Disclaimer: Still own nothing.
Megatron had made plenty of mistakes in his lifetime. There were more failures and disappointments than he could count, and he could deal with that. Loss and war went hand in hand; sometimes you had to suffer for change. There were still things that haunted him at night, screams and gunfire filled his processor even while he recharge, but he accepted it. He had started this war, and he had to finish it, and he would take all the punishment it earned him – all of it, that is, except for Drift. Only one regret pained him above all else, only one failure filled him with true shame. He had been betrayed before, by people he trusted and even those he loved, but he just couldn't accept this one. Somehow, somewhere, he had failed his creation. Perhaps he had never really done right by him at all. He remembered that day, so long ago, he had awoken to find he had birthed a sparkling in recharge. He hadn't even known he was carrying; he'd been a gladiator, constructed cold, with no experience or knowledge of sparklings. Maybe it would have been better to have given the little bitlet up. He had certainly considered it at the time, but he just . . . couldn't. Not with those big pink optics staring up at him, framed by finials so similar to his own. Those optics had been full of blind trust and love and innocence, all of it aimed towards him. Perhaps it had been a selfish decision, but Megatron just couldn't bring himself to let his creation go.
Would it have done Drift good, to have been raised by someone else? If he had been taken away from the gladiator pits, away from Kaon and the Decepticon cause, away from a carrier who resorted to violence just to keep them fed, would he have been different? Megatron had done everything he could to shield Drift from the world he was raised in, but in the end it hadn't been enough. Nothing was enough. Maybe he should have seen it coming, but how could he? Sure, Drift was volatile, a little too eager to harm and a little too apathetic towards the fallen, but Drift was his sparkling. Megatron looked at his face and saw the little bot that used to follow him around with stars in his optics, who used to sing off tune with Soundwave, and charm energon candies out of officers. How could someone so sweet, so young, so wonderful, ever truly be evil? Megatron told himself over and over it was simply a phase; he would grow, he would change, he would learn. And he did – in all the wrong ways. All the signs were there, and Megatron still refused to see the truth until Drift was already gone, slaughtering bots he'd known nearly all his life on the way out. Without even hesitating. Megatron couldn't hate him for it, though. No, not Drift, never Drift. He hated himself, though. He had failed as a creator, and he would never forgive himself for it.
I was having a shit day so I decided to make it better by making Drift and Megatron miserable. Yay?
Almost wrote another one of these based on A Perfect Mistake where Megatron reacts to having a sparkling around again, but I was like, would anyone actually want my OCs mixed into this? And I was like nah. There will probably be more of these though. Might actually even write that one. I like Supernovae and Cloudjumper. Shrugs.
