here it was.
It was quiet at first. Deceptively quiet. Obscenely quiet. No one else, probably, would have noticed it or paid it any mind at all. I, however, had become uniquely conditioned to hear it, no matter how faint, no matter how far away. More than that, it was the sound that I had been waiting for, although certainly not with any kind of happy anticipation. I had known that I would eventually hear the sound, but that didn’t stop me from hoping that by some miraculous twist of fate I’d been forgotten or that I’d been granted, for whatever reason, a reprieve, or that he’d become distracted by something else. But there were never any such miracles in store for Starscream, and so there it was.
It was a sound I had grown to hate more than any other in the universe, and it was increasing in volume as it slowly but inexorably drew nearer to my quarters. With each dull, reverberating thud, the echoes of imminent, inevitable pain, of violation and humiliation, wafted down the corridor, propagated through the very walls and floors. They seeped into my quarters and pounded against my audios like a savage, ritualistic drumbeat, one that insistently worked its way into my very being, refusing to be dislodged.
The sound was the sound of Megatron’s approaching footsteps as he moved purposely down the corridor, toward my quarters.
Exactly four hours, twenty-two minutes, and thirteen-point-eight seconds elapsed between the moment that Megatron, in a rage, had banished me to my quarters and the moment that I heard that first faint footstep as Megatron had stepped off the elevator and into the long corridor that ran outside my door. I was sitting where I always sat when I was waiting for Megatron to arrive, at a small table situated directly across the room from the door to my quarters. My back, as always, was toward the door. I never wanted to see him enter the room, after all.
I had been trying to use those four hours constructively. As always, I was trying to shore up my mental defenses in preparation for the nightmare that I knew was heading my way, that always, inevitably, headed my way. As always, I sat in complete darkness, cloaking myself in it, wrapping myself in its comforting arms. The darkness was…soothing, for one thing. And, for another, I didn’t really want to see the room in which I was sitting. It was Spartan, unwelcoming, unlived-in. Dispersed amongst the old scorch marks and scratches on the walls were the shinier, newer patches that had replaced the ones that had been deeply dented when my airborne body had slammed into them before crashing in a shuddering, ignominious heap to the floor. Those were the things that I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing. Under normal day-to-day circumstances, I didn’t notice those little features of my quarters; I was just like anyone else in that I didn’t really notice tiny details that were simply there all the time, that were a mundane part of my existence. I took them for granted, like probably everyone else would.
But these were not normal circumstances and I am not exactly like everyone else. And during those times when I was waiting for Megatron to swoop down upon me like one of the avenging Furies out of Greek myth, I realized that the story of the relationship between Megatron and me was all there, etched into the walls that were slowly suffocating me. It was all around me, all the time, inescapable. It was literally the writing on the wall, and at the moment…I didn’t want to see it. No, what I needed to do right at that moment was to concentrate. Such focused, determined concentration was, at times, all that separated me from the murky yet seductive depths of complete insanity. And sometimes…Sometimes, it was all that kept me alive. I was well aware of that fact.
So, I sat in the quiet, currently-peaceful blackness of my quarters. My body was hunched over. My elbows were resting on the table in front of me, and my hands were clutching at both sides of my head as if I thought it would fly apart if my grip on it slipped for even an instant. My thoughts as I sat there, waiting…waiting…were turned entirely inward. I was concentrating…focusing…collecting my wits as best I could so that I could face what was to come. But most of all, I was concentrating on clearing my mind of any thoughts of Skyfire and especially of our recent meeting.
That process took much longer than I thought it would. I hadn’t realized just how deep of an…imprint being with Skyfire had left on me this time. I knew, though, that I was starting, ever so slowly, to see things differently. I was beginning to know where I belonged. And I was beginning to feel a flowering of self-confidence, the likes of which I hadn’t felt in…well, in a very long time, indeed. It had burst into full bloom, unfortunately, those four hours ago. And I knew that Megatron could – and would – instantly detect those sorts of feelings and the changes that they were beginning to forge in me…and then he might possibly link them to Skyfire…and of course I couldn’t let that happen. I had to protect him. I had to protect us. So that was the focus of my efforts now. I was working on constructing a thick, protective wall around Skyfire and my memories of and emotions about him. I knew that I could succeed in the effort because I had become, over the years, very good at building such walls. In fact, I had been doing it unconsciously for so long now that it had become an ingrained part of my identity.
Starscream was all about walls, indeed.
And I was confident that Megatron wouldn’t be able to see through my defenses, too. And besides that, as I sat there preparing for his arrival I honestly didn’t think he’d really care much about what I might be hiding, anyway. He rarely expressed any genuine interest in – much less concern for – me and my well-being or for what I might be thinking about during these unpleasant…episodes…of ours. In fact, he didn’t seem to care about me at all. All he really wanted to do, it seemed, was to use me as an outlet, to vent his various frustrations upon me. And then after that, he usually wanted to bond, as if he’d drained from himself everything that he was during that venting and he needed to fill himself back up by sucking the very life out of me.
And it had been a while since our last bonding, so I’d known, somewhere within me, that he’d be needing me in that way very soon. It was inevitable, an immutable fact of my life. Still, I couldn’t help wishing that Megatron wouldn’t take so much out of me when we bonded. When the bond experience was added to the physical torture that Megatron had slowly, over the past year or so, taken to inflicting upon me and that he seemed to enjoy… Well, after all that, there usually wasn’t much left of me. I shuddered at the prospect of having to go through it all again, at the prospect of spending, indeed, the rest of my life enduring that sort of thing on a regular basis. I knew there was nothing that I could do about it, of course, that it was my well-deserved lot in life…but that didn’t take away even the smallest iota of the dread that overcame me every single time that one of these sessions was looming on the horizon.
But I knew that I couldn’t dwell on that, certainly not now. All that I had time to do before Megatron finally arrived was to reaffirm to myself that I was a survivor. I inwardly swore that someday I would stand up to Megatron, that someday I’d be stronger, that someday I would be the one in control of the situation, not him. Someday, yes…
…But not today.
The footsteps stopped just as I realized and fully acknowledged that today would not be the day that I’d stand up to Megatron. I knew that Megatron was standing in front of my quarters, just on the other side of the door. He always stood there in that precise spot for a moment or two before he entered my quarters, waiting. Megatron knew that I would know that he was there. He knew that I’d be dreading his arrival, and I knew that he wanted to prolong that dread as long as he possibly could. It was all a part of the game, it seemed, a game that Megatron lived for and that was completely out of my control. And I might have been imagining it, but it seemed to me as if Megatron waited just a little longer each time before entering my quarters. Each time, I had to endure a little longer the frantic pounding of my energon pump, the horrible, gnawing fear that took hold of my spark in a cold, iron grip at the moment when I first heard his footsteps in the corridor and that crescendoed as he stood there, just outside my door. But finally – Mercifully, in an odd sort of way – I heard the buttons on the computer lock on my door being punched in a long, complicated combination.
I had spent the past four hours coaching myself, preparing my thoughts, and planning my words so that maybe I could endure what was to come just one more time. I went through the same routine each time one of these…experiences…was looming in my immediate future, and every time I would forget just how unpredictable Megatron could be when he set his mind to it. I would forget how he seemed to know exactly how to tailor every one of these sessions so that it would smash through my carefully-constructed defenses in the most ruthlessly efficient manner possible.
I heard the door swoosh open behind me. I saw the dull splash of light wash over the wall in front of me, saw Megatron’s shadow on the wall, and then I heard him walk into my quarters, the doors quietly swooshing shut in his wake after he’d passed through them. My hands tightened into fists as the lights came on, which was, of course, always the first thing that Megatron did when he entered my quarters. I stared at my fists and inwardly cringed as I waited for the first cannon blast to burn a hole through my back. But none came. Instead, I heard the familiar sound of metal sliding quietly against metal as Megatron removed the fusion cannon from his arm and set it – lovingly, no doubt – on the floor. My body relaxed a bit with relief, as I realized that, at least this time, I wasn’t going to be blasted with that awful thing. After all, nothing hurt worse or took longer to heal than a fusion burn.
Or so I thought, anyway…
I continued to sit quietly, staring intently at my fists on the tabletop as Megatron approached me from behind. I tensed again, anticipating some kind of violent action on his part and some kind of painful sensation on mine. But again, neither of those things materialized. Instead, I jerked slightly and winced as I felt Megatron’s hand touch the top edge of my right wing. But to my utter confusion and surprise, there was no pain at all. In fact, Megatron was…caressing me. I felt his fingers gently trace along the edge of my wing, out to the tip, and then slowly move back again. He did this over and over again before he actually spoke to me.
“Why have you been behaving this way, Starscream?” Megatron finally asked.
The deep, gravelly voice was familiar, yes, but the tone of it and the behavior that Megatron was displaying were not familiar at all. He wasn’t yelling at me. His voice did not even quiver with the much rarer, restrained, quiet fury that would sometimes consume him and that I knew, from experience, was actually a harbinger of extreme pain for me. And his question wasn’t an accusatory one, either. It was merely…a curious one. In fact, Megatron sounded like someone who actually…cared. And, on top of that, I really hadn’t been expecting any sort of physical affection from him. That hadn’t been a part of our relationship for…a very long time, indeed. So, as Megatron continued to stroke the tops of my wings, now using both hands, one on each wing, my shoulders reflexively – and against my will – relaxed. Megatron’s completely unexpected gentle ministrations were beginning to distract me.
Keep your focus! I sternly reminded myself. He’s playing games with you, just like he always does. Don’t let him get to you so easily, fool!
So, with that thought in mind, I set my jaw and continued to stare down at the table in front of me…but it was a difficult front to maintain. It had been so long since he had shown me any sort of affection like this. So long…
“What ‘way?’” I eventually asked, trying to sound both angry and in control of the situation. But I could already feel myself wavering, on both counts.
Megatron didn’t answer me for a moment. He just continued to stroke the edges of my wings. But eventually he leaned over my shoulder and spoke slowly and softly into my audios.
“I can feel that you’ve been defying me through our bond, my dear Starscream,” Megatron whispered. There was a certain unidentifiable edge to his voice. There was a tinge of something that seemed affectionate, but that tinge was almost drowned out by…something else. Something I couldn’t quite put a finger on… “I want to know why you’re doing that.” When I didn’t answer, however, Megatron slowly moved around to my side and knelt down on one knee next to my chair. “Look at me.”
The gentleness of his voice was confusing. His lack of violence was even more confusing. So, as if not of my own volition, I swiveled the chair around so that I faced him.
Megatron looked calm and composed. He even smiled slightly when I turned toward him. I couldn’t understand why he appeared so serene when, judging by his reactions to similar things I’d done in the past, he should be in a fuming, tearing rage. In fact, he should have already been tossing me around the room, and I should have been screaming for all I was worth, begging him to stop. Instead, he was looking at me like a doting human father looks upon his infant child. In return, I regarded him with my head tilted slightly, inquisitively, to the side for a long moment. I didn’t speak, though, so Megatron apparently felt that he needed to fill the silence.
“You’ve always argued with me, Starscream,” he said quietly. “That’s nothing new. But today you did something you’ve never done before. You…resisted me…through the very thing that keeps us united.”
The tone of his voice sounded almost…wounded. Betrayed, even. But I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or if it was merely the latest ploy that he had devised to make me feel guilty, which was a common tactic of his. Whatever the case, he leaned closer to me, and trailed the fingers of both hands up the length of each of my forearms, and then my upper arms, and then he began toying absently with the mount of the laser rifle at each of my shoulders. He was so physically close to me, almost embracing me… It was something that he almost never allowed, and I was, at that moment, completely tempted to reach out and touch him in a similar manner…but I knew, on a more alert and warier level, that to do so was to tempt fate, and that wasn’t something that I wanted to do, not now that he wasn’t doing horrible things to me. Not now that he was touching me as one touches someone whom one cares about, whom one loves. Not now that he was looking at me not with fury or scorn, but with a slightly-smiling, wholly benign, and almost…affectionate curiosity.
My thoughts were becoming more muddled by the minute. With all that I was, I had been preparing myself for Megatron to behave as he normally behaved…only to have him arrive on my doorstep displaying the exact opposite demeanor. So, I was confused, and I was becoming more confused with every second that passed…yet I couldn’t help but enjoy the physical contact, the affection. Both were things that I craved more than almost anything in the universe, especially from Megatron. And it had been so long since I’d had any of that from him…
“Something has changed, my Starscream,” Megatron was continuing softly, as he gently massaged my shoulders, his voice now a soft, almost seductive, purr, “and I need to know what it is.”
I pulled in a deep breath before I answered, one that despite my best efforts to keep it steady and indifferent shuddered as much as I was internally shuddering. I said the first thing that came to mind, which was all that I could think of to say.
“I…I’m not sure what to say,” I said, and my voice shuddered, too, which was thoroughly damning evidence of the inturnal turmoil that I was experiencing, that I had been wanting to keep to myself. And what I’d said was the truth, too, because I really did have absolutely no idea what to say at that moment. I knew I couldn’t tell Megatron about Skyfire…but my ingrained loyalty to Megatron and the thoroughly unexpected affection that he was bestowing upon me were beginning to shake the foundations of those mental defenses of mine.
“You can start by telling me where it is that you’ve been running off to lately,” Megatron was saying softly but firmly. And then he ran his hands slowly down my chest. They came to rest on both sides of my waist seconds before he tipped his own head forward so that it rested against my chest. I could feel him touching our bond, searching my soul through it, looking for the answers he wanted. “Show me, Starscream. Show me where…”
And at that moment… At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to curl up in his powerful arms and tell him everything. Megatron was treating me just as he used to treat me when we first became bondmates so long ago, and I missed that so much. I wanted to reach out and touch him and just hold him close to me and have him take away the pain of Skyfire and everything associated with Skyfire. But touching Megatron in that way likely would’ve triggered his anger, and I didn’t want to ruin the moment. So, I obediently kept my hands at my sides and just tried to absorb his closeness.
And in the process, I let my mind drift dangerously…
And suddenly, an image of Skyfire’s island appeared in my mind. It was a memory of me standing on the beach, looking at the terrain and then out over the ocean. The shock of seeing the unexpected mental picture so clearly made me gasp and jump slightly in my seat. Megatron, of course, immediately straightened his back and smiled up at me.
“An island… You’ve been escaping to a remote island. Nothing to fear in that.” He reached up and cupped my face in his hand, and gently stroked my cheek with his thumb. “Now tell me what makes this island so special.”
My defenses were crumbling. I had already revealed to him the kind of place I had been sneaking off to, and now he was searching for the reason I had chosen that place, specifically.
He mustn’t know about Skyfire! I yelled into my head. Fight it off! Keep your focus, you idiot!
But I couldn’t keep my focus. I could easily fight Megatron’s probing when he was angry, when he was hitting me or throwing me around the room, but this…I was not prepared for this kind of treatment, and although I was clawing desperately at the rope of my concentration, determined not to reveal everything that had been happening between Skyfire and me, I could feel my grip on that rope becoming looser. I could feel myself slipping down, inch by inch, as more images of the island kept flashing through my head, only now some of Skyfire’s medical equipment was visible. At the same time that I was enjoying the demonstrative attentions Megatron was bestowing upon me, a deep and sickening fear began to wind its way into the very pit of my core, beginning to constrict it like a giant python. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong…but I couldn’t think clearly enough to pin down that vague feeling of wrongness that was beginning to gnaw at me.
It occurred to me, vaguely, from some unconscious part of my mind that if I answered his question, perhaps he’d stop probing around for the answer deep inside of me. Maybe a glib, vague answer would be enough, and he’d be happy with me. So I tried it. I had very little left to lose, it seemed…
“Um…there’s nothing…nothing really special about the island itself,” I stammered. “It’s just a quiet, uninhabited place where I can get away and think.”
It was a good answer, too. In the past, I’d often leave the base to find some isolated place where I could be alone. Megatron knew that, of course. I hoped that, now, it would be a satisfactory answer and that he would then drop the entire subject.
“Hmmm… Uninhabited, you say,” Megatron murmured, releasing his tender grip on my face in order to stroke his own chin in an exaggeratedly thoughtful manner. “Uninhabited…” he repeated, cocking his head to one side and studying my face quizzically. “Yet, when you return from this ‘uninhabited’ island of yours, all of your damage has been miraculously repaired, even that which would be impossible for you to fix yourself…”
With that observation of Megatron’s, my fear began turning to panic rather quickly. I knew, suddenly, that he was going to figure it all out, and I knew, too, that there was nothing I could do about it. As usual, there was no place for me to run. I was trapped. If he found out about Skyfire, Megatron would probably kill him, and I wasn’t sure if I could live with that. True, a perverse part of me actually wanted Skyfire to disappear, even if it meant his death. After all, with Skyfire safely gone again, things between Megatron and me would return to normal and everything would be just like it was before we had found him in the Arctic. But the other part of me couldn’t bear the thought of losing Skyfire again. Losing him the first time had destroyed me, after all… And I didn’t even want to think of the things that Megatron might do to Skyfire before he killed him. They were, after all, partial bondmates through me, although Megatron was for the moment ignorant of that fact. If he were not ignorant of that fact, though, then he’d certainly use the knowledge to his own…advantage. So, I fully intended to keep Megatron ignorant.
I looked down then, only to see that Megatron was staring intently at my face, his expression uncomfortably intense. He was studying me, reading my body language and my facial expressions as easily as a human would read a book. His gaze bored into me as if he thought he might be able to pierce my metal skin and see the secrets kept deep within my spark.
“You’re hiding something from me, Starscream,” Megatron announced, his voice still oddly soft and gentle. “You don’t have to hide things from me. We’ve been together too long for you to keep any secrets from me… ” Still kneeling in front of me, he drew close to me again. Reaching out to me again, he took my hand in his and raised it so that he could press the back of my hand into his own angular cheek. “Open yourself up to me,” he whispered seductively. “Don’t be afraid.”
I was completely stunned by Megatron’s words and by his behavior. Not only was he being uncharacteristically gentle, quiet, and…kind, but he was also allowing me to touch his face. True, he was holding my hand there so that he maintained control…but still, he had not permitted this kind of contact since we’d left Cybertron. And I was so hungry for this kind attention from him. He was giving, in his own cautious, controlled way, a little bit of himself to me, and I wanted to savor that moment, for I knew that it wouldn’t last long. But…
Megatron was asking me to open up. And I couldn’t tell him about Skyfire…could I? No, I decided that I could give him everything else, everything inside me, especially if he were to treat me like this from now on, but I would not give him any information about Skyfire and about the relationship that existed between us. It would, I decided, only serve to infuriate him…
Yet, on the other hand, I…loved Megatron and didn’t have any real desire to keep secrets from him. I always had loved him and always did love him, even when we fought viciously, even when he was inflicting pain upon me. I supposed that it was similar to my feelings about Skyfire: There was a part of me that wanted Megatron dead, and at the same time, there was a part of me that simply couldn’t live without him. It was a dichotomy that I found I couldn’t reconcile…so I chose not to do so. I put it aside and returned my attention to the situation at hand. My attention drifted back to my hand, which was still pressed against Megatron’s smooth, gray face. The corner of his mouth slowly drifted up into a small smile as he watched me deliberate. Voices…thoughts…whispered in my mind as I watched him watching me.
Megatron… You are bonded to Megatron. You owe him your life. Everything.
I couldn’t tell if the thoughts drifting across my consciousness were mine or Megatron’s. Everything was becoming confused. I couldn’t think straight…
Hold on! Don’t let go! I sternly told myself. Don’t give in! Don’t let him trick you like this!
You owe him, that first voice whispered back. Your defenses are useless, a waste of time. You will tell him.
I…can’t.
Oh, but you will…
Skyfire…
Obligingly, an image of a wall of white overwhelmed my mind. An image of a large, curved, white shoulder flashed through my head…then a cockpit window…then a red stripe…
Oh, Primus! No!
I realized in that instant that Megatron had succeeded in breaking through the emotional barriers I had so carefully constructed around my recent memories of Skyfire, that now everything in my mind was obtainable to him if he but chose to probe around a little. All he had to do was poke around in my soul a little bit, and he’d find everything that he wanted to know. So I simultaneously realized that I needed something that would distract both of us, and I needed it fast. But crushing waves of panic were, at the moment, drowning out all logical reasoning, and so in my desperation I seized and acted upon the first course of action that came to my mind…
Tearing my hand out of Megatron’s grip, I wrapped both my arms around his neck and insistently pulled his face up to mine. And then I pressed my lips firmly against his, just like I’d seen the humans do in their silly movies. It all happened so quickly, within the span of a few moments, that Megatron was taken completely by surprise. He didn’t react at all for a few precious moments, except to stiffen in my grasp, so I held on to him tightly and focused all my energies and all my attention on that kiss.
And…Oh, but it felt good. For the first time in our multi-million year relationship, I had taken the initiative. I had the upper hand. I was forcing my will on Megatron, instead of the other way around. The momentary feeling of power as it coursed through my body and consciousness was the most euphoric and potentially addictive sensation that I had ever experienced. It was something that I knew I’d never forget…
…And it lasted all of three seconds.
I knew I was going to pay dearly for such a bold invasion of Megatron’s personal space, but I had to do something to keep him from discovering the truth about Skyfire. And it did work.
But, as I was to find out shortly, it had also been a complete waste of time…
“Mmm-fff-mm!” Megatron protested, his voice muffled by my mouth, as he recovered from the initial shock of being forcefully kissed. He tried to pull away, but I kept my arms tightly locked around his helmet and my lips steadfastly planted on his. It was a battle of wills more than anything else, but finally, inevitably, I lost that battle. With both arms, Megatron pushed on my chest with all his strength, which sent me tumbling backwards off the chair, abruptly breaking the embrace. I came to rest next to the wall with all the scratches, dents and scorch marks imbedded in it.
And I knew what was coming next.
“Starscream!” Megatron bellowed, his voice no longer gentle or silkily persuasive. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” he demanded. “Have you completely lost your mind?!” He stood up then and stomped angrily toward me, nearly hysterical with rage while I huddled on the floor with my back against the wall and my arms over my head, waiting for the inevitable. “How dare you perform such a repulsive human ritual on me? You odious piece of scrap! Whatever compelled you to—“
Curiosity got the better of me and, uncoiling from my cringing position, I looked up at Megatron in the sudden silence that followed his abruptly-halted tirade. He was standing over me, his narrowed optics staring down at me, glowing a furious, hellish red. I could tell that he was thinking about something…
“Heh-hehhh,” Megatron chuckled deep in his throat after a moment, as he stared at me, at the expression on my face that had to have communicated to him my utter, panicked terror. But then he turned around and calmly walked back toward the chair I had been sitting on moments ago.
Again, I was bewildered at Megatron’s strange behavior as I watched him walk away from me. What, I wondered, was going on? Why was he not trying to tear me limb from limb? Or had he already done so and I had just blocked out the whole experience, as I often did…? I ran a quick internal diagnostic, but it showed nothing out of the ordinary. No internal damage, no external gashes spewing out uncomfortably large amounts of energon, no anything. So, I slowly stood up, temporarily leaning against the wall behind me for support, and looked around the room. I confirmed that everything looked the same as it had looked a moment before. I didn’t appear to be missing a block of time in my memory…
I glared across the room at Megatron as he stood there, calmly watching me, smiling an infuriating little smile before he righted the chair that had been mine and sat down on it with a long sigh…and a contented, self-satisfied grin on his face. Oh, I hated it when Megatron played these kinds of mind games with me. If nothing else, they made me question my own sanity…
“Ahhhh, my dear little Starscream…” he said after a moment of smiling at me while I continued to glare at him. His voice was practically dripping with condescension, and then he scowled at me, his expression changing in an instant from benign amusement to entirely unamused irritation. Folding his arms contemptuously across his broad, gleaming chest, as spat at me, “When will you learn that your asinine tricks will never work on me? I will always be one step ahead of you, Starscream. Always.”
And as he spoke those words, Megatron looked up at me as if I should know exactly what he was talking about. But, as usual, he was making absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I decided to try the most obvious tactic and then work my way from there…
“Tricks, Megatron?” I echoed, bewildered. I was going for an innocent tone, of course, trying not to let my voice squeak out of fear, and I actually managed to succeed at that, more or less. “I wasn’t trying to play any tricks on you. At least, I don’t think—“
“Oh, spare me the innocent, naïve act, Starscream,” Megatron interrupted roughly. “Your futile attempt at distraction was a complete waste of time.”
Megatron was glowering accusingly at me as he spat those words at me…and I began to have that awful sinking feeling again. Panic was beginning to envelop my thought processes, and a terrible yet very familiar dread began to invade my senses as he continued to speak.
“A little over four hours ago,” he said, his voice nonchalant, as if he was talking about some particularly pleasant weather phenomenon, “I sent Ravage on a little mission to Autobot Headquarters. It wasn’t until today, you see, that I realized that there had to be a connection between your disappearances and your recent…attitude adjustment. I had a vague idea, but no real proof.”
For a moment, Megatron paused to look at me. He stared expectantly at me, as if he knew that I was going to say something. But no words came to me. No words came to me, at least, that wouldn’t simply serve to trigger his temper. Ultimately, I knew that there was, in the end, nothing I could say in my defense because Megatron, of course, was absolutely correct… Megatron, however, seemed disappointed with my lack of response. He scowled at me again, his lips downturned in a sneer of disgust…and then he nonchalantly opened up a small compartment in his left forearm, withdrawing a small object from it. It was a fine surgical laser, and I instantly recognized it, naturally, for it had been used on me several times before. In response to seeing it, my breath quickened and I wanted nothing more than to back slowly away from Megatron, as if that might somehow ward off what I knew, now, was in store for me. But there was a wall behind me that prevented my retreat.
And besides, there was nowhere, really, to run…
Megatron, meanwhile, was continuing to speak in that same unnaturally calm, even voice.
“It was a simple enough task for Ravage to sneak into Autobot Headquarters and access the Autobots’ duty rosters for the past three months,” he calmly informed me as he casually clipped the laser to his right fist with a click that sickened me, that seemed to echo for an unnaturally long moment off the walls of my quarters. “That, in itself, is not considered high security information, so Teletran was not alarmed at the request. But it gave me exactly the information I needed. And what do you think that information might have been, Starscream?”
Obviously not expecting an answer – which was good because I certainly didn’t have one; the sound of my world crashing around me was loud enough to drown out all rational thought – Megatron looked up at me with an almost beatific smile on his face. It lasted for only a few breaths, though, before he looked down at his hand again. Almost fondly, he ran one finger up and down the length of the cutting laser that was now attached to the knuckle of one finger of his hand. Watching him, my entire body shuddered in the grip of a deep and growing terror. I hoped that Megatron wouldn’t see it…and apparently, he didn’t, as intent upon torturing me with this endless talking as he seemed to be.
“It seems that there is one Autobot who is conspicuously absent from the muster,” Megatron explained calmly, no doubt enjoying watching me squirm. “And what a coincidence that his absence began at just about the same time you started making getaway trips to this mysterious ‘uninhabited’ island of yours. Imagine that, eh Starscream?”
But I was tired of playing the game. Megatron knew, and I knew that he knew. Pulling the tattered cloak of my dignity around myself, I stood up a little straighter, deciding to face the inevitable with as much stoicism as I could.
“So…You knew?” I said flatly. “Before you came here?”
At that, Megatron spat out a humorless, scathing laugh.
“About Skyfire? Primus, Starscream, how dense can you possibly be? Of course I knew about Skyfire! When Ravage gave me his report exactly…forty-eight minutes ago, my suspicions were confirmed.” He glared at me, then, with a glare colder than the farthest reaches of outer space, that froze me and sent shivers racing through my entire body as Megatron added, speaking slowly and precisely, “You’ve been secretly collaborating with Skyfire, a known traitor to the Decepticon cause. Haven’t you?! Admit it!”
“N—No, Megatron! It’s not what you think! I would never divulge crucial information to the en—”
My words were cut off when Megatron began to move quickly and soundlessly toward me, like a shadow across water, and then… One of his fists lashed out so quickly that I didn’t see it happen, didn’t realize that anything at all had happened until the canopy in the center of my chest obligingly shattered on impact, the surprise of it all abruptly cutting off my words. It wasn’t, of course, the first time he’d done such a thing and, as usual, shards of the canopy fell to the floor as if in extreme slow motion. I fancied, as I stood there frozen, caught in that precarious place that lurks between surprise and agony, that I could hear every tiny sliver of it as it hit the floor, tinkling almost cheerfully in the momentary silence. But then…Then, the agony took over.
My scream of pain almost but not quite drowned out Megatron as he bellowed, fully enraged now, “You lie, Starscream!”
And with that, as pain and fear weakened my knees and my resolve to try to remain calm in the face of everything that was happening, I collapsed to the floor. Reflexively, I put my arms up over my head, protecting it from Megatron’s next blow. All the while, as I cringed before him, I yelled desperately, pleadingly, “But Skyfire’s not the enemy! Please, Megatron, I’m telling the truth. I am loyal to you. I am! I promise! Skyfire’s not an Autobot anymore. He left them! He has nothing to do with them! I swear!”
But Megatron, apparently, wasn’t impressed with my protestations. Instead of listening to me, he grabbed me by the shoulders, lifted me to a standing position, and then slammed my back against the wall behind me. The impact was powerful enough to rattle every microcircuit in my body and to make my vision go temporarily dim. I shook my head to fend off the latter. I knew that I needed all my senses about me for as long as I possibly could keep them about me…
“I don’t care what he is!” Megatron was yelling in my face, meanwhile. “If Skyfire is not a Decepticon, then he ismy enemy!”
He glared at me for a long time after that, his eyes boring into mine as he held me pinned against the wall. But then, abruptly, his fury seemed to drain from him. His grip on me loosened a little, enough so that I found myself standing on my own feet rather than being pinned to the wall. Megatron, for a moment, was quiet, thinking. I knew, however, that that probably wasn’t good news for me…
“Tell me why you’ve been meeting with Skyfire,” Megatron finally asked of me, after a moment that seemed like hours.
His voice was quiet, oddly undemanding…but what he’d asked was not, of course, a request. It was an order that had to be obeyed…or else.
“He was…a good friend of mine…back on Cybertron,” I stammered, trying to keep my voice level, trying desperately not to let slip all that Skyfire was to me. “We were explorers before the war. I…I told you the truth, Megatron. I told you all this when we found him in the Arctic. You remember, don’t you?”
At that, Megatron smiled a smile that on the one hand looked understanding, even compassionate. But I knew, after millions of years of exposure to it, how his mind tended to work. I knew that the outward appearance of that smile was likely deceiving, and that the wheels were turning in his mind…and that he was coming to a conclusion that I dreaded. He leaned in close to me then, pressing his chest against mine. Reaching up, he ran one finger along the edge of my helmet. The gesture was a gentle one. To an outside observer, it might have even seemed an affectionate gesture. From Megatron, however, the gesture was not affection at all, but…something else entirely. It was probing. Possessive.
“Oh, yes,” Megatron was saying slowly, speaking in that calm, rough-yet-seductive voice that he could so easily summon whenever he deemed it prudent to do so. “Yes, I remember that well. And Skyfire must be a very good friend, indeed, Starscream. After all, he gave up a promising career in the Autobot ranks just to sit on a deserted beach somewhere and wait for you to arrive so that he could repair your damage.” He paused then, tracing one finger along the various seams of my helmet in a way that would have been loving had the touch been coming from anyone but Megatron, before concluding, “And I must say that he does a fine job of repairing you, too. This…This is the work of someone who cares a great deal for the one he’s repairing.”
I winced then. It was reflex. I jerked my head away from Megatron’s probing fingers. Which was, of course the wrong thing to do because Megatron then scowled at my impudence and clamped his hand insistently around my jaw. After that, he slammed the back of my head forcefully against the wall behind me, pinning it uncomfortably.
“We were…close friends,” I managed to choke out after gasping in surprise. I hoped that the answer would satisfy him. But of course it didn’t satisfy Megatron at all. In fact, his hand moved from my jaw down to my throat, which he proceeded to squeeze with all his considerable might.
“He was the one, wasn’t he, Starscream?” Megatron whispered scornfully while I struggled, choking and sputtering, in his grasp. “He was the one you were mourning when we first met. You eventually told me that your bondmate had died. But of course he didn’t die. Did he, Starscream?”
“But I thought he was dead!” I managed to protest desperately as I pushed with both hands against his in order to prevent him from choking the life out of me.
I said it without thinking, in pure desperation, before I realized what it was that I’d just confirmed for Megatron. So, after spewing out that damning claim, I clamped my mouth shut…for a moment, at least. But after that moment, I felt compelled to…explain, to try to undo some of the damage I’d just done, in the vain hope that my explanations would somehow fend off the inevitable. And Megatron, as if he knew that I was about to more deeply dig my own grave, obligingly loosened his grip on my throat a little, so that I could get on with damning myself.
“Or at least I thought Skyfire was lost forever,” I proclaimed hurriedly, desperately…and truthfully, ironically enough. “I didn’t…didn’t really know what had happened to him, Megatron. I swear it! All I knew was that I wasn’t expecting to see him again. Ever.”
At that, Megatron’s mouth curled itself into a sneer of sheer disgust. After slamming me against the wall one more time for good measure, he released his grip on me and took one disdainful step backward, away from me. My knees gave out on me as he stepped away, and I sank down so that I was huddled on the floor against the wall, gasping for breath. Megatron silently glared down at me, but his silence, of course, didn’t last long…
“So you are bonded to Skyfire, then!” he declared. “Which means that I am now bonded to him, too. All this time…You kept it a secret all these years. You managed to keep it hidden from me somehow. Why didn’t you tell me about all this when we first found him, Starscream?”
I just stared up at Megatron for a long moment while he glared down at me like an angry and wrathful god. I knew that I was caught, I knew that I was in trouble, and I knew that I was going to pay for it. There was even a part of me that informed me that I deserved to be punished. Megatron was right, after all; I had kept a rather enormous secret from him, one that had resulted in a forced relationship with Skyfire, now. But of course there was also a self-preservative instinct that insisted that I try to do something…anything…to prevent what I knew was inevitable, judging by the look with which Megatron was spearing me at the moment. Fleetingly, it occurred to me that perhaps the truth would satisfy him. True, it had never satisfied him before – Often, it had just made him angrier with me – but perhaps this time it would work. So, I tried it. After all, I had very little left to lose.
“I was in shock,” I said quietly, my voice rasping around my dented throat, as I gazed fearfully up at Megatron. “Completely in shock when I saw him. I truly never expected to see him again, Megatron. And then, once we’d revived Skyfire…Well, he and I never really had a moment alone to talk, did we? But I was going to tell you, Megatron! I was, I swear! I mean, I knew that I had to tell you because I figured that Skyfire would become one of us, that he would be around all the time. But then…when Skyfire…defected, I figured it wasn’t important anymore. He made a choice, and that choice didn’t include me.”
It was the truth. Every word that I spoke was the truth, as painful as it was. Megatron, however, seemed less than impressed with it. He just continued to glare down at me for a long moment. During that moment, I sat huddled pathetically against the wall, twitching with the pain that was still radiating from my shattered chest, my arms wrapped tightly around my own midsection as if that might protect me from any other exquisite little agonies that Megatron might wish to inflict upon me.
“’Not important?’’ Megatron finally echoed, after what seemed like hours of staring angrily at me. His normally-rough voice was further choked with a deep outrage. “It’s not important that you disappear for days at a time in order to engage in secret meetings with him? It’s not important that you betray me and the bond between us by consorting with him? It’s not important that you’ve become increasingly defiant toward me ever since these meetings between you started?” Megatron leaned down then, so that he could stare demandingly, infuriated, into my eyes as he concluded, “If it was not so important, Starscream, then why did you try so hard to keep it a secret from me for all these years?!”
“I didn’t, Megatron! I mean…I did, but—“
“More lies!” Megatron interrupted, screaming into my face at a decibel level that made me cringe to my very core.
“I’m not lying!” I protested desperately. “I just—”
I didn’t get to finish my protest, though, because suddenly I was airborne. I was being thrown across the room. It was, sadly, a familiar sensation, but even after dozens of similar trips, I still hadn’t learned to be unsurprised when it happened. Nor had I learned to properly prepare myself for my eventual impact with a wall or with a piece of furniture. So, as usual, my trip to the other side of the room ended when my right shoulder and air intake slammed painfully into the far wall. I felt metal screech in protest, give way, and then crumple, and then I went crashing to the floor in an awkward heap of askew limbs. I tried to push my upper body up off the floor…but when I put weight on that crumpled shoulder, all I could do was let out a high-pitched yelp of pain and then fall pathetically, face first, back to the floor.
I could feel the vibrations of Megatron’s footsteps on the deckplates as I lay there, trying to gather my strength, such as it was. I knew from the increasing intensity of the vibrations that Megatron was walking purposefully toward me…but I couldn’t actually hear his footsteps. In fact, I couldn’t hear anything at all. And I knew why, of course.
I was beginning to shut down. It was a reflex that automatically kicked in every time the beatings started. It was a defense mechanism, a way to separate myself from the pain that was soon to be inflicted on my body. When it happened, when I was fully detached from myself, I’d see everything in a blur. Time would lose its meaning. An hour or more would pass, but it would seem like mere seconds to me. I would see nothing, hear nothing, think nothing, and most importantly feel nothing. So now, although I knew that Megatron was screaming at me, I couldn’t hear his specific words, even though I would often yell back at him sometimes during these…episodes of ours. I could never remember, afterwards, exactly what I’d said, though. Likely, it mostly consisted of me begging him to listen to me, to give me a chance to explain. At least, that was what I always wanted to do when these episodes started. I wanted the beating and the pain to stop, and I knew that if I could just explain things and if Megatron then accepted my explanation, then he’d stop.
But of course Megatron didn’t listen, and he didn’t stop. He never stopped.
And so it was this time, as well. Things…happened to me. Many things happened to me, in fact, although as always, I wasn’t sure what, specifically, was going on. I only knew that whatever it was, I had no wish to be there for it. So, I busied myself with trying to direct my mind and my thoughts to a different place, a better place where there was no fear, no pain, no yelling, no mind games, no beatings, and no violation. There was only soft, comforting light and warmth and peace and an unnatural quiet that enveloped me and supported me, that blocked my vision, dulled my hearing, and that diverted pain impulses somewhere else.
And then there was the floor. And my hands… I was, suddenly, on my hands and knees, staring dully at the floor beneath me without really seeing it, my arms shuddering as they struggled to support my weight.
I was back. I could suddenly hear, see, and feel things again, so the beating must have finally ended. I had no idea how much time had passed, but I suspected that it had been quite a while, for I felt even more drained, physically, than I usually did after these episodes. Silently, carefully, I sat back on my heels, and as I tried to gather my wits and reorient myself as quickly as I could, the injured parts of my body began to wake up, each part eventually complaining, loudly, of its treatment. Ohhh, there was so much pain, and it was literally everywhere, some of it so intense that it wasn’t really registering with me yet. Somehow, each one of these sessions seemed to be more prolonged and more damaging and more painful than the previous one. At least I was still in one piece this time…
Or so I thought. Then again, there seemed to be a small pool of spilled energon beginning to form around me that I dully realized was likely all mine…
But then even that realization was shoved out of my mind when a large black hand came out of nowhere and pushed so hard on my battered chest that I instantly flopped back to the floor, my back and the back of my head slamming roughly against the cold, hard deckplates. The impact obliterated all thoughts from my mind other than the realization that suddenly I was in more pain than I had been in before, even though I hadn’t thought that possible. But, instead of yelling, I coughed as my back painfully slammed into the floor, and a spray of energon shot out of my mouth like the exhalation of a surfacing great whale. And then I felt tiny, cool droplets gently shower my face as gravity pulled the vaporized energon down.
I held on to that moment. In my mind, I willed it to last forever. I wanted just to lie there, feeling nothing but a cool mist on my face and the cool floor upon which I was lying. The moment lasted only a split second, but I cherished that second. I lived in it for as long as I possibly could, treasuring every millisecond of peace and nothingness all the more because I knew precisely what was going to happen in the next second. And I dreaded it, dreaded it more than anything in the world.
Because my second of peace was eventually over, of course, and then I knew that it was time for the bonding. And I also knew that I wasn’t able to shut down and detach, mentally, for that aspect of mine and Megatron’s encounters. Megatron wouldn’t let me. It vaguely occurred to me, as I lay there just before it all began, that bonding was supposed to be a wonderful, mutually-enjoyable thing, that one wasn’t supposed to want to shut down during such an activity, that one wasn’t supposed to want to shield oneself from one’s partner but rather that one was supposed to want to open up to him in every way possible…but I could no longer remember a time when I didn’t want to shut down or when I actually wanted to open up. Not anymore… I desperately wanted to remember those times when a bond had been a mutually wonderful experience but…I couldn’t… Too much had happened since then, too many horrible things, and now I associated all of those horrible things only with bonding.
“I will not share you, Starscream.”
Megatron’s gruff, impatient growl interrupted my thoughts. He was lying next to me, propped up on one elbow, in the process of opening the small, well-armored panel that protected his spark. I had already opened mine. I hadn’t consciously thought about doing it, really. I just did it. A certain pattern had become ingrained in me, after all: First, the beating to break me, and then the bond so that Megatron could bask in the pain that wracked my body, could bask in the desolate brokenness of my soul, knowing that his was the power that had caused it all. And there was, I had slowly and painfully learned, no point in struggling against him because that only earned me more pain while giving him still more perverse, sadistic satisfaction. So, although I dreaded the whole bonding experience, I didn’t fight it anymore. It didn’t even occur to me to try fighting it. All that I could do was prepare myself as well as I could, prepare myself to survive it all one more time. Just one more time.
And I even tried to stay with Megatron – emotionally and mentally – as the bond began. I tried to give him what he wanted, mostly so that I could just be done with it. I tried every time to satisfy him…but every time something within me fought against it, in the way that my battered body couldn’t fight against him physically. Every time, those stronger emotions and ever more intense sensations that Megatron wanted to evoke in me refused to rise to the occasion. And as this latest bond began, some part of me, as always, wished that it wasn’t that way, wished that I could just resign myself mentally to the experience as easily I resigned myself to it physically, that I could just go with it and give Megatron what he needed without fighting or trying to hide myself away, so that it would just be over quickly, with a minimum amount of pain on my part. But I couldn’t do that. I didn’t know why I couldn’t, but it seemed to be in my nature to resist even when I didn’t consciously want to resist, even when resisting just made things worse for me.
After all, the fact that I resisted giving Megatron what he wanted only meant that Megatron needed to use…creative…ways to make me submit to his demands and give him those more powerful emotions and sensations that he seemed to need for some reason that I still didn’t fully understand. He needed so much, it seemed…and he gave so little. In fact, he gave nothing. With Megatron, it was all take, take, take.
Not that I really deserved to receive anything from him, of course… My suffering was my own fault. All my own fault. It was my “reward” for the inferior life that I led. It was all that I deserved…
“You succeeded in surprising me with that disgusting little example of human behavior, Starscream,” Megatron was suddenly whispering into my audios, distracting me from my own thoughts.
All of the anger was gone from his voice as our sparks merged and he began to absorb the essence of who I was. His anger and frustration with me and with the universe in general had been purged, no doubt, during the beating. All that was left now was for him to reap the rewards of those efforts. Since he was joined with me now, he could easily sense my fear and my desire to hide away somewhere deep within myself while he had his way with me…and that actually pleased him because he knew that I couldn’t hide away from him, that he was in complete control of the situation, that he was free to take everything that I was from me and give nothing back to me in return.
“Humans do so many odd things,” Megatron was continuing to babble. “All sorts of insipid, irrational things that seem to serve no purpose at all…”
I wasn’t sure why Megatron was talking about humans, but I didn’t really care. He would often drone on about one thing or another, mostly about the Autobots or my shortcomings, during the bonding. I, however, did not speak. I never spoke. I had to concentrate too hard on keeping my sanity from flying apart. I had to focus on shunting away from consciousness the pain, both physical and mental, and avoiding the terrible coldness that was Megatron’s essence, that surrounded me during these ‘unions’ of ours, that gnawed at my spark like some feral beast. Besides, I knew that his babbling would eventually lead to something much, much worse, and I fancied that if I stayed quiet he might forget about those worse things, might forget that I was there at all, and just babble on forever…
He never did, though.
“Like crying, for example,” Megatron was saying, his voice low and rather dangerously speculative.
It was then that I heard the small surgical laser that he’d attached to his knuckle earlier snap on. It hissed and spit every once in a while as it burned up the tiny dust particles that happened to be floating in the air around it. I felt myself begin to shake uncontrollably then, despite my best efforts to control myself. Megatron had used that laser on me before, of course, and I remembered exactly what it felt like as it had sliced into various delicate and sensitive areas of my body. I was certainly not looking forward to feeling that sensation again…
“I wonder …” Megatron was still whispering, staring at me. “I wonder what it would be like for a Transformer to cry…”
I noticed then that Megatron was looking at my eyes without really looking into them. And, with a cruel grin on his face, he slowly brought his arm up and carefully aimed the laser just below my right eye… It snapped and crackled malevolently at me, filling my entire field of vision…and then Megatron began cutting.
My entire body jerked reflexively and I screamed so loudly that the whole base probably heard me, but I didn’t care. The soft metal of my face was so pliable and so sensitive that to damage it even slightly was to experience excruciating pain. And this damage was…not slight. This damage was coldly calculated to produce the most pain in the most efficient manner. And it worked, too. All the dampened sensations and the mental hiding that I’d been concentrating on maintaining suddenly burst like a breached dam, sensations and emotions flowing out of me unchecked. They violently crashed their way through the bond and into Megatron, who responded to my pain with a long and deeply satisfied groan.
I could feel a small blob of energon well up from the cut below my eye and then run slowly across my cheek and down into my audio vents. I’m sure it looked very much like a Transformer equivalent of a human tear, which was what Megatron had been wanting, of course, although I couldn’t begin to comprehend why he had wanted such a thing. Whatever the reason he was doing it, though, I wanted nothing more than to beg him to stop…except that I knew it wouldn’t do much good. He was too deeply into the bond, wholly focused on the powerful sensations that my pain awakened in him. So when the pain of the first cut had died down a little and my systems had begun to try to repair the damage, Megatron felt compelled to gouge another excruciating cut right next to the first one. And then another one next to that. And another. And another… And then he moved to the other side of my face and proceeded to do the same thing all over again.
With each cut I screamed louder than I had ever screamed in my life, until finally I reached a point where I had no voice left, no feelings left. Further attempts on Megatron’s part to inflict pain upon me seemed to have no effect because there was nothing left of me to feel it anymore and there was nothing and no one there to react to pain, either. So, there was nothing left for Megatron to take from me, either. And, solely because of that, he stopped what he was doing, disengaged the bond, and then promptly shut down for a quick recharge, no doubt overwhelmed by all that he had managed to wring out of me this time.
The bond was, mercifully, over.
Afterwards, I stayed awake and stared dully at the ceiling of my quarters, as I always did, not really seeing it, not really seeing anything. My energy, my mind, my spark…all of it was drained, empty. My entire body was twitching, and some of the twitches were powerful enough that one might legitimately call them convulsions. The gashes in my face continued to leak a good amount of energon. It spilled across my cheeks and down into my helmet vents. I imagined that the sensation was likely very similar to what a crying human would feel, except that I felt no accompanying emotion. And on top of it all, I was low on energy and, according to my diagnostics, I was leaking energon in many other places besides on my face. But I knew that the total damage was moderate overall and that it all could be repaired with a little time, patience, and skill. The idea, after all, was not to kill me but simply to put me in excruciating pain…
However, I did need to shut down. I could feel my systems shouting at me to slip into repair stasis mode, but I fought it with all that I had left…which wasn’t much, of course, but it was apparently enough to keep me conscious, for the moment. I always fought the urge to shut down after one of these bonding sessions. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew that I had to stay awake and be conscious when Megatron came back online. Maybe it was because I always felt so…empty afterwards, so alone and abandoned, which was a feeling that, since I’d lost Skyfire, I could not tolerate at all. And, besides that, after a bond with Megatron, there was no longer any of me left, so I needed Megatron to restore my identity, in a sense, to remind me of who I was and what I was supposed to be doing with my life.
After all, it was so easy for me to get…sidetracked, which would then make me forget the important things in life. In this case, I’d been sidetracked by Skyfire, and he had a tendency to make me forget, for a time, who I was. He tried to make me be who I used to be, which was not the same person… And as I lay there, staring at the ceiling without seeing it, lying on the cold floor of my quarters without feeling its chill seep into my being… As I lay there, all I could ask myself, despite everything, was how I could have been so stupid as to bring this all down on myself. All I could ask myself was how I could have betrayed Megatron after all that he’d done for me, after he had made me into the person I was. A person with power. A person with a purpose, a destiny. And I realized, as I lay there waiting for Megatron to regain consciousness, that I deserved the pain that I was feeling and much more, that I deserved all the pain that I’d ever experienced. It was my penalty for allowing myself to be manipulated by Skyfire, not just in the present but in the past as well, when we’d first met. Everything bad that had ever happened to me, every cruel twist that Fate had seen fit to apply to my life, had been his fault. If I had never met him, my life, I knew, would have been good. I’d had a promising career then, and then…Boom. Enter Skyfire…and my entire world fell apart.
And he continued to screw up my life, too, culminating in this latest experience. Damn Skyfire! Damn him! I wished nothing more, at that moment, than for his death, so that he would stop tormenting me…
With that thought in mind, I felt Megatron begin to stir. He was coming out of the torpor that was a general effect of bonding, particularly of bonds as…intense…as the ones that he and I shared. He always recovered quickly, though. He was strong that way… Eventually, true to form, Megatron propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at me, his mouth curled in an expression of disgust. He opened his mouth, perhaps to say something to me, but then the small com light on his chest flashed on and he spoke into it instead.
“Yes, Soundwave,” he said, his voice still rough from his exertions.
“Medbay staff is on alert and standing by, Megatron,” Soundwave replied in his impassive monotone over the com.
I really wasn’t surprised that Soundwave had had the medbay prepared. It was often my first stop after an encounter with Megatron, after all, and Soundwave was certainly bright enough to know that…
“Cancel that order,” Megatron was roughly replying. “Have a medic bring his equipment and meet me here in front of Starscream’s quarters. Starscream is now confined to quarters until I say otherwise.”
“Understood. Soundwave out.” If Soundwave was at all surprised by the order, he of course didn’t show it. Soundwave never showed anything, never let anything affect him. Sometimes I envied that…
Meanwhile, Megatron stood up and walked over to where he had left his fusion canon. I watched him as he slid the gun back into position on his arm with the fluid ease of long practice.
“Get yourself cleaned up, Starscream,” he said off-handedly as he made sure the weapon was properly mounted on his arm. It was as if he wasn’t even cognizant of the condition that I was in at the moment. He didn’t even look at me, in fact. “I have a few plans in the works, and I will need your assistance with them.”
I hadn’t moved even a millimeter since the beginning of the bond. In fact, right at that moment, moving any part of my body was the last thing I wanted to do, but I knew I had to at least scoot myself to my recharge berth. A while back, I had installed special hook-ups that were close to the floor…because that was usually where I was when I needed to recharge: on the floor, hardly able to move, and in worlds of pain. But even though the recharge berth was calling to me like a siren, I knew that I couldn’t let Megatron leave just yet. I was still too…empty, and my mind was still too fuzzy and confused for me to be able to deal with being alone yet.
“Megatron,” I croaked. There was still some energon pooling in my throat so the urge to cough it up was almost overwhelming, but I held it back for fear that Megatron would lose patience with me while I coughed and leave. “I’m…sorry. I shouldn’t have kept such important information from you. I—“
But then I couldn’t stop myself, and I coughed. It was just a few times, but it was enough to keep me from finishing my sentence.
“Hmmm…” Megatron murmured speculatively, as he turned, approached me, and then knelt down beside me. He looked so strong and confident and wise. So perfect. So…unlike me. “Do you remember who you are, Starscream?” Megatron was asking of me, his voice almost…gentle.
Although it was extremely uncomfortable to do so, I shook my head slowly, wincing when sensitive damaged spots came into contact with the floor. Repeated, sputtering coughs kept me from actually saying no, though.
Megatron, meanwhile, sighed impatiently, as if he couldn’t be bothered with me now that I had given him what he wanted. Still, he recited his little ritualistic speech to me, as he always did just before he left me.
“As usual,” he said, “I need to remind you of what a complete mess you were when I found you. You had been top of the class at the Cybertron War Academy, yes, but you were completely dysfunctional when it came to combat and leadership. Until I instructed you, of course. And now you are second in command of the entire Decepticon army, Starscream. You wield a power that anyone in his right mind would die to possess. Because of me. All that you are, all that you have become, is solely a result of what I, in my generosity, have given you because you certainly could not have attained it for yourself.” He paused as he casually brought his fusion canon around, pointed it in my direction, and began to run his fingers up and down the barrel, as if to reassure himself that it still was there. “Never forget, Starscream,” he concluded, “that you owe me. You owe me everything. You are nothing without me.”
I winced in reaction to suddenly looking down into the familiar black hole that was the barrel of Megatron’s fusion cannon, which happened to be pointing in my direction. But I winced even more because I knew that Megatron was right.
“I know that I’m nothing,” was my scratchy and equally ritualistic reply to Megatron’s speech, the one that I knew pleased him. Then I cleared my throat and continued, “And I promise you, Megatron…I promise I’ll never go to Skyfire again. He has deceived me for the last time. The next time I see him, it will be to kill him. I swear it to you, Megatron.”
And I meant it, too. I meant every single word. I had realized, as I’d lain there on the floor of my quarters waiting for Megatron to regain consciousness, that I didn’t need Skyfire, that I didn’t need anyone. I had decided, right then and there, that I would show Megatron and everybody else that I could make it on my own, by myself, with assistance from no one. Listening to Megatron’s ritualistic speech had only managed to reinforce that notion. So, once again, I realized who I was and what I was supposed to be doing.
Someday I would lead the Decepticons. Someday Megatron would do my bidding. And in order to bring that ambition to its full fruition, I needed to be strong. I needed to be ready when the chance arose, as it most assuredly would arise. And soon.
“Nevertheless,” Megatron was saying as he stood up, “you are confined to your quarters until I call for you. And I expect you to deliver the coordinates of Skyfire’s location as soon as you are fully functional again.”
“Of course, Megatron!” I said loudly, which was a mistake because it caused more energon to bubble up into my throat, choking me. “I won’t disappoint you! I promise! You’ll see that—” The rest came out as a series of indiscernible coughs and sputters.
“All right, stop babbling,” Megatron barked impatiently. I could tell that he was through with me, that he wanted nothing more than to leave my presence. And, as if on cue, the door chimed; the medic had arrived. Megatron turned to open the door, allowing him to enter.
“When you are through with him,” I heard Megatron say after a few moments of conferring with the medic, “alert Soundwave and he will unlock the door to let you out. And be advised, Medic, that I want him to be in perfect working condition when you are through, or else I will be very…displeased.”
Judging by the medic’s suddenly nervous expression, I figured he probably understood Megatron’s intentions completely.
“Yes, Megatron,” was all he said before kneeling down at my side and opening his bag of nasty little tools.
“Thank you, Megatron,” I called out just as Megatron stepped out into the corridor. He turned around and just nodded tersely before punching in his personal code on the door lock.
“I will check back with you in a few days,” he said with a crisp nod as the doors slid shut and I heard the soft hum of a force field lock powering up within the access panel.
Yes, Megatron was right that I owed him, that I had been nothing before I met him. But he was also right that he had taught me what I needed to know to succeed in my ambitions for my life. And someday…I determined that someday I would show him just how much I’d learned under his tutelage.
I would show everyone.
But…not right at the moment, no. At the moment, my energy reserves were fading fast and blackness was determinedly eating away at the periphery of my vision as I began to slip, against my will, into repair mode. I fought it desperately, but it was a losing battle. And the very last image that I saw before consciousness was ripped from grasp was of the medic, who had a look of uncomprehending horror on his face as he examined my “tears.”
No doubt, he couldn’t understand why Megatron would have inflicted such a thing upon me. But then, the medic’s lack of comprehension wasn’t surprising to me at all. After all, no one understood Megatron and me. No one understood what bound us together. And probably, no one ever would…