Chapter Text
Bumblebee found Megatron laying beneath the clouds, the slightest breeze tickling at their plating as he crouched before the ex-Decepticon.
I heard you two fighting.
Megatron glanced at the other bot. He watched with cold optics as the scout flinched back, watched as fear filled those eyes, the ones that were blue like the sky above him, that were filled with so much emotion that he could never touch it, never know it the way Bumblebee did.
Knock Out sounded mad.
“Your observation skills are phenomenal Bumblebee!” Megatron scathed, he felt his face plate scrunch up into a hateful sneer. “You should become a scientist! Shockwave would be more than happy to welcome such a prodigy in his ranks!”
Is this about that mech you two kept talking about?
“Primus I wish I had destroyed more than your voicebox that day.” Megatron shut his optics, the light from the sun felt too unbearable for some reason. “You talk too much.”
Megatron turned off his comms.
“Beep.”
Megatron furrowed his brows together.
“Beep, beep, beep!”
“Just shut up Bumblebee.”
“Beep, eeep! Eep!”
Megatron turned away, burrowing his helm deeper into the grass that laid beneath him, that seemed so much softer than before. He thought about disconnecting his audials, thought about living in silence, the one that Bumblebee seemed so desperate to fill.
“Beep! EEP! BEEP!”
“Is that all you can say? It’s really getting pitiful now Bumblebee.”
Suddenly it all went quiet.
It was strange, like a flower blooming in Iacon, it was something that shouldn’t have been there, yet it was. There was nothing now to distract him from his thoughts. The ones that swirled in his processor desperate to make sense of all this new. He clenched his servo, moved it without hearing those metal chains that clanged against the stone ground of that cell. He carefully touched his torso, right where he knew his tank was, hidden beneath all those layers of plating and protoform that kept him safe during all these solar cycles. He wasn’t hungry, it had been a long time since he felt hungry.
This was wrong.
Knock Out had said it himself.
Megatron didn’t deserve this.
This freedom, it was all wrong.
His proof was right in front of him, in a small mech that was colored yellow and black, that couldn’t speak, that had its voice box torn out before its own plating had even hardened, and Megatron was the one to do it.
“You would’ve liked Cybertron,” Megatron whispered.
“Beep?”
Megatron couldn’t find it within himself to turn his comms back on, to hear that voice that was empty and emotional, the one that sounded like him.
“It's everything you dreamed about . . . and more.” Megatron cradled himself in that way Knock Out had when Praxus had first fallen, his pedes pulled under him as his arms held them in place, all while he laid on his side against the organic life that was surely flattened beneath him. “You would’ve loved it.”
“Beep . . . beep.”
Megatron knew what Bumblebee was saying, he didn't know how . . . he just knew. “There’s metals that you’ve never heard of, flora, and fauna that you’d never believe existed.
“The Cybertron you saw was nothing like the Cybertron we knew.”
“Beep . . . beep.”
“It wasn’t . . . perfect . . . but it could’ve been, it could’ve been like the golden age, the one that those high-classed politicians used to speak about in those grandiose declarations in Iacon.”
Bumblebee stayed silent.
“I used to watch those a lot . . . as a miner there wasn’t much you could do . . . well if you were any low class mech there wasn’t much to do outside of work.”
“Beep.” The mech leaned in closer, his optics cycled as he gazed up at the elder.
“Sometimes I close my eyes and I can still see them, their optics, so full of hope, that one day our lives could’ve been better.”
In another life he would’ve said he believed them.
He felt a nudge at his side. Bumblebee was staring down at the dirt, his digits carefully tracing out glyph after glyph, a language long forgotten by Megatron’s glossa, words and words that he had written in a time that no longer felt natural against his own frame.
They say we should be proud of our work, of the fruits of our labor that hold our society together, yet they beat us in the streets, treat us lower than the dirt beneath our pedes, they rape and kill us, for we are dispensable to them. We never were meant to be equal to them.
Megatron turned away, a pit now sat in his tank. “I haven’t seen that in a long time.”
Optimus used to read it to me. Bumblebee wrote into the mud beneath it.
“Seems about right for an archivist.”
They weren’t good mechs, the . . . politicians you were talking about?
“They . . . they were trying their best.”
Bumblebee paused, his fingers tense over the ground that had become his canvas. Just because they were trying their best doesn’t mean they were good people.
“Let me guess, Optimus taught you that too,” Megatron seethed, he bared his teeth at the young bot, it felt natural, as if he was in that area again, the crowds surrounding him, chanting his name and the only thing he could do was bare his teeth, like a cornered cybercat. “What other little lessons did Prime teach you? He probably told you about his grand duel with the Champion of Kaon! How he smited that fiend back into the pits where they belonged?! Huh?! Is that what Optimus taught you?!”
Bumblebee recoiled away, his shoulders hunched in on themselves as he wrote, He told me of the caste system, of Starving Kaon, and the Great Revolt.
“He shouldn’t have told you about those things . . . they were . . . worthless events.”
I deserved to know about them.
“No you don’t! No one deserves to know about that! No one! Optimus had no right! No right to tell you!”
I deserved to know. I’m Cybertronian too.
“You aren’t though! You’re not like me, or Optimus, or Elita, you’re not like any of us! You’re not one of us! You don’t understand! You’ve never known Cybertron! You’ve never lived on Cybertron! You can’t mourn Primus’ death like we can! You don’t get to recite my words to me, that I wrote about Cybertron! You don’t get to act like you knew Cybertron better than me! You never lived on Cybertron!”
Bumblebee didn’t dare write anything else. His eyes were distant, and apathetic. He closed them, hiding the tears that slipped down his cheeks, the only evidence of their existence was the sun’s rays that peaked through the trees, that illuminated them in that yellow color, the one that was in buildings of Iacon, in the desert outside of Kaon, in the mines and in the hallways he once walked upon, they were the color of mechs whose faceplates now lie in dirt, left to rot on a planet they had once promised to protect, the planet he promised to protect.
His tears were the color of lazy mornings, dreamt up by miners and servants and slaves who all stared up at the same sky and wished that same foolish wish of a new Cybertorn, the one that she had embodied, the one that he had spoke about, the one that so many fought for.
“You’ve never even lived, Bumblebee.”
Bumblebee suddenly stood up, it seemed that the mech couldn’t take the brutish, cruel words and was to retreat back into whatever hovel he had woken up in.
“Have a good day . . . Bumblebee.”
Not a beep responded to him.
“You’ve pushed them away, why?” She stepped out from wherever she was hiding, her long legs striding in cold confidence to his side, that was where he used to find her, she used to always be by his side. He couldn’t find it within himself to look up at her, he was tainted by his sins, he was covered in Primus’ blood and if he dared look at her, she would become like him, the very same murder who destroyed their carrier, she would, like him be swallowed alive for crimes she had no part in.
“You’re a good person, D, I know you are-”
“And if I’m not? What shall you do dear sister? Will you still stand with me, if you knew what I did after you left me, you would not say those things.”
“I”m saying those things because I know you . . . you and I were born from the same spark, birthed by the same god-”
“You are a fool, truly a fool, we are not the same, you . . . you were blessed, by the church, by Primus, you were lucky, I was not, that’s the difference between you and me.”
“I was born of the same class-”
“But you don’t have to live with their blood on your hands, do you, you don’t know death like I do, the way it clings to your frame, the way you can smell it in the air, you didn’t have to learn those things, I did, I protected you, shielded you from all those terrible things-! I-! I did those things to protect you. All of this is your fault!”
“My fault, yes indeed, this war has always been my fault, it was my dream, to be freed.” He heard the clicking of her collar, the same one he wore now. “I wanted to see the stars every night, not just the nights when the clouds over Kaon parted. I was greedy and selfish and tied you down to me.”
“You’re mocking me-”
“I would never-”
“Yes you would, you’ve been mocking me for solar cycles. You are cruel and you are unjust, you don’t get to haunt me, I did what I had to!”
“You had to kill me?”
“YES!”
Silence fell over them.
“You . . . you were . . .”
“The worst thing that ever happened to you.”
“Yes . . . I am bound to you, and I hate it, I hate it, I burn with this hatred, I want to kill them all, those fools who think they can tame me, I detest your existence, you make me weak, you make me . . .”
“Primus! I can’t even look at you! You are like this planet’s damned moon! Weak and feeble and pale and you won’t leave me alone! You always follow me! And . . . and . . . and I can’t get you to stop!”
“ . . .”
“Are you still waiting for me?” He felt his lip curl into a sneer, revealing fangs that were white like stars sharpened into points that tore through cables and lines of autobots who he couldn’t remember their names, or faceplates or voices that had screamed into his audials all those years ago. “If I come back to the Nemesis will you still be there? Or will you have abandoned me?”
“I would have been there, I’m always there . . . waiting.”
“You weren’t there when Praxus fell,” he whispered. “You weren’t there when we needed you . . . when I needed you . . . you weren’t there when I surrendered.”
She didn’t respond to him.
“You probably think I’m a coward, that I’m some spineless mech like that false prime, Sentinel! I’m not though, I believed in it, in the Decepticons, in our movement . . . I believed in you, in your foolishly naive words! And you just left me . . . you left me . . .”
“Are you still waiting at the Nemesis for me?”
“I’ll always be waiting for you . . . Megatron.”
“This might be my last night free . . .” A cold bitter laugh escaped from some part of him, it burned at his tanks, at his vents that shuttered with the motion. “Maybe I’ll go back to you . . . one final time . . .”
“I’ll be waiting for you . . .”
Megatron closed his optics, he remembered something Elita had once said to him.
“Just imagine her, remember that one day, she’ll need you again, and you have to be there for her.”
He tried to remember what she was like, what it was that made her so special, so different from everyone else, how she had shined under that spotlight. How she had smiled at him all those years ago, how she had leaned her helm against his shoulder, how she had held his hand and promised all those thin promises that now were nothing but lies on his frame, weighing him down like the armor he wore in that area. She had spoken to him in that strange way, he couldn’t remember her tone, all he could remember was her words, sung over and over again, and how they’d swirl into his processor, painting pretty pictures of a life that was so pastel only a sparkling could think up. It made him want to purge his tanks. She was beautiful and the ugliest thing he’d ever seen, dressed in fabric so gaudy it burned at his optics, made him want to rip them out, or maybe rip her apart. She always had an eye for the finer things in life, she was selfish, and vain, and self-absorbed and she was just like Knock Out, she had white protoform under that thin armor, and she had flaking paint on her legs and arms and her stomach, it had been the same shade of blue as refined energon, the same kind of energon that was spilled across ball room floors, stamped over by bourgeoisie pedes that only watched from their high balconies as the mechs beneath them starved. How he loathed them. She was powerful, and she was weak, she commanded a room with every step she took, yet under his servos, when death stared her in the face, she lied there and dared not fight back. She was pathetic . . . she was a coward, she was his weakness.
What was it that Elita had said again?
“Everything you do, it will be for her.”
How unfair.
“Are you still there . . ?”
“I told you . . . I’ll always be waiting for you.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why are you still waiting for me?”
“Because you told me to wait for you . . .”
“Shut up . . . I told you to wait for me back then . . . but you didn’t . . .you didn’t wait for me.”
“What are you-”
“You didn’t wait for me.”
“D, I-”
“You didn’t wait for me.”
“Megatron, I-”
“You didn’t wait for me.”
“Brother-”
“Are you stupid or something!” He shot up from the ground, he scanned the area before him, his pupils, cycling, recycling, over and over again until he was certain, until there was no doubt in his mind she was gone. She didn’t even have the spark to leave her footprints in the dirt.
“You didn’t wait for me,” he repeated. It stung at his chassis, pierced through his plating, the very one that had withstood slashes from Optimus’ axe, stood strong under the heat of Hot Rod, had survived Starsplitter’s sword, the very thing it dared to crack under, was her words.
“You didn’t wait for me.” He said it once, then again, and again, and he was saying it like it was the last thing he knew, whispering it, like a hymn or a verse from the holy texts that were written in Primus’ temples, as if it was the last and only thing he knew. It was the only thing he knew, she had left him, she had . . .
“You left me,” he finally croaked through his voicebox. “You left me.”
He slammed his hand into a tree. The pitiful thing died without a creak from its trunk.
“You promised to wait for me . . . you promised. You lied to me . . . again.” Megatron could feel his fingers digging into his palm, carving crescents into the plating beneath it. “You lied, you always lie . . . why?”
There was no one to grace him with a response.
“Why . . . why . . . why?!” He whipped around and screamed, screamed at that Primus forsaken cabin, at this lifeless rock that he now stood upon, at the Autobots who think they could tame him, at that foolish prime who could never keep his own enstril in his own business, at his sister who couldn’t bare to leave him alone.
“You always lie . . . you know that . . . and I believed them, were those words under that sky . . . were they lies too?” He rubbed his servo over his eyes, felt the way they sagged, the way they could barely open, how they fought recharge, how they fought his coding that so desperately wanted to be soft, to be weak, to let the plating that was so full of scars fall across his protoform that was bare and pale. “I try to remember your voice . . . your words, your promises, the way you smiled, the way you laughed. The only thing I can remember is the way you lied.”
“That smirk, those eyes that would stare down at me, like those high classed mechs that I detested so much! You became one of them in those moments, when the spotlight would shine, when you would look over that crowd, the ones that sat at the palm of your servo, the ones that you could bully and poke and prod and they would do nothing, I would do nothing, because . . . because . . . when . . . when you were on that stage . . . when you weren’t just 20 . . . when you-”
The words got caught at the base of his throat.
“You were everything I wanted the Decepticons to be.”
“You were everything to me . . . everything I so desperately wanted, and I couldn’t get close, I couldn’t hug you or hold your hand the way we used to all those years ago, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t because . . . because . . . because . . .”
“Because . . . I’d blink and suddenly you weren’t someone I knew anymore . . .”
“Your lies . . . they twisted into my truth, the speeches you’d give were just sheets of glass and the fantasy we were building was nothing but fake flowers that you gifted me . . . you never really believed in our cause . . . you never even saw me any different from those Senators in Iacon.”
“You used me, just as they did, you . . . you tricked them all, Knockout, Soundwave, Starscream, even Orion and Elita! You tricked us all, and now you’re gone . . . and you made me the villain in your story.”
He bit his lip, energon dripped from the wound. “You’re a traitor . . . that’s why I killed you.” He laughed. It was . . . humiliating, to have someone so dead, so gone and so forgotten still haunting him, it was as if she was . . .
He took a step forward, peering into the woods before him. “I know . . . you’re there.”
A twig snapped.
He whirled around, the world was spinning, she was there, and she was staring down at him, she was smiling, that terrible, terrible smile that was burning at his spark, screaming at him to kill her, blast through that Primus forbidden faceplate and leave it to the pits, to forget everything that ever tore at his soul, weighed on it like the cannon that was weighing on his shoulder, or his servos that were too stained with their energon, the warriors he slain in battle, his planet that he tore to pieces for his precious justice, her who stood in front of him waiting for him to do . . . something.
“Why have you returned?”
“I told you that I’d be waiting for you.”
He squinted, tried to get a better look at her, the only things he could discern was her optics and that . . . smile.
“No! Not now!”
The shadow flinched back.
“I’m talking about before! Before! Before! Primus don’t you remember!” He shook his helm, tried to rid himself of the tears that were suddenly clouding his vision, blurring his processor until he couldn’t see what was right and what was wrong.
“D-”
“When you were my second in command! When I thought I knew you! When you promised to be there for me!”
“D-”
“Why . . ! Why return now?! When everything has been done! When I can’t clean this in the Sea of Rust! You were supposed to be there for me! You were supposed to have stopped me! This is your fault!”
“D-”
“I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear your excuses! I don’t want it . . . I don’t want it . . .” He was loyal, loyal to the end, to that planet, to the Decepticons, to her, and they had all left him. He was loyal to rotten fruit. “You did this to me . . . don’t you see it.”
She didn’t move.
“You’ve made me a monster . . .”
“Megatron.”
From her spot, Optimus was now there, he walked, and she followed, he was now the color of refined energon, and had paint that was flaking off on his legs and arms and stomach.
Megatron stared at him for a long moment. “I hate that color,” he finally spat out.
“Megatron, I don’t want to make this any harder than it is-”
“I really, really hate that color . . .”
“What are you-”
“I hate that you look like her . . .” Megatron looked past him, she was still standing there, just out of sight behind Optimus’ finials that flicked in annoyance. “I hate how you act like her too, you both didn’t even spend that much time together . . . why are you acting like this.”
“I . . . I never changed.”
“Neither did I . . .” He gritted his teeth together. “Yet you and all the others are so adamant that I can change! But she knows the truth.” He pointed at her, his digit falling in line with the moon that casted its pale light onto her, only illuminating her white protoform.
Optimus turned behind him before giving Megatron a quizzical look. “What in Unicron’s name are you talking about? There’s no one there. Megatron are you-?”
“Show yourself!” She stared back at him. “SHOW YOURSELF! Don’t be shy now!” He held out his arms as he started forward, he wanted to see her recoil, to see that face, to see those optics that glowed that should’ve shown him emotions like hate, and anger, and loathing, the ones that he felt run through his cables every day when he was in those mines, it should’ve been something terrifying monstrous more than that, it should’ve been something anything that Megatron couldn’t have imagined, something that would soothe that ache in his chest every time he thought about her.
The gaze that she gave back to him was the same one she left him with, it was soft, and fragile, and didn’t have any spikes that could prick him if he dared to get too close.
It was the worst thing that Megatron had ever seen, it panged in his chassis, in a space too close to his spark. “You liar.”
“Megatron, please, tell me what you’re seeing,” Optimus said sternly.
“She’s a liar.”
“Who is-?”
“She is!” He pointed at her again. “You don’t get to make that face! You don’t get to make it hurt more!” He raised his hand to where his spark was supposed to be, where it burned and throbbed in its chamber. “You don’t . . . you don’t . . .” A long silence stretched between them.
“Megatron you should go see-”
“I’m not crazy!”
“Of course not, I never said that,” Optimus said gently.
“You don’t understand . . . you don’t understand Orion! You just-!” He turned back to her.
She was gone.
“No . . .” His lip trembled and his legs couldn’t carry the weight anymore, the one that had been building against his spinal strut, born from her lies, from his actions, from the pain that laid inside his chassis that he didn’t know what to do with, suddenly it seemed that it was all crashing before him.
“Megatron!” Optimus reached forward, catching the other in the palms of his servos. “Are you-”
“You saw her . . . you saw her too . . . right?”
“Megatron . . .”
“You . . . you have to have seen her . . . she was . . . she was right there . . .”
His expression softened, it wasn’t one fit for a prime, it didn’t fit that cold exterior, the one that Megatron had learned to know on the battlefield when the horrors of war froze over the remorse and guilt that lined the wiring beneath his frame.
“Of course I did,” Optimus finally said in a quiet voice.
“I . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”
“I know . . . I know you didn’t . . .” For a moment, Megatron could almost believe him.
It was ruined when Megatron heard the familiar click of energon cuffs.
“You . . . you . . .”
“I’m sorry . . .”
“You both . . .” Megatron glared down, stared down at the leaves beneath his pedes, bit his glossa to stop the tears that threatened to slip down his cheeks. “You both see me the same . . . as some monster-!”
“I don’t,” Optimus pleaded.
“No you do . . . you’ve made it abundantly clear!”
“Please . . . Megatron, don’t make this any harder than it is-”
“OH SPARE ME PRIME!” Megatron strained against the cuffs, his optics were wide, feral . . . dangerous. “Your lies are thinner than paper, just look at me! A collar, I’m like some fenced in turbohound! Energon cuffs, I’m just low-life scum to you! Just say it at this point! No need to hide Prime! Just look at me . . . Look at me! LOOK AT ME PRIME!”
Optimus had closed his eyes.
“You want me to change . . . Optimus . . . you really want me to change . . . don’t fraggin treat me like those Senators, don’t treat me like I’m some . . . beast.”
Optimus was crying. Megatron felt no sympathy, no care for those pitiful tears.
“Knock Out told me to come collect you . . .” Optimus finally said after they were some paces from the cabin. “He told me . . . you didn’t want to continue . . . to be rehabilitated.”
Nothing was spoken between them for a moment.
“What do you want me to say . . . that he was lying?”
“No . . . but . . . you must . . . don’t you want-”
“I don’t want anything!” Megatron whipped his helm in Optimus’ direction, a cold bitter feeling settled in his tanks. “You don’t know me Prime.”
“She would’ve wanted you-”
“Are you serious!” Megatron pulled himself away from Optimus’ grasp. “You . . . of all mechs, you can’t be telling me what she would’ve or wouldn’t have wanted! You didn’t even know her!”
“I did know her-”
“No you didn’t! Not like me! You didn’t know the real her!”
“Megatron-”
“Just shut up! . . . Let’s go.”
More silence.
“Where’s Bumblebee?” Optimus asked.
“Sleeping,” Megatron snapped. “Not like he does anything else really, all he does is sleep, wake up and then annoy me.”
“I see.”
They reached the base, the one they called the Ark, he sneered at his past self for not being able to find it.
Knock Out was there, waiting.
Elita was there too.
Optimus handed him over to them.
“You gonna lock me up?” Megatron asked with a toothy grin. “Throw away the key?” He lowered himself until he was eye level with Elita.
She frowned, and from her mouth came words that held no bite, no banter, it was nothing but a flat sentence that lingered in the air, strained and stretched until they finally reached his audials.
“Can I ask you something?”