Work Text:
At some point, the initial flood of violence had to die down. When he could no longer fire his new plasma cannon, when the low fuel warnings made his vision flicker, when it simply wasn’t possible for him to continue fighting.
Iacon was a smoking wreck. They had not purged the city of all of Sentinel’s supporters, the ones who had enabled his cruelty and deception, but it was a start.
His voice box was raw from screaming, bellowing out his orders, and in only a few short days, he had gone from T-cogless miner to undisputed ruler of Cybertron.
It didn’t feel real. One second, buildings exploding around him, the pressure of Sentinel Prime bending under the force of his rage, and now he was here, so exhausted he thought he was going to die, in a berth room, somewhere, in some building that was still mostly intact. It was far more opulent that the quarters he had shared in the mines, with gold inlay in the walls and a private wash rack.
When the door shut behind him, he realized that it also had the good noise control. The sudden silence was jarring.
D-16 had never slept alone, never slept in silence. The barracks they shared were cheap, constantly filled with the hum of heavy machinery, with mechs talking and moving, no matter what the hour was.
He had shared a bunk bed with Orion. Orion held the top one, and D-16 could expect to see his blue helm and cheerful, upside smile, checking in on him, chatting with him, bothering him, waking him up at odds hours to look at something or explore, no care for D-16’s need for recharge.
On nights, when the heater broke or that time Orion broke his foot and struggled to climb the ladder or during those rare occasions they had access to engex and he was too stupid from overcharge to figure out how to go up or when he was simply too lazy, Orion had curled up on D-16’s bunk.
It was usually awful. The bunks weren’t made for two. Orion kicked and shifted. He had pushed D-16 off his own bunk more than once, or crushed him into the pad, or forced him into the corner, contorted into a painful position that threatened to wreck his joints. Only in a few warm memories, did he manage to cuddle along side D-16 like a normal mech, sharing the space fairly.
He would get a good, solid recharge. He could expect that, and the silence was good. The silence was clean.
He would finally get to sleep alone and in peace because Orion was a fragmented, crushed wreck, lost to the bowels of Cybertron. Despite all the hazy hours, D-16 could feel Orion’s wrist on his palm, his limp dead weight, unable to help or cling because D-16 had blown off most of his chest, his arm, and he was too weak, processor clearly failing, optics sparking, energon leaking and-
And D-16 had let go. On purpose. The dark had swallowed Orion, now and forever. There would be no more color now, no more splash of blue and red and brightness.
If D-16 hadn’t blown out his voice box, the shrill keen he let out would have been audible.
Mechs were heavy. Orion, after receiving a T-cog was heavier than most, and D-16, no Megatron, that was who he was now, still had to adjust to his own strength.
His grab had been artless. All of Orion’s weight held up by the tendon cables in his arm and shoulder, and the joint had strained. The ache lingered, a twinge that wasn’t going away, even after Megatron had been cleared by a medic.
Surely, it had not been that strenuous. Orion was heavier than Megatron was used to, but what with all the missing parts, his weight was probably closer to his pre t-cog self than it felt. It had not strained Megatron to rip Sentinel in half, a mech bigger than both of them, and-
And that was one of the things that Megatron did, in the immediate aftermath. Dispose of the corpse. There would be no honors for Sentinel Prime. Megatron wanted to keep his legacy in the trash where it belonged, and it was easy to arrange to have the corpse smelted down for scrap. Megatron watched it happen, watching the gold and blue melt together into an ugly green tinted brown before smoldering into the bright yellows and oranges and reds of molten metal.
In a way, watching, it felt like Sentinel was getting one final victory. That Megatron was there at all was proof that the Prime still had a hold over him, had been important to him once. He should have sent him to the smelter, the one Darkwing had wanted to banish them to, right after the race.
The corpse seemed to dissolve back down into its base components, the tyrant nothing but metal and glass and plastic. It was infuriating.
“Orion is dead because of you,” Megatron said, and it was partially a lie, but it felt true, and saying it out loud hurt in a way that took effort to shove down and control.
After everything they had learned, Orion had still jumped in front of Sentinel. Selling out their planet, ripping out their t-cogs, working them to death. None of that seemed to matter to Orion. Megatron couldn’t fathom it, that it was more important for Orion to stop Megatron from being too rough with the source of all the evil in their society than it was for them to get justice, to put a stop to it. The fight was a smear in his memory core. Only when he took in the sight of Orion’s shattered body, did time stand still and all those little details, all the damage, gleamed like stars.
He would not ever be able to understand, why Orion really did it. That was something else he had condemned to the abyss. It was- It was so foolish and unnecessary and at its spark, cruel. Maybe the truth need more time to sink in. It was hard to deconstruct hero-worship. Maybe, if Megatron had just held on, had not given in to spiteful hurt, had given Orion time, maybe in the aftermath…
It did nothing for him to entertain that. They had made their choices. Orion had looked equal parts horrified and empty. The shot had been an accident, but that didn’t matter, not really.
There was too much to think about to focus on sparking blue optics and a rapidly disappearing form. He pushed it so far down that it pustulated, and did his best to ignore the sticky, tacky grief that gummed up the circuitry deep in his belly.
He was surrounded by screaming, cheering, some of it triumphant, some of it a deep, animal terror. Good. Supporters of Sentinel should be scared. It was only disappointing that so many mechs he knew fell into that category.
B-127 and Elita One had been thrown into the abyss after Orion. Everything had happened so fast. They had been fools, clawing foolishly at his cannon, acting like he was the monster, as if Orion had not willingly taken a shot for the most wretched mech that Cybertron had ever produced, as if that sacrifice had been something noble instead of idiotic.
Even his acquaintances and friends from the mine. Many of them flocked to his side, but a significant portion of them cowered or clung to the old order, one held up by the deception of Sentinel. It was difficult to tell the difference, and more than once, Megatron killed on principle alone, disgusted with the simpering no matter what the cause.
Megatron snarled, flinging a body aside. Above him, some of the old guard were tearing down another statue of Sentinel. Megatron had not realized how thoroughly Sentinel had plastered his arrogance over Iacon until they had started their cleanse of the city.
Megatron stalked down another street. When they were reasonably sure that they had cleared the city of enemies, then they could rebuild properly.
There was a shift, a scattering of falling rock. Megatron whipped around.
Nothing. A rubble strewn alley.
He strode forward. It was still satisfying, his new strength. It took no effort to toss aside a metal sheet, a chunk of the nearby shattered building. Curled underneath it was Jazz. He scuttled back, cowering low to floor.
He did not look good. He was missing the portion of leg that he had lost in the mine accident. That was- that had happened so recently, not even a week. The reattachment did not have the time fully set.
“Ha!” Jazz laughed, high pitched, stressed. He scooted back, stump leg dragging. He was dented, all over, loose wires sparking. There was a crack in his visor, and when he looked at Megatron, he was slightly off. “Hey D! Uh, Megatron. Don’t mind me.”
“What are you doing?” Megatron snapped. Jazz flinched, and the simmering rage that had been thrumming through him since the reveal of Sentinel’s betrayal spiked.
“Trying not to die,” Jazz said.
Megatron leaned down, reaching for him, but Jazz apparently still had some quickness in him. He fumbled, clattering back over another pile of rumble.
“I’m good!’ Jazz said. “No really. You go on.”
“That is the same thing you said in the cave.”
“Yeah, but I’m not lying to seem heroic this time.”
Megatron considered him. Jazz had been part of the fight, whooping in glee as he spun through the air, taking out Sentinel’s drones. This was the first time Megatron had seen him since then.
He had been willing to rise up against Sentinel with the news of his betrayal. That was enough to spare him for now. Megatron did not want another one of his former friends to be a spineless traitor.
“I am going to take you to the medical pavilion,” he said. “You are bleeding out.”
“Nah,” Jazz said. He lurched back again, close to an edge, a slide into the lower levels of Iacon. “Can’t. Gotta find Prowl.”
There was a fissure of terror in his voice. Jazz glanced up at him and then away. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen him, huh?”
“No.” Megatron said. He had not been close to Prowl, had only really known of him. The mech was standoffish, close to only a select few and preferring to keep to himself in the background. He was close to Jazz, had rushed to his side after the accident, quick to hold his hand in a paltry offer of comfort.
Jazz muttered something under his breath. “Yeah, okay,” he said, louder. “Well, I’m gonna keep at it. I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.”
“No. You are no help to him like this.” Megatron reached for him, but Jazz eeled back, deftly grabbed a rail on the side of the building, he dangled, a decent drop below him. He had no leg. How was he moving so quickly? Megatron growled. “Jazz!”
“I’m finding him,” Jazz said, stubborn. “We got separated in the chaos. He’s okay. He’s gotta be.” But his mouth trembled, betraying his lack of confidence.
Jazz glanced down, planning his new route. Megatron shifted, ready to grab at him and put an end to this foolishness.
Then Jazz looked at him, really looked. Megatron stilled.
“You and your new buddies really don’t give a frag about who you hurt,” Jazz said, and there was a desperate hate on his faceplate. “S’all well and good to fire all willy-nilly. Destroy… Whatever it is you’re trying to destroy. Who cares? If mechs don’t wanna get hurt, they just gotta get out of the way. It really didn’t take you long to forget what it’s like to be cogless, huh?”
Megatron froze. Jazz was so small now, compared to him. Still tiny, his frame full of soft curves, nothing sharp or dangerous about him. No wheels or jets to help him move quickly enough to avoid falling rubble.
“I still can’t believe you let Orion fall like that,” Jazz said, not hiding his bewildered hurt and betrayal. “D-16,” he added, voice full of venom.
That was enough to break him out of his stupor. He roared, lunging for Jazz, but Jazz let go, sliding down and catching at another railing so he could fling himself into a hole in another building. Megatron powered up his cannon, swinging out over the side of the fall so he had a better aim. He fired. The building vaporized where he hit it, and it started to collapse in on itself, the support structure ruined. Megatron kept firing until it was just another massive pile of rubble, the air hazy with dust and grit.
There was no small black helm, no familiar blue visor. He hoped Jazz had been crushed, but the rubble pile he had just made was too large to justify wasting the time it would take to check. Jazz would likely die from his injuries soon enough anyway.
Time passed. The number of corpses to dispose of increased. Megatron’s spark lurched every time he saw a blue helm, a red pauldron. Finials. Orion lurked in every corpse, and it was maddening. It was worst when it just the same facial expression, that slack look of betrayal and disbelief. Sometimes they spoke to him in Orion’s voice, a thin and patchy, and full of accusation.
“You let go,” Orion said, every time, everywhere Megatron saw him, in the corpses, in his dreams, in the screaming.
He did let go, and he would do it again. Orion only wanted to stop him, and now was the time to rid themselves of obstacles.
Megatron had rounded up the Sentinel supporters, had sent them to the mines. No more energon would be sent to the Quintessons, but they still needed energon for their own health. Let him put them through when they had put him and his fellow miners through. The ground constantly rumbled, collapsing more buildings as the inexperienced prisoners triggering explosions in the unstable, unrefined energon. It only lessened when some of the miners were sent back in. If they did not want to be liberated then let them rot in the prison of their own making.
There was much to do Megatron ended each day exhausted, pushing himself to the brink. Then he wouldn’t dream.
Things were slowly settling into Megatron’s control, but just when he thought that it was finally coming together, did the traitors start to fight back in earnest, guerilla fighters, popping in and out to break and hinder Megatron’s plans, and it was infuriating. He had wanted the rot in Cybertron to begin and end with Sentinel, but clearly that was just more of his naivety.
But he was glad to have something hit, when the frustration and rage burned too hot for him to contain.
Mechs were hoarding energon. The mines weren’t producing, not with the incompetence of the prisoners, not after they had destroyed several rich veins with their foolishness. And it was infuriating, mechs needed to come to heel. They had other problems. They did not have the full specifics of the deal Sentinel had made with the Quintessons. When the next shipment of energon was not delivered, would the old war break out again? They had to be prepared. They needed weapons, needed fighters, needed those who would do what needed to be done.
Megatron was slowly but surely wrestling Iacon into a sense of order.
It felt good. Pockets of calm were growing. There were still rebels - Jazz was one of them, the slagger was confirmed to be alive - but it was controllable. They could focus on what was next, defending their home from the Quintessons, and making sure that no Cybertronian ever fell under tyranny again.
Megatron was talking with Shockwave, the mech had a knack for science and weaponry, when Soundwave commed him about a disturbance, something Megatron needed to check out himself.
Of course, it was at that pedestal at the base of Sentinel’s tower. Megatron had refused to look at that area. He had his speeches there, had hung Sentinel’s body there before having it smelted down. But he refused to look at it. It was a smear of color and light and roaring crowds, not a place in his memory. If he focused on the details, he focused on other things, things that crippled him, that wanted to hold him back, that wanted claw him open.
But acknowledging that place’s effect on him would be to acknowledge the cause of that effect, and so Megatron did not hesitate, leaving Shockwave to their plans.
It did not take long.
The road built itself in front of him, and as he came into view of Sentinel’s tower, of the pedestal where everything went wrong, he caught a flash of red and blue, and it did not phase him, not initially, but the colors cleared into a figure. The silhouette was not quite right, and he had merely fallen prey to his overactive imagination once again. But there were two familiar figures with him, pink and yellow.
The mystery mech held something shining. Around them, planet was starting to glow and rumble, and, unbelievably, the rivers of energon started to fill.
He landed on the platform of the pedestal. The figure turned.
Orion Pax, upgraded by the matrix of leadership, looked at him.
Those terrible eyes. There was no liveliness in that face, no poorly contained desire for mischief. Megatron couldn’t speak. They stared at each other, the moment stretching and twisting and contorting as his nightmares, his fear of Orion’s reproach folded itself onto reality.
“You let go,” Orion said at last, and every ounce of condemnation struck true.