For all Smokescreen whined and flinched within the med bay (only putting a brave face on when he thought the femmes were looking over), it was laughably simple to extract the Omega Key hidden within his frame. Whatever Alpha Trion was thinking with such a risk, the odds of Smokescreen even landing on Earth and finding the Autobots so astronomically low, at least it meant Megatron never had a chance of retrieving the key for himself. Though it wasn't the first miracle Optimus had been blessed with; finding Elita again after so long must have been even more improbable.
And he didn't even want to think of how unlikely it was that, of all Decepticons on Earth, Dreadwing would change where his spark had lain for more centuries than he could still remember. Even more so when Optimus realised that, ever since Smokescreen's operation, he hadn't seen the Seeker in the foyer. Arcee, still nursing her wounds, noted that she glanced him trying to cram his wings inside the elevator to the plateau, but it seemed no one was overly concerned about him. But the night was only getting darker, and Optimus knew he couldn't let it slip by in sleep just yet.
He turned to Airachnid as she cradled her yawning daughter, trying to supress one herself. "Airachnid, take yourself and Scorpia to my quarters. I will join you once I am ready."
Even after explaining himself she still spent the rest of the evening looking scorned, not that he could blame her. But her legs, bundled up at her back, betrayed that she wasn't as angry as she looked.
"...You still don't trust him?" she asked after a pause, one that was all she needed to gauge what he was planning to do. Or maybe she saw it in his spark. Nowadays it was hard to differentiate what she knew from him and what she knew by pure instinct. It was almost jarring, to see how she could still make him hesitate with their bond so neglected until now.
"It is no longer trust that I am concerned with," he answered.
She looked up at him for a few longer nanoklicks, almost like Scorpia often did with her unbreachable curiosity, before she just nodded. "Don't be too long."
Optimus parted with a faint kiss on her skeptical frown, making his lonely way to the elevator. Dreadwing must have heard his approach, the whirr and grind of the winches carrying the Prime upwards, but he didn't move at all from his perch at the edge of the plateau. When Optimus saw him he half-thought he was looking at a statue, some ancient guardian saved from the rust of centuries by a casing of stone. The wind made faint whistles through the gaps of his wings, and their minute flickering was the only movement Dreadwing betrayed as Optimus brought himself beside him.
"Earth has lovely skies," the Seeker said numbly, optics pinned upwards at the scattered darkness. His wings seemed to struggle against their joints the longer he looked, fighting the urge to take off and coast on those cosmic clouds. On Cybertron it was often rumoured a Seeker couldn't survive if they couldn't fly, for then they wouldn't be a Seeker at all.
"Not even Iacon had such a showcase of stars," Optimus added. "May I join you?"
Dreadwing's claws tightened, but he did not decline. "I am not planning an escape, if that is what concerns you enough to be here."
"I know that," was all Optimus said as he lowered himself to sit with him. The horizon ahead was a stark white line of moonlight separating ground from sky, almost as blatant as the line between grounders and Seekers in Cybertron's Golden Age. There was no such thing as a low-caste Seeker, and surely one of Dreadwing's skills would have lived a comfortable life already before Megatron's empty offers for equality. Yet Dreadwing did not carry the pride of his kind any more. Sitting there over the plateau, dangling above the barren ground rather than soaring, he carried only regret. Maybe that was why he refused to fly, if it was as heavy as his tone.
"The mech that I fought today is not the same one I agreed to follow into the Allspark. Certainly not the same one my brother would have gladly died for." He didn't sound disappointed, as if he was hoping to be given proof that leaving the Decepticons was the right decision.
"Neither is he the mech I once befriended," Optimus admitted, something he'd long since accepted by now. "Sometimes I doubt if he ever truly was… what compelled you to follow Megatron so long ago, Dreadwing?" What had gone so differently between them, for Optimus to know instantly what the Decepticons took too long to realise; that all Megatron had to offer was death?
At least Dreadwing didn't seem to be in denial anymore as he scoffed. "The same promises that every tyrant makes," he answered. "A better society, one built on justice over the ruins of the old. A planet we-" He caught himself treating his brother as if he was alive, with a cough of cold static correcting his mistake. "...A planet I would be proud to fly over. I was not from the same depths he'd been born into, but I knew what place he'd come from. I thought he would have wanted to destroy that place… not just drag everyone else down there with him." Dreadwing sighed, casting optics again to the sky in a desperate sense. "It all seems so pointless now, doesn't it? In trying to save our home, we only lost it forever."
"Not forever," Optimus hoped. "Not for much longer."
Dreadwing nodded only once at the reminder. "The Omega Keys… if they work. If we can keep them in the right hands. I am too well acquainted with tragedy to remain hopeful on that..." He blinked a sad red eulogy, turning a low helm towards Optimus. "But with the fortune Primus has given you, Prime, perhaps he will be kind to us this one last time."
"...I have more than just Primus to be grateful to," Optimus said, not expecting anyone with a Decepticon badge to have such faith in him of all bots.
Again, Dreadwing nodded only once, turning back to the lofty dark heavens just out of his reach. "I will not keep you here longer, Optimus. I know you will be missing your sparkmate."
The ache in Optimus spark was from more than just the distance between him and Airachnid, but he knew his business here was finished for now. He pushed himself back up, and seeing the horizon from a better height he only now saw the sunlight starting to bleed over it, the bruises of morning starting to show through. He'd spent far longer sitting with Dreadwing than he first thought. He left the Seeker to his thoughts and fading stars with one last musing to occupy him for the dying night.
"I do not expect you to see the Autobots as friends, Dreadwing... but I do hope you can find a better home on our Cybertron."
"...I hope so too, Prime," Dreadwing said back quietly, only when Optimus had reached the elevator.
The base seemed colder than it should have been after the hours spent up top, everywhere except his quarters. In that safe warmth he found Airachnid and Scorpia curled together on one side of his berth, so small on the colossal surface, smaller still in his close embrace as he held them both gratefully to his chest.
xx
Megatron may have lacked use of his plasma cannon, dazed from fatigue with the once invigorating rush of fury in his fuel lines now more like heavy sludge keeping him weighed down, but he still had advantage over two of the Dinobots. He could still fly.
The winged Dino struggled to keep up with its feeble flapping, unable to match the speed of Megatron's engines and thrusters pushing themselves over their limits, hauling his fans into overdrive just to carry him out of range of the raking claws below. The frozen air suspended in the clouds hit him like a wall as he smashed through, slowing him enough to let him survey the battleground before his plummet back to the blinding white Earth.
The winged beast saw him reappear out of nowhere, but Megatron had already moved into a nosedive to clip past the ground-dwelling creatures, sharply turning so he could slam against the most dangerous looking one with horns rearing out of his helm's wide crest. His armour cracked against one of them, but the Dinobot himself spilled across the hard ice, almost stumbling into the water all around them while Megatron carried himself another safe distance away.
One temporarily down with two to go… but his tanks were drained dry. He was running on vorn-old rations and coolant now, with another much darker kind of energy starting to leech from his spark in place of pure fuel. A voice that wasn't all his own bellowed out to the advancing Dinobots, far stronger than he should have been able to muster.
"You call yourself mighty beasts?! Yet you allow yourselves to be treated like nothing more than puppets, by a mech who cowers behind ancient trinkets!" A claw ripped through the air, hovering a sharp accusation at Starscream still hiding in the Apex Armour's prison. And the sweeping bellow from the pit of his chamber cracked like a whip against the beasts, forcing them just a step backwards. The Dinobots' heads heaved themselves towards Starscream as well, sunken in the ground and filling the air with rust-laden grunts, the same challenging steel in their narrow and simple optics.
Understandably, even with the Armour hiding his wings and shakes, Starscream looked even less confident now. "What are you waiting for, you half-thawed imbeciles?! He's right there, destroy him!"
The remaining grounded Dinobot, spinal strut bristling with plates jutting out like an armoured forest, was the first to try and make his vocaliser good for something other than growls. "Snarl... no... follow weak! Snarl...follow king!"
Yet even as he made the declaration, Megatron's target had regained his balance with only some ice stains on his back, completely unhindered from butting his horns brutally against his companion. "Snarl no king, Slag king!" His grunts thundered over the clank of clawed peds thumping the ice underneath in a static stampede.
And from above, the winged Dinobot had dropped down to snap his wings at the warring pair. "No need king! We all king!" he cawed.
"ENOUGH!" Again Megatron's alien call was like a war cry over leagues, crashing hard into the Dinobots and even making Starscream flinch. Wherever his command came from, the hot rush in his empty fuel lines and something that couldn't have been energon screaming around his boiling helm, he knew he could use it better than his weapons. If he could not fight these monsters… he would control them instead.
"I am your king. And I order you… to turn on your false master."
Even before the command had fully left Megatron's vocaliser Starscream knew his fate, already panting and whining in snatches of pitiful screeching, almost suffocating in his bubble. "W-W-What?! No, no! Y-You can't-!"
With a rear of his head Slag threw him backwards like a sparkling swatting at a doll, horns flipping him so he landed on his front and saw his smack against the ground. As he wearily lifted his cracked visor all he saw was Snarl's tail viciously sweeping towards him to pierce the Armour's seams with glittering spikes. And again Slag was gouging horns against the metal, scoring it deeply and leaving Starscream petrified in its shell. Even if he managed to escape and regain use of his wings he would have been snatched out of the air, by the Dinobot already soaring down to do just that. He couldn't pierce the metal, but as his claws scratched wildly they managed to push into the broken glass over Starscream's face. Through the hole Megatron could hear the Seeker's pleas for mercy so clearly, the manic screams and whimpering as he was forced out of the Apex Armour by hooked claws.
"Swoop smash birdy?" the winged Dino chirped, pinning Starscream down with a thorned ped curled around his neck, almost choking out his cries.
"NO! No, no no, p-please, I BEG YOU!"
Through the maze of pitted metal, spikes and spears and glinting razors surrounding the Seeker, Megatron was glad to see his optics so dull and his face twisted with the terror he brought upon himself. How he wanted to see the remains of the wretch's spark littered on the ice, his wings in shreds and his tormenting vocaliser thrown out to the ocean… but that looming presence in his spark wouldn't let him. Not just yet.
"Let him live," Megatron said reluctantly. "For now."
As if sensing the disapproval at his own order, the Dinobots took their time in standing down, eventually letting Starscream scramble back upwards only for him to throw himself down again at Megatron's peds. "M-Master, please, I… I only sought to enlist them for the good of the Decepticons-!"
"Spare me your sad excuses for once in your life, Starscream," Megatron groaned, completely disinterested now that he knew he had to wait to spill the traitor's guts. "You will leave, and you will return with the Nemesis. Understand?"
Starscream nodded wildly, not meeting the warlord's glare as he tried to push himself upright before he embarrassed himself any further. "Y-Yes, my liege, at once!" He turned, saw the Dinobots still bristling at him, and practically leapt into the dark air before deploying his wings and deserting the site of his complete failure. Whether or not he actually returned did not concern Megatron, all he wanted was the chance to evaluate these Dinobots properly.
"Slag, Snarl and Swoop…" He said each of their names slowly, carefully, trying to remember where he recognised them from. "Are you creations of Shockwave?" he asked, remembering the scientist mentioning them among a hoard of a hundred other projects he had running during the war.
The Dinobots were not nearly as intimidating now, keeping their distance with curved faces riveted on the ground at Megatron's peds. Snarl made his namesake sound as he stuttered an answer. "Shock… wave build Dinobots. Dinobots fight, then sleep, then cold, long time cold!"
"Swoop wake up first… see screechy bird! Swoop no like!" He flared his wings as he shook his tapered head furiously. Slag remained silent, only glaring under heavy optics.
Megatron watched him with an equal glare, eventually turning it on the rest of him. "I am Lord Megatron, and you all serve me now. We are still at war, and you will serve your creator's cause. In return for your obedience, I will give you energon and peace."
It was a generous offer for these creatures, only met with skeptical grunts. "If Dinobots no follow?" Snarl asked.
"Then I will do to you what I should have done to Starscream," Megatron answered, silencing all but one of them with that grim promise. Slag snapped his denta and marched forwards, raking his horns defiantly at the empty air.
"No need leader," he insisted. "No want orders… but need fuel."
"Then you'll behave, if you're not too dumb to know what's good for you." Megatron stared him down, daring him to try and stab one of those horns forwards, but for all Slag's hatred he couldn't act on it. Snarl kept his helm averted, chewing on something sour, and Swoop still fluttered his wings as he combed through the claws on the ends of them.
"One Dino missing," he mumbled. "Only three. Was four."
"I'm sure he's around here somewhere," Megatron dismissed, whirling away from them to watch the still water horizon ahead, hearing mighty sighs of relief as he moved. "Take sentry, Dinobots. Watch for the arrival of my ship… of your new home."
As he focused on the sky, he only then noticed the darkness fading to a blood-shower of pale pinks, purples and the faintest blues for the day ahead. He'd spent the whole night wresting control from the beasts, and now the sunrise lit the sky like the purple umbra of his burning optics.