Lost Faith
He started out looking down, unwilling to face the inevitable. His voice started out just as hesitantly, as if it was something that needed to be said, but he was still reluctant to say it. "I know your secret, you know."
"I know I seem too slow sometimes to catch on, but I've been around you long enough to clue in. You've got two personalities, whether or not you admit it to yourself. You're the commander and the 'bot, the tyrant and the person; you're my friend, but you're my superior officer, too." He shifted his feet, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation but plowing onward anyway. "You never wanted to admit that you were my friend. To be perfectly honest, I'm not so great about bringing it up, either. It's just too personal for ideal Predacons to be talking about, and you've always been one for the ideal. Your ideal doesn't always match everyone else's, but I've tried to live up to it. I've been a good officer, I like to think, and I've been it for you, my commander. Not for my friend, but for the one who gives me orders and expects me to be the ideal for him."
He raised his visor a little, half-smiling at remembered times. "It wasn't easy, but it was. I mean, I'm not the brightest 'bot on Cybertron, and it was kind of nice to know exactly what I was supposed to do and think. You're a tyrant, and you can be one hard taskmaster, but all you ever expected of me was that I follow you loyally and keep your back covered. I've done a pretty good job of it."
Now he looked to the side, avoiding any commitment to eye contact. "Things changed, though. I always knew that my commanding officer wasn't my friend, but I never realized how much you separated each side of yourself until one day you turned up with this scheme to take over the universe. As a tyrant, you ordered me to follow you. As my friend, you asked me to believe that you could achieve the impossible. I could see the struggle; you were trying to become something that combined a friend and an officer. You were trying to become one of those 'bots that lead entire armies into the Pit by pure force of personality, not a friend but more than just a commander. You were trying to achieve an ideal, the perfect Predacon leader, and you thought you had a cause."
His visor shifted to the other side, but higher, as if he gathered courage from his own words. "You thought you could reconcile the differences between your two personalities and become the leader you idolized. I followed you because I thought for a time that you could do it. I thought that maybe you could BE the leader."
He sighed. "I was wrong."
"I tried to give you time. I really did. As a friend, I tried to believe in what you said, but every day I see you becoming more and more just my commander. You've become a tyrant ordering me to follow a dream that you'll never be able to complete. You've lost the other side of your personality, buried under an officer, and without that part of you...I realized the impossibility of your schemes. There's no inspiration in your plots; just violence and orders, threats that don't make me believe. Maybe it's time you think about it yourself."
He looked up now to face the consequences. "I'm not saying you're a bad commander. I'm just saying that you're not my friend anymore, and ALL you are is a commander. I'll follow you, but I won't surrender my spark and body to your control, believing in your cause. If you can accept that, maybe you can accept that trying to conquer the universe is a worthless goal for you. You should find a higher cause, or another dream to throw your lot in with. Your dream is futile, but you're a good commander. There has to be someone else you believe in..?"
The worst over, he waited and ran his words over in his mind. No, he should have said something different. Something more persuasive and less offensive. The problem was that there was no way to phrase it any less bluntly. He's tried to say that they weren't anything but officer-commander anymore, but he's still trying to give advice.
He could feel the rebuking stare, and he met his reflection's gaze ruefully. "Maybe tomorrow," Scorpinok said to the mirror, "I'll tell him."
And elsewhere in the Predacon base, Megatron shut off the surveillance monitor and leaned back in his throne. Only his beast mode's head knows what thoughts ran behind his dimmed optics.
As much as I like mocking Scorpinok, the guy was a tragic character. The thing is, he was probably the closest to Megatron because of his loyalty, as a follower and perhaps a friend. Yet he was a scientist, so he had to be intelligent. Somewhere along the line, he had to have had doubts.