Thank you so much to everyone who's commented and encouraged. I hope that you continue to enjoy the direction this goes! There's a lot of not!sex this chapter, and a lot of Megatron characterization that I hope you all enjoy. Please remember that this is an AU canonsmush of G1 and movieverse, so there's not going to be total agreement with any existing canon.

WARNINGS for this chapter: continued public sex, ritual sex, religious themes, sticky sex, possessiveness, visionquesting, and all around cracky goodness.

It was not, despite Megatron's sneering suggestion, the entirety of the Decepticon army. Shockwave and the Decepticons' Cybertronian Air Guard were conspicuously absent. Nearly everyone else that the Autobots had ever seen on Earth, though-the high command, the seekers, the Constructicons, even the Insecticons-were present. Several Decepticons that the Autobots hadn't realized were on Earth were present also, though Astrotrain, his interstellar engines shaking the surrounding forest, was nearly unrecognizable without his thick shielding.

Their guests certainly had taken the ritual seriously. They were just as naked as the gathered Autobots that scrambled out of their way as they settled in the north end of the plaza. The seekers themselves were, as a group, easiest to recognize by the broad expanse of their wings, though their helms, chests, and limbs had been lightened and the twilight made it difficult to make out their colors. Others left the Autobots whispering in speculation. It took them awhile to identify the fair-faced, broad-chested carrier as a visor- and facemask-less Soundwave. Without visors and facemasks and most of their kibble, the Constructicons were an undifferentiated blur of light green and pale violet plating. Rumble and Frenzy, restless but staying near Soundwave's feet as if tethered there, were nearly identical. And the mech leading the Decepticons...well. The youngest of the mechs stared in confusion and not a little awe.

Without his fusion cannon, without his helmet, without his armor, but with the underlying cranial panels spread wide and proud in the traditional corona of the Lord High Protector, Megatron looked nothing like himself. Or rather, the older Autobots murmured to the younger, he looked as he had before the war, when he had stood at Optimus Prime's side on Cybertron, in the Senate, at rites such as these. His protoform gleamed, the dying sunlight accentuating the strength in hydraulics and secondary power plants, energon lines crawling thick through the twist of internals, the shine of untouched metal interrupted many times with the duller sheen of welds and patches, scars illustrating a million battles proudly displayed.

As the last Decepticon arrived and the roar of flight engines faded to echoes against the surrounding mountains, the valley filled with expectant tension. It pulsed, almost but not quite in resonance with the spark-thrumming hum coming from the Prime's dais.

The tension was almost thick enough to combust as Megatron, bold and confident as ever, approached the dais.

The blessed resonance was impossible to fake, impossible to ignore. Prime shone like a beacon with it, and it called to Megatron on frequencies he'd long ago resolved to ignore.

It was damnably distracting.

It had hundreds of thousands of vorn since he'd seen Optimus ritually prepared and filled with the light of Primus. Armor set aside, struts and protoform bared, charge crawling lazily from plate to plate, sparklight pulsing teasingly from between flared plates... The sight was utterly erotic, and his control was not aided by the images Laserbeak had transmitted as they flew in: Prime writhing under his pet Noble and then his spec ops head, crying out in pleasure, charge and sparklight flaring.

Megatron took firm hold of himself. This was not about his lust. This was about taking every bit of ground Prime would foolishly give away.

He set his foot on the first step, climbing. "It has obviously been too long, Prime, if you've forgotten the proper order of worship." In the silence of the valley, his voice rumbled like thunder.

Prime waited for him, serene, his field, under the-Primus, the power-shimmering lightly with familiar humor. "You were late."

Of course he had been. He'd not been about to dignify the ritual with the Lord High Protector's presence if Primus had not blessed it. Had Prime walked out with nothing more sacred than good intentions in his field, Megatron had wanted the opportunity to destroy him.

"I am here now." Megatron reached the top of the dais, stone solid under his feet.

Prime's field flared with something annoyingly close to triumph, but Megatron ignored it to watch the Prime step closer to him, well within threat range, close enough to feel the swell of his spark through the morass the blessing had made of his field.

Frag it all to Cybertron and back, but Prime felt good. Millions of years of hate and he still felt like-

my other half

-the best pleasurebot when he put his mind to it.

"Yes. You are here now. Welcome." That heady field stroked outward, enticing, encouraging, offering, and Megatron hesitated just long enough to make it clear to all involved (and all were watching, he knew, from the smallest cassette to the most annoying of his seekers to Prime's white-eyed acolytes kneeling at the edges of the dais, watching him like the spec ops agents they were) that he was doing this of his own will, on his own terms.

He had barely lifted his arms when Prime slid into his hands, into his field, and Megatron's fingers were on him as if magnetized there, sliding across bared seams in a pattern he'd never forgotten, a sweep of up-back-down that was patterned into his kinetic memory. He would be long dead and his frame would still remember how to hit that long, arcing line of sensors that made Prime shudder and moan. It would remember the exact angle and strength of grip needed to ease Prime to the-

berth

-ground, the exact cant of hips needed to allow him to pull Prime into his lap, to line up valve with achingly eager spike, to bracket an arm behind Prime so that he could-scrap and SPARKS-

"I miss this." Prime groaned, sliding down. "I miss YOU."

Megatron growled, surging up, Optimus' valve, as always, stretching and hugging him just so, as if made for him. The cry that accompanied it, the clutch of hands against bared plating, was familiar. Utterly, terribly familiar. Megatron's spark, scarred and skeptical as it was, could not lie. He remembered this more than he should, the memory a lash of heat across his processor. He wanted this, as much as he hated to admit it. The shape and weight of Optimus' frame was burned into his sensor arrays, a ghost of lust and satisfaction he'd never been able to exorcise. No other lover had ever been as compatible in as many ways. Even in their last, furious time as Prime and Lord Protector, when their meeting had been more fight than coupling, the pleasure, bitter as it had been, had been white-hot.

This time was no different. Their frames fell effortlessly into eons-old patterns of thrust and arch, caught in a feedback loop that was like raw voltage to Megatron's neural net. His focus narrowed to the tight heat of Optimus' valve, the frantic beat of his spark, the whirr of ventilation struggling to cool his overheated frame, the SOUNDS he made, that smooth deep voice staticked with abandon and rising charge.

"Is this what you needed, Optimus?" Megatron hissed. "These last few days, when you could barely string a complete sentence together, all but begging your acolytes to 'face you every two joors?" He lifted Prime so that he could pull back, all the way out just to hear the great Optimus Prime cry out in protest and then in pleasure as he slammed back in. "Is it?"

"Yes! Yes..."

"No one could satisfy you, could they?"

"No...Primus..."

"Primus himself couldn't have satisfied you," Megatron growled, weight shifting to topple them, ritual positioning the DAMNED, to pin Optimus down with a screech of metal against stone, his spike buried deep. "You are MINE, and your frame has NEVER forgotten it, has it?"

"No." That frame shivered, and didn't THAT feel delightful translated through the Prime's slick valve. Prime's hand groped up, finding the arch of Megatron's hip and holding. His optics opened slowly, glowing like teasing stars in the dark Earth night. "Speaking from experience, my Lord High Protector?" He rolled his hips, lifting them both, getting enough friction to ramp the charge up just that little bit more, until sparks arced between them, plasma-bright.

Megatron's only response was another growl. After that last time in Iacon, he had never let himself touch Optimus in anything other than combat. He had never approved of the mingling of work with pleasure. It muddied one's priorities. PRIME muddied Megatron's priorities, like a code patch that dropped straight to his interface subroutines. Besides, 'facing him was not conducive to convincing the Lord High Protector programming that Prime was an enemy. Megatron had made a point of giving the Autobot leader as few chances to distract him as possible, knowing that to allow himself the indulgence would break his hard-won discipline, scatter his wits, and lower his defenses.

Like it was doing right now. Starscream could be right behind him with an energon blade and a grin and Megatron would NOT CARE. The thought shot a needle of ice through the heated charge.

This is a mistake, some distant, unaddled instinct warned. A perfectly-baited trap.

No, no, logic replied. Even Prime would not sully a sacred rite for mere political gain.

The aphrodisiac of the blessing, the feel of Prime's submission wrapped tight and hot and wet around his spike, his own lust, all converged on his circuits with pinpoint accuracy. Charge arced through him as it hadn't in vorns, his polarity meeting its opposite mate, his spark spinning and pulsing and as overload hit, that small part of his processor observed snidely "PRIME is no more in charge of this than you are."

Megatron froze, but it was too late. Optimus' frame arched in pleasure, unarmored hands clutching hard at his armstruts, valve clutching with exquisite pressure, field flaring and wrapping Megatron's spark in heat and pleasure and something that was so much more dangerous, more INTENT than mere blessing.

Slag and smelt me, Megatron thought resignedly. Then overload was sweeping him up like the hand of Primus it was.

Primus' presence was always a shock to the systems, but Megatron bore it well, holding straight and proud through the divine examination. He waited, righteous but...wary.

Images of Optimus, Cybertron, mechs long gone, lost to war and time, floated across his consciousness. Memories, full and detailed as the day they were recorded, some he'd not looked at in more vorn than he could remember, their pain or pleasure too much, too distracting. Watching rank after rank of his warriors die, his spark burning with rage. A sparkling playing in a nameless plaza in Iacon, laughing in the light of a sun long gone cold and dead. Millions of vorn of music and art, of architecture piercing the skies in graceful spires. The sound of Iacon, of Kaon, of Praxis, Vos, living cities filled with the hum and clank and deep-throated roar of billions of mechs.

And then...Cybertron as he'd last seen it: cold. Dead. A tomb for living and dead alike.

"I will rebuild," Megatron murmured. "We will be strong and prosperous again, I swear it by my own spark."

Your road is paved with corpses, my creation.

"They resisted me!" Anger flaring, he shoved aside the image of Optimus, begging him to listen, to wait, to please see sense, to- No. NO. "He ABANDONED me! His people were fighting and dying for ignorance and senseless pride, and he did NOTHING. Weak and naive, listening to petty advisors and powermongers instead of his own Lord High Protector! Allowing corruption and greed to eat at our very core, to gut us! The Council was a pack of thieves such as the universe has never known, crushing mechs under their feet so that they might hold power for themselves. They were vile and despicable and destroyed more mechs than I ever have, and I AM NOT SORRY!"

You are right.

The agreement hit him like a slap to the spark.

But they are dead.

"Their legacy lives on!"

No. Your Prime lives on. Join with him.

"No." Reflexive recoil, rebellion running spark-deep.

You trusted in me, once.

"Oh, I trusted in you..." His rage, which had always been too large for his frame, now felt like a plasma cloud: thick, choking, burning, yet also, for the first time, something untethered from him. Something that he might leave behind. He clutched at it, stubbornly. "I trusted in you, and the Council ordered my soldiers to slaughter! I trusted in you and pushed for change! I trusted in you and fought for the weak and oppressed! I trusted in you and lost everything! My people, my mate, my home, my planet...all gone!"

Not gone. Damaged. Scarred. In pain. But this is a crossroads, my creation. Will you fight for them again? Will you reclaim them? Or will you give up? Will you be a leader...or will you be an executioner? Will you rule with bitterness and anger, or with wisdom and hope?

His spark trembled, feeling rage slip from his grasp, moving through, away, no matter how he tried to hold onto it. He keened in loss, floating anchorless in the gravityless nothing that was worse than deep space. Here, stripped bare, he could see every justification, every manipulation, every lie, every twisting blow to his own spark as he slashed and burned and forged himself awry and into something new and frightening. The reality of it was crushing, and for the first time in a long time he felt...he wished...

Anger and bitterness...or wisdom and hope?

"I...I have lost all my hope." The words weren't even spoken, just felt, KNOWN, a concrete fact like a cage of Cybertronium, hurtling toward oblivion.

Then let me give you more, my creation.

"I..." Resistance. It was hard to think. Hard to separate his will from the great will around him, powerful and intimate. There was another, lesser will there, also: close, support and care and ridiculously unconditional love wrapped around him like an embrace. He batted it away irritably. "Let me THINK, damn you."

Laughter, not unkind, and a backing away.

He groped for his bearings, for his purpose, and found himself kneeling amongst the shells of discarded ideals. Unity. Service. Protection. Strength. Righteousness. Anger. Power. Control. Conquest. Victory. Here, disconnected from them, from the trappings that surrounded them, the webs that snarled and snared, Megatron could examine them clearly. He dismissed the first few with barely a look. He had moved beyond them. Never again would he be the naive public servant, the blind follower. Neither could he return to thinking that pointless power could be an end unto itself. It and the control it fed were useless without a purpose.

He reached forward, taking hold of conquest and victory. He weighed them in his hands, felt the heft of them, familiar but for one thing he had never noticed. They were hollow: shells of higher purpose, a naive extension of his desire to rule, to prove himself RIGHT. Here, he could see the cracks, the pits, how underneath that desire was something else, the end long-buried under the layers of justified means.

He abandoned conquest, brushed away the cracked shell of victory, searching...and realized he was back at the beginning, his progression not a line but a circle, starting with Hope.

No, he thought. I have moved beyond such things. I am a pragmatist. A realist. I do not...

Images, locked away long ago and half-forgotten, rose from the ashes beneath his feet. Optimus and he, young and naive, lying together in the quiet nights, sated and content, murmuring of problems and plans, patterns and promise. His own energon-stained hands, after the fateful battle at Ganex IV, when he'd truly seen the problems with the system he served, when his first instinct had been to go to Optimus, because surely there was no problem they couldn't defeat together.

Hands covered his, pulling his gaze up to Autobot-blue optics. "I could not help you then. I was young, naive, weak...all the things you accused me of being. I was afraid of what you offered. I was afraid to pull back from the safety of tradition. I was afraid, and you were angry, and that only made me more afraid, and then angry. At you. At myself. I was the diplomat, the negotiator, and I could not convince my mate and best friend to listen to me. I felt weak, and that made me angry." Optimus paused, considering. "There was a tipping point. Before it fell out of our control. Where I might have contacted you...discussed...compromised. When you might have listened to me. I did not see it until it was past. You are right. I abandoned you, as surely as you abandoned me. I am more sorry for that than I can express."

Something shifted around them. Megatron knew Optimus' words were true. Here, they had moved far beyond the capacity to lie. His words dropped into Megatron's spark like drops of light, warming instead of consuming.

Optimus knelt with him, their optics level. "I don't want to make that mistake again. Surely we can make better choices. Surely we've gained some wisdom in all of this. Some strength. We are not who we were. We are not shackled by our youth, the Council, the past. We can begin again. If we can just stop fighting each other. I don't want to fight you anymore." He opened his hands, pulling Megatron's own hands apart to reveal the light sitting in his palms, coalescing into images of Cybertron, rebuilding. Of sparklings...so many sparklings, running and playing and flying with not a care in the world. Of the Constructicons and Prime's builders arguing, pointing, adjusting, their holo blueprints buried under a mess of revisions. Of Decepticons and Autobots swarming over a half-built structure that might have been reminiscent of the Hall of Primus. Of he and Prime, walking together, their hands full of datapads. Of them both, laughing.

"I want this." Prime curled forward, down leaning his helm into Megatron's hands, in want, in pain, in supplication. "I want this."

What do you want, my creation?

The universe paused, turning on that one question.

What do I want?

He wanted that Cybertron also, Megatron knew. Peace. Prosperity. Unity. Strength. But how to achieve it? After so long, after so much pain and death, how to get from here to there? He'd thought that he could forge a path...thought he'd seen the road...but now...

Now.

Inside his spark, something untwisted, straightening ever so slowly. It felt like energon finally flowing through a crimped line, like a dislocated joint set true, like a sparkling unfolding. Like promise.

Megatron cupped Prime's chin, lifting his face up. "There is another way," he said, surprised at the truth of it.

Optimus smiled. "Yes. There is."

The universe shattered.