Fate's Cruelty

[heliopauseentertainments]

For FandomTrumpsHate 2025 & jariktig

Continuity: IDW1

Rating: Teen

Relationships: Megatron/Orion Pax

Characters: Orion Pax & Megatron

Warnings: Alternate Universe Canon Divergence, AU of an AU, Major Character Death, Minor Character Death, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Suicidal Thoughts, Suggestive Themes, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Terminal Illnesses, Weddings, Arranged Marriage

Summary: In which, despite adversity, Orion and Megatron make a life together.

Notes: Canonical to An Unfamiliar Battlefield

Crossposting: AO3 | Tumblr

Fic under cut. See AO3 for complete notes.

A cuffed miner, looking beaten up and worse for the wear with scrapes, dents, and healing cracks, was marched up to the captain’s desk by Springarm.

Unfortunately, Orion knew exactly why the poor mech could use a long date with a dent puller and a rotary buffer.

Releasing him from his unnecessary imprisonment wouldn’t quite make up for yesterday’s mistreatment at Whirl’s “hands” while confined, of course, but… it was the absolute least Orion could have done to rectify the situation. The bare minimum. Especially after it had been established that this prisoner had not been involved in the barroom brawl that had preceded his arrest.

“You must be Megaton.”

Megaton stared silently at him, optics a little hollow. He was probably still recovering from the beating. Not surprising after having to spend the whole night alone and bound before it had been brought to Orion’s attention this morning.

Or… he, like many others, had learned not to talk to law enforcement.

Orion couldn’t quite smile behind his mask as he held out Megaton’s confiscated datapad, but it seemed like the right time for a smile if he had had a mouth to do it with. A little encouragement in another otherwise uncomfortable situation. Uncomfortable for all involved.

When the item wasn’t immediately taken, Orion found himself fidgeting with the datapad, rubbing his thumb against the edge.

It was only right to return the datapad, especially after he had already read through most of it without the owner’s permission…. Not that he had strictly needed that when it came to examining “potential evidence.”

The datapad contained a political think piece, criticizing their planet’s theocratic government, occasionally framed by incisive poetry. Not too unusual, Orion thought. After all, everyone had thoughts like that in a world like theirs. It was normal, right? At least this brave spark had taken the time to write it down. Brave, but foolish; prosecutors loved paper trails. But by organizing his thoughts and recording what he believed, he was doing something, artfully at that. Everyone else just let those sorts of thoughts pass through through their processors unimpeded. Or tamped them down.

As a courtesy, Orion had merely noted down in the report that the item had merely been a “personal diary” without going into any further details of the contents. No use getting Megaton thrown before a Functionist tribunal over a little harmless venting.

However, now Orion could only hope the sound of a warm, friendly, and wholly imaginary smile would come through in the sound of his voice. He had been fervently avoiding getting a mouth, despite the recommendations of his physician for the past hundred or so years. It was an unnecessary complication where a simple fuel hole would suffice.

Meanwhile, all he received in exchange for the proffered item was an exhausted frown and frigid silence.

Unfortunately, Orion had forgotten that the prisoner was still cuffed, which would obviously make the datapad handover more than a little awkward.

He lowered his arm over the edge of the desk to make the datapad easier to reach.

“It’s Megatron, sir. T-R-O-N,” Springarm politely corrected.

Orion was 0 for 2 here. He’d better hurry up and get the situation over with before he struck out completely, a total embarrassment to the force.

He coughed, clearing his vocalizer apologetically as Megatron’s cuffed hands clumsily clasped the datapad to take it back.

“This is yours. I couldn’t help reading it—I hope you don’t mind.”

From the writings that Orion had managed to process, Megatron was clearly a pacifist who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time; as someone with those kind-sparked beliefs, he’d surely forgive Orion’s minor social miscalculations. Right? Hopefully.

It’d be a damn shame if they met again in better circumstances and all Megatron remembered of Orion was that he had been the socially awkward police captain who had made the situation supremely uncomfortable for everyone involved.

“Keep it up,” he said, before he could put his foot deeper into his proverbial mouth again.

Megatron, however, said absolutely nothing as Springarm led him outside to finalize the release.

 

---

 

Roughly elbowing the door open, Trailbreaker came back from the mail pickup run that Orion had sent him on a few hours ago. His visor was low over his optics and his hands were empty….

No, wait.

One hand had a box of a “cheap”—they still cost more than Orion would have wanted to pay—mixed engex beverage, the straw of which was lodged in Trailbreaker’s mouth.

He’d gotten into the bad habit of drinking those prettied-up rotguts ever since they had defended that one hot spot from Sentinel’s forces in Alyon. Roller was squarely to blame for getting Trailbreaker into it. At least the rest of the team abstained… where Orion could see it, anyway. His team was generally fairly good at keeping their personal vices private. And off-duty.

At least they had vices. His friends had things that brought them joy.

By comparison, Orion felt… boring. He had no hobbies. Free time felt like a waste that he could have spent doing something productive, accomplishing something. And yet it left him empty. The only things that ever stirred his passions these days was jumping into battle on contracts…

And the ever shrinking hope that Trailbreaker would one day bring him what he had been waiting for from the post office.

Orion sighed as he sat at his desk in their base, his hands folded together so that he didn’t clench them into fists in his frustration. No mail. Again.

One of the costs in their line of work was few public services being willing to work with a dubiously legal mercenary outfit—“private security contractors”—under assumed names currently based in a cheap warehouse in Rodion’s unfriendly outskirts.

Trailbreaker shrugged apologetically but said nothing else; there was nothing to say.

Whether Trailbreaker hadn’t checked—unlikely—or there had simply been no mail to collect—almost certainly, jobs were drying up lately—changed nothing. Orion, to his embarrassment, had… other postal concerns.

He tried to ignore the longstanding aggravation that had been building up with each mail run for the past…. He had lost count of how many runs it had been.

The disappointment was especially bitter when there was one piece of mail that he had been desperately waiting for…. Every week, Orion faced down the same harsh reality. A small shapeless glimmer of hope—slowly shrinking but never quite extinguishing—in his spark is all that stopped him from giving up altogether.

Megatron….

After getting thrown out of the Grand Imperium, Orion had taken the bold step of contacting him.

The words that Megatron had written in that “personal diary,” three questions critical of Senatorial power, had stuck with him. They still lived in his mind. Long after he had screamed them in a session of the Senate when their thugs had murdered his men and forcibly freed one of their own from his station’s cells.

To his surprise, Megatron had written back, interested in continued communication. Did Megatron, far away underground, even know the power his words had wielded, the lives irrevocably changed, before Orion had contacted him?

Before Orion had known it, countless letters had been shuttled back and forth over the years after Orion had forsaken his post as the station’s captain. Not as many letters as Orion would have liked, sure, but there had been the early bones of a solid… something. Friendship? Camaraderie? More, maybe, if he had dared to don the rose-tinted glasses. It was tempting, a type of bond he had never considered in his previously rigid life.

“I look forward to your letters.”

Of course, that was the polite thing to say when getting letters from anyone, but had Megatron actually meant it? Orion couldn’t allow himself to read too much into stock pleasantries. They could have meant anything. Nothing. Everything.

Had Megatron kept each of Orion’s letters secured in a locked box to read again like Orion had done?

“I’d like to hear more about your misadventures. A far more interesting way to spend time than breaking apart the cold stone walls here.”

Megatron had surely just been humoring him; no one really wanted to know the details of the missions Orion had gone on. Past… "conversational partners" had thought him… boring, especially as an officer. His career change hadn’t really shifted that perception.

“Misadventures” was, however, an appropriate word. There had been no other way to describe a plot involving a bomb hidden in a dead Prime's chest as opposed to a holy relic that was supposed to have been there.

“I feel like you understand.”

Another one that had taken Orion off guard, so blunt rather than the bitter poetic lines Megatron used to describe the ice earlier that same letter.

“If you were here, would the mining facility feel quite so much like a prison?” one of the last letters had said.

Orion hadn’t known how to answer that, how to interpret it. Had he meant that Orion would improve the conditions? Had Megatron meant that he missed Orion’s company?

He had spent so long overthinking a response that his light-pen’s new powerpack had died in his hand without having put a single glyph down. Eventually, of course, he had scraped some coherent sentences together just to have something to return to his… “friend.”

Now, having vacantly stared off into space for who knew how long, he sighed again, shuttering his optics for a few moments as he let his head hang down.

Orion had yet to hear back after he’d sent the last datapad almost three decades ago to Megatron’s mandatory new—or rather new at the time—posting on far away Messatine.

Messatine.

A whole planet as cold as polar Iacon, but with enough water in the atmosphere to blanket much of the surface in thick snow. A dry cold Orion could manage, could even thrive in, but wet? With an involuntary shudder, he could already imagine the ice forming and crunching in his joints. Just the thought of it….

And Megatron was sent there to mine nucleon, of all things. Prone to explosion. Fire and ice. Just like them—

The last Orion had heard, he had at least been sent with a friend, whose name Megatron had never shared out of respect for that friend’s privacy. While Orion could have tried to track down who that was using his police training—it had been tempting—he could take some comfort knowing that Megatron was not alone out there in the frigid fringes of the universe digging up volatile substances.

There had been an attempt for a mutual acquaintance to put them in contact over a strange voice communicator in Alyon, but the connection had been too poor. In fact, Orion hadn’t ruled out that his acquaintance had just been pranking him. Had they even known Megatron? Why would they have known some miner?

Since then, Orion had wondered many times if he ought to try and contact Megatron again, but… perhaps this… this deafening silence was Megatron’s way of telling him not to bother.

Still, he doubted it. Megatron was always so direct, even for a pacifist. Orion had always admired that about him. If he wanted Orion to stop talking to him, surely… surely he would come right out and say it….

Or what if Orion had gotten the wrong read on him this entire time?

Not impossible. For all of the cumulative praise he had earned for accomplishments as a police captain, before Sentinel Prime had put him on a hit list, Orion remembered only his all-too-glaring mistakes. Team members dying or getting injured, criminals getting away, … not preventing abuse at the hands of his men. All lapses in judgment, failures to act appropriately at the right time. They accounted for, statistically, a small portion of his career, but each one was a vivid scar in his memory.

Heavy footsteps rumbled through the floor just before Roller burst through the far door, his wide shoulders barely fitting through the opening. He yelled something that Orion didn’t quite catch—the word “listen” was definitely involved—as he flipped on the large holoscreen installed in the wall.

Roller was supposed to have been on the roof monitoring police feeds—Something big must have just come through.

An announcer’s voice came on mid-sentence, in the measured monotone journalists used for serious situations to prevent the audience from panicking.

“—are mass evacuations being carried out on Croteus 12 after a vicious attack on Kaon’s Senator Decimus at a peaceful ceremony at Mining Outpost C-12 honoring the upcoming implementation of automation.”

Croteus 12.

Did he know anyone there? That was one of Cybertron’s nearer holdings, if he remembered where Croteus 12 was correctly . The only miners he had really known were Megatron and Impactor, though his acquaintance with Impactor had been brief before he’d been tossed in prison for his role in that bar fight. And Megatron was at Messatine.

Curious, Orion turned his head to look at the screen, images of smoke rising above some industrial structures he couldn’t begin to identify flashing by before being replaced by video of battered, cuffed miners being publicly walked into what looked to be prison transport shuttles. Orion recognized the models even at this distance.

“Senator Decimus, thankfully, sustained no injuries and was safely evacuated from the scene.”

An image of the senator, one that Orion wasn’t personally very familiar with was thrown on screen. Perhaps, he had been in attendance when Orion had gotten himself thrown out of the Senate. It seemed so long ago now.

“He responded to concerns for his wellbeing with an affirmation that ‘we are each all cogs in a great machine.’ Even after such a harrowing event, it appears Senator Decimus’s faith remains strong and unshaken.”

A snippet of video played, replacing the live feed. Decimus smiled and waved at a crowd of reporters, though no audio accompanied the clip beyond the original anchor’s continued narration.

“At this time, an unknown number of miners and guards are reported dead in the resulting violence, many more are injured.” The image of Decimus remained large on the screen, as though lives lost were but a footnote in the senator’s story. “All participants in the revolt have been secured and will be transferred for processing as Penal Facility H-3, also known informally as the Rig.”

The feed of the senator slid, shrinking to one side of the screen, while the other side returned to the live footage of the miners being marched off.

One seemed… familiar.

Orion spiraled the focal rings in his optics inward in an attempt to better process the visual feed. There was nothing to more to gain. The camera drone was too far away from the miners to actually make out most details, but the defiant way one of the larger miners moved, hands cuffed in front of him….

In that moment, Orion knew. Which left him with an obvious question.

What was Megatron doing at Mining Outpost C-12? The last Orion had heard, he had still been stationed at Messatine, multiple systems away.

And now he was being arrested for involvement in a fatal riot? There was no way. It had to have been a mistake.

Orion’s hands clenched against the edge of the desk. His spark froze in his chest.

Like last time, Megatron must have just been caught up in being in the wrong place at the wrong time; Orion was certain of it. Megatron would never….

“Due to the exceptionally vicious nature of the attack, the cases have been referred by law enforcement officials to Sentinel Prime for approval in expediting the usually prolonged court process and proceed directly to sentencing.”

For a capital offense.

Orion shot upward to his feet, the desk tipping over from his death grip. Datapads and empty cubes of fuel clattered to the floor, desk slamming into the ground.

“I need to get to the Rig!”

Trailbreaker and Roller stared at him, confused.

Orion waved his arm, pointing at the door.

“Now! Let’s move out!”

 

---

 

The alarms blared on the disabled transport ship, emergency lights flashing. The need for a ship-wide panic had passed; Megatron lay prone on the floor of the escape shuttle’s ramp.

Decimus’s lackeys slapped stasis cuffs on his wrists, arms outstretched in front of him. The inhibitor claw already clamped onto his back bit down into the seams of his plating. The points emitted a familiar numbing buzz. The stasis cuffs were overkill.

Redundancy was the name of the game for the twitchy, over-funded wastrels of the force.

Energon coated his hands, smearing against the ground as his captors jostled him to better facilitate the restraints.

He’d done it again.

Murder was seemingly an increasingly necessary evil; he was beginning to numb his spark to it. The ship’s guards had been easier than the soldiers at the revolt.

The cooling frames of the two minibots he had tried to escape with lay in a heap nearby, shot point-blank through the brain module like livestock by the last guards. He hadn’t even known his comrade’s names.

Megatron was certain he would soon receive the same fate. Surely, they were merely binding him to make him easier to dispatch due his substantial size.

“So you’ve been aware of him for some time then?”

A voice prattled somewhere behind him. The senator himself was talking to someone else. Would he not have wanted to distance himself from the banal reality of violence?

Two of the guards grabbed Megatron’s cuffs, yanking them upward and hauling him up onto his knees and deeper onto the claw’s points. The rest loosely crowded around him, waiting for him to slip up, resist…. Any excuse to enact state-sanctioned violence.

Any minute now.

They probably wouldn’t even blindfold him. They hadn’t bothered to blindfold his companions. All the better to stare his murderers in the face in one last show of defiance. They could kill him , but they couldn’t kill his dignity.

“Yes, he’s been quite high on our watchlists for many years now, a troublemaker who thinks too much. Very dangerous.”

The responding voice had an underlying buzz. A communicator, on speaker phone for some unfathomable reason. He had heard this new voice somewhere before, perhaps on the news, but he couldn’t immediately place it. Not that it mattered. Shortly, he wouldn’t be able to place anything ; he wouldn’t be.

Was the senator recording his execution? A way to have some kind of morbid trophy, he supposed. Yet he would be just another dead manual class automaton to someone like Decimus. Nothing special. Not worth taking a trophy of.

Since no bolt yet lodged in his processor, that meant he wasn’t yet dead, a lull that could theoretically have been taken advantage of to escape. If he could move. He couldn’t even wriggle his fingers, the cuffs and the claw ensuring his compliance. Exhausted and paralyzed, Megatron knew he had reached the end of the road.

There was a cruel irony in having tried to give people hope and strength through his writings, only to have ended up here with no hope of his own. Would he become a martyr? Most likely not. Just a criminal, if anyone would remember him at all.

“Thankfully you were unharmed,” the voice continued.

The sarcasm through the communicator was palpable. Apparently Decimus wasn’t beloved by those who held his leash anymore than by the masses in County Kaon who knelt before him.

Megatron fixed his gaze on the guards, bracing himself for the inevitable.

No one had a gun at the ready. Yet. But it would come. The time elapsed before the inevitable outcome would be but a negligible detail, he thought.

Instead, they just stared back at him, blankly, like they weren’t sure what came next themselves.

He opened his mouth to ask what the hold up was, until the voice on the communicator continued.

“Keep good hold of him. I’ll send someone to rescue you…” There was an exasperated sigh. “And to collect him.”

 

---

 

“By the power vested in me by our vaunted ancestors, I, Sentinel Prime, judge Megatron of Tarn guilt on all counts before the court.”

This was no courtroom, but a temple’s sanctuary, deep underneath Tarn. This was no trial, but a demonstration of the power of the empire and the “god” who kept his pet government on a short leash.

Sentinel Prime stood before the empty altar, plain but fashioned with conspicuous rings on the sides. He raised his arms over his head with all the forced drama of someone who would much rather have been anywhere else than in a temple.

How funny, for someone who was supposed to have been a god reborn. He even lived in a temple.

A mech in priestly vestments, looking like he would more belong in a dive bar in a seedy back alley than in any kind of ecumenical role, stood nearby.

Megatron knelt on the floor in the middle of the brightly-lit room, guards flanking him on either side. He was still surprised that he had not been cuffed or restrained in any way since being brought into the room.

It had been many tens of thousands of years since he had been in—or rather under—his homeland of Tarn. While constructed in the underground city, a dead titan, within but a hundred thousand years the rights to his labor had been granted to off-world projects.

And now Sentinel had brought him to the temple that laid deeper in the ground than even the city’s corpse itself.

He had at last come home… if only so that he might die here like a wretched sacrifice.

Megatron set a baleful stare on his judge. He would not show fear.

“Incitement to violence, attempted evasion of law enforcement, attempted aggravated grand theft of a vehicle, aggravated assault of law enforcement officials, aggravated murder of law enforcement officials, creation and distribution of danger seditious materials, and, worst of all, attempted aggravated murder of a senator.”

There was one thing, however, that Megatron couldn’t quite understand, a nagging inconsistent little detail. Why would the ruler of their entire “empire” be interested in judging someone like him personally?

Though Megatron had apparently managed to get onto multiple secret watchlists for his writings; perhaps that was why, to show the “futility” of dissent. That hardly seemed sufficient to warrant the attention.

But if that were the case, then why drag him to Tarn of all places? Especially down here, deep underground with no press to parade about. If Sentinel wanted a show trial to punish him for attempting to rise above his station, a stubborn nail to be hammered back down, why not have it in the palatial public courts of Iacon’s temple? All the better for the camera drones and media outlets to gawk at him.

Megatron continued to glare forward at Sentinel, unafraid. No self-proclaimed deity would cow him.

Sentinel’s arm swung forward, pointing directly at Megatron.

“I sentence you to carry the burden of the Vessel of the Fallen. You will learn your place and serve the public good all your remaining days.”

“What?”

In his surprise, Megatron had been unable to bite his tongue. Out of the corner of his optic, he could see one of the guards flanking him instinctively readying his rifle at the outburst.

The priest at Sentinel’s side waved to others waiting in the antechambers.

Chains rattled from one side of the room, accompanied by heavy footsteps. A huge mech, easily double Megatron’s own size, was brought out… blindfolded, gagged, and bound by the arms and wrists. Staggering forward to the altar, the mech was sluggish and compliant. He had clearly been heavily drugged.

Out of the other side, Megatron saw guards bringing forth what looked to be a pair of tools: a dagger with an odd slot in the blade and a clear, crystalline chalice. All far more ornate than anything Megatron had ever been allowed to touch.

Once the large mech was in place in front of the altar, the ends of his chains were then tethered those conspicuous loops on the altar as Sentinel walked away.

Megatron recalled seeing this mech before in a news bulletin, a serial murderer appropriately named Killmaster. His ascension to the temple in Tarn had been announced on the news several hundred years ago.

The exact nature of the rites of ascension for this particular “Prime” had never been well publicized, only that the old one’s death and the new one’s rise were announced in the same breath, to underscore an unbroken cycle.

Megatron knew that he was about to become intimately acquainted with the remaining mysterious, and almost certainly bloody, particulars.

The guards urged him to his feet with the muzzles of their plasma rifles jabbed into his sides.

If he simply refused, perhaps he could be shot dead, a death on his own terms rather than participating in whatever charade Sentinel wanted.

And yet….

As soon as he was standing, the dagger was placed in his grip, the delicate-looking chalice then roughly shoved into the palm of his other hand.

The dagger’s slotted shape evoked the legendary Star Saber, the sword that the Fallen had both wielded and then fell to. It was easy for Megatron to imagine what he would be asked to do with it.

The priest at Sentinel’s side barked clinically cold instructions. He was reminded that he need not speak, unless he so chose.

Each step, shouted by the priest, felt like part of a spell, the completion of which was compelled by the rifles trained on him. Each action against his will, a deeply coded need to survive winning over his desire for defiance.

He approached the bound prisoner, and plunged the blade deep into Killmaster’s throat. Warm fuel rushed out over the knife, over his hand, sparkling violet and glowing bright.

Killmaster didn’t even flinch, seemingly too far gone in his artificial stupor that he was aware of nothing, not even the excruciating pain he ought to have been suffering, not even the hot flow of his fuel draining away.

Megatron held the chalice out to catch the fuel until it overflowed, slopping and spilling over the rim. With disgust, he drank from the fuel while it was still warm, as the priest ordered. Whatever cocktail of drugs ensuring passivity that Killmaster had been pumped full of before his execution would surely soon affect him as well.

One day, he knew, this ritualistic disposal would be his own fate when they no longer had use for him.

When Killmaster began to slump, Megatron withdrew the blade and threw it aside. Its edge glinted in the burning bright lights of the sanctuary.

Fuel now flowed freely down the front of Killmaster’s coated armor, pooling on the floor as his failing spark struggled to power the fuel pumps.

As ordered, Megatron poured the remaining fuel upon the altar, the chalice left atop, upside down to drain. The dull noise of contact with the metal surface revealed it was merely a cheap plastic prop.

And then, as the drugs began to numb both his thoughts and his limbs, he was hailed by the distant voice of the priest as a god.

When the floor came up to greet and embrace him, Megatron could vaguely hear the sounds of a heavy body being dragged away.

 

---

 

Megatron hadn’t been given a choice in the matter. Valve had simply announced to him last week that his protector—the live-in warden more like—had been chosen. With a protector at his side, he would be fully installed as a “Prime” and would be alt-mode exempt, completely stripped of his previous manual class status. In theory, this was a promotion.

Whichever of the candidates that he had been shown, there was no way to know which of them had been picked. It wasn’t impossible that Valve had chosen someone that hadn’t even been presented to him; Megatron had no way of knowing what would be done behind his back in this prison.

The union dirge played overhead, piped in remotely through the speakers. A recording, something to paint the passing time with while Megatron waited in the oppressive glare of the spotlight.

Valve had laughed when he had explained that this would be a “joyous” occasion.

The last time he had been here in the sanctuary, the lights had turned up to their full brightness as he was judged to be guilty and forced to ascend to his punishment. Now only a spotlight broke the gloom.

Only one candidate had caught Megatron’s eye as potentially acceptable, one he had met previously who had then demanded unarmed single combat at the audition upon their brief reunion in the throne room. Such a challenge had been forbidden, of course. Valve had made sure of it. The variable voltage restraints cuffing him to his throne had also dissuaded Megatron from moving.

Megatron had already known that candidate, from long ago. He had also known that if he had said so anywhere outside of his own head, that it would have only caused more trouble down the road. An old friend, even estranged, could be used against both of them.

Ultimately, the choice of Lord Protector was up to the general—jailer —who masqueraded as a high priest; Valve would have made the final decision. Megatron’s input had likely only been solicited on a nominal basis, to mirror the autonomy and authority wielded by his so-called “peers.” If anything, given that his deification was meant to punish him, he half-expected Valve to choose one of the candidates that Megatron had liked the least.

Today he would find out who had been selected to both magnify and personalize his punishment.

Steps, heavy and uneven—uncertain but not hesitant—echoed behind him. The candidate approached.

Was it the rigid, retired general from Protohex seeking new purpose? Likely not with that gait; Megatron would have expected a more pronounced limp. Was it the paradoxically suicidal priest of Quintus looking for a socially acceptable way out? Possible, but even Valve, short-sighted as he was in most things, had seen through the flimsy excuses to the contrary. Lord Protectors needed to last.

Even when the steps stopped at his side, Megatron couldn’t see who had arrived. Valve had instructed him to face forward until his cuffs had been removed, or else the guards might “develop itchy trigger fingers.” It was tempting to simply be done with the whole thing now by looking, by defying … and then he could be free.

Valve spoke… at length, reciting whatever liturgy was traditionally appropriate for a funerary farce of a wedding, meant to tether his collared throat to someone who would obediently hold the leash at the government’s behest.

If Megatron looked, he could get the charade over with whenever he chose, still demanding the final say in his own fate, an agency in death that he had been denied in life.

And still he did not look.

A voice he knew—not just from the candidate audiences, but also from before, long ago in words of encouragement—repeated the awful vow Valve fed him.

The cuffs fell to the floor, a hand took his. And for the first time since Megatron had been captured and forced to assume the void-black granite throne, he felt warmth.

Orion.

Megatron finally turned to see him.

When… when had he gotten a mouth?

 

---

 

Eyes. Watching. Always watching.

Megatron had thought he had become accustomed to them, to the watchers, but perhaps not or… perhaps Orion’s renewed presence in his life had made the many camera lenses that formed the omniscient background of his world feel new again as they scrutinized his every movement.

Even in the dark.

He cursed the inventor of low-light lenses, while he laid there on the lightly cushioned slab. Yet another night of waiting under the quilted tarpaulin for recharge to sweep him away into morning.

Something warm brushed against his hand, which rested on his midsection. Fingers curled around the back of his palm.

Orion often held his hand at night, nearly every night since their union last month, as though it were a hard coded compulsion to make up for some perceived inattentive misdeed.

Megatron let him. It did no harm, even if he wasn’t certain what he ought to do with the attention. At the very least, it was a welcome reminder that he was not alone in this glorified prison, that he had one friend left in this world. All others had long since gone.

How long until the priests took that measure of comfort away too, like they had taken everything else? It was no secret that the protector was supposed to be his leash; if they thought Orion was not sufficient restraint… if Orion encouraged “inconvenient” ideas…. Would there be some “unfortunate accident”?

The cameras could likely see the chaste expression of affection perfectly. For security purposes, of course. A voyeurism for the “public good.” Almost nothing was secret.

Orion’s hand slipped downward—

“The cameras are on, Orion.” Even if the blue indicator lights were turned off to accompany the pitch blackness of artificial night. A ruse of privacy. “They can see you.”

Us , he thought, but Orion was technically the one at fault here. The world of judicial punishments operated chiefly on technicalities.

The hand hovered awkwardly over Megatron’s hip where it had frozen at being caught.

“Nonsense; they’ll do the polite thing, surely.”

As though that would somehow improve the situation. Relying on some third party with no accountability and obscured motivations to avert their gaze from newlywed lovemaking was a foolish decision.

“Did your thugs ever ‘do the polite thing’ in your old police station?”

Orion paused, saying nothing in that particular way that Megatron was quickly learning meant he had been caught out being in the wrong.

After a moment, Orion returned his hand to Megatron’s palm and lightly squeezed.

“In the shower then.”

Megatron couldn’t help but laugh at the silly suggestion. It had been so long since he had last laughed about anything.

“In the shower then,” he echoed, still chuckling.

 

---

 

The noise of the cold solvent—the only temperature it had ever been—spraying against the glass and tiled floor would at least help drown out any other sounds that might have made it to the microphones constantly listening in on their private lives.

After Megatron’s union with Orion, plans had been finalized for his frame, the last piece of his ascension and the stripping of his caste.

It wasn’t a true reframe where his lifecord would be transplanted into a new body. Instead, his underlying endoskeleton and internal components had remained unchanged, but the outer reconstruction had been significant. Thicker, heavier plating to make him more durable and more visibly suited to his new role. A wider chassis with more powerful limbs, a new helmet with blinder-like flanges.

He had always been in a body that was not truly his, built in a factory rather than “naturally occurring.” By all the rules of the theocracy, he wasn’t “supposed” to be there and that he ought to have been grateful to exist at all.

But that body, that brittle disposable body, had been the only one he had ever known. While not his in the way a forged body would have been, he had had no reference for any other one. He had not wanted to be separated from it to be in yet another alien casing, but Valve had assured him that it was not optional.

The solvent bounced off of his back. The solvent alone wouldn’t remove the thin film of uncured residue left over from the fresh sealant.

When Megatron had refused to consent to the modifications, the priests had taken extreme measures. Anesthetics hidden in his fuel. And a pounding headache when he awoke later in the medical bay, wrapped up in plating that might as well have been a stranger’s.

Who knew where the armor had come from. Was it left over? He didn’t recognize it as Killmaster’s, but he had hardly seen Killmaster before his death.

He now looked down at his new hands, jet black where they had once been rusty brown and dull gray.

Orion, who had stopped patiently waiting in the cramped shower with him, took those hands in his own blue ones.

“You’re alright,” Orion said, squeezing their hands together like there was nothing strange or new about the situation.

The voice, the warmth…. Together they soothed the isolation in his spark, pulled him back from the feelings of alienation from his own being.

Orion let go of his hands, reaching up instead to touch his shoulders, his neck, his face.

Warm palms drug over the thick metal of his chest armor, leaving faint scuffs on the top coat, smearing the sealant residue. His former frame’s dark gray paint and bright manual class stripes had been replaced with a lighter gray, mimicking the bare metal of a dead body.

Yet even while he had been forcibly altered to emulate a corpse, with Orion’s attention, Megatron had seldom felt so alive.

Orion let his mash snap back to reveal his mouth, a rare treat that only meant one thing.

Valve’s voice blared through the intercom, announcing that guards were at the door to collect them.

“Sentinel Prime is here for a surprise inspection.”

“Be presentable” was implied.

 

---

 

“Are you ready?” Orion asked, double-checking the straps securing his brand new axe while the shuttle jolted in the wind. Other than the pilot and armed guards, he and Megatron were the only occupants.

Valve, the high priest, had a separate shuttle to himself heading to a different rendezvous point.

Sentinel Prime had finally decided to send Megatron—and Orion by proxy—into battle. Outside of the training room, Orion had yet to see Megatron fight for real. He had known that Megatron had fought in life-or-death situations before, but it would be different to witness it for himself, putting all their practice to the test.

Megatron was expected to do the lion’s share of the fighting, with Orion merely there to ensure he stayed on task and wasn’t hindered by enemy attack. Or… to put an end to the situation if Megatron became a danger to their own side.

But that wouldn’t happen. He wasn’t some panicked animal, acting only on instinct, or some monster driven by bloodlust. Orion knew better, deep down in his spark. He had known Megatron before Sentinel Prime had chosen him to be a living weapon.

Surely no one would mind if Orion got a… modest share of the offensive action on the field.

Megatron, meanwhile, was flexing his hands as he sat on the seat at Orion’s side.

His upgrade had been only a few weeks ago so he was probably still adjusting to his heavier build and thicker armor, Orion reasoned. All their training had taken place before the modifications.

With the armor and a large arm-mounted cannon, Megatron took up nearly the entire seat on his own; Orion was nearly pinned to the wall. It was only his own bulk that let him bully the guards back for additional space.

“It doesn’t matter whether I am or not.” A melancholy philosopher’s answer. As expected from his personal poet.

Orion, despite knowing how Megatron had gotten here and their training together, still struggled at times to see a warrior rather than the pacifist who had wound up in his Rodion jail. He wasn’t sure exactly how that transformation had happened, but there was no one he would rather have at his back where they were going.

The shuttle shook as it stopped abruptly midair, hovering and trembling in place while enveloped by the clouds.

The order to go came in over their commlinks and one of the guards yanked open a door. Powerful, howling winds and a deluge of rain forced their way inside the small cabin.

The wet onslaught was the cost of stopping in the middle of a cloud, he supposed. Peaceful and fluffy on the outside, but an endless storm on the inside.

“This is our stop,” Orion shouted, trying in vain to keep the tone cheerful despite the horizontal rain battering his unshielded optics and mask. “Time to jump!”

It had been so long since he had felt the rush of adrenaline that came from leaping into the chaotic unknown. It had been a favorite part of his previous occupations and here it was again, ready to embrace him.

“Jump?”

Orion almost hadn’t heard him, laughing as he fell through the clouds to the battlefield below. At last, the thrill he had always craved.

 

---

 

“Do you even know how to use that, Orion?”

The conference room echoed with their voices.

The wide open space with large table, holoprojector, and a global map was a much more convenient venue for discussing tactics and plans rather than being crowded together at the simple desk in their private quarters. While there was something to be said for the years of being practically on each other’s laps to plan, this was a far more productive place to have these meetings.

Far less likely to lead to “emergency” group trips to the shower. For special tactical planning.

The new priest, Starscream, after Valve’s disgrace and execution had made significant changes to security protocols around the temple. Access to this facility was one such change.

Even if Starscream constantly seemed to be up to something, Megatron could at least be begrudgingly grateful for the improved privileges since his arrival. For now he would accept the perceived increased autonomy of having access to spaces and leaving his quarters to roam the temple whenever he wished.

Of course, the problem with privileges was that they could so easily be taken away with little recourse.

A problem for later. A bigger cell was still a cell.

Arms crossed, he watched from his seat as Orion tried to pull up the file for the map of the target world on the holoprojector’s touchscreen user interface. It appeared that Orion kept getting lost in the submenus of the settings… as opposed to where files were stored.

“Of course, I do, Megatron.” Orion was a terrible liar, but his earnest spark behind it all made up for it. “It just takes time; that’s all.”

Sentinel had once more deigned to delegate the actual planning of an assault on one of his wishlist worlds, the uncreatively named ocean world of Aquaria, to the Fallen.

The excuse Megatron had received from the Prime of War was that he had been too busy with Senate matters that required his attention. The Prime of Balance in Protohex, Tyrest, who oversaw the purview of strategy? Likely had never even been consulted, but why try to fob off work to a colleague when you could force your glorified prisoner to do it instead?

Starscream sat nearby, amused as he looked through what were presumably his own notes. He always looked so pleased with himself, smug and scheming, but at least he was willing to look Megatron in the eye and speak to him like a person rather than a half-witted animal. It was clear from his wings that he hadn’t made his way here through the graces of the caste system.

One of these days, he would figure out what it was that Starscream was truly after. But not today.

“Lord Pax, if I might so humbly suggest pressing that button there….”

Orion’s optical ridges furrowed together as he followed Starscream’s pointers.

“Ah, yes. Of course.”

A holographic global view of Aquaria hovered nearby, its waters rippling in an approximated animation, with no dry land to speak of. There were no visible structures on the surface, the indigenous people of this planet all living beneath the waves.

Maybe now they could actually get underway.

“A sloshing ocean world,” Megatron said with a sigh.

He stood up to approach the projection.

Water, especially salt water on an organic planet, presented a slew of unique challenges for combat. And that was without taking into account the specific chemical effects on their metal bodies.

“And Sentinel wants it to… prove a point about the indomitability of our forces rather than for any specific resource extraction. Pax Cybertronia indeed.”

He scoffed, grabbing the globe and pulling the image wide to zoom the view in to just below the water.

The view refocused, revealing the various drowned mountain ranges, deep oceanic trenches, and settlements.

“With the significant layer of water in the way, conventional orbital bombardment is out of the question, I believe we’ll waste the fewest resources and save the most time if we focus on the major population centers here and here with decisive strikes of remotely detonated electrical pulses on guided missiles—“

He could already hear Orion start to open his mouth in objection, always ready to argue in favor of his version of harm reduction.

“Yes, yes, too many civilian casualties.” Megatron gestured for Orion to step up to the projection. “Do you have an idea that won’t lead to a drawn out war of attrition then?”

He found himself smirking as Orion approached. With a dramatic mock bow, Megatron withdrew.

Starscream could be heard furiously taking notes at the table behind them, though he said nothing.

“Go on; I’m listening.”

“You always say that but I’m not sure it’s true.” Certainly grinning behind his mask, Orion began moving the map with his fingers. “I think you’re onto something with remotely detonated electrical pulses, but I think if we focused on smaller, more limited military targets like munitions depots we could have a greater impact without putting as many civilians at risk.”

After all these years, sometimes Orion had a good point. Sometimes Megatron liked to draw those points out on purpose, just for Orion to poke holes in a purposefully flawed plan.

A damn shame there wasn’t a shower nearby at a time like this.

 

---

 

The cold mud clung to Orion’s face as he hit the ground, his leg refusing to bend. Rain beat down on his back. Gunfire sounded nearby, the rhythm of battle around Presidium’s weapon vault uninterrupted around him.

There was no pain, save from falling.

His leg didn’t hurt. He was receiving sensory feedback from it. It just… didn’t respond to incoming signals.

Lately it would happen at home walking around the temple, but he thought he had just needed more joint grease. It was easy to forget things when you were busy.

But, it had never happened on the battlefield before, where a limb just ignored his commands. It didn’t make any sense; his joints had been greased by an aide on the shuttle ride over as part of standard preparations.

Still this was no time to lie down on the job; he needed to get back up. Sentinel had ordered Megatron (and thus Orion as well) to guard Nominus Prime’s cache of weapons, each one considered too dangerous to use.

Megatron shouted something nearby. The heavy stomping of feet sloshed in the mud; suddenly hands were on him, lifting him up under the arms.

His unresponsive leg stuck out stiffly as he rotated his hip to get his foot underneath his frame.

“What’s the matter?” Megatron shouted to be heard over the din. Bullets from slug-throwing rifles pinged off his thick armor, the barrage as loud as his voice.

Had he forgotten about the shared commlink channel? … Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted to use it, lest Sentinel take issue with a minor bungle.

“I’m fine!” Orion shouted back, pulling himself free from the concerned hands gripping his arms. “Just clumsy me!”

He forced himself to laugh it off as he reached down and smacked his fist against the side of his knee, dislodging the stuck joint.

“We’ve got a vault to defend!” Raising his blaster rifle once more, Orion clapped Megatron on the shoulder to stop those eyes from staring at him in worry. What was one little fall?

---

 

Paint flaked away around his knees. Around his wrists. At the corners of his mouth. The flaking itched something awful and it took all of Orion’s self control to not scratch or worry the surface. That would only make it worse.

And just got ointment on his hands. Again.

Not that his hands had been wanting to function much lately. In the months after he had taken that fall on Presidium, his frame had been much less cooperative. Worse, his transformation cog had lodged itself in place last week, refusing to budge.

The temple’s doctor, Flatline, had just told him why.

Early onset cybercrosis. No cure. Only incremental decline until the end. His spark had decided to grow old, rapidly and millions of years sooner than it ought to have. Cause unknown.

Lying on the table in the exam room, Orion wished that Megatron had been allowed in with him. Megatron had insisted that Orion needed to be looked at. Traditional protocol had forbidden his presence. The medical center was one of the few places in the temple that the Vessel of the Fallen was not permitted unsecured, even with Starscream’s liberal policy reforms.

“We can do everything in our power to keep you comfortable.”

But he would die. Likely within the decade. A blink of an eye for their kind.

He had expected to expire somewhat earlier than would be usual due to his role here, but not like this, not quite so soon.

“I’ll inform the appropriate authorities that you shouldn’t be deployed for combat—“

“No.” The word was out of Orion’s mouth before he really think about what he was saying. “I should be there. I need to be there.”

At least he could die a warrior, at Megatron’s side on a battlefield, rather than as a fading husk wasting away on a slab somewhere.

Flatline sighed, writing something down on his notes, probably about how stubborn Orion was being… or prescriptions that he wanted Orion to take. Hopefully they included something for the itching; that alone was almost worse than the thought of dying.

“There will come a time where you can’t even sit up, let alone stand.”

But not today.

Plenty of time.

“Then I’ll fight until I can’t anymore.”

Not even Megatron could stop him.