Chapter Text
The humans’ pitiful dam was long since blown. All those billions of gallons of hydropower just roaring by, like dust between his digits. Megatron wasn’t sure why he still fought when their objective was already beyond achievement.
He supposed the fight had its moments, like Prime going down in a burst of light.
Starscream came through after all. That was a thought Megatron could have maybe half of the time on any given occasion. The other half, he’d let his tac-unit putter out its fury materializing different ways he’d kill the seeker– was better than actually doing it. For all his failings, Starscream served his purposes.
Megatron sprang into the air, shouting a battlecry. Prime looked up at the last moment, shaking the remaining disorientation from the torpedoes off. Megatron was sure he had him this time. His cannon was singing its deadly tune, he was within ten meters of his target, he had him dammit. Except with the Prime it was never that easy. The blasted mech threw himself to the side, dodging the first devastating shot, swiveled his battleaxe so that it deflected the next, and then he was too close anyway for a third– the blowback wouldn’t be worth the damage, and their servos locked in a grapple.
“Surrender, Megatron! And we will show your troops mercy!”
“Mercy?” Megatron spat the word back at him. He could do this fight in his recharge. The verbal sparring was no different. “The day we accept mercy is the day we take the easy path. The day we accept mercy is the day I rip my spark out with my own two servos!” He punctuated the sentiment by wrenching Prime sideways, giving him the opening to pull back one of his servos into a fist, and slam Prime in the side. He choked at the impact, nearly dropping to his knees.
Megatron smirked, got him right in the fuel pump. If there were any kind of luck on his side, the thing would just stop. Except it never was, so Prime instead grabbed him around the waist as he went down, and then they were both wrestling in the mud. It ground between Megatron’s backplates, smearing into any and all exposed cabling. Just another little indignity courtesy of the mudball they were fighting on. Oh, how he anticipated the solar-cycle they could blow the whole planet to dust.
If the Prime had any sense he’d reactivate his battleaxe and use his position on top as leverage, as it was, the mech was running on two byte ram, and instead was attempting to pin his servos.
Megatron sneered, twisting a stabilizing-servo out from under him, and kicking Prime off. It wasn’t easy; the mech was dense, but he managed, throwing him onto his back. Megatron followed easily, and now he was on top. He also wasn’t an idiot, so he went for the throat, pressing his sharp digits between those cables where he knew the critical lines resided.
Prime was scrabbling uselessly against his front. He’d be lucky to leave a dent with those blunted digits, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d actually hurt him. Megatron’s grin only widened. He found the first line, and dug his digit in. Prime gasped as energon spurted, then gushed forth. Panic flared in those big blue optics, and he savored the sight.
“De-desist.” Prime rasped, his voicebox glitching violently.
“Never,” Megatron breathed.
“Desist or I’ll–”
“Or what? You’ll bleed on me?” He found the other line, flicked his digit over it. “Goodbye, Pri–”
Ice-cold metal sheared through his chassis. He looked down. There was a blade buried in his internals. He followed to the hilt. Prime’s servo was wrapped around it. Debris from the battlefield. Energon was building in his throat, bubbling up right along with the rage and the glee. His grin returned, something wild glimmered in his optics, meeting Prime’s. The pain he found there almost negated his own. “You missed the spark.”
And Prime knew. Of course he knew. He knew it just as Megatron knew he’d never aim for it, though it still brought him a sadistic delight that he could think it. Four million stellar-cycles of war, and Prime still couldn’t bring himself to deliver a killing blow.
“More like this,” he took Prime’s servos in his own, forcing the blade to twist as he pulled it out. Damn thing hurt like a glitch, but it wasn’t anywhere vital, and he could rerun the Prime’s wide-eyed reaction and horrified field in his memory banks for all of eternity. His energon spilled out of the wound, onto Prime’s middle, thick, and maybe a little more heavily than he’d been anticipating. He suddenly felt dizzy, light-helmed. Prime seemed to pick up on this, gaze hardening, before he kicked Megatron off of him, let him roll onto his back, on the ground. They both pulled themselves up onto unsteady pedes, meters apart.
“You raze destruction wherever you go, Megatron. This dam, this planet, our home–”
“Don’t bring Cybertron into this!”
“Why not? Afraid to confront your own mistakes?”
“I’m not afraid of anything!” Megatron threw himself at Prime, swapped his servo out for a mace, swung it right at the damn mech’s helm.
Prime dodged easily. Megatron only realized at that moment that he was moving much more sluggishly than usual. The other should’ve taken proper advantage of this– maybe taken the opportunity to finish him off with a well-timed blow of the axe. Instead, he just shoved him as he passed, letting gravity do the rest, ending with him sprawled on the ground. He wheezed into the mud, tried to stand again– knew that Prime would let him, because he hated fighting an opponent who couldn’t fight back, but found he couldn’t get his frame to carry him up. He tried his relays again, and they just stayed dead. With a dull thrill of panic, he checked his fuel gauge, to find it less than a centimeter above empty.
“I’m taking you in,” Prime said, optics flicking left, comming his own command no doubt. The sight only sent Megatron into a renewed rage, but he couldn’t do anything when Prime got his servos on him, hauling him up.
He prepared his reserves. Frag, this was going to hurt like a glitch. But what were reserves for? He waited until Prime was mid-step, then fired them up, forcing backup energon– older, stale, through rarely-used lines. Knockout had pushed for a tuneup on the whole system, to avoid this very problem, but Megatron had only snapped that a little pain didn’t phase him, and that if the medic wanted to keep that arm it better get off his plating that moment.
He pointedly, was not regretting it now, only the added pain from within didn’t do his tac-unit any favors. He snarled as he threw Prime off of him, swinging and missing with his left fist. The other only stepped back, as though dealing with little more than a misbehaving newspark. Cooler helms would not have prevailed, if Soundwave’s familiar monotone had not crackled over the comm line, .:Suggestion: general retreat:.
Sometimes he wondered why his third even bothered getting the confirmation, when he knew Megatron would almost always agree, his suggestions were so seldom.
Prime lunged when Megatron blinked. He saw mud kick up in his periphery, a squad of grounders closing to intercept and haul him in. It wasn’t like Prime to call on others when they got going, but it was exactly like Ultra Magnus to do it for him.
The pair grappled again. Megatron was weak. It was clear, even in the face of his endless confidence, that he would lose in this straightforward test of strength. The backup squad drew closer, and Megatron hid the private smirk that threatened to bloom. There was a reason Prime always fought him alone. For all the blasted mech’s glaring weakness, he was the only one who could ever keep up. Even after countless offlined comrades, the fall of Cybertron, and endless upgrades to his own frame, the mech didn’t stop. Beyond reason, beyond hope. Megatron had thought he’d broken Prime in a thousand different ways, and yet, he remained steadfast, there to stop him at every turn.
He could draw some strange comfort from a constant like that.
He held out the last few nanokliks he needed before the squad got within range. He feigned a misstep, let Prime think he was open. The idiot fell for it, and found himself face-down in the mud for it. He didn’t have the charge in his cannon left to put a lasting mark on Prime, but had more than enough for one of his lackeys. He pushed as much as he could spare into the weapon, and let a single bolt fly at the interlopers. The first two cars blew into the sky, and Megatron didn’t even have to look to imagine the horrified expression that would color Prime’s face. He did so anyway, just the moment that it all registered, turned away as soon as resigned determination took its place. As always, Prime picked his bots, running towards them like Megatron didn’t even exist. The predictability should’ve brought him joy– that Prime remained weak in such an easily exploitable way, something to laugh over.
But like every other time, over hundreds of battles, he only felt disappointment.
He didn’t know why.
Megatron gathered himself up, limped a short distance away from where Prime was tending to his bots, puffed out his chassis, and called the retreat.
It only took an expected few kliks for jet turbines to swoop into audial range, as Starscream transformed to root and lit down by his side. He was running his intake before his pedes even hit the ground. “You’re calling a retreat?! You coward, you damned weak bucket of bolts! I almost had all of Autobot command at my mercy!”
“We’ve discussed this,” he grit out. And they had. “If you truly find yourself in such a position, I expect you to move forward with the extermination, with the stipulation that you bring me their helms on pikes!”
It was always a dangerous line, fighting Starscream’s exaggerations– or unequivocal lies, with permission to act on his own authority. Too much of the latter, and he’s been known to take advantage. Too little, and he’d go blathering on. It was usually a losing game either way. Today he’d struck the chord right, and Starscream’s intake snapped shut.
Not for long. Never for long.
“Looks like Prime’s done a number on you, dear master.” He always managed to make the title sound insulting– small. And he never stopped there, poking at the wound in his middle. “If you really wanted the Prime to penetrate you so badly, you should exercise that in a way that doesn’t lose us the battle.”
Starscream was too pleased with the barb to dodge the backhand. There was less force behind it than the seeker deserved. Wouldn’t have mattered either way. There was no satisfaction with the clang of his servo meeting the polymetal of faceplates. Only slightly more when he went squelch in the mud. Less than none when he started squawking about his finish. In the sky, he’d avoided any of the insult the wet planet provided. The lines to the washracks were going to be long today. Even superior rank wouldn’t help when the solvent started running cold after less than a cycle.
Megatron boarded Astrotrain shortly after. It only took a few kliks for the shuttle to fill to capacity, even with the seekers opting to fly. Starscream himself had disappeared with a glare and pointed burst of his thrusters.
He could’ve shouldered his way to the cockpit where he was sure Soundwave was waiting, but found himself unwilling to bother. He watched, detached, as Astrotrain gained speed and left the muck of the battlefield behind, the huddle of Autobots– likely gathering survivors, the ruined dam. The wound in his middle started to throb as they gained altitude, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle, nothing that could kill him.
Nothing ever could.
The thought should have buoyed him. It did. He was Megatron, and he wouldn’t be killed. Prime had seemingly died a few times, only to come bouncing back in some dramatic return. Megatron stayed steady.
The battlefield slipped away beneath the clouds.
This was it, wasn’t it? Solar-cycle after solar-cycle, fighting Prime, winning, losing, usually coming to a draw, a retreat. He ground his dentae against the thought. This was the kind of thinking that got him slagged– the kind that won the Autobots the War. There wasn’t any other option. Kill or be killed, and mark his words, Optimus Prime would die.
He refused to feel anything but grim satisfaction at the thought, the slight trill that came when he remembered those few times Prime’s sparklight was revealed. Once, at the barrel of Sentinel’s cannon, a scarce few times at his own. Someday, he’d see it snuffed.
Astrotrain landed with a low rattle. Someone bumped into Megatron during the rough landing, and proceeded to nauseate him with their pleading words, and terrified field. He didn’t have the patience to dismiss or reprimand the bot, he just pushed past, out to the landing bay.
Starscream was waiting, servos on his hips. That alone should not have concerned him. He always wanted the last word. Today’s argument shouldn’t have been any different.
He was grinning, relaxed in a way Megatron hadn’t seen him in some time, pauldrons rolled back. Even his plating was tilted in a neutral position. These solar-cycles it was flared even when they fragged.
This was the part where Megatron would charge up his cannon, tell Starscream to give up whatever he was plotting. This was the stance that predated every attempt on his life.
He hefted the cannon, hoped that the other didn’t know he was running on empty. “I’m not in the mood for your games, Starscream.” He pushed every shred of aggression into his vocalizer, and was almost impressed with his own ability. His wound flared new pain. It was getting steadily worse. He needed recharge, several hundred litres of energon… maybe a medic.
Starscream didn’t cower, and that was a bad sign. He raised one null-ray. It flashed green– not its usual color. “Goodbye, master.”
Megatron didn’t have time to dodge, or shout, or even sneer. His vision flashed that green, all encompassing, and painful, like his frame was burning up from the inside-out.
And then there was nothing left to think.
*
“Optimus, sit.” Ratchet jabbed his digit at the medical berth. Optimus sighed, and did as he was told. He had learned long ago that trying to avoid Ratchet– or Primus forbid, argue with him, would only bring on a processor-ache. Today, he didn’t even have the energy for his customary request that the medic check everyone else first. He’d spent the past two cycles carrying the injured and the offlined back to base. Luckily, there’d only been three deaths. He’d mourn them when he could. Another weight on his spark hardly made a difference these days.
“You did all you could,” Ratchet said. It was a tired line. Somehow, even all these vorns later, he sounded like he meant it. It never did anything for Optimus’s conscience.
“Not enough,” he responded, on autopilot.
Ratchet only shook his helm, and had Optimus lie down so he could get a better look at the damage.
“How are Sunstreaker and Sideswipe?” The two had gone up in Megatron’s blast. Sideswipe had been unconscious. His sparktwin had seemed distraught at whatever he was feeling over their bond.
“Don’t talk while I’m trying to patch your damn neck.” A long silence while Ratchet worked, then finally, “they’ll both be fine.”
Optimus let some of the tension leach from his frame.
When he left med-bay some kliks later, he immediately ran up against commotion in the hall. This wasn’t unusual. The med-bay tended to draw a crowd post-battle, of the injured and their loved ones both. A few moments pushing through it, and it became obvious that this wasn’t the usual.
For one, everyone seemed happy.
Bee ran up as fast as his mobility aids let him, a half-hobble, half-hop that had him moving more quickly than should’ve been possible. “Did you hear the news?” He almost sounded like the Bee he once knew, joyful, brimming with energy, finding every new thing exciting.
Optimus shook his helm, considering the possibilities. New energon source? News from Cybertron? His spark pulsed at the thought of hearing from Elita again. She’d been M.I.A. so long he was starting to fear the worst.
“Megatron is dead!”
*
Less than fifteen kliks later found Optimus in a command meeting. He certainly hadn’t called it, hadn’t quite had the wherewithal to do anything, but what he was told. He watched the meeting as though he were outside his own frame, detached, almost… numb.
Megatron dead. He couldn’t believe it. There had been many false reports of the very thing over the course of the War, but none borne of such confidence. None where the circumstances had been known.
Maybe it was the how that had him so tied up in knots. He’d always imagined— feared, that the only way Megatron would offline— had to offline, was by Optimus’s servo, with Optimus’s death alongside him. He wasn’t scared of the sacrifice. He’d die a thousand times over to end the War. But killing Megatron…
In the end, Starscream had done it. Reportedly. He’d snuck some kind of nanite into the wound Optimus had left in his middle, then waited for them to multiply throughout his system and blasted him with an agent that’d detonate them in his frame. So Optimus had a servo in the death after all. If Megatron hadn’t had the hole, hadn’t been so low on fuel, hadn’t, hadn’t, hadn’t.
It wasn’t worth thinking about. “How do we know all of this?”
Jazz looked up sheepishly from his presentation like he had forgotten Optimus was there.
“Do we have a new spy in their ranks?”
“Ah, y’know Decepticon gossip. Moves faster than a seeker on synth.”
“Actually,” Ironhide said, “I think it moves exactly as fast as a seeker on synth.”
The whole table had a chuckle at that. The group was in such good spirits. Optimus loathed to taint it, even if he doubted Jazz’s story. Either he had a spy, or… well.
Jazz finished his intelligence report quickly after that. Optimus was unsurprised when Prowl requested to speak next.
“The next cycles are critical. Here’s exactly what we need to do.”
He spent the next several kliks laying out a detailed plan he had for this exact eventuality. It was specific. Too specific. It brought Optimus’s suspicion back with vicious clarity.
“Jazz, Prowl. Did you have a servo in this?”
They got away with a lot. Prime had countless suspicions of the crimes they’d committed in the name of the Autobots. In the name of peace. Some of it, he’d had no proof, no grounds. More often, he was ashamed to say he let it slide. It hadn’t always been like this. Early in the effort, he’d hunt impurity in his ranks with all the ferocity that he fought Megatron. Now, he barely had the energy to do that.
“No,” Jazz said lightly, as Prowl said, “yes,” steady, and unabashed. The pair’s optics met, tense, coming to some wordless conclusion. Jazz leaned back in his chair, propped his pedes on the meeting table. Prowl leaned forward, servos clasped.
“Yes,” he repeated. “We colluded with Starscream. We came up with the method, and provided him the tools. And we’re telling you this because we trust you to make the necessary decisions to end the War, which we can do today… if we play our cards right.”
For lack of any better response– certainly not the muted anger, or the dull horror he felt, he waved a servo, bidding Prowl continue.
“We have rapport with Starscream. We offer a truce. It doesn’t matter if he says yes or no, whether he means it or not. We get that out of the way. Depending on his response, we deploy one of the two options I just outlined, use the third if he agrees and backstabs us anyway, which is the outcome I calculate most likely.”
It was a callous plan to systematically weaken, and eventually dissolve the bonds that tied the Decepticons together as an army unit. It was a plan that Prowl had attempted before.
“What makes you think it will work any better than the last time?”
“Because there’s no one bot unifying their forces. Megatron is dead.”
Optimus wouldn’t flinch at the recurring words. He shouldn’t care. He should be happy.
“You don’t like any of this. That’s fine,” Prowl said. “We never expected you to. What we do expect is for you to do it.”
“I–” can’t. Is what threatened to pass his intake. Underservoed tactics– those were things the Decepticons did. Megatron colluded with double agents, Megatron influenced his troops, Megatron offered peace treaties he didn’t mean. Had, many, many times. Megatron could offer a peace treaty tomorrow, if he weren’t offline, and Optimus would have never believed it, because he had, more than once, and paid dearly for it.
His command table was watching him expectantly, and he realized that they all wanted him to say ‘yes.’ It was demanded.
One last unsavory decision, and the War could be over. Prowl wouldn’t be putting this on the table for all to see if he didn’t think it would work within a near-zero margin of error. He was too careful for anything else.
“And you are sure Megatron is offline?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s not coming back.” It was more rhetorical than anything.
“He’s not you, Prime,” Jazz quipped. The joke only cut Optimus’s spark deeper, though he couldn’t imagine why. “Primus won’t be bringing him back.”
*
Megatron’s gyros told him he was lying flat on his back. The light seeping between his optic shutters and his last watery memories had him concluding that he’d made it onto Knockout’s medical slab for yet another miraculous recovery.
There was going to be hell to pay when he got his servos on Starscream.
He pushed himself into a seated position all at once, making his displeasure known with a snarl. That would have Knockout or whichever on-duty medic skittering back, reminded of Megatron’s ferocity despite seeing his vulnerable frame for however long they’d been working on him. All part of the image that kept him leader of the Decepticons for so many vorns.
He blinked twice, reset his optics.
He wasn’t in the Decepticon med-bay.
His first thought was that someone had hauled him into the Nemesis’s VR training room and forgone setting it to any module. Couldn’t think of any damn reason for it, and even then, the training room had limits. His optics had long been upgraded to a set that let him scrutinize down to the seams of the space, the place where holomat met screen. The room– could it really be called a room? Was limitless. Light pouring in from every angle. When he pushed himself to his pedes, he knew he had to be standing on something, but it didn’t feel solid, like standing on the rubber surface of his berth. When he looked down, he only saw more of that light.
Someone was playing mind games with him. He officially let Starscream’s designation slide down the ranks of his slag-list. Unless it was Starscream toying with him. If so, he might finally have to rethink the seeker’s continued existence. Like the training room, Megatron’s patience had its limits.
He started walking, hoping he’d be able to discern some kind of exit. It couldn’t be boundless brightness forever. Whoever was doing this– wherever they were keeping him, they had to have made a mistake. Throughout the War, he’d dealt with kinds of nonsense he hadn’t known were possible. One thing was shared between these so-called architects, they always made a mistake. A crack in the illusion, some unwelded seam. He’d find it, and rip the simulation down the middle. If no exit made itself apparent, he’d make one. He always did.
But then, it occurred to him that this could all be in his processor. Wouldn’t be the first time for that, either. Disgust rippled through him. It was usually fellow mechanics trying that kind of thing, but there had been occasions when it’d been organic captors. Squishy, leaking things. Like the mud, getting between his plating, only this time it was his brain. He suppressed a shudder, and searched within. He felt present. That discounted the processor theory, but never ruled it out. The technology for hacking only got better as the vorns rolled by. He stuffed any and all sensitive data down into the pit of his mind, raised his emergency firewalls, the ones that drew enough power that he was wiser to keep them offline most of the time. He might pay for that later, but luck always did favor the prepared.
He didn’t know how long he spent walking in a straight path. When he checked his chronometer, the data came back unintelligible. Same for his fuel gauge. More evidence for his processor theory.
And then he hit a wall.
He hadn’t seen it coming, and landed flat on his aft. He clambered back up, grumbling a string of curses. He searched for the offending protrusion, and only saw that same light. He groped blindly, and yes, it was still there. He trailed his servo along it, trying to find where it ended. It didn’t. He followed the solid path of it, kept walking longer than he thought he’d have the patience for, but without the ping of his chronometer, or fuel gauge, or even the sensation of fatigue, there wasn’t much reason to be upset. Even the mystery of it all was starting to intrigue him. It’d been so long since he’d had something different.
*
Soundwave heard the commotion echoing in the minds’ of several dozen different bots. The news had followed shortly after, all roiling excitement, aimless terror. Lord Megatron is dead! Starscream killed him!
He hadn’t believed it. Not even when he saw the greyed-out corpse on the ground, Starscream preening triumphantly above him, one pede balanced on the still chassis.
Megatron’s mind was never supposed to be silent. Even in recharge, he dreamed loudly, thought louder. Megatron’s inner monologue was something Soundwave was only deprived of on long-distance missions that took him to whole other planets.
And now.
His first instinct was to fall upon Starscream, throw everything he had, his AMPs, his shoulder-mounted gun, the tentacles he kept wound up in his chassis. He held fairly confident he could win, if it ever truly came down to just the two of them. Not positive. If it were just him, fighting for Megatron’s legacy. Yes. Without hesitation. He would at the very least try.
His cassettes squirmed in his subspace. They’d never order him, but they always made their opinions known. Rumble and Laserbeak were the more cautious of the bunch. They suggested retreat. Frenzy and Buzzsaw were already swearing vengeance, cooking up dozens of campaigns in kliks. Starscream would never know peace.
Do what you need to, boss. Ravage’s steady voice rose above the rest. Soundwave forced himself to take a calming vent, think the situation through. His cassettes were counting on him. Soundwave didn’t care for legacy, at least, not when it came to himself. He could be buried under the sands of time, and find peace, knowing he’d done all he could to secure Megatron’s.
That was the crux of it.
He pushed his auditory sensitivity to its limits, ran the program he’d developed for surveillance. Specifically, gathering and quantifying the army’s sentiments.
Some of the bots were glad to see Megatron dead. These thoughts boiled down to the toll of the War. It had been dragging long, but that wasn’t Megatron’s doing. Soundwave stayed his anger for these.
For every bot that rejoiced, three more despaired. Starscream was not popular among most of the troops. Even the seekers, who were fond of him, had concerns over his competence.
He didn’t need to kill Starscream. If he bided his time, the Decepticons would do it for him.
Soundwave approached Starscream. He kept his plating in a tense flare, let the gravity of his field flow outwards.
Starscream picked up on this instantly, expression turning nervous, then that false cockiness. It brought Soundwave satisfaction to know that the other never lost his healthy fear. He dropped to a knee.
“Come to bow at the right bot’s pedes?”
And pulled Megatron’s frame out from under Starscream’s heel-strut. The seeker yelped as he reeled back, losing his balance. Soundwave didn’t spare a single neural for his curses or threats, just slung Megatron over his shoulder, and marched out. He supposed it was customary to take the frame to the smelter, to be remade into new parts for the wounded, or any matter of components for the War effort. It was certainly what Megatron would want– would expect of him.
Soundwave had no such plans.
He was going to get his master back.
*
Megatron ran up against five more walls before his patience finally crumbled.
“Show your face, damn you!” he roared into the void. It came back, watery, echoing. “You will not herd me like livestock!”
No response.
He hefted his cannon, aimed for the latest wall blocking his path, fired.
There was the fuchsia glow of the bolt, but no impact. It was like the wall wasn’t there.
In the face of all of this, he could only vent, shaking furiously.
He screamed his frustration.
This too, only came bouncing back.
*
They met Starscream in the desert. Maybe not the best choice, the grit of sand under their plating wasn’t conducive to productive discussion, but it was still better than meeting at any of the areas populated by life. They’d done enough to this planet already.
Optimus and his Autobots arrived early. Starscream was already waiting.
“I was wondering when you’d show your sorry faceplates.”
Optimus had to put a servo on Ironhide’s pauldron to stop his retort. Antagonism wasn’t conducive either, and Optimus wouldn’t let it come from his side.
“We’ve come to discuss peace, Starscream.”
“That’s Lord Starscream to you simpletons.”
Optimus didn’t miss the way the bots at the seeker’s back exchanged a look. He wasn’t surprised to find that the confidence in Starscream was thin. Prowl had anticipated as much, and prepared exactly what Optimus should say.
“I never called Megatron ‘lord,’ so forgive me. I would be more inclined to do so if we were working towards aligning our goals.”
“Aligning,” Starscream said flatly, skeptically. “I couldn’t imagine anything we would align on.”
“Don’t you want to go home?”
The seeker’s wings perked up at that, before being forced back into neutrality. Got him.
“Just picture it. Cybertron restored, our people made one. Every bot under our suns shouting your name in adoration, because you were the one to make it so.”
“I don’t follow.” His optics were flickering brightly, like he was imagining that future.
“They would call you something greater than Lord. How’s hero of Cybertron? You could be the mech who allowed our people to reunite, and go home. You could do something Megatron’s never managed.” He swallowed down the feeling that rose at that name. “Something good.”
“I–” Starscream took a tentative step forward, then stopped short, optics narrowing. “You’re trying to trick me.” Dentae bared. “Seekers! Open fi–”
“No trick!” Optimus raised his servos in a placating gesture. “Why would we sabotage our first chance at real change?” He prayed this would work. He hoped beyond hope that Starscream would agree, and mean it. He didn’t want to need Prowl’s plan B, or C. He placed a servo over his spark. “I understand why the War started. I never liked it, but I understood. And I understood why it kept going for so many vorns. The system needed a reset. And we can argue to the Pits and back about if there truly was a better way–” He was losing Starscream’s interest. The seeker was picking something out from between his digit-rotors. Optimus sighed. “There’s no reason to continue fighting. The elites are dead, and you must know we have no interest in reinstating functionalism, or any kind of Prime, or Autobot controlled government. We’ve always fought for peace–” he knew how ironic that was, “and equality. “We can build the future… together.”
Starscream’s focus was back. His optics were narrow and cycling. “I want to rule.”
“I prefer the term lead.”
Starscream shook his helm, smiling sadly. “You don’t mean it. You can’t.”
“Would you at least consider discussing it? We would draft the treaty, Decepticons and Autobots both. Me and you, Lord Starscream, leader of the Decepticons, could bring our people into a new age of peace.” Optimus reached out a servo.
“I…” Starscream’s own lifted like he was seriously considering taking it, and Optimus’s spark rose.
And then Starscream’s expression dropped. His optics flicked left, comming or receiving, and then he shrieked, “he what?!”
*
The news reached Shockwave quickly, efficiently. “Megatron is dead.” He was not surprised to hear this, only that it had taken this long for someone more intelligent to reach out and join forces with Starscream in his vendetta.
Neither was he surprised to find Soundwave crossing the threshold of the spacebridge, stepping into his command center with Megatron’s limp frame in his arms. The telepath was familiar with Shockwave’s study of resurrection, moreso geared towards predacons, but then, Soundwave was smart enough to infer that the knowledge may be transferable.
Soundwave did not like him. He did not feel any way about Soundwave, beyond noting that his loyalty could be as much of a boon as a bane. He’d leveraged this to his own advantage before. All he had needed was Megatron’s approval, and the telepath would move Allspark and Cybertron to have Shockwave’s research needs met.
Right now it was a bane.
“You are interrupting.”
Soundwave’s visor only burned brighter, saying with actions what did not need to be said with words. He knew what Shockwave was thinking: that he had far better things to concern himself with than one dead warlord. Shockwave knew what Soundwave was thinking in return: that he did not care.
“Examine him,” Soundwave said, stepping closer, and with an effect that may have been menacing to anyone else.
“He’s dead.”
Soundwave bristled. “Examine him.”
“You’re being emotional, Soundwave.”
“Starscream: is in command.”
“This does not affect the research.”
“Starscream: will destroy everything.”
Shockwave found that unlikely. It wasn’t like Soundwave to be this dramatic. “Define everything.”
“Legacy.”
Shockwave huffed. “I do not care.
“Starscream: meeting with Autobots. Peace talks.”
This was another in the long line of things that were unsurprising. Starscream was even easier to manipulate than Megatron had been.
“Autobots: will shut down your research.”
“Illogical, and highly unlikely.”
“Experiments: incompatible with ethical sensibilities.”
“Nothing provable,” he shrugged, pushing his next engagement back by five kliks. It was going to throw off his entire schedule for the next vorn. He turned, ready to return to his work before it got any worse.
It was foolish to turn his back to Soundwave. He should have anticipated this. Between one nano and the next, the telepath had his pauldron in a death grip. His field was flared out far past its usual boundaries. The intent was steady, assured violence. Shockwave remembered when he’d been able to feel things like that. Naturally, he neither missed, nor loathed those times.
“I will tell them.”
Threats didn’t scare him, they only factored into his logic unit. When he ran this one, it told him that the theoretical time wasted examining Megatron’s frame, and potentially resurrecting him, did not outweigh the potential damage he could take offlining Soundwave to keep him quiet. Not to mention the simple fact that there was a 43% chance that such a confrontation would end with his own demise.
“Understood.” Shockwave rolled Soundwave’s servo off his shoulder, and started towards the lab best-suited to such an examination. “Follow.”
*
How long has he been here? Kliks? Solar-cycles? Vorns? Megatron couldn’t seem to parse the difference. He only followed the invisible walls. He’d tried the cannon again, his mace, his bare servos. He’d tried doing nothing, just to spite whatever malevolent being kept him trapped, but eventually grew bored.
Now he just followed, because it was the only thing he could think to do.
It was disheartening. He usually had a plan by this point. He usually would’ve deigned a pattern he could leverage. He’d been keeping track of every turn, left, right, every step. He mapped it all out in his brain, and it made no sense. Sometimes the path he was following curved in on itself, overlapping in improbable ways.
Back to the processor theory.
But then, he’d tried everything for that too. Disrupted his relays— by self-inflicting pain, he’d even gone through the horrible sensation of rebooting his processor. That should’ve glitched out the world, even for just a nanoklik. It always did.
Whatever this was, it was trying to break him. He wouldn’t let it. He lengthened his stride, wary of crashing into another wall, but breaking into a near-sprint. There had to be something here. He needed to believe that there was an end, and sure, assumptions borne from necessity were hardly a basis for a belief system, but sometimes, it was merely better than the alternative: despair.
He ran. Pivoting for the turns he suddenly knew how to anticipate. He imagined something beckoning him deeper, some hidden… something. It was illogical– beyond illogical. It was delusional. He didn’t care.
A short eternity later, and he stopped.
Or more precisely, it stopped. He couldn’t begin to understand it, the way it felt as though the very air held itself still. He suddenly gained the acute sense he was being watched by something far, far larger than himself.
“Who’s there?” he snarled, whirling around.
The space looked the same as it always did— maybe a tad brighter? It was so hard to tell. The air hummed, as though in response, and he felt the brush of a field.
Mirth.
“Don’t toy with me! I am—“
“MEGATRON.” The voice was deafening, and coming from every angle. He almost collapsed under the force of it, but managed to keep from falling to a knee.
Such power…
“What are you?” he asked, slowly, cautiously. He braced himself for the response.
“MANY NAMES. MANY FACES.”
Not helpful. “Where am I?” His voice had an edge of frustration.
“IN MY BRAIN.”
The words brought a chill up his backstruts. He didn’t understand it, but he somehow knew it was true.
The implication being…
Megatron scoffed, ignoring the slow comprehension crawling under his plating. This was some wretched dream, or worse, an incredibly sophisticated ploy to steal the contents of his mind. Or even worse yet, break him.
“NO PLOY. NO DREAM.”
The horror solidified in his tanks. “Get out of my processor!”
“YOU FIRST.”
Megatron laughed, shaky, disbelieving. He couldn’t help but remember the events preceding waking in this place. Starscream’s treachery, the green blast. “You’re claiming you’re Primus. That I’m offline.”
No response.
“Well, I’m not staying here. Send me back!”
The field enveloping him shifted. If it had belonged to a bot, he’d expect a set of optics squinting at him with fierce scrutinization.
“NO.”
“What do you mean, ‘no?’” Megatron hissed. “If you are as you claim, it should be easy.”
“ABILITY, DESIRE. IRRELEVANT.”
“I’m not done!” Megatron exclaimed, felt conviction down to the core of his spark. “It’s not my time! Not until I’ve ground Prime under my heel.” He let humor color his fury. “Or maybe you merely seek to protect your divine emissary.”
“EVERY BOT LEAVES WITH MATTERS UNDONE. YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT.”
“I–” am. He’d almost said. He… was? He was Lord Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, damnit. He’d started a war– The War. He’d rallied an army, the likes of which Cybertron, and the universe, had never before seen. He was leading his bots into the future they deserved. One which saw all Cybertronians equal–
Equal.
His instinct was to turn his mind from it, put it in background processing in favor of more pressing things, but here, there was no such excuse. Since when did he shy from the difficult questions?
What had he been doing all these stellar-cycles?
Not the beginning of the War, not the vorns after. He stood by every energon-soaked decision he’d ever made. Every. Last. One.
But when was the last time he’d decided something for himself?
Did the War continue because he made it so? Was it truly the vehicle of his resolute vendetta, or was it the other way around? Why did he fight, truly? He thought back to his most recent battle with Prime, and those manic memories came back ash-gray in his intake. The satisfaction had been fleeting for centuries now. Even their arrival on Earth had only held its novelty for so long. Tormenting the local aliens to spite Prime was only amusing when there was a point.
They were evenly matched. Every skirmish only ended with more deaths on each side. One by one, they diminished, with no way to bolster their numbers with the extinguishing of the final hotspot over two million stellar-cycles previous, and the use of all the frozen sparks the old council had harvested. Megatron could hardly even remember the last time he’d been fully fueled.
“I’ll change it,” he said.
The air twisted around him, curious.
“Send me back. I’ll change it.”
“CANNOT.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“DEAD IS DEAD. DONE IS DONE. YOU CANNOT CHANGE IT.”
Megatron shook his helm, frustrated. “I didn’t mean change. I meant forward. I don’t regret a thing. The future is what I make it.”
“THE FUTURE IS OUT OF YOUR SERVOS.”
“No!” Megatron snarled. “It isn’t over!”
The void around him shifted, as though perking up. Megatron had the immediate sense that it wasn’t– and yet was, about him.
“What?” he demanded, looking all around for any sign of change.
“MAYBE…”
*
Starscream flew out of the meeting like a bat out of hell– a human expression that Optimus didn’t quite get, but Jazz liked to use. His seekers weren’t far behind.
“What’s happening?” Optimus asked, raising his voice above the shriek of retreating thrusters.
Jazz’s intake twisted the way it always did when he got a concerning comm. “Chatter on the airwaves says that Soundwave’s taken Megatron’s corpse to Shockwave.”
“Oh,” Optimus said faintly. “You think–”
“We need to stop this!” Prowl exclaimed. “This ruins everything we’ve worked for!”
Regardless of whether Optimus agreed, he knew he had to be there. To stop Megatron. To stop Megatron from–
From whatever scheme he’d enact when he woke up, or from resurrecting all together?
He pointedly did not ask himself that. Megatron wreaked havoc. Optimus stopped it. That was the way this went. The only way it ever could go.
“Autobots, roll out!”
*
It took Prowl kliks to come up with a plan of attack, and Skyfire’s team less than that to enact it.
“So what’s happening here, is that we use this gizmo,” Wheeljack gestured to the jerry-rigged mother of all safety-code violations, “to hijack the Decepticon’s spacebridge, so that we can arrive at the same location as Starscream at the same moment he does.”
“How long?” Optimus asked, harried. There wasn’t much time.
“Intel says they’re at the bridge. Less than a klik,” Jazz said.
Optimus nodded, stealing himself. Whatever was about to happen here, it was going to change everything– or nothing. He could only hope that he’d make the right decision when the time came.
“She’s picked up the signal! It’s go time!” Wheeljack threw a switch. “Good luck to y’all! Megatron’s gonna wish he’d stayed dead!”
Optimus’s tank roiled with sick dread as he stepped into the make-shift spacebridge portal. He chalked it up to the way the world shifted green and swirling, and let it pass.
Bullets were already flying when he stepped out the other side. He bumped into a seeker stepping out at the same time. Slipstream looked shocked before attacking all at once, throwing him to the ground, going for his optics.
“Wait! We’re on the same side!”
“Doubtful,” she hissed.
“Starscream!” he called. “We’re here to help!”
“How–” the seeker cut himself off as he dove down to stand above Optimus with a raised null-ray. “Of course, Soundwave’s incompetence in keeping our secure lines secure should have been spotted kilometers away.”
“Where’s Soundwave now?” Optimus barked, starting to pull himself to a stand. Miraculously, Starscream let him. He only realized after that the seeker was cowed by the Autobot entourage at his back.
Starscream jabbed a digit over his shoulder. “Past those blast doors, I presume. But we’ll need to get through Shockwave’s little minions before we get a chance to hack at them.”
The source of the laser fire was a menagerie of insecticons and predacons. Most of these, Optimus recognized as experimental MTOs and resurrections of Shockwave’s.
“Prowl?” Optimus asked.
“On it,” Prowl said sharply.
“Like I’ll take any orders from an Autobot,” Starscream sneered.
“Ah,” Jazz cut in. “So you want Shockwave to bring Megatron back?”
Starscream visibly paled at the prospect. “Fine. I’ll hear you out. But make it snappy.”
*
“Status,” Soundwave demanded, feeling the mechanics in his internals winding up tight. He refused to acknowledge this as anxiety as the din at the blast doors got louder. It didn’t help that Megatron’s chassis was wide open on the table, bearing the dark pit of his sparkchamber.
“Hmm,” Shockwave replied unhelpfully. Whatever he’d found, he’d determined that it was likely to disrupt his work further. He was always irritatingly difficult to read. His mind didn’t sound like the usual bot’s, but this was a good sign.
“Status.”
“There are faint readings emanating from the sparkchamber.”
“Clarification required.” He tried not to feel hope. It was for the weak.
“Seventy-six percent chance that it’s an echo. Inconsequential.”
“Remaining twenty-four?”
“Viable.” Shockwave pulled a complex tool from the overhead containment unit, and pressed it into the darkened sparkchamber. Soundwave couldn’t dare hope. Reality didn’t care for it any more than his master did.
But maybe just this once, he could allow it. After all, if anyone could beat the odds, it would be Lord Megatron.
*
One moment, Megatron was fine, feeling that same, weightless way since he’d arrived. The next, debilitating pain sheared through his spark. He doubled over, feeling tethered to the floor, sinking down, down. His frame had never been so heavy.
“What are you doing to me?” he ground out, doing all he could to keep from curling into a ball on the floor.
“NOT I.” The room pulsed dull comfort, as though smoothing over a wound. For all its mirth, the presence didn’t like seeing him in pain.
“What’s happening?” he hissed. He was being split in half, he was sure, only from the inside-out. As though in two places at once, and his frame was rejecting the notion. Something in him was warring, two halves of his spark each vying for a different plane of existence.
And if it wasn’t Primus doing it…
He loosed a raucous laugh, gleeful for the first time since arriving in this wretched place. “My frame does not fail me. You can’t keep me here, can you?”
The room was laughing with him, jagged lines of code flowing through the space, casual, like an old friend.
“ANOTHER TIME, THEN.”
He was evaporating, rearranging. His vision burned white.
Driving the same path over and over again, for meganuums, left ruts of unimaginable depth. Attempting to drive outside those treads was nigh impossible. Megatron’s mind— and so the rest of the Decepticon cause, was much the same.
Waking from death was like a great mudslide, washing those tracks clean.
In retrospect, his previous existence seemed laughably small, limited. When had he stopped fighting because it was the right thing to do, and started doing it because it was all he could imagine for himself?
Sure, elites still existed in their hidey-holes, abuses of power remained, a number of those in his own ranks, likely, but he was suddenly certain that there would be no way to expel these without the death of their species. For the first time, the idea of compromise entered his processor as a serious consideration.
His systems booted up slowly. First came the ache of his joints, the wound in his middle. Then the rest of his senses. His auditory feed came back complete chaos. A battle. He readied his motor relays, but not to join the fray.
He was Lord Megatron, leader of the Decepticons. He’d started the War, and it would end the exact moment he said it did.
Today.
*
“Shoot him, damnit!” Starscream shrieked from where he was trapped in the space between the blast door and the wall. They’d managed to destroy Shockwave’s minions, and force the doors open. Shockwave hadn’t allowed it long, though, firing some code that shut them again. Optimus had made it through. Starscream had not.
“This is your chance, Optimus!” Jazz shoved his helm into the crack, but couldn’t wriggle the rest of the way through. “Kill him!”
Optimus leveled his blaster at Megatron’s chassis, where it lay open on the slab. His spark chamber was crimson like his optics, and vividly alive. He’d never gotten to see it like this before, in all its crackling, swirling glory. Only glimpses when his axe had struck too deep, and quickly hidden.
It was beautiful.
Megatron’s optics shot open, and he rose to a sitting position all at once with a sharp gasp.
There was no way Optimus could miss his target.
They just sat, gazes locked. He caught the exact moment the situation registered, the way Megatron’s bright white irises spun and focused, the way his clawed digits bit into the surface of the table. They both knew Optimus could make the shot before he closed his chassis. In the millions of stellar-cycles of war, he’d become an excellent marksmech.
Megatron slid off the slab, slowly, never once turning his spark away from the barrel of Optimus’s blaster. He took the few steps between them, letting the muzzle nearly brush up against his swirling corona.
“You have a choice today, Optimus.” And that couldn’t be right. Megatron never called him Optimus. Megatron smiled sharply, like he could hear the thought. “You pull the trigger, or you agree to open peace talks. Either way, this War ends. Right. Now.”
Distantly, he was aware of his entire command team yelling at him to finish it from the other side of the blast doors. Let the bolt fly that would end the War. But here Megatron was, offering him another option, one where they didn’t have to kill each other. If Optimus didn’t know any better, he’d say he was in a dream.
He wanted so badly–
“I don’t believe you,” he croaked out, desperately pinging his digit to squeeze down on the trigger. It wouldn’t respond.
Megatron’s expression became one of fierce determination. Optimus tensed for the inevitable fallout. “You will.”
One of his black servos slipped over the barrel of Optimus’s gun, and gently pushed it down, away from his spark. This was the part where Megatron was supposed to take advantage of Optimus’s glaring weakness. Punch him when he blinked, twist the gun out of his grip and fire it back in some cruel kind of irony, reveal his latest savage plan for world domination. It was what he did best.
Megatron only stepped away, closing his chassis as he went. “We’ll be in touch,” he promised. “Decepticons! To me! Open these damn blast doors, Shockwave.”
Shockwave inclined his helm, and did it. If he was chagrined at the ruined state of his lab, he didn’t show it.
Starscream yelped and cowered as he hit the floor. He scrambled back when Megatron drew close, cannon leveled at him. “Master– Master please! I didn’t– it was the Autobots! They tricked me into–”
Megatron fired. Optimus watched in horror as vicious fuschia blew through Starscream’s spark. The protests died with him. The frame fell limp, graying.
Optimus hadn’t liked Starscream, not by any stretch, but… he’d been a bot like any other. He’d had hopes, dreams.
His optics had lit up at the prospect of going home.
“Megatron!” Optimus took a step forward. “You said peace–”
“With the Autobots,” Megatron growled, not turning to meet Optimus’s optics. “Not one of my own traitors.” And continued for the spacebridge.
“You’re not going to take his frame?”
“What for?” Megatron did look then, and the cold stare was like a blade in his chassis.
“Funerary rites.”
Megatron scoffed. “He’s all yours.” Soundwave found his place beside his lord, his warriors lined up at his back. “Until the peace talks.” And he disappeared in the swirling green light of the spacebridge.