Symbiosis

[stainless]

Title: Symbiosis
Characters: Megatron and Starscream
Verse: G1
Wordcount: 1,190ish
Rating: T for angst and sadness
Warnings: It's sad, and there's violence going on, but it's not explicit.
Summary: Megatron and Starscream, fighting the last battle for Vos, and realizing both what they're losing and becoming.

I don't usually like Megatron's original alt, and most of what I write is drawn from many different canons so he's usually something else. But... sometimes it just works, and the image of Starscream wielding him at the last, losing battle for his home just grabbed me today and would not let go of my mind until I wrote it down.

Way back when I wrote Happiness Is A Warm Gun all those long months ago, it really got me interested in the idea of how Starscream and Megatron would have to be in sync with one another for that wielding to work. And I think it would be deeply in evidence in the battle for Vos; as I see them, they both deeply value it. Starscream, obviously would because it's his home -- but in my personal funky headcanon Megatron does too. It's a place that Starscream leads, which means it's a place for competence and elegance and its own little brand of ruthlessness, and as I see it Megatron approves very much of those things.

And so... this.

Below him, his city burned.

If it had been anywhere else - anywhere else, not just his enemy Tarn, or the arrogant domes of Iacon, but anywhere, even someplace like Altihex or Praxus where no one had done a thing to him and his kind - Starscream would have called it beautiful.

His warriors flew a dance of death. His allies, risen from the Badlands and from Kaon, already said to be the mouth of the Pit itself, tore everything on the ground to twisted scrap, their cannons and lasers setting it all ablaze in flame.

It would have been perfect.

But it was Vos that burned.

His spark crackled with fury as he roared through the sky, always the fastest, always the brightest, always the best, always far, far beyond where any other could touch him.

He felt heat against his underside, a hum of fierce, barely contained energy crackling through the weapon mounted there. It echoed his indignation, his rage at this destruction.

They could have communicated. Could have spoken. It was certainly easy enough. But everything they had needed to say to one another had already been said. Said before they'd taken these forms, folding in upon themselves, one becoming a weapon so that the other could wield it.

Starscream deserved at least that now. To soar high above the others, raining revenge and death and destruction down on the ones who would dare to desecrate his home, his greatest ally now his greatest weapon.

"This is sacrilege," the other had said, his silver face lit orange-red with the light of the flames.

"Sacrilege, Megatron?" Starscream hadn't understood. Vos was his home, and the home of his many wings of warriors; of course it would affect him. But a mech like the one who led Kaon cared for his own first, all others after. Even his allies. "You yourself wanted war."

"I wanted war, yes," the big mech had answered, clenching a dark fist, looking out as spires toppled, wreathed in flame, crashing to the scorched ground. "But Vos was the last place on this world worth preserving. They have destroyed everything our world has ever been."

He had turned, his optics burning as bright as the conflagration building around them. "They seek to destroy those terrible enough to recreate it. The dangerous. The cunning. The vicious. The strong. But it will not happen. They will be consumed."

They will be consumed. Starscream's spark had sung with it, and with the strange, cryptic praise.

It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. Even if they won this day, the towers soaring into Cybertron's skies were cracked or broken or downed entirely. Vos had already become a ruin, and it would be long vorns before any resources could be devoted to rebuilding. For now, there was only war.

And to that end - this.

Starscream sped toward the center of the city, high above even his own warriors, through smoke and ever-rising flame.

And there, above it all, stood the last and highest of the city's towers, the home of the Winglord himself.

His home. His palace. Symbol of his might. Greatest jewel in the crown of Cybertron.

The only thing worth preserving, soon to fall to grasping and unworthy enemies who understood nothing.

He felt a hum beneath him, and knew that both he and Megatron shared the same thought: If it must fall, it will not fall to them.

Disgust coursing through his systems like a virus, he lined himself up with the window of his palace.

"Now," he whispered, struggling to keep his engines from stalling as they choked out his despair. He should have cried out, shrieked it loud enough for Megatron to hear.

It didn't matter. He heard the low whine of the cannon charging, felt the burn of the gathering energy.

Then the bolt of lavender energy burst free, speeding toward the one place on the planet he had truly made his own.

Then everything was swallowed in a flare of purple light so bright his optical feed flickered with static from the exposure. The sound filled his audio receptors, and his spark pulsed, hidden at the center of his form, hideously overfull.

So this is regret, he thought with a peal of laughter, wild and mad.

Megatron was warm below him, the air around him still crackling with ozone like the first hints of a lightning storm.

"Everything burns," Megatron said. "Everything."

Starscream's engines whined. Who did Megatron think he was, deciding how this battle should be fought? He knew very well that Megatron hadn't proposed this alliance intending to treat him as an equal forever. But for one thing, he had his own ideas about that - and, for another, this battle was his.

"Everything burns," he repeated. Those words - as irritated as he was with Megatron, they could have come from him. His spark crackled with energy, and the living metal against him had grown hot again, as if in response.

It unnerved him. He was the Winglord of Vos, and held no others above himself. No bonds connected him to the rest of the world, except for ever-shifting alliances that, until now, had kept Vos a city apart, untouched by the petty power grabs of all the other cities on the planet. Starscream's counsel was his own, and even if any other mech had known his plans, he could never have untangled them anyway.

And here Megatron was, not bothering with any attempt to understand him at all, speaking the things he felt, giving voice to what he wanted, to the reckoning he sought to call down from his skies...

It was an affront. An affront that Megatron would pay for, someday, somehow, despite all of this, despite Megatron bringing his armies to Vos's defense - and, now that the end had come, to its revenge.

And yet, Starscream thought, he allows me to wield him. To carry him. To choose, for the moment, what he destroys.

Blind fool. Of all the beings in the galaxy, why choose to trust me?

Feeling the silent weight attached to him, the shared wrath as it warmed, and fired, and warmed again, he remembered the answer the other had given.

They have destroyed everything our world has ever been.

They seek to destroy those terrible enough to recreate it.

Those terrible enough to recreate it...

Starscream's engines roared and he gave a high cry.

Everything burns.