Chapter Nine:
Megatron didn't pay much attention to the gate Livewire placed in front of the entrance. The medi-tech placed him on the table at the head of the girl's cot and left them alone. They had long ago come to realize he wouldn't harm her.
He sat on the ample padding of his tail and watched the girl sleep. He knew it would only be a matter of time before she would begin to thrash in her sleep and the nightmares would begin. So he spent his time thinking about what he would tell the girl this rest cycle. Should he continue telling her about his various gladiatorial victories? Perhaps, he should tell her about the battles he won. Maybe, he would tell her about his friendship with the young Orion Pax, and how the 'bot betrayed him.
The child moaned in her sleep and began to twitch. So, the nightmares were starting, Megatron thought.
He jumped from the table to the pillow the girl's head was resting on. "Hush child," Megatron whispered as he gently brushed the hair from her face.
She stopped twitching, but frightening emotions flitted across her face. She gasped and began to mumble. To Megatron, he thought he heard the word "Papatron," and then something similar to "Uncle Al." Then, he distinctly heard her say, "No!" as she bolted upright.
"Little one," Megatron addressed her. No one else knew that was his pet name for her.
Ellie blinked, and then tracked his location from his voice. "Papatron?" she asked tentatively. She made certain no one ever heard her address him so familiarly.
"I am here. Lie back down. You are safe now."
She gathered him up into her good arm and lay back down.
He could feel the tension in her body as she fought to keep from crying, the terror of the nightmare still fresh in her mind.
"Tell me about your nightmare. I heard you say my name and something about your uncle. What happened?" Megatron encouraged.
For a long moment, the girl said nothing. Finally, she took a deep breath and let it out on a frustrated sigh. "I met this Ratchet 'bot. Then he saw you and said 'What are you still doing alive?' And then he grabbed you and said, 'I'm going to need spare parts to fix this mess,' as he started ripping you apart. Then, he turned into a giant Uncle Al and grabbed me. That's when I woke up."
Megatron was taken aback. He knew she would often have nightmares about her Uncle Al regaining control of her, but this was the first time she ever told him, even inadvertently, that she was also frightened of him being injured.
Curiously, he felt a shifting in the area of his spark. The best way he could describe it was as if it had opened to shine even more brightly than the brightest sun.
"Well, I'm still alive, and you're still here. Try to rest now," he consoled.
"I'm afraid the giant Uncle Al will come back if I close my eyes," she confessed.
"Would you like to hear another story?" Megatron asked. He still wasn't sure what he would tell her.
"Do you know any happy stories?" she asked hopefully.
He scanned his memory banks, and finally found one she would like.
"Long ago, on Cybertron, well before the war, even before I was a gladiator," he began. "I worked in the mines as a demolitions 'bot in sector sixteen. So, that was what they called me, D-sixteen."
"Why didn't they call you by your name?" Ellie interrupted.
"I didn't have a name then. I had to earn my own name when I became a gladiator," he informed her. "Now hush.
"One day, after a grueling cycle in the mine, I reported to the maintenance clinic for a standard cleaning and upgrade. As I stood in line, waiting for my turn, the most beautiful fem-'bot I had ever seen flitted from one bay to another like a busy little butterfly.
"She was a medi-tech, and very young. Only a few planet orbits from a hatchling in fact."
"Hatchling?" she interrupted again, sleep growing heavy in her voice.
"Newborn. Now hush and close your eyes or I won't continue my story," he threatened.
Megatron continued. "She was a mint green color with soft cream colored details."
"Um, pretty," Ellie commented
Megatron ignored the interruption. "Before I could stop myself, I reached out and caught her arm. It stopped her instantly in her tracks. Then she looked at me with her beautiful green optics with such innocence in her expression. 'Can I help you?' she asked me.
"Her voice was like music to my audials. For the first time in my existence, I found myself at a loss for words. Finally, like a fool, I was able to say something along the lines of upgrades."
The child giggled.
"So innocent she was. I don't think she realized how smitten I was with her.
"'I'm afraid upgrades are postponed for the cycle. There was a cave-in in sectors one twelve through one eighteen. Right now, we have sparks to save. You'll have to come back either before or after your next shift,' she said to me.
"She gently removed my hand from her arm and continued her harried flitting from one bay to another. I continued to stand there for a brief time later, just staring after her when some of the rescue 'bots brought in two more severely damaged 'bots. It was like I was in some sort of fog when they said the collapse was expanding, and they didn't think they would be able to stop it before the whole mine was gone."
"Thought this was happy?"
"That's when I realized I might be able to help. So, I ran back to the mine and found the emergency command post the rescue units had set up. I was able to see immediately what the problem was; they were trying to set off control explosions to stabilize the current cave-in and in the process, they were destabilizing the surrounding sectors."
"Idjits."
"Finally, after I forcibly made the rescue commander listen to me, I was able to intervene, gather several other demolitions 'bots together, and we stopped the collapse. After we were able to verify the area was stable again, we stayed out and helped the rescue units find as many survivors as possible. When it was all said and done, there were six dead and one hundred ninety-four injured."
The child snuggled Megatron closer to her as she whispered, "My hero."
"After we had tended to the dead, I returned to the clinic and waited outside for the rest of the injured to be seen to. She would have to leave soon after that. At least, that was my reasoning. Soon, it was nearing time for my next shift, and still, the medi-tech did not emerge.
"Not wanting to acknowledge my part in the previous cycle's happenings, or the fact I spent the night waiting for her to come out, I went into the clinic with the excuse I was following her suggestion about coming in for my upgrades before the next shift.
"When I went into the structure, there was no 'bot there. So I waited. When no one emerged to find out who had come in, I went in search of her. I eventually found her in the slag bay, kneeling over the dead and trying to desperately find even a glimmer of spark in any of them. My very spark seemed to scald my chest with the desperate hope she displayed.
"As gently as I could, I pulled her away from them. At first, she tried to fight me, 'No!' she exclaimed. 'I have to save them.'
"'You can't. They are gone,' I said to her.
"'What good is a medi-tech who can't repair even the most damaged?' she pleaded with me.
"'A normal one,' I told her. Finally, she gave up trying to return to the dead and turned to me. I held her as she sobbed into my chest."
"Fluffy chest," she mumbled sleepily.
"Eventually, she regained her composure. 'I'm so sorry,' she said to me.
"I told her no apologies were necessary, and that it was refreshing to find a medi-tech who actually cared about her patients.
"We talked for a few moments, and then she escorted me back into the clinic where she completed my standard maintenance and upgrades. As she was finishing up, I was afraid I would never have the chance or courage to approach her again, so I asked her out.
"She said yes and we eventually were unified . . . That's the Cybertronian version of marriage," he clarified before she could ask.
"Wha's it like?" Ellie wanted to know.
"A unification ceremony is a bit different than a human marriage ceremony. The male and female 'bot basically report to a mutual network terminal, upload their petition to unify, then wait for approval. It only takes a few micro cycles for it to be approved or not. If it is, then they can cohabitate in the fem-'bot's quarters and begin their life together."
"Party?" she asked.
"Sometimes. It depends on the unified couple's standing, and how many other males the female already has."
"Hmmmm?" the child made a quizzical sound.
Megatron chuckled. "Yes. Cybertronians practice polyandry."
"Huh?"
"Ah! Found a human word even you don't know did I?" he teased.
"Polyandry is the practice of a female being unified, or married in your language, to multiple males at the same time.
"You see, males outnumber females by over eighty to one in our society. So, to adjust to this, it is permitted for females to have as many males unified to her as she wants. Of course, if things don't work out between the male and female, or one male and other males in her unification, the female can dismiss the male in question.
"Usually, she transfers her male's unification state to another female. Sometimes, if no other female wants the male in question, well, it is considered a grave insult. At those times, either the female can transfer the male to one of her daughters, if she is lucky enough to have one, or just dissolve the unification status altogether. In those cases, it is rare that a male would find another female on his own. Occasionally, the male will get lucky and find a young female to unify with him before she has enough experience to know better."
Megatron kept talking for another twenty minutes. He saw that his little one had fallen asleep sometime between his definition of polyandry and the social status of Cybertronian unification laws. Thinking about it, he realized the topic was a bit over the head of a twelve year old human, no matter how intelligent she was. But, he knew that the sound of his voice helped her sleep without nightmares.
Once he determined that the girl was sleeping soundly again, he settled back to watch her face. As was typical, when he spoke about his unified, the memories flooded him. This time, instead of turning them off to focus on the war, he allowed them to swamp his processors; he remembered the fun they had as they learned about each other, he remembered the absolute joy on her face when the approval came over the 'net for their unification, he remembered how his circuits sang when she engaged his unification port, right there at the terminal in front of anyone who would be happening by. The feeling of her arms wrapped around him as his wrapped around her and their mouths fused to give her access to his most intimate memories. He could almost feel the slide of her access tube through his teeth to engage the port at the back of his mouth. In his memory, he was still laughing at her eagerness to drag him off to her residence, once there, she had told him, they would have to apply to get on the seeding cycles.
The memories flooded him, but instead of leaving him cold and angry as they usually did, he felt light again. For a few blessed moments, he was happy. Finally, the final memories came.
VVVVVBREAKVVVVV
He was at the mine during his routine shift when the notice went out about another collapse. Running with the other miners, he was able to scoop up three salvage scrap drones and another miner who had fallen when the sound of another collapse behind him seemed to chase him out of the sector. He got to the assembly point as the last of the rumbling quieted.
Waiting around for the foreman 'bot to verify numbers and identities seemed to take forever. Eventually, they were told to report to the clinic to make certain there were no delayed injuries. Megatron felt as if he was floating as he ran to the clinic when she called him via their personal radio link. He remembered sliding to a stop when he heard the panic in her voice. "I'm fine. I'm on my way to the clinic," he tried to answer her. But she didn't hear. In desperation, he accessed her optics to see where she was. She was digging in the mine, screaming for him. He felt his very spark stutter at that instant when he realized she thought he had been caught in the cave-in. She was going to dig him out with her bare hands if she had to.
Turning around, he barely took a step before he had completed his aerial alt-form and was zooming off toward her location. He kept his connection to her, continually trying to get her attention that he was fine. She was too grief stricken to believe her audials.
Finally, he had zeroed in on her and was nearing her location when a secondary landslide let go above where she was digging. He saw the dirt close over her head through her optics, felt the boulders crushing her torso, then the sensation of being torn in two as her bottom half got caught between stationary boulders and her top half was still being carried away between the boulders in the moving soil.
He roared out his rage and anguish as the connection between them suddenly severed and he dove headlong toward the coordinates where he last had contact with her, calculating where she would be given the rate of descent of the soil's movement. Diving into the soil as if it was nothing more than water, he prayed at that moment that he would either find her and she would survive, or he would die stabilizing the soil so that she would be found and survive.
The concussion of his entry into the landslide had the desired effect of thinning out the soil below it to make it easier to work through. It also temporarily stunned him. Megatron had not completely shaken off the effects when he was already in 'bot form and searching the soil where he knew she should be. He even was using his enhanced ore vision to find the metals of her frame. Eventually, after what seemed like forever, he saw her hand sticking up through the debris. He lunged at it in desperation and began to dig around it. It was not connected to her body. Finally, he saw her face looking up through the dirt, the optics had been broken, so she couldn't see, but he tried to let her know he was there, praying her audials were still working. He dug her out and held her tightly to his body, screaming for help. Slowly, or so it seemed to him, the rescue 'bots arrived. They cracked open her chest to monitor the spark, and that was when he realized she was truly dead.
The grief overwhelmed him at that time. In his rage, he succumbed to the ancient practice of self-mutilation, and ripped off his own lip plates.
VVVVVBREAKVVVVV
Megatron came out of the self-induced fog of the memories and waited for the ever present anger to engulf him. They didn't come. Instead, he felt only sadness at the loss of his beloved. He realized he didn't even feel the usual hollow feeling.
Looking at his little one, he found a moment of crystal clarity about himself. For the first time, he accepted his role in the destruction of Cybertron; he was the lynchpin that started it. True, there were a great deal of factors leading up to the final escalation, but he was the one who ultimately decided to pull the trigger.
He accepted that he was not, necessarily, a popular leader, most of his Deceptacons followed him out of either fear or a love of fighting, and as long as he could continue to give that to them, they would continue to follow. But lately, in this place, he realized the war could not continue forever. He remembered the one question the girl asked him when he first got here and she was talking to him about the war; "What you're fighting for might be worth dying for, but what do you have worth living for when the war is over?"
The question had stumped him. He never allowed himself to think about what was beyond the war. He was so consumed with his own grief and making the bureaucrats, and the Cybertronian society at large, pay for his unified's death, he never thought about surviving the war. Now, he knew he must think about that, and what the price would be for anyone he cared about.
Remembering the way the others had been whispering about him recently after his girl could no longer hide her illness, and the way he lashed out at them all when she was particularly weakened by an episode, he realized they knew he cared about her.
He knew what he had to do, and the knowledge ripped his spark out.
The sound of metallic treads in the connecting caverns brought Megatron out of his reverie.
He wriggled his way out of Ellie's grasp. He landed on the dirt floor of the cavern. As was typical, he landed on his back, the balance of this body not suited to landing upright.
He pushed himself to his feet and toddled to the curtain. It took two tries for his plush fingers to find and grasp the edge so he could open it and look out. Out in the corridor, Bonecrusher was stopped in front of Ellie's quarters; Soundwave in his hands.
"Yes?" Megatron demanded as quietly as he could through the child's gate.
"Is the girl sleeping soundly?" Soundwave asked.
"Yes. She won't overhear us. What is it?"
"You are aware that Optimus Prime and the Autobots will be arriving in twenty-one hours. What is the plan once they have aided the girl?"
"We will convince the girl to restore us to our bodies and then we will continue our assault on the Autobots."
"How will we accomplish this with the Autobots here?"
"I will tell her the Autobots will want to kill all of us if she does not intervene on our behalf. It will scare her into hiding us before they get here and then it will be a matter of time before she will rebuild us."
"Are you certain she will believe you?" It was the first time Soundwave ever outright questioned Megatron's logic. He knew it was a risk, but he needed to gauge his response.
"Are you questioning me?" Megatron asked quietly. Dangerously.
"No. I am questioning the girl's naiveté," Soundwave answered.
"Naïve, is one thing the child is not," Megatron chuckled. "The girl will obey. She likes me."
"That is not a guarantee she will listen," Bonecrusher interrupted.
"And how would you know?" Megatron asked.
"She knows her Elliebots want what is best for her, and she loves every last one. However, she still has directly ignored, or outright disobeyed more than one of their instructions.
"I would speculate that she would not be meeting with the Autobots tomorrow if she was still able to ignore her own illness."
Megatron and Soundwave looked at each other in surprise. That was the longest thing Bonecrusher had ever said to either of them at one time.
"What proof do you have of this?" Soundwave questioned.
"The most recent example was when she and Jukes made initial contact with the Autobots today. Jukes confessed to Livewire that the girl would not eat the food they sent with her if she didn't like it. Also, he informed the medi-tech she left the shielding of her base to get sustenance she preferred.
"She knows she needs to eat properly, but will disobey if she doesn't like the taste. She knows she needs to remain shielded or her illness will get worse, but, again, she will disobey if she so chooses.
"Also, she disobeyed Jukes, Livewire and the others when she created the arena for you and the others. She disobeyed Jazz and the rest of the Autobots when she gave you a body, even if it is that of a plush toy."
Bonecrusher finished his lecture to silence. It took so long before either Soundwave or Megatron responded, he began to get nervous.
Megatron looked at Soundwave, and then did something he rarely ever did. "What would you suggest then?" he asked of Bonecrusher.
Bonecrusher was taken aback. Megatron never asked for anyone's opinion unless he thought they would just confirm his own. Perhaps this was the time to share a little bit of the knowledge he had.
"I do not think the girl will allow any of us to be destroyed. She will only allow the Autobots access if she is certain they will treat us with some semblance of civility. It is my belief that she will restore us to our bodies in time. The key is, she has to trust us. If she does not trust any 'bot, I believe she will not restore them."
"And who, exactly, do you think she trusts? And who does she not?" Soundwave asked.
"She trusts me, you, Laserbeak and she trusts Megatron and his judgment on who is loyal to him. She does not trust Sentinel Prime, Shockwave or Starscream. Everyone else, she is up in the air about."
Megatron had to chuckle. "She's much more intelligent than even I realized if she doesn't trust those three. The only one that I may have to work on her about would be Shockwave. I don't trust his morality myself, but he is easy enough to handle when allowed to explore his scientific curiosity undisturbed."
"That is what will keep him in his holo-preserver. He reminds her of her uncle," Bonecrusher pointed out.
"If you can, let the others know, with the exception of Sentinel Prime, that they can win their own restoration if they can win the girl's trust. Sentinel Prime can rust and rot for all I care," Megatron ordered Soundwave.
The sound of Ellie becoming restless in her cot caught Megatron's attention. "She is beginning to have another nightmare. Go now. Spread the word among the others."
As the curtain dropped across the opening, the squishing sound of his stuffing shifting as he walked back to the girl receded. A few minutes later, they could hear his soft murmurings and the girl quieted.
"See? She trusts him. Very few other 'bots have that effect on her," Bonecrusher told Soundwave.
It was worse than Soundwave feared. Ellie and Megatron loved each other. For the first time in his existence, he made a decision that was completely selfless.
"Hand me off to Jukes when you return to your station. I believe it is time to start gaining the trust of more than just the girl," he informed Bonecrusher.
VVVVVBREAKVVVVV
Passing through the lab cavern, he found Jukes looking at the perimeter monitor. Without a word, he handed Soundwave's holo-preserver to Jukes and trekked out to the arena.
Jukes was surprised when the spymaster looked directly at him and addressed him by name.
"You are Jukes, the girl's oldest comrade and protector?" he confirmed.
"Yeah. And you are Soundwave, the spymaster of the Deceptacons and the one 'bot no other 'bot completely trusts."
"That would be correct.
"Now, I must share some information with you regarding Megatron. He has grown emotionally attached to the girl. This will prove to be dangerous to them both."
"How so?" Jukes was curious. He knew they were becoming emotionally entangled, but thought it might be a good thing, at least as far as Ellie was concerned.
"Megatron has many enemies. Not only among the Autobots, but also within the Deceptacon ranks as well. I had been monitoring their movements to try and find the 'bot in charge when I arrived here. There are a couple here who may be directly connected to them, and a few more who are indirectly so. I fear that when, or if, we are restored to our bodies, they will give their leader an unusual power over Megatron."
"You figure that if it becomes common knowledge that Megatron cares about Ellie, whoever this underground leader is will target her to gain leverage over him."
"Correct."
"Thank you for telling me. I believe the best course of action is to tell them both. I'm afraid that I can't just arbitrarily separate them, or that might raise even more flags. Not to mention, it will wear out the reset button on most of the holo-preservers of the opponents he would face.
"No. When I go to pick up Megatron in the morning, I will tell them both that they seem to really be caring about each other. That should sound the alarm bells in his head and get him to pay more attention to his behavior about her."
"That might be the wisest action," Soundwave agreed. He had done all he can, now he had to leave it up to the Elliebot.
VVVVVBREAKVVVVV
Megatron returned to the cot and climbed his way up to where the child slept. "My little one," he sighed as he stroked her cheek. "No matter what, know that you are my daughter. I fear that I have not guarded that fact as well as I could have. Now, my love for you has put you in danger, and for that . . . well, no words can convey my sorrow. I ask only that you forgive me for the betrayal I must commit to protect you.
"Optimus Prime and the other Autobots will be here tomorrow. They will protect you with their dying spark if they must. And Prime? My oldest and most honest friend, he will fall in love with you," he chuckled. "How can he not? You are easy to love. I only hope that he will take you under his protection, and that you will love him in return. He deserves that, to be loved unconditionally."