Title: Funhouse
Summary: The first time he'd failed, his commander hadn't punished him. Breakdown's still trying to figure out why.
Prompt: "I can't get this darned thing out of my memory.…"
Rating: T
Characters: Breakdown.
Continuity: G1
Notes/Warnings: None. Written for tf_speedwriting.
There was once a brief interlude where Breakdown didn't shirk every time a pair of optics fell on him, but no one else remembers much less him. He can't remember what is was like but he can remember when it stopped.
It was on their way back to Earth, not even a hour after they'd first awoke so it wasn't much to remember to begin with, but Breakdown remembers how it wasn't the mechs around him that set him off, and how it wasn't the red optics or visors that shook him to the core, no it was the imminent thought that they were new and they were there and they were going to fight a war for mechs they didn't know and who were so much older and experienced than them and he didn't want to offline before he was even a day old and didn't he deserve to be a bit worried?
Breakdown doesn't remember what he said, but he does remember how Motormaster whipped around and bore into him for a moment that lasted for centuries and this was what he scrawled to memory.
The first time he'd failed, his commander hadn't punished him. He's still trying to figure out why.
It never leaves him. The eyes. They were purple, but it was not so hard for red to overlap and then everywhere he looked they were there, inflicting upon him everything he'd grow to hate about the world, about his fellow Decepticons (sans teammates), about himself—
(The humans speak of funhouse mirrors, which multiply and distort, and then one becomes five becomes ten, and then you're surrounded by so many copies of things you didn't ask for. The humans pay for fun and leave. Breakdown never paid, and stuck in base where transplanted optics remained stationed on various mechs of every kind, but always, always the same, he knows he never can.)
If Megatron were god then Motormaster was the devout believer. He could do no wrong; he deserved no less than unadulterated support and perfection. This is why he both hates them and beats them, because they can't give what he so desires, and the first time that he hits Breakdown the Lamborghini follows Drag Strip's advice (what was he thinking?) and tries to look him in the eye while it happens.
The eyes are the same and it comes back, so he averts his gaze and Motormaster hits him even harder.
For every failure he'll always be punished. This he knows better than he knows his own plating, but he still can't figure out why he wasn't the first time, because Motormaster doesn't leave things unfinished, doesn't leave wrongs unwrought.
Whenever he enter a room he thinks they're watching, no, he knows they're watching, and after such a long while that it has become commonplace, but never accepted, a cruel voice that sounds like the semi whispers in the back of his head, oh, but you are.