Ch. 175

This wasn't supposed to be happening.

Starscream slammed into a hallway wall and ducked down to avoid a set of claws that teased his capture, his sharp peds skidding him out of the way as his pursuer pounced.

Around this time, the Autobots should have been assailing a large Decepticon fortress outside their own destroyed base.

A growl for a cackle followed the lithe seeker as he barreled himself down an intersection and ran to the right. He didn't risk looking back. The sound of rapid pedfalls just behind him told him what he needed to know.

But without any Autobots around and no fortress to attack, something else had to happen instead.

Starscream felt the tips of large claws lightly grab at his lower back and he shrieked, tumbling to the floor when he tripped. He rolled painfully against the corner of another hallway intersection, gasping when the air was forced out of him, and struggled to intake further when those claws didn't bother grabbing him but gently traced at one of his wings.

So here he was now, no Autobots, no fortress, and with the previous event gone a new occurrence had to take place: Megatron was toying with his treasure like a cat with a delicate bird.

"I've caught you..." the warlord sneered, "upon my own ship, with no assistance from the crew. My dear Starscream, how can you not see that you were meant to be here? I always catch you..."

The seeker flinched away from his touch and glared into the wall he had slammed himself up against, "I... w-will never..."

"Don't you already? Every time we fight, we have to be drawn together first. How are you so distant from the destiny you have already traveled towards for so long?"

Starscream winced as he attempted to sit up, the whole of his chassis defined as one, throbbing ache, "Am I destined," he spat, "to resist against your delusions of power? Am I destined to reside in this torment you insist having thrown upon me? Or suffer with your spells of manic fervor? Is this what I am destined to?"

Megatron chuckled and shook his helm, "Oh no, this is for my own pleasures, my dear Starscream."

The smaller mech felt his optics widening. Typical. He wasn't even being tortured and tormented out of a necessity or Autobot secrets, it just made the warlord feel good. He grumbled and winced again when he tried to put weight on his right leg; the limb buckled, the stress too much, and Starscream would have fallen back to the floor if Megatron hadn't reached out to grab him.

The larger mech looked him over and smirked, "It looks as though you will need to rest before I chase you again. Such a shame, I enjoy hunting you aboard my ship."

"You're sick," Starscream flinched away, backing into the wall behind him to support himself, "How can you not see this? How can you not see how you're treating me?"

Megatron leaned down to look his treasure in those large, sad blue sapphires he called 'optics', "I do not need to see, only feel," his claws slowly reached forward, latching onto the front of the seeker's chest plate tightly, "And your spark is still beating so fast, my dear Starscream. I can feel every beat singing through my frame."

The smaller mech gasped at the touch and pulled back. His captor grabbed at him again and forced him into a tight hug, purring when both chest plates met and clanged against each other.

"Can you feel it? Sense it? Your own power coursing through you like the life blood of Primus himself? And it all comes from one, single point..."

Starscream trembled, unable to do much more than that as Megatron leaned over him and smiled; the warlord spoke softly, "Your spark, my dear Starscream..."

The seeker had to stop himself from frowning. So that's what this deranged lunatic wanted, his spark. Just the only thing that was keeping him alive, the thing he used every day to power his chassis and hold onto the most precious of memories, it wasn't like it was important... And yet, the thought of all this pain and suffering boiling down to the answer 'your spark, my dear Starscream' made the smaller mech's energon cook in his own tubes. All of this just for what made him him? All the torment and the deaths, the pain and loss, the constant rethinking of situations that shouldn't have happened anyway? For him? For his spark?

Starscream let out an angry whine as he finally began to struggle in Megatron's hold, his voice nothing but a flurry of irate words, "Yyyoooouuuu-! After all this-! You sick, twisted, glitch for fragging-! I could just-!"

"Yes, what could you just?" the warlord chuckled, "Could you just... perhaps... stop struggling as much? Perhaps you could simply agree to what I have offered to you this whole time. Come back, my second. Stop trying to fight me. Your spark will only just pulse louder..." he slithered a servo in between them, tapping at his treasure's chest plate, "and I will always find it."

The smaller mech scowled, "How awful is that then?! No privacy to myself, you can just... find me?!"

"Always, my dear Starscream."

This made the seeker angrier.

Starscream almost started yelling again when he felt thoughts tickle at the back of his helm and he bit down on a growl so he could huff instead, "So... how is it that you do that then...? How do you find me?"

Megatron smiled softer and held his prisoner more gently, "Are you asking as an... 'Autobot' or as my second?"

"... Does this truly matter?"

"It does," the warlord said firmly, "I certainly cannot divulge information to one who defines themselves as an Autobot, now can I?" he purred as an afterthought, "But I know you are not one of them. So indulge me, my dear Starscream..." he nearly lifted the smaller mech, eliciting a squeal, and whispered into his treasure's audial, "say what I want to hear. Say it."

"... M... Megatron."

"Yes."

"I..."

"Go on."

"... I am at your side, Megatron."