This is based on the third-season ep, 'Webworld'. Basically, the Decepticons (prompted by the clever and self-serving Quintessons) decide to get Galvatron some long overdue psychiatric help. In the canon episode, Galvatron uses his own madness to defeat his Torqulon therapists, lays waste to their planet, and goes right back to leading the Decepticons.
-He even seems to forgive his second-in-command Cyclonus for trying to have him committed, though this may have had more to do with the planetary devastation putting Galvatron in a good mood than anything else.
In THIS story, the Torqulons decide on a more cautious approach to Galvatron's therapeutic care, and thus my story begins...
Thanks for the Memories
Now since our breakup I wake up
Alone on a gray morning-after
I long for the sound of your laughter
And then I see the laugh's on me
.
Chapter 1.
.
"CCCYYYCCCLLLOOONNNUUUSSSSS!! I WILL DESTROY YOU FOR THIS!! I WILL SEE YOUR OPTICS BURN! I WILL RIP OUT YOUR BOLTS ONE BY ONE AND CHOKE YOU WITH THEM!! I WILL-"
Cyclonus sighed uncomfortably, arms folded across his chest plate.
"Is there no hope of curing him?" Cyclonus asked the Torqulon standing nearest.
"We will certainly try, but this is a very advanced case..." the monkey-like therapist replied, doubtfully.
"Galvatron..." Cyclonus said, softly.
"Come on," Scourge suggested, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder, "-we should be getting back to Charr. We will have work to do, if our leader is to have an army left to command when he finally IS cured..."
"-TRAITOROUS SLARGS! GET BACK HERE AND RELEASE ME!! I, GALVATRON, COMMAND YOOOUUUUUU!!" Galvatron roared, from inside his web-spun cell.
Cyclonus gave his leader a sorrowful backwards glance, then followed Scourge and his three winged horrors up into the sky.
Nanoclicks passed.
Breems passed.
Cycles passed.
Planetary night had long since set over the flat plains of Torqulon.
Galvatron finally stopped yelling and stood there staring at the empty, star-filled void, his powerful frame still shaking with rage.
He sat down abruptly, and the trembling stilled to an eerie quiet. Galvatron retreated within himself to consider his options and chances for escape from this pathetic dirtball of a planet.
In his earlier rage, he'd tried every strand of sticky purple webbing, every dark spine of cage-material, even blown the floor into soft loan trying to claw his way through the tightly-woven bottom.
Nothing.
Every strand of cage-webbing he managed to break replaced itself from somewhere deep beneath the ground, well out of his reach.
Well, they would pay for it, Galvatron decided grimly.
He acted. He raged. He tried every sticky strand of the cell many times over. He attempted to trick his Torqulon captors, pretended to be sane, and offered them promises of great power.
The Torqulons had heard it all before. They spoke to him kindly, used their null-rays when they had to, and took patient notes.
Hands stuck fast in the gummy webbing of his cell bars, Galvatron dreamed.
He was fighting Optimus Prime at the dam, axe to flail. He was himself again, and strong. Galvatron remembered something a Torqulon had prattled to him about 'visualizing his own recovery', and snarled softly without waking.
This was the best dream he'd had in a while, and he wasn't ABOUT to let one of those hairy, simpering fools ruin it for him...
When Galvatron awoke from recharge that morning, Prime was there. He was sitting on the other side of the cell with his back to the sticky bars. Galvatron was frozen for a split second, hot, glorious hatred and rapturous joy at finally having a problem he could DO SOMETHING about washing over his tortured mind in fairly even parts.
"PRIME!" he cried, launching himself the pitifully short distance across the cell at his long-time enemy with a maniac grin on his face.
Standing well out of reach as the bars shook, two Torqulons stared at their crazed purple and gray patient, and exchanged a worried glance. One of them dropped Galvatron with a well-aimed shot from his null-ray before the unbalanced mech could do any more damage.
One blue eye glowed in the darkness, not twenty feet away. -The other must still be broken, Galvatron thought, with some satisfaction. Galvatron stirred, commanding his sluggish, reawakening limbs to move. He had to get up. To recover the dignity the Torqulons were trying to take from him...
"So Optimus Prime, still getting monkeys to do your dirty work, I see," Galvatron sneered, pushing himself up into a sitting position.
Prime shrugged disgustedly.
"Ravage got your tongue?" Galvatron asked, his smile widening.
Prime snorted. It was a sort of stifled backfire through the exhaust pipes mounted on either shoulder, and with a start, Galvatron realized that Prime was trying not laugh.
"So," Prime began, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back against the webbing, "-what are you in for?"
.
"It won't work, you know."
"What?" Prime asked, looking out through the bars with his back to Galvatron.
"Trying to drive me insane. I know what you are, and you don't frighten me."
"What do you mean?"
"You're a ghost. I've dealt with ghosts within the ranks of the Decepticons, and I KNOW I killed you," said Galvatron.
"You 'know' you killed me, do you? Well then who was it that forced you to retreat from the crypt when you came for Rodimus and the others? I know who it was you THINK you didn't see, because I was THERE, Megatron-"
"MY NAME IS GALVATRON!!" the disturbed Decepticon leader screamed.
"No it's not," Prime said quietly.
"You know me as Megatron because you're DEAD, you fool!"
"Am I?" Prime challenged, turning. "Did you actually see my spark go out, or did you just believe what the Autobots told you?"
Galvatron choked, staring at his long-time enemy speechless.
"They- TRICKED me?!" Galvatron ground out, finally.
"It's not that simple," Prime sighed, "You damaged me all right, and I was on the POINT of deactivation... I passed the Autobot Matrix of Leadership on to Rodimus Prime, and I fell into stasis-lock. When I came to, everything was different... and Rodimus would not surrender the Matrix back to me. I am sorry to say that his desire for power led him to have me committed here, to get me out of the way. -He's not evil, but there is a reason the Matrix is only passed from an old leader to a new one on the point of death. To give up the Matrix otherwise is- -unthinkable." Galvatron caught a slight growl in Prime's voice as he pronounced the last word.
"So what you're saying is, Rodimus did to YOU what Starscream always swore he'd do to ME," Galvatron laughed, entertained beyond his most fevered hopes.
"...Yes," Prime agreed, looking back out through the bars, "-I must be admit though, my first attempt to reclaim the Matrix could have been... misinterpreted."
"Hmn..." Galvatron nodded, knowingly.
Solar cycles came and went. The Torqulons changed shifts and wrote stuff down.
Prime brooded, and stared up at the stars a lot.
Galvatron attacked him whenever the Torqulon therapists had their tails turned, and Prime gave as good as he got.
It was about mass. The sheer strength and weight of metal on BOTH sides was terrifying, and Galvatron grew to relish the fearful reactions of the monkeys watching from outside their cell as much as the boom of his own fist denting Prime's red armor.
Gradually, Galvatron formed a plan.
"How would you like to get out of here, Prime?"
"Would I ever," Prime agreed, warily.
"I have a plan," Galvatron purred, "-would you like to hear it?"
"Shoot," said Prime, wryly.
"That's just it, my gun would still fire if it had a good enough power source... like you, for example."
"And leave you free to go, and me too weak to follow? Not on your energon pump, Megatron."
"But I would rather have YOU in command of the Autobots than that insolent Rodimus... -think- Prime, I could HELP you with that," Galvatron coaxed.
"Another Decepticon trick. I'll tell you what Megatron, why don't YOU use your life force to blast us a way out of here and I'LL carry YOU when you run out of power?"
"Ah but Prime, you can't fly..."
"And YOU can't be trusted," Prime said matter-of-factly, "-if anyone should know that, it's ME."
"So here we rust," Galvatron spat, "-you're even more helpless without your precious Matrix than I thought..."
Darkness lay over the surface of Torqulon like a heavy cloud, and even the bright gas giant two systems away wasn't facing them.
Galvatron felt a hand press down over his mouth, woke out of recharge instantly, and slammed the front of his helm into what he hoped was Prime's faceplate.
A muffled grunt rewarded him, but then a pair of large hands pinned Galvatron's arms down, pressing his elbow joints into the hard-packed dirt. The rear sight on his back dug into the ground like the end of a pickaxe. Galvatron felt an exhalation against his face from the dual cooling fans on either side of Prime's helmet. He smelled dust, hot oil, and that resin-core solder that Humans liked to use...
"BE. -Quiet-." Prime rumbled into his audio receptor.
"Or WHAT?" Galvatron hissed.
"...I'll get off and leave you alone..." Prime promised, nipping the side of Galvatron's chin.
"I was right," Galvatron crowed, smirking," I always KNEW you wanted a piece of me..."
"Wrong. I want you NOW, and I don't hear you complaining."
"-Doing a lot of justifying tonight, are we?" Galvatron smirked.
"Shut- -UP," Prime growled, the low rumble of the powerful diesel engine in his chest vibrating all the way down through Galvatron's frame. The Decepticon shuddered as his own cooling fans kicked on-
"No, please-" Galvatron snickered, "-what EVER will my troops think?"
"I don't -CARE-," Prime assured him, pressing a kiss against Galvatron's hard, pale lips. There was no response for a moment, only the taste of a frozen sneer, and the oddly welcoming sensation of Galvatron's lower lip. Then Galvatron tore his gun arm free and gripped the back of Prime's crested blue helmet to him, plundering the Autobot's mouth- -and those firm gray lips were just as lush as they looked- -with a hunger that had waited millennia.
Dawn came to Torqulon, and threw a basket-weave shadow across the two large mechs recharging in the middle of the cell floor.
Galvatron woke from the best recharge he'd had in over a stellar cycle, and became aware of the dead weight of Prime's left arm draped over him. They were lying face-to-face, and the big Autobot was actually -hugging- him.
It figured that Prime would be a cuddler.
Galvatron kept his optics offline, and drew back experimentally. Prime tightened his hold, and mumbled something that sounded vaguely possessive.
Galvatron raised an eyebrow thoughtfully, and studied the unconscious semi-truck's face.
What had that pink wand of an antenna said of Orion Pax...? Ah yes... 'he's the jealous type'. ...Prime still WAS, apparently.
And without the Matrix to channel that feeling into concern for his troops, what would that mean for HIM?
Galvatron wondered.
