Chapter Text
He isn’t alone.
He can feel it – something, there, right past the back of his neck. Hovering. Unsure. It follows him, but sometimes vanishes entirely before he picks up on it. Like it’s watching him from the back of a crowd, far back, right by the door. It wants to leave, but it’s pausing- waiting for just a few more minutes.
He spends his meetings glancing at his command staff, searching for the same twitches, the flicker of awareness that steals through their eyes before they close themselves off harshly, grit their teeth. Perhaps he can’t see the signs in someone other than himself. Perhaps he’s getting paranoid.
He keeps whirling around, fusion cannon crackling with violent energy, and every time he only sees the dim shadows lying in the corners of the base. Soundwave is the only one who could possibly be that stealthy, that watchful – and it isn’t him. He knows it isn’t. Soundwave’s gaze is silent and neutral. He could pin him to the ground with the barrel of his cannon and that yellow visor would reveal nothing to him.
But every time he feels it, he feels- cold. There’s a sadness back there, and when it grazes over his plating it leaches into him, seeps like ice between his seams and makes his neck hurt.
He hates it. He hates its gentle cold, its weight on his spark, he hates the way it appears in the room before he even notices and slips away before he can grasp it, and it’s constant, constant silence, longing, disapproving, mourning silence, it fills him with so much rage he wants to reach over his shoulder and strangle him with with bare hands-
....He catches himself. Stops. His anger – so quick to boil up and flood through him like his energon is on fire – falls flat, and for a moment he can barely feel the frozen air slipping around his shoulders. He closes his eyes- tight, so forcefully he sees spirals and stars when he opens them again. Then, he shakes his shoulders (it retreats, knowing it is not wanted) and starts walking towards his office.
Megatron remembers how Alpha Trion told them stories. His was a voice made for them, smooth and deep and melodious, every tale a song one could fall asleep to. Once, he had been telling them about Liege Maximo – it was something about his trickery of a fellow prime, meddling in the affairs of the spark as he usually did. To be truthful, Megatron hadn’t retained much of the myth. Somewhere halfway through, he had dozed off against Magnus’s frankly massive shoulders, and Trion had only noticed his idle snoring after Optimus started trying to poke him awake while Magnus defended him. Primus, they acted like such newsparks back then, it was-
It was-...
Megatron never really listened to those stories. He stares at the cracked datapad in his hand (Optimus had taken the picture of them – grinning in that way you could tell he was smiling behind his mask, Magnus reaching towards the camera to try and grab it away from him while not bothering Megatron, who was still peacefully sleeping away at his side – but Megatron had stolen it from him later to destroy the evidence) and feels his neck aching again.
He freezes – for once, just- just letting it happen. Call it curiosity.
His shadow seems hesitant. It’s so very patient, something that makes Megatron grit his teeth. Patience or stubbornness – they can be oh-so-similar, that is, until one decides whether they like you or not. He can be patient. Yes...
The cold comes again, stronger. It slips over his shoulder and around his neck, and drifts downwards- Megatron clenches his fist as it strays too close to his spark.
It stops.
It goes up, instead.
It curves around the underside of his jaw and Megatron is careful not to tighten up. It feels like rain, trickling upwards. It’s lacking its normal acidic bite.
Instead, it’s just cold.
Still, it is gentle, cupping his cheek. It has no physical sway over him, but he turns his head to the side, cants his chin up the slightest bit, opens himself up as his spark twists and burns within his casing. He can feel it behind his eyes.
Then. Trailing up the exposed cables of his neck like hot energon, pressure and shape so slight but stark against the cold that passed over but a second ago, and Megatron realizes faintly what it feels like. He hates himself for it – he gasps, softly.
Warmth breathes itself over his lips and into his mouth, and he’s set alight.
“Get-“ he jerks around and throws the datapad across the room, “away!”
It hits the far wall with a crack and falls with a crunch of broken glass. Megatron sees red electricity behind his eyelids. He screams and swings his fist at nothing, the fusion cannon on his arm wailing with power.
He could destroy it all, he knows. Vaporize the datapad, the walls, this entire room.
“Haven’t you had enough?!” He shouts at the air around him, the heat inside of him. “Haven’t you learned?! You achieved nothing- you won nothing ! I’ll find them- I’ll crush them into rust,” he hisses, “and Cybertron will live again.”
His lungs are burning. “And no one,” he spits, like nausea welling up at the back of his throat, “will remember you.”
He’s panting now. His fists are shaking, so tightly curled he can’t make them loose. He has a smile, or a grimace, on his face, but his lips are burning and he’s not entirely sure he could control them if he tried.
He’s alone.
Megatron stands there breathing hard for a few minutes before he wheels around and smashes his desk in two without a sound. Then, he crumples to the floor, trembling.