Embers

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

Fandom:  Transformers IDW
Characters/Pairings:  Wing, Megatron, Starscream, Frenzy, Rumble
Rating:  NC-17
Warnings: sticky sex, mindfucking, noncon, dark
Prompt: Any characters, Tell me your deepest, darkest secrets and I will help you obtain their reality.  This is a rejected fill for my second dark_fest prompt.
Summary:  A young Knight has been captured in the early days of the war.



Wing fell, heavily, onto his knees as the Decepticon guards dropped him.  His wrists ached, bound tightly behind his back with a crude twist of wire.  His knees hurt. His wrists hurt. But more than that, the shock of shame: that he’d been caught, cornered, captured.

He’d let them down, the other Knights. All their training, all their warnings. And he’d broken them, flying off to help, without a partner, unattended.  

And he deserved this. That weight crushed him down worse than the heavy hand on his shoulder, hurt worse than the cutting contempt of the blue jet beside him, the pain from his damaged wing.  

“We figured you might want to see this yourself, Megatron,” the blue jet said.  

“This.” A shape in the shadows moved, red optics resolving from the gloom, like some creature making itself, coalescing from the darkness. “A jet. A civilian. I have seen both.” The tone was cold, dismissive.  

“You haven’t seen this, though.”  The white jet, the one who had called himself ‘Starscream’, stepped forward, holding out the Great Sword.

Wing bit down on a keen of pure agony, at the sight of his Sword in another’s hands.  His Sword.  Knights were allowed to own nothing, save the relic entrusted to them, bonded to them, spark and honor.  It hurt, just seeing it in another’s hands; and more, when the other mech reached out, a battered black-armored hand closing around the hilt.  

And not just any armored hand: Megatron’s.  His optics betrayed him to curiosity, even now, lifting off the blade, to study the face.  Oh he’d seen the warlord on the holovids. He’d seen Prowl’s triumphant record of the arrest, Megatron brought, presumably, low. And he had seen the kindling flames of defiance, a greater enmity, a greater purpose, burning in those red optics, hardening on that sneer that refused to be humiliated.

He had expected that: anger, defiance.  He did not expect the almost smug smile, the casual amusement with which he examined the sword.  “Archaic,” Megatron said, turning it over in his hands. He held it up, peering at the matrix crystal. “Pretty.”

Wing twitched, unable to restrain himself as Megatron tapped the crystal with one careless finger.

The motion caught Megatron’s attention, the smirk spreading, warm and somehow sharp, like an oiled blade. “Yours,” he said, simply.

Wing nodded.

A laugh. “No longer.”

“I know.” The voice was a scraped-empty croak. Another thing he’d lost—deserved to lose. Another failure.  Again, he’d failed.  

“Can you even wield such a weapon?” Megatron asked.  It fit in his hand, comfortably.  

Wing gave another nod, miserable, his cortex feeding him memories: the weight of the sword in his hand, the smooth contact plates, the familiar blue glow of the activated blade, the light gleaming and catching in the bright glyphs. Gone.

“And what, exactly, are you?”

“A free Cybertronian.” He tipped his chin up. Not defiant, just…sure that in this he was right.

Another laugh. “I didn’t think there were such things anymore. Is everything about you archaic?”

Wing refused to rise to the obvious bait. He wasn’t ashamed of what he was. The Knights were all that was good and true in Cybertron, a light that burned even brighter as the Senate had fallen into disarray, city after city into chaos.  “It would be sad if freedom were archaic,” he said, quietly.

“Freedom,” Megatron spat, “has always been a myth, an illusion.” The vehemence in his tone struck Wing like a slap, stinging over his sensor net.  The larger mech shifted his gaze to the other jets. “Leave us.”

“Megatron,” the larger white jet protested. “He could be an assassin, sent to kill you.”

Megatron’s optics raked over Wing. “I would not deserve to lead if I could not protect myself from one such…assassin.”  Cold words, meant to hurt.

A hesitation from the jets, before they left, the blue one’s hand squeezing painfully into Wing’s shoulder manifold, waiting until he saw the wince of pain before he released his grip, turning to follow the other.

Megatron waited, as the footsteps receded into silence. “Rise,” he said, idly, moving to settle himself on a table, resting one hip, one thigh, along the surface.

Wing struggled to his feet, his bound wrists making balance a tricky thing.  Even standing, Megatron sitting, the Decepticon was taller: Wing’s optics were on a level with the purple insignia the Decepticons had claimed as their rallying symbol. He said nothing, too wrapped in the weight of his own situation to manage a riposte, feeling the other’s optics studying him.

“Now,” Megatron said, holding out the Sword. A taunt: Wing’s wrists were bound behind him. “A civilian does not carry such a weapon.”  

“No,” Wing admitted.

“Then.” He turned the blade over, letting the scant light gloss over the carved glyphs: older than Wing, older than Cybertron, if one believed the Teachings. “What are you, jet?”

This was Megatron, Wing thought, turning his face up to the larger mech. This is Megatron, the one who ordered the maelstrom of Altihex. The one who took from you your life, your friends, your happiness. You should hate him.  You should fear him. He is the source of all your pain, all your loss.

…he is what brought you to the Knights.

And the Knights did not lie.  Nor did they divulge their secrets.

“Wing,” he said, quietly. “I am Wing.”

[***]

“I will know what you know.”  The words haunted Wing’s cortex, scurrying around like turborats in the darkness, the false glints of light one only saw in total darkness, the deep timbre of Megatron’s voice the perfect pitch of shadows.  
He’d lost track of time down here, held in the darkness. Hunger had become like a stranger who had sidled up in the dark, turning into a sharp, aching fog that filled his joints, the empty crevices of his body, and the two—starvation and darkness both—became the confines of his world, even narrower and all-encompassing than the small duct they had shoved him in.  
He was so muffled in this agony that the slice of light over his optics didn’t register for a handful of kliks, his optics wide and spiraled to lowlight.  Shapes moved, and a sound assaulted his audio. It took him a moment to recognize it as his own name.  And by then, a hand had reached in, wrist scraping against the top of the duct, hauling him out by hooking around his arm.

Wing made a plaintive wail at the sudden pain—the light, the pavement grating under his chassis.  It was an inchoate sound, a shapeless lump of pain.  

“Eh. Get up.  Come on. He wants to see you.”

There was no need to specify ‘he’. There was only one ‘he’ here spoken of in those respectful tones. Wing struggled, his vertical stabilizers leaving red streaks on the pavement as he staggered to his feet.

One of the mechs caught at him: smaller than Wing, but sturdily built. “Took a lot out of you,” he said, wryly.

Wing gave an unsteady nod: no sense denying the truth. He stepped forward, feeling the two move around him, steadying his steps. It struck him as a strange sympathy, that they could have let him fall but didn’t.

Small sympathy, but one nonetheless.  He let them lead him up to a grav lift, wobbled at the unsteady thrust.  He had no words. He didn’t trust his vocalizer to speak. And…what could he say?

The grav lift stopped, and Wing felt the stirring of fresh air along his flight sensors, like a thousand light feathers tickling against him, beckoning him to flight.

He lacked the energy to even ignite his nacelles by this point, too weak to even hover.  So he trudged, heavily, after the smaller mechs, optics burning with despair.  

And he became aware, in that stir of air, of his own…reek.  He could think of no other word for it: a powerful, unwashed, unmaintained stench, sharp and bitter, with a rancid tang of his untreated injuries.  He quailed before her own filth, even before he saw the bulk of Megatron, silhouetted in what Wing’s sensors recognized as the coral-violet of sunset.  
He hungered for the sky, his shattered wings twitching with yearning.

“Wing.”  The voice, the one from his memories.  And he realized this was but a further cruelty, a show of what he had lost.  Wing stumbled forward, crushed under a blow of despair. And this time, a large hand caught him, hauled him up as though he weighed nothing.  

That same, too patient smirk. “I imagine your kind. You must miss the sky.”  The large hand curled around his Great Sword’s attachment point, holding Wing upright, the hand squeezing hard enough to strain the mounting.

He did. The sky called to him, air swirling around him, stirring the fetid odor of his too-long-unmaintained self.  It seemed to whirl around him, dizzying his cortex, the rooftop’s cinder-coated surface seeming to reach up to him.

A hard jolt against him, Megatron’s arm blocking his fall. “Weren’t made for underground,” he observed, as though this made Wing inferior.

Wing didn’t care. He was inferior. He was weak, his systems parched with want.  The sky sang to him, the thin violet fingers of sunset stroking over his armor.

A snort, and Wing felt his world lurch and spin, the rooftop seeming to rise to swallow him, black and ominous.

A vibration against him, the blackness swirling, coalescing. And a touch on his chin, rough, tugging his chinplate down.
A garble of sound, and then a crashing rush of energon over his glossa, sweet and tingling and warm. His visual field pixilated down, finer and finer in resolution, to see Megatron kneeling over him, an emergency ration of energon—flightgrade—in one hand, the other cupping Wing’s helm.  

Wing tried to squirm back, away, but was still too weak to move, the energy still making its slow, burning way down his systems.

“More,” Megatron said, the tone an order. Wing tried to turn his face away, but his body’s need overrode him and his mouth tipped up, wanting the fuel.  

A lopsided smile on Megatron’s face, as though unaccustomed to this kind of smile, as he held the ration up, squeezing more of it into Wing’s mouth.  Wing knew what it was, knew what this was about: deprive him, disorient him, and then be the hand that brought stability, plenty. He knew how it worked.

It didn’t stop it from working, didn’t stop the warm rush of something akin to gratitude above his spark.  He shuddered, energon permeating his systems.  His optics focused on the other’s face, the red optics limning the heavy shape against the sunset glow.  

“We  leave in the morning,” Megatron said.  

“We.” The word was chalky and thin through his underpowered vocalizer.  

Megatron reached over, idly wiping a drip of energon from Wing’s lip plate. It was almost tender—deliberately so, Wing thought. Another calculated move, that he was powerless to resist.

“You have a choice.  Although,” the optics lifted, to the distant, dark horizon, neither day nor night, but the line between, “it is not much of one.”

“I go with you or you kill me.”

A chuckle, like the sound that had haunted the darkness of the duct.  “Astute.”  

Wing shivered.  He knew the right answer, he knew that dying was his only option, letting the Circle’s secrets die with him the only safety. He knew the right answer. And he couldn’t lie: the protocols of the Circle insisted.  But his body had tasted death, and now was parched with it, soaking in the small droplets of life, from Megatron’s hand.
And he couldn’t lie, but he hated himself, shuttering his optics as he murmured, “Take me.”

[***]

Take me.  

Megatron had taken that as an invitation, hot and raw. He’d taken Wing right then, right there, on the cusp of incapacity, body driving into the smaller mech’s, armor scraping over the battered once-white plates, Wing’s gritted-shut optics and mewls of pain and shamed pleasure some sort of potent aphrodisiac. The sun had set, and Megatron’s heaving body, the broad, massy shapes, became Wing’s whole world, the spike stabbing into him an echo of the sharpsweet energon on his mouth, the world around them glittering with red stars.

Wing arched up, the overload tearing through him, jagged claws of ecstasy scoring lines of fire down his frame, as he buried a cry in the other’s shoulder.

That deep laugh, felt above, felt within, and Wing realized that he had been utterly subsumed, and he realized that the dancing red lights around them were not stars, but embers of the burning city.

[***]

They moved, base to base, never staying for longer than a decacycle in one place.  Advance? Retreat? Wing didn’t know. He was allowed to move in the light now, but he kept himself, in that, in the dark, fearful he might let something slip about his origin, his kind.  

And he?  He was merely a silent witness, a mute pet, sitting at Megatron’s feet when he held audience, standing behind him as he surveyed his troops. And, at night, lying beneath him, absorbing his lust, his hard desires.  It was the price of his life, the small toll to his small freedom.  

“Wing.”  Megatron breathed his name, something almost like an endearment, his hand stroking over the intricate plates of the jet’s Altihexian armor.  

“Yes.”  The only word he seemed to know, these days, everything passing in a numbed haze of obedience, of deliberately not seeing, not knowing, not recognizing what he did for what it was: cheap, tawdry, an exchange of dignity, a blaspheming of the sacred, for mere existence.

“Tell me,” Megatron murmured, leaning forward, a gentle ex-vent stirring the air down Wing’s interface-heated chassis.
“Tell you what?” A delay, a stall. He knew the question was coming, knew the answer he couldn’t give. And knew, too well, what his refusal would get him—thrown, held down, forced, violated. It was interrogation become a game, a strange foreplay; Megatron aroused by his refusal.  But it was like flying: sometimes the stall was thrilling, pushing yourself beyond endurance, feeling gravity assert itself, master your thrust.

That velvet laugh, one hand propping up his head while he stroked the other down Wing’s side, reaching behind him to tweak his folded wings.  “Tell me what you want. Freedom?” He tugged at the wing. “Would you like to fly again, little jet?”

“No.” What freedom did he have? What could he want? Altihex was gone, destroyed by Megatron’s command if not his hand; the Circle would refuse him reentry. He had no use for freedom.  

“No?”  The hand moved down, stroking silkily down his silver thigh.  “Power.”

Wing shook his head. What use was power? Unless it was the power to go back, be stronger, let death take him in its claws, succumb to starvation.  

One large knee took the place of the hand, pushing between his thighs. Not asserting, just claiming. For now. “Tell me, then, Wing.” The hand reached up, stroking over his audial fin, down his chin, one fingertip grazing his throat’s exposed cables, in that half-erotic, half-threatening touch. “Tell me your darkest secret.”

“I have no secrets.”

“You hate me.”  A curl of a smile, as though the idea were amusing. And no doubt it was: the power to control something that hates you, the power to compel it to ecstasy, to bend it to serve your desires.  Wing didn’t want power, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t recognize it in all its twisted might.

“Yes.” The truth, a shameful one: Knights didn't hate. He couldn’t lie. And he realized in that truth lay another, like a dark gem in the night-colored petals of a malignant flower: that he hated himself far worse.  Megatron had brought down Altihex: Wing had ruined himself.  And all only for a feeble scrap of life.

But that was no secret, no lie, only a misshapen, ugly truth he had avoided looking upon.

Megatron purred, sliding his weight over Wing’s, as though pinning him to his body, confining him to his shape with pressure and pain.“Tell me what you are.”

“I am nothing,” Wing said, and it was the truth. He could not lie.