Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ratchet had been called away from the castle for his check in with Jazz and the Praxian territories. Prowl had been sent to Optimus’s side in the battle on the Vosian borders, so his territory had been left to Jazz’s devices. Which had run smoothly for the first six mega-cycles until Jazz had called him, sloshed on high grade, and completely panicked about Prowl coming back to a ruined territory and the people revolting and chopping off his head. 

It had taken the better half of a micro-cycle to calm the poor bot and reassure him that he would come over and help make sure that Jazz was doing everything he needed to be doing. Luckily the paperwork had only needed a day to complete, and they had spent the third day catching up and discussing the war.

Jazz had been the one to bring the necessary information that gave Optimus and their forces the advantage they needed to avoid getting slaughtered by the Vosian Air Commander and his legion of Seekers at their Polyhexian border. The war had started over a trade agreement, and escalated when the ‘high Lord Starscream, leader of the Vosian air division’ demanded land as their recompense for the perceived slight. 

Optimus had denied them, and then met them in battle. And Ratchet and Jazz spent the day in a jovial pessimism about their future.

“If Optimus croaks, and I have to raise his sparkling, I'm going to lose my mind, Jazz.” Jazz had laughed, and then pointedly topped off his cube with high grade. It was the kind he would never spend the shanix on, too expensive even if he could easily afford it.

“If Prowl doesn’t make it back I’m going straight to the pit to drag him back out.” Ratchet had laughed a little too hard at that, what with the implication that Jazz knew Prowl wouldn’t be returning to the well. 

So it was with a heavy, yet hopeful, spark that he went into recharge that night cycle. 

So one could understand his anger when he was woken, a good six micro-cycles before the sun would rise, to shouting outside his guest room.

“What?!” Perhaps slamming open the door wasn’t a great idea, they were at war and he was effectively acting king with Optimus away and Megatronus so untrustworthy. Bulkhead stood with, and it took him a moment to process but turning off and back on his optics revealed the same thing, Blitzwing looking frantic with his random persona fronting and thrashing in bulkheads arms. 

“Let me go, you overgrown boulder !” he was shrieking, and kicking out with his legs, but noticeably keeping his claws and turbines to himself.

“You can’t climb through windows and expect to be welcomed nicely,” came bulkheads steady and disappointed reply. Mech was as sturdy as a mountain and just as hard to get past. 

“What is going on?” he could see optics in the dark at the end of the hallway and pinged Jazz to give him a moment to figure out the issue. 

Blitzwing continued to thrash in Bulkhead’s arms, and Ratchet couldn’t really blame the mech. Blitzwing was a triple changer with a spark quirk so rare Ratchet had only read about it once before meeting the mech. When a spark first forms it's like a tiny satellite to the carrying mech's spark, and as time passes it collects charge and mass from the carrier's spark to supplement its own until it can be self-sustaining. Twining is when the original satellite gets too much charge at some point in the process, or gets charged unevenly with enough mass, and it tumbles out into two separate sparks. 

Usually that's the end of it. They get repulsed by their different frequencies and circle the carrier spark in separate but equal orbits. These twinings can happen multiple times, and sometimes they end up with two sparks that are viable, and sometimes one twin falls back into the carrier spark before it can sustain itself. 

Blitzwing was a special case, somehow three twin sparks managed to not only orbit until they were viable, but they harmonized their frequencies so that only one larger frame could house them. 

This had given the mech three distinctive faceplates and matching personalities. Cold was the blue faceplate with a calm demeanor, Red was similarly colored with a more aggressive attitude, and Random’s faceplate was like that from a nightmare with the personality of a clown. When Megatronus had introduced the mech to Optimus and his guard it had been with an air of a noble showing off a particular curiosity they had found, before declaring any issue with Blitzwing would be brought to her directly. 

It had left a bad taste in his mouth, for all intents and purposes it had felt less like Megatronus was showing off a mech that worked for her, and more of a pet. 

“Megatronus has been very sick for several days.” Cold snapped despite his level tone and relaxing frame, but his faceplates spun again and Red snarled at him “You need to take care of her, now!” and he was back to fighting. 

“Stop!” he raised a servo to his head and activated his F.I.M. chip. Sobriety hit like a truck and he was no happier for it. “What do you mean sick? What are her symptoms.”

Honestly, he wasn’t expecting much. Megatronus had been entitled and prissy from the moment she had been forced to share space with Optimus and Rodimus. Had been a pain since moving in and it was only Optimus’ disappointment and bleeding spark that had stopped him from suggesting to the mech to politely fuck off back home. 

He had caught the mech snarling at Rodimus once, and had overheard her vapid conversations with Baron Knock Out enough to know he didn’t care for the mech much at all. 

So he wasn’t expecting much, maybe a helmach, or a touch of stress induced nausea. Something he would recommend medi-grade and bed rest for and only check on after another few cycles to see if symptoms persisted. 

“She’s been unconscious, and unresponsive, with fever since you left.” 

Frag.

“What do you mean unconscious and unresponsive?” Please let him mean unmanageable .

“Megatronus retired to her quarters after mid refuel and asked to be left alone,” Cold said before his face switched to Random, “And Megatronus is no fun when she wants to be left alone,” back to Red, “but I should have checked on her! I found her well into the evening refuel, collapsed by her desk!” Ratchet pinged Bulkhead with a message to let the bot down as Blitzwing had stopped struggling. 

The mech stumbled a bit before reaching out, with a surprisingly gentle grasp, he took hold of Ratchet's shoulder pauldrons. Random’s faceplate was backlit by red biolights and usually held an expression of manic ecstasy. Now it was the closest to sorrowful and afraid Ratchet had ever seen it. 

“I fed her coolant and energon when I could, but her frame won’t cool down,” there was a tremor in the mech frame Ratchet was already diagnosing as low fuel and stress, “But there was smoke rising from her helm when I left.”

“ Frag. ” panic dropped hot in his lines as he whipped around to Jazz down the hall, “I need to be there last cycle. ” 

“You got it mech, you and Bulky here can take my hovercraft, it’ll be way faster than your transfer vehicle.” he gave a two finger salute and pinged Ratchet the location in his docking bay. He smiled at Ratchet before turning around and walking away. He was getting the staff necessary to organize their take off and the return of their vehicle. Ratchet sent a ping with his thanks before grabbing the distraught triple changer and beginning to lead him down the hall. 

“Bulkhead, get Springer up and ready, we’re heading out as soon as you two meet us down in the docking bay.” Bulkhead gave Blitzwing a look before nodding and heading in the direction Springer was resting. 

Turning he began to march Blitzwing down the hall, grip on his arm firm.

“Now tell me everything you’ve noticed and how you’ve been treating it.”

It took a few breem’s to get the hovercraft up and running with one of Jazz’s servants at the head of the ship to pilot. Blitzwing had not stopped chattering. It was worse than Ratchet had thought.

“-her paint started bubbling so I dragged her into a cool solvent bath-”

“-I found her purge in a trash bin by her desk-”

“-I was giving her coolant nearly every other breem-”

“-the heat would come in waves that would break a little but never enough to stabilize-”

“-she stopped moving this evening, like her frame gave up getting away from the heat-”

Horrible, and unfortunately pointing in one direction. An overdose. Some external substance had overcharged Megatronus’ systems and they had sought to burn them out. Overdoses like that were incredibly dangerous to the processor, and Ratchet couldn’t stop the stream of research data running through his processor about heat induced processor damage. It could be bad. It was already bad . 

“Tell me why you didn’t contact me?” it was tugging at his processor, had Blitzwing called him anytime earlier he could have been there sooner to prevent damage, rather than try and figure out how to manage whatever damage the mech definitely had now.  

“I don’t have your comm code.” Cold said without inflection. Not good enough.

“Why didn’t you ask for it?” He was getting irritated. He may not like Megatronus, but she was still his patient. 

“No mech would give it to me!” Red’s snarled declaration stung, and Ratchet found himself snarling right back. 

“That's slag and you know it , who did you ask!?” There was no way every single bot would deny to share Ratchet’s comm code over Megatronus being unconscious for over eight micro-cycles!

“Cindertrap!” and everything fell into place. Cindertrap was their liaison for Megatronus’ mechs to talk to. And it was only now that Ratchet realized he  had assigned her without taking into consideration that she had lost a loved one to a Kaon and Iacon scuffle a good 60 vorn’s ago. He had thought it behind her, or maybe just beneath her, to take it out on a Mech who wasn’t even an idea back then. But looking at how she had been acting the last few cycles…

“Slaggit, okay, I’ll deal with her later then,” he searched his info bank and found Blitzwing’s com code, never activated but known, and sent a ping over with his designation. “There, now you have it.” He dragged his servo down his faceplate and exvented as hard as his system wanted. “You did good kid, everything you were supposed to do.”

And to his surprise, Blitzwing switched to Random and began to hum nervously. Clearly pleased but still visibly stressed and it was the first evidence Ratchet had that he was the age he was claiming to be. 

13 Vorns, barely old enough to get away from creators let alone be a personal guard for a royal. But he had seen the kid actually fight so he knew better than to test his combat ability. 

Barely out of his sparkling frame, good at advanced combat, fiercely loyal to Megatronus, and easily cheered by praise. 

It painted a bleak picture, but perhaps not the one he had originally thought. It was something he would look into. 

It didn’t take long for them to get back, it would have taken nearly quadruple the time had they gone on the ground. But the sun was just barely sitting above cybertrons horizon as they pulled into the castle's landing bay. 

Ratchet didn’t waste time, transformed, and blasted his lights as he raced through the halls. He was a terrible influence on Rodimus everytime the sparklet caught him doing this, but the extra time would be worth it. 

It surprised him to find that Megatronus’ door was already being guarded. 

“Move Swerve,” the minibot jolted away from where he had dozed in a chair by the door. He gave a relieved sigh before opening the door behind him.

“She looks really bad , Ratchet. Though, Tailgate’s the one that found her like that.” and probably asked for help guarding the door. 

Looks like Tailgate had come to a similar conclusion as Ratchet. 

There were two ways (generally) that a mech overdosed. Either they did it themself, or someone did it to them . He was glad to see some of his staff knew how to behave with their king’s conjunx.

“Ratchet!” sparks singed Tailgate’s cheeks from under his visor, “I found her getting energon like this .” He pulled back the blanket for a dramatic reveal of heat warped plating and ruined paint. Ratchet was lunging forward as all his medical protocols were activating at the sight, running the math on just how hot her frame had gotten. 

Paint was severely damaged, mostly bubbled but also flaked and brittle. All gleam or polish had tarnished and darkened her gray plating to the point that she looked like she had been offlined. Only the strain of overtaxed fans and the pulse of her sleeping field gave away that she was still alive.

Ratchet began with his medical scans, and already hated the story they were telling. There was extensive damage to her wiring, and all her plating was warped in some way. Luckily it looked like her repair nanites were already working on the major injuries, and the platting changes would be fixed with a new alt mode. But with how fried her wiring was there was little hope that her processor hadn’t fully melted out of her helm. 

The mech could be fully braindead. Ratchet was doing a deeper scan when Tailgate rested a gentle servo on his forearm and spoke.

“She made herself a medical mix of energon two micro-cycles ago.” Tailgate’s field was genuine and confused, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “She put charcoal in it,” Blue visor and shining blue optics looked up at him, “I’ve only ever seen Kup put charcoal in it.” 

Charcoal. It was an older recipe, or maybe a poorer recipe , used when the higher end decloggers were unavailable. The idea that this mech , Megatronus “I'm not going out in this weather, it would ruin my polish” Prime had made a medical grade mix with charcoal in it was baffling. Scanning his intake system revealed she had used at least three pucks of condensed charcoal, which meant it probably had more solvent in it too, which meant it had tasted like slag . 

“I watched her make it , then down it almost in one go .” made it? Downed it ? Megatronus had been nothing but perfect etiquette, and high class attitude, since she had arrived. And Ratchet had personally heard her complain that their energon wasn’t processed enough more than once.  

“Almost?” His deep scan was almost done.

“She left enough to catch as much of the ground charcoal at the bottom as she could, then knocked it back like it was cheap engex .” horrific , and an action he had watched Kup do the last time he had a virus.  

His deep scan pinged complete, and cheerfully gave Ratchet every excruciating detail on how this mech should be past tense.

Her wiring was working at 10% their capacity.

Her plating had reached 83% damaged.

Her joins had burnt through their lubricant.

The composition of her struts were entirely compromised . 

And to top it all off, it looked as if her spark had tried to burn through the inside of her frame .

He redid the deep scan on her spark chamber. And to his horror it came back with the same information. Its entire structure was compromised, warped and singed and blown outwards enough to imply Megatronus’ spark had exploded and this frame was dead .

Megatronus grunted, optics flashing on near white in their intensity before slowly adjusting to their usual red. No, not their usual red. They were still red , but the hex code had changed .

His third deep scan pinged him back, cheerfully depicting in his mind the damage a spark chamber received when a live grenade was put inside one.

Megatronus’ spark pulsed on, happy and stable. As if nothing was wrong .

“Ratchet?” never , never had this mech referred to him as anything other than a disdainful ‘ Marquess ’. 

“Megatronus, how are you feeling?” He was redoing the scan, but starting up the software to perform a processor evaluation. 

Scan came back, her spark chamber had blown up from the inside .

“Like scrap.” blunt, firm, to the point. Gone were the flowery words and side eye and constant venom. Megatronus lifted a servo, using what wiring to send the necessary signals he didn’t know , and rubbed at her helm. Ratchet could hear her joints grinding with the motion.  

“Can you be a little more specific for me?” he was locked into the best bedside manor seen from him in vorns . Processor damage was becoming more and more likely. And looking more and more like a miracle if that's all. 

Her temperature was holding steady, a little lower than Ratchet would want it at but considering this mech had downed miners medigrade it was normal for her systems to have overcorrected somewhat. He reached out and rolled the wrist Megatronus hadn’t lifted to check her medical port and found it had melted to the point it would need to be fully replaced. 

“Feels like I crawled into a smelter and forgot to crawl out.” and here Megatronus did something he had never seen from her before.

She… smiled.

Smirked more like, but there was good humor in her field and an open and honest expression on her face, and Ratchet's processor scan came back with both more and less damage then he expected. 

Oh the damage was bad , but it was concentrated in a way it shouldn't be. Like her spark chamber, it looked like the section of her brain responsible for memory and the section of her brain responsible for social interaction, had both simultaneously exploded. And yet they remained undamaged. 

“I need to check something on the back of your helm,” he looked at Megatronus and found that he was getting her full intense attention, “May I?”

He didn’t know why he had asked, but the sharp look in Megatronus’ optics had given him pause. 

“You’re the medic, Ratchet.” The use of his designation was staggering . “I defer to your judgment.” her optic had dimmed. Ratchet had maybe a breem before the mech went back into recharge. Nodding in baffled but quickly accepted confusion of this out of character behavior, Ratchet checked the back of Megatronus’ helm for a medical port that was hopefully saved from the heat.

The damage there was even worse. He doubted he would be able to replace this port let alone use it now. 

“What do you remember before the fever set in?” he was checking her other wrist with a rising fear that he was going to have to wait until these ports were replaced to check for processor damage. Processor damage was never good left on its own. 

“Nothing.” all attention snapped to Megatronus’ faceplate. She looked surprisingly calm, but that could simply be the recharge her processor was clearly attempting to drag her into. 

“What do you…”

“I mean that my last memory does not line up with what has apparently happened to me.” there was some of the attitude that Ratchet had come to expect from his unhappy roommate. But the undercurrent of wrath and superiority was gone. “My most recent memory, that’s intact, is my,” she paused there, faceplate twisting for a moment like he was manually pulling up the file, “...conjunx ceremony.”

Ratchet did not panic. 

He hummed, signaling he had heard the mech, and did not panic.

“I see,” he reached out, pulling the blanket back over the ruined plating covering Megatronus’ frame and tucked it in around the mech, in her state it would take precious seconds to untangle before getting up. “Try and get some rest for now, I’ll need to get some materials together and then we can start getting you back to a 100%.”

Red optics narrowed at him.

“I take it you saw something unnerving.” she optics looked away, instead staring up at the canopy of her bed. “That’s fine then, I’ll need more energon later, I'm still consuming it rather rapidly.”

“Of course Megatronus.” a grimace crossed her faceplates, brow ridges furrowing in something like distaste. 

“Call me Megatron, Megatronus feels… inaccurate .”

Primus. 

“Of course.” Ratchet said, not panicking and not straining to get the words out at all . “Megatron. Get some rest.”

A hum was all the warning he got before watching Mega tron drop into recharge immediately. Ratchet stared at the unconscious mech. 

This was… bad.

“Tailgate,” a bright visor looked up at him, “Keep an eye on Megatronus, call me immediately if her condition changes.”

“You got it Ratchet!”

Ratchet stood and turned to find Blitzwing standing by the door looking as devastated as Cold could. 

“You.” he pointed directly at the mech. “No one but me, or Tailgate give Megatronus fuel. And don’t let anyone enter this room unless I approve of them.” The mech’s optics spiraled wide, before his faceplates spiraled and landed on a determined looking Red.

“Understood, sir!” obnoxious but effective. With that figured out he began to aggressively ping several bots in the building.

Megatronus was in a state that most bots would never survive, so Ratchet’s priority was stabilization and recovery. And seeing as Megatronus’ spark was happily spinning as if nothing was wrong he was going to focus on the recovery aspect. 

There was going to be a lot of recovery.

And to start that, Ratchet began making the necessary requisition forms needed for the parts that Megatronus was missing. There was a lot of work to do.

Chapter Text

Several micro-cycles earlier:

Before the war, when he was a newforged miner, one of his fellows walked him through the process of reassigning priority to the pop ups and status effects that his frame had been insisting were concerning. Megatron, though he had been known as D-16 then, had been struggling with recharge. Both falling into it and pulling himself out of it. Impactor, who had been older than him by only a few cycles, had taken the time to teach him how to make the necessary code to fall in and out of recharge more efficiently. A skill that had been vital working as a miner, and continued to be essential during the war.

So it was entirely strange to realize he was in the initiation stage of leaving recharge. 

He had streamlined this process millions of years ago .

There was no room for the panic that was clawing at the back of his processor. The possibility that a mnemosurgeon was involved was low. He focused in on the initialization phase of pulling out of recharge, rushing the process as he spent half his energy pulling up the old code he had made all those years ago. 

He found it, undamaged and unchanged, but commented out. As if he had just set it up and was getting ready to implement it but thought better. 

Strange.

He uncommented it and integrated it immediately. Priorities in this situation were simple. Check for physical threats, then everything else. 

He was awake, but had not moved, and he found himself grateful for that as an E.M. field made itself known to him. He kept his own field placid, calm in the way every unconscious cybertronians field tended to be between dreams. The new bot didn’t speak, and Megatron couldn't tell anything specific from their E.M. field besides the fact that they were feeling rather guilty over something. 

There was some shuffling, and the sound of a liquid filled cube being placed on a small table, before the bot seemingly took a seat nearby. Baffled, Megatron waited for some sign that the bot was hostile or not and found that as the silence stretched that gentle guilt in their E.M. field fluctuated with a sense of resolve and protective indignation .

Protective of him.

Very strange. 

Then again, considering how Rodimus and Ultra Magnus had sent him off, perhaps not outside the realm of reality. Quietly and without revealing his consciousness to the bot watching him, he weighed his options. He could remain unconscious and start running his diagnostic checks in his processor, or he could reveal his consciousness immediately and start demanding answers. 

The quiet repressed terror in the back of his processor over the idea of some bot digging around in his processor made the decision for him. He locked his body in a recharge stasis, to keep up the act and to give himself the processor space to filter through the entire backlog of his personal data. Awareness of the E.M. field next to him fell into the background, set to alert him if it turned malicious or violent, and he started pulling up his coding. 

Nearly every advancement and convenience that he had added to himself during the war and his time with the lost light had been commented out. Nearly all the code he currently had active was protoform based, with a few etiquette subroutines and a whole section of coding labeled ::Carrier / Sire protocols:: that he had never seen before. Once he started looking further there was also plenty of overlap with some of his much older coding and the protoform coding that was present. And to top it all off there was enough compressed memory files to make up nearly 20 vorns worth of information.

If a mnemosurgeon was behind this they were the least subtle being Megatron had ever met. And he had spent an extended period of time with Rodimus . 

One thing at a time. He focused on cleaning up his coding. His coding, the commented out coding, quickly replaced the duplicated code and added where it was relevant. Which was almost everywhere. He left the new code largely alone, as looking through it revealed there were changes to his frame that he would need to look into. The etiquette subroutines were generally harmless, but he removed their auto activation function. The idea that he had implemented code that could change his behavior without his permission was sickening . 

There were similar subroutines on the Carrier / Sire protocols but they required medical access that he couldn’t reach, and were connected to organs he didn’t recognize the names of. Besides, they seemed to be focused on protecting something called a sparkling . So as long as he avoided whatever that was he should be fine.

With the assurance that his code had not been changed in a way that he couldn’t fix, he began reviewing the compressed memories. Running through them would allow him the chance to understand what had happened.

Unfortunately he found more questions than answers.

Before waking, Megatron knew what he was walking into. His time with the Lost Light had ended, and with it his parole had ended as well. New Cybertron had finally been put together enough to decide his fate, and a quiet execution was their solution for him. He couldn’t blame them. Four million years of cruelty and disregard followed by a few good years don’t balance.

He had been a tyrant, and he couldn’t take that back. 

Rodimus and Ultra Magnus had fought for him. He had been the one to send Rodimus away when it became abundantly clear that seeing Megatron accepting his execution was breaking him. Rodimus was many things, but he was not good at dealing with loss. Perhaps it was because they had reached peace, perhaps it was because of how they had traveled together. Whatever the cause, the helplessness in Rodimus’s field had been crushing , and Megatron had gently encouraged him to find Drift and leave . 

Ultra Magnus had stayed though, steady in his sorrow but firm in his refusal. They had talked quite a bit in those last few days.

What had surprised him the most was when Optimus had made his appearance. He had sat with him often, talking, in the last few cycles before his execution. He talked about everything and anything, talked about memories from former primes, about what Cybertron had looked like before the war. And had run Megatron through hypotheticals and picked his processor clean for reforms and laws that ought to be in place to ensure all sentient beings on their planet would be treated with the respect and care they deserved.

So that another Megatron would never rise again. So that New Cybertron wouldn’t bring with it the same problems the old one had.

At one point he had accused the mech of trying to build a version of himself in his mind. Something to keep after he was gone. And Optimus had fallen devastatingly, tellingly, quiet before he spoke again.

“I often feel that we could have built something better,” He had said, his deep voice hitching with tragedy and sorrow, “if only we had worked together .”

Megatron hadn’t had the spark to remind Optimus he was the one that was supposed to be despondent. He was the one that was getting his spark snuffed after all. 

Instead he had felt all the weight of his actions after so many years, and head hanging low had said.

“I believe you’re right, Optimus.” He had hesitated, almost called him Prime. As if all he was could be condensed into the title he couldn't refuse. “I would have reveled in the chance now, but we both know I was too stubborn then.” He hated that admission, despite the truth behind it. That his own stubborn pride had elongated a war that could have ended with Optimus’s Primacy.  

The sorrow and resignation from Optimus’s field had been undercut with a gentle sardonic humor. 

“Yes,” amusement and a crinkle around those blindingly blue optics, “if only you had been a fraction less stubborn.” The look Optimus had given him had been one part tragic and one part sarcastic recognition. Megatron simply wouldn’t be himself if he had been any less stubborn . 

He had laughed then, and though it wasn’t the last conversation they had before he was brought to his death, it was the one on his processor when he had felt his spark sputtering and failing.

He opened the compressed memory files and was hit with more errors and damage reports then he knew what to do with. It was reminiscent of the time Starscream had actually managed to infect him with a virus. Luckily Soundwave had been watching Starscream at the time, and had subsequently helped Megatron with the malware. He had updated his firewalls after that. 

Speaking of, he had missed that step before opening the compressed memory files. Frag.

He scoured his codding to find the line that made it second nature and reactivated it with a vengeance. 

He swept away the warnings, and categorized the errors, then closed the files. Then returning to his coding pulled up his own firewalls only to find that a majority of them had been commented out like much of his code. Annoyed and frustrated he got to work scrubbing every line of code he had .

This was probably not the best choice, as about three fourths of the way through scrubbing his code he received a :: CRITICAL ERROR: Energon Levels Low :: before he was ejected from his half recharge, half stasis, state and forced to open his optics to an overheated processor and a dark room.

The E.M. field from earlier was gone. The room he was in was dark and empty, and his overtaxed processor was fuzzing his visual feed. Groaning, he rolled over and up, dragging his frame upright.

It surprised him that in the process of doing this he nearly threw himself off the berth. There was some sort of tarp that had been laid over his person that had tangled with his legs as he had tried to stand. Baffled, he ran his servos over the material and instead of a synthesized polyethylene he felt the plush and delicate smoothness of a microfiber blanket. A cybertronian sized blanket. Confusion only added more heat to his processor so he simply shoved the mostly fallen blanket aside and dragged his attention to the side table beside him.

Sitting there perfectly placed, glowing in the darkness of whatever room he found himself in, was a glass of pink energon.

He didn’t really hesitate, there was a blinking warning on his heads up display that he couldn’t ignore, so instead he activated his energon analysis program and prepared for the worst. 

The worse ended up being medi-grade energon with enough talc mixed in to nearly clog his intake. He’d had worse. Thankfully, as all medi-grade had, there was enough coolant in it to touch up his levels. The coolant washing through his processor was a throbbing relief, a near double edged sword, but he would take it over the near melting his processor had been heading towards. 

With his processor no longer threatening to melt, he forced himself to his peds. And toppled back over as his struts screamed in protest. Not one to give up, he ex-vented to get rid of his extra heat and tried again.

It was painful, but no more painful than his worst day in the war, so on he pushed. 

He stood, and after a moment of swaying his gyros kicked in and he was steady enough to walk around. Half his processor was caught up in how little energy his frame had access to, and how much pain was signaling through his wires, the rest of him was confused why such minor inconveniences kept getting marked with priority. 

It was as if this frame had never gone hungry before. Had never ached before. Had never known pain . 

Megatron knew pain, so he forced his frame to learn .

He stumbled forward in the dark room he was in. His optics attempted to adjust to the darkness with a sluggishness that implied burnt visual cones. Whatever fever he had before waking had done a number on him, and he startled when light suddenly poured in from a window he hadn’t noticed was set into the walls.

Silvery moonlight drenched the room and Megatron’s processor stuttered over the pure opulence laid out before him. 

He had pulled himself out of a bed with a full canopy . And it was a bed. Not a berth. The difference made stark by the copious covers and clearly recovering memory foam mattress indent from where he had been sitting. The bed had curtains . Why did it have curtains? And the bed was hardly the most extravagant item in the room! 

Against the wall was a full polishing station, complete with a section that had access to an empty solvent pool. Baffled, his optics swept over the contents of the room, confused by the combination of luxury goods and the clear quality of them. 

There were engravings around the mirrors of the polish station. Entirely unnecessary and beautiful in the pale moonlight. The curtains on the bed frame were embroidered, the fabric patterned and beaded for primus’ sake. 

Utterly blown away by the excessiveness of the room before him he found himself startled, again, by the view he could clearly see out the window to these quarters. 

He stepped to the window, slow, controlled, and entirely unfeeling of his own frame. He placed a servo against the synthesized crystalline plane.

Cybertron in all her natural historic glory gazed back at him, bathed in the light of Luna 1 rolling hills and luminary crystal flora shown in a glory and beauty the likes of which he had never seen before. Memories of ancient text, descriptions and poor quality holos, ran through his processor on a loop as he struggled to take in the view before him.

Memories of Optimus’ voice describing a land strange and beautiful in the eyes of Primes past ran through his processor. 

His legs gave out beneath him and he found himself kneeling in front of the window. 

The sky was the same, and it anchored him to look upon the stars and map their positions as familiar and yet …

Even the stars were not the same . 

There were approximately three missing, and one that shouldn’t be there at all. 

He knew what that meant, but the data was so unlikely and horrifyingly impossible that he struggled to accept what was looking directly at him, but he had not traveled on the Lost Light to come away unchanged. 

The stars told a simple story, one that he could read easily.

He was in the past, and in an entirely new universe.

He spent the next several hours forcing his processor to run through the compressed memories. Funny how easily he used terms like hours now, he supposed it was due to how much time he spent with Autobots that had long since adopted human habits. So several hours later he had a picture of where he was and what this was about. 

His designation was Megatronus, and she was the bastard heir to the throne of Kaon. She was a princess of sorts, considered a high prize, and she was sold off to the neighboring kingdom, Iacon. For a peace treaty. She was sold off on her sire’s whim. For Peace with a country that wasn’t actively fighting them. Sold off as a conjunx for a peace treaty with a kingdom they were at peace with.  

Crazy thing was? Optimus agreed .

His processor was fuzzy, but the gist of it was that to strengthen Optimus’s position as the king of Iacon he needed a conjunx by his side. Odd, he couldn’t figure out why . So Megatronus ended up as the trophy of another kingdom with only two loyalists by her side.

Though one of them had been taken away by some skirmish several deca-cycles ago. Said skirmish had also taken Optimus and two thirds of their royal guard away. Leaving Megatronus and the crown prince under the care of the king’s regent.

There was more information on her relationships, her life, her family (though part of him felt sick thinking of the word so he figured that was going to be a mess to untangle) and on his surroundings. But as he was getting to the more recent memories about dynamics with those around him he once again was hit with a :: CRITICAL ERROR: Energon Levels Low :: message. 

Groaning, he locked the memory files away. He would get back to them later, for now he had to take care of his frame before it took care of him. Having been kneeling on the ground for so long he made sure to carefully rise to his peds. He was incredibly pleased to find that though his frame ached, it wasn’t the strut shaking pain that he had been dealing with while on the fool's energon. Even recovering from an incredible fever, and reading his error messages, some sort of spark anomaly he felt better than he did on the fool's energon. 

How tragic . 

He pulled up the patchy schematic of the building he was in, Iacon estate. He thought it was stupid to name a castle after the kingdom but who was he to judge. 

The schematic only had the main halls and few rooms, and suffered from inattentive updating. As Megatron left his room he found just how inaccurate the map was as the schematic scale was off by several meters. Annoyed, he activated an old subroutine he had as a miner. It would run in the background and allow him to have something to focus on as he headed in the directions of the kitchen. It would make a far more accurate and detailed map than the near useless schematic he had. 

It wasn’t far, but he was surprised to see no mechs up and about in the halls. His chronometer was somewhat glitched, but it could tell it was approaching dawn soon. His earlier estimate of how many had gone to the skirmish must have been off for no mechs at all to be up and preparing for the day.  

He found the dining hall, and followed vague memories of servants bringing energon out of doorways to find his way to the kitchens himself. He was rewarded by the kitchens, and the opportunity to map out several servants' halls. 

Now faced with an empty kitchen and all the things he could need, he got to work making miners medi grade. Medical grade energon was a simple recipe, but medics were able to properly add the parts together without separation or adverse reactions. Miners in the pits had to work with what they had if a comrade went down. 

Megatron moved with the confidence of a mech on a mission and gathered his materials. 3 parts energon, 2 parts coolant, and 1 part solvent was the base for medigrade, but it wasn’t the miners grade if there wasn’t enough charcoal to chew, and enough talc to make you taste it for a deca-cycle. 

Mixing the liquid ingredients was easy, he simply drank enough energon from a cube to make the three parts and added the coolant and solvent after. He was low on coolant and his systems were warning him of ingested corrosives. He found charcoal pucks near the back of the pantry and only grabbed two lumps of talc. The talc dissolved in the energon mix with only minimal agitation. Crushing three charcoal pucks was probably excessive, but he was just proud he could stop at three . 

He picked up the cube and swirled it. Watching as the coolant mixed with the energon and created small sparks as the mixture began to cool in his servo. He turned around to lean back against the counter, easing his weight off his joins and unsteady struts. He continued to swirl the cube in one servo so the ground charcoal wouldn’t settle at the bottom, and took a heavy swig. 

Just as he thought, the taste was awful . Considerably worse than the medical grade he had drank some hours ago. But as the slurry hit his tanks his repair protocols activated with a vengeance. So he chugged this medi grade dutifully and turned off as many sensors involved with taste as he could.

He pulled the cube away when he nearly reached the bottom of it, licking his lips as he swished the mixture to get the last of the charcoal grounds. He knocked back the rest, turned around, and began to rinse his cube in the sink.

He was distracted from the task of washing out his cube by the sound of something crashing to the ground behind him. He whipped around, processor scrambling for combat protocols that he hadn’t uncommented out yet and ended up throwing a cupful of solvent and ground charcoal in the direction of the noise.

Tailgate took the solvent to the faceplates, and with the grace of an astro dancer, began to wail . 

“ Frag .” immediately he reached out and guided Tailgate to the sink, leaning the mech over the ledge of it, there was definitely charcoal in that solvent and judging by the frantic servos reaching for his face, the charcoal had gotten into his optics. “Turn your head, I’m going to wash out your optics.” The minibot followed instructions, and Megatron was relieved to see the solvent washing out the charcoal as he gently ran the faucet over the minibots visor. 

“My apologies, you startled me.” which was a lousy excuse for throwing, essentially , a chemical weapon directly into his faceplates. He allowed the minibot to stand back and easily snatched one of the many microfiber towels in the kitchen to pass off to the bot.

Tailgate whipped his face, then looked up at Megatron with sparking optics.

“What are you doing here?!” somewhat started he simply stared down at the minibot in confusion. Fluttering his servos, Tailgate seemed to come to a decision and took Megatron's servo into his own and began to tug him along.

“You have been bed ridden with a fever for like three days now! I’m really happy you feel better walking around but you should really be resting! Come on, I'll escort you back.” Not willing to argue, and feeling the rapid cooling of his systems as they began to stabilize, Megatron followed along.

“Probably for the best I suppose,” was all he said as he was tugged forward by a bot a 5th his size. 

It looked like Tailgate, same colors, same visor, same basic shape, but as he had been washing the mech's face he had realized that the visor was decorative. A stark difference to the Tailgate he knew before, who’s visor was his integrated visual feed. It looked like this one had a faceplate under the lens and mask. 

It was a small detail, but one that Megatron found himself caught on. 

The sun was starting to light up the room he had woken in. This only served to display just how gaudy everything in there was. Drapery and molding on the walls that did nothing but boasted about disposable income. Annoyed, he almost missed what Tailgate was saying. 

“-I’m sure Lord Ratchet will be home soon, and then he can make sure you’re healthy and well.”

His spark nearly gave out at the words ‘ Lord Ratchet ’ before a buried memory pushed up to the forefront of his professor about how Ratchet held the title of Marquess, and was therefore addressed as a Lord . He pressed the palm of his servo into the side of his helm and followed Tailgate’s instructions to lay back down and allow the minibot to tuck him in. 

He was embarrassed, but also baffled by the care this Tailgate was showing him. He had been the one to officiate Tailgate and Cyclonus’ Conjunx ceremony back on the ship. Rodimus had been jealous for the klik it took for Tailgate to ask him to organize the after party, then he was so thrilled he had screamed. Tailgate had held his servo and told him he considered Megatron a friend before they had returned to cybertron. He had then pressed a photo of him, Cyclonus, and Whirl happy and together into his servos, visor sparking with sorrow as he had said he hoped to see him soon.

He had lost the photo in whatever transfer of consciousness he had done to end up there, but it had been one of the few belongings on him when they had executed him. 

This Tailgate had no such connection to him, and yet was showing a similar care to his wellbeing. With something settling in his processor he realized that he was rapidly approaching recharge. 

“Thank you, Tailgate.” He let his optics offline and felt cables and his plating setting into the cradle of foam on his bed. He was recharging within seconds.

Chapter Text

When he woke up next it was to a clear processor and an aching frame. Megatron online his optics to a well lit room and, surprisingly, Tailgate at his bedside. 

“You’re awake!” the minibot scrambled for a moment, clearly flustered, before picking up an energon cube from the same spot Megatron had gotten before. “Here you should refuel! I already pinged Ratchet.” 

He moved as if he was going to pour the energon into Megatron’s intake. Like he was some kind of infant bird . Absolutely not. 

Despite his frame's protests, he hauled his body mostly upright, fully ignoring Tailgate's protests. His joints ached, and his struts felt like they wanted to crumble, but he stayed steady and took the energon cube from Tailgate's servos and drank it without further thought. 

He finished the cube, it was regular medical grade energon, and was still a little under, but he felt better. After so long on the fools energon even a fraction of a tank on regular energon felt incredible. 

“So,” he set the cube down and turned his helm to look at Tailgate, “how long was I in recharge?”

“Well…” he didn’t get the chance to respond as the door to the room burst open to admit several bots at once. Ratchet was marching in with a faceplate that spelled murder, or in his case the treatment of a patient, and Megatron got the rather artful display of Blitzwing falling to the floor. 

The flier immediately popped up, faceplates spiraling until a red and rather angry looking persona took over and was about to lash out only for a massive green plated servo to reach around and cover his face and pull him back. It was odd to think that the triple changer was one of Megatron’s only true allies here. Though he planned on gaining more, as of now Blitzwing was one of his only loyalists.

He would have to be careful not to fall into old patterns with thoughts like those. 

“Megatronus!” Megatron grimaced, “How are you feeling?” 

He could remember now the feverish conversation he had with the mech before. And he clearly recalled telling the mech he didn’t want to be called or referred to like that. 

“I thought I told you to call me Megatron, Ratchet.” He had adjusted the subtext of the glyph for his name to be masculine, it had surprised him that his frame had considered itself a femme but it was easily fixable. He could pinpoint the exact click that any hope that Ratchet had was dying in his spark. Hope for what? Megatron didn’t care, but their optics were locked and Ratchet looked stressed. “Are you alright?”

Ratchet sputtered for a moment, looking baffled and annoyed before pressing a servo to his faceplate and exventing rather aggressively. 

“Megatron,” Tailgate had slipped from his side and Ratchet had approached the bed close enough to take his place, though his didn’t sit, “Unfortunately, due to the condition I found you in last cycle I was unable to access your data, as your medical access ports have been completely melted.” The medic looked like he was stealing himself for something, and Megatron was baffled; why had taken so many words to say his medical ports were ruined?

He looked down to his own wrist to find one such port and for the first time truly noticed how warped and damaged he was. His paint was fully flaking off for Primus’ sake. 

“Unfortunately, I need to replace them, and without access to your ports there isn’t a painless way to -”

“Then just do it.” He offered up his arm to the medic, he’d had ports replaced in the past, it hurt, but no more than a slap in the face did.

The frozen blank look Ratchet was giving him wasn’t really a good sign.

“Megatronus I have seen you complain about a helm ache like it was a lost limb.” he looked incredibly done, and Megatron found that he had to repress the urge to laugh, “I need you to hold still for this.”

“And I will be as still as you need.” He couldn’t stop the good humor from entering his voice anymore then he could change the situation he was in. “Ratchet, just do it .”

Irritation flashed across Ratchet’s face and Megatron had to commend himself, it looked like he was already making a distinct impression as different .

He had come up with a plan. The fever had been intense, but he had been able to cycle through his new memories during his recharge, and in his new memories he learned about the mech that he was.

And he found that mech intolerable. 

Sure there were many shared traits between the two, but now that he had learned the things he had learned he couldn’t go back to behaving in that manner. Acting as if he was better, acting as if others were beneath him. 

He wouldn’t go back to being the monster that nearly destroyed their species. 

So, starting with Ratchet, he would insert himself into this new life and be a better mech than the one he had replaced. And if he had to start that by being annoying then so be it. It wasn’t like that was half the reason he got his Ratchet to tolerate his presence on the Lost Light. Though he would deny it.

Ratchet’s face had soured enough that all it would take to push him over the edge was a sardonic smirk and a few well placed words.

“Oh I'm sorry, are you not able to perform this minor procedure ?” It was rude, and it was a little closer then he wanted to who this frame had been before, but it got the results he wanted, so who was he to complain?

“Oh I can perform! I can get this done in 3 clicks flat!” Megatron made sure to raise a single brow ridge to really sell a patronizing look.

“Ratchet, it's fine if you can't-” the medic snarled and finally broke from the perfect bedside manor that had been giving Megatron the creeps.

The medic grabbed a firm hold of his arm and yanked out the port enough to clip the wires it connected to. The pain was sharp and sudden but Ratchet was already installing the replacement port, which cut off the pain signal immediately. There wasn't a drop of energy to be seen, and as his frame accepted the new port he found himself giving Ratchet another look.

“Very well done,” he lifted his wrist to look at the new port and had to revel in the skill of a proper medic. He had spent a long time with medics like Flatline and Hook so seeing work that was both effective and near painless was a bonus he was unused to. “That could hardly be considered painful.” 

“Yes well,” Ratchet looked irritated and impressed, something Megatron was reveling in, “I’m worried that's a sign of processor damage.” 

That did make Megatron laugh. And though he could see the shocked look on Ratchet’s faceplates, it hadn't distracted the medic from plugging into the new medical port.

He had already locked his proper memories behind enough firewall protection to make an infiltrator bot nervous. So he wasn't worried about Ratchet seeing anything too important. But the growing horror on the bot's face was rather funny.

In an abstract way. 

He could feel the path that Ratchet was taking through his processor, checking the active code and the inactive, and he could feel the growing shock in his field as he continued through more and more of Megatron’s code. 

“Where did all this come from?” It was a fair question, only about 10% of the coding he had active was from before he went unconscious. With a grimace he decided to play this the only way he could.

Stupid .

“I don’t know, all I know is that I had new coding upon waking, and that I much prefer it.” it wasn’t even a lie, he didn’t know how he ended up here.

“That’s slag, it could have come from a virus, you know that right? That you shouldn’t activate new code just because you like it? It's important to me that you know that it was incredibly dangerous .” Megatron nodded, ever the dutiful patient, though judging from the look on Ratchet’s face he didn’t believe it for a second.

“ Primus ,” the medic leaned back in his chair and just cycled his optics for a moment as he ran through Megatron’s processor. The silence stretched, and Megatron was rather too comfortable and too tired to really care to fill it. Ratchet on the other hand seemed more uncomfortable than he expected. 

The silence stretched. And Megatron quietly clocked where in his code Ratchet was. For some bots this was an uncomfortable experience, but Ratchet was Ratchet no matter the universe, and he was the perfect example of a medic in his code.

The only warning he got was a deepening grimace before Ratchet broke the silence between them.

“You’re different.” Megatron looked at the medic surprised, he thought it would take more to convince him. “You can’t stand silence. You should have insulted me considerably more by now, and been a lot worse about it.” he was categorizing issues he was seeing in Megatron's processor as he spoke. A skill few medics had, so it didn’t surprise him to see Ratchet implement it. 

“I-” he cut his vocalizer off manually. Panic making his fans kick in and his processor queue up battle protocols. He offlined his optics and sat in the silence as he gathered his thoughts, dismissing requests for weapon initialization for parts he was realizing he no longer had.

He had almost told Ratchet everything .

He had almost told Marques Ratchet everything.

He online his optics to the focus in Ratchet's own, he was still running through his code looking for viruses, active or inactive, but his attention was equally on Megatron himself. 

“Megatron?” The prompt was gentler than he was used to coming from Ratchet, but there wasn’t the forced politeness he had been using before. Megatron was thankful for that. 

He leaned back into the cushions he was provided with, and stared up at the ceiling of his canopy bed. The wealth alone disturbed him with and without the context of his memories. Realistically, if he were to tell Ratchet the truth as he had experienced it the most likely outcome would be assumed insanity. In his fractured new memories he was a ruler without the right to rule. Untrusted and quarantined from doing anything with the power he was supposed to have. He had conjunxed into a kingdom from another kingdom and Optimus hadn’t trusted him with his castle and his sparkling unattended. 

Sparkling , there was that word again. He would have to ask what it was as it was clearly important and none of his memories were telling him scrap . 

But the fact of the matter was he conjunxed with Optimus, and then less then a mega-cycle later Optimus needed to take a majority of their troops to the Vosian border to quell a territory grab by the Vosian kingdom. Leaving his kingdom in the servos of a mech that just got there would be the choice of a fool.

Megatron respected Optimus’ clear-headed decision to ask Ratchet to lead in his stead. 

Megatronus saw it only as a personal failing and betrayal. 

“ Megatron .” his optic refocused on the medic, he had gotten lost in his own helm. 

“Apologies,” Ratchet jerked away from him, “I was lost in thought.” he reached up to press a servo to his helm and grimaced at the squeaking and grinding of his joints. “I don’t know how the code got integrated, but I don’t believe it is of a malicious source.” 

Ratchet hummed at him, the very same sound Megatron had heard him make at Drift when the bot had managed to cut off Rodimus’ arm when they had been rough housing. 

“Ah yes, and because you believe it's not malicious, it obviously can’t be malicious. Since you’re an expert and all.” 

“That’s fair.” It was fun to see the medic’s face contort. “Though I am curious if you can remove a section. I don’t like how integrated with my behavioral programming it is.” Now was as good as any to ask.

“What are you talking about?”

“The Carrier/Sire protocols? I don’t know what their trigger is and quite frankly I don't like the idea of any of my code being able to override or manipulate my personality cortex.” he felt this was a reasonable thing to say. Seeing as Ratchet was so concerned with a virus that wasn’t there. Like he could miss a virus in his own systems , he worked with Starscream for four million years .

Ratchet had gone dead silent.

“Ratchet?” funny how their roles reversed. 

“You’re joking.” The medic was staring at him, and the feeling of him scanning through his code had stopped. “You must be joking .” 

“Then I must disappoint you.” He could feel a weariness rising in him. He had missed something. “I am not joking.” 

“Do you know what those protocols are for?” Megatron was at a loss. 

“I… do not.” They were simple enough, there was a thing called a sparkling, and depending on if the sparkling had certain protocols active sire or carrier protocols would slot into place. 

“Do you know what a sire is? A carrier? A sparkling ?!” judging by his increased franticness these things were important. But Megatron just grimaced and shook his head, incomprehensive. 

Ratchet fully dropped his faceplate into his servos and groaned. After a moment the scanning of his coding continued with the medic unmoving. 

“How did you manage to completely remove yourself from your memories?” The medic lifted his helm and frowned at Megatron, clearly readying himself for a full lecture when his scan happened upon a particularly helpful section of coding that Megatron had installed after Starscream had poisoned him that first time. 

“Megatron what the slag is this?” he was being asked a lot of questions it seemed. 

“Poison detection.”

“Why does it say you had two separate poisons in your lines?”

“Presumably, because there were two separate poisons in my lines.” 

The medic paused, finished running through his code, and unplugged before standing up and walking towards the door. Megatron could hear him making a request for several things, oil, energon, and solvent. He stopped paying attention and pulled up the poison report his coding had provided him. 

Two crystal based poisons had been in his lines, carefully powdered and both administered orally. One had caused his core temperature to rise drastically, while the other caused his helm to heat just enough to cause hallucinations and feelings of euphoria. Funny, one seemed to be for the purpose of getting high, and the other for heat death . 

Ratchet had returned to his side.

“Let me get this all straight.” he pinched his nasal ridge and Megatron tried not to wince, “you were poisoned three days ago. You got a serious fever, no one called me . You didn’t improve until just before I arrived, so that I could discover that you should have offlined ,” that was news to him, “your personality matrix is completely different , you have fully dissociated from what’s left of your memories , and you don’t know what a sparkling is.” his servo had moved to cover his optics as he spoke, but it fell away to pin Megatron with a sharp look. “Is that all correct?” 

“Well, considering you’re the medic in this situation, I defer to your expert evaluation.” 

It took all the mental fortitude he had gained over four million years of civil war not to break down cackling at the dismayed look on Ratchet’s face.

Tailgate startled easily. This was a fact that Swerve and Blurr had taken advantage of over the vorns for many practical jokes. He could also find the humor in it, and being startled by your minibot friends could only tax your systems so much. It was funny, it was their thing, Swerve would make silly situations and Blurr would make them happen for his conjunx’s amusement. 

Don’t get him wrong, Tailgate wasn’t the only target, just the easiest.

So who could blame him for thinking that seeing Lady Megatronus in the kitchens of all places was some elaborate prank.

Up until she had thrown gritty solvent into his optics that is.

That wasn’t even the weird part! The weird part was the cuss and the gentle servo on his pauldron. Megatronus never cussed. He had heard Megatronus tear into another housekeeper bot when she heard them cuss. All they had done was mutter ‘scrap’ when they dropped a wet rag on a polished floor. Megatronus had made them cry! She had fired them! Over the word scrap !

So hearing her drop “Frag.” before treating him with the gentleness of a carrier was jarring . 

But not as jarring as looking up at the Lady of the estate and seeing a zombie looking back at him. Her plating was so bad he nearly passed out in horror, he had heard she was sick, had been privately relieved that he wouldn’t run into her while doing his rounds. But if this was how bad she had gotten in the same house as the crown prince then no one was safe .

She shouldn’t have been able to move, let alone get her own energon. 

And things only got worse when Ratchet arrived, and she went and changed her name, and added a masculine modifier to it. Ratchet had dismissed it, assuming it was fever or a processor hiccup, only for him to be corrected the second he saw him again. 

Megatronus was now Megatron, and instead of being the Lady of their house, he was now their Lord. Tailgate did the only thing he knew he could do.

He told… everyone . 

While this new Meagtron was very even tempered he was not willing to put his fellow workers at risk. And so information was spread as efficiently as it could be, and by that he just told Swerve. Who told his conjux Blurr, who then told every bot else. 

In the meantime, he got stationed at Megatron’s bedside, which left him time to think.

Megatron had definitely been poisoned. Tailgate had figured that out before Ratchet had his little back and forth with Megatron, which was crazy . Megatronus had never bickered with anyone, it was always scathing remarks or sharp demands. But Tailgate was now a witness to the first mech to ever go head to head with Ratchet and not lose . And he wasn’t that mean about it either! 

For a moment it was almost like they were old friends catching up.

Which was crazy to say because every moment Tailgate had seen between the two mechs in the past was nothing but a cold war of animosity and distaste on both sides . So the idea that they could be friends in any world was boggling his processor. 

And yet he thought he had just glimpsed it. 

Well, Megatron was nothing if not a wave maker.

Hopefully he could make enough waves that they could find whoever it was that poisoned him before any danger could reach prince Rodimus. That little mechling was young enough to be vulnerable, and anything that could lay out a mech like Megatron for that long would end Rodimus before they could figure out what had happened. The fact that Megatronus had been poisoned in the first place was a major failing on all their parts as workers in the house.

At least Megatronus had survived, even if he was greatly changed now.

And even though the poison had left Megatron as a much nicer mech, Tailgate doubted that would be the only consequence if Rodimus had been poisoned the same way. Already Blurr had volunteered to be a taster for Rodimus, with his metabolism and small frame he would be sensitive to any poison that appeared in the young prince’s fuel. Plus he had an affinity for filtering his systems, Tailgate had seen the mech down enough engex to kill a titan and he had gone to work the next day uninhibited. He doubted any poison would work on him. 

For Megatron, Tailgate had volunteered. He had a few subroutines in his systems that could identify foreign substances faster than the average bot. He felt a level of pity for Megatron he hadn’t before. Something about seeing him so patient and understanding, and yet ribbing Ratchet to the point of loosening up, had activated some protective instinct in Tailgate’s processor. 

Megatron had come to Iacon castle with two bots by his side. One of which had left with Optimus for a battle he could very well not return from. Which had left Megatron with only one attendant. Seeing him so injured and vulnerable didn’t sit right for him.

So he wasn’t upset with his new posting at Megatron’s side. If anything he hoped it would give him the chance to understand this new mech a little better.

Chapter Text

He has learned what a sparkling is. 

He will never have one.

The horror that cybertronians reproduce like organics was almost too much for him. And considering Ratchet had started telling him about how interfacing worked with a grudging discomfort that had turned to sadistic glee as Megatron had gotten more uncomfortable had not helped. 

He was expected to have a sparkling with Optimus.

Well if Optimus wanted to keep his spike he would keep it to himself .

Megatron sank further into the solvent bath, letting the heated solvent break apart the flaking paint that was stubbornly clinging to his warped plating. Ratchet had put together a simple recovery plan, for the first few days he would be monitored for any change in temperature outside the normal range, then should he hold steady he would go under a major surgery to replace a majority of the wiring he had burnt through. His plating would be removed for that surgery and unfortunately couldn’t be replaced immediately after because his wiring needed to integrate with his protoform. It was annoying, but Ratchet had been firm on the wait time, and he had to pick his battles sometimes. He would be without proper armor until they got the specs for his new altmode and his new plating was attached.

He had already picked out the new altmode, Megatronus’ alt mode had been a form of jet, and Megatron had not wanted to keep that, and instead found the closest matching tank to the alt mode he had before. He was looking forward to transforming after he got his new plating.

He sighed, and let the solvent wash away the tension in his struts. His joints had been oiled and detailed by an oddly enthusiastic Tailgate and Blitzwing, and rather than feeling deeply uncomfortable with the physical contact he had ended up finding it incredibly relaxing. He felt pampered. He had never in his life felt pampered. The last time a mech had touched him for that long it had been a failed assassination attempt by Starscream that had ended with them trapped in a cave. Which isn’t to say that was the last physical contact he had. Hugs were weirdly available on the Lost Light once he had proven himself to the right mechs, but those had been brief, and oiling his joints had taken a few hours.  

Then there was the energon.

Before, there was energon and there was engex. Medical grade added talc and charcoal, but those were the only non-liquid ingredients they consumed. 

Things were different here. 

Now he was on a diet . One that Ratchet had made for him to make him suffer . Energon with more additives than energon left his mouth feeling gritty all the time , and their odd flavors and textures left his processor reeling and unable to make an opinion. 

He liked his energon plain, but now if he asked for it plain Tailgate would give him the most desperate and pitiful look, and he couldn't stand it. So he simply left it up to Tailgate to pick whatever supplements to add for each meal. He will say he was a touch partial to the iron that kept getting added to his energon. It was… sweet. And oddly enough his systems were requesting it. 

So most of his meals were sweetened with iron, and then more was added. The flavors were intense though, and often Megatron found himself choking them down with difficulty. They were just so much that his processor was struggling to categorize them.

Whoever had been making his mixes had diluted the supplement concentration as of late, and for that Megatron was thankful. 

He stood, feeling the solvent pouring off his frame and moved slowly out of the basin to get to the drying room. One of the things he had needed to fight for was privacy when he bathed. Which was exhausting. He could spend a few hours (micro-cycles, he needed to use the cybertronian time units) alone in a solvent bath without killing himself. Though if you spoke to anyone else you would think he was one step away from offlining. 

He stepped into the vacuum chamber and activated the drying vents. He let his optics dimm as he turned off his audials to the incredibly loud droning. He could towel off, or better yet simply drip dry, but Ratchet had insisted that he use the vacuum chamber to save his vulnerable platting.

The sheer amount of damage this frame had taken was nearly incomprehensible. Especially when he felt little to no pain, and had no physical limitations to his movement.

If anything he felt better .

After his joints had been oiled he moved with an ease and fluidity he had not known for centuries. Despite the sensitivity of his plating he felt almost lighter. He knew he wasn’t, not really, but he felt so much stronger than before. He was stuck between the causes being that he was no longer forced to consume fools energon or simply that this frame was millions of years younger. 

Whatever the answer, he felt great.

Tailgate burst past the privacy partition, the solvent basin was just in a section of his room, and immediately started mopping the miniscule amount of solvent he had dripped on the ground. The first time he had caught the minibot doing so he told him it was unnecessary . 

“But what if you slip?” he had said, clearly winding himself up, “What if you slip and hurt yourself?” his optics had started to spark behind the visor as he had pressed his servos to his face, “What if you slip and hit your helm again and pass out and wake up and you’re mean again?!?!?” 

It had taken him the better part of a micro-cycle (ha.) to calm the mech back down. He had promised no more than seven times that he wouldn’t hit his helm and wake up mean again before the bot stopped sparking.

The floor mopping had become non-negotiable.  

The vacuum chamber turned off as it finished its work and Megatron promptly exited. He was hoping to walk around some, maybe get a proper look out of the stupidly large windows at his estate. However, Blitzwing appeared like a ghost, Cold’s faceplates impassive, and promptly guided him to his bed like an invalid.

As it had been for three cycles now. 

Once he was settled sitting up in his bed Blitzwing passed him a cube of energon, and Megatron did everything in his power not to snap.

He had little functional memory from the previous version of himself. Megatronus’ memories were clearest in the last orn or so, but further back it began to get patchy and disjointed. From what he ‘ remembered’ of Blitzwing was disheartening to say the least. Megatronus had picked the mech from an illegal street fighting ring in her home country, when the mech had only just gotten his final upgrade, and had kept him close since. From what he could tell from his memories, Blitzwing saw him as a sort of caretaker, not that he behaved as such. If anything, the bot had become obsessed with taking care of him .

He drank half the energon cube, comfortable with his fuel gauge resting over 70%. Blitzwing began to rapidly switch faceplates, stopping on Red, then on Random, then back to Red, and settling on Cold before repeating. It was a habit Megatron had only ever seen when the two of them were alone, though with Tailgate across the room maybe it was just the illusion of privacy the mech needed to be so flighty of face.

“If you have something to say, say it.” He kept his voice level. He didn’t want to come across as accusatory or judgemental, but there was an ounce of irritation leaking into his voice. Did he really make everyone around him so paranoid to speak? Was there not one universe where others could feel safe to speak clearly and without hesitation with him?

Blitzwing’s face cycled through between Cold and Red several times, with Random popping in for a fraction of a klick before he finally settled on Cold. 

“You should finish your energon.” He seemed almost shy saying it, and Megatron could only work up the energy to sigh before knocking back the rest of his cube. Once his systems were sitting at a nearly bloated 100% he handed the empty cube back and pinned the bot with a look.

“I highly doubt that finishing my energon is the only thing you want to speak to me about.” guilt washed over the bot's face for a moment before the spinning began again. Finally settling on Cold, again .

“I wanted to ask about how much you remember…” 

Ah. he had been expecting this. What he hadn’t been expecting was for the bot to try and fight his own nature to put his ‘best’ face forward for the conversation. 

From what little of his memories he had of the bot, he was a bit like Whirl. Erratic and emotional, but dependent on the connections around him. Cyclonus, who was his other guard who he had many thoughts on none of which needed thinking on now, often treated Blitzwing like a mechling in need of guidance. He had no memories of either he or Cyclonus ever coddling Blitzwing. Though he did have memories of Megatronus encouraging Blitzwing to limit which face he spoke with at a time.

He took measure of Blitzwing’s presentation. He was sitting military stiff, with his servos laying flat on his thighs, though Megatron could see how tightly they were clenched. Blitzwing’ face switched to Red before switching back to a grimacing Cold.

“Are you trying to only talk to me with one face?” it was a question, but he didn’t state it as such. A statement made for confirmation only. He waited as Blitzwing straightened in his seat and gave him a startled look before Random swapped out and grinned at him.

“What if we are?” It was a touch unnerving , and all at once Megatron understood a little better why Megatronus felt confident with this mech watching her back.

“Stop.” delight washed over Random’s faceplate, “Use whatever aspect of yourself feels right when speaking with me. I would not have you limiting yourself for my comfort. ” Random cackled, and Megatron leaned back more comfortably as he watched tension bleed out of the bot’s frame. 

“And to answer your question,” he grimaced, this would be difficult to phrase. “I remember the event of how we first met, and I remember what I did to make you a part of my guard, but much of the time between is disjointed and confusing.” Blitzwing’s face flashed over to Red.

“You remember keeping me but you don’t remember why?!” it was a touch startling, he could hear the grief he was trying to hide behind the angry shout. 

Megatronus and Blitzwing’s relationship had been complicated. There was some rolling monologue over some of the memories, thoughts that Megatronus’ had but never shared, and one of them was about how useful yet temperamental blitzwing was. Blitzwing had idealized Megatronus, and as Megatron sat in her place, he felt it was his fault for taking her away. 

“I remember an incredibly skilled fighter,” he did, Blitzwing had torn his way through a bot nearly twice his size, using both his tank and flying alt modes to carry himself through the battle, “and I remember a very young mech, doing what he had to, to survive.” Also true, Megatronus had followed backstage at the time, curious if he could take home the winning fighter, and had found Blitzwing curled in on himself. Trying to make himself small. The memory was broken up after that, but it was enough to get a sad picture of the life Blizwing had before Megatronus took him in. Blitzwing broke eye contact, and switched to Cold as he looked down at his clenched servos. 

The silence stretched.

“I’m sorry, Blitzwing.” his helm snapped up, shock taking over his, then Reds features as he switched, “I am different then I was, and I do not believe I am going to change back anytime soon.” It was said with humor, but considering the damage to Megatronus’ memories, it was a simple fact.

Whoever Megatronus had been, she was as good as dead now. 

“You’re going to get rid of me.” He was dragged out of his musings by the wretched terror in Blitzwing’s voice, Cold was looking at him with pure defeated fear .

“Wh-What made you come to that conclusion?!” he was off kilter, startled, last time he felt like this it was because Whirl had thanked him for something. He couldn’t even remember what , it had startled him so bad. 

“Megatronus was the only one who ever thought I was useful .” oh no .

“I’m not getting rid of you!” his faces were spiralling again. Red popped out on top. 

“I am nothing! I couldn’t stop you from being poisoned! I took too long to get help!” Oh no.

“You did your best!” he slammed his fist into the soft cushion of the bed he was half layed in, Blitzwing’s face was swapping again, but his servos had come forward as if to stop the action. Random made his appearance and looked far from his usual jovial mania.

“I’m supposed to keep you safe! I failed!” The mech’s face began to spark, and coolant tears had started pooling in his optics. Panic was setting in fast for Megatron, so he did the first thing he could think of. 

He reached out and pulled the mech towards him, near crushing the bot to his chassis. Blitzwing was pulled awkwardly from his chair but he clearly didn’t mind as the bot began to bawl . Arms latching on around Megatron’s waist and holding on tight . 

Some line of code in his processor turned its head, activating with a vengeance and giving instructions that Megatron latched onto in a mirror of them mech latched onto him. Oddly enough they were part of the Carrier/Sire protocols, but Megatron didn’t have time to analyse that right now. Blitzwing was working himself up into a full processor crash and Megatron did not want that.

Immediately he began to rub small circles into the mech kibble, and found himself emitting a low rumbling hum that was entirely alien to him. But it felt like comfort incarnate . His field was brushing against the frazzled fear that was Blitzwing’s, and he found a calm in himself he hadn’t felt moments ago. 

“I’m not getting rid of you Blitzwing.” he meant that. “You are one of my closest allies here, and you have been doing your best to look out for me. But you are just one mech . You have to rest sometime and I have been remiss in making sure you could do that.” he pressed a servo to Blitzwing’s shoulder, encouraging him to pull back enough to look him in the optic. 

“My entire care and wellbeing should not have been on your shoulders alone, you did your best, thank you for that.”

While this did not stop the crying, in fact it increased it, his field was no longer full of fear, regret, guilt and terror. Instead it flushed with gratefulness and a feeling of safety. Blitzwing continued to cry, but he was calming down. Megatron made sure to stay right where he was, allowing the bot all the time he needed. 

He ended up pinging Tailgate to get energon for Blitzwing. He didn’t know how exactly, but he could tell the bot was running on fumes. When Tailgate arrived with the energon Blitzwing jerked away from Megatron as if embarrassed.

“None of that now,” Megatron made sure to keep a servos on the young bots shoulder, he didn't want him thinking that asking for comfort was a one and done thing. “There's nothing to be embarrassed about.”

If anything this seemed to make Blitzwing more embarrassed. 

“He’s right y’know!” Tailgate was handing off a cube of energon that had mercury swirling behind the glass and a magnesium foam on top, “it's important to let your feelings out, repressing them only makes them worse.” Megatron found himself nodding in agreement. As far as he could recall, Tailgate and Cyclones hadn't gotten together yet, but he was already hoping for their courting to be less complicated this time around. Tailgate seemed to have some of it down after all, maybe he would have an easier time convincing the flyer to buckle.

“I'm supposed to keep Megatron safe though,” he held the cube with both servos, and Cold looked absolutely miserable before he swapped to a miserable looking Red. “I can't do that if I'm crying .”

He unfortunately had a point. Though Megatron highly disagreed that he needed protection at all, he was ready to admit in this world it was a necessity. If only to show to the people that he had a strong relationship with their king, and thus, was a strong point of leadership.

“Then I will just have to increase my staff,” he found his servo gravitating to pat the mech on the helm, “you will not have to bear this burden alone for much longer Blitzwing.” 

Relief and hope washed through his E.M. field, and Megatron found joy and pride mixing in his own.

“Oh! I forgot to mention!” Tailgate had fully turned to face Megatron, “Ratchet fired Cindertrap and reassigned me to be your liaison! I kinda work for you now, so please count on me too!” He did not recognize the name whatsoever , but judging by the snarl on Red's face followed by the glee on Ransom's he could safely assume they were not well liked. 

“Good!” Random cheered, then Cold fronted as he faced Megatron, “She was who I had to go through to get anything done for you and she was terrible.” Megatron nodded. He didn't have any memories of this femme but he did have some where Megatronus was annoyed at something not getting done.

“Well, I'm sure Tailgate will be a great improvement.” He just hoped they wouldn't coddle him anymore then they already were, he gave Blitzwing a meaningful look and gestures to the energon drink. Judging by the look Blitzwing shared with Tailgate over the foam of his energon, Megatron could feel that small hope die .

In the two cycles it took for the internal materials to be ready for the first major repair Megatron needed, Blitzwing and Tailgate never left his side. They hadn't just coddled him, they had bullied him into compliance. All in good humor and with kind regards but with the persistence of a collapsing star . There was no resisting them when they were both ganging up on him. 

Blitzwing had started pushing at the boundaries Megatron had never set up, testing to see what he could get away with. Apparently, the answer was more than he could before. Megatron, used to the harassment of Autobots on the Lost Light and New Cybertron, found Blitzwing’s antics to be, at worst, funny . And so the bot had started acting out, and Megatron hadn't really corrected his behavior. Ratchet had provided him with some reading material on sparklings, and through Tailgate he had acquired more. A mech Blitzwing’s age should have creative outlets, and if the mech wanted to act like a clown, who was Megatron to stop him. 

For the two days he awaited word on his repairs, Blitzwing and Tailgate had taken to keeping him in bed, and his fuel tanks in the 90 percentile. He had been uncomfortable with such a full fuel tank, more used to the feeling of always needing more. That discomfort may be why Blitzwing had started acting up.

But now he was finally getting ready for his wire repair and Ratchet wanted to put him under for the operation. 

“Absolutely not.” It was his old paranoia rearing its ugly head, but he was untethered from all things truly familiar, and while he trusted Ratchet to do a good job, he didn’t trust whoever poisoned him. 

“Megatron, I'm going to be operating on you.” Ratchet looked horrified at the idea of Megatron being conscious for the operation, but he would get over it. “I’m going to be removing parts of you and replacing them, you cannot be conscious for this.” 

“Would my consciousness interfere with the operation?” it was a trick question, it wouldn’t . “Or are you just worried I will have some emotional reaction that you cannot control?”

Ratchet sputtered for a moment, stuttering through too many denials to land on a single one. It was a habit his Ratchet didn’t have.

“I will be conscious for the operation.” He wished this Ratchet was a little more hardened, it would make these conversations shorter, if not less complicated. 

“Never have I operated on a conscious mech, and if you think I'm going to start now-!”

“I do think you’re going to start now. I have already been poisoned once in this house and I will not give them a second chance.” It was a low blow, Ratchet had an investigation going on to find the culprit of the poisoning but there was little evidence to be found. “I trust you to do the operation, but I don't trust the mechs in this house to not take advantage of me when I am unconscious. Blitzwing is doing his best , but he is just one mech and I am not taking unnecessary risks that put him under any more stress.” 

Ratchet reared back, looking more shocked than angry. His optics were searching Megatron’s own face for signs of deception that Megatron simply didn’t have. 

“You’re worried about Blitzwing.” He sounded floored. 

“He is a young mech with a lot to handle, and has been blaming himself for my,” he gestured to his ruined plating and flaking paint, “ condition .” 

“So you want to be conscious for an indepth surgery.” Ratchet was still looking at him in shock, so Megatron didn’t hesitate to nod in response.

“I told him I would be perfectly fine and would comm him if I needed assistance, I cannot do that if I am unconscious.”

“You want to be conscious for an indepth surgery so that your guard won't be anxious .” 

“It’s hardly that big of a deal Ratchet, you can still have the pain blockers in place so it's not like I will be feeling anything . Besides we have some things to discuss, and why not take advantage of the time we will have to spend together anyways.”

“Primus,” Ratchet pressed his servos to his faceplate and groaned into them, it was the most immature thing he had seen the medic turned king regent do, “The second I catch fear-no, unease in your field I'm knocking you out.” 

“Deal.” He couldn’t stop the smugness that entered his voice and field. Ratchet gave him a withering glare before turning around. If the medic thought he would get squeamish over a little surgery he had another thing coming. 

“Just get on the medical berth Megatron.”

He rolled his own optics at the medic attitude, and got on the berth without further hesitation. Ratchet’s guards, Bulkhead and Springer, were on the other side of the door. Doing their job, and though Blitzwing had tried to join them Megatron had given him strict orders to rest . Tailgate had promised to help him find a hobby, and Megatron couldn’t help but feel relieved. 

Blitzwing was a touch obsessive, and unfortunately Megatron had found himself in the center of that obsessive behavior, and considering Megatron’s history with mechs that were obsessed with him he wanted to nip that in the bud fast . Him and Tailgate had shared a few concerned looks when Blitzwing did something particularly worrisome, so he was happy with the idea of Blitzwing finding something else to express himself through. 

Hopefully, he would get a few new skills, and find something to steady himself that wasn’t just Megatron’s safety. Considering Megatron’s record, and his luck, he was not something any mech should be looking to for consistency and support. 

He tried not to think about any of the other mechs that had been obsessed with him. 

“I cannot believe I agreed to this.” Ratchet had pulled his tools over and had sanitized them as much as they needed. Unlike organics they didn’t have nearly as many diseases to worry about. So only minimal sterilization was necessary when replacing parts. 

Ratchet shot him one last sharp look before plugging the pain inhibitor into his medical port and setting it to maximum. The moment Ratchet looked away he went ahead and turned it down to a medium input. He would adjust it as necessary, but he wanted to make sure he could still feel what Ratchet was doing. 

“Alright, I’m going to start with your extremities and then work my way in. legs, arms, torso and then helm. I have a lot of work to do, but I can still talk if you want to talk .” and with that stated he promptly started removing his plating. He could feel as Ratchet sheared off structural points under his plating to remove it, but it felt detached. Like his flaking paint felt. A slight tug and he watched as section after section of his plating was lifted and set aside. Ratchet was an efficient worker in the operation room and Megatron felt himself relax, really relax, for the first time since waking up.

Now for the hard part.

“Ratchet, going forward I would like to be more involved in the governing of this country.” he had timed this statement carefully, and watched without flinching as a removed piece of plating dropped from Ratchet's servo and clattered to the ground. 

“Excuse me?” he had whipped any expression from his faceplates and clearly steeled himself for whatever slagged up thing that Megatron would say next. It was almost funny how clearly Megatron could tell he was just waiting for Megatronus the overlord to come out.

“You’re miserable,” it was a simple statement that was entirely true. Every time Ratchet had come to check on Megatron leading up to this surgery he came stressed and uncomfortable, and left more steady then he arrived. He was made to be a medic, he was not made to be a leader, and Optimus had truly burdened his friend when asking Ratchet to lead in his stead. “And I’m bored .” Now was the time for the push. This wasn’t a grab for power, and he needed that understood . Like with the Lost Light, leading was one of the only good skills he had, and he didn’t want it to go to waste. 

“Where are you taking this, Megatron?” Ratchet had resumed his work and Megatron took the unspoken threat with good grace. He had expected it, Ratchet had treated him with suspicion since he had woken in this body and he doubted a few days where he was bed bound would change that. 

“I imagine there is an ungodly amount of paperwork you have been wading through each day.” Ratchet gave a curt nod, not looking up from his work. “And since we are understaffed at the moment due to the skirmish at the Vosian border, I would like to offer assistance on handling the daily workload.” He did well in a supportive role after all. And all that time working with Ultra Magnus had given him skills with paperwork that he doubted anyone here could rival. 

“Why would I let a mech suffering from processor damage do paperwork?” cheap shot.

“So you can save yourself from getting processor damage from doing the paperwork that you hate . Honestly Ratchet, I have already finished reading through all the material you left me. Give me something to do so I don't offline myself and give you a real helmache to deal with.” He was thankful that Ratchet kept his servos steady as he sputtered at him. “Well?”

“Let me think you blasted scrap head .” He snarled, but there was very little venom behind it.

Megatron hummed and leaned back, letting the medic think. The fact of the matter was this, he had plenty of time to convince Ratchet to give him something to do. The mech was only just getting to his knee joint on one leg.  He had the rest of his frame to go, and all that time to convince the mech working on him to give him something to do.

Megatron was crazy . Ratchet snapped at him as he worked through replacing the wiring in his left elbow joint. Rebraiding and insulating his primary, secondary, and tertiary cabling. This should be painful . And yet he had watched the mech turn down the pain dampener and proceed to be as unflinching and unwavering as a million year old war veteran and not a 20 vorn old noble mech. 

It was strange, and if they lived in a fantasy Ratchet would be leaning towards some grand tale of spark replacement and changelings. But he had scanned Megatron top to bottom and the only change that was present was the damage he had found. 

“Honestly Ratchet, I don’t know why you’re insisting on doing the paperwork that is practically snuffing your spark.” Megatron whined , “You would be much happier if you didn’t have to do all of it. Really, it would be a detriment to not let me assist.” 

Had he a servo to spare he would be massaging his nasal ridge. 

Even the way this Megatron whined was different. Oh, they were similar, but at times like this they were painfully different. Megatronus had no interest in paperwork, but he had demanded complete control of castle affairs. A privilege Ratchet had taken away when he had seen him snapping at Rodimus over something he had done. To be fair, though Ratchet hated to give him any credit, Rodimus had destroyed a table hover boarding in the castle halls. But to his detriment, had ratchet been a micro klick slower Megatronus would have laid hands on the crown prince. 

It had been two mega cycle’s into his stay, and he had gotten no responsibilities since.

“If I give you work will you shut your intake?” The fact of the matter was that this Megatron was an unknown . Unpredictable. This new Megatron had, so far, been entirely patient with the lock and key treatment he had been receiving. When Ratchet had mentioned he should stay in his quarters for the time between this surgery and the replacement of his plating, all he had gotten was a disappointed sigh and a solum ‘I understand’ before he simply moved on.

“Yes Ratchet,” the smugness in his field made Ratchet want to hit him. “I will shut up about this if you agree to give me something to work on.”

“Fine!” if he or anyone was going to understand where this mech was coming from then they needed to give him chances to show his true colors. “I receive requests from different provinces every cycle, I need someone to summarize and organize them, we can have you start with those.” he had been letting Getaway do it, but honestly he could use the mech more in different areas of work. 

“Ah, your junk mail.” Megatron looked thoughtful for a moment, before a grin took over his features, “That will occupy me, thank you Ratchet.”

And then the mech proceeded to be silent . 

Megatron was crazy, but he was tolerable now. Maybe they could make something of this new personality. The fact that he was willing to wade through junk mail , as he so eloquently put it, was far from what Megatronus would have tolerated. 

There was a fragile hope building in his lines, he did his best to squash it down, but it was budding and there was no stopping it. 

He had been avoiding the topic of Rodimus with this new mech, and he was realizing that his window to bring it up was rapidly closing. He vented harshly, sighing as he mustered up the mental fortitude to have this conversation. If he timed it with him starting on the mech’s torso, the more sensitive area, then no mech could blame him. 

“We need to talk about the crown prince.” He expected a reaction, some disdain or flinch of recognition.

“Optimus Prime’s protege?” oh for the love of Primus , he didn’t remember Rodimus . “I assume the bot is working somewhere?”

Scratch that, he didn’t remember what a prince was , he just learned what a sparkling was.

“He’s a sparkling.” vague confusion broke into a basic understanding across Megatron’s field, and Ratchet was starting to regret giving into Megatron’s demands for work. “He’s the King’s sparkling.”

“Leadership is passed down through a familiar line?” it was an honest question, and if Ratchet had a free servo he would be pinching his nasal bridge.

“I don’t think I can let you go through my junk mail Megatron.” Offense rose in a delicate and quickly squashed wave in Megatron’s field.

“You didn’t give me any material on this topic, give me a day and I will catch up.” The craziest part of that statement was that Ratchet believed it .

He had given Megatron a brief talk on sparklings, where they came from and how to make one. And had been endlessly amused by the horror on the mech's face and disgust in his field. It had been like talking to a newspark for the first time, and he had taken a little bit of revenge for the poor treatment of Megatronus in the past.

Then he had left him with some reading materials and checked in on what he knew the next day.

He had read all of it.

He had read all of it, and though he discussed his understanding with Ratchet had been long suffering and a touch disgusted, he had understood it. It hadn’t been a particularly difficult topic, but he had also deep dived into carricer and sire protocols and had grudgingly agreed to keep the coding. 

“Fine, I'll have Getaway bring the necessary material to get you caught up. You’ll still be on strict bed rest for a few cycles so some light reading would be an acceptable outlet for your processor.”

Relief and gratitude brushed against his field and Ratchet had to resist the startled shock that wanted to flood his systems. Megatronus would never be grateful to him, she had been far too demanding and privileged, but for some reason Megatron was so much softer than her. 

“How young is the crown prince? There are some distinct differences with sparkling ages in the first 10 vorns.”

“Yes, well Rodimus is-” shock and confusion jolted in Megatron’s field before he locked it down immediately. 

“I’m sorry, his name is Rodimus ?”

“I’m starting to think that you forgot that the crown prince existed at all.”

“No, no I just… was checking.” Megatron didn’t move, despite the turmoil in his field. “Please go on.” He was hiding something, but Ratchet doubted he would find out immediately. 

“Well Rodimus is 5 vorns old, he’s only into his second upgrade, and he is.. Precocious .”

“I can imagine.” Which was a telling statement.

“I have asked him to leave you alone while you recover, but as time goes on he will become curious of you and start appearing. I only ask that you treat him well.”

“Of course, he’s learning to be a leader for this country, why would I treat him poorly.” Ratchet couldn’t stop his field fluctuating at that, why indeed . “Ah… I have already treated him poorly.” It was unnerving how a mech with such intensive processor damage could still be so insightful. 

“Once. I interfered and forbade Rodimus from seeking you out since, but he has become increasingly irritated that I spend time with you and he cannot know you.” 

“He wants to know me?”

“It would be more accurate to say he wants to ensure I am not being mistreated by you.”

“Ah, he views me as a threat.” There was a sad acceptance in his field that was tugging at Ratchet’s spark. How obnoxious. 

“Megatron,” he pulled away from the mech's wiring enough to look him in the optics. This was important and he needed to know how he would react. “You were a threat.”

“...I see.” his field had once again softened around him. “You are worried I still am.”

Ratchet grimaced, but didn’t say anything. He waited though, pausing his work to see what Megatron would say next. 

“Would you take my word?” it was clear he didn’t think Ratchet would. “I promise not to bring the mechling intentional harm.” 

Ratchet snorted. It was progress he never thought he would have, and though he expected the words to be delivered with blase disinterest, Megatron had been painfully sincere . 

“I will take your word for now, Megatron. Now hush, I need to work on your helm and any more talking will just make this take longer .”

Chapter Text

Optimus’ sparkling was Rodimus. Part of it made sense, they were both primes in his universe, so it made sense that they were connected here as well. But a sparkling? Sure Rodimus was immature, and technically if you considered his time as prime as a sort of second life, he was considerably younger than Optimus, and yes he acted reckless and untethered the way that was described in the sparkling books-

By Primus.

Rodimus was a sparkling.

Megatron stared at the ceiling of his room, stuck between horror and awe. His processor was still stuck on just how organic these cybertronians were, they reproduced, they had sexual reproductive organs.

They weren’t reliant on the well of sparks to make more of their number. 

It was such a stark and strange change from his world that it had settled some part of his processor that was still running probabilities of this all being some kind of recharge backlash. This was as real as the pain in his frame was. 

Ratchet had warned him that he would need to spend a minimum of three days without any plating. He was going to be stuck as just his protoform for three days. He had at least been given a proper covering, a robe that would protect the sensitive silvery flesh beneath it, but he could tell at soon as the first day started that it was not enough. 

He was cold.

It had been a long time since he had been unable to thermoregulate and be unaffected by his surroundings, so finding himself feeling cold was a novelty. Especially when all it took was one shiver and Blitzwing and Tailgate both had him smothered in blankets. 

He hadn’t actually minded, but he made sure to complain at them anyways. Tailgate had been shooting him knowing looks that he had been able to categorize as him starting to think of Megatron as a friend. They were the same looks his Tailgate had started shooting him back on the Lost Light.

It caught him off guard how similar some bots were here, and how different other bots were. Blurr was a good example. Tailgate had given up on mixing energon meals that Megatron wouldn’t turn his taste sensors off for, and had brought in Swerve for a proper meeting. 

Swerve had brought his conjux. Blurr had become something of a celebrity in his universe, and he had too many memories to erase of Swerve talking about the mech. His universe's Blurr was an average sized speedster. This universe's Blurr was a minibot. Just as fast, but half the size.

He had left before their meeting was over, and Megatron had quietly wondered why he ended up here at all. 

His energon rations, no, meals were less overwhelming after that. The flavors of different metals, minerals, and substrates became more complementary and mild. It was honestly a relief. 

But now he had cravings. Never in his life had he craved a flavor of something, and yet now he craved the oddly sweet iron that they had been putting into his energon. It was obnoxious. In his last frame he had permanently activated his F.I.M chip to prevent himself getting attached to engex, yet here he was with a craving for iron. 

His new frame was so strange. More so without the familiar guarding panels of his plating. It was hard to ignore that his protoform had an almost skin like mesh over his proper internals, that his interfacing equipment was no longer a set of cables and ports but some weird amalgamation of organic inspired spike and valve unites between his legs. 

They were incredibly basic, and incredibly vulgar. He had not interfaced with a mech in a long time before he had been pushed onto the Lost Light, and he doubted that would change anytime soon. Thankfully he could keep the spike retracted without effort, and he had a replacement modesty panel for his propriety.  

It was the second day he had to suffer without any plating that he had a meeting with Getaway. 

Megatron was not very hopeful with how this meeting was going to go. But With Blitzwing at his back, and Tailgate actually looking out for him, he figured the amount of damage the mech could do at this point was negligible. 

Hopefully. 

Megatron was already half convinced this was the bot that had poisoned him. He half expected the mech to just come out and start taking accountability for the poisoning when he had arrived.

“Ratchet has insisted that I go over proper contemporary historical text with you, and find out exactly where your processor has dropped information.” He had placed a large stack of data pads on the table between them.

Tailgate had been the one to set up the meeting. He had encouraged (insisted) that Megatron meet with Getaway in his room’s sitting area. He was still blown away that he had a room with a separate sitting area. Tailgate had been detailed, down to where Blitzwing would be standing and how Megatron should be sitting considering his missing plating. 

Apparently he was not to cross his legs, and he was to sit properly. Despite the robe covering all of his body, and a set of odd slippers covering his peds, there was an insistence that he not be seen by any mech this way. Tailgate had stumbled through an explanation that it was inappropriate in some nebulous way, while Blitzwing had simply said that without his plating he was vulnerable, and that ‘lead others’ to ‘strange thoughts’. He admitted to parroting the phrase from when Megatronus had explained it to him. 

As much as he loathed the feeling of vulnerability, watching as Getaway looked anywhere else then looking at him was getting rather amusing. 

“You’re going to be the one to fill in my education then?” Perhaps it was the way he said it, or maybe it was the way he had leaned back to relax into the couch he was sitting on. Either way, despite the distance between them he was buffeted with Getaway’s field and just how annoyed the other mech was. 

It was surprising how much more intense another mechs field was without the dissipating sensors one found on their plating. This was distinctly different from his universe. 

He caught any sound or reaction to the sudden discomfort before he could display any of them. 

“I don’t want to be here,” Getaway pointed to Megatron with a data pad and swept it out to encompass the entire room. “But you apparently want my job. And I apparently have to teach you how to do it.” 

The mech was furious. Megatron had seen many angry mechs in his time, through the war he had seen, and caused every kind of rage a bot could experience.

This rage was personal. 

He tilted his helm as he looked over this Getaway. It was fascinating seeing just how much softer every mech he had met here was. Without the years and years of battle to change and shape them they were polite and softer in ways he couldn’t quantify. 

Getaway had started squirming in his spot. Clearly he had expected some grand reaction from Megatron, something he could take back to Ratchet and say ‘see? I can't work with him!’. It was a pitiful and unimaginative version of the plan he had attempted on the Lost Light. 

“Are you done?” Honestly, his attempts were pitiable, and watching as he simply crumpled, Megatron was finding it harder to think this mech would have the guts to try to poison him. Let alone get away with it. 

Getaway made a few vague motions but said nothing else. 

“I see,” he took a moment to actually look at Getaway, he was flustered, and his field was receding back to where it was considered polite. “You will leave whatever materials you brought with you today, I will study them, and when we next speak tomorrow you will arrive with an attitude that is appropriate for the situation we have at hand.” he leaned forward and placed his servo on the top of the data pad stack before Getaway could try and snatch them back. “That is of course, assuming you brought valid material.”

Humiliation spiked in Getaway’s field before it was snatched away and hidden. Megatron frowned, then simply scooped up the stack and set it next to himself on the couch.

“Go and get proper materials, Getaway.” the mech didn’t move, “Be quick about it and I won't tell Ratchet how rude you’ve been to his only patient.”

That did it, the mech practically vaulted the couch he was on in a mad dash scramble for the door. Satisfied, he turned on the first data pad and skimmed its contents.

It was not a report. Or historical text. Or anything important. 

It was a novel. 

Specifically a romance novel.

He set it aside and checked the second one, another novel. He began to check all of them.

“Are you really going to let him get away with that?” Tailgate sounded affronted. 

“It is his name.” There were twelve data pads, and as he set down the seventh he was coming to the realization that Getaway had taken a section off a shelf somewhere to intimidate him with a high workload.

“If his field approaches you again,” a seamless switch between Cold and Random, “I’ll tear his limbs off!”

Foolish of him to think that he could scare Megatron with paperwork. He worked with Magnus for primus’ sake. 

He paused on the eleventh data pad. He would never see his Ultra Magnus again. With the care he had learned on the Lost Light, he gathered his feelings of loss and loneliness, and with the viciousness he learned in millions of years of war, shoved them into a part of his processor he would not have to deal with for a long time. 

He picked up the final data pad, and was surprised by an actual report. It was a simple correspondence, requesting aid to an area that had been hit with a small earthquake that had destroyed a section of a building. Well it was listed as a building but it had been a housing sectional. Holding four coupled bots and six single occupancy bots as well. There was half filled out paperwork with the correspondence as well as a form that was clearly supposed to be for building materials. 

He could feel his optics narrow.

There was a subsection of the correspondence that mentioned injuries, and there was nothing in the paperwork that addressed them. With a new level of irritation at his incompetence, Megatron followed the simple patterning of the material request form and added medical aid. He was done within minutes, and he took the time to add a section in the code so that Getaway couldn’t just claim he did the work. It was a simple virus that made the author of these reports Megatron, if he had any sense in his processor he would find it and fix it within a few minutes. Megatron had doubts he would find it at all. 

In the meantime he began to take a closer look at the trivial novels that Getaway had left behind. The titles were telling to say the least. ‘The Taming of the Wrecker’ was clearly a romance novel, along with ‘Love in the Rust Sea’, ‘Can love bloom on the battlefield?’, ‘Dawn’, ‘Logic and function’, ‘The Datapad’, ‘The fluctuation in our frequencies’, and ‘Beauty and the Beastformer’. ‘Howl's living city’ and ‘The tallest spire’ seemed to have something else going on but as he read their description they were also romance novels. 

Getaway really had just grabbed a section off a well organized shelf and brought it to try and intimidate him out of working. It was sad that he could think of a few bots this would have worked on back on the Lost Light. Rodimus being one of them.

Cycling his vents, then grimacing as his robe billowed more than he had expected, he set the data pads aside and addressed Tailgate, who had been patiently explaining to Blitzwing that there were more ways to ruin a mech than just physically hurting them. It was admittedly strange to hear about social intricacies from a bot he had known to be so naive in his world.

He rubbed his servo over his optics and leaned further into the couch behind him. 

“Do you think he’ll bring actual material or am I going to have to bring Ratchet into this.”

“Oh Ratchet would hate that, he gets annoyed when he has to intermediate between mechs.”

“No wonder he’s so miserable as king.”

“How can you tell?” Now this was a conundrum. How to explain that Megatron could read the tension in Ratchet’s plating by how much softer he had been with Drift back in his world. How could he explain that the annoyance in his field had that bitter edge that had faded after Drift had come back. 

How to explain he could read a mech simply because he had come from a time where he had seen that mech miserable, and had seen him truly content. At least that was the same, Ratchet displayed grudging misery the same across this dimension and his own. It was a sad thing to find comfort in. 

“How can you not?” He reached forward and plucked an iron rich energon goody that Tailgate had set out on a platter and popped it into his intake. “He's clearly very careful in our interactions, until I manage to annoy him into not caring. I know it was Optimus that asked him to lead, but that mech must have known he was placing a great burden on our resident medic. I only hope that I can lessen the burden. If the stubborn glitch will let me, that is.” His optics had drifted to the door that Getaway had sprinted out of.

“Oh.” Tailgate sounded touched. “You like Ratchet.” 

“He’s an incredible medic,” he was stomping down any embarrassment and flustered surprise before Tailgate could think he got the drop on him. “And as far as I can tell, he’s done an admirable job keeping the kingdom together in the absence of its king.” 

He couldn’t see any kind of mouth on Tailgate considering the face mask, but the bot was beaming regardless. 

“So you like Ratchet. It’s not like like right? Because that would get complicated considering you’re already conjuxed to the king and having an affair is so much work to hide and-”

“Tailgate,” he had wheezed, shocked by the little bots' tenacity and ability to say just anything. “I do not have a romantic interest in Ratchet.”

If Drift existed in this universe he would kill him. 

“Well good!” Blitzwing was weighing in as Red, “He’s not good enough for the prince of Kaon.” a smooth switch to cold, “Not that the king was much better.”

He found himself a little shocked by that.

“Blitzwing?” He allowed a soft curiosity and concern to fill his field as he tilted his helm back to look up at the standing mech behind him. That statement had been pointed.

“What?! King Optimus Prime is a fantastic mech!” Tailgate’s ability to switch from ‘implying I can help you hide an affair’ to ‘you have a great conjux’ was whiplash in and of itself. 

“He’s been conjuxed before!” Red was back, “and he left Megatronus alone for their first night!”

Primus, Megatron rubbed a servo over his faceplates, he was talking about interfacing. A new addition to the conjunx ceremony in this place was consummating it with an interfacing session that was intended to result in a sparkling. Megatron had been informed that his interfacing array had never been used by Ratchet, a fact he had brushed off as trivial, until Tailgate had brought the sparkling texts and it became abundantly clear to him that it was expected he would have one. 

“Well, most conjux have time to get to know each other first! Maybe he just wanted Megatronus to be more comfortable!” 

They were fully arguing about his sex life without him involved. He rolled his optics and grabbed another iron based energon goody. He would leave them to it. He doubted interfacing would really matter, it was unlikely his relationship with Optimus would be anything other than a professional working co-Kingship. Something like what he and Rodimus had, but hopefully more productive. 

Tailgate was saying something about relationships being built off more than just interfacing when a knock at the door alerted them to a visitor. With a gesture Tailgate immediately went to check who it was.

::Getaway’s back:: Communicating over comms gave a level of control to Megatron that he couldn’t help but admire Tailgate for thinking of. He smiled, and picked the last data pad back up and popped another energon goody in his mouth before responding. 

::Let him in then:: he was giving the exact dismissive air that had been known to piss Starscream off the most. With quiet amusement he activated the only data pad that had actual information on it and didn’t glance at Getaway until the mech had deposited another stack of data pads on his table. This new stack had about twice the number as before, truly highlighting the stupidity of grabbing a few romance novels to try and intimidate him, when the raw materials would have worked much better. 

Getaway’s field was unsteady, nervous and frantic and personally offended. Already Megatron wished he could simply tell this mech to leave. 

“Y-you want real material, you got real material.” He set the data pads into two stacks and almost immediately tipped one of the stacks over as he pointed at Megatron. “Slag- I didn't say that, sorry, okay, so here’s how this is going to go!” He was rearranging the data pads entirely, three stacks were forming, and his field was getting no closer to grounding itself. “This stack has reports that I have already finished, this stack is reports that are set up but not finished, and this is a stack of communications that I haven't had time to go over because I have to teach you how to do this.”

Primus this mech was exhausting. For a moment he missed the days when Soundwave would simply handle mechs like this without hesitation.

He wondered if there was a Soundwave in this universe. What could the mech be up to? What kind of trouble would his cassetticons be getting into? He wondered if Ravage was alive here. He hoped so.

He took the grief that rose up with that thought, and did to it what he had done before. 

“Fair enough,” it was obnoxious how simple his planning was, there was no effort put in at all. “Here, of the novels you have given me you left something I assume was actual work for you.” He passed the data pad over with a limp wrist, he wanted to emphasize just how trivial this was for him, and he knew he succeeded by the irritation he felt under all the anxiety in Getaway’s field. 

He picked up the ‘finished’ data pads and began to skim them over. A brief overview, followed by a full read through, and then another skim. The file system was fine. It was incredibly simple, though, and as Megatron grabbed a second data pad to examine it, he was hoping it would get better.

It did not. 

Maybe he was spoiled. With soundwave as his third in command he knew every report that came back to him was succinct and accurate. With Magnus they were in depth and thorough.

These were neither. 

They were barren, and simple. They summed up correspondents in ways that were incomplete if not outright inaccurate. Megatron had grabbed a third and fourth data pad, having gotten the pattern of sloppy work memorized. 

These were bad. 

Magnus would never allow this to happen. 

He shut that thought away, and then shut down the following thought that he couldn’t keep shutting thoughts out. Turning off his reactions and feelings was a road he simply couldn’t follow. 

The small amount of work he had done on the other data pads was significantly better than what he had done with the reports in front of him. His optics flickered up to get a read on the bot that had brought these half-afted attempts at work and was hit with the realization he was trying to fix something on the data pad.

The author of the report. The small virus he had added. He was still stuck on it. He pinched his nasal bridge and lifted a hand to get Blitzwing’s attention. 

“Getaway you may leave now.” honestly the mech was so close to useless he was astonished he had lasted this long. Was Ratchet relying on this mech? Primus he hoped not. “I think I have everything I need from you.”

He sputtered, field pulsing outward, but that was all he managed to do before Blitzwing was looming over him with Random fronting. He didn’t say anything, but he did start getting closer to the mech. Getaway, with the spirit that gave him his name, scrambled back and stood, clearly putting the couch between himself and Blitzwing.

“B-But I need to teach you how to do the filing system?” he was shrinking back as Blitzwing climbed on the couch like some earthen lizard. Rodimus liked sending gifs over text channels and Megatron had been forced to see several earthen animals. 

“I think I can manage.” He picked up another data pad from the finished pile and felt a frown deepen on his features. “I’m keeping all these though.” he made a loose gesture to the stacks of datapads around him. 

“Uh well, but the um.” he was struggling to back towards the door as a low rasping laugh started bubbling out of Random’s chest. Blitzwing was advancing with the intent of a predator, and though Getaway couldn’t see it, Tailgate was shaking with the effort to not burst out laughing. “The-the novels are-”

“You can get new ones.” With those words and final dismissal Blitzwing made a lunging motion forward. Cutting it off before he actually lunged, and Getaway bolted. He hummed and got to work on the data pads in front of him.  

If this was Kaon, Blitzwing would have killed Getaway by now. He was still running his battle protocols as he paced the room between the door and Megatron behind him.

That slimy little slag sucker would be dead. Scrapped for parts. Thrown in a smelter. 

But this wasn’t Kaon, and Blitzwing found himself angry not for the first time since they had left their kingdom. In Kaon Megatron could have had this fool gone and dealt with at the first sign of insubordination, but instead they had to wait for the mech's real mess to be revealed in full before they could get rid of him. 

And even then it was unlikely Getaway would face any real consequences!

Things were simpler in Kaon. Mechs like Getaway never lasted. Mechs with helms too big for their lot in life got shot down fast. Blitzwing’s own creators were a great example. His carrier had gotten into gambling, and when it came time to pay up Blitzwing had been the collateral. 

It had been fine. He had gotten good at fighting. But after Megatronus found him life went from fine to pretty good. Blitzwing had gone from no one looking out for him to two people on his side.

He missed Cyclonus. Megatronus had told them they needed someone on the front so that she ‘didn’t look sparkless in the eyes of the people’. Blitzwing hadn’t really understood why that mattered. But Cyclonus had, and he had volunteered to go.

So he was back to only one person looking out for him, and for him to look out for. It was fine. But Megatronus wasn’t happy. And there was nothing he could do to make it better.

And then she was sick. 

He whipped around so he could look at Megatron reading through data pads. Megatron was frowning. He sighed as he read every data pad and set each aside like disappointments. He was frustrated with Getaway’s work.

He was the happiest Blitzwing had seen since they had gotten to Iacon.

His battle protocols finally settled. Both he and Tailgate had been keeping close optics on Megatron. It was nice to not be the only one looking out for Megatron again. He was worried for a bit there that it would be just him and Megatron going forward.

He didn’t think he could have managed that for long.

“He’s fully changing the point of the requests!” Megatron lifted a data pad emphasis of his point. “His arrogance knows no bounds.” 

This was familiar. Blitzwing let himself relax. Switching to Random as a giddy amusement ran through him.

“I’ve never met a mech who was as stupid as he was arrogant before!” That got a laugh from both Megatron and Tailgate, and Blitzwing puffed up with the attention. Cyclonus would have some catching up to do, but Blitzwing was already looking forward to whatever stupid expression his faceplate would make.

Chapter Text

The cycle followed smoothly. Megatron finally had something to work on, even if it only took a few micro-cycles to finish it. He had a check in with Ratchet in the morning so he would simply talk to the mech then. He had to know his aid was completely incompetent. 

He had started reading the romance novels at some point in the afternoon. It was a way to pass the time even if they were devoid of substance. By the time he couldn’t stomach the poorly written drivel it was evening.

Blitzwing and Tailgate had done their evening ritual. Which simply meant they were making sure he was fueled to 100% and tucked into bed like a new frame. Well, a sparkling would be the better term now. It was obnoxious, but also the only way to get Blitzwing to leave and rest in his own quarters. So Megatron braved the babying, and settled like the well behaved processor damaged bot they half thought he was. 

It was a few hours later that had him rising from the bed, restless and helm aching. He dragged most of his blankets with him, the robe simply wasn’t enough in the cold and dark of the night, as he walked towards the windows. 

He hadn’t wanted to think about it, but the fact remained.

He would never see any of the bots from the Lost Light again.

He would never get to speak to the mechs he had proven himself too again. Tailgate and Cyclonus were intrinsically different here. Tailgate was far more worldly than the charmingly naive mech he knew. And Cyclonus was loyal to him in this world in a way he had never been before. 

Ratchet was different too. Less hardened, less jaded. The Ratchet he knew had taken Pharma’s servos for himself and would mention it without remorse or hesitation if it came up. He could not imagine this version of him ever taking parts from another mech. They had plenty of replicators, so they wouldn’t need to scavenge parts. 

He would never speak to Magnus again. 

That, more than anything, made his spark shutter. They had gotten close. Closer than he had ever intended them to get.

He pressed his servo to the window and bowed his head until his forehead pressed against the cool glass. 

They had been close, but they had never named what their relationship was. They had been close, but Megatron now had nothing to prove it to himself. No label to fall back on. No promises made. Just silent, constant company, easily rewritten and recontextualized if he lingered on it too long.

Emotion welled, fitful and aching, he had gone to his execution knowing he was leaving everything he loved behind. He had been prepared to rejoin the all spark. He had been at peace with himself, he would leave and not be able to hurt, or be hurt ever again. 

He had not been ready to continue without them.

For the first time since he had arrived in this new and strange world, he let himself mourn for all the things he had left behind. 

He needed to get fuel before Ratchet checked on him in the morning. He did not want to explain why he was at half fuel to a concerned Ratchet, Blitzwing and Tailgate. Tailgate and Blitzwing were already smothering him with their attempts to make up for his lack of staff so he simply couldn’t risk them thinking he had been under-fueled. But mourning had taken its toll, and that toll had been 48.7% of his fuel capacity. 

If they badgered him any more than they already did he would purge. 

So with a swath of blankets, and his soot and coolant covered faceplate, he made his way from his room to the kitchens. 

The walk was calming, steadying his spark and regrounding his processor. He was in mourning, but his new blasted frame desperately wanted more iron and he had used up an insignificant amount of fuel with his emotional processing. 

He had cried.

Which had surprised him somewhat, he could not remember the last time he had cried in his last life, so it was strange he had done so in this one. So he was a little distracted, he was expecting there to be the same amount of bots up and about as there had been when he first woke here. That being none.

So surprise surprise when he turned on the lights in the kitchen to find another bot taking up space. 

Specifically, standing on the counter and trying to get to the sweet tasting unrefined quartz. Pale blue optics locked with his own and for a moment they both froze.

The bot was tiny. Smaller than Tailgate which was throwing his processor for a loop he was entirely unprepared for. They were brightly colored with reds and yellows, with two wing panels on their back that were comically large on their tiny little frame. They raised a servo and pointed at Megatron. 

“You cried.” Their voice was light, higher pitched, and incredibly familiar.

That was Rodimus. That was also what a sparkling looked like. Megatron turned around and shut the door behind him. Maybe the sparkling would get the message and be gone before he opened the door again. 

No… the sparkling was still there. Rodimus was still there. Still standing on the counter. 

“What are you doing?” Rodimus was trying to climb the cabinets. There was a misplaced panic building in his processor as he watched the oddly proportioned version of his friend try to climb.

“Nothin’!” his overly large winglets flexed at just the wrong time and Megatron found himself lunging across the kitchen with a speed he did not expect. The sparkling had thrown himself back with an astounding lack of balance and was falling towards the floor. 

He barely caught Rodimus before he brained himself on the counter. Wide optics stared up at him from the position Megatron had managed to catch him from. Megatron simply stared back, equally surprised. With a slight shake of his helm he pushed the little mech upright to stand once again on the counter. 

“That was unwise.” There was something alert in his code, checking and rechecking Rodimus over for any and all dents, dings and scraps. Rodimus puffed up his cheeks and crossed his arms. 

“Woulda been fine if you hadn’t shown up.” he could feel his brow ridges rise. That had been considerably bitter considering how small and sweet looking this Rodimus looked.

“Or it could have been worse. Imagine if you had fallen alone.” Rodimus was starting to fidget under his scrutiny, peds shifting on the counter and large winglets twitching behind him. With a soft vent he reached up and grabbed the jar of unrefined quartz with ease. 

Quartz had a sweet and crunchy texture that melted well into energon. He plucked out two reasonably sized chunks and passed them off to the startled sparkling in front of him. 

“Rodimus, it’s not safe to climb things like this.” The mechling wasn’t paying attention anymore. He took one of the quartz Megatron had given him and took a loud and obnoxious bite out of it, cracking and shattering it and then scrambling to shove the crumbles into his intake. 

Unimpressed, Megatron turned around and simply stepped away to get some energon. If Rodimus hadn’t managed to kill himself yet it would be fine to leave him alone for a second. 

For some reason that thought made his spark anxious. 

He grabbed an energon cube, and hurried back to check on the sparkling. Rodimus was chowing down on the second quartz without hesitation.

Good. His assessment had been correct. With that settled, he grabbed the iron additive for energon and dumped perhaps more than he was used to into the energon. Maybe if he loaded up on the stuff he could kick the craving aside. 

“Why did you cry?” he looked at Rodimus, unamused but feeling unbalanced with how small and honest his expression was. 

“I was thinking of those I have left behind.” 

“Oh.” He shifted on the counter before simply falling to his aft and kicking his legs out over the edge. His faceplates scrunched up in a way that implied he was about to do something he didn’t want to do. “You wanna talk about it?”

Well, he couldn’t help but laugh. 

“No, I do not.” The relief on his smaller face plate was funny to see. “You can simply not offer to listen when you don’t want to.” His little face scrunched up again.

“Yeah, but Ratchet said it was polite.” He kicked his peds out, one then the other. “And like, you got me some quartz so, y’know.” 

“You can just say ‘thank you’ and be done with it.” 

“Really?” he grinned, cheeky little slagger, “Thanks!” and then he jumped forward and tumbled to the floor. Startled, he watched the sparkling pop up and scuttle towards the door on all fours before it occurred to him to transform. The most cartoonish looking version of Rodimus’ alt mode then bonks the kitchen door open enough to drive away. 

He finished his energon in silence. Grief lifted as he stared at the skid marks this new Rodimus had left behind.

Talking to Ratchet had been interesting. He had figured the mech was aware that his assistant was incompetent and was keeping him on due to some social political mess that Megatron didn’t care about.

He had been half right.

He was keeping the mech on due to a social political situation. Getaway was a count, and had the ears of a few prominent nobles, and in having him work for the Primacy he gave the impression to the noble class that they were in good standing with the king.

Ratchet was entirely unaware of his incompetence. 

His reaction to the news had been a cross between hysterical and furious. And Megatron had ended up talking him down from firing the mech immediately by suggesting he could just take a demotion while they found another appropriate replacement. Of course that had been after the shouting (Ratchet) and laughing (Megatron) had subsided. 

As it turned out, Ratchet had been so entrenched in meetings and delegation and paperwork of a different sort that he had been unable to double check Getaway’s work, and had instead trusted the mech to pass on information accurately. As he had all under Optimus’s lead. 

Instead, as they found out, he had been omitting information in correspondents. The detail he had seen in the mechs form about them needing medical aid that he had missed? Not a miss, an intentional omission. 

“How are we supposed to go back over seven mega-cycles of requested aid?” Ratchet had sounded more defeated then Megatron had expected. “I can barely keep up with what the kingdom needs in a cycle!”

“I’ll do it.” He had wanted to offer comfort, but instead had found himself offering the next best thing. Results. “Put Getaway on sorting with whoever else you have working, I will start summarizing new correspondences and auditing old ones.”

“I can’t ask you to-”

“I am offering.” There was no room for disagreement. It needed to get done. Ratchet was in a difficult political game that he was ill prepared for. “I don’t have anything to do but wait and heal from my incident. And I can do this in the meantime.”

Ratchet had looked torn.

“Ratchet,” he couldn’t pull rank, that was a tool that Megatornus would use often, so he tried a different angle. “Let me help.”

“Frag,” he had dropped his face into his servos, clearly defeated and exhausted by the situation. “If you weren’t still recovering I would offer you the best engex Optimus has.”

“Another time then.” He couldn’t help but feel fond.

So now he was in charge of all the petitions that the common mechs of the Iacon kingdom made. And all it took was pointing out the incompetence of one mech. He would be more concerned with the stability of the governing party he was now a part of if he didn’t intend to completely change it.

In time.

In the meantime he needed help. Having just Tailgate and Blitzwing on his personal staff was simply not enough. Not that they weren’t doing a great job, Tailgate had managed to get all the reports organized by date and set out for Megatron to access, but he was slow going through the information.

“I’m more of a doer, y’know?” he did know.

And blitzwing was doing a fine job guarding him, but Megatron had found out the bot also struggled to process data efficiently. 

It would take maybe a micro-cycle for Megatron to go through 10 data pads. Tailgate could make it through 6, and Blitzwing could get through maybe 2, and he was miserable the whole time. 

They spent two days like this. With Megatron blasting through the daily petitions and going back to review previous petitions that Getaway had already ‘reviewed’. Tailgate and Blitzwing helped for the first day, but Blitzwing threw a fit when he realized he would have to do it all over again.

It was incredible. He had flipped a table, he had tried to eat a data pad. Megatron had needed to lock his arms around the mech's head and pry the damn thing out of his grip. He had then sat the mech down in a corner for an hour before he let him join them again.

He told him he was done, and that he didn’t need to help anymore, only for Blitzwing to look horrified. As if his actions had just caught up to him. He had started stuttering through an explanation that he could still help but Megatron had cut him off and asked him what he did when he wasn’t helping.

This is how he learned that Blitzwing had taken up art as a hobby.

He was incredibly bashful about it, but the mech had taken up sketching as a pastime, and Megatron was pleased to see that he was legitimately good at it. So Blitzwing’s job became organizing when they needed it, and guarding Megatron. In other words, he sketched by the door so he felt like he was doing something. 

It had taken far longer than Megatron would have wanted, but he had managed to get through a quarter of the old paperwork that Getaway had neglected. Every cycle he and Ratchet had an hour-long meeting, where Megatron told him the bullet points of each correspondence, highlighting what Getaway had missed. 

News came from Ratchet that he was ready to replace his plating and Megatron was pleased to get the time for a longer conversation. He had already gotten the specs for the alt mode he wanted, the same tank he had with the Lost Light, cycles ago. All he needed now was to get the plating and initiate the transformation cog to get the material where they needed to be.

“I’m going to fire him.” Ratchet had finally passed his weirdly polite phase when talking to Megatron, and he couldn’t be happier about it. 

“And I’m not saying that you don’t,” Ratchet was welding his kibble into place as they talked, this was another surgery he wanted Megatron unconscious for that he had refused, “I’m saying you need to find his replacement before you get rid of him. Preferably one of the Noble class.”

“That’s such a waste!” he threw a tool that Megatron couldn’t see onto the tray next to him as he grabbed another component, “A waste of time, a waste of resources, a fragging waste! I hate this slagged up political dancing! We should just fire him and get someone else!”

“And have another thing for the heads of state to meet with you over?” he grinned as he felt Ratchet move onto working on his shoulder pauldrons. “I didn’t realize you loved meeting with them so much, perhaps you should extend the four micro-cycle meetings to six!”  

“If you weren’t my patient right now I would throw you into a smelter.”

“I’m sure you would.” He let his field fill with amusement and understanding. He fully believed Ratchet would. “Let me finish going through his mess so we can have an itemized list of all his mistakes, and you can work on finding his replacement.”

“I honestly think we need to audit his entire work within the castle.” Ratchet hissed in irritation as his field fluctuated with anger, worry, betrayal. “Primus, he’s been working for Optimus since Rodimus emerged. That’s 5 vorns Megatron! You’re not going to finish that anytime soon on your own.”

“Tailgate has been helping,”

“Megatron, we both know you need more help then just Tailgate. Listen, I’ve been going over the finances, specifically your budget, and I wanted to tell you that you have more than enough to hire some help. Three, maybe four extra bots could help you get through the backlog.”

Megatron felt his processor hiccup. He had a budget. He had a budget? He had a budget.

He raked across his memories to try and find any reference to it, and found a few corrupted conversations between Megatronus and some bot he couldn’t name about the money Megatronus did and didn’t have. 

Help would be incredibly welcome. Plus hiring someone new would take some pressure off Tailgate and Blitzwing. They were both incredibly intent on insulating him from the rest of the staff, it had come to a point that Megatron knew they suspected someone on staff for poisoning him but didn’t know who. 

“That…” he wondered who would apply, should he simply ask Tailgate to handle the applications? No the bot was working on so much already, maybe he could just have him make it known that a position was open? “Yes, that would be very helpful.” There was a deep sigh from Ratchet that dragged him from his musings. 

“I’m glad to hear that, I was worried for a klick that your stubborn aft was going to say no.”

“Rude,” he snapped back without heat, “I know when to ask for help.”

“That's slag.” another clack on the tray of surgical tools, “You won’t even let me put you under for surgery.” 

“Well, when else am I supposed to speak with you?”

“Just ask!” there was legitimate frustration in his field that surprised Megatron. “For Primus’s sake, somehow you have a better head for these political games now than you did before, and absolutely no one can get irritated with me if I need to speak with the second king of our kingdom.”

He moved around Megatron to face him, gesturing that he could move now.

“You don’t have to stay awake for uncomfortable situations just to speak with me now.”

Ah… the medic thought he was pushing himself so that he could speak with him. This was… not ideal. 

“Ratchet, I'm not uncomfortable. I’m being efficient.”

“At the cost of yourself.” The medic in him was rearing its overprotective head and if he didn’t play this right he would have one upset ruler on his servos.

“No, Ratchet, it’s fine, it doesn’t bother me.” he grimaced as the medic gave him a look, “I am more comfortable when I am in control of my body.”

“So you don’t trust me.”

“Of course I trust you.” he cycled his optics in surprise as he looked at the medic. “I let you work on me.”

If he didn’t trust Ratchet he wouldn’t have let the mech anywhere near his ports or protomater. Ratchet's faceplates made a complicated emotion, one that was part disbelief, part horror, and part acceptance, before he simply pressed his face into his servos. 

“Let’s just get you into your new alt mode.” Whatever had poisoned Megatron had fundamentally broken him. Not in a tragic way, nor in a way that left the mech unable to care for himself. It would be easier, Ratchet thought, if the mech was broken in a way that was familiar. Easier to understand. Rather than this strange limbo of a hyper competent yet ignorant mech. 

He was good at paperwork, he was good at understanding their political standing, he was good at understanding that even though he felt disconnected to his previous actions they were still his actions.

He was good at handling pain, he was good at managing his temper, he was good at managing Ratchet's temper. He had managed to get Tailgate on his side in a few micro-cycles. And yet he was hesitant to ask for anything. Megatronus was never ending requests for expensive things that Ratchet had to say no to. But now? Well… 

He had not missed the lingering pause after he had mentioned the mechs budget. He ground his denta together, anger flushing through his systems, he was supposed to feel confident that Getaway would help get Megatron’s knowledge gaps filled. And instead he was now finding out that the mech had been fragging over the subjects of Optimus’ kingdom. 

Megatron had been working on it for a few days, but he had already made it through a mega-cycle worth of work, which was a level of efficiency Ratchet had only seen in Optimus and Prowl. And Prowl had the excuse of his tac net which was a medical mystery!

Megatron stood and did a few turns to inspect himself and his new plating. It was basic, enough material that his transformation cog would have something to work with before inevitably incorporating it into whatever alt mode Megatron had chosen.

And that had been an event. When he had gotten the report on what Megatron had wanted for his alt mode he had nearly blown a gasket.

A tank, one that, after Ratchet looked into it, could take out aircraft's and ground any flyer with a single well placed hit. When he had asked Megatron about it, the bot had simply said it was to show a strong front. They were in a battle with Vos, Vos was mostly flyers, Megatronus’ alt mode being a flyer had caused tension with those that knew but it had largely been a mystery, Megatron’s new alt mode would leave nothing to the imagination when it came to whose side he was supporting. 

Ratchet watched as Megatron activated his T-cog and transformed into his new alt mode for the first time. He was mostly staying to make sure the mech didn’t get stuck or hurt himself. He was pleased to see that he transformed seamlessly into the war machine he had chosen.

The choice had rubbed Ratchet the wrong way. But as he watched Megatron go through his systems before transforming back to root mode smoothly he was coming around to it. With the extra armor the tank alt mode gave he would be a little harder to kill, which would be a relief for the kid that was his guard. Plus he had to admit that the new look was better than the old one. Where Megatronus had sharp curves that ended in points and edges, Megatron had taken a more boxy yet streamlined root mode. He looked good. 

“Figure out what you need in assistants and have Tailgate post the job,” Megatron looked at him surprised, before his features settled into attentive understanding. “You could leave the interviews to Tailgate, or do them yourself,” a thought occurred to him so he found himself hastily adding, “but first we need to get your paint fixed before you’re seen by mechs outside the castle staff. We don’t want them thinking you’re neglected here in the castle.”

He figured if he made it a public image thing rather than a health thing (like he wanted) then Megatron would make less of a fuss. 

Megatron easily nodded.

“Anyone come to mind?” 

“Yes,” it would be interesting to see if the mech he had in mind would bring out the old Megatronus, might be a good test, He needed to know if this better mech was only on loan until his processor healed. “But in the meantime I’ve given notice that you can start deciding how we deal with the correspondences that come in every cycle. I’m not keeping up with what you’ve been showing me, and at this point you’re practically doing it anyways.” 

Every time they met to go over the petitions Megatron had been reviewing, he approached them the same way. He started with the most time sensitive ones, then explained their location, summarised what was needed, and then suggested a course of action. Ratchet had been weary for the klick it took to realize his suggested course of action was exactly what he would do. Well not exactly, but it had the same spirit that his responses would have. The only reason he hadn’t given Megatron permission to implement his suggestions after their third meeting was the fact that Megatron should be resting, and that he wasn’t sure how much of it was real. 

Megatron, whether he was going by his old name or new, was sly. And Ratchet didn’t want to trust a mech just because he acted differently now. But Optimus had just asked for more aid at the border, and Ratchet was suddenly busy with making sure their country could support both itself and a war effort.

So giving Megatron actual power, power that was technically rightfully his, would take enough pressure off Ratchet's back that he could focus more on the war effort. It had only taken one quick conversation for him to feel confident in giving the mech the new responsibility. Besides, if he abused it Ratchet would be paying extra close attention now.

“Hmm, I suppose that works well for me.” Megatron’s red optics dimmed as he gave Ratchet a cocky look, “I would like to assume we’ll still be meeting to go over things? I feel as though it would be a loss for the both of us.”

“Ha! I didn’t realise I was that important to you.”

“I figured you’d want to make sure I wasn’t taking advantage of this new responsibility.” The cockiness had softened, “On a trial basis to ensure I am caring for our country like I should.” There was understanding on his face and in his field as he turned away from Ratchet to once again look at his plating. 

He had turned around at just the right moment. He completely missed the utter shock Ratchet was feeling. 

How processor damage made a mech kinder Ratchet doubted he would ever know.