Disclaimer: I own nothing – at least nothing Transformers related.

AN: This is not a nice chapter. No, it isn't.

And I shouldn't write such stuff at 3 am. No, I most definitely shouldn't.

Thanks to mdnytryder for correcting and betaing.

Special Five: Abyss (G1)

And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you - Friedrich Nietzsche

He was suffocating.

Sometimes he stood here, in his dark room deep within the Nemesis and felt like - well, not exactly as if he couldn't breathe (he did not breathe, after all),- but still, he felt as if something was suffocating him.
It was insubstantial, invisible, untraceable, but still, it was there, smothering him, seeping into his vents and through the seams in his armor, clouding his vision, kissing his Spark and then clenching it slowly but mercilessly, drowning it in frost and the infinite blackness of space.

He was suffocating, and if he hadn't been so scared, he would have hated it.

But Megatron was scared and as he felt his inner circuits freeze up and crack in the cold grip of pure, unadulterated fear, he couldn't help but envy all those other creatures on Earth, humans and mechs alike, for their ignorance.

His Spark pulsed painfully in his chest, caged by the icy bonds of panic, and Megatron offlined his optics to concentrate completely on maintaining his brittle composure and to act like the strong, determined warlord everybody saw him as for another day.

Should he fail in this act, the consequences would be dire, not only for the mechs under his command, but his enemies as well.

Megatron should have hated Starscream for putting him in this position, if the mere sight of the Seeker didn't terrify him.

He onlined his optics slowly, trying to find solace in the deep, red, warm glow reflecting off the datapads on his desk, but it was no use.
The joints in his hands were still hissing and trembling and the fear only curled tighter around his Spark, freezing the Energon in his lines and mocking him silently in his helplessness, for his inability to save his mechs, to do anything.

If only he had known.

If only he had killed Starscream the first time he had laid optics on the scientist-turned-soldier.

If only he could do something to warn Prime.
Perhaps together they would find a way to get rid of the threat once and for all. Megatron would even accept ultimately losing the war if that was what it would take….

But he couldn't.

Each time he stood in front of his army, each time he was locked in battle with the Prime he wanted nothing more than to shout, whisper, scream the horrible truth and warn them of the unseen force that played with their lives, and unbeknownst to them, controlled their every action.

But he couldn't, because one wrong muttered word, one crack in his façade would mean death for all of them – or worse….

If only he had known.

But then again, there had been no way he could have noticed.

The Seeker had seemed so sane in the beginning, so eager and desperate and passionate about the cause.
It had only been much later that the whispered jokes had started, the covert suggestions that his Second was mad, that he had cracked his processor in some battle. And later, when the suggestions, jokes and insults had become open and cruel, Starscream's actions had hinted at some other kind of madness, at some form of masochism perhaps, or a superiority complex coupled with the desperate need to control….

If only it had been that simple.

But Starscream didn't crave pain, he just didn't care if he got injured or not.

And the Seeker didn't want the leadership of the Decepticons. After all, he didn't need it with the fates of every single mech on Earth in his hands.

And he hadn't gone mad as a result of the war.

His descent into madness had happened long before, when he had lost his sanity to the vast nothingness of space, shattered into pieces too small to ever been found again and became nothing but a husk full of vaguely remembered needs and unfulfilled wishes.

Nobody would ever know if the long, lonely journey back to Cybertron after losing Skyfire had been the final straw to break Starscream completely. Or if the loss - one more desertion in a lenghty personal history of abandonment - had given the Seeker's already unstable psyche the final push in the wrong direction.

Whatever the cause, when he had returned home, he had found a world mirroring his own distorted inner state.

Would he have been still capable of feeling anything, he would have probably been ecstatic.

But as it was, Starscream had simply seen an opportunity and used it to create a mockery of the dreams, fears and memories of his previous, sane self, their crash on Earth only sealing the fates of every single mech on the planet and probably everywhere else.

Now he was in control, the Second in Command of one of the most powerful armies in the universe.

He was provided with food, shelter and warmth most of the time, his basic, instinctual needs fullfilled.

He wasn't alone anymore, surrounded by the same, familiar mechs day after day.
But conversly, he stood outside of their close-knit groups and so he was alone in a crowd, always only a breath away from company but at the same time discouraging anyone from getting too close. Once he would have been afraid to getting harmed if he allowed anyone close, but now, after losing this fear to space and time, he only followed a deeply ingrained habit and prevented a discovery of his madness at the same time.

His position of power was affected as well from the ghosts of memories.
He had actively brought himself into a situation of constant humilitation and pain after establishing himself as "irreplaceable", combining a violent past, deeply engraved habits, fears and wishes into some sick mix that would have once given him reassurance and the comfort of familiar if cruel patterns.

And now, here on Earth, he had plenty to learn, to research and discover.

While he was completely indifferent to the results of his experimentation and testing, the memory of long hours in a lab and some foggy urge to simply know was enough for him to decide that he "liked" the current status quo and that the world would remain unchanging.

Period.

And so, after long years of interchangeable defeats and victories, Megatron had finally, painfully caught onto his Second's real game behind all the treachery and screechy insults.

One day he had analyzed the pattern, noticed that whenever one side came too close to actually winning the war, or at least the battle over Earth, the balance would tip again.
Sometimes through "open" interference of Starscream himself, or some other "coincidence" that with enough patience and unconventional thinking could be traced back to the Seeker.

The warlord had naturally been furious, intent on offlining Starscream once and for all.

Bbut when the flyer had stood before him with a new, neat hole in his wing and just smiled, Megatron felt the first tendrils of the now-so-familiar fear creep into his Spark.
A forebording that something much more serious was amiss than just a Second in Command proving his superiority by manipulating some events.

And for the first time in millennia, Megatron had really looked at his Second, had noticed the hollow smile and the empty optics devoid of - devoid of simply anything, be it morality, feelings or life.
And he had noticed the abyss behind those optics, the Spark that was truly nothing more than a glowing ball of energy and leftover splinters of "once".

For the first time in all his life, Megatron had felt the terror that was now his constant companion, always there, always waiting and reminding him how utterly helpless he was and that they all were nothing but pawns in a dead mech's carcass of a dream and that Starscream would dispose of them all should they threaten the status quo or should he "tire" of them.

And he couldn't help but dread the day the Seeker had learned all he could about Earth, because there was no way to know what the instinct-driven husk would decide on next, if he would let one side win or guide the war to the next planet in a long, long line of planets, just to keep him company in his lonely journey through insanity.

Megatron had looked into his Second's optics and an abyss had smiled back at him.

He wasn't sure if he should feel relief at the knowledge that one day it might do more….