Author's Note: Take it as you want it, slash or manly platonic affection, it barely affects the story. Although I really need to stop writing such pap, it's bad for my image.

Sacrifice

Decepticons these days are too ungrateful.

Oh, sure, they remember what we were before Galvatron came back, but they choose to ignore it. They complain that things would be so much better if Megatron was still here and yet completely miss how much they're insulting themselves by saying they're useless without him. Every Decepticon thinks he'd do a better job as leader, but the real story is that most of them desperately want someone to tell them what to do.

Irony. Story of my life.

I think Cyclonus was the only thing that kept us from dying after Galvatron vanished. He broke up fights, he made sure we didn't just sit down and never get back up again. Supposedly he talked Dead End out of suicide once, but that's just hearsay. Cyc didn't have Galvatron's charisma or power or sheer force of personality or the right sort of end to his name, but he was willing to take up the torch and at least try to pretend we were still an army instead of starving Empties on a dead planet. And if you ask my private opinion, keeping us out of that's just as impressive as taking back half of Cybertron.

Still, there was only so much we could do, so many times we could spout off war chants until 'Hail Galvatron' turned to ash in our mouths and we saluted only to make sure our arms hadn't rusted at our sides. I backed him up, if only so the both of us would look like less challenging targets and there'd be at least one spark to try and start the applause. Besides, without him I'd be in command and that's like sticking a giant 'please shoot here' mark on your back. I'm not leadership material and I plan on never needing to be. Sweep-herding is hard enough.

Without Cyclonus, we would have torn each other to pieces and starved to death on this pathetic bit of rock, and even with him there we were halfway to each other's throats at the best of times. We were all on level whatever-it-is of fuel conservation and I still spent most recharge periods with my passive sensors online in case someone decided the energon in my fuel lines was worth more than the risk of getting caught. Primus knows I thought about doing it myself. Never quite got to the point where I saw the seekers as little dancing energon cubes, but it was getting there.

I honestly don't know how Cyclonus stayed on his feet that long, between keeping everyone in line and energon-hunting and dealing with what had to be a Unicron-sized load of stress. Sheer force of will, probably, it certainly wasn't the scant energon rations we had to live on. One night he just collapsed right next to me as we were walking back. Fell over in midstep, dented a horn on a rock. It would have been funny if the situation hadn't been so dire, and if we hadn't been alone I think he would have been spare parts in minutes.

I suppose I could have just insisted that the others give up their rations to help him, for all that they would have just tossed a few rocks at his corpse and said good riddance. Or left him there without a word, or taken the Sweeps and run before the Decepticon army exploded into anarchy. The Autobots wouldn't have seen us as enough of a threat to actually kill us and at least they keep their prisoners well fed.

Instead I found out the hard way why mouth-to-mouth energon transfer is a last-ditch effort. The taste stays in your mouth most of the day, and you feel like someone put a suction pump up your throat. Cyc was lucky he wasn't awake enough to do more than let it trickle into his mouth and slip down into his dry fuel tank. He'd probably have spontaneously developed a gag reflex.

Was the only way, though. If I'd botched a fuel line transfer I'd have to explain to Hook why I was messing around down there in the first place and anyone who happened to come by would have thought I was doing something weird instead of regurgitating my own half-processed energon and sustaining the life of a Decepticon who was a lot weaker than he could let the others know.

It hurt, feeling every little drop leave my body, every tiny microastroliter that could have kept me going another day, another hour, another astrosecond before the darkness set in. I kept wondering if Cyclonus was really worth it, he'd just be hungry again tomorrow and I couldn't just let him lean on me forever. Why bother trying to keep him around?

In retrospect I don't think I could have done anything else.

I've never told him. I don't plan to. It would mean having to explain how I'd been able to support him when we were all teetering on the point of starvation and barely able to care of ourselves and I know he wouldn't just let me blow the question off. Truth was, I'd been skimming energon off the top for myself—a few sips here and there when nobody was looking, not enough to be noticed but enough to take the edge off the constant hunger. Even now Cyclonus probably wouldn't forgive me for that, no matter what I went on to do with it, and if it's too late and too pointless to try a court martial on me he'd at least give me nasty looks in the hallway for the rest of my life. If anyone'd found out at the time they'd have lynched me and Cyclonus would have probably pulled the trigger himself.

Still, it saved his life. Probably saved the rest of the Decepticons in the bargain; no one else would have kept up the search for Galvatron until we pulled him out of the plasma bath and had him lead us all to…well, to better than it was. At least we're alive and back to making overly-complex devices to get energon out of pineapples or whatever Hook's come up with this week. There's only got the regulation number of attempted coups per month and Galvatron's doing a reasonable job of keeping down the uppity, certain ghosts nonwithstanding. We even manage to beat the Autobots some days when luck and Galvatron's temper are on our side at the same time. Sure, it's not total galactic domination, but at least I can rest easy at night.

So there you go. Scourge, unsung Decepticon hero.

Probably better that way. If I told anyone I was noble, they'd probably expect it from me on a regular basis.