Chapter Text
“For once you have tasted flight …” His voice was desperate now. “…you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.”
Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us
Megatron hit the ground, and the ground hit back. Or at least that was what it felt like. Dazed and disoriented, he rolled over. His senses were scrambled, optics shut down automatically and audials roaring with the echoes of that blast. Heat surged over him in a wave so intense it felt solid.
He hurt in a dozen places, but he couldn’t afford to indulge any of that. He struggled to get his left elbow under him so he was no longer sprawling in undignified vulnerability on the ground, and managed to push himself up a little, jaws gritted together. His visual field flickered and came back online, but he could see nothing except for the spotlight in the distance—which was a relief, because if not for that, he would have wondered if the explosion had taken out his optical system.
Then his audials began to work properly as well. The night was filled with chaos. Shouts rose from the militia camp and sirens screamed out, joined by alarms as Polyhex’s city defense systems activated. Of course, they had no idea what had happened, so for all they knew, they were under attack. Megatron struggled up to a kneeling position. He couldn’t transform yet, but they needed to get out of there before—
The sound of running footsteps, growing louder, sent a surge of energy rocketing down his right arm, and there was a low thrum as his cannon charged up. But before he could fire, he heard the unpleasant clang of loose pieces of metal slamming into each other, and only moments later, Starscream reached him. Megatron lurched to his feet and switched on his lights. Part of the wing brace had become dislodged, but Starscream didn’t seem to notice.
“Are you hurt?” He was shaking and covered in dust, but his optics burned like embers brushed by a hot wind.
Megatron shook his head. His audials had picked up another sound, one even less welcome, and it was the growl of multiple heavy-duty engines heading his way. There was no way forces from Polyhex would have pinpointed his location so quickly, so those were the Altihex militia.
“Get out of here!” he said to Starscream, because there was enough going on without his having to defend a weaponless outsider, especially one who’d deliberately risked his own neck by strolling into this mess. Starscream hesitated for barely a klik before he turned and disappeared into the night.
Megatron knew he should be relieved that Starscream was gone, or at least still angry that Starscream had disregarded his wishes so blatantly instead of staying in Darkmount. Instead, the twinge deep inside him felt like disappointment, which was ridiculous. And there was no time to dwell on that. He limped to safety behind a massive boulder—which, he realized a moment later, was still smoking-hot because it was part of the hill that had been shattered and then flung outwards by the explosion.
He glanced around, and his headlights picked out Deathshead, lying in a crumpled heap several mechanometers away, out in the open. But although most of her armor was too dark to show any change, Megatron could still see the pale yellow and amethyst common to all the Insecticons, so she wasn’t dead. Yet.
The roar of the engines grew louder as Megatron grabbed the Insecticon to drag her to cover, and moments later there was the shift of rapid transformation. “Hold your fire!” Megatron shouted, but they either didn’t hear him over the blaring cacophony of sirens or didn’t care. Megatron barely made it behind the boulder, and at least one of the shots hit Deathshead. He felt her body, insensate though it was, jerk with the impact.
“Hold your fire!” Megatron roared. They had to have hear that, and they would have—except something swept low overhead, rolling through the clouds with a thunderous rumble. None of the Decepticon choppers made that sort of sound. Megatron stared up, but he couldn’t see anything, and in the next moment the Altihex militia were shooting at him again. Between the sound of that, and the muffled roar of powerful engines sweeping past them overhead, they heard nothing else. Fuel hammered through his veins as he prepared to shoot back, knowing he’d have to aim over their heads if he had any hope of the alliance continuing to stand. The concentrated hammering of gunfire was deafening, and the boulder began to fragment, red-hot, under the barrage.
Suddenly light washed over them, the intense white glow of a spotlight turned to point in their direction. The militia shouted and cursed, trying to shield their optics from it, but they couldn’t do that and aim at the same time, and Megatron fired a warning burst over their heads. That made them all drop to the ground, because even if they couldn’t see a fusion cannon blast, they could feel the already-heated air boiling in its wake.
“This is Megatron!” he shouted. “Hold your fire or die!”
“Weapons down!” one of the militia yelled, and the rest of them obeyed, much to Megatron’s relief. He glanced up at the spotlight to see whether it would remain trained on them.
And like a ghost in the night, there was Starscream, holding on to the spotlight with one hand, legs hooked into the framework that kept the light in place on the post three hundred feet tall. The rush of relief that swept over Megatron was so intense that it was all he could do to look away when he heard a weak scrabbling sound. Beside him, Deathshead was stirring, coming back online, but oil and processed energon was soaking into the ground around her, and Megatron could tell she was badly damaged. Sending a swift comm to Soundwave with his coordinates and a request for urgent medical assistance, he knelt beside her to try to stop the worst of the leaks.
He realized his mistake a moment too late. Since Deathshead couldn’t see, she had no idea who was next to her, and she reacted accordingly. Her wings unfolded with a snap, spreading so wide they filled the world.
And their patterns shifted and changed, the dark fluid shades spattered across them flowing into each other, coiling and intricate. Unable to look away, Megatron stared at them. The mesmerizing colors washed over each other like tides on an alien sea, drawing him down into its infinite depths. He was vaguely aware of a popping sound so soft it was at the very limit of awareness. Multiple limbs settled on him to pull him closer and there was a dry sinuous rustle as something slid through the air towards him.
Then light blazed into his face. It scorched past his optics and he jerked reflexively, twisting away. The hypnotic hold broke and as he realized what had almost happened, he had to suppress a surge of nausea before he could speak even close to normally.
“Hold it back!” he snapped, but it wasn’t until he looked into the mirror and saw that Deathshead had obeyed the order did he dare to look around. By then three Decepticon helicopters had reached them, and order was starting to be restored in the militia camp as more Decepticons drove out from Polyhex. Megatron ordered Deathshead to be taken back to the city for urgent repairs, but when Hairtrigger arrived and heard what had happened, he agreed with Megatron that a sweep of the surrounding area was to be done immediately.
The results were conveyed to Megatron over his comm as he was being repaired. There were no remains whatsoever of Brawl.
By the time Megatron returned to his quarters, it was well past dark. He’d gone straight to the command center after his repairs were complete, because he had to know if anything else had happened during the night. There was always a chance that the Brawl incident, as he’d come to think of it, had been a distraction from what their unseen enemy really wanted to do.
But although the city was on high alert, Soundwave reported nothing else out of the ordinary, and after a while Megatron decided to retire for the night. He was more tired than he would ever admit, not to mention frustrated. Shockwave had maintained that the explosion had been set to cover Brawl’s escape, because they’d found no traces of him or the evidence he’d claimed he’d buried. And from what the Altihex militia had said, Brawl had been the sort of insubordinate soldier who was just one step away from hard labor or a brig sentence, so it made sense that he’d graduate to desertion. After tricking Megatron into taking him out of the militia camp to make his getaway, and Megatron hoped to some day meet him again to repay him for it.
But where in the world had he gone after that? The Decepticon choppers had fanned out, searchlights in their undercarriages sweeping the ground, and had found nothing, even though a mech with a tank alt-mode would never be faster than they were.
Megatron tried to push the matter off his mind, knowing he’d find it all the more difficult to recharge otherwise, but of course he couldn’t do that any more than he could enjoy some privacy in his own quarters, because there was Starscream seated on the divan and clearly waiting for him.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
Megatron wished he felt nothing at all. “Did you guess what they were going to do?” he said, cutting through the meaningless small talk and getting straight to the point.
“I always suspect the worst of them, and I’m rarely mistaken.” Starscream got up and went to the chair. “Here, take the couch. What’s going to happen now?”
Megatron tried not to look as though he was sinking gratefully into the divan, though he couldn’t resist lying full-length on it and propping his feet up on one arm. What was going to happen now? Good question. He could only hope “more unpredictable events” wasn’t the answer.
“Hairtrigger suspects something,” he said, lifting his left arm so he could rest it across his optics. “When Caltrop told him he’d given permission for Brawl to leave, I could see that Hairtrigger didn’t believe a word of it. And your showing up like that didn’t help either.”
“Oh, sorry. Next time I’ll leave you to fend for yourself.”
That brought his arm down, and he leveled a look at Starscream. “I don’t know why you followed me out to that camp, but it wasn’t out of concern for my well-being.”
“Yes, it was.” Starscream started to lean back, grimaced as his broken wing swayed with the movement, and returned to his usual stiff posture. “If you were killed, the Decepticon Army would descend into infighting, and I’m not sure I’d survive that.”
“Well, there’s a saying about how only the good die young, so you’ll probably live to a ripe old age. Though one thing you will never do again is leave my quarters without my express permission. That window will stay locked from now on.”
“Guess I’ll have to get creative,” Starscream said, undaunted. “But what’s going to happen now?”
Megatron sat up. “We’re still marching against the Autobots, if that’s what you mean. But you’ll be coming with us.”
Optics flashed a red blink. “I will?”
Good, he’d managed to take Starscream aback for once. “I don’t want to imagine what you’ll get up to here without someone to keep an optic on you,” Megatron said as he went to the energon dispenser. “Besides, you can make yourself useful.”
“As a camp follower?” Starscream asked. “Of course. At the end of each day, I can fetch your rations, bathe you, polish you—”
“A camp follower?” Megatron tried not to imagine Starscream washing him, spreading cleanser over every inch of his armor and then rinsing it off before drying him in slow soft touches of cloth until every drop was gone. “You’d be terrible at that.”
“What will I be doing then?”
Two cubes were full, and Megatron handed one to Starscream before he sat back down. “Scouting, recon, and carrying sensitive messages between us and Polyhex.” He took a long sip of his energon to deliberately draw the moment out, while Starscream sat unmoving, his posture even more rigid. “Of course, you’ll need wings to do those.”
When Starscream spoke, his voice was a near-whisper, held under tight control. “Don’t tease me.” Static crackled under the words. “Not about that.”
Megatron studied the swirl of energon in his cube, because he knew Starscream would hate it if anyone saw all the raw desperation in his face. “I spoke to Hook when my repairs were in progress,” he said, and took a deep swallow. “He already had the design and specifications of the replacements, so those are being prepared now. They should be done by mid-morning.”
“And the—” Starscream hesitated, then went on. “The procedure can take place then?”
“If you’re ready for it.”
“I am.” Starscream looked down at the cube he held, as though he wasn’t sure how it had got into his hand. “Thank you.”
Megatron finished his energon. “You saved my life,” he said as he dispersed the cube and came around the table. “And whatever someone does to me, or for me, I repay in kind. Don’t ever forget that.”
Starscream’s gaze darted up at him immediately, as he’d known it would. Megatron gave him a faint smile that didn’t reach his optics, briefly resting a hand on the top of a red shoulder-vent as he rounded the chair. “Finish your energon and get some recharge,” he said as he went to the washrack. “There’s a lot to be done tomorrow.”
“Hook to Megatron,” Hook said over the comm.
“Yes?” Megatron had been studying a three-dimensional projection of a map, but now he shut it down.
"The procedure’s complete, sir.”
It was late in the afternoon, and although Megatron had managed to avoid looking at his chronometer more than once or twice, he’d wondered if there had been some unanticipated problem. “That took longer than I expected.”
“Perhaps due to the fact that we’ve never replaced a Seeker’s wings before,” Hook said dryly. “Also, once he came back online, he was uncooperative.”
Megatron frowned. “What do you mean, uncooperative?”
“We had to make certain the operation was successful, but he refused to so much as transform. Even though he should now be capable of doing so without pain.”
Megatron had assumed that Starscream would be happy about the replacement of his wings, and that he wouldn’t be able to resist testing them out. So much for that. Of course Starscream never, ever did what was expected of him.
“Did he say what was wrong?” he asked.
“He barely opened his mouth. Just like before.”
Hook was clearly disgruntled, and no wonder. After all the work the surgeons and engineers had poured into this, they’d expected to see their success revealed in its spectacular end result, only for Starscream to revert to his obstinate silence instead. “All right, I’ll deal with this,” Megatron said, wondering why everything was such an uphill climb with Starscream. “Send him to my quarters immediately.”
He continued to plot their route on the map while he waited, and shortly after he finished, a security guard escorted Starscream in. Megatron’s gaze went to the wings at once. The brace was now gone the way of the patches and makeshift welds, leaving sweeps of sleek metal, and the pale perfect white was slashed straight through with a red that would not just catch optics, but draw them towards the high wingtips, tracing the span with a look.
But there was no pleasure or even anticipation in Starscream’s expression. He plodded into the room and sat down, leaning forward as though he still needed to keep his wings from touching anything. His forearms were braced against his knees with a hand gripping each elbow, and he stayed silent.
“Do you want to explain yourself?” Megatron asked, though he kept his tone neutral, because it was obvious this wasn’t more defiance. He wasn’t certain what it was, actually, but he was going to find out.
“Not really,” Starscream muttered.
“Starscream, look at me,” Megatron said, and Starscream obeyed slowly. “Is this because the surgeons and their assistants had to touch your wings?”
Starscream managed a shake of his head. “I knew they had to do it.” His voice was strained. “I mean—those couldn’t have been replaced or checked for functionality otherwise. It wasn’t as bad as the paint job."
“Go on.”
Starscream’s throat tensed as he swallowed. “It’s been so long since I transformed. Or flew. I don’t…” Once more his head lowered, his vents working audibly. “What if…”
Abruptly he bolted up, his features twisting in anger. “I hate this!” His hands were clenched at his sides, but in the next klik he recovered his composure with a visible effort. “I’m sorry. I’m behaving ridiculously.” His voice was dull, and he still wouldn’t meet Megatron’s optics.
Although Megatron had been prepared to tell him to get a grip, he now thought better of it. He had neither the time nor the inclination to indulge weakness from anyone, but it was obvious that this wasn’t cowardice. This was someone struggling to overcome a problem instead, and berating him for failing to immediately do so wouldn’t accomplish anything.
So instead Megatron said evenly, “Sit down.” He waited for Starscream to do so before he continued. “What do you hate?”
There was a long pause before Starscream answered, the words coming as though wrenched out of him. “Being like this.” He stared at his knees. “No one even needs to think about transforming. It happens naturally. But I keep picturing it and imagining how it could go wrong, how that would feel, over and over again.”
Megatron shrugged. “Doesn’t strike me as ridiculous at all. Anyone would feel that way.”
“Well, I’m not anyone,” Starscream said sullenly.
An idea occurred to Megatron. "No, you’re a prisoner whose arrogance is hopefully matched by his ability," he said, and sent a ping over his comm. "But if you don’t want to try transforming, I’m the last mech who’s going to push you to do it—and I’ve got more important demands on my time anyway. In two cycles' time, we’re leaving, and you’ll accompany us whether or not you can fly. I just hope you won’t be too much of a liability.”
Starscream said nothing, clearly too preoccupied to even care about a riposte. When the ping was answered, Megatron issued a quick order over his comm, then got up from his workstation. Starscream rose as well.
“Could I go to the library?” he asked.
There was no enthusiasm in his voice, which meant he wanted to make a quick retreat to the furthest location he could go. “No, that’s closed for routine maintenance,” Megatron said. “But you can come with me if you like.”
“To where?”
“The building immediately to our west.”
“Oh, the armory,” Starscream said, with his usual habit of seeing right through token attempts at concealment. Megatron let it pass, and said nothing as they took the underground tunnel that led to the armory’s basement, and then an elevator to the topmost floor. If Starscream wondered what they were doing, he didn’t ask. Megatron unlocked a door and led the way out to the roof.
The armory’s roof was as tiled and flat as the observation deck, and likewise set with sluices for rain, but there was one striking difference. Short thick columns were set along the low wall that ran the length of the roof, three to each side, and Megatron went to stand between two of those. Far below them came the whirring of a helicopter’s blades.
“We have a better view of the militia’s camp here,” he said, but didn’t elaborate any further.
Starscream nodded. “Is there something I should be…” He paused and looked down, frowning, as the sound of rotors grew louder. “Who’s that?”
The helicopter rose like a bullet, streaking up through the air towards their level, and there was a click as black gun barrels extruded. Megatron pushed Starscream away from the space between the columns and threw himself aside in the next moment. A bolt of light, concentrated to a furnace heat, hit one of the columns. Megatron scrambled to his feet and turned to put his back to the next column, his cannon charging up as he did so. Gobs of liquefied metal began to drip from the wall around the roof.