Rewind & Chromedome from beginning to end, snapshots of different characters, and the God-King passes judgment.
Title: Candy From Strangers, Pt. 18
Warning: Angst, alternate endings, different beginnings, and glimpses into the middle.
Rating: PG-13?
Continuity: IDW & G1
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): Prompts from Tumblr.
[* * * * *]
Rewind & Chromedome - "what happened immediately after their meeting in the relinquishment clinic"
[* * * * *]
They spent hours talking. Hours. Chromedome's head felt emptier than it had in ages, in longer than he remembered, and Rewind's returning energy had an odd effect on him. It buoyed him. It was an uplift like he'd been injected with helium, making him lighter than air.
He wondered if the little mech felt similar, but he wasn't sure how to ask. How did an aborted suicide ask a pseudo-grave robber about a connection that might be one-sided? He'd never believed in love at first sight, and a stubborn portion of his mind cited all the scientific facts denying anything beyond a euphoria from stimulated neurocircuitry. The floating sensation wasn't love. It was the first-contact high from meeting a compatible mech whose electromagnetic field resonated right, and who seemed to have an agreeable personality.
Rewind looked up at him, exuberance filling his visor. "I can't tell you how much it's helped me, talking to you tonight," the flashdrive said, and Chromedome jolted in surprise. "Searching for Dominus Ambus...well, it's been so long." He sounded wistful. "Every time I think I've found a lead, the crash is harder. Hope hurts when it lets go, you know? When you found me - not to sound trite, but I truly felt burnt out. I was on the verge of giving up."
The awkward shrug that accompanied his words made Chromedome think he'd averted a fate more severe than Rewind just going home for the night. He'd heard too many traumatized Autobot soldiers say those words in much the same tone of voice. He'd said them himself.
"Good thing I stumbled on you, then," he said, striving for a less cynical voice than the one he used naturally. It was instinct by now to find the worst in everything, but Primus. Primus help him, he wanted to ignore that part of his head dissecting Rewind down to liabilities and flaws.
He didn't want to go down that road, so he quickly continued talking. "You changed my evening, too," he blurted out, but then he flinched when he realized what exactly he'd just said.
It didn't take much thought to connect the dots. The only people in a relinquishment clinic were patients or practitioners, and a practitioner wouldn't have been free to immediately walk out the door with somebody randomly found digging among the former patients.
Rewind laughed.
The sound shocked Chromedome. It had the electric spark of a floodlight. It practically lit the abandoned building they'd found to sit in after leaving the relinquishment clinic. It pierced his strangely weightless spark and set him on fire.
For a moment, the crushing depression and desperation completely disappeared. He literally could not remember a single reason to die. This tiny mech - Rewind, archivist and relentless friend to the long lost - laughed, and Chromedome wanted him more than he'd ever wanted anything in his entire life. More than he wanted to die, he wanted to live just to have this person in his life.
The bright visor looked up at him, amusement and a peculiar sadness in its depth, and he couldn't even care that the pathetic, broken-down Autobot reflected in the blue glass wore his face. "I," he started, not a clue what he could say, only that he had to say something to make this personal miracle stay even for a few minutes longer.
"Want to go home with me?" Rewind interrupted him.
"Yes," Chromedome agreed in a breathless rush. "Yes, please." It didn't matter that he didn't have a home anymore. He'd gotten rid of all of his belongings and told Prowl the apartment was his before going to the clinic. He'd have abandoned everything from his former life just for this offer.
His home was wherever Rewind took him.
[* * * * *]
Rewind - "Delerious"
[* * * * *]
He was delirious. He was seeing things. The last thing he'd heard was the crashing boom of the bomb exploding, and now he was imagining Chromedome's voice in his last second alive. He got to see his conjunx endura in the last moment of life. That…that wasn't so bad. Rewind could think of worse ways to go, really.
Maybe Primus was a merciful god. Adaptus sure had shortchanged him, anyway.
[* * * * *]
Rewind - "take a joke"
[* * * * *]
"...were you really that angry at me?" Rewind asked afterward, after First Aid cleared him, the crew had visited to congratulate him, and Chromedome finally, finally got him alone.
The flashdrive waited until they were by themselves before asking, because he had to ask. His last memory of Chromedome before waking up was one of rigid backstruts and a stubbornly turned-away visor. It always infuriated him that the mnemosurgeon refused to acknowledge his own score of broken promises while lambasting him over the few times Rewind broke his word. It wasn't different, but Chromedome still insisted on justifying every time he used his needles. He insisted and insisted that his broken promises were necessity and yet Rewind's chances to find Dominus Ambus were fool's errands.
He'd turned his back on Rewind in the drop shuttle, and Rewind had been hurt.
Now Chromedome stared at him, shuddered, and hugged him so tight he squeaked. Unsteady ventilations puffed against the back of his neck, but the larger Autobot said not a word.
Rewind stood very still in his arms, one hand coming up to lay on of the arms around him. "Chromedome? Domey? Aw, Domey, not the silent treatme - joke, Domey, joke." Both hands rose, and Rewind drew Chromedome's shaking helm down to rest against his chest above his spark, warm and alive. "Shh-shh," he whispered. "Just…it's okay. It's okay, Chromedome."
[* * * * *]
Chromedome - "aftermath"
[* * * * *]
He wouldn't let the smaller mech out of his sight for days. The minute he lost him in Swerve's bar - Whirl cut between them, and Rewind was just gone - Chromedome's visor blazed a frantic yellow. He whipped around, searching, but there was no one there. Rewind was gone. Rewind was gone, and he hadn't even had the chance to say goodbye, say he was sorry, say all the things an entire lifetime wouldn't be enough to say.
A thousand regrets choked him in a building pressure that would break apart at the seams.
And then a small figure at the bar turned around to wave, and Chromedome plowed through anyone in his way to Rewind's side, never once looking away.
[* * * * *]
Rewind - post/60102088663/commission-for-the-evil-friend-i-had-this
[* * * * *]
Time runs away from him.
How far does time slow down in the chamber? The door seals, and Rewind puts his hand against the glass. "I'm sorry, Domey. I'm sorry things didn't work out."
He's not talking about the attempt to jettison Overlord. He's talking about the two of them. Chromedome promised they would talk about this later, talk this out like it's just another hitch in their relationship, but that's not going to happen. It's another promise broken. Another promise among too many, at this point, and Rewind's not apologizing for doing what he has to do to save the rest of the ship. He's an Autobot. He won't apologize for doing his duty.
He's far beyond angry for the fact that he has to do this particular duty because of Chromedome.
He's sorry for a lot of things, but boiled down to simple terms, Rewind's sorry that they didn't work out together. Their relationship has been sweet at its best but a turbulent thing full of trouble the rest of the time. Too many broken promises, Chromedome. This time Rewind's trust snapped on the rebound, and there won't be a chance to repair that damage. Not this time.
No time to talk it out and smooth it over until the next broken promise, because isn't there always another one?
The door's sealed, and Chromedome's still desperately trying to tell him something when the temporal dilation field engages. Rewind looks up, visor huge, as Overlord rises to tower over him.
When he looks back through the window, the ship outside the cell is in fast forward. The light in the cell is red, it's slowed down so much, but the cell detaches in regular time. Chromedome zips toward the stairs before the cell drops away, and Rewind wonders where he's going.
He's always been the one wondering that. He wondered back on Cybertron, when it turns out Chromedome injected for Prowl all along. He wondered on Hedonia, when Chromedome ended up running weapons for Rodimus. He wondered on the ship, and now look where he is. Chromedome goes away, and Rewind wonders where he went until the answer's suddenly and painfully there.
Call him an optimist for not wanting to believe the worst of Chromedome until the airlock clicks closed between them.
The shadow of a monster looms over him, and his shoulders hunch. An entire archive of atrocities pop up tagged with Overlord's name.
There's nowhere to run. No escape. Just another unrecorded, horrible fate adding another weight to his unforgiving judgment of Chromedome's sins.
The cell drops away, and all he can see through the window is the bulk of the ship and the black of space. Seen too fast through too slow time, the universe outside tumbles. The stars whirl in streaks of light. In here, time has slowed to a crawl, and he feels every creeping second. Tick tock. Tick tock.
Overlord's systems growl, and the massive Decepticon laughs as if he knows why Rewind trembles. Perhaps he does, and wouldn't that be the ultimate cruelty? To die knowing his murderer did it to punish the one who betrayed him? To die used, like the disposable thing he was once told he was.
The Lost Light spins by outside the window, and Rewind tenses. For anyone else, that glimpse wouldn't be enough, but Rewind is an archivist. He knows what he saw. The faint glow of warming blasters had been there. The ship's guns take whole minutes to warm up. That's plenty of time for a slow death.
In here, that's mere seconds.
Rewind turns and drops to his knees, grabbing for Chromedome's hand the only way he can. Cold shadow darkens the floor around him, but he feels no fear. Not anymore. There's only a sense of relief that lightens the leaden pain around his spark.
He can't forgive this. There's no time. A thousand suspicions coalesced, and hundreds of broken promises came to mind. Forgiveness needs time in order to wear the edges off sharp betrayals with memory and words.
But for a flash of mercy, a shot to end the suffering…he can try.
Overlord reaches for him, and Rewind hugs Chromedome's arm tight. "Thank you, Do - "
Time runs out.
[* * * * *]
Rewind - "Fast forward"
[* * * * *]
They got him back. Damaged. Broken. Irreparable, in the most hurtfully trivial way. When everything else could be fixed and this was what was lost..?
He'd ask what he'd done to deserve this, but he was guiltily aware of just how much he'd done to deserve worse.
"Go slowly," First Aid counseled him. "He's not the Rewind you remember."
"The databanks aren't there. He doesn't remember you. He won't remember you, and there's nothing you can do to change that." Ambulon had an interesting idea of what a bedside manner consisted of. It was easy to tell he'd once been Pharma's ward manager, with that attitude. "If you liked who he was minus his involvement with you, you'll still like him. The question is whether or not he'll like you."
If Chromedome didn't know better, he'd think the mech suspected something. Or maybe Ambulon got that sharply defensive about all his patients. Pharma hadn't always been a madmech, after all.
Ratchet was blunter yet. "If you needle him," the CMO said, "I will know, and I will bring so many mental abuse charges against you that you'll never see him again. Got that?"
Chromedome looked down and tried not to be flattened under guilt. The needles that had caused all this retracted so far into their slots they hurt his hands, but he clenched his hands as well. The other Autobots knew about Overlord, now, and about his broken promise. In their optics, a mech Prowl talked into doing something behind their backs might do other shady things when nobody was looking. That was a reputation he had to live down, now, and the first step on that road was accepting their suspicion with humility.
So he swallowed a sharp reply and just nodded. "Got it."
"Good. He's a different person. You have no right to manipulate him into being whom you want him to be. That person is dead." A long, edge-of-angry look, because Chromedome had killed that mech, indirectly or directly depending which Autobot was asked.
Chromedome studied his feet intently.
Ratchet relented. He turned to knock gently on the isolation room's door. "Rewind? You have a visitor."
The mech behind that door was a stranger.
It took time to realize that. It took more time to turn realization into reality, stop fighting hope, and accept the truth. Chromedome struggled every day with seeing the familiar, beloved shape who didn't have a single memory of him in return.
What Rewind knew about him came from what he learned now, instead of something built up over a long relationship. And watching the flashdrive learn about him was a painful experience.
The smallest thing was what Chromedome had taken for granted, and it was taken away from him forever. Rewind didn't like to be touched by him. Somehow, that hurt worse than seeing the little mech looked him indifferently.
It wasn't that Rewind wasn't curious, but it was the same curiosity he felt for every new mech he met. There was nothing special there. Chromedome visited, and the blue visor turned toward him with a stranger's impersonal watchfulness. When the mnemosurgeon tried to reach for him, however, even just a slight touch of his fingers to the back of one tiny hand - that was when Rewind treated him differently.
The smaller Autobot moved away. He avoided Chromedome. The ever-observing visor flicked toward the offending hand, then back up to Chromedome's face, and there would be a little shake of the head that said Rewind didn't want that, thank you.
It hurt to withdraw his hand, time after time, but he did.
Rewind never said why he didn't like Chromedome to touch him. Maybe it was the hopeless longing in the bigger mech's visor that turned into a sick craving as time passed. The mnemosurgeon covered it in a stiff mask of politeness, but it fit poorly. Underneath lay the look of an addict denied a fix every time Rewind politely bid him goodbye. Every visit created a deepening need, but Chromedome was too scared of the answer to ask why Rewind refused even the lightest touch. He didn't know what he'd do if his former conjunx endura only tolerated his visits out of politeness or pity.
Maybe Rewind didn't want Chromedome to touch him because someone - probably Whirl, maybe Tailgate, but even Chromedome's seething hatred couldn't blame Cyclonus - had told him how events had happened. Overlord, and the explosion, and how the archivist had lost his memory in the first place. Not all of it, of course, because Fate had a sick sense of humor. Just the priority tags had been destroyed, most of which concerned one dearly beloved, Chromedome by name.
Without memory, getting to know him again hurt.
"So you lied to me?"
Chromedome clamped his knees closed around his hands, because it made it easier to keep from reaching toward Rewind again. It also concealed the way his hands shook. "Yes."
"Repeatedly."
"Yes, Rewind."
The truth built up each visit, like bricks of facts. Unlike memory, there were no mitigating explanations or excuses or emotions to dissemble the wall as it went up. Facts just kept stacking higher between them. It was the unvarnished truth, and Chromedome choked every time he tried to say something that would make no difference to the camera recording his reaction.
So the mnemosurgeon stared at his hands and quietly answered Rewind's questions. They weren't really questions. They were mostly just tests of whether he would try to deny the truth. Rewind wasn't standing judgment. He was the prosecuting lawyer for a dead mech, laying out the facts in a coolly dispassionate voice. Chromedome was judge, jury, and defense watching as the crime unfolded in a series of ruthless questions.
"You made multiple promises to stop, you broke every one of those promises, and I forgave you?"
Something thick and heavy crushed his vocalizer, but Chromedome managed, "Yes." Rewind sounded so skeptical. Primus, it hurt to hear that laid out so starkly. Because why would someone forgive serial betrayal?
The little archivist fell silent for a while, just watching him. Then he reached up and toggled his camera off. He looked out the window of his new habitation suite as if searching for something. "You know Brainstorm?"
Of course. Brainstorm was his close friend. But how would Rewind know that? Chromedome winced at the reminder that the little mech had forgotten absolutely everything about him. "Yes."
"Hmm. Well, he showed me something I apparently threw at Fortress Maximus before everything went to the smelter." Chromedome's visor went wide; Brainstorm had done what? "It was a message from me to you. He explained that I had apparently been trying to convince you to not to operate on yourself. You have a habit of erasing your memories of painful events. Loved ones who hurt you by dying just," he flicked his fingers as if brushing away something, "go away. You make them go away, and then you go on with your life without the hurt of living with what happened."
Stunned, Chromedome couldn't find the words to protest that utter absurdity, and yet he could almost feel the solid heft as the wall of truth built another layer higher between them.
Rewind gravely turned to look at him until he awkward withdrew the hand he'd been reaching toward the smaller Autobot. Only then did Rewind continue.
"I've been thinking about it, and this 'accidental deletion injury' story Ratchet's fed me doesn't quite add up. It's too specific, and what Brainstorm said about your habit makes too much sense."
Chromedome's spark seized into a knot of terror as his mind made the immediate leap. "I would never - not to you!" He snatched his hands behind his back as if hiding the needles would make them go away.
Rewind shook his head. "I didn't think you did, but even if you had, I expect you would have a perfect line-up of rational reasons why it was your only choice. That seems to be the pattern in our relationship. I catch you, you rationalize your wrong-doing, and I give you another chance. Over and over again."
Ugly truths he didn't want to see were stacking up before his visor, and Chromedome felt like he couldn't breathe. All his vents had stuck closed. "What...what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that from what I've learned of us," he gestured between them, "and you, I think I finally understand your point of view. You were the one who hurt me, however, and you didn't do it by dying. So I didn't wait until you were dead to erase you." Rewind slid away from the hands desperately reaching for him, but calmly, as if he were avoiding a spill of engex at the bar.
He hopped off the end of the berth and looked up at the trembling mech trying to grasp something no longer there. "And now I can go on with my life without the hurt of living with what happened."
[* * * * *]
Rewind, Chromedome, and Brainstorm - Apocalypse AU
[* * * * *]
Brainstorm opened the door without knocking, because this was no time for niceties even if he didn't care about being polite the rest of the time. But it didn't matter, none of the rules mattered. "Chromedome!"
His fists clenched around their burdens. For a split second, he honestly wouldn't have been able to say which was more important. That was a first. He'd never thought anything could be more important than what his briefcase held.
He didn't stop to think about it.
"Chromedome!"
"I heard you the first time." His friend turned around, ungainly and off-balance. That arm had to be fixed. Why the frag hadn't he gone to the medibay yet?
Brainstorm knew why, and it made him angry. No, truth be told, his inability to change Chromedome's mind about this, of all things, made him angry. He was frustrated, and his spark ached for the only friend he had as he stormed toward the stubborn, infuriating, grieving mech. "Then why didn't you - you - "
He stopped. Stubborn and infuriating Chromedome might have been, but that wasn't the desolate look he'd come to dread. The grief was gone.
Bright energon dripped down long needles, extended and forgotten. They made small stains on the floor. Chromedome would look down eventually and wonder how they'd gotten there.
His hand clenched tighter, and Brainstorm shook. "You already did it."
The baffled look hurt to see. Death should mean something. It should be remembered, returned to, learned from, and grieved. It shouldn't be erased as if it'd never been. Chromedome rewrote history and took the pain away. He'd not only wiped the end of his lover from his memories, but he deleted the entire world of context into nonexistence.
Chromedome never needed closure because there was no opening. In the beginning, there was nothing. He played god in his own universe. When one world didn't work out, he just made it disappear. Story open, story closed, and then the story disappeared altogether. Once it was gone, he moved to the next world and started over again.
Shaking, furious beyond words, Brainstorm turned on his heel and walked out of the room. In his hand, Rewind's message burnt against his palm, evidence of a lost world that had once been and now never was.
Right there and then, no more precious a treasure existed in all the universe, but yet there was no one left who cared.
[* * * * *]
Prowl - "Guardian"
[* * * * *]
Emotions were a weakness. Denying their presence would be opening them up for exploitation by the enemy, so he labeled them as illogical but present. They created the difference between mechanical being and machine, or perhaps they were a symptom. Either way, exterminating emotion would create mental illnesses in far excess to the weakness they caused when still present.
So he didn't eliminate his emotions. He just controlled them, tight and merciless. Channeled into tactics, they made him ruthless. Rerouted from personal affairs, they made him cold.
He stood between his leader and the war, his faction and their atrocities, and he guarded their weaknesses by making a shield of his own.
[* * * * *]
Megatron - "Trend"
[* * * * *]
The Senate called the gladiators a fad. The violence of the underground and the deaths in the ring were a passing fashion to the elite in Iacon. Kaon rocked to the sound of the crowd. The quick, liquid slice of a blade moving through metal could elevate the whole city to elated screams or render it silent in respect for the dead, but Iacon dismissed the gladiators as temporary.
They were entertainment, in the optics of the Senate. Soon enough, the dull-minded simpletons that populated the world outside the Senate walls would find a new source of amusement. The gladiators would fade away, celebrities past their fifteen minutes of fame. They would burn and gutter out, and Cybertron would move on.
Too late, the Senate realized that Megatron was no trend.
[* * * * *]
Cyclonus - "Accent"
[* * * * *]
The language corrupted.
It was inevitable. NeoCybex was the result of an evolution of language, but it wasn't an ending point. Language didn't reach a certain point and stop. Linguistic drift caused by time and changes continued. The NeoCybex of today was millions of years beyond where it had been, and Cyclonus rolled the modern tongue around in his mouth in disgust. The vowels were too shallow, the consonants too soft. The rich depth of sound had disappeared, and the words lost meaning in consequence. The clipped, hard endings were too glottal for Cybertron now. Sharp syllables stuck out like right angle corners in the middle of words, and they turned too quickly for out-of-practice audios to catch.
Tailgate wasn't as naïve as he sometimes appeared, whatever his age. Cyclonus knew the waste disposal worker simply hadn't adjusted to hearing everything in the new sounds of their old dialect. Unfamiliar alternate meanings for familiar words flew right over his head, but he was adjusting fast. He'd get the hang of the new-old language.
Already, slang had crept into his vocabulary. His accent disappeared as fast as he could erase it.
Cylonus refused to adjust his speech. Let the Autobots mock his accent. They were the ones who'd degraded.
[* * * * *]
Whirl - "Urge"
[* * * * *]
The Senate had trained him well. Whirl hated to admit it so he didn't, but that didn't change the fact that they'd gutted a watchmaker with gentle optics and long fingers for this…this thug. That's what he was, now. It's what they'd wanted him to be, after all, and he knew full well that what the Senate had wanted, the Senate had gotten. They'd used violence to train violence, beating the urge to fix out of him. Or maybe they'd just mangled it into another urge.
Rung seemed to think so, anyway. "Some things are root programming," the skinny orange Autobot told him, standing by his shoulder in front of the table. "It can be twisted, but not deleted entirely. They turned it into a desire to take things apart, but at the core of you is still the original code." He patted the rotary mech's shoulder, but instead of standing over Whirl's shoulder in watchful echo of the Senate's threatening surveillance, Rung went back to his desk. He sat down to work on his own model ship.
Surprised, Whirl stared after him for a second. Then he looked down at the scattered pieces of a half-assembled gunship model. The little guns were perfect to the last detail: a ship meant for violence, but a model requiring delicacy and dedicated attention to put together. It'd require far less effort to just smash the whole project to bits.
His pincers twitched.
[* * * * *]
Blurr - "Monster"
[* * * * *]
Others feared Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, or a thousand other Decepticon specters. They feared a violent death or pain.
Blurr feared slowing down. Simple and straightforward, he was afraid of what he was without his speed.
That's it.
[* * * * *]
Sunstreaker - "Order"
[* * * * *]
They whispered behind his back.
They said he was a terrible creature. They said he was a narcissistic sociopath. They said he'dfeel nothing cutting down his own faction, and maybe they were right. Who knows?
Truth be told, he'd probably feel nothing during the actual act, but he refrained from thinking about it. He wouldn't ever go down that path. The temptation was there, but Sunstreaker had been a particular kind of artist. Everything had its place in his creations because that was how his mind worked. He saw the universe in separate colors: blue and green, yellow and red, black and white. There could be no shades in between, not through his optics. It was either all or nothing.
Sunstreaker was an Autobot. He would not mix.
[* * * * *]
Rung - "Judgment"
[* * * * *]
He found it difficult to take a stance, sometimes. A lot of his work depended on being receptive to his patients' beliefs or thoughts. He had to hold strong opinions, but sequestered away from the outside where it could influence duty. Partitioning his personal thoughts were what made him so effective as a psychotherapist, but it did make him rethink every time he made a definite decision.
When he wasn't hired and it wasn't a patient, however, he found it easier to make judgments. He was still afraid of the consequences, but wasn't everybody? The ones who didn't fear were the ones who needed his help - and his judgment - the most.
As Rodimus discovered.
[* * * * *]
Drift - "Apathy"
[* * * * *]
He didn't care how many rules he broke. That's what Rodimus, Ratchet, and even Chromedome didn't understand. Brainstorm might have. Prowl certainly did. Drift didn't care about the rules. He cared about lives saved, but in an abstract way. He knew that the numbers were important because they represented actual people, although he occasionally had to remind himself that the statistics meant more to others than they did to him. They saw the lives, not just marks under 'Casualty'.
He went along with Prowl's plan because the numbers tallied, in the end, and came out balanced. Deception in return for information. A good trade.
Ultimately, however, he didn't care what rules he broke. Because they were Autobot rules, and he still had trouble seeing them as real.
[* * * * *]
Swerve - "Instinct"
[* * * * *]
He opened his mouth.
They came at him with guns and implacable featureless faces, and Swerve opened his mouth.
Hey, a friendly voice took mechs off guard more often than not. Sometimes it diffused the situation. Tell a joke to get the room laughing, and mechs could forget their grievances. A voice of authority could make them rethink what they'd been about to do. A whiny complaint could break the tension.
Worse came to worst - which it did this time - a loud, stupidly distracting monologue gave him time to dodge for cover.
[* * * * *]
Jazz - "Nightmares"
[* * * * *]
Third-in-Command of the Autobot army, saboteur and killer in his own right, and Jazz was creeping down the hall in search of reassurance after a nightmare. Every shadow got a critical look. Unexpected creaks from the floor froze him for seconds at a time. Strange shapes in the dim light made him jump. This was no confident Head of Special Operations. This was a scared mech.
Okay, okay, don't rub it in.
He eased to a stop by the right door and glanced both ways, scanners on high. Nobody. Inside, he could just barely make out a single lifeform. A quick hack of the door code, and Jazz slid inside to check for certain that Optimus Prime was okay. Yes, good. Excellent. One Prime: too heroic for his own good, still alive, slightly less than mint condition.
Jazz disappeared from the room as if he'd never broken in, relocking the door and everything. Then he headed down the hall to check that Prowl really was on duty like the roster claimed. Better to check in person right now, eh? He wasn't in the mood to trust anything less.
Because he'd had a nightmare that both Prime and Prowl were dead, and Jazz…well, Jazz didn't want to be in command.
[* * * * *]
Starscream - "Loyalty"
[* * * * *]
He was attached. Devotedly attached to the point of obsession, although he felt no form of affection for Megatron. That wasn't a requirement. All loyalty required, in the technical definition of the word, was that attachment. He undeniably had that.
What form that attachment took didn't matter, yet still they called him disloyal.
[* * * * *]
Soundwave - "Urge"
[* * * * *]
He could change the direction of an entire world. Soundwave had mastered manipulation eons before humanity ever existed. He had archives of music older than their entire species, but the humans had evolved to the point that they might be able to appreciate the complications of an older race's music. And they were so easily influenced by sound. Songs, artists, musicians, and celebrities could occupy whole subsets of major populations. The masses followed the brightest stars and marched to the tune of their whims. Lyrics, profane or sacred, launched crusades.
Soundwave could sway Earth through the beat of an alien world's ancient rhythm, and humankind would embrace the invasion. They would love him for it.
He could do it. He could conquer a planet where Megatron's grandest plans had failed. He could control the media, and through it, the listening minds.
Earth would adore their master, and even those who hated him would tap their feet along.
[* * * * *]
Onslaught - "Trend"
[* * * * *]
They were convenient. Reliable, at least if he paid Swindle on time and played Vortex's sick little games enough to keep the chopper interested. Blast Off and Brawl, well, he has his own tricks to keep them in line. Since he had them, why not use them? So he used them.
Again, and again, until they worked together like a well-oiled machine, as if they'd always worked this closely. The time Onslaught devoted to coordinating four dissimilar mechs folded over into working on plans to take advantage of how easily they read each other's actions. He barked an order, and the four of them were already calculating how each one's separate abilities slid into the places.
They were becoming a special operations military unit in all but name, but of course some had to buck the trend.
Swindle and Vortex came back one night together, and he didn't remember sending them out. "Where have you been?"
The weapons dealer and the interrogator gave him an identical blank look. "Out," Vortex supplied blandly.
"About, even," Swindle finished with a grin.
"That's not an answer," he snapped. His even tone cracked like a whip, and soldiers everywhere would have jumped to attention under it.
"You don't own me," Swindle said back, just as level and twice as vicious. "I may be a Decepticon, but you may have noticed that we're not anything official."
Vortex lounged on his companion's shoulder. "Swindle had a job for me. I took it. I can do that, you know." The amusement in his visor dared Onslaught to make an issue of that fact.
Because they weren't soldiers. They weren't part of the military. They were mercenaries who only went where the payroll led them, as far as the contract limitations spread.
Onslaught stood there long after the two went their own ways, fists vibrating at his sides.
[* * * * *]
Ratchet - "Laugh"
[* * * * *]
Laughter was not the best medicine. Laughter was a result, a symptom, a moment of rejoicing, or a bitter sign of failure. It was a false cover slapped over a wound, or a genuine expression of relief.
But medicine? Laughter couldn't weld cracked armor and replace a burst hose. It couldn't soothe a dying spark or ease the pain during surgery on the living.
Laughter had its uses, but it was no medicine.
[* * * * *]
Tarn - "Natural"
[* * * * *]
Had he served Megatron as he began life, Tarn would have been useless. His natural forging gifted him with a head for the right ideals, a spark powerful enough to follow a strong leader, but his body had been lacking. Fortunately, there were ways to make up for that lack. It just required rejecting most of what he'd started as.
Tarn served Megatron, but he wasn't the Tarn he had been at the beginning of the war. There wasn't much of that mech left.
[* * * * *]
Rung - "the God King"
[* * * * *]
The God-King was a quiet mech. Small. Unassuming. The exact opposite of the imposing sculptures and images of the Thirteen, or of Primus.
Perhaps that was why Fortress Maximus didn't recognize him at first. The God-King was old, older than the war, older than the Senate, as old as the Primes. He hid in plain sight, and only the mad saw him for what he was. Or perhaps it was in recognizing him that the mad returned to sanity. He had a reputation for that. They came to him insane, moths zeroing in on the brightest light, and he redeemed them.
Under his guidance, even Whirl might regain his balance.
Let Rodimus wear his bright flame colors and crowning crest, fling himself about in hectic action trying to be a hero. Rung dwelled in a palace of age and power, words a weapon he wielded to cut down the heroes and the humble alike. He accepted the disrespect of the young. He bent before military might and threats.
Fortress Maximus had held a gun to his head. He'd ripped Rung's thumb off. His violence had led to the orange mech's head being blown off.
Rung hadn't died.
It was in the cell, staring down at the hands that had torn, that had failed to protect, that Fort Max understood who had held him. It had been a sacrifice in the form of shelter. The medics cited medical statistics, the crew whispered of miracles, and Fort Max stared into the certainty of his own death. A shift of Swerve's arm, and Rung had taken the killing blow. But he hadn't died. Because the God-King wouldn't die of mere mortal wounds.
Distantly, Fort Max wondered if this was what insanity felt like. He'd gladly trade his sanity to make the guilt stop. What was a God-King? How long had he known about it? How could he know about it?! There was no data in his files, nothing came back in his searches, and yet -
And yet -
He knew. The slender orange psychotherapist had been the one he'd homed in on. A ship full of Autobots, and he'd returned to a small office tucked away at the far end of the ship. He hadn't even know where he was going until he'd hammered the door open and stumbled inside, crazed optics target-locking right past Whirl to focus on Rung. Of everyone he could had gone after, he'd chosen the seemingly most harmless as captive, but Rung's worth had been far above his appearance.
Only the mad could see the power in that slight frame. When the veil of sanity lifted, that was when mere optics could peer beyond metal reality into what existed underneath. That was when a paranoid mech could find a bright spark worthy of trust; when a shattered rotary could collect himself enough to focus on a friend; when an amnesiac could recall there was something about this one person.
When a traumatized warden could see the God-King looking back at him.
In the off-cycle, when the lights dimmed and most of the Decepticons stopped their howling, Fort Max kept staring at his hands. The hands that had harmed the God-King. Sinful hands, attached to a sinful mech stuck in a brig cell with no way to atone for his sins.
He was afraid. Afraid for his dubious sanity - God-King? Rung? Primus, what was wrong with him? - but more afraid of the night when a silent shadow stopped before his cell. Fort Max shuddered and looked up, already knowing the optics that met his were equally mad. They were all mad, here.
Perhaps he dreamt that Skids escorted him out of the cell. Part of him knew that he slumbered, that this was nothing more than a particularly twisted dream, but it didn't feel like recharge. It felt like he trudged the halls, wrists cuffed behind his back and guard at his side, until he unerringly found the right hall and the right door. He didn't wonder where they were going; he knew.
He quietly waited as Skids knocked. The door slid open. Skids regarded him narrowly but let him enter alone.
The God-King was a quiet mech. Small. Unassuming. Fort Max had never been more certain that he was insane, but alongside that certainty grew a dread because this was real. A hallucination, a dream, but also as real as the bars of his cell, the cramped berth he recharged on. This slender orange mech was a psychotherapist, a nobody Autobot maybe a little older than the norm. That didn't change the fact that Fort Max fell to his knees before him because Rung was the God-King, a figure of respect and authority that ruled star systems, ordered planets into being and dismissed entire species with the wave of his hand. Those who served him knew his favor and those who displeased him suffered unimaginable torment.
"Mercy," Fortress Maximus whispered hoarsely. He didn't deserve it. He couldn't possibly earn it.
Those inordinately expressive optic ridges turned down. The much larger, far more insignificant mech cowered before that slight motion, and Rung sighed. "You have already paid your penance, Fortress Maximus. You are here for final judgment, not for further punishment."
He didn't understand, and terror crawled through his tanks. "I - what penance? How can I - " His vocalizer cut off, because he already knew there was no way he could pay for what he'd done.
Rung regarded him evenly. "Overlord."
Fort Max stared, struck dumb for a long moment and unable to understand. Overlord?
Enlightenment smacked him between the optics hard enough to hurt. "N-no."
"Yes."
What was time to the God-King? What torture could be cruel enough for the mech who'd held a gun to the God-King's head? Overlord. Overlord had been Fort Max's punishment. Would still be his penance. Had been because of his crime.
Fans stuttering, vents opening and closing in gasped sobs, he bent to the floor. The grieving keen he gave after pressing his face to the floor betrayed the agony inside him as every memory were relived as if they happened here and now. Perhaps they did. Time and space were nothing to Rung.
The warden writhed, moaning, and begged in whispers against the floor that it might finally end. Let the end judgment be now. Please, please, God-King of old and new, empty spark chambers and ignited hotspots, have a shred of pity on him at last.
Rung did. But it was the worst torture, all the same.
Fortress Maximus woke up.
He numbly looked at the cell bars, sat up on the narrow berth, and knew that he'd forgotten something. Something wonderfully, horribly important that could have changed everything, that had changed everything, but…was gone.
Since he was awake anyway, he started composing an apology for the therapist, what was his name? Rang, or something like that.
He couldn't quite remember.
[* * * * *]