, but when he looks back, Shockwave has angled the datapad away from him.
Starscream goes next, updating them all on the well-being of his seekers.
“We’re back to patrolling, because you ungrateful brutes can never give us flight frames a Pits-damned break. I expect triple rations! For all the trouble you good-for-nothing pipe-suckers have caused!” Starscream snarls, slamming his servos down on the table. Knockout carefully pulls his mug of rations away from spilling distance.
“Ease off, Screamer,” Jazz yawns loudly, pedes kicked up on the table. “You’re actin’ like you haven’t gotten some in ages, mech.”
Starscream bristles.
“I ‘ought to–”
“And how is Thundercracker doing?” Optimus cuts in gently.
Starscream immediately settles, wings dipping in ease and he grins haughtily.
“Oh, he’s recovering wonderfully. I must give credit – despite it paining me to do so toward a grounder – but you were wise in processing medigrade through the Matrix. It’s practically miracle fuel now. Unfortunate that it only converted a scant amount, but I cannot find reason to complain. By the charts, Thundercracker will be up in the air in a few stellar cycles.”
“That’s wonderful news, Starscream,” Optimus congratulates, and he even looks like he means it. Blehkh. Suck-up. Starscream preens, soaking the praise like a sponge.
Ratchet and Knockout semi-bicker over their medical reports, and then Soundwave gives a detailed explanation on why they should fire Blaster from his position as radio co-host. Blaster then complains about Soundwave. It’s as efficient as these meetings will ever get.
“Alright,” Prowl mutters, hitting his datapad like a gavel against the table until the two carrier bots finally settle into their seats. Jazz snickers into his palm. “Is there anything else that anybot would like to add before we move to adjourn?”
A few kliks of blessed mutual silence, where Megatron pictures himself falling into berth and blissfully recharging after this, and then–
“I actually have an announcement.”
Several bots groan in unison, Megatron among them.
“Don’t be a bunch of bitlets,” Optimus chastises. “This will be quick.”
“Primus give me strength,” Elita-1 mutters into her servo.
“Dramatic much,” Knockout drawls.
“I’m retiring!”
“You’re WHAT?!”
Optimus simply chuckles at Starscream’s outrage. Megatron pinches his nasal ridge and wonders if there is a universe out there where Optimus doesn’t require dramatic attention-hogging timing for every little thing he does.
“I’ve been thinking about stepping down for a while now. I’ve served as leader for more than enough time, and with the Matrix gone, I see it fitting to–”
“Please take Megatron with you,” Jazz begs, clasping his digits together and pressing them against his helm. “Please. Please. I’ll do anything. I’ll polish your windshields–”
“Ewww, keep that slag to yourself,” Skywarp fake gags from his position behind Starscream.
“It would be optimal,” Prowl muses, tapping at his chin. Megatron scowls.
“How in the Pits would it be optimal?”
“It just would be,” Prowl deadpans. “Don’t ask questions. Nobot wants you here.”
“Except Optimus. But he’s deluded.”
“Hey…”
“I should blast you to–”
“Yes, actually,” Optimus cuts in quickly before Megatron can justifiably blow Prowl’s helm off. He places a servo over his arm, and it’s a smaller servo than he’s used to. Not as small as Orion Pax; this new frame gifted by Primus is different from all the others. Small modifications here and there, but armour and a frame that is neither Orion Pax nor Optimus Prime. It is something that specifically belongs to Optimus. “I’m taking him with me.”
“Fuck yes!”
“FINALLY.”
“Oh, thank Primus.”
“If this is a recharge influx, leave me be.”
“I think I’m gonna’ start crying–”
“This is ridiculous,” Megatron glowers. “I can’t believe this slag. Ungrateful scraplet-spawns, all of you. You lot aren’t worthy of peace times.”
“Go take a nap, Megs,” Jazz chortles. Prowl and Knockout nod in acquiescence. Soundawave projects an image-capture of a berth layered with heavy mesh blankets. Starscream claps in celebration.
“Retirement,” Optimus nods along, rubbing little circles in Megatron’s plating. “We’ve done enough. More than enough to all of you. It’s high time Cybertron had a new leader. And…” Optimus pointedly looks at Starscream. “A new method of electing leadership?”
Megatron pieces the hints together, and dread crawls up his spark.
“No…” he mutters, but it’s too late. Their fate has been sealed.
“YES!” Starscream shrieks in delight, jumping out of his seat and cheering. He grabs Skywarp by the shoulders and shakes him until the purple seeker’s optics glitch. “AN ELECTION! MY FUCKING ELECTION!”
Megatron sinks his helm into his hands and lets despair fill his spark chamber.
“You’ve doomed us all.”
Optimus rolls his optics and continues to trace patterns along his armour. He thinks he feels the vague shape of a heart drawn into his chassis. Primus knows though. Optimus is no artist. He’s apparently no longer a leader either. What a reality. He needs a drink.
Starscream harps about his plans for an election. Prowl’s actually taking him seriously, jotting down his ideas and damning them all to suffer at Starscream’s servos. He looks livelier. Or, well, as lively as a bot like Prowl can get. Last Megatron heard, he only drinks once a stellar cycle now, under Jazz’s supervision, and with Optimus in tow.
Drinks sound so good right now. He’s a retired mech now, isn’t he? That probably calls for something like drinks.
“New Maccadams?” Megatron offers under his breath to Optimus. Optimus stops tracing patterns and turns to him, grinning like a fool. A lovesick fool. Megatron wonders what he must look like, then. Probably equally foolish. Probably moreso.
“You askin’ me out on a date?” Optimus whispers back.
“Unbelievable,” Megatron huffs. He slips an arm around Optimus’s waist, reveling in the warm living metal beneath his own, the thrum of a spark and the soft blue optics right in front of him. “You’re so irritating. Yes, you moron. It’s a date.”
“Finally,” Optimus bumps their helms together. “I thought you'd never ask.”
“Go be gross somewhere else!” Jazz calls out, breaking their moment. Jazz always needs to break their moments. Nosy little pest. “And I heard New Maccadams mentioned. Is it party time?”
“Party time!” Blaster chimes.
“No,” Megatron tries protesting. “It’s not–”
“Party time. Party time!”
“By the Pits, I can’t believe it. It’s going to a retirement party.”
“Can this be Megatron’s going away party?”
“Tempting, but OP deserves a retirement party first.”
“Holy slag, yes, that’s so domestic and cute. Can I DJ?”
“Blaster: will not DJ.”
“Fuck you.”
Optimus is laughing, open and loudly, and it’s not a pretty sound, but Megatron doesn’t think he’ll ever actually manage to hate it. He doesn’t think he’ll manage to hate anything about Optimus. He thinks he might just love every piece of him.
“Retirement…” he murmurs, letting the cacophony of voices wash over him. He feels Optimus tracing hearts into his servo. Lovesick fool. “I can’t believe this.”
He feels Optimus press his lips against his knuckles in a tender kiss.
He thinks, yeah, you know what?
I can get used to this.