Aftermath
Optronix was fairly sure that he was deactivated. After what happened he wanted to be dead. But as he floated through the layers of consciousness, he started to dread one thing… that he might still be alive and moreover moving towards onlining. He definitely didn't want that either. It was so calm and peaceful in this dark abyss, wherever it was. Pain-free most of all. He didn't want to leave it and go back to the world of burning pain and screaming agony. But the process didn't stop, no matter how he willed it so.
Well, at least the dark didn't change. The pain was different too; instead of tearing him apart and burning him up it toned down a bit into a sharp , burning throb all though his frame, centering near his spark and… as he started to think of it, spasming through his valve. Or what used to be his valve, as he was fairly sure that Megatron shredded it to tatters. Optronix was alarmed to realize that he was feeling absolutely nothing past his hip joints, unable to move his legs in the slightest.
Not that the rest of him was any more responsive, but at least he felt his arms, as though they were turned into lead and far too heavy to move, and some of his torso plates pinged back with – he wanted to laugh but it came out as a choking, wretched sob – dents of all things. The only part that was more or less pain-free was his helm, where it was just his voice box that felt like scrubbed with steel wool and doused with acid. The result of so much screaming that it fritzed out many times, he supposed.
He tried to switch on his optics and only after a few unsuccessful tries did Optronix realize that they were already online and it was the room that was draped in pitch-black darkness. He gave a small thanks to Primus that he felt or heard no sign of Megatron in the room. After a few kliks of sluggish thinking he retracted the thanks – the slagger didn't deserve it. Not after last night. Maybe not ever, since he was alive, meaning that he'd have to go through it again and again. He shuddered at that thought, or at least tried to.
After trying to move and failing totally in it, he gave up. As sensors came back online they all started to clamor for his attention, sending their pain signals to his processor, which could do nothing about them. He felt that he was laying in a veritable puddle of sticky, cooling fluids, probably a disgusting mixture of transfluid and his own energon. Some of it was drying on his still-hot plating too, creating a messy, obscene and unpleasant layer that he wanted to get rid of.
Time seemed to crawl sluggishly as he lay there, bleeding out his energon, weakening by the breem in the unforgiving, uncaring darkness alone, unable to find a respite or go back to blessedly offline. At first he tried to call someone when he found his broken, staticky voice, whimpering for help, for some mech to do something, to just be there, but only the silence answered. He sobbed without tears, the cleanser long run dry from his optics. The pain ebbed and rose in waves together with his nausea and the urge to purge, but his tanks were empty and he only heaved dryly a few times.
He was alone with the pain. Optronix tried brokenly to think of happier thoughts, of his siblings or his friends but the aching of his frame always pulled him back into the stark reality. Has Megatron just left him here to bleed out and deactivate alone in the darkness? Was he so unimportant, so hated and despised that no mech cared to stop his bleeding or patch him up, not to mention to bring a cube of energon? He was ready to welcome any fate by this time, just to end this misery.
He didn't know how long it was before he heard a door opening and a mech's stepping inside the room. It was a big mech by the reverberations and Optronix sobbed brokenly anew, dreading Megatron again. Light flooded the room and Optronix's straining optics were blinded by the sudden change. He heard a muffled oath and the steps became faster before they came to a stop beside the berth. He couldn't help the trembling starting up. Who was it?
"Stay with me youngling, I'll fix you now." – the voice was that of a stranger, just as the visage that his blearily blinking optics started to see in time, but he didn't sound bad. – "I didn't know it was this bad."
A small sting on his neck cables and blessedly, his body just fell off his sensor-net. Optronix breathed a small vent of relief at being suddenly pain-free. He still felt his spark throbbing in discomfort, but that was nothing compared to the rest of it. No bond though, or he was completely in the dark about what a bond should feel like.
"Are you online, Optronix?" – the mech was a medic probably and he was mopping up the mess of energon and fluids that he was laying in. – "Stay with me, you are going to be fixed now."
"Y-yes…" – he croaked rather than spoke and even to himself it was hard to understand. Still it surprised him that he was able to do this much.
The medic glanced at his faceplates before going back to whatever he was doing. – "Here, drink this. It'll soothe your voice a bit." – he held a small cube to his lipplates and Optronix gulped its contents down with some effort.
Whatever it was, he was glad for it. The smooth fluid had a sweet taste and it did wonders for his intake and voice. He wished there was something like this to soothe his processor and spark too. The medic continued to do things that Optronix didn't really want to know about. The lack of pain and the night spent mostly online in agony made him drowsy and soon he fell into an uneasy and shallow recharge. He felt hungry with all the energon he lost and the overload – at least he supposed that that dark, disgusting explosion-like feeling was an overload, one where he was taken for a ride without his volition. But in time even the hunger seemed unimportant.
When he came online the next time, Optronix felt much better – the pain was mostly gone or muted down to dull aches, his empty tank filling up from a drip connected to a main line in his torso. He felt terribly weak though and still unable to move much. Certainly not strong enough to leave the berth. It was dark again, but his whispered order brought the lights on. Lifting his helm slightly he looked over to his frame, to be sure it was still there. He saw no sign of damage, so the medic did fix him up, but both the berth and his plating had plenty of flaking, dry fluids on them.
He wanted to get rid of it. Optronix knew that he might never feel clean again after this. He wanted to go to the wash-racks that he saw opening from the berthroom and scrub his plating raw to get rid of the fluids. But he couldn't move and he was alone again. His internal chrono said that it was the middle of the night cycle, so he must have recharged almost a whole orn. His self-healing still demanded that he rest more though, and Optronix acquiesced to it.
His next few orns passed much the same way, with Hook, the medic coming every morning to check him and bring energon. After the first time, the medic was all professional, never conversing with Optronix, only about his condition as he healed physically. Mentally, he thought that he never would and his spark was throbbing and flaring sometimes, like it protested against the bond that was imposed on it. By this time he knew that this dull ache in his spark was supposed to be the bond, or the beginning of one.
After he told about it to Hook, one time he felt drowsy after drinking the energon and surprisingly fell into a deep, blessedly dreamless recharge straight away. When he came online again, the throb in his spark lessened, the barely-there bond felt a bit stronger and he had a few silvery scratches on his chest-plates. It happened twice more before he realized what it had to be.
It must have been Megatron and Optronix trembled just from that thought itself. But the warlord didn't touch his valve on these occasions, only his spark; he learned that the new bond always needed to be reinforced by frequent merges before it settled and became a permanent connection. He was thankful that it happened while he was sedated – awake Optronix was sure that he wouldn't be able to force himself to touch Megatron again.
But no matter how the bond strengthened, it still felt like a dead end. Megatron kept his end closed off all the time and Optronix didn't have the mental strength either to re-establish the connection, no matter how many times he tried. His situation was even worse than he'd thought it would be. He couldn't even feel his supposed bondmate, much less talk with him through the bond, like he heard that normal mates could.
The time came when he could stand up and move under his own power – and Hook didn't come any more in the mornings to check on him. Optronix could drag himself on shaking legs into the wash-rack finally and filling the sunken pool, he immersed himself into the warm solvent with an almost happy sigh, the first for a long while. He let it soak through the layers of dried fluids before scrubbing it off himself, resting for a breem every now and then in the job, as he was still weak and trembling from exhaustion. But he didn't stop until he felt his plating clean again, after joors of determined, angry and still sobbing work.
He just had enough strength to clean the berth before dropping in exhaustion onto it and went straight into recharge. His last thought was to desperately hope that Megatron wouldn't come. Tired as he was he had recharged enough in the last few orns, so his offline time was disrupted many times by memory fluxes. But there was no other mech around here to curl to, to feel the calming effect of their nearness, to feel safe. Optronix was young enough to still wish that someone was there, like his siblings whom he could always go when frightened by recharge fluxes.
No such luck here. He onlined alone in the morning, no mech and no sound whatsoever in the suite of rooms he was given. He felt strong enough to discover the chambers, which to his dismay didn't take long. There was an anteroom that he remembered opening onto the corridor outside – but the door was locked securely, so he couldn't leave. It had a table with cubes of energon on it, some storage space and a couple of cleaning droids. It opened into a living room with recliners and sofas around a small table, decorated with pictures on the walls and crystal statues on pedestals.
The berthroom, he already knew, just like the wash-racks opening from it. On the other side, there was a smaller room of indefinite function, but with the only window looking to the outside. Optronix was eager to discover what it showed but after a few kliks he had been sorely disappointed; he could only see a stark wall of the palace's outer curtain, part of a bastion and some roofs underneath. Only a bit of a sky could be seen in the upper corner and the window was barred with strong bars.
Like a prison, his processor whispered uncomfortably, and unfortunately nothing that he saw or experienced so far has refuted that assessment. The door that led to the corridor was locked, the single window barred and he saw no mech else so far but Megatron and Hook. His comm was still set to the Iaconian standard and he didn't even know how to reset it. Megatron handled him like a worthless drone, not even deeming him worthy for answers or conversation and their supposed bond was totally locked down.
There was absolutely nothing he could do here, Optronix realized after only half an orn. No entertainment system, no newscasts, no datapads or games… the rooms were empty of anything but the furniture. The paintings on the wall and the bland view from the single window occupied his attention for a few joors only, before they got boring. No company either, he realized after a few days. No mechs came in, only the servants while he was in recharge, leaving his daily energon in the anteroom's table.
He tried to listen for voices in the window but only the wind raved around the structures, whizzing and whining like it was sympathetic to his mood. Only rarely did the wind die down a bit and sometimes he heard faint, disjointed notes of music fly past his window. Never so coherent that he could identify it, but lacking any other pastime, he sometimes tried to imagine who'd listen to it, what it was or why it was done. He envied those mechs too for having the means and the mood for music.
He was bored out of his processor in a single orn – and Optronix knew that he would probably have to face vorns in the same way. Not even escape would free him, as Megatron would only have to open up the bond and he'd catch Optronix in no time. Provided he could get out of this place. At first it looked impossible, but he knew that if he had to spend vorns with nothing to do, in time he'd find a way to escape. Since that seemed the only thing to do here, Optronix decided to plan an approach to it.
It gave him something to do for maybe a few groons, no more. Whoever designed his rooms made a through work and thought all possibilities. Besides Optronix realized that the story datapads that he remembered might have described several ways of escaping from a prison, but they were invariably either impossible or inapplicable in his situation.