Title: Sidus Ad Quirito Diabolo

By: Ceris Malfoy

Drabble #3d: Perfection, Part 4

Summary: Optronix can easily picture this seeker as what he should be: Death and War and Insanity made whole and perfect.

Characters: Optronix a.k.a. Optimus Prime, Starscream, Starsinger (OC), Autobots, Unicron

Pairings: Optronix (OP)/Starscream, Autobots/Starscream, Optronix (OP)/Starsinger (OC), (very slight) Unicron/Starscream

Warnings: bad mojo, character death, graphic (and semi-graphic) sex, violence, mentions of violence and rape towards younglings

Continuity: Shattered Glass, major AU

A/N: For 14FlashSteps, who gave me this prompt:

"He had, Optimus realized in dark humor as his ember fell into darkness, unintentionally created the perfect weapon."

This is part 4 of 4, and I personally think this is definitely my favorite of the sections. Just a warning to others: there is some mentions of disturbing events in this section, more so than the others. This section is pretty much Optimus Prime's version of events during Diabolicae Foedus. Enjoy!


"So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere."

- Beatrice Potter

Fire.

Crimson flames consume everything in their path, spewing sparks that burn more brilliantly than he had ever imagined they could. The crystal of the so-far untouched buildings in the far distance reflect the raging fire where once it had reflected the light of the morning sun. The firs rains down from the sky like divine judgment, and he glories in the irony. Artillery fire can be heard over the sound of the explosions and the roar of the inferno, and above it all he can hear the sound of laughter, mad and gleeful.

His troops are having fun. He smiles and watches gleefully as the aptly-named Crystal City burns before him. He stands behind his little once-beloved who is held down on his knees by Optimus' cruel grip on the seeker's already shredded wings. He occasionally digs his claws deeper into the frayed metal, ripping the gruesome wounds open even further, just to hear the seeker's agonized wail.

From the conflagration rises a thin, desperate wail before it is abruptly cut off. There is relative silence for a moment – he grins knowingly – before the screams rise in echoing crescendo, a multitude of howling voices crying out in pain and horror and supplication, begging to be spared, to be saved. Optimus knows that his men will spare precious few, and even then, those few will only be spared to teach his little not-beloved a lesson tomorrow. The seeker in his grasp trembles, fluids leaking from his agonized optics, and this makes him happy.

He must break the seeker, completely and totally, if he is to mold the seeker into what he wants the creature to be. The burning of the seeker's precious city is only the first step.


Ash is thick in the air, and there still lingers small remnants of the inferno he had called into being. His army, the army that by the laws of Cybertron should not even exist, surrounds a small group of terrified seekers, all of whom are stained with the ash and soot of their precious city and the energon of their fellow seekers. He smiles at them all as he positions their Lord's only heir in front of them, the small-by-comparison seeker keening weakly as he is moved. Optimus Prime has declared war last night, and while he knows those seekers still alive understand that, he also knows that they do not understand just what he has declared war on.

His hands caress Starscream's helm, gently, soothingly, deliberately adding a touch cruel kindness to the horrors he forces the trembling seeker to watch. One by one he bids the survivors to be brought before the seeker, and one by one he forces Starscream to watch as his people are tortured, raped, and murdered before him. One by one he meets the gazes of these condemned seekers and thinks quietly: He chose you over me. So you must be removed from the equation.

He is proud of his band of psychopaths and sadists, as each death is crueler and more twisted than the last, each one a truly inspired artwork of pain. He listens to the seeker in his grasp as he prays to Primus, begging the slumbering god to stop this madness, to save at least one of them. Optimus' smile grows larger and crueler as with each death the seeker grows quieter and meeker, until finally he watches in complete silence.

When they are all dead, their corpses grayed and optics dark, he orders his army to ransack the ruins of the city. They do so with little prompting, delightedly searching every corner in the ashes, probing the foundations of every building that once stood, and poking around in every cubbyhole that still lingered, occasionally taking time out to defile the dead. He watches their progress, but most of his attention is on the seeker, whose frantic gaze and fervent prayers tell him that Starscream knows exactly what his mechs are searching for.

The seeker's prayers will go unanswered. It's only a matter of time, after all, before he finds the crèches and completely eradicates Starscream's frame-kin from existence. And after that, he thinks he will take down Vos as well, because despite the differences in opinion, one did not mess with seekers of any model without bringing down the wrath of the only true military-build on one's helm. Vosnian seekers will be a true challenge, masters of war and death that they are, and the thought of how Starscream will react upon learning he is the very last seeker in existence more than makes up for the knowledge that a great deal of his army will die in the assault.

Mechs would come easily to his hand if he can bring Vos down.


As he expected, the underground crèche is revealed in less than a full cycle. He rewards the mechs who found the entrance, and drags his not-beloved into it. There, in full sight of several dozen younglings and sparklings who do not understand what is going on, he chains the seeker to the ground. He has made sure that Starscream is weak from hunger and pain; seeker's, no matter their ideals, were notorious for their berserker-like rage when their young were threatened. And he means to do so much more than simply threaten. Again, he hold's the seeker's helm in place as he allows his mechs to do as they willed to the young innocents. He smiles as his mechs, monsters all, fall upon the sparklings and younglings alike with no remorse and no mercy. He watches as the young are forced upon thick spikes much too long and too wide for their delicate, tiny bodies, watches as some are eaten alive, watches as still-developing wings are separated from still-developing bodies.

He watches his men and smiles, and he listens to Starscream's broken, faithless silence and rejoices.


His seeker is silent and cold, broken and beautiful, but so proud, too proud. Starscream's pride and defiance lingers in every inch of silence, with every sound the seeker fails to make as his body is tortured. Optimus considers the problem seriously, well aware that if Starscream remains mentally strong then there will be no ultimate weapon to unleash upon the universe. He thinks, perhaps, the problem lingers in that he has been the only one to personally sully the seeker's frame; he thinks, perhaps, that the seeker needs to be completely and utterly used for that pride to shatter.

He considers for a long time, weighing his options. He is strangely reluctant to pass the seeker off to his troops, well aware that he might not get the seeker back at all, that the seeker may die before he is broken completely. He considers and plans and in between his thinking, he issues his orders concerning Vos.

His mechs are certainly eager, he thinks merely several rotations after giving his order – Vos is little more than a hole in the ground, and its winged denizens, the supposed masters of War and Death, turn out to be little better than the Crystal City seekers when it comes to facing their annihilation. He turns towards the shattered frame of his little pet, watching those artic-cold blue optics that watch him in return, burning with hate, burning, burning. Well. That won't do at all.

That evening he makes his decision, and as a reward for a job well done and a city well-sacked, gives his seeker to his men to play with. He issues only two orders concerning the seeker's health: first, that any life-threatening injuries are to be immediately reported to Ratchet, that the seeker may be promptly repaired for continued play, and second, that no mech was to even consider touching the seeker's ember.

That part of the seeker remains his in totality, and he does not share.


The vorns pass swiftly, his attention caught and held by this upstart rebel Megatron, and the army the former mathematician manages to raise against him. Optimus is at turns furious that someone dares defy him and the new order, and pleased to finally have a challenge. The challenge that Megatron poses is a serious one, despite how late in the game it comes, and it takes all of his considerable genius to not only keep his original plans on schedule, but hold off an army that grows stronger and more ruthless with every passing cycle. Megatron and his mechs are new to war, new to violence, but they are desperate and they are angry, and that gives them an edge that Optimus' own mechs, most of whom are in this for the fun, lack.

That lack doesn't last long, though. His mechs are hardly happy to find their 'fun' being opposed by the same sort of mechs that they had long secretly mocked for being weak and law-abiding citizens. So battles are raged and Cybertron becomes a twisted mockery of the beauty it once boasted.

And of his seeker he thinks not at all.


Megatron grows bolder with each passing vorn, his courage and strength of will finding a hold in these tremulous times of war and growing strong. He pulls in the few neutrals who have managed to survive this long without declaring a side, and suddenly Optimus is being driven back. He is confused and outraged and beyond furious; Optimus wants to capture Megatron and break him. For the first time in vorns he thinks about his once-beloved, but the thought is quick a fleeting, a mere image of himself on a throne and two pets at his pedes: the weapon his seeker will be, and the toy he will make out of Megatron.

The image is a good one, and it comforts him with every loss in battle he suffers.


Success! Such glorious, magnificent triumph. He looks upon his prisoners and smirks. He has not only driven Megatron out of Iacon completely, but he has in his grasp most of the rebel chain of command. He wastes no time on gloating, though, and issues orders for their interrogation to begin immediately. Even if they reveal nothing of worth, the exercise will be good for his mechs, who have gone far too long without fresh toys.

He enjoys watching his mechs as they tear through their captives, relishing in the screams that echo piercingly throughout his entire base. As an after-thought, he decides to pay a visit to his own little project, to see if the seeker has been thoroughly broken. He should be, given how long he's been a 'guest' of Optimus' mechs. But the sight that greets him is not one of a mentally-broken mech cowering in a corner of his cell, no. No. Optics cold and hating look at him much as they did that day so long ago, still too-blue. His body is beyond misshapen, wings holding on by bare tethers, legs broken and armor dented. The seeker's colors have faded, and he is missing three fingers and a portion of his jaw-plating, but there is no mistaking just how alive the seeker is.

There is no mistaking how furious the seeker is.

Starscream's fury can be felt like a living entity that is barely leashed, barely contained within the fragile shell that is his body. Optimus waits patiently, waiting for his once-beloved to speak, to curse at him as the seeker surely wanted to. But nothing comes. No sound, not even a rev of his engines or his turbines. The silence stretches, cold and dark, and the seeker's fury beats down upon Optimus' energy-field in wave after wave of unmatchable strength. He cannot bear it, cannot stand strong in that dismal silence.

Obviously he has failed in some fashion; obviously he should have paid more attention to his pet project. Now he must try and fix things, try and get his plans for the seeker back on track. But he is at a loss, and does not know how or even where to begin. Grimacing, he leaves the brig. Something needs to be done, but he doesn't know what.


The problem of what he is to do with his seeker is blown to the wayside when Megatron attacks. Iacon comes under assault in several key locations, and he is hard pressed to defend them all. He personally heads to what had once been the Iacon Institute of the Sciences where surveillance has caught sight of Megatron.

Only he's not there. No one is, which tells him that either he has a spy in his midst, or his surveillance system has been hacked. Knowing as they do the punishment for treachery, Optimus doubts any of his mechs would dare betray him like this. He checks the area carefully, wondering if this is to be an ambush of sorts, but the ruins of the Institute are as silent as the dead and twice as still. There is nothing living here, and he wonders why he had been led here if not for a trap. It takes only a moment of serious contemplation before he snarls and races back to his base – it is a trap alright, but one more sneaky than a simple ambush. Along the way, he issues orders to his various generals to retreat from their various battles and return post-haste to the base.

Distractions. Nothing but distractions guaranteed to separate his men into manageable groups spread over the entirety of Iacon, he himself led to the one area farthest away from the true objective: Megatron does not mean to take Iacon back, but rather free his captured command. And in the midst of all the prisoners that bear the Decepticon mark, there is a single seeker, the last of his frame-type, a seeker who hates Optimus with a passion capable of burning suns and a genius intellect to back it up. If Megatron should free him….

Optimus curses and drives faster.


Optimus laughs for a long time – mostly out of relief – when he learns that while the Decepticons have been successfully freed, the rebel leader has left Starscream right where he is. Megatron is a fool, he has always known this, but never before had he had living proof of that foolishness. The silly mech could have gained a loyal follower the likes of which could have completely turned the war in Megatron's favor had he rescued Starscream; conversely, Megatron could have completely thrown a wrench in Optimus' plans by simply putting the wretched seeker out of his misery. Instead, Megatron did neither, simply ignored the seeker, left Starscream in his cell as if he was too dangerous to even approach.

Optimus agrees. Starscream is dangerous in his own way, and always would be, no matter how broken he became. And he would break. His mechs are furious that their toys have been taken from them, furious that they had been deceived so thoroughly. He allows them to anything and everything they want to the seeker who even now watches him with cold, burning optics, silent as the dead. He does not linger long, though. Shortly after the venting begins, Optimus goes down to personally oversee the torture.

He is… alarmed by Starscream's new optic color – gold-red, the exact color of molten metal – and even more alarmed by what the seeker does the second he catches sight of Optimus.

Starscream smiles. Smiles and smiles and makes not a single sound despite the pain he must surely be feeling, despite the bitterness and fury in his gaze that is focused so intensely. Something in Optimus' ember recognizes that something irrevocable has changed, something that causes his ember to twist in combined fear and warning.

His mechs force the seeker onto his shattered pedes, laughing. Starscream's gaze goes distant, as if looking at something behind Optimus, but there is nothing there.

"Say my name," the seeker says, voice a quiet shattered mockery of what Optimus remembers. The mechs holding him up drop him in their shock, and if Optimus wasn't feeling the same, he'd be laughing. Vorns upon vorns, and the seeker had never once made a single sound, and now he speaks? Optimus wanted to be hopeful, wanted this to mean that the seeker was finally on the verge of breaking into something he could mold into his own, but for the gnawing fear in his ember.

Starscream falls to his knees, unable to support his own weight on his broken pedes. And then his smile, sharp and cold and as cruel as shattered glass, turns sweet and knowing. "I, Starscream, heir to Starsinger, once-Lord of Crystal City,…"

"Kill him." The order escapes his own mouth before he is even conscious of saying it, but he does not retract it once given. The warning in his ember is screaming at him to not let the seeker finish. His mechs react as expected, and for the first time Optimus curses his forethought of denying weapons past a certain point in the brig, as his mechs are forced to resort to beating the seeker to death.

A gun would be the most useful thing in the world right now.

"…ruler now of dust and ash and rusted corpses, do hereby enter into a covenant with Unicron, the Dark God…."

"KILL HIM!" he shrieks, ember a tight ball of fear. Starscream must not finish the pledge. He does not know why he is so afraid, as he does not believe in the gods of Cybertron, and does not believe that Starscream's pledge will be any more successful now then his prayers were so long ago.

But, still…. There is some sort of weight to Starscream's words, as if something or someone greater than Optimus is watching, listening, waiting.

"…I want, no, I demand justice for what was done to me and those under my family's protection. I understand that once the covenant is completed…"

One of his mechs, a particularly cruel grunt, finally gets the bright idea of grabbing Starscream's jaw and ripping it off his face. Energon pours, wires snap and spark, but Starscream keeps speaking – and why not? The jaw and mouth is just mimicry of some being from their distant past; as long as the vocalizer is intact, no mech really needed a mouth or a jaw to speak.

"KILL HIM! KILL HIM!" he is shrieking, over and over, but it is too late, much too late.

"…that my ember is forfeit unto Unicron. So mote it be."

And then a pede slams through the canopy of the seeker's chassis, right through and into the ember. For a moment, Optimus believes that everything is fine, that the seeker is dead – his corpse is even greying – but then Starscream's optics flicker to life and the color returns. The seeker's gaze regains it's cold, burning intensity, still that ghastly gold-red color, and focuses on him.

And still the seeker smiles.


Beautiful, Optronix thinks sadly to himself. Starscream is so achingly beautiful that it is painful in the extreme to see the seeker and know that he had nothing to do with the transformation.

He watches, attention caught and held by the seeker sitting so calmly on his throne of battered, shattered corpses. His little once-beloved is just as battered, just as shattered, but unlike the bodies he rests upon, Starscream is alive and the ferocity of his living will surrounds him like an invisible mantle of raw power. Starscream is a living reminder that Optimus has failed; despite many vorns of planning and torture, despite the even longer vorns of patient waiting, he has failed to bring his ultimate weapon into being. While Starscream has finally become everything that he had ever wished him to be (and so much more), it is not to his call the seeker comes.

It is such a waste, Optronix knows. This beauty is leaking his own tainted energon, his fury-mad optics so unlike either the Vosnian or the Crystal City seekers' optics glowing bright on facial painting that is whiter than one of Cybertron's many moons. Optimus knows that inside Starscream's genius processor there are no weapons designs or chemical warfare tactics, but rather simply death, and how the seeker can spread that death to any and all who live while those he had once cherished do not. He sees that this seeker has become something other than what Optimus had always thought he should be: Rage and Fury and Vengeance given form and intent.

Unbidden, Optronix glances at the mech claiming to be the Unmaker whose very presence prevents him from going to Starscream, staring at he who was undoubtedly stronger and more terrifying than anything or anyone Optimus has ever met. Whether or not this mech is Unicron hardly matters any longer, when it is to His hand Starscream comes, when it is He who devours his army one by one. He looks away, unable to watch as those he has cultivated and led into battle after battle for many, many vorns are denied any kind of reunion with Primus, unable to bear the shame in his defeat. For he has been defeated, more completely than if he had merely been killed. He turns his gaze instead to Starscream, who looks at him with a cruel smile on his torn lips, hatred in those burning red-gold optics, and bittersweet joy in his ember. Optimus knows why he lives; he had once forced Starscream to watch as he and his burned Starscream's world to the ground and erased the existence of his frame-kin, and now too must he pay for that. He closes his optics, unable to match gazes with Starscream's fury, knowing bitterly that even in this he fails, for unlike Starscream so long ago, he has not the strength to watch as all his plans and dreams are ripped apart and digested.

It is almost a relief when the mech claiming to be the Unmaker finally turns his attention onto him. Optimus surrender's his ember with no protest, knowing better – he has seen what happens to those that fight that mech's voracious hunger, and he does not want his last moments to be of pain. He bares his ember, chest plates opening reluctantly, shutters his optics, and waits. The touch, when it comes, is oddly gentle, and Optimus can almost fool himself into believing that it is the touch of a lover instead of a mech determined to eat his ember. He focuses on that delusion, losing himself in half-remember trysts that blur into one unique encounter, frame easily starting to heat under the mech's knowing touches.

"Unicron," comes the distinctive, brittle sound of Starscream's voice, and just like that the illusion is shattered. His optics jerk open and his gaze unerringly finds that of Starscream's.

The mech claiming to be the Unmaker releases Optimus' ember and turns to look at Starscream, gaze hungry and amused. "Yes?

Starscream smiles, helm cocked slightly, optics burning, burning. "Make him suffer," the seeker whispers, and in the absolute silence of the battlefield strewn with corpses, the words echo piercingly.

Optimus spends only a click staring at Starscream, who even now that he's won would still see him punished for crimes long gone, before he panics. He does not want the pain he knows the large mech before him can give him, he does not want to suffer. The silver and gold mech claiming to be the Unmaker follows Starscream's orders, so if Starscream is dead….

He roars and launches himself at the seeker, fear making him fast, hope making him faster. He draws his energon sword, the only weapon left to him, and thrusts out, piercing the seeker right through the ember. He pants, grinning, thinking that he's won, until he notices Starscream's smile.

That smile. The same smile that the seeker had given him that day in the brig, the one that said he knows something that Optimus doesn't. Optimus releases the sword that is piercing the ember of a seeker that even now remains impossibly alive and stumbles back into the grip of the mech named Unicron, and for the first time since he'd seen the mech, he suddenly doesn't disbelieve the mech's claim of god-hood. "How?" he whispers out, frightened.

Starscream smiles, even as his optics spit out hate, even as his hand pulls out the sword that pierces his ember, even as he bleeds and bleeds.

The god holding him chuckles. "He is mine," the Unmaker says, tone almost friendly. "No mortal may take what has been promised to me. As long as we are bound together in a covenant, he cannot die." Claws caress his frame beneath Starscream's burning gaze, pause over his ember, and then move on. There is a demented hiss of "He is mine," and suddenly there is nothing but the pain.

Pain, a burning red-gold gaze, and high-pitched laughter: he will never know anything else.


Hahahahaha! It's finally done. I'm sorry this last part took so long, but as you can probably tell, it kinda ran away from me. As I said above, this portion of the fic was supposed to strongly mirror that of Diabolicae Foedus, only centered around Optimus Prime. It was a bit of a struggle in some areas, again because I don't identify well with evil tyrants as well as I do sneaky little shits (XD), but I think I persevered.

In the interests of those who asked: this four-part "drabble" is actually 20 pages long, and just under 11k words. I wrote most of it in the course of thirteen hours (combined), and this last section (around 4.5k words without the intro/outro) took me around 5 hours. My recommended music list for reading anything in this 'verse:

Evanescence "Made of Stone (Renholdër Remix)"

Danny Elfmann "Little Things (UNKLE version)"

Kid Cuddi "The Ruler and the Killer"

Marilyn Manson "Seizure of Power"

Lacuna Coil "Trip the Darkness (Ben Weinman Remix)"

The Cure "Apart (Renholdër Remix)"

Linkin Park "Blackout (Renholdër Remix)"

Maroon 5 "Come Away to the Water"

Rammstein "Ich Tu Dir Weh (Fukk Offf Remix)"

8mm "Liar (Revenant Mix)"

The Naked and Famous "Young Blood (Renholdër Remix)"

Also, as a fair warning, don't play CastleVille or CityVille while trying to be creative. It doesn't work very well. XD