Hail To The Prime

Opposite Sides of the Coin

It had been many millennia since Megatron last felt cuffs chewing into his wrists, replacing the weight of gauntlets and barely distracting from the tension cracking his gears, the hot humiliation rushing through his otherwise starved fuel lines. Even if his HUD was still working, it would only be a dull imprint in the gloom of his cell. As well as the rust forming a thin layer over his scarred lips, the constant clink of his chains stopped him from sleeping; the more he struggled, the more energy he lost, the more he suffered.

Megatron knew exactly how close Optimus came to offlining him the day of his capture, still flinched from the stinging ghost of a blade cleaving through protoform, cables, wires; already soaked in energon before finally exiting his body in a fountain burst of his blood. That never happened, of course, not with a coward like Optimus wielding the killing blow, but Megatron could see the scene playing out clearly enough in the Prime's' optics; the glass surface reflecting only a fraction of the fire that otherwise would have melted right through. Even he had never wanted to kill a bot more intensely than Optimus' did at that moment. The only thing that spared him for a cell rather than a coffin was the summons of surrender, his ranks rippling with equal parts desperation and desertion. With their leader down, a flick of the servo away from losing his helm, what else could the Decepticons do? What else could Megatron have expected them to do, other than what they were all best at; betrayal?

In a way, he should have been proud of them. They saw his weakness, and knew they were doomed if they stayed with him.

Part of his spark hoped it would perish right there, in Cybertron's basement, with at least his dignity left intact if nothing else. But once again, he underestimated the Autobots. They came for him eventually; a uniform scuff of peds against floors trudging through the sludge of his consciousness. He might have recognised his jailers if he had any will to raise his helm, might have received guilty glances down from ex-Decepticons now hauling their disgraced warlord before their new master. Metal grating dissolved to hard steel scraping against his crumpled knees, and flickering plasma lamps carved into the cavern walls paled against the glare from the open council chamber doors ahead. Not even his optics clamped closed could protect the lenses from the light pouring on him. Though he was blinded for now, his audio receptors were as sharp as they'd ever been. No applause greeted him, only a chorus of harsh intakes and the uncertain creak of bots debating with themselves, whether they should run for the nearest exit or stay and watch the show.

He lurched to a stop, limp as a puppet, and colours bled into the cracks of his vision. Red, blue, then streaks of grey pooling in the hard outline of Optimus' frame sitting leagues above him on a familiar throne made out of mangled struts, a prison of Megatron's own making stolen from his own fortress in Darkmount. He'd only notice the two mechs flanking either side of him much later, each of them struggling to look down at the shuddering pile of rust thrown at their peds. For now, all Megatron could see was the hatred etched into every curve of Optimus' face, pulling taut at his cables and leaking from the very core of his spark.

Seeing the anger leaking from his composure made Megatron smile like he was cutting a scar into his faceplate. He looked forward to seeing just how far he managed to push Optimus into this, what kind of pathetic sentence the Prime would have ready for him. "That throne doesn't suit you, Prime. Far too... uncomfortable for someone like you," Megatron told him, almost recoiling from how foreign his voice sounded after escaping the gauntlet of his broken vocaliser.

If Optimus was at all surprised by what weeks in a dungeon had stripped from his nemesis, he hid it well. "Someone like me... who now leads your entire army." His voice was fringed with a ceaseless snarl, torn to ragged strips by his gritted denta. Megatron was reminded of feral Insecticons, but he'd gutted enough of those in the past to not be scared of a lone soldier clicking its maw at him. "And now has you, Unicron's own herald, pleading for-"