Prime & Megs Outtakes

A/N: Here are a bunch of little fuzzy bits that I either rewrote substantially, or culled out of the final version of "Evolution." But they're still kinda neat. So here they are, like orphaned children, bunched all together at your door, raising their hands for just a little bit of kindness.

(What? I never claimed to be free from melodrama! These excerpts certainly are full of it.)

o0o0o

"Prime!"

There was no answer.

Megatron pounded a fist on the door. "Come out of there! Primes don't have time to pout!"

A voice inside proclaimed, "I'm no Prime, Megatron. Not any more."

Just barely, the Decepticon refrained from kicking in the door. He cycled three slow intakes, and counted to eleven. Then through his teeth, he said, "Let me in, Prime. I'm asking nicely."

The door slid up. Barring the entry with his arms, Optimus confronted his former assailant nose-to-nose. "I... am not... a Prime," he said slowly and distinctly, "So stop pretending that I am!" His usually-kind features twisted. "Or is it just that you can't stand being bonded to a bot who's something less?"

Megatron reared back as if he had been slapped. Then with a feral growl, he grabbed Optimus by the scruff of his redoubted neck, and shook him. "Are you trying to upset me?" he shouted. "Bad idea, Prime."

"I'm trying," the red Autobot said tersely, "To be realistic. One of us has to be." Well-practiced, he broke free of his one-time enemy's grip. "Now that the Matrix is destroyed, I've got no more right to lead our people than-" he flapped a hand, "Than Wheelie!" (The small, orange newling had come online just before the Cataclysm, and was driving everyone bonkers with his insistence on rhyming)

"Oh no you don't," Megatron jabbed a finger at the tall red-and-blue Autobot. "Asking Primus to reconcile with Unicron was your Pit-spawned idea. You don't get to run off and leave us, now that things haven't turned out like you and Elita hoped."

"And what were you, furniture?" Prime shot acidly. "I seem to recall your being present at the Heart of Primus, when the idea was first broached. In fact, I've got a sound-file stored of you giving your consent..."

"Unwillingly!" Megatron fired back. He sounded petulant, but didn't care. "I tried to talk sense into you and Elita. But no. I was outvoted. And look where it's gotten us!" He pointed out the window, where the lifeless surface of the corpse of Cybertron filled up three quarters of the view. "You need to step up and be the Prime we need now, Optimus. You made the problem. Fix it. I don't care how you fix it. But this hiding in a corner has to stop."

"And what exactly would you have me do?" Optimus threw his arms wide and stalked away, restless in his too-small chamber. "I can't call up a planetary resurrection, Megatron. And I don't have a map in my subspace that leads to some idyllic paradise flowing with purest energon. I just can't do it, Megs!" His voice cracked with unwonted desperation. "Just leave me the slag alone!" He turned his back on the big gray Decepticon, to stare unseeing out the room's one high window.

On the rare occasions when Prime really lost it, Megatron became paradoxically cool. He stood silent, cold, his metal plating clicking as the fires of his engines turned to ice. His face showed nothing; it was as aloof as the airless, friendless expanse outside their small ship's hull.

After a moment, he came up behind the Autobot, and turned his bond-brother firmly to face him. "Listen to me, Orion Pax out of old Iacon on Cybertron-that-was. I don't give one black hunk of slag what you think of yourself. Because I slagging know you." He leaned forward till their helms were touching, but there was no warmth of fellowship in the gesture. "That sparkly crystal you had in your chest was nothing but a meddling short-circuit." The Decepticon thwacked a derisive knuckle against Prime's too, too hollow chest. "It isn't what's in here that matters," Megatron rasped. "It's what's in you, you stupid, stupid, stupid slagging glitch. And if there's truly nothing there now, then you're not the mech I always thought you were."

Without a single backward glance, the big Decepticon turned on his heel, and marched out of Prime's chamber.

Optimus... blinked.

He went into the corridor and called after his bond-brother.

But Megatron had fled.

o0o0o

"We don't need you to have the fragging Matrix," Megatron explained. "We just need you to be, well... you."

Optimus dropped his gaze. "I need the Matrix," he whispered, ashamed.

"I know you think you do..."

"Just like you think you understand?" Optimus hit his Brother with a flat, humorless stare.

"Then make me understand," Megatron suggested.

Optimus looked away. "What if I pushed him too far?" he asked, barely audibly.

"Him?" Megatron was confused; this had nothing to do with the Matrix.

"Perhaps I should have said them."

"Ah. Primus and Unicron." Megatron suppressed a snort. "I've been wondering the same thing myself, Brother of mine."

Optimus turned wide optics to the big Decepticon. "What if it's not just me who's been cast off?" he asked. "What if we're all forsaken? That is my greatest fear. That's the one bungle I can't find any way to mend."

Megatron grunted, comprehending. But he shrugged. "So what if we've been damned and left to rot? That doesn't mean you should give up on us."

Prime flinched. That point had stung. But he rallied, "Our people deserve a better leader than Orion Pax! Especially now."

"A better leader?" Megatron shot his bond-brother a knowing look. "Like who, pray tell?"

But Optimus was unable or unwilling to come up with a replacement for himself.

o0o0o

They were sitting now in silence, side-by-side on Prime's berth. (It was the only piece of furniture in the spartan quarters he had been allocated on the command shuttle.) Megatron swung a restless foot; and both bots were startled by a tinkling, metallic scrape.

The gray mech bent to retrieve a small, dully glinting object from the floor. "Huh," he commented, surprised.

Megatron ran his thumb across the grooves in the palm-sized slab of dirty silver in his hand. It was one-of-a-kind. He held it out so that it was in Prime's eyeline as well as his. "Lose this?" he demanded. "Or did you throw it in your fit of pique?"

Prime reached to touch the object, but instead the gray mech took hold of his hand, placed the Symbol of Unity into it, and bent the dark blue fingers tightly around the rough metal. "I put a lot of effort into making this," Megatron said dryly. "I expected you to take better care of it."

The metal fragment from the floor had once been Prime's famous faceplate. Cut into the shape of combined Autobot and Decepticon brands, it now hung from an old chain - something the gray Pit-Lord had dug up out of his dark past (its bent links were smeared with oil and flecked with many colors of old paint). He'd given it to Prime, that day when they'd declared the Ceasefire permanent. Megatron had meant for his new bond-brother to wear the sign around his neck, as he had worn a badge so long ago in the arenas. But Optimus felt awkward bearing such an ostentatious thing upon his chest. So he'd usually carried it in his subspace, getting it out only for ceremonial occasions. In time, he'd almost forgotten about the gift. Until tonight.

With more force than was strictly necessary, Megatron shoved the chain over the old Autobot's head. He balled a fist, and whanged the sigil solidly against the red chestplates. "Wear it," he ordered. "You made it."

"You made it," Prime protested.

"But you made it possible," said Megatron flatly. "We'd still be at war if it weren't for your obsessive, simple-minded quest for peace. Don't insult me by trying to deny it."

Prime shrugged. "I do my best..."

"Sometimes, that's all that's needed." The Decepticon raised his chin in triumph, certain he'd scored a point.

Prime gave a sudden, sidelong smirk. "Great pep-talk, Megs. Well done. But do you actually believe any of it?"

Megatron turned dark optics to his Brother. "Do you want me to admit I'm lying?" he asked warily.

Optimus fiddled for a minute with the symbol on his chest. Then quietly, he sighed, "Lies might just have to be enough."

Megatron, clapped him heartily on the back. "That's the spirit!" he said, bright with false cheer. "We'll make an honorary Decepticon of you yet." He rose up from the makeshift bench. "Now I'd better go do some Mighty Megatron-ing, before Shockwave or somebody decides he can do this job better than I can."

"Wait." Prime's hand shot out and detained his bond-brother. "What about you, my fiery old nemesis?" Kind blue optics met fast-dimming red ones. "How are you holding up?"

Megatron froze, and turned a brittle, toothy smile to his bond-brother. "Splendid," he replied. "Since you ask. Just peachy."

Optimus rose as well. "Are you still in this with me?" he asked gravely.

Megatron huffed a massive gust of super-heated air. "I suppose so," he said heavily. "After all, if not you, whom else should I go to?"

Optimus wrapped an arm around the big Decepticon, and drew him close, "Sounds like you need a few lies of your own, my Brother," he said quietly. He looped the chain around the other's neck, drawing them tight together. "A lie for a lie?" he suggested.

"What else have we got?" asked Megatron bleakly.

o0o0o

"Megatron, are you all right?"

The gray mech bared his teeth in a terrible, mocking rictus of a smile. "Oh, I'm just peachy, Optimus. Have a nice trip."

"I'm not going anywhere that I know of."

Megatron snorted richly. "You can start by getting out of my quarters. I'm due for a recharge." He dropped onto his berth and rolled into a ball, his back to his bond-brother.

But Optimus remained. "I don't plan on retreating, my old nemesis," he said.

"Yes you do." Megatron spoke impatiently, as to an under-programmed newling. "I knew it when I saw you hiding in your room like a slag-licking coward. You're abandoning us. You intend to disappear."

"Actually, I don't."

"Primus damn it, Prime!" Megatron at last uncoiled from his huddle to glare at his Autobot Brother. "I'm a Decepticon! Don't lie to me! Not now."

With more sense of purpose than he'd felt in several quartex, Optimus shut the door behind him. Crossed the room in three long strides. Climbed up beside Megatron in one practiced movement. And then trapped the big gray mech in a circle of tight-drawn limbs.

"I asked the Medics once why they could not save Dion," he whispered. "And they told me that Elita and I weren't supposed to live. They told me we were an anomaly, a miracle; and to be grateful. They said that by the time they found us, there was little they could save except our sparks. They told me how they built us new frames from scrap out of emergency supplies, and covered up the welds with shiny paint. Sometimes my processor still glitches, and I get neural twinges from the stump of my leg grinding against the ground; the numbness seeping up my arm as I fight not to lose hold of Elita; the slow drip of inmost energon trailing from my rattling chest..." He hunkered in to whisper. "I have been shot, dismembered, reprogrammed, and sent through a faulty space-bridge into a dimension that does not even exist. But I'm still here, Megatron. I do not disappear. I'm Orion-slagging-Pax. And I do not leave anyone behind."

o0o0o

Megatron lay with his head against Prime's chest, listening to the pulse of his bond-brother's quiet spark. The rhythm was as peaceful and hypnotic as always - unchanged, though Optimus might protest otherwise.

Over the thousand-thousand vorns that they'd been adversaries - and only slightly more so now that they were bonded - Prime's sparkbeat had served as the metronomic baseline to the symphony of chaos within Megatron's red spark. This was his home: this plodding pulse beneath much-marred chestplates, on which most of the criss-crossed scars were of his own making. He listened; sinking down into the steadfast beat. It was like falling into a peaceful cocoon of deep blue light. For the first time since the Cataclysm, the fear stuttering in his fiery heart abated, just a little.

Optimus let his Brother's weight anchor him to the ground - or at least to this berth in a small, drifting spacecraft. Earlier he'd felt flimsy, untethered, flung wide into an unknown and unwelcoming universe. But now Megatron's mass forced him to recognize his own structural integrity: the strength of his unbending armor; the power of his servos; the endurance of his spirit. The old gray mech had always (for better or worse) evoked hitherto-unguessed heights of courage from the Autobot - often to surprise the both of them. And this day was no different.

He smiled a little as he hearkened to the wild, careening drumbeat of the gray mech's spark, less heard than felt throughout his frame. Optimus Prime had always been the kind of bot who persevered through any obstacle. Like his spark-beat, he marched. But Megatron had shown him how to dance.

Optimus stroked his fingers absently over the other mech's now-unhelmeted crest, inspecting all its joints and hinges as old habits dictated. (It was an old joke of Elita's that Optimus showed love by testing rivets.) His spark warmed, and he thought again how lucky he was to have Megatron for a Brother. It was so nice to be the rescued one, instead of the rescuer, every once in a while.

Slowly his mind went quiet. He began to hear the the clattering of feet along distant, too-small corridors; the muffled murmur of faraway voices; and at last even the subtle rumble of the ship's idling engines. All of these blended with the point and counterpoint of their two sparkbeats. He smiled. Maybe, just maybe, things would all turn out OK.

"Megs..." he began.

"Don't say it," warned the big Decepticon.

Optimus rolled his optics. "Megatron," he amended.

"Not that. The other thing. What you were going to say. Don't. It's too sissy for us."

The red mech sighed. He cast about for an acceptable alternative to the simple affirmation of his love. But there was none. So in the end he settled for, "Thanks for believing in me, glitch-head."