He sat waiting. After five years, the days had blurred together into moments. It was no longer morning, but the time when the guard shifts would change and he could hear them outside talking loudly about him. There was no sun to tell him it was the afternoon, but the door that opened to reveal his newest 'shrink'. There was no moon to illuminate the darkness that surrounded him; only Deagon barging in on the silence and groan about how hard it was to be a Warden of an ungrateful prison. In his own time of having prisoners, Megatron had never known any to be grateful.
He stared at his shackles. There were days that time passed quickly - as far and few between as they were, he welcomed them. Most days though ached along, dragging him through each moment. He would prefer being smelted piece by piece than endure what his existence had become here. Days were filled with visits from diplomats or other government officials. A reminder of his times when he stood before the council on Cybertron, revealing his ideas that would bring them into a better age.
How little they cared to listen. We want to hear what you have to share with us. And then their optics would become pits as he spoke. They didn't care for what he had to say if he was not going to say anything of importance to them. It was the same unspoken truth for humans as it had been for Cybertonians.
We are powerful, therefore we are great. We do not care for your stories. We do not bow to the lesser. We only take. Accept us as we are or we will tear you down.
On Cybertron he made them pay for their ideals. They willfully murdered innocent lives for the sake of living in peace. Why had it been so wrong that he paid them the same respects with their own lives?
He stared off into the darkest corner of his cell. The lights above were still on, yet this one was overshadowed by a metal container that had been welded high off the ground. Its shadow cast over the corner, sinking it into a perpetual darkness. When he focused his attention there he could see the insects that had found the black and claimed it as their own. He snarled. Even the insects of this world were more free than he was.
His mind began to reflect again and he bit the thoughts back with a growl. Why? Why was his mind wanting to go back to the moments that brought him here? The shadow of his newest shrink cast over the chair that she sat in across from him. He blinked and it was gone. He felt his face contorting with anger. Of course. She'd been trying to get him to talk about his past with her today. A past he would soon rather forget. A past that haunted him in his stasis. A past that was once for the glory of his people and had become the very reason their world no longer existed.
No shrink in the five years they had come to tour his mind, had ever gotten him to share anything of himself. They were conceited, humans with souls as ugly as his own spark. They wanted nothing more than to break him open and share his secrets with the world. He was not a relic to be exploited nor a soldier to be commanded. Their efforts failed at every turn.
Why had hers worked today?
Are you worried about how they could use your information against your own?
His optics focused in on the dark corner, looking for the smallest insect that scurried around. How had she figured that so quickly? He had not met one shrink who had ever thought that. Who had ever cared to think such a thing. He was a tyrant and they rightfully saw him as that. They feared him. He did not care whose hands murdered his own, be it Autobot or Decepticon. Yet. . . It threw him into rage to think that they would use his own tactics, his own weapons, his own past against them.
Let them destroy their own world in pursuit of domination. But he would not let them do so with his own secrets as their weapons.
A fly snagged itself within a spider's web. Thrashing about, it became even more ensnared until it could no longer move. He narrowed his attention in on the spider that skitter its way to the fly and wrapped it up in its web. It reminded him of the ways his Decepticons would trap the Autobots. Those would only work so many times before they caught on and he would have to think of a new way to lure and capture them. These creatures of earth though, they were not so smart. They ran purely on instinct alone. There was no forethought to their actions. The fly flew where it wanted and in doing so, risked its own life. The spider only knew through instinct to make a web, but it would not know which fly it would catch - or if it would be caught before starvation took its life. Only that it was to coil it within its webbing to feast on it later.
He had always had forethought into every action. Yet there were times that it seemed he ran on instinct. After so many eons in a war, tyranny had become not a second, but first nature to him. He fought to capture and kill the Autobots so that his Decepticons came out on top. So that they could claim a new world for their own and live how all should have back on Cybertron. There were vast contrasts to himself and this spider and yet as he watched it devour its prey, he wondered, were they so different?
The door scraped against the floor as it opened and his attention turned to a stocky figure entering into his prison. Deagon let the soldiers outside shut the door as he grabbed the box and made his way up the stairwell, his eyes directed at him. His other hand held a gray brick.
He stopped at the top, his eyes narrowing in with an anger Megatron had seen a thousand times before in this man. He set the brick onto the table and the sound echoed through the room. Turning toward him, he leaned over the railing. "You've got yourself a sympathiser." his hands smoothed over the box, but didn't press it. "Talking about HIPAA laws and rights. You're a monster who has no rights. You forfeited those the moment you began war on your own damn planet. And yet-" his fingers swirled over the button. "She thinks you deserve them. I don't feel like getting sanctioned anytime soon. So you're going to do me a solid." Deagon picked up the brick and pointed it toward him. "You're going to give her permission tomorrow that whatever you tell her, I get to know firsthand. Got it?" The brick shook violently in his hand. "And don't try to lie that you did - I'll be coming in at the end to make sure you say it."
Megatron turned his attention to the box in his other hand. Deagon's knuckles were white grasping onto it. Anger was flowing through this man as if it were his own blood. "You think she will break me?" he mocked. "This shrink is no different than the others. She will soon fear me enough to run away for good. You will be out of options and have no choice but to turn me into the scrap metal you think I am."
Deagon's body vibrated with anger. "I want those secrets! Give up, Megs, it's been five years. Spill your black heart out to her and tell her I can have them."
Megatron leaned in slowly, his optics narrowed in on Deagon, reading every twitch in his body. "No."
Deagon put the box on the ground. "Then pay the price of your insolence. If you won't do it willingly, I'll make you do it in a way I wish I would have thought of years before."
"Whatever you have planned, Deagon, it will be no worse than what I have done to my own kind."
Deagon's left eye twitched, a sick smile spread across his lips. "Then pay the price." He smacked the brick onto the box, the weight pressing down onto the button.
Shocks rolled through his body, a continuous loop of pain injected into every cable and fiber. He could feel his body twitching involuntarily, noticed on the wall before him how the light of his optics grew and faded with the pain. Deagon stepped back from his concoction and raised his arms with the smile still pressed into his face.
Megatron watched him, his vision faded in and out of blurriness. The man was watching him, enjoying this moment, as much as he enjoyed the murder of Autobots. It was agonizing to be on the other side. But he would not relent so easily.
He instead wanted to lunge for the man, yet his body betrayed him, unable to move as the pain pulsed through him. It ran through his system, flowing through him as if it were one with his energon. He could hear the buzzing of the shocks in his helm, feel them snaring around his spark.
Deagon watched as he descended the steps. "I'll return in the morning. We'll see how you feel about telling your secrets then."