Survive
Depth Charge sat alone in the cell and wondered how he could have thought it would have ended differently.
The other Maximals on Earth had asked him about "survivor's guilt," tried to help him, prodded by Rhinox's concerns and Primal's pathetic attempts at congratulations and comfort. The whole thing was rolled into one awkward package he wished he could return to sender. It wasn't that he didn't know about survivor's guilt, or that he didn't appreciate it when Rattrap told him--in typical Rattrap style--via verbal abuse that he worried about him. Even Cheetor and Rhinox managed a few words despite how busy their planned return to Cybertron made them all. The fact that the other Maximals had found time amidst the preparation and celebration was...touching, he supposed.
He'd looked into the face of his nemesis and stared down death in emerald green optics. Then he had to walk away a survivor, and the only Maximal he felt had an inkling of understanding watched him with a furrowed brow and never approached. She kept her fuzor from approaching him, either. He appreciated that in abstract when he remembered that the rest of the universe existed. The Maximals' concern felt cloying and temporary. Survival, at least, was undeniably real.
The Predacons were subdued, presumed dead, and Megatron awaited judgment as they prepared to leave. Depth Charge pitched in to help whenever possible. A fleeting fantasy they might be, but these Maximals were the only ones left alive to regard him as a companion. His fellow Maximals were otherwise long dead, scattered on an empty colony and destroyed starbase. He saw them looking back at him through Cheetor's eager smile and Rattrap's anticipation. But Rhinox was wrong. He didn't feel guilty for living where the rest had died. He'd delved deep into that particular emotion and emerged with vengence overwhelming all else.
His vengence was had. Rampage--Protoform X--had died at his hands, and the body melted into slag afterward. He'd poured the hot metal into the base's volcano himself once he'd recovered enough to retrieve the body and go through with this last precaution, like the crab would return if every part of him weren't dispersed in the lava, never to reform and surface triumphantly. Primal had watched him with concerned optics and not protested. Time and irrefutable proof of Rampage's danger had worn down the Maximal leader's protests, and there had been relief deep in the ape's careworn face when Primal had lifted him from the ocean floor and smiled down at Depth Charge, only partially intact but still alive: victim and executioner welcomed as a friend. Relief that Depth Charge had lived. Relief that Rampage had died.
So he did not protest when Depth Charge insisted on seeing the last evidence of the monster destroyed. He didn't try to take the body parts with them or say anything against the time the raybot spent searching for pieces scattered by the explosion. Primal simply let him do what he had to as if he thought Depth Charge possessed by some form of penance. "One last act" or some such noble deed instead of weary paranoia. The raybot could have laughed, if he'd still had that ability.
But, no, he instead sat his turn at guarding Megatron as the ex-tyrant ranted about Maximal conspiracies and the revenge he would wreak for this indignity. He wondered, as he listened to Megatron fume, if the Predacon had any idea of how much he related to his crazed ravings. He, too, had sat alone in cells, alone and at the mercy of a unsympathetic few who'd never been there, could much less imagine being there, when the universe went mad.
Life, Depth Charge had learned, was not fair. He'd had it taught to him by an insane experiment on Omicron and had it burned into his spark by locked doors in Maximal cells. Justice was a relative word. He could empathize with Megatron, but not sympathize.
The Maximals took him back to Cybertron with him, and he hadn't the words to tell them it was the last thing he wanted. How they could overlook his blatant disrespect and the dislike he directed toward Primal after his arrival on Earth amazed him, and only the widow's sharp gaze told him she knew his ire had been a watered-down version of what he felt toward those who gave Primal his marching orders. He half-heartedly thought about telling the cheering Maximals everything on the shuttle back, only to dismiss the idea. Here, now, flying back to the world that should have been his home, he felt almost...normal. Rattrap and Cheetor, Primal and Rhinox, Blackarachnia and Silverbolt--they were almost a crew. His crew, even. They were people he could look at with a wry sense of humor for the venture of hope into his everyday existance. They could actually joke about Rampage's death and Depth Charge's supposed life from now on. They promised to include him on barhopping and future missions, and on wild plans for their adventures.
They handed him over to the Maximal High Council without a murmur of protest.
It was a small comfort to know that they didn't know. Those Maximals he'd last seen waving goodbye and arguing amongst themselves as they followed an official off to debriefing genuinely thought that they would see him later on, and would probably think it was his decision against such. Blackarachnia had hesitated, halfway down the hall, but a Predacon is always a Predacon, reformed by love or not; she continued on to secure her own future, not chancing to risk anything on his. He said nothing as he watched them go, not even a farewell, and felt a surprising amount of happyness in the betrayal. At least they were alive to leave him behind. The dead had left him in similar circumstances before without the opportunity to smile as they went.
So Depth Charge sat in the cell, as he'd always sat in cells in the aftermath of Protoform X, while interrogations and accusations writhed around him in knotted coils of insinuation. No matter how benign the questioner or neutral the question, it always circled back around to the fact that Rampage was dead. He had killed the immortal. He had destroyed the spark that the Maximal High Council had hidden and funded and sacrificed starbases and colonies to keep alive and secret. In the previous sessions in similar cells, they'd accused him of killing the colonists himself, of somehow managing the deaths of every single person in the starbase. They'd set up the evidence with desperation and put their flimsy cover-ups in place. It might have worked had Protoform X not accomplished so much and so improbably. The public liked scapegoats, but not even the Maximal High Council could bury the sole survivor of two massacres in contrived murder charges.
Yet they could, and did, erase Protoform X's role in history. The massacres were done by "unknown insurgents," and Depth Charge returned to Cybertron as the only hero facing sentencing for murder of a Predacon. As mind-boggling as it seemed, during the course of the entire Beast Wars, there was only one premediated death at the hands of the Maximals. His hands. And Rampage, with his past as Protoform X completely hidden in the High Council's classified files, became the Predacon faction's rallying cry, their demand for "justice" that neatly dodged any implications that the Tripedicus Council may have unofficially endorsed Megatron's attempt at restarting the war. They demanded the death sentence for his murderer. The Maximal High Council negotiated, silky-voiced and deadly and understanding the politics of corruption. It was all kept quiet and inside the system that the Councils owned, of course: jury, judge, and evidence. Such agreements worked like that.
The Maximal High Council sent in their interrogators with circular questions and invasive scientists looking for scraps of a body, residue of a spark, anything they could use to salvage their one-time miracle. He grimly gave them nothing. There was nothing to give, nothing at all. He'd survived, and destroyed everything in his survival. They threatened that survival with their mockery of a court, but he'd survived once, survived twice, and thought, maybe, that the reality of survival this third time had failed him if he would not really live.
Depth Charge sat alone in a cell, disappearing day by day, and wondered if feeling no guilt meant that he was finally ready to die.
I...don't like the Maximal High Council. Just stop and think about the crap they pull on the show, then tell me I'm totally wrong on this interpretation of a "what if Depth Charge lived" scenario. The title and tone for this piece came from "For All The Lost" by Necessary Response, which sort of says what I meant even without you needing to hear the lyrics. I am not, if nobody has figured this out yet, an optimist when it comes to "after the Beast Wars" stories. I really just can't see how it could be happy.