stainless | and yet another RP log (Reply)

Yes, I am working on the next chapter of Nova, and hopefully it will be up by next week sometime. This is the week of my birthday, so I've been very busy. So I'm just going to post an RP log today.

I had posted an essay to

crimson_optics about Megatron and Starscream, and in the comments I made reference to this fic I wrote, explaining that it originally was part of the RP I've posted snippets from before, and in that RP Megatron had thought about the events and commented on them.

decepticon41 wanted to see that part, so I've decided to post it here.

As I've mentioned in other logs I posted from the same RP, I'm playing Megatron and Optimus Prime is played by

aeon_entwined. By this time in the RP, Megatron and Optimus are lovers and there's an uneasy truce between the factions (which, of course, Megatron is scheming to pervert to his own ends.)

Optimus grinned against his partner's lips, lazily tasting the other's tongue against his own. Though he could tell they were both far from adverse to another round of what they'd just experienced, he felt far more at ease and content merely being in the other's arms.

His fingertips traced odd patterns down the warlord's sides, skimming over plating and skittering against exposed transformation seams. Just taking the time to memorize the other, his imperfections, his shape, his very self, was almost more intimate than the merging they'd just shared.

Megatron felt the fingers exploring his scars. Once again, he remembered those first touches, the blue fingers tracing his injured frame in some odd mixture of awe and sadness. Had he been looking to soothe the injuries from their battle with his touch? Or was it old scars the Prime wanted to feel, his fingertips hoping to drink in the memories of old wounds and draw away some of the pain? It hadn't mattered then, but somehow it did now.

"You want to know," he murmured, breaking the kiss and whispering against the other's neck. "But could you know? Could you, truly, learn and face each memory I carry? Each comrade I watched fall in a revolution your kind condemned? Each mech who dug desperate fingers into my plating, hard enough to rend and tear, begging me to spare his life, the lives of his friends, his comrades, his kind?

"Could you hear each protestation of innocence I ignored? You believe in innocence; I never did, not even before I formed my revolution."

Optimus knew exactly what he was doing. He knew Megatron knew this. He knew Megatron knew he knew what he was doing. Nonetheless, that didn't make the moment any less poignant and charged.

"I want to know ... I want to feel what you felt ... I want to help you carry that burden," he replied softly, one arm tightening around the other mech's waist. "But you know, just as well as I, I'll never truly know. I can only learn as much as you teach me."

"Then come here," Megatron said, his chest plates slowly closing as he led the other mech over to the berth. He chuckled. How had they failed to even find their way over to it before? And now that he didn't intend to spark-merge again, here he was, encouraging the other to lie down beside him...

He took hold of one of Optimus' hands, guiding it to the freshly-repaired wound Starscream had made. As the blue fingertips touched the wound, he hissed once in pain and then moaned softly.

"What I teach you?" he murmured. "Would you go over every scar? There is no time now for that, Optimus Prime. But... this one is new. Can you tell? This one was made only days before I called you here.

"Starscream did it." The red optics stared intently at Optimus. "And it is, more than likely, the last wound he will ever give me. The last token of... whatever it was. His anger. His hatred. His respect. I defeated him, as I told you I would. I nearly destroyed him, because it had to be done.

"And I left him for dead when I was finished. As he had left me, when all of this began."

Optimus merely listened, keeping his optics trained on his partner's as his hand was guided over the other's hip. He had noticed the injury, but he hadn't said anything. Now, everything was made clear.

"There may be no time for teaching now, but there will be, that I promise you." he replied softly, gaze still locked with the other mech's.

"And while I don't enjoy violence such as that ... I can only say it seems fate has dealt her final hand for your Lieutenant. I will not say he deserved it, because I cannot judge others in that manner, but I think his end was somewhat expected."

The warlord chuckled. "Expected? Yes. I believe in the end even he expected it. If he hadn't known from the beginning." He stared up at the ceiling. "Sometimes I believe he wanted that, and spent vorns asking for it. While it is true I never shrank from pointing out his faults --" he smirked -- "it was never me who claimed he lacked potential. I chose him because I knew that his mind was quicker than anyone else's. And that he was every bit as deadly as the gladiators who thought I'd hastened him out of their world because I preferred him... less damaged."

His optics shone. "They had clearly never seen what happened when their cronies tried to hassle him. Starscream was always more than able to take care of himself -- and more than willing to do so in ways that would make those who crossed him bitterly regret doing so.

"No, it was never me who failed to believe in him."

"Then ... I suppose I understand why you do seem to miss his presence." Optimus replied softly, still trying to work out everything that his partner was telling him. "I can see it in your expression ... you do miss him ... in your own way. Why?"

He was genuinely curious. Throughout the long years battling one another, he'd only seen the Decepticon Lieutenant being beaten, chastised, or ridiculed. But ... perhaps ... there was more to the situation than meets the optic sensor. That was their interaction on the battlefield, but their attitudes towards one another could alter slightly behind closed doors.

Megatron chuckled. "I think you know what my kind believe. We value those who are the best, who have the skill or the tenacity or the shamelessness to rise above the herd and make themselves into something more. It is no accident that we are weapons. We have to be, even to ascend among our own kind. And he was the best, aside from me. I was the last barrier for him, and it ate at him that he couldn't destroy me."

The warlord chuckled. "I wanted his loyalty. And at first I had it. At first, he admired me. When he first gave himself to me he was... frightened, I think, but willing, all the same. He did not mind that I had demanded it; that much he expected. He minded, I think, that I could... and that he knew, in the end, that he could not truly defy me.

"I hated the things he did to undermine me; they never served his aims and often went against ours." His fist clenched, tight and dark, and then opened again. "But... all the same, I did not hate his defiance. I did not hate the spark that drove him, even once his mind knew what his spark did not, to challenge and rage against me despite inevitable failure. Because... the alternative was to accept what those failures meant. Better that he fight futilely, that he throw himself against something immovable and indestructible, than that he walk away accepting his place as second best. There is no second best in our world -- not to those who truly understand it."

He smiled, slowly, his optics flashing bright in the dim room. "No, I did not hate him. I punished him because that is the way of things, because it made an example of him, because his failures did affect us, and because I wanted to."