Forsaken

[stainless]

Title: Forsaken
Characters/Pairings: Shockwave
Verse: Bayverse
Wordcount: 1700+
Rating: K. Bit bleak, but nothing violent or the like.
Warnings: Angst of doom. Not much else.
Summary: We know nothing about what Shockwave will be like in the upcoming movie except that he's the villain. As I'm fond of loyal Shockwaves, I decided to explore what might lead a loyal one to betray his leaders. Canon will no doubt turn out nothing like this at all.

Thanks to randomramblings for beta.

Shockwave cycled a sigh through his vents. He didn't want any of this. The ring of recording devices around him felt like an invasion, encroaching on his privacy.

Someone like Starscream would delight in this attention. And of course, Starscream himself would consider this day the crowning moment of his life.

Shockwave, for his part, wanted only to be left alone. He wanted only to manage the affairs of his world quietly, just as he had since the others had left.

But that had become impossible. He was certain of this. He'd analyzed the situation over and over again, hoping he had missed something, some factor that allowed for some other outcome. But every time he examined the evidence, it led him to the same conclusion.

Megatron had truly gone insane, and was no longer fit to rule. Those with him were lost to the true Decepticon cause. And that left Shockwave to take up the mantle.

His spark pulsed heavily as he thought it, as if refusing to acknowledge the truth, even now.

Some of them would have expected him to be glad of this. Ambition was, after all, a common Decepticon trait. But Shockwave had never wanted leadership. He had intended only to become useful to his Leader's revolution. His spark had swelled with pride when Megatron had first confessed that he'd become not just useful, but indispensable.

Others would be surprised at his nervousness: the flare of his single optic, the nervous twitch of his finials. They would not expect his nervousness, not because they thought he wanted to lead, but because they believed he was incapable of emotion at all.

He knew what they whispered about him when they thought he couldn't hear. (Of course he heard; ever since Starscream had flown off in search of Megatron, he had placed the entire planet under the most precise surveillance possible with the resources at hand.)

They claimed that he valued logic so much that he'd deleted his emotion programming, if not physically removed his affect centers entirely. He had been entrusted with Cybertron itself after both of its leaders had left for a backwater planet on a mission to locate a lost artifact that was destroyed in the end anyway.

In order to properly govern a planet, Shockwave needed to ensure he would never get carried away by emotion, as they had. Or so the others assumed. He had in fact done very little to his emotion-related programming other than learn to ignore it when necessary. He felt as they did, most of the time. He exulted in victories, despaired at defeats, and felt the red-hot desire for revenge sear his circuitry.

He simply refused to be steered by those things unless reason agreed with them. It did so far more often than the others believed.

But on some unfortunate occasions - such as this one - it did not.

He did not conclude that Megatron could no longer lead out of anger or defiance. When Megatron had first cast off the mantle of Lord High Protector, insisting that his civilian cousins had lost their way and refusing to accept anything less than full rulership of all Cybertron, Shockwave had thrilled at his words just the same as anyone else had. He had long ago concluded that the old system gave far too much power to the civilian Prime and those under him. The civilians were useful - as builders, scientists, researchers, inventors, and many other things - but they were not war machines.

No, it was not that he lacked the emotion to feel excitement. Not when Shockwave heard his own theses in the mouth of a true warrior, rumbling out of the great vocalizer as though the destruction had already begun. His spark had pulsed with it, whirled with it, all his energy crackling to its promise. Megatron would rise to scour this world clean of the unworthy and a new era would begin.

And Shockwave had intended, from the very beginning, to be indispensable to it. He had risen through the ranks not only for his ruthless precision, but also for his deep conviction that Megatron was and would be the greatest leader Cybertron had ever known.

It had begun in precisely the blaze of glory he so fervently desired. All of Cybertron had burned, alight with the flames of its rebirth. Shockwave might not have roared with joy as the others did, but there was no rule against silent exultation.

Then everything had unraveled.

He had, of course, understood Megatron's desire to retrieve the Allspark. Without it, no new machines could be given life. Both the Decepticons and their Autobot enemies could construct only drones, mindless automata that would follow rudimentary programming in the service of highly simplified objectives. Drones were no substitute for new warriors, for sentient beings who could plan and invent - and know what it meant to fight and die for their cause.

And someday, when the war ended and the Autobots had been extinguished, the Decepticons would need not just more warriors, but new generations, to train and teach and hone and take pride in.

But when Megatron had finally found out where the Allspark was, he hadn't come up with a plan to retrieve it. He hadn't assembled and sent a scouting party, or a group of infiltrators, or even a strike force that would raze the alien planet to dust if its denizens didn't turn over the Allspark.

Instead, he'd flown off after it himself, a feverish light in his crimson optics.

Shockwave had done his best to dissuade his leader. Starscream had of course exhorted him to stay as well, in far less measured words. But Megatron's mind had been made up from the moment he first mentioned it. He'd flown off in the middle of their very meeting, irritated that his closest advisers would dare question him in a matter so vital to their war and to their future.

After all, if he did find the Allspark, he would return with an army. An army that any calculation showed would prove victorious. If the Decepticons could continue to swell their ranks with new-sparked warriors and the Autobots could only produce drones, they would stand no chance.

Shockwave knew this. But in the interim, the Decepticons would be without their general. Starscream was an able fighter, but it would simply not be the same.

And it had not been. Starscream had proven himself a more worthy commander that Shockwave could ever have calculated he would be. But he was not Megatron, and both the Decepticons and the Autobot resistance knew it.

And Megatron had not returned quickly, his gleaming new army in tow. The Allspark had been destroyed, and Megatron with it.

That had led the Decepticons to mount an emergency mission to locate a shard of the destroyed Allspark and make a desperate attempt to resurrect their leader.

Although that attempt had worked, and the newly-rebuilt Megatron had briefly returned, his obsession with the alien planet had only grown.

Once again, he had left Cybertron, fueled by his volatile and dangerous emotions, his desire for violent revenge on the alien world and on the Autobots who had followed him there.

Once again, he had abandoned the Decepticons.

His Decepticons.

Shockwave's spark seized up again, crackling with a rage born of anguish.

He had always been loyal. More loyal than Starscream had been, with his endless doubts and his poorly hidden preening. He'd thought the other Decepticons didn't notice his clicking wings and spinning turbines as they called him Lord, Leader, High Commander. He was a fool. Everyone knew.

And yet now he was with Megatron, gone to some faraway world, lost to the Decepticons he so wanted to lead. If the intelligence Shockwave had was good, Starscream was even protecting his Leader now.

While Shockwave, loyalist from the very beginning, concluded that there was no option left but betrayal.

He permitted his finials to twitch again. Under such dire circumstances, showing some small evidence of his distress was surely no sin.

Then, slowly, he activated the cameras surrounding him.

"Decepticons," he began, his single optic staring straight into the largest of the cameras. "Megatron is lost to us, as are Starscream and the others who left Cybertron. They have chosen another world over this one.

"Our own world must be our priority now. We drove our enemies out, but it is certain that famine will destroy us if we do not devote ourselves to rebuilding and to harvesting what fuel we can from nearby worlds.

"We cannot wait for our leaders' return. We cannot permit ourselves the luxury of believing that they will return. Our sparks perhaps - desire it -" he reset his vocalizer - "but it has become vanishingly unlikely. We all know this.

"And if they do return, we have no guarantee that they will consider our well-being their first priority. Not when they have abandoned us.

"Decepticons, I have delayed too long. Now I must declare a state of emergency, and take up the mantle that Megatron, Starscream, and the others who left with them have abandoned. Therefore, I must reluctantly take up their duties and declare myself Leader in their absence."

He hesitated, his spark a cold weight in his chest. Then he cut the cameras quickly, glad to be alone in his tower instead of addressing the throngs personally. If they were hailing him as their new leader, he had no desire to hear it.

And if they were not - if they considered his claims illegitimate because their sparks, overriding their logic circuits, told them they should follow the lost ones to the bitter end -

- then Shockwave wanted some peace before his own kind ripped his tower apart, tore him from his high place, and dismantled him.

Either way, one small moment of solitude was only fair.