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niyazi-a.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
shadow_vector2010-10-01 08:50 am
Coward
Bayverse, post ROTF
Megatron/Starscream
refs to noncon dom/sub humil
“You have missed me, have you not?” Megatron purred into Starscream’s audio. The bronze jet’s face was crushed against a bulkhead, his injured arm twisted up so far behind his back that the barbs jabbed into one of his engine mounts.
He ground his mouthplates together. He would not lie. He would not. He turned his face into the cold metal, as if that were the reason he could not speak.
Megatron laughed, the sound a greasy dark echo from Starscream’s long past, when he had been dazzled by the Lord Protector’s attentions. When he had taken the pain as a sign of his weakness that he needed to purge, something to rid himself of to be truly worthy, truly a warrior.
No, he had not missed that. In the intervening aeons, he had come into his own, he had grown, and claimed the warrior legacy he had always longed for. Pain was wisdom to him now, but no longer a friend.
“Speechless, are you?” Megatron’s voice was silky, his hand, with a hateful familiarity, stroked down Starscream’s rib strut. Reclaiming his right, attempting to reclaim who he was through who he had been, what he had possessed. “What was that you said, back on that filthy slag ball? ‘Cowards do survive’?”
Starscream shuttered his optics, as if that would do anything to blank out the present. As if that did anything other than make the past wash up over him, like an acid scorching into his systems. Yes. Speechless. It was better this way. Bitter humor, acrid irony. A broken-hearted smile pushed into the silent, immovable beam, that would keep his secret, witness his abjection.
The possessive hand curled around his hip. He squirmed, trying to twist his body away from the hateful remembered touch of the unfamiliar claw. A thigh bumped against his, driving him forward. His cockpit grated against the bulkhead. Megatron’s rage slammed against him like a palpable force, heating with insult. He barely dared to ventilate, as if the slightest move could tip the balance. Megatron had already beaten him, his armor dented, battered, the polish he had kept with such…vanity, as a sign of his warrior’s pride, honor, a sign of his fitness to lead, clouded and scraped and marred.
“Say something,” Megatron ordered, offended by Starscream’s silence, as if his choice not to speak were an act of defiance. In a way it was, but it was more an attempt to defy reality. “SAY SOMETHING.”
“Yes, my lord,” he croaked, the words tumbling like jagged stones from his vocalizer.
“Did you enjoy that?” Megatron hissed.
“Enjoy…what?” Starscream twisted, trying to release some of the tension from his pinioned shoulder. Megatron’s claw dug into his interface hatch, brutal, causing him to cry out in pain.
“That!” Megatron roared, his voice so loud that it buzzed out the jet’s audio. “That pitiful spectacle of my betrayal!”
Starscream writhed again. “No!” he gasped.
“Yes,” Megatron corrected. “You did. But let me tell you something.” The pincer tightened on Starscream’s wrist, the sharp edges beginning to bite into the jet’s armor. “Learn your lesson from the end of it. Those who betray me pay with their lives.”
That..wasn’t the lesson Starscream would have pulled from the events. The Fallen had not gone down at Megatron’s hands. But he knew when it was unwise to argue. He could feel the insanity roil against him. That thing he had been denying for ages. That seed he thought he had seen in the latter days on Cybertron, as Megatron hoarded himself more and more in his chamber, his rules becoming stricter and more didactic, his punishments more brutal and out of measure. That, sparked by the Fallen’s voice, had not aged well through the incarceration in ice, the burial under the sea. The long, long abandonment. Glory, if there’d ever been any, had been twisted, blackened, stunted, deprived so long of contact, life, light.
There was danger Starscream was willing to confront, but the danger of the ancient insanity, like a dusty, vicious worm, was something he knew to avoid. Easier—though hard enough—to submit. He would live through it. Living with scars, seen and unseen, was better than the slow, pointless agony he knew Megatron could, would, happily inflict.
Megatron pulled against his hip, turning Starscream around, his broad wing slamming into the wall plating. He barely had a chance to feel his hand free before Megatron’s claw grasped at his throat. “You will not betray me,” he said. Almost disappointed, as if Starscream’s self-loathed loyalty deprived him of a chance, a treat, a rare pleasure.
“Never,” Starscream said. He forced his optics still and calm. He was a warrior. He had learned dignity. He had learned pride. He had learned these in Megatron’s absence. He would not lose them, would not put them aside or step back from them. Or else the label of ‘warrior’ was a lie.
“You will give me what I want.” Megatron’s hand raked down roughly over Starscream’s interface hatch. The jet went rigid with pain, his mouth working, hands coming up, curling around Megatron’s strangling claw. The pain and humiliation and helplessness on his face seemed like nourishment to Megatron, his optics drinking it in greedily. “You will.”
“Yes,” he breathed. Hating his submission, but knowing it was needed. For the crew of the Nemesis, his for so long. For what he had gained, and what he had lost. For the cause. For his own crushed ambitions. For his hubris. Cowardice and courage masquerading as each other for so long the masks had gotten stuck.
As he’d said, the words soursweet and hard….cowards do survive.
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I don't think I've mentioned how much I like your movieverse Starscream. Nobody else writes him quite the way you do... he's a very complicated character!
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Your stories are express so much emotion in so few words.
Could you check the link for Missing - it seems to link to Coward.