shadow_vector | Gathering Storm

PG
IDW: Megatron Origin
Megatron
angst, spoilers for Megatron Origin
written for a prompt 'Megatron/Thundercracker be my strength' and

tf_speedwriting prompt of Katrina (hence, the title) Because I iz efficient like that. Or something.
Wordcount 902
Time: 1:03

Megatron went rigid, inwardly shaken by the news. Senator Ratbat. This whole time. The whole thing had been a manipulation. HE had been manipulated. “Acknowledged,” he murmured softly, his vocalizer out of tune from recharge.

Of course. He was what, after all? Only a miner. Obsolete. His function replaced by mere, unsentient automation. A pit fighter, who called himself a gladiator, wrapping the brutality of it—from which he had once hesitated—in pretention as though it made it better, more noble.

He bit his lip, chewing on a bitter and oily taste. Betrayal. Or near betrayal. He had dared to trust, and though in the end Soundwave had chosen him over the senator, the fact that the game had been so deep that he had not even seen the pieces disturbed him.

Recharge had fled, entirely. Megatron pushed off his berth, feeling his weight hit the floor as though he weighed more than usual. As though something substantial and dense had come to roost on him. He slipped, as quietly as he could, through the recharge-hummed quiet of the rooms in his small underground base, his red optics more accustomed than anyone else here at penetrating the dark.

The literal dark, of course. This metaphorical darkness still blinded him. And would be, he thought, a dangerous undoing.

This was his new reality. This was his new world. Not miner. Not gladiator. But not politician. Never that route. Starscream’s game he had seen through, had trusted that the glossy, earnest young jet’s frantic genuflection when they’d first met wouldn’t crumble in the face of punishment. A risk, but unlike with Soundwave, a risk he’d known he was taking.

Politics. All of it a game. A filthy game of lies and long manipulations and buried motives that made the simple, short viciousness of the arena seem almost clean and honest by comparison. Disgusting. His hands had been stained with energon, but in their own way, they had been clean.

Until now, when the lure for power began whispering in his audio, sweet, susurrus sounds of what he might accomplish not for others but for himself. Power he might attain, gather, wield, for no greater purpose than his whims.

That…scared him, as much as he still had the capacity to fear. He had long ago lost the fear of death. The arena sapped that from one as an unnecessary and dangerous distraction. Fear of pain, he had lost in the mines, where one slip of equipment could gouge deep into one’s armor. No enemy outside could destroy him. Only from within.

Only from within.

He looked down at the blue frame curled into an exhausted ball by his foot, just inside the door to the small room the Seekers had reserved for themselves, claiming some obscure aristocratic privilege and privacy. He had let them—they had been useful and more, and had earned their privileges. And would keep earning them, he hoped. Because that old way of lineal privilege was dead now—brittle bones supporting the dry and desiccated corpse of the Senate, the marrow hollowed out by mechs who clutched corruption like a perquisite.

Reward must be earned.

For them, and for himself. He listened to their recharging motors, three different pitches of soft sound, related, like notes in a chord. Together and yet individual. And when together, perhaps, something greater.

The room smelled faintly of burnt fuel and heat-scorched thrust-vector cowling, a sensory testimony to how hard all of them had fought in the past decacycle. This, Megatron thought, stepping backwards out of the threshold, is important. This is a reminder. That we can do more than we thought we could, push ourselves harder, if we have something worth believing in. I fought first because my way of life was threatened; then because I thought it was power in its own right. Now…I must fight for something outside myself.

I must remember that, he thought. That is their strength; that shall be my strength. That is what shall save me from simply replacing a corrupt oligarchy with a self-twisted demagogue. Their willing giving of their strength, their solid faith in him, he thought, was a source of power deeper and greater than the hot crackling splash of energon on his fingers. Greater than life-over-death was the power to command faith and obedience and honor.

This one, he thought, looking down at Thundercracker, his miner’s optics pulling out the details in a complicated mesh of angles, doubts. And his doubts shall be the surest level I have, the counterbalance to ambition, most trusted because most obvious.

He turned back, as quietly as he could on his heavy heels, looking around the cramped rooms as he passed again, through the enveloping darkness. Too small, too cramped, already reeking of too many mechs in too close contact. Soon, though, he thought, soon we move forward. No longer hiding in darkness, but opening to the light; no longer feeding off scraps and killing ourselves—as we have done for aeons--at the amusement and whims of others, but taking with force and confidence. Living, with the full force and vibrancy of life that knows how closely death shadows it.

And he felt the darkness seem to grow and swell around him, like a cloak, like a velvety presence of a power large and old and incorruptible, like the gathering clouds of a terrible but beautiful storm.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

crimsonseastorm.livejournal.com

*flails* Oh this is awesome. A truly terrific glimpse of Megatron's motivations and inner turmoils. It's so interesting how he sees Thundercracker's doubts; most would see it as weakness but it just seems to make Megatron more self-aware, more driven.

*happy squee*

I wish I didn't fail so hard at saying how awesome this is 8D