Ep0 Megatron's quarters - 'All or Nothing' Closed
Nov 17, 2011 15:14:39 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2011 15:14:39 GMT -5
<<Megatron & Barricade>>
“Decepticons, we are on the brink of victory.”
It was a bold statement to open with on the command deck, with all of the high ranking Decepticon agents assembled with representatives of the Eradicons present on the lower threshold. Megtaron held the audience with a confidence that was more a force of nature than an act of will, his optics vividly alive and conveying the same ferocity and belief that had gathered an army to him when the war had been in its infancy.
After a suitably pregnant pause to fully relay the significant conviction of his words, Megatron continued. “We have in our possession a weapon that will destroy the Autobot infestation of this world within seconds, poisoning the energon in their lines and rendering what little stockpiles are left to them useless. They will die suffering, but to facilitate their deaths will take the efforts of all assembled here.”
The warlord silently triggered the large screens adorning the command desk to display the six power plants that had been targeted, and the schematics of a device Shockwave had just finished perfecting. “Six teams will strike these six power stations in unison, obliterating the human occupancy and installing one of these energy transmitters onto the main generators. Barricade will run interference with the Autobots so that by the time they respond to these synchronised attacks, it will be too late.”
Megatron looked towards Shockwave, standing tall and foreboading to one side of the assembly. “Shockwave will provide you with the details of the devices, and inform you of the specifics in the co-ordination of the attacks. Prepare yourself, Decepticons. We proceed tomorrow.”
As the assembly began to disperse, a ripple of chatter running low and quiet between the mecha, Megatron moved to stand alongside Barricade. The smaller mech had not moved since arriving for this briefing, held fast by a peripheral sense that Megatron had more to say to him than had been said to the others, Megatron confirmed this when they were stood face to face, close enough to touch but perfectly aware of the discreetness they maintained warranting that they did not.
“Barricade, come with me,” Megatron instructed simply, his features and EMF field carefully unreadable. It was only because of so much time spent together that the implication that what followed was to be personal and in the Commander’s quarters was conveyed.
Cade didn’t say anything, just nodded and quietly followed his CO. Behind them the atmosphere of the room had changed, charged he supposed, the murmur and electromagnetic thrum of Eradicon excitement shivering in the air and the feeling was familiar. It was the same linguistic and electro-emotional buzz that had once charged the streets of lower Kaon back in the twilight hour of the Golden Age on Cybertron. It whispered across long-wave EMF like a touch on the back of your neck or a murmur in your audio and when he heard it Barricade felt that fervor conducting across his own mood like viral string leaping from one mech to the next.
He wasn’t sure what was about to happen. His mind was already on the task at hand, on his squad unit waiting from him in the lower hangers, prepping for the mission launch within the next few hours. He could feel through no particular venue of understanding that the warlord did not plan to brief him on last minute changes to the plan and he admitted to the cool note of apprehension in his chest, murmuring through the alien code that had been set like livewires into his sparkchamber.
Once alone, Barricade tilted his head at the other mech, red optics flashing dimly in the semi-dark of Megatron’s chambers. “What is it?”
There were old ways, old customs, that simply predated Barricade; certain gestures that functioned as discourses in themselves to convey that which words simply couldn’t carry, or cheapened in the attempt. They were largely forgotten now simply because they had no place in war, and certainly no place within the Decepticon ranks. However, Megatron knew that it would take something much more than words to convey to Barricade that he was utterly serious in this moment - resolved and stalwart.
Standing just out of reach of the mech who was a clear two heads shorter than the warlord but rarely ever acted like it, Megatron crossed one arm over his midsection whilst the other remained slack and straight at his side. The silence took on a hot note as he held Barricade’s optics with his own, intense with focus, certainty and promise. Then, simply and silently, he knelt. It put Barricade taller, and Megatron still did not break optic-contact.
Barricade froze.
“Wait,” he said reactively, wildly uncertain what was happening. He was certain only that what he wanted – the vast and incalculable and bizarre shape of Cade’s ambitions – did not include being knelt to by anyone, least of all his commander and, now, spark-aligned. He couldn’t remember how to move or what this signified, he only knew the intuitive sense that this meant everything and he had no comprehension of that, no sense of context for the dread and want that rushed him. “Now?”
The large mech shuttered his optics briefly, an unspoken command for Barricade to stop talking and just listen. Satisfied that he had the dark mech’s attention, and ignoring the prickling waver that he’d been expecting to arise in the other’s field, Megatron spoke. “I have never acted in half-measures, Barricade, and I do not intend to start now. I banished the class system that murdered Nos and had made slaves of innumerable Cybertronians, overthrew the government too stagnant and corrupt to change, instigated a war to scorch a path towards a future of strength for our people, drove the Autobots to the brink of extinction and now, on the precipice of victory, I will not have this one incomplete article lying between us.” A pause, then: “If you would permit me.”
The infiltrator said nothing for a moment.
Then, quietly, “I would.”
A thin, genuine smile and Megatron rose with the same slow intent as he had knelt. His hands slid across Barricade’s sides, the long claws of his fingers tracing over the warm chassis as if touching it for the first time. He bowed his helm against the other mech’s, concentrating on the feeling of disconnect in their resonances that would soon be erased. It was with slow, near-reverence that he pressed his mouth to the corner of Barricade’s optics before moving down to his mouth. The infiltrator was here, now, being acknowledged, welcomed and asserted as an equal to him - an event that had never transpired before in his long existence, and one that he had not entertained ever would.
An urging pulse across the half a bond they already had, a sensation that could loosely be articulated as: Be certain/sure/of your own volition. I won’t/can’t/refuse to lose/endure/suffer/die again. Words he, for all his strength and might, could not bring himself to speak.
I don’t make moves I’m not certain of, thought Barricade, his words murmuring down his frame and through the aether between them, hot with his certainty, reinforced with want. “If you will risk having me I have no plans to die before this war ends.” Cade’s chin rose, a fission of dark pride moving through his spark. “I told you once I will not be the chink in your armor. Make no mistake, this is dangerous, tactically unsound – I slaughter mechs foolish enough to do what we’re approaching. I’m willing to risk it, but the true risk is yours, Megatron.”
Cade took the other mech’s right hand from where it had stopped against his frame. He examined the scarred alloy of the warlord’s palm, as if reading the history of violence there… then gently pressed his mouth to center of Megatron’s palm. He could not describe the emotion that motivated him. He looked up, optics strange and unguarded. If I am worth that, then take what I am.
Megatron’s large hand curled gently, cradling Barricade’s helm. His other hand came to rest across the mech’s chassis, covering the bold and brilliant spark he could feel as strongly as his own “I am no stranger to risk, nor suffering, and I was called more than a fool when I started on the path to what I have become,” Megatron replied simply, touching their helms together once again. Their chassis were flush except for his hand, their systems sharing warm eddies of air and thin electrical arcs. He parted his plates a little, the sequence already running and ready, spark energy leaping out hungrily for the integration and transformation that would follow. “There is more than risk to a sparkbond, Barricade. There is so much gained. It fortifies and strengthens, as if an alloy. We will be reforged.”
Feeling the receptivity of the other spark, Megatron’s own surged in a heady pulse that almost had him staggering into the smaller mech. He tore the barrier of his own hand away from between them, grasping the lithe body fully, optics flickering white as the corona of his spark flared, forcing the very casing open. “ ‘Cade...”
The Saleen inhaled raggedly, his chest splitting wide, baring his spark so easily it was terrifying. That bright razor-sharp cut of fear was followed by a heady blur of arousal, of want, excitement and a spark-deep crush of need so primal he didn’t know where in his basecode it could have come from. It pulsed so deep in his protoform beneath every design and engine and machine that he lost track of himself as he looped his arms around the warlord’s neck and gripped so tight it was more like a combat hold than any intimacy.
Maybe he spoke, said Megatron’s name like most invoke a god. He was hard to hear over the sound of his own revving, whirring, aching systems.
His vents cycled through, frame charging with a full-body current so intense he could hear the hum of it across his mesh, see it sparking and arcing off their frames, metal to metal, mesh to mesh. He was shaking, couldn’t stop it, every hydraulic line in his body tensing and singing with the other mech’s raw spark energy coursing through him, into him and inhabiting his being so fully he couldn’t fully delineate himself. He felt his own hands on Megatron’s armor plates, the drag of his claws on the warlord like he was touching himself and the feeling was impossible and unbearable.
“Primus...” His own voice shocked him, agonized and desperate, wanting something he couldn’t even frame in words. He held tighter, optics shuttering, “Please...”
Megatron gave as much as his spark took and more, systems keening into the merge. “Yes,” he groaned, growled, almost cried into the other mech’s body. “Everything...”
His back struck the floor before his equilibrium systems had warned him that his legs had given way beneath them. Megatron didn’t feel the impact, the scope of his universe wholly encapsulated by the flashing, mingling light between them that flared and roared with the silent fury of an electrical storm. Barricade’s body sprawled grasping and clawing on top of him felt an extension of him, alive and untamable.
Conscious thought was passing from Barricade’s processors, devolving into a empathic language of impulse and electromagnetics, frequencies of desire transcribed in sound and lightening - he couldn’t parse the lattice of pleasure and heat and friction, the complex configuration of code as it crawled through him with sensation so pure it was profane the things Barricade would have done to make sure it didn’t stop. A bond protocol, some instinctive sub-routine that unfurled through his hazy systems in digital reels, changing him and rewriting him from the spark out. He could feel the onslaught - the reformat that swarmed through his neurocircuitry and laced him down to the basecode with the markings of another Cybertronian - setting Megatron like a vital component into the clockwork of his soul.
Barricade would have done anything, anything for that feeling not to stop. Luckily, nothing was asked of him and he leaned down, hands gripping at the nape of his partner’s neck as their sparks were drawn into alignment like binary stars. He pressed his helm to Megatron’s, a scream in his throat caught up fast with words that wanted to be begging, wanted to be profanities, wanted to be prayer. He felt himself overload but not come down from it - he remained pulsing, shaking, body and mind possessed by pleasure that bordered on agony.
He wanted it to stop. He wanted to keep going. He doubled up against his partner, shivering so hard his armor hummed a note, alloy heated with electrical discharge, the smell of ozone... His optics flickered blue-white, his spark flaring in his chest and he screamed, stifling the sound against Megatron’s mouth, tasting his own cry as he swallowed it. He shuddered, moaned. “I.. how much more...?” He couldn’t take it much longer, the feeling like coming apart and wanting it, suicidally needing it. “Megatron?”
It had been the warlord’s overload that had been dragging Barricade along, beginning after the infiltrator’s own and carrying on afterwards, though they felt it as one. When Megatron came down the wild fury of sensation ebbed away like the last of floodwater pouring through a dam, and he collapsed back fully into the floor, vents howling and arms holding, clutching Barricade to his chassis hard.
Onlining his optics, Megatron couldn’t discern if it was thin ribbons of smoke twisting up above them or if his visual processor was in the middle of correcting an aftermath-glitch. It was instinctive, natural to speak across the new, fully-formed bond as opposed to using his vocaliser or comm.. Barricade? ‘Are you alright?’ was contained in the single world.
The universe had realigned again, slightly off-centre. The infiltrator sat up, his armor still partially ajar, shoulder wheels flexing, panel arrays bending and humming in the aftershocks. About his disarray, the static in his eyes, or the hitch in his vocalizor, the police car couldn’t have cared less. He could feel a line drawn tight inside him, through him, the lines in his neural net shivering and he knew he’d been irrecoverably altered. He checked his higher processes, his logi-tech, scouring his mind as if he could see through his newly remade mind the changes that might be there.
I’m... still me. He made his observation mildly. He sat up, aware he was straddling the other Decepticon and gazed unreadably down at his bonded commander and chief. And aloud he said, “It feels like..” He didn’t know. He wasn’t alone, there was no ‘alone’. He could flee to the darkest, farthest edge of the verse and he would not be alone. Barricade couldn’t articulate the sense of shock and joy at this so he just said, “I’m yours.”
“You are,” Megatron rumbled in affirmation, the words echoing across the bond and washing into the other mech through audio and spark. Barricade washed back, entwined within the weave of his being like nothing else, meshed against facets of himself that had never been so utterly exposed in his long life.
The other mech would know him now, in his rawest form, separate from the mythos that preceded him. At his core, Megatron was a creature of willpower and passion, ruled by emotion and a thirst to surpass circumstance. He had perpetuated a war effort for centuries, orchestrated genocides, was rightfully called a monster by the enemy and some of his own followers, but monstrous was not all he was. Even now. There were still rare points and moments of vulnerability that were always the cost of possessing great strength, and now another would be privy to them.
As an alloy with Barricade, though, he would be fortified as much as his sparkmate was. Apart they were strong - together they were unconquerable.
“Mine,” Megatron continued in that same multiplicity of spoken words and the spark bond, hand tightening on Barricade’s nape with warm possessiveness. “Everything you are, everything you were and will become, I will also have. Just as you will have me.”
Barricade couldn’t repress a strange shudder that passed through him, potent and pleasurable and terrifying as he felt all his being laid bare in reels and strands, unraveling in lines of code and memory and it felt good. Warring sub-routines flared active within him – eons of infiltrator instinct running up frantically against such a total exposure, rejecting, fighting what was already infused in him to the basecode. Barricade was no legend, no warlord, but he was a persona – a smile and lie and brutality that would make him a war criminal if this war ended wrong. (And he never supposed it could not end wrong.) He was a living liar and a lie.
There would be very little hiding now… and for all that ran against his instincts, Barricade reached up to grip the warlord’s wrist where he rested on his shoulder, his hand gripping him tight and his smile was not a smirk for once in a very great while. “All or nothing,” he said, the words strange and redefined, a frisson of wordless emotion transmitted instantaneously. Barricade knew he was understood. Implicitly. Totally. Overcome, the comparatively smaller mech just leaned down, pressed his helm to Megatron’s. “I will fight to keep this.”
And the Autobots – they did not yet know brutality.
Optics shuttered, Megatron allowed this new variant of silence, of lying still and quiet but with a warm presence within and without, for several minutes. Long enough for their systems to normalise - to find a new plateau of normalcy and align themselves there. Their chassis wound shut without conscious command, minute shifts of their bodies allowing the mechanisms to cycle closed whilst retaining the maximum possible levels of contact.
Finally, quietly, Megatron nudged Barricade’s side with one hand. “Come on - there’ll be time after we rain destruction and death.”
<end>
“Decepticons, we are on the brink of victory.”
It was a bold statement to open with on the command deck, with all of the high ranking Decepticon agents assembled with representatives of the Eradicons present on the lower threshold. Megtaron held the audience with a confidence that was more a force of nature than an act of will, his optics vividly alive and conveying the same ferocity and belief that had gathered an army to him when the war had been in its infancy.
After a suitably pregnant pause to fully relay the significant conviction of his words, Megatron continued. “We have in our possession a weapon that will destroy the Autobot infestation of this world within seconds, poisoning the energon in their lines and rendering what little stockpiles are left to them useless. They will die suffering, but to facilitate their deaths will take the efforts of all assembled here.”
The warlord silently triggered the large screens adorning the command desk to display the six power plants that had been targeted, and the schematics of a device Shockwave had just finished perfecting. “Six teams will strike these six power stations in unison, obliterating the human occupancy and installing one of these energy transmitters onto the main generators. Barricade will run interference with the Autobots so that by the time they respond to these synchronised attacks, it will be too late.”
Megatron looked towards Shockwave, standing tall and foreboading to one side of the assembly. “Shockwave will provide you with the details of the devices, and inform you of the specifics in the co-ordination of the attacks. Prepare yourself, Decepticons. We proceed tomorrow.”
As the assembly began to disperse, a ripple of chatter running low and quiet between the mecha, Megatron moved to stand alongside Barricade. The smaller mech had not moved since arriving for this briefing, held fast by a peripheral sense that Megatron had more to say to him than had been said to the others, Megatron confirmed this when they were stood face to face, close enough to touch but perfectly aware of the discreetness they maintained warranting that they did not.
“Barricade, come with me,” Megatron instructed simply, his features and EMF field carefully unreadable. It was only because of so much time spent together that the implication that what followed was to be personal and in the Commander’s quarters was conveyed.
Cade didn’t say anything, just nodded and quietly followed his CO. Behind them the atmosphere of the room had changed, charged he supposed, the murmur and electromagnetic thrum of Eradicon excitement shivering in the air and the feeling was familiar. It was the same linguistic and electro-emotional buzz that had once charged the streets of lower Kaon back in the twilight hour of the Golden Age on Cybertron. It whispered across long-wave EMF like a touch on the back of your neck or a murmur in your audio and when he heard it Barricade felt that fervor conducting across his own mood like viral string leaping from one mech to the next.
He wasn’t sure what was about to happen. His mind was already on the task at hand, on his squad unit waiting from him in the lower hangers, prepping for the mission launch within the next few hours. He could feel through no particular venue of understanding that the warlord did not plan to brief him on last minute changes to the plan and he admitted to the cool note of apprehension in his chest, murmuring through the alien code that had been set like livewires into his sparkchamber.
Once alone, Barricade tilted his head at the other mech, red optics flashing dimly in the semi-dark of Megatron’s chambers. “What is it?”
There were old ways, old customs, that simply predated Barricade; certain gestures that functioned as discourses in themselves to convey that which words simply couldn’t carry, or cheapened in the attempt. They were largely forgotten now simply because they had no place in war, and certainly no place within the Decepticon ranks. However, Megatron knew that it would take something much more than words to convey to Barricade that he was utterly serious in this moment - resolved and stalwart.
Standing just out of reach of the mech who was a clear two heads shorter than the warlord but rarely ever acted like it, Megatron crossed one arm over his midsection whilst the other remained slack and straight at his side. The silence took on a hot note as he held Barricade’s optics with his own, intense with focus, certainty and promise. Then, simply and silently, he knelt. It put Barricade taller, and Megatron still did not break optic-contact.
Barricade froze.
“Wait,” he said reactively, wildly uncertain what was happening. He was certain only that what he wanted – the vast and incalculable and bizarre shape of Cade’s ambitions – did not include being knelt to by anyone, least of all his commander and, now, spark-aligned. He couldn’t remember how to move or what this signified, he only knew the intuitive sense that this meant everything and he had no comprehension of that, no sense of context for the dread and want that rushed him. “Now?”
The large mech shuttered his optics briefly, an unspoken command for Barricade to stop talking and just listen. Satisfied that he had the dark mech’s attention, and ignoring the prickling waver that he’d been expecting to arise in the other’s field, Megatron spoke. “I have never acted in half-measures, Barricade, and I do not intend to start now. I banished the class system that murdered Nos and had made slaves of innumerable Cybertronians, overthrew the government too stagnant and corrupt to change, instigated a war to scorch a path towards a future of strength for our people, drove the Autobots to the brink of extinction and now, on the precipice of victory, I will not have this one incomplete article lying between us.” A pause, then: “If you would permit me.”
The infiltrator said nothing for a moment.
Then, quietly, “I would.”
A thin, genuine smile and Megatron rose with the same slow intent as he had knelt. His hands slid across Barricade’s sides, the long claws of his fingers tracing over the warm chassis as if touching it for the first time. He bowed his helm against the other mech’s, concentrating on the feeling of disconnect in their resonances that would soon be erased. It was with slow, near-reverence that he pressed his mouth to the corner of Barricade’s optics before moving down to his mouth. The infiltrator was here, now, being acknowledged, welcomed and asserted as an equal to him - an event that had never transpired before in his long existence, and one that he had not entertained ever would.
An urging pulse across the half a bond they already had, a sensation that could loosely be articulated as: Be certain/sure/of your own volition. I won’t/can’t/refuse to lose/endure/suffer/die again. Words he, for all his strength and might, could not bring himself to speak.
I don’t make moves I’m not certain of, thought Barricade, his words murmuring down his frame and through the aether between them, hot with his certainty, reinforced with want. “If you will risk having me I have no plans to die before this war ends.” Cade’s chin rose, a fission of dark pride moving through his spark. “I told you once I will not be the chink in your armor. Make no mistake, this is dangerous, tactically unsound – I slaughter mechs foolish enough to do what we’re approaching. I’m willing to risk it, but the true risk is yours, Megatron.”
Cade took the other mech’s right hand from where it had stopped against his frame. He examined the scarred alloy of the warlord’s palm, as if reading the history of violence there… then gently pressed his mouth to center of Megatron’s palm. He could not describe the emotion that motivated him. He looked up, optics strange and unguarded. If I am worth that, then take what I am.
Megatron’s large hand curled gently, cradling Barricade’s helm. His other hand came to rest across the mech’s chassis, covering the bold and brilliant spark he could feel as strongly as his own “I am no stranger to risk, nor suffering, and I was called more than a fool when I started on the path to what I have become,” Megatron replied simply, touching their helms together once again. Their chassis were flush except for his hand, their systems sharing warm eddies of air and thin electrical arcs. He parted his plates a little, the sequence already running and ready, spark energy leaping out hungrily for the integration and transformation that would follow. “There is more than risk to a sparkbond, Barricade. There is so much gained. It fortifies and strengthens, as if an alloy. We will be reforged.”
Feeling the receptivity of the other spark, Megatron’s own surged in a heady pulse that almost had him staggering into the smaller mech. He tore the barrier of his own hand away from between them, grasping the lithe body fully, optics flickering white as the corona of his spark flared, forcing the very casing open. “ ‘Cade...”
The Saleen inhaled raggedly, his chest splitting wide, baring his spark so easily it was terrifying. That bright razor-sharp cut of fear was followed by a heady blur of arousal, of want, excitement and a spark-deep crush of need so primal he didn’t know where in his basecode it could have come from. It pulsed so deep in his protoform beneath every design and engine and machine that he lost track of himself as he looped his arms around the warlord’s neck and gripped so tight it was more like a combat hold than any intimacy.
Maybe he spoke, said Megatron’s name like most invoke a god. He was hard to hear over the sound of his own revving, whirring, aching systems.
His vents cycled through, frame charging with a full-body current so intense he could hear the hum of it across his mesh, see it sparking and arcing off their frames, metal to metal, mesh to mesh. He was shaking, couldn’t stop it, every hydraulic line in his body tensing and singing with the other mech’s raw spark energy coursing through him, into him and inhabiting his being so fully he couldn’t fully delineate himself. He felt his own hands on Megatron’s armor plates, the drag of his claws on the warlord like he was touching himself and the feeling was impossible and unbearable.
“Primus...” His own voice shocked him, agonized and desperate, wanting something he couldn’t even frame in words. He held tighter, optics shuttering, “Please...”
Megatron gave as much as his spark took and more, systems keening into the merge. “Yes,” he groaned, growled, almost cried into the other mech’s body. “Everything...”
His back struck the floor before his equilibrium systems had warned him that his legs had given way beneath them. Megatron didn’t feel the impact, the scope of his universe wholly encapsulated by the flashing, mingling light between them that flared and roared with the silent fury of an electrical storm. Barricade’s body sprawled grasping and clawing on top of him felt an extension of him, alive and untamable.
Conscious thought was passing from Barricade’s processors, devolving into a empathic language of impulse and electromagnetics, frequencies of desire transcribed in sound and lightening - he couldn’t parse the lattice of pleasure and heat and friction, the complex configuration of code as it crawled through him with sensation so pure it was profane the things Barricade would have done to make sure it didn’t stop. A bond protocol, some instinctive sub-routine that unfurled through his hazy systems in digital reels, changing him and rewriting him from the spark out. He could feel the onslaught - the reformat that swarmed through his neurocircuitry and laced him down to the basecode with the markings of another Cybertronian - setting Megatron like a vital component into the clockwork of his soul.
Barricade would have done anything, anything for that feeling not to stop. Luckily, nothing was asked of him and he leaned down, hands gripping at the nape of his partner’s neck as their sparks were drawn into alignment like binary stars. He pressed his helm to Megatron’s, a scream in his throat caught up fast with words that wanted to be begging, wanted to be profanities, wanted to be prayer. He felt himself overload but not come down from it - he remained pulsing, shaking, body and mind possessed by pleasure that bordered on agony.
He wanted it to stop. He wanted to keep going. He doubled up against his partner, shivering so hard his armor hummed a note, alloy heated with electrical discharge, the smell of ozone... His optics flickered blue-white, his spark flaring in his chest and he screamed, stifling the sound against Megatron’s mouth, tasting his own cry as he swallowed it. He shuddered, moaned. “I.. how much more...?” He couldn’t take it much longer, the feeling like coming apart and wanting it, suicidally needing it. “Megatron?”
It had been the warlord’s overload that had been dragging Barricade along, beginning after the infiltrator’s own and carrying on afterwards, though they felt it as one. When Megatron came down the wild fury of sensation ebbed away like the last of floodwater pouring through a dam, and he collapsed back fully into the floor, vents howling and arms holding, clutching Barricade to his chassis hard.
Onlining his optics, Megatron couldn’t discern if it was thin ribbons of smoke twisting up above them or if his visual processor was in the middle of correcting an aftermath-glitch. It was instinctive, natural to speak across the new, fully-formed bond as opposed to using his vocaliser or comm.. Barricade? ‘Are you alright?’ was contained in the single world.
The universe had realigned again, slightly off-centre. The infiltrator sat up, his armor still partially ajar, shoulder wheels flexing, panel arrays bending and humming in the aftershocks. About his disarray, the static in his eyes, or the hitch in his vocalizor, the police car couldn’t have cared less. He could feel a line drawn tight inside him, through him, the lines in his neural net shivering and he knew he’d been irrecoverably altered. He checked his higher processes, his logi-tech, scouring his mind as if he could see through his newly remade mind the changes that might be there.
I’m... still me. He made his observation mildly. He sat up, aware he was straddling the other Decepticon and gazed unreadably down at his bonded commander and chief. And aloud he said, “It feels like..” He didn’t know. He wasn’t alone, there was no ‘alone’. He could flee to the darkest, farthest edge of the verse and he would not be alone. Barricade couldn’t articulate the sense of shock and joy at this so he just said, “I’m yours.”
“You are,” Megatron rumbled in affirmation, the words echoing across the bond and washing into the other mech through audio and spark. Barricade washed back, entwined within the weave of his being like nothing else, meshed against facets of himself that had never been so utterly exposed in his long life.
The other mech would know him now, in his rawest form, separate from the mythos that preceded him. At his core, Megatron was a creature of willpower and passion, ruled by emotion and a thirst to surpass circumstance. He had perpetuated a war effort for centuries, orchestrated genocides, was rightfully called a monster by the enemy and some of his own followers, but monstrous was not all he was. Even now. There were still rare points and moments of vulnerability that were always the cost of possessing great strength, and now another would be privy to them.
As an alloy with Barricade, though, he would be fortified as much as his sparkmate was. Apart they were strong - together they were unconquerable.
“Mine,” Megatron continued in that same multiplicity of spoken words and the spark bond, hand tightening on Barricade’s nape with warm possessiveness. “Everything you are, everything you were and will become, I will also have. Just as you will have me.”
Barricade couldn’t repress a strange shudder that passed through him, potent and pleasurable and terrifying as he felt all his being laid bare in reels and strands, unraveling in lines of code and memory and it felt good. Warring sub-routines flared active within him – eons of infiltrator instinct running up frantically against such a total exposure, rejecting, fighting what was already infused in him to the basecode. Barricade was no legend, no warlord, but he was a persona – a smile and lie and brutality that would make him a war criminal if this war ended wrong. (And he never supposed it could not end wrong.) He was a living liar and a lie.
There would be very little hiding now… and for all that ran against his instincts, Barricade reached up to grip the warlord’s wrist where he rested on his shoulder, his hand gripping him tight and his smile was not a smirk for once in a very great while. “All or nothing,” he said, the words strange and redefined, a frisson of wordless emotion transmitted instantaneously. Barricade knew he was understood. Implicitly. Totally. Overcome, the comparatively smaller mech just leaned down, pressed his helm to Megatron’s. “I will fight to keep this.”
And the Autobots – they did not yet know brutality.
Optics shuttered, Megatron allowed this new variant of silence, of lying still and quiet but with a warm presence within and without, for several minutes. Long enough for their systems to normalise - to find a new plateau of normalcy and align themselves there. Their chassis wound shut without conscious command, minute shifts of their bodies allowing the mechanisms to cycle closed whilst retaining the maximum possible levels of contact.
Finally, quietly, Megatron nudged Barricade’s side with one hand. “Come on - there’ll be time after we rain destruction and death.”
<end>