Enemy

[stainless]

Title: Enemy
Characters/Pairing: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Verse: TF: Prime
Wordcount: 5,138
Rating: M for spark-sex
Warnings: Spark-sex, dub-con, bondage, violence, mind games, and other torments
Summary: Optimus Prime was once Orion Pax, disciple of Megatron's revolution. Captured by Megatron, Optimus must face the truth about his lover turned enemy, and about the corruption that he believes has taken hold of his former idol and destroyed everything he once believed in.

Thanks to meaisin_caoin for beta.

"Orion."

He knew that voice, dark and resonant. It made him shiver, though his processor felt foggy and slow and he couldn't place why.

I must be wary, he thought. Something depended on it. Others. Others that he needed to keep safe.

And he couldn't see. His optics struggled to focus. He was lying on a berth - small, sparse, uncomfortable - and staring into lights on its ceiling. He did not think it looked familiar.

"Orion Pax."

The voice was pleased. Happy to see him waking. It was a voice he knew. A beloved voice, a voice his frame thrummed with pleasure to hear.

You know that one, he thought. And he hasn't sounded like that in years.

Nor has he called you by that name.

It was his name, his real name, a name he'd borne before trouble or war. Those who followed him now called him Optimus, their leader, their Prime.

"Megatron?" he asked, shaking his head in an attempt to clear his vision.

"Here," the voice answered.

Optimus turned toward the voice - and found that his hands had been shackled to the berth he lay on.

He tossed his head, all the more determined to know what was going on. His optics fuzzed, static suffusing his vision, and finally cleared. He could see manacles over his wrists, stasis inducers from the look of them and the purple strip of light glowing on their surface.

Purple. The mech he once called brother had adopted it as his color long ago, painting his frame with rich violet accents. Everyone who watched his gladiatorial matches knew who that particular shade of purple belonged to.

And soon, it had gone from the color of a warrior to the color of his revolution.

A revolution that the young Orion had been part of. Remembering it, Optimus thrashed harder.

A familiar weight, pressing down on his chest, stopped him. It didn't hurt, not exactly. But the hand was cold, too cold, and the intimacy in its touch froze him where he lay.

"Enough!" his captor roared.

Relief surged through Optimus, hearing the rough cry. He could handle the rage in that voice. He slid his battlemask closed over his mouth, and spoke.

"Whatever it is you want, Megatron, you won't get it from me."

The pointed face leaned down to leer at him, its lip plates pulled back, its fangs glinting. Optimus had faced it many times before, and it held no terror for him now.

But it saddened him, the kind of deep sadness that set his spark pulsing, to remember that once he'd found it both terrifying and beautiful.

"I want only to talk, brother," Megatron answered, laughing.

Optimus's optics flared in disbelief. How long had it been since Megatron had called him brother? Megatron's rebels had become his Decepticons, and Optimus the leader of their Autobot enemies. They'd long since stopped thinking of one another as kin.

And why hadn't Megatron just killed him? That was the thing that truly unnerved him. Megatron was a thing of legend now, fueled by dark energon, tainted by the very blood of Unicron the Destroyer.

Keep calm, Optimus reminded himself. Megatron had always been one for grandiose gestures. His revolution, violent as it had become, had begun with speeches. The rabble of the mines and factories and pits, machines that the high-caste would have doubted could even process oratory, had hung on Megatron's words.

Optimus - Orion, back then - had seen it himself. Dirty, rust-pitted mechs, their optics angry crimson, held as spellbound by those speeches as they were by Megatron's casual brutality in the pits.

Watching them all stare, their audios soaking up the words of a gladiator-turned-philosopher had been something to behold. He'd believed in the revolution, then, of course. But he hadn't believed in the haulers, the smelters, the fighters-by-trade. Megatron studied history, asking Orion for volumes of records from the Great Library and poring over them, processing more information in a night than he'd thought the workers could in days.

He knew now that even he, inspired young zealot hoping for a new, just Cybertron, had misjudged the laborer castes. It had shamed him to realize it, and shamed him now to remember it. He had hoped their lives would become less difficult in the reforged Cybertron, of course. He had always believed that no being should suffer.

But he had not believed in them. Not as Megatron had.

Hearing them cheer for Megatron's call for justice as thunderously as they applauded his brutality in the pits had forced him to believe in them. And had only strengthened his belief in the one who they themselves believed in.

Right now, Megatron looked just as he did before giving those speeches in Kaon. His optics shone a bright, intense red, the plates above them knitted in a combination of eagerness and intense concentration. Obviously Megatron had something to say now. Something he was willing to keep his rival alive to make sure he heard.

If Optimus could just keep Megatron talking, it might give his team time to come for him - or, if they had also been captured, time to trick Megatron into revealing something about their fates.

Cautious, the Autobot spoke. "Megatron, you should know me well enough by now to know that I won't say anything that could put my team at risk."

Megatron laughed again, his broad frame shaking with mirth. His claws slid over Optimus's windshields, their touch light. They grabbed at the edge of one of them, curling around it. Optimus braced himself for pain, for the wild shock of his glass shattering or the freezing jolt of that strange cold becoming too much.

Neither happened. Megatron simply held his hand there, as if cradling some fragile treasure. The metal on his glass was cool - too cool - but not unpleasant.

The Autobot shivered. Once, he'd welcomed such touches. Was that what Megatron wanted with him, now that he had him captured and bound?

Megatron's claws moved to Optimus's battlemask, digging into the joint where each piece of it attached. The Autobot winced, both from the pain and the cold. Apparently it grew worse when Megatron felt violent.

"That's not what I meant. I know you better than to think that you'd betray your team for fear of me."

He wrenched at the battlemask, tearing both halves of it free, one in each of his hands. Optimus bit back a howl of pain, his engines roaring. With a snarl of disgust, Megatron tightened his fists around the thin plates of metal, crushing them as he squeezed.

"But you don't need these," the Decepticon hissed, throwing them aside. They hit the floor with a clang.

"You call me brother," Optimus answered, his faceplates stinging as they shifted to form the words. "Yet you bind and damage me."

He twisted his neck to stare straight at Megatron, his azure optics gleaming in the dim room. "Those are not the actions of a brother."

Megatron's own optics flared, a bright blaze of red. Then he smiled, taking Optimus's chin in his hand. "Perhaps not. But if I were the monster you believe me to be, I would kill you and be done with it."

"You've razed worlds in the pursuit of your ambition. You have made planets that once teemed with life into blackened, dead husks. Your war even claimed our own home, Megatron. It's you who used the word 'monster,' not me - but that's precisely what you have become."

Megatron's grip on Optimus's chin tightened. The Autobot gritted his dental plates, willing himself to ignore the cold and bracing for more pain.

It didn't come. Instead, the other hand moved to his window glass and settled there, icy claws curled, dangerous but sedate for the moment.

"And that is exactly what I want to talk to you about."

Good. He wanted to talk. So badly he was risking his own plans, talking -

The claw curled inward, digging into the glass beneath it. The glass shrieked in protest as the claws scraped along it, rime appearing where they'd passed.

The damage was far from serious, however. Once, Megatron had done that sort of thing before -

Optimus shook his head violently, willing himself not to think of that. What was Megatron playing at? He didn't yet know, but figuring that out was a much better use of his processing power than old memories that would only pain him.

Still, this was so familiar his spark already pulsed with recognition and loss. Megatron always had loved to talk. Optimus's spark gave another heavy lurch, remembering, and Megatron's optics widened at the heat under his hand.

Megatron's first weapon had been words. And he had been no less deadly accurate with them than he was with the cannon adorning his right arm.

Whatever Megatron was about to say, it would hurt, he knew, as much as the memories did. But the longer he talked, the longer Optimus's team had to reach him, and the better the chance that Megatron would drop some hint that would allow him to get out of this.

But Megatron didn't elaborate. Instead he laughed, flattening his fingers against the glass. Optimus's spark only pulsed harder, whirling with mounting unease.

"You do remember," Megatron said, his smile a ring of sharpened teeth.

"I remember."

The Decepticon's hand slid to the exposed cabling at Optimus's shoulders, claws twisting into the small spaces between parts. "You were eager then. For revolution - and for everything else."

Optimus twitched. "You despoiled our homeworld and then stirred our dead in their graves." His optics flickered bright blue, his mouthplates setting in a grim line. "Will you now leave nothing untouched - not even those memories?"

Megatron pulled his hand away. "Oh, don't worry about that, old friend. For now, I'm only playing." He grinned again. "If I do more, it will be because you ask for it."

Optimus stared, his engine stalling, his spark frozen in his chest. "Ask for it? Now?" His head drooped, falling to the berth beneath him with a faint clang. "The dark energon truly has driven you insane."

Megatron held up a claw. It glinted in the light, and he watched it as though mesmerized by his own sharpened fingertips. "Is that what you tell yourself?"

He leaned down, his pointed face nearly touching Optimus's own. It reminded the Autobot painfully of the first time he'd seen that face: sharpened, deadly, pitted with rust and scars. He had believed in revolution then: in change, in freedom, in each Cybertronian and each sentient being guiding its own destiny.

But for him it had been an ideal. He had fought for it over clandestine Grid transmissions, whispered of it to university students, debated professors.

Megatron had earned scars.

Orion Pax had loved them back then. The sight of those scars had been undeniable proof of what revolt meant. He had found them beautiful even as they'd horrified him.

Did he now, now that he had not only taken up arms for that revolution but taken them up against the one who led it? Optimus Prime wasn't sure.

"Is that what lets you kill those who follow me, you who don't believe in killing?"

The clawed hands moved to Optimus's shoulders. Megatron traced his fingertips over the Autobot symbols branded there, his touch gentle.

"You -"

"Quiet!" the Decepticon hissed, his optics the burning red of molten metal.

"It's not me who has changed, Orion Pax," he murmured. "It's you who finally see me through clear optics."

Optimus snarled, twisting in his bonds. "No - !"

The grip on his shoulders tightened, the frosty fingers pressing inward. Optimus could feel them digging into the seams between his markings and his plating. He shifted again, wanting anything but the feel of those fingertips, frozen and unnatural, easing their way into places they would never again belong.

"Megatron -!" Panting, Optimus spat the name like a curse. "You lied to me -!"

"Once or twice, in the beginning. After that, old friend, you deceived yourself."

The claws clenched, whole handfuls of Optimus's plating buckling under their grip. Optimus gritted his denta as wave after wave of pain tore through his sensornet, the sharp bite of frost on its heels.

The cold was unfamiliar, but his spark pulsed in a parody of recognition anyway. He'd felt those claws on him so many times, heard the shriek of his own metal as the tips scored through his paint and into his plating, leaving lines of fiery sensation in their wake.

It had always been too much for him, even when Megatron had meant it fondly. He'd been built a member of the scholarly caste, his plating light and soft. He'd reinforced parts of it once he'd joined Megatron's revolution, but even then, he was neither a pit-fighter nor a factory worker.

And, although Megatron had been the first to touch him, he'd never expected such touches. In Iacon, the worst most avid lovers suffered was a few scratches in their paint. Megatron's claws dug deep enough to draw energon, so effortlessly that the young Orion had doubted Megatron always knew when he was doing it.

And from what he gathered, anyone from the Badlands or the cities would be the same. Fighting bled into interfacing and back again for the workers and the pit fighters alike. So Orion had trained himself to take it - to feel the sting of it, the warnings, the fine thread of nervousness that zipped through his systems as his plating buckled or tore - as signs of passion and desire.

He'd never quite come to like it, at least not in the way he gathered the others would have. But those things were part of what it meant to be touched by Megatron, to be respected and wanted and prized. The few times Megatron hadn't hurt him at all, it meant that he'd been distracted, uninterested, bored. Orion had missed them, if only because of that.

And strangely, now, as he bucked and roared, his spark pulsing hot against its housing in dismay and rage, all he could think was that this unbearable agony, this stripping away of the mark of his defiance, meant that Megatron was focused only on him, wholly and completely.

He growled again, his systems running hot with his will to fight it, unwilling to trust himself to find words.

"You don't need these, either," Megatron snarled, throwing aside fragments of the Autobot symbols that had come off in his hands.

Optimus cycled heavy pants through his vents, willing himself to focus through the pain.

"You cannot erase what I am." What my team is. What my team will do to save me. What my team needs, and somehow find in me. "Will you kill me, brother, when you are done teaching me whatever lesson you believe I must learn?"

Megatron's optics shone again, the bright red of molten metal, the rings of white in their centers burning white-hot. Optimus could hear the whine of the Decepticon's cannon powering up and taste the tang of its electricity in the air around him.

Or will you kill me now?

But the Decepticon only leaned down, his scarred mouth sliding along the dents and cuts his hands had left. Then he licked, lapping at the energon dripping from Optimus's wounds. The Autobot sighed in spite of himself, the eldritch cold numbing the pain.

This, too, had been a favorite game once. The gladiator had noticed his partner's discomfort and, laughing, had bent to soothe it, rubbing his faceplates over the damage and licking away the energon his claws had drawn.

It had calmed Orion then. Fierce as his lover's touch had been, it must have meant he cared. It must have meant that he had intended pleasure.

And part of Optimus relaxed into it, even now, even as his logic circuits screamed at him that Megatron had hurt him for real, that this was no game of passion any longer. His engine turned over, his frame wracked with sudden vertigo.

Megatron felt it and lifted his head. His ring of sharpened teeth glowed bright with the Autobot's energon. His cannon, still pointed at his prisoner, glowed as well, the lavender light of the energy fueling it stinging Optimus's optics.

"Kill you? Probably. After so long, you leave me no other choice." He laughed. "Unless you want to return to the revolution you abandoned."

"Never!" Optimus roared.

"I thought not." Megatron laughed. "Tell me, brother. Does it bother you to hear me call you traitor?"

Optimus's engine roared. "Don't."

"Once you believed in revolution. Now you are a Prime yourself."

"It is an honor to lead what remains of the Autobots."

Megatron grinned, straightening up. "Against me?"

Optimus's mouth set in a grim line. "I do not wish to fight you, brother. But the course you have chosen is not the revolution I was a part of."

Megatron's only answer was another laugh, deep and resonant. A hairline crack appeared between his chestplates, and Optimus could see the bright red light of his enemy's spark in the breach.

"Megatron!" he roared. "You said you wouldn't -"

Megatron held up his hands. They also shone, coated with pink energon. "I wasn't lying."

Optimus felt his own chest plates shifting, instinct and memory bidding them move. He gritted his dental plates and willed them shut. "Then why -?"

Megatron's hand moved to his own chest. He flinched slightly at the combined heat and chill of his own half-exposed spark.

You miss me, Optimus thought before he could stop himself.

And on the heels of that thought, another:

Maybe I can still reach you. Maybe there is something left of the comrade I once loved.

"Because you still don't see what you must understand."

Megatron moved, pacing around the berth his prisoner lay chained to. He's nervous, Optimus thought.

Then the Decepticon smiled - or grimaced - his lip plates pulling back from the mouthful of stained denta.

"You think I've changed. You think I've become a beast, driven by rage and wickedness. You think the dark energon seduced me. Now that I am fueled by it, you cling to the hope that it made me something I once was not."

"Yes," Optimus whispered, his voice laced with static.

"But I did things you did not like from the very beginning, brother. How do you explain that?"

"Legend says that Unicron seeks to be whole again. That his blood calls out to those who would hear."

Megatron's chest plates slid farther apart. Optimus shifted on the berth. Tendrils lanced from his own spark and buried themselves in the plating of his chest, which he kept shut by will alone.

He could see lines of purple lightning dancing around the red orb of Megatron's spark. Dark energon was purple, or so the legends said. This, then, must be its taint, seething through Megatron's life-force itself.

Megatron threw back his head, howling with laughter, the bright red light of his spark reflected in the gray metal of his helm and face. "And you think that is how our war began? Unicron, whispering to me all those years ago? Poisoning our revolution?"

"Perhaps," Optimus answered quietly. "The Megatron I knew loved Cybertron. He would never have sacrificed his home to his ambition."

The Decepticon hissed. "You insult me, Optimus Prime."

"You insult yourself, doing such things."

Megatron's spark pulsed, greedy or angry or both. Optimus's chest plates creaked, the gears that parted them turning, heedless of his processor's commands to hold them closed. He felt them crack apart and sighed in unwilling relief as some of his spark's heat escaped him.

"Do I? I would have done them sooner, if I had had the means." The bright purple tendrils crackled, whirling faster, as Megatron's optics fixed on the blue light flooding from the seam in Optimus's chest.

"But you won't believe that if I simply say it, will you, my brother-turned-Prime? So let me prove it to you."

His spark spun, a bright core of heat, the purple lightning crackling audibly as it circled around it.

"I can see its taint on you already," Optimus grunted, fighting to keep his chest plates closed.

"Merge with me," Megatron insisted.

"That will tell me nothing. I am no telepath. A spark-merge won't let me read your mind." If I could have, would I have seen this coming?

"But you will sense my emotions," the Decepticon crowed, smirking. "If something has altered me, you will feel it."

Optimus's spark pulsed, so hard that he felt the plates holding his spark chamber closed might melt in its effort to reach the other.

Optimus shook his head violently, his helm clanging against the hard metal of the berth. This wasn't right. This wasn't anything he should ever - could ever - agree to.

And yet, after so long, Megatron still wanted him. The cannon lay pointed directly at his most vital systems, but Megatron still had not fired.

The Decepticon leader was arrogant, yes. He had been even in the early days of his revolution. But he was no fool. He surely knew that the longer he let Optimus live, the longer Optimus or his team had to foil his plans.

And yet he had not killed him.

Perhaps there was some reason for that, some reason that a gladiator-turned-warrior could never admit to himself.

And perhaps if Optimus dug deep enough, he could find it. Perhaps if he bore the frozen bite of the dark energon, hunting beneath it for the spark of his lost brother, he could free Megatron from Unicron's influence and bring back what he had lost so long ago.

"You want me to open to you."

The cannon hand twitched, just barely. No one else would even have seen it. But Optimus knew his old comrade and lover better than anyone else ever had. "Yes."

"And you will kill me, either way."

Megatron frowned. "Autobots make so much of the fact that Decepticons lie when we must. So, Optimus Prime, I offer you a choice. Die in the bliss of your ignorance, or die knowing the truth."

"Then show me," Optimus sighed, his chest plates slowly parting.

Megatron cycled a ragged pant, watching the blue light of Optimus's spark unfurl before him. To Optimus's surprise, the Decepticon did not gloat. He merely stared, as though he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

"Brother," he murmured. Then he smirked, the orb in the center of his chest flaring bright crimson, the purple tendrils of dark energon lancing greedily outward.

Optimus felt them first, their frozen burn lancing agony through his systems. What was Megatron doing? Had he meant only to fool his enemy and allow Unicron's dark energies to consume him.

Then he felt it, a burning spear of light after the cold, unforgiving and unyielding but pure and real and alive, the fierce heat of a warrior's energies, searing his systems as it poured into his waiting spark.

He thrashed as Megatron's spark-energies flooded his systems. For a moment, he forgot everything, forgot Optimus Prime and civil war and brothers turned enemies and the hungry weapon, glowing lavender and still pointed down at him. For a moment, he was Orion Pax, offering himself up to the lord of the revolution he'd made his own. For a moment, his hands were no longer locked down at his sides in glowing bonds but tracing along the spikes and curves of a gladiator's form, fearing he would cut his fingers on the sharpened plating and daring himself to risk it anyway.

For a moment, he was that young Cybertronian again, his spark and spirit open as a strange, new heat rushed to fill his frame, welcoming and terrified.

Then Megatron bellowed, throwing back his head, and Optimus felt that, too, as though it were his own emotion. The pleasure of tearing through another's defenses, of bidding him open and being obeyed, of surging into someone else's systems and overwhelming, overcoming, overpowering.

This, too, was familiar. This, Orion Pax had already sensed, and already feared, even as he clung tightly to his partner, feeling himself filling and filling, touched and burned and purified everywhere by the heat of a leader's purpose and wondering, someday, if he would ever find such purpose of his own.

It is the same, he thought. He felt the cold of the dark energon, still inside him, still infecting him as it had infected his lover turned enemy. He hoped for a brief moment that he was hearing Megatron's thought and not his own, implanted there by Unicron's corruption, seeking to manipulate and confuse him.

His spark contracted, frozen as if by the dark energon's sting, as he realized the thought was his own.

It is the same. Cities razed. Enemies fallen, lying in twisted husks of blackened metal at the feet of the glorious Revolution. Megatron and his kind, their optics red and bright, the world around them melting in the fire of their cannons and lasers and energy rays.

Ready to be reforged, they'd said then. In whose image?

And what price for that reforging? Megatron had left his own kind, abandoned his Decepticons, to seek out the dark energon that fueled him now.

Optimus had thought that he must have done it because Unicron had called to him, dark and powerful and irresistible.

But feeling it freeze him now, he knew the truth. Megatron had sought it himself. Megatron had commanded it to keep him alive, when by rights he should have died.

Whatever remained of Unicron, Megatron was the dark energon's master, and not the other way around.

At least for now, anyway.

Optimus writhed even as his overfull spark pulsed with heat, the dark energon pricking a cold counterpoint through his systems. You are no part of me, he snarled, and it wheeled and danced like the dead he'd fought, but retreated.

"Megatron," he panted, tasting the tang of ozone in the air as the cannon powered up again, fueled by the energy of their bond.

Optimus gritted his dental plates and drew that energy to him faster, harder, wrenching it free from his partner and catching and holding it.

You wanted me to see you, brother, he thought. But fair is fair. You must see me for what I am, as well.

With a bellow of his own, he hurled the energy back into Megatron in a flare of blinding purple light.

The Decepticon grunted and pulled back, startled by what Optimus had done, barely able to absorb their combined energies. Optimus felt his emotions through the bond: rage at being attacked in so intimate a moment, surprise... and dismay.

You feel my sadness, brother. Our despair at having lost our world. I cannot imagine you do not feel it yourself. Even now. Even here, stranded on a distant world, with Unicron's infection racing through your circuitry.

But you do not understand its meaning. If you did, you could never live with yourself.

Come home, brother. Come home.

Megatron's fangs dug into his own lip plates; Optimus saw fresh energon gleaming on his enemy's chin. The red optics darted around the room, unseeing, nervous. Optimus felt the wave of anxiety, the fear. The grief of both Autobot and Decepticon alike. The wailing, keening horror of having lost not just their comrades, but their home.

Optimus wilted with it, feeling Megatron feed it back to him, doubled, all-consuming.

Then Megatron threw his head back and laughed, a loud unnatural sound that set the walls vibrating and made the light of their connected sparks swim in the young Prime's vision.

The energy crashed through him so hard his systems reeled, cold and heat and pain and passion and desire hitting him all at once. Once again, he was small, the librarian Orion Pax, young and new and fearful and far too easily torn apart.

And what rent him was desire, his systems dancing like demons to its terrible rhythm. It sought to consume him, remake him, reform him. It wanted to purify him, but the purification it would bring would melt him down from the inside.

Part of him wanted it.

Part of him always had.

Those parts of him sang with it, molten and greedy and strong, and suddenly he was not himself, not Orion Pax or even Optimus Prime but some great and terrible colossus, optics gleaming the red of the destruction it left in its wake. Worlds fell before it, blackened and twisted and melted, and what was broken and dead was nothing more than slag, to be removed and turned aside so that the new order could arise free of weakness.

He arched to meet the energy flooding him, burning him, perfecting him, tearing away the parts of him that sought to cling to weakness, to protect those who didn't deserve it, those who were not him, not him and not the one who fed this to him, setting his systems aflame -

No.

There are others.

He remembered them, faces swimming through his vision, sleek and blue; broad and green; yellow and inquisitive; red and white, the faceplates turned down in a perpetual frown.

A frown that would only deepen, hearing of this.

And others, small ones, tiny creatures he was protecting, creatures that this other version of him would only crush to death beneath its feet.

They need me.

He could not remember them all. Not when fire and ice chased one another through his systems and his spark pulsed, overfull, needing its release.

But he would remember them when this was over.

And that was all that mattered.

He shuttered his optics and surrendered, letting the heat race through him again, sharp and pleasant and so much missed and so much needed, and even the tang of cold that came with it only sent him higher, spiraling toward a bliss he could not name and had never felt before or since.

Now.

He did not know if the other had spoken. He heard that voice in every part of his processor, greedy and hard-edged and unforgiving.

For the last time in his life, he obeyed it without hesitation or fear or regret, overload racing through him in a nova of heat and light.

And then he felt the other, there with him, attuned to him as he never before had been, and a second overload tore through them both, fierce and unrelenting. His vision blanked white and his frame shook, completely out of his control.

He willed himself to stillness. The others might still come for him. He knew them well enough to know their faithfulness, their trust in him. He was their last Prime and their last hope, and they believed in him completely.

Megatron had some loyal soldiers, yes. But even the most steadfast believers in the Decepticon cause weren't foolish enough to truly trust their lord. Megatron would never understand that kind of loyalty.

But they had little time. No time at all, if what he'd seen in Megatron's spark meant that Megatron really would kill him without shame or regret.

He watched his enemy's optics flicker and waited for the end, or for the beginning.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, dark but awesome and quite in character. Very nice. :) - Zuzeca

[stainless]

Thanks! Took me long enough *thud*

[ilyena_sylph]

Oh, good LORDS almighty, this was...

Really impossibly hot and good, so very Optimus and so excellently Megatron, all his wicked power and his endless ambition...

And mind-blowingly hot.

[stainless]

Wow! So glad you enjoyed it so much!

[bluebuickr.livejournal.com]

Whew! Well done and a hell of a lot of work I'm thinking. Bravo.

[stainless]

!!!!! Thanks. Yes, it was a lot of work. My mind is still tapioca this morning. :-)

Megatron comes easily to me, but Optimus is always tough. He is a lot of work, because I really want to write a version of him that's worthy of the name.

[randomramblings]

Holy... wow. 5,000+ words. Now I know what took you so long. Seriously, Trinity, I don't know how you create such epics (both length and content-wise) one after the other. Just thinking about it boggles my mind. @_@

That being said, holy cow, this was mind-blowing. Even as I watched TF:P, I never really thought about the chemistry between these two, but I think you've done a wonderful job at crafting it and making it immensely believable. I must say I've become rather fond of the eloquent speeches your Megatron tends to give, and this story certainly didn't disappoint! And Optimus' internal struggle is just... my goodness.

I think I need time to pick up the pieces of my brain off the floor. GUH!

(Also, this is entirely unrelated, but this was playing in my head the entire time I read this.)

[stainless]

Holy... wow. 5,000+ words. Now I know what took you so long.

Yeah.

*collapses*

Part of what took me so long is Optimus and Megatron in a room together is actually really hard for me, because I love them both. (Used to like OP a little more than I liked Screamer actually; now the queen bitch has won me over.) I find Optimus very, very difficult to write, and I'm so glad people think he works here.

That being said, holy cow, this was mind-blowing.

Wow. I'm honored.

Even as I watched TF:P, I never really thought about the chemistry between these two, but I think you've done a wonderful job at crafting it and making it immensely believable.

I think it's very easy to see them as bitter exes in canon, so this had to happen.

Again, I'm glad it works for you!

I must say I've become rather fond of the eloquent speeches your Megatron tends to give, and this story certainly didn't disappoint!

Thank you! I do try.

And Optimus' internal struggle is just... my goodness.

Yeah. *pats him*

Wait, I'm a Decepticon, I'm not supposed to be doing that...

I think I need time to pick up the pieces of my brain off the floor. GUH!

*helps pick up brain*

I was listening to this when I posted it (I don't usually listen to music when I write because it makes it hard for me to concentrate.)

[kaeleersheart]

So sad. And wonderfully done.
(Ebon-gray at lj)

[stainless]

Thank you very much!

[(Anonymous)]

Now that was a fic. Rich, dark and deep. Loved every word of it. I am so glad I saved this one to read.

(vermilionbird on LJ. I don't have a dreamwidth acct)

[stainless]

Wow, I'm very glad you liked it!

[snowdropexplodes.myopenid.com]

Fantastic writing, as ever.

I found this one very tough though. It felt to me like both characters were at their most vulnerable, and also like it was the most downright abusive relationship that I have seen you write (although still with such deft and subtle tones).

Megatron seemed vulnerable not only because Orion/Optimus was able to fight back, but also because he did seem to need his former follower to see him as he saw himself and to need on some level that affirmation of self.

Optimus was vulnerable because he could, after all, be reduced back to the awe-struck librarian he once was, by the manipulation by his (former) abuser. (I know in previous episodes you didn't write it that way, but the descriptions and perspective given here, it felt to me like it had been an abusive relationship, or at least, a toxic one.)

It made a very challenging read, but also moving and enlightening.

[stainless]

I'm really glad you found it so moving, but I'm not quite sure how to react to this. I think some of your response is not something I intended (and actually something I was working to avoid.) I'm torn on what to say, though, as there's only so far authorial intent goes -- the story becomes its own beast once it's out there. I'll have to see if others are willing to talk in such depth about how they understood it, and perhaps think about rewriting (parts of?) it.

[snowdropexplodes.myopenid.com]

As I was writing my responses, I had a nagging feeling that I was picking up something that you hadn't intended and wondering how much of it had come from something I brought with me.

Wow.

[(Anonymous)]

A good story takes you places. I feel like I was there. Great job on this!