Broken Halo

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW/Megatron Origin-ish
Wing, Megatron
no warnings.
Imagine if Wing had met Megatron before the Knights had made their decision to leave.  They're both very, very young. 
L-lol VERY loosely based on tf_speedwriting prompt.

 

“Protests. Really.”  Megatron was amused.  Protesters.  It was…laughable.  The official security forces hadn’t been able to shut down the Arena, but a bunch of ragtag, unarmed civilians, carrying signs, thought they could.  Symptom, he thought, of everything wrong with Cybertron. 

Rumble laughed. “Yeah, they have demands or some slag.” He snorted, showing this familiarity with Megatron because he’d earned it, been there from the beginning. 

“Demands.” 

Frenzy corrected. “Requests, the lead mech called them. Guess it’s more, ya know, ‘polite’ that way.”

Requests.  This was a farce.  But. Megatron could use some distraction. “Let him in.”

“You can’t be serious!” 

And it was a sign of his familiarity with the two little former convicts that he tolerated their insolence.  They kept him steady, reminding him of where he came from. “I am pretty sure I can handle…one protester.” 

Rumble chortled. “Think so, too, boss.”   He ambled off, returning a few kliks later with, apparently, their chosen emissary.

Megatron felt a strange shock, like a creature from another world had descended into the mines.  The visitor was blindingly white, some sort of jet frame, but unlike the Vosian trine Soundwave had recruited for him, the wings folded flat against his backframe, engines on his shoulder assembly.  He barely reached Megatron’s shoulder, but…not many mechs did that anyway.  What was different was the fearless glow in the golden optics. Not challenging, not attempting to push down. Just…not afraid.

Interesting.  “Your name?” 

“Wing.”  The voice was a warm, cultured tenor, in which Megatron could read almost an entire history, thanks to Soundwave’s tutelage.  Education, luxury. Ideals. Always, Megatron thought, ideals.  This…Wing inclined his white helm. “And you are, of course, Megatron.”

Megatron snorted. “Seen it on the wanted posters, have you?” Deliberately pitching his voice low and crass and raw. 

“And…other places.”

Megatron laughed. “Know your enemy,” he said.

“You are not my enemy.”

Megatron leaned forward. “Are you so sure?” The cannon loomed on his forearm. 

Wing smiled. “You are not my enemy,” he said, calmly.  “Am I yours? It is a difference.”

One of those silver-glossa’d philosophers, Megatron thought. Ideas, words, intangibles.  “Is that what you came here for? Word games?”  He made a derisive sound. “I have no time for games.”

“But you have time to allow mechs to slaughter each other…for profit.”

Megatron’s optics brightened ominously. And he, too, could play word games. In his fashion. “Allow.”

“Surely, without this arena, this…bloodsport—“

“They’d starve,” Megatron said.  “They’d die unknown, unmourned. Here, they have a chance to live, and if they must die, they will at least be known.”  It was more than he would have faced, when C-12 shut down. Slow, forgotten death had stared them all in the face that day. Until the shooting had started.

“That’s…the best you can offer them?  Death as sport?”

“Do not judge me, stranger,” Megatron said.  “Or them. You have no right.”

“I have every right,” Wing said, glowing with a strange intensity. “I cannot stand by while my society celebrates torture as entertainment.”

“But you stood by, buried in your ivory towers, “ Megatron said, standing up abruptly, “while we were ignored, while we suffered. And when we make a stand, take a chance to snatch some of the plenty that has been dangled, glittering, in front of our starved optics, our hungry mouths….” He dropped into a growl, moving closer, letting the smaller jet feel the mass and power of his movements.  “…you dare to judge us.”  His chin armor nearly struck his chassis as he looked down at the white jet, whose head tilted up to his, open and clear. 

“I do not judge. I question.”  A glimmer of defiance.

“And what do you question, Wing.”  A hint in the flat intonation.

“I question the commodification of suffering.” 

“What do you know of suffering, jet?”  Megatron studied the white armor in front of him. Undented, unmarred. Perfect.  Beautiful.  He felt a feral urge to damage it.  Just as a lesson…perhaps to both of them.  One hand floated up, over one of the pinions of the shoulder nacelle. 

“Are you judging me?” Wing’s optics glinted with amusement.

“Evading.” 

Wing laughed. Laughed.  In front of Megatron. He dared.  A rage born of some ancient injury, a lifetime of disrespect, dismissal, boiled up from within him.  Megatron’s arm lashed out, for that bright face, those optics the color of a sun he’d barely seen in all his days in the mines.  And Wing….

…wasn’t there.  There was a flash of white, and Wing was simply…on the other side of Megatron’s arm.  “Evading,” Wing said, quietly.

Megatron snarled, sweeping forward with his other arm.  Wing spun down, and out of the way, coming up somehow behind him.  Megatron whirled. 

“You cannot destroy what you cannot touch,” Wing said.

Megatron smirked, sending the command to his pulse cannon, arming it with an ominous hum. He raised his forearm. “I don’t need to touch you to destroy you.” 

“Do you need to destroy me? Am I, and my words, such a threat to you?”  The wings flared behind the mech, in preparation, it seemed, for launch.  Like a jet, Megatron thought, mercurial, unpredictable, shifting the conversation to his own ends.

“You are no threat to me.”  The jet was fast, he’d admit that. But he had no integrated weapons.  Useless.  Fragile.

“Your stance would say otherwise, Megatron,” Wing said, softly, his optics downcast, leaching any sharpness from the rebuke.

Megatron lowered his arm, self-consciously, painfully aware that he was allowing himself, in a way, to be led by the small, white jet.  “And yours?” he countered. “What does your stance say?” 

Wing laughed. “That when one runs one’s vocalizer, one sometimes best be prepared to run?”

And just like that, the tension broke, Wing’s laughter this time shattering the hardness over Megatron.  “You might,” he said, “learn discretion.”

“And risk being misunderstood?”  Wing smiled, the pinions of his nacelles sleeking down, relaxed, straightening from his taut crouch. 

Megatron laughed. He did, after all, admire courage, whatever cause it supported. “And what is it you don’t want me to misunderstand?” 

“That some of us do not want you to fight.”

“Autobots.” Megatron walked by Wing, dismissing him.

“No.  We do not want war. Nor,” he said, before Megatron could interject, “do we want things to stay the same. There must be change, but…fighting is not the way.”

“It is the only way they’ll listen.” He turned, looking over his shoulder at the jet.

“Yes,” Wing said. “Perhaps you needed to get their attention, but you have it now.  And you can change now.”

“Change,” Megatron spat.  “Why should I change? I am, after all, what they made me.”

Wing hesitated, stepping closer, and then daring—daring—to place one small hand on Megatron’s forearm. “And when do you become what you make yourself?”

Megatron snatched the hand from his armor, nearly crushing it in his larger fingers.  He felt the metal plates whine together, just enough to start pain. He knew by now, to a fine calibration, the infliction of pain. He saw it lance across the white jet’s face, his golden optics clouding momentarily.  “Whenever I choose,” he said, the statement carrying a dual meaning.

“And what will you choose?” Wing’s voice was barely a whisper. 

“I will not,” Megatron said, “close the Arena.  I will not give the Autobots their means to starve us yet again.”

“The deaths—,”

“Are no different than the deaths in any war, Wing.” He hadn’t said the word aloud before, hadn’t named this thing he was starting, had been building for all along.  War.  Change paid for in the lives of mechs, the highest price one could ask. 

“We want no part of this. But…we are not your enemies.”  And something kindled in the optics of the smaller mech, some admiration of the young whose experience has not caught up to his wisdom. 

Megatron grunted, releasing the smaller hand finally. “We will not engage your kind.” He knew as he spoke it how thin and unreliable a promise it was, but that it was, after all, an attempt.  And Wing realized it, too, nodding solemnly. “Is that all you want?”

And the golden optics flared, shyly, the wings ruffling behind the backframe, nervous, Megatron thought, for the first time. “No,” Wing said, his voice softer than air, “That is not all I want.”

 

Comments

[not-your-gun.livejournal.com]

*purrs* What a beautiful lead in...

It makes me want to know what happens next.

I like all the little details you throw in about the characters--the way they interact with those around them, the movements they make to convey emotions--its all very, very compelling. It's most interesting to think about all the things Megatron does between Origins and when we next see him (what is that, in Stormbringer technically?), and as odd as it is to see him and Wing in the same mix it's a combination that is really intriguing--both are young enough that they're learning from each other, and developing views for later.

There were a few awkward-flowing phrases, but they're things I'm sure you know about. I'm really looking forward to seeing more of your Wing~

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

L-lol I have no idea what happens next. The comm it's for has a rule about spending no more than 2 hours on a prompt and...that was 1:56. It was also supposed to be, uh, kind of sexy. Which it's...probably not :). (Hence some of the ungainly language and some pretty shoddy motivations, there.)


Obviously Megatron gets him to the Arena, they spar and then...friskiness ensues.

[femme4jack.livejournal.com]

Excuse me while I flail. This was amazing! And that is coherent as I can be this late :)

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

They're both at an interesting point in their lives here. I'm not sure the sexual tension came through but I tried.

[gatekat.livejournal.com]

Very cool. They're both so in character. In later years I think Wing would have gotten to Megs more.

Was Wing ever given a city of origin?

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

It's hard to tell. I think much past Stormbringer and Megatron wouldn't have heard him out, even as an amusement.

They're never given a city of origin, but the gold optics and the design (which he clearly has on Cybertron) indicate he's not from Vos.

[abarai-san.livejournal.com]

Is there more? I hope there's more. *waits eagerly* putting Megs and dear cryptic/gentle/Wing-ey Wing together in the same room... I love the result. :)

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what happens next! ;_;

[abarai-san.livejournal.com]

'Daww. Well, whether there is a sequel or not, 'twas a pleasure to read. :)

[anavidbookworm.livejournal.com]

Wing just seems to bring out the best reactions in people. This is an interesting take on this section of Cybertronian history. It does seem to be leading to something which just intrigues me more.