"You will fail human," his voice rumbled through her body. It was unnerving, talking to someone, something, that held so much physical power in his words. "As the countless others have failed. I am no soul to be saved."
"I am not here to save your soul, Megatron," her words were cool compared to the nervous heat she felt rising in her body. "That is between you and whoever created you."
"You believe me to be created?" A disgruntled laugh snorted from him. "How so?"
"I believe all things to be created, Megatron. Our minds are too intricate to be happenstance mistakes of time." she diverted her eyes to his files again and flipped through them. His gaze was terrifying and felt as if he could destroy her with simply a twist of his expression. "My turn to ask a question. Who are you?"
"Who am I?"
"Yes, I believe it should be simple enough for you to answer."
"I would be careful of that tongue human, I may see it the first thing to go when I escape."
"Noted." She scribbled on her notepad, knowing full well he couldn't see what she wrote down. He simply needed to believe that she was noting down something important about his comment. But in reality, she had geared herself up for the threats. "Now," she finally turned her eyes back up toward him. "Who are you, Megatron?"
"I am the leader of the Decepticons. Warlord. Scourge of your planet. Destroyer of worlds. Would you like me to go on?"
"No." her tone was curt. "But I would like you to shift your focus. I don't want to know who you are portrayed to be - whether through media or your own reflection. I want to know, deep down, behind what I can see from a glance, who are you?"
His optics narrowed in on her and she bit back a gulp, forcing her body to stay still and straight. He didn't need to see her squeamish. He didn't need fuel to the fire of his fury and fear mongering. He studied her for a moment and in turn she studied him back. She watched how his optics twisted, as if they were seeing in different spectrums with each turn. She watched his face contort with anger and minute flecks of curiosity. She had seen the same reaction in many others she worked with - mostly those who believed they didn't have a problem. He clearly didn't think he had one, or he wouldn't be so against anyone fighting him on it.
No one fights a war that long without believing in their cause. She looked away and scribbled the note down for himself.
Find cause for beginning war.
As the period inked the end of the sentence, she thought back to Dr. Yarks notes about his deflection of those questions. She'd have to find new ways to ask him. Outright questions could infuriate him, she needed backdoor conversations that lead into natural discussions. She needed him to talk about it without realizing the truth that he had shared. He was not human, but he seemed equally susceptible to psychological manipulation as any human was. Emotions were a fickle thing for any being and he had them all the same.
"You fear me." His words snaked through her ears, as if searching for the fear it could grasp onto and squeeze it out of her.
Aurora looked up and breathed in the hot air of the room. Why were they keeping it so hot in here? It seemed they'd want it to be more cool, make his metal ache against each other with each move. "Yes, I do." She closed the files and settled her hands on top of them. There was no use in coating the truth from a being who could see her demise in the time it took her to blink. If she were to read him, she would have to let him read her. "I expect, perhaps, most humans fear you."
A dark chuckle rose from his chest. "I have rarely met a human who has not."
"Does that upset you?"
The moment of fleeting discussion died and his expression darkened, his optics glaring down at her once more. "Upset me?"
"Yes," her feet fiddled with each other, the nervous energy having to erupt somewhere before she bolted from the seat and banged on the door to let her out. "Does it upset you that humans fear your existence?"
Silence fell between them again, a vast expanse that seemed to further the divide. His optics turned to look at the far wall where the button rested. She turned her attention toward it as well, the blank expression she had been holding onto shifting with sympathy. She could almost hear the question rummaging through his mind. Why had she not brought it with her? Why not keep the failsafe close at hand?
She turned her eyes back to him and her heart pounded seeing him leaning closer toward her. Her body instinctively shuffled back, the chair clashing onto the floor. Her hand grasped for the metal railing surrounding her and she kept herself from falling onto the floor completely. His being, still too far away to do anything, felt menacing having moved from his position to be closer to her. Her hands trembled as they pulled her back onto her feet.
Noise erupted from below, guards bursting through the metal door at the sounds.
"We heard a scream," the shorter one called up, his eyes filled with fear. She couldn't tell if it was for her safety, or his own with being in the same room as the tyrant.
"Everything is alright." she forced her legs to stabilize, though they wanted to tremble and crumbled back onto the floor. She couldn't do that. She could not begin their first session having shown him the fullness of her fear toward him. "I. . ." she watched the other guard begin walking toward the button. "I sneezed!" The excuse came flying out of her mouth faster than she could think on if it was a sane one or not. "I'm sorry." she held her elbows straight as she held onto the rail, forcing herself to stand a little taller. "I have horrible allergies and sometimes they just come. . ."
Stupid. Absolutely stupid.
The guard stopped walking and looked up at her with a gaze of confusion and disbelief. "I'm sorry?" he questioned. "You. . . Sneezed?"
"Powerful sneeze," her head nodded, trying to convince herself of the lie. "Just, horrible this time of year. I apologize for having scared you both."
"Do you need me to press it at all?" the guard sounded deflated at the thought of not injecting pain into the warlord.
"No," she shook her head and picked up the chair, feeling her nerves starting to come down off the frightened high. "Not at all. He's-" she stopped herself while ahead - no need in saying something too asinine to the situation. "I'm okay." She watched them leave before settling herself back down into the chair and released the air that had lodged itself deep within her lungs.
"You lied to them." Megatron's words were curious and angry.
"You came for a closer look, I overreacted." she patted down her sleeves and twisted the cuffs as they reached her wrists. "Hurting you would be a horrible punishment for a curious right of any living being."
He grew taller as his back straightened, his optics staring down at her with distrust. "You are a horrible liar, human."
"That is not the first time I've been told that." she quipped back. "If I were a good one I would have gone into gambling. I'd probably be in less debt than I am now with student loans." A limp smile spread across her lips. "Megatron," her tone tried to sugar coat his name, yet it felt jilted coming out. "You can't see me as the bad guy here. I'm trying to help you."
"You are here only to convert me to your government's military. Where is the help for me in that?"
Her back straightened. "No, actually, I'm not."
His optics narrowed in on her again as he leaned forward. This time she was prepared, watching his every move. How the metal of his body shifted as he did. "You are a horrible liar, human." He spat out human as if the word itself left a disgusting taste in his mouth.
"Yes, we've established that." she nodded cordially. "But we are not here to pinpoint the parts of my own personality. We're here to do that with yours. So I'm going back to my original question, and seeing as I have answered a few of yours, and you have seen me in quite the interesting light, I deserve an answer. Who are you, Megatron?"
"I am everything you say I am, and nothing that you believe me to be."
She stared at him for a moment. "On earth, we call that an oxymoronic statement."
"Believe it what you will, you know nothing of me and you will never know it. I am not a weapon to be played with. I am not a soldier to fight your wars. I will not be subdued to your human whims simply because you see better in me. Cover for me all you want, I will not trust a being I can destroy under my pede."
The door below clicked open and she heard the Wardens voice rise over her thoughts and the mech's voice ringing in her ears. "Time's up for today, Dr. Clark!"
She gathered her notes and stood across from the tyrant, her eyes studying him as he stared off into a yonder distance. She'd seen broken hundreds of times before. She'd witnessed their anger, hatred, fear. She sifted through it all the same. She had worked with soldiers who refused her until they saw how their brokenness hurt those around them. Until they finally came to her of their own volition to be healed. There was no telling if Megatron would be the same. He was more than a soldier who fought in a war. For all she knew, he created it and led it till its end.
Stepping down carefully, she met with the Warden and nodded to him that she was ready to go. "I heard they almost used the button today. Makes you wish you would have brought it with you, huh?"
She hated the snark in his voice and how loud he projected it for the mech to hear.
"Did they relay that the incident was my own accidental doing? I have allergies and they unfortunately acted up at a horrible time, as they always do."
"Don't be coy, Dr. Clark. He scared you, you wet your panties, you covered for him. You're not the first to have done so." Deagon gave her a sly smile that made her stomach churn. "But they all eventually held onto that box for dear life. After all, he's quite the menacing one. No matter how much we say he can't get out of those restraints, you'll come to believe he can and one day you'll grasp that box for dear life and wonder why you ever took this position." The door slammed shut behind them and he led her through new hallways.
"I am already wondering that, Warden. I wondered it the night I took it and wondered it on the drive here and I wonder it now as we walk away."
"You think he's salvageable?"
She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. "I can't answer that. This was one session - at least give me time to get to know him."
"You talk like he's one of us." Deagon walked on without her and she sped up to catch him.
She was scared to admit the truth, but she could see it in him as clear as she saw it in any of the other soldiers she worked with. Deagon stopped before an elevator, and pressed the call button for it. Stopping next to him, she turned to Deagon and slid her lanyard off, placing it into his hand. "Because he is like one of us, Warden - just a little bigger and made of metal." The doors to the elevator clicked open as it arrived and she stepped inside. Her eyes watched the Warden until the doors closed and for the few moments she had where no one could see her, save for the cameras in the corner, tears slipped from her eyes.
She would not sleep tonight. She didn't know if she'd ever sleep again. Those eyes. . . They would haunt her nightmares.
As the elevator stopped and the doors opened, she picked herself up and walked out into the parking garage where her car waited to take her home. Her new home. Not the familiar one that smelled of coffee and bananas from all the bread she'd baked. No, this one had been used as a file storage facility before she came and it smelled of rusting metal and old paper.
It would take time to become her new home. It may never be her new home. Who knew, it may be far more temporary than she had planned on making it. She could not live her life in fear of this being, and yet. . . And yet. . . She saw in him a pain that was so deeply seeded within him, she couldn't help but want to pry it out. It's why she was given the soldiers who refused help. Why was she called to do this job? Because she was the last ditch effort of every family who wanted their loved one back as they were before the war.
Only he had no family.
He had no one who loved him.
Only a government who coldly wanted to use him for their own gains in politics and war. For that, he may never come around. This whole escapade would be useless, and yet she saw the challenge at hand and much like her father before her, took it upon herself to see it through. No matter the outcome.