Title: Candid

By: Ceris Malfoy

Summary: Megatron and Starscream. Alone together. In a cell. For several weeks. Deprived of the chance to kill each other, they may learn a few things that they really needed to know.

Continuity: G1

Inspiration: This started out as a simple conversation/monologue, and then went ballistic on me. XD

Status: Complete

The situation certainly isn't one Megatron is used to. Sure, his idiot of a Second manages to get captured on a regular basis, and he's inevitably the one to rescue said idiot, if the seeker doesn't manage to break out on his own (which is not as rare an occurrence as most believed – Starscream is sneaky like that). And, sure, there are those few odd occurrences with a few now-exterminated alien races where they might end up in a cell or two – usually, in those instances, however, it is most of the Decepticon Army that occupies those cells, not just Starscream and himself.

Never before, in all his long years, has he ever been captured by the Autobots alongside Starscream, chained down to his berth within the cell, and told he would be held on trial and then executed for various crimes of war at the end of the next Earth-month.

The only consolation about all this was that Starscream was not only chained down to his berth, but was also bound by three sets of stasis cuffs, a gag, and a blindfold. Talk about over-estimating an enemy, or underestimating, as the case may be – you'd think the Autobots would realize that he was the only threat in the room.

Well, at the very least he isn't going to be forced to listen to the glitch's voice any time soon.

Less then a breem later, he is proved wrong.

Their guard is in the process of tube-feeding him when the seeker finally decides he's had quite enough of silence, thank you very much. The gag – a round ball made of an inferior alloy – slams upside the guard's helm in a rather impressive display of blind targeting – made all the more impressive considering the sheer amount of force behind the gag. Megatron looks at the sizeable dent on the side of the guard's helm, and wonders how, exactly, it was possible to spit an object with that much force.

The guard leaves, cursing.

Starscream begins to systematically curse Primus, Unicron, Megatron, Optimus Prime, and this backwater planet in every single language and dialect he knows – which to Megatron's annoyance, is over 349 different ways to say the same damn thing.

"Would you shut up already?" he growls out, annoyed and in desperate need of recharge. Recharge he wasn't getting because a certain seeker had yet to stop his cursing.

"How about 'no'?" the seeker snarls.

The odd clinking noise that follows this provokes his curiosity, so he looks over at Starscream. Instantly he begins chuckling. "I would think you'd have been used to them by now; you end up in chains often enough."

Starscream hisses in outrage. "Just because you've accepted defeat and allow yourself to grow accustomed to your chains, doesn't mean that I will."

Megatron snorts. "You have three times the amount of chains that I do, in addition to stasis-cuffs. I hardly think you're going anywhere anytime soon."

The smile that curls the seeker's thin lips is just as irritating as it is intriguing. "Wanna bet?"

It takes Starscream another full cycle to accomplish it, but eventually the stasis-cuffs clatter to the ground, dead and lifeless. Sky-blue servos flex, then start working on the blindfold.

Megatron, and the guard currently feeding him, watch. Megatron is fully expecting the guard to start panicking, so is not-quite prepared when the guard simply shakes his helm and sighs.

"You're getting faster at that," the guard spoke ruefully, dim amusement and reluctant respect coloring his tone.

Starscream smirks. "Please. It's not like you idiots use anything different to restrain me. I've proven time and time again that I can escape from you glitches. Why should now be any different?"

The guard gazes at Starscream for a long moment before pointing at Megatron "Because this time, we've got him."

Starscream, now free of his blindfold, stares at the guard, then at Megatron. He cocks his head, as if pondering something important. "So?" he eventually asks.

The guard's jaw drops.

Megatron attempts to get off his berth and strangle the seeker. It doesn't work.

The rest of the orn is filled with many expletives hurled at each other. It will take them another orn afterwards before they'll calm down enough to stop trying to get up and kill the other.

Halfway through their third orn, and less than two orns to their executions, Megatron finally asks the one question that has been bothering him since the beginning. He looks at his second and bites the human's proverbial bullet. "You used to be my most loyal, the one mech I could count on no matter what." There is a long moment of silence between them, and then Megatron sighs. "What happened, Starscream? How did this happen?"

Starscream says nothing. The silence stretches between them like a great chasm; a rift that can't be mended or bridged. Finally, the seeker turns his head and stares steadily, facial plating perfectly clear of any expression, optics blank and guarded. "Why the sudden interest, Megatron?"

For once in a long time, Megatron could find no hint of derision, disrespect, or sarcasm in his Second's voice. "I don't understand it. I can't understand it, and Primus knows I've tried over the years. I know the events and attitudes that led us down this path, but for the life of me, I can't figure out the why." Megatron met his seeker's guarded gaze determinedly. "Why, Starscream? Why, after several thousand years at my side, did you suddenly turn traitor?"

"'Traitor'…" Starscream echoes. He continues staring at Megatron. "That's an interesting way to describe me." He turnes his gaze to the wall opposite him and cocks his head, as if in thought. "Or to dismiss me," he adds quietly

"And if not treason, what would you have called attempted murder and insubordination?" Megatron growls.

"A warning," Starscream says darkly.

Nothing more is said for the rest of the cycle.

"Are you going to answer my question, Starscream?"

Starscream doesn't even glance at him, though he does stop fiddling with the small, black box-like object he had taken out less than a breem ago. There is silence between them again, no longer broken by the soft sounds of Starscream putting his tool-kit to use. At last, Starscream mutters quietly, "Are you ever going to answer mine?"

Megatron frowns. "What question?"

Starscream looks at him, a faint frown twisting his thin lips. "Why the sudden interest? You've never once bothered to question my so-called 'treasonous' behavior in the past nine million years. Why now?"

Megatron's frown grows deeper. "I told you already. I want to understand what happened."

Starscream cycles air in an obvious display of annoyance, even if it never once touches his facial plating or optics. "One of us isn't making much sense here, and I'm very sure it isn't me. Since when do you care? Since when have you ever cared?"

Megatron snarls. "You damn fool, just answer the question!"

Starscream sneers, then turns back to his little project. "Go frag yourself," he mutters.

They do not talk to each other for the next three cycles.

"I lost the faith," Starscream declares, placing tiny black box-like thing down beside him.

Megatron jumps a little in surprise. "What?"

Starscream stares at the ceiling, frowning. "I lost faith in you, Megatron. That's your 'why'."

There is silence, thick and oppressing. And then, "Why?"

The seeker laughs; a bitter, strange sound he's never heard before, and never wants to hear again. "Always the 'why' with you, Megatron. Like a damn youngling." Starscream's wings twitch. "There are many reasons I lost my faith. Which one do you want?"

Megatron stares. "Give me the most important one."

Starscream smiles bitterly. "I believed in you once. You were an icon, a legend. You gathered us all and gave us hope – promised to make Cybertron great. You fed every last one of us on the belief that we were more than the defective drones the Autobot council treated us as. You lifted us out of the pits and made us strong, united us under your banner and directed us en masse against those that would have rather killed us all then admit we were equal."

The seeker pauses and then lookes at Megatron. Megatron is struck by the bitterness in the seeker's steady gaze. No anger, no accusation; just a resigned, aching bitterness.

Starscream's voice is quiet when he continues. "And yet, it was all a lie, a means to gather us all and mark us as your possession; your toys of war to be cast aside when broken. Under your banner we united, and under your banner we lost ourselves. No longer were we scientists and miners, gladiators and pleasure-bots. No longer were we the oppressed, tortured, and starving lost souls with no one to rely on but ourselves. No. We became the oppressors, the torturers, and still, we starved."

Starscream gestures angrily, voice growing brittle under the force of his frustration. "You promised us glory and freedom, but brought us madness and a never-ending war!" He snarles, claws raking the berth he was sitting on.

Megatron stares at the deep furrows left in the metal, knowing that were they not chained to their respective berths, those furrows would be on him.

Starscream cycles air heavily for several moments, glaring at nothing, before he gradually calms down. When the seeker meets his gaze again, Starscream's facial plating is disturbingly expressionless. "I saw the path we were heading down, Megatron," he says tonelessly. "I saw the consequences that we would suffer when – not if – we failed. And when I tried to caution you, I was beaten down and imprisoned."

He smiles, and that grim, strange little smile, coupled with his expressionless facial platting and emotionless gaze, does more to unsettle Megatron then anything Starscream has ever done. "You would not listen, Megatron. So you had to be removed."

Megatron says nothing.

Starscream turns his empty gaze to the cell doors, where they can just begin to hear the pede-fall of their guard. Quietly, so quietly Megatron isn't even sure he's actually hearing it, Starscream adds, "I was wrong."

Two cycles later, and Megatron can no longer stand the silence between them. He turns an irritated gaze on his Second. "Starscream, why did you never leave?"

Starscream graces him with a look that quite clearly says 'you're an idiot'. "And go where, Megatron? Do what? Become an Autobot?" He shakes his head. "Even if you would have let me go - which I sincerely doubt - you and I both know that I would have sooner killed myself than become an Autobot – and that sentiment will never change."

Megatron does know that – all the Decepticons knows that. It is one of the only reasons that no one really objects to Starscream's continued survival. After all, there is a fine line between being a treasonous glitch and being a traitorous glitch; a line Starscream has made his stance on very clear: he is a Decepticon first and foremost, and his personal issues with Megatron are just that: personal. "Why not?" But, still, Megatron is bored, and frustrated with the silence, and if he has to be stuck in this damn cell, chained to a berth, with Starscream, the damnable seeker ca at least satisfy his curiosity.

Starscream, on the other hand, doesn't seem to agree. "Megatron?" he asks tersely.

"What?"

"Shut it."

It doesn't matter how Megatron tries to capture the seeker's attention after that, Starscream won't even glance at him. The seeker simply continues tinkering with his little black box-like thing.

"Damn it all to the pits, seeker! Talk to me!"

Starscream stares at him.

And alright, so perhaps that outburst is a little excessive. Perhaps even out of character. But he has been chained to this damn berth for almost four full orns now, unable to so much as stretch, and he has nothing to distract him from the fact that in less then three cycles, he'll be executed. He's run out of ways to mentally kill Prime one orn ago, and has run out of ways to torture him slowly five cycles ago.

Starscream is still staring.

He glares back.

The seeker cycles air in agitation.

He glares harder.

"Fine!" Starscream snaps. "What do you want to know this time?"

Megatron snorts. "Why not pick up where we left off? Why would you never join the Autobots?"

Starscream growls. "Because, you Primus-damned glitch! Despite everything you've taken from me, and everything I've willingly sacrificed in the name of power and survival, nothing will ever compare to what they've stolen from me!" The seeker's optics are glowing; a burning gaze of rage and anger and loss. "They stole my bonded-mate, my sparkling, my creators, my home, my job, my purpose, my very race. No matter what you or I have done, it is they who are still the true monsters of this little drama, because even now, they look at me and think less."

There is silence for several minutes, broken only by the sharp whir of Starscream's vents working hard. "At least you," he finally continues quietly, gaze no less intense, "did me the honor of looking at me and thinking threat."

And what can he say to that? Megatron doesn't know, so he says nothing. Starscream likewise says nothing more; just goes back to fooling with his little black box-like thing.

Megatron is starting to get curious about just what that thing is.

The cycle before their execution, Starscream tosses the box-like thing at him. He catches it, and stares at it in confusion. "When they unchain you, press the red button on the side. And tell Thundercracker he better take damn good care of Skywarp, or else."

Megatron stares at the box-like thing in his hands, processor unable to comprehend the statement. "What is it?" he finally asks.

Starscream simply smiles – a soft, but brief, tug of his thin lips – and doesn't answer.

Starscream is taken first. The seeker doesn't beg, plead, or whine. He moves with a strange grace between his guards, helm held proudly, wings angled to display them to their fullest, pace unhurried and calm.

The black box-like thing sits heavy in his servos, and again, he wonders what it is, and why Starscream gave it to him instead of using whatever it was for himself. There is the small thought that it is an explosive of some sort, but it is only a small one. For once in his paranoid existence with Starscream at his side, he does not fear that Starscream means to kill him.

When the guards come, covered in energon that is not theirs, he follows Starscream's instructions to the letter. He is only lucky that the box-like thing is tiny enough to be hidden easily within his fist. He presses the red button, and is no longer in an Autobot cell with energon-stained Autobot guards about to take him to his death, but in the Command Center of the Nemisis, staring at his Decepticons as they stare at him, mutual shock running rampant.

Megatron is not a genius or a prodigy, and is nowhere near as intelligent as Starscream, but he is not stupid. He can easily put facts together and fill in the gaps left with (mostly instinctive) impressions and ideas and come up with a relatively correct answer. Regarding Starscream in particular, he usually ends up with an entirely correct answer, if only because he knows his seeker better than he knows himself, which is a concept that has often scared him, especially when he considers that he really knows nothing about Starscream – at least, nothing important.

He holds in his hand a little black box-like thing that has turned out to be a small, one-time-only teleportation unit. He will not learn for several orns that Starscream was the creator of the internal-teleportation device that Skywarp's skills rely so heavily on, and had created one for himself in case of such an emergency as execution. He will not learn until then that such a device had to be personally calibrated to a specific mech's energy signature, and that altering such a device to transport another mech was next to impossible. He will not learn until then, that in the end, Starscream had had a means of escape on his person during their entire imprisonment, one that the seeker had spent the vast majority of said imprisonment re-calibrating for Megtron's use. As soon as he learns of this, he will wonder what changed, what had caused his traitorous second to decide Megatron's life was worth more than his own. He will never know.

Until then, he is left standing there, a useless black box-like unit in his hand and the image of Starscream's brief smile in his processor.

Um... Oh, damn. Did I do that? Sorry, I totally did not mean to kill off Screamer. That totally just happened, literally, about 20 minutes before I uploaded this. This was meant to be a 'Starscream and Megatron end up in a cell and talk through their differences and then escape and have awesome hot smex', but obviously that didn't happen. I'm beginning to think I should just stop planning fics and start just plain writing to see what shows up. It might give me a lot less headaches, if nothing else. XD

Anyway, about the fic. Obviously, during the course of the conversations, there are a few points that are vague. This is because a)I really wanted people to supplement their own imaginings - you would not believe the amount of shit I get when I play around with backgrounds - and b)because the points in question are well known to both Megatron and Starscream, and thus they themselves would have no need to talk about them. If you would like further clarification, just ask. I'll respond. Eventually. XD

RnR?