This scenario is so wrong it can only be a viable story if it's crack…and yet…it's not crack, it's a completely serious fic…I think I just broke my own brain…

Disclaimer: do not own Transformers

Summary: Drabble, AU, Megatron and Allspark!Sam interaction. (Not that way. Don't look so innocent, I know what you were thinking). For as long as any of them could remember, the human race had always been caged, by one side or the other.

Rating: T

Title: Day in the Life

Acknowledgments: Nods to DarkAngelLilith's "Freedom in a Cage" (cough) which I'm thoroughly enjoying so far and which I hope she will update soon (cough). I hope you don't mind Lilith!

Warnings: Beware OOC!

Day in the Life

For as long as any of them could remember, the human race had always been caged, by one side or the other.

Ten thousand years ago, or so they say, a great artefact fell from the skies. Those who liked to listen to myths said, rather romantically, that this artefact blessed the humans, granting them power and secondary forms in return for protection. Those who sought a scientific explanation claimed that the Allspark radiation evolutionarily changed the humans over time in a form of punctuated equilibrium.

It didn't matter though. From the moment the Allspark gave them power, albeit raw, untried power, the human race became caged.

The Decepticons kidnapped. The Autobots saved.

In the end, there was no real difference.

They were racing now, not only to find the Allspark (which continued to be the conduit for all the power that the humans now held), but also to dominate the humans.

It was like that insipid cartoon show that bored, caged humans thought up when he was very much younger.

Gotta catch 'em all.

It was a day much like any other day. The cassettes spazzed, Thundercracker moped, Skywarp pranked, Starscream screeched, and Megatron bitch-slapped his second-in-command at least three times.

Sam had had a rather productive day. He gave his watcher (Starscream) the slip, made it halfway through the rather expansive ventilation system (he often wondered why both sides' ventilation system had such shoddy security, but then realized that many runaway humans used the ventilation system, and both 'Bots and 'Cons would really rather not have bits of human all over their nice metal shafts), was caught by a wandering cassette, and was dragged back to Megatron.

So many humans, and he was one of the few that belonged to the tyrant. Mikaela and Lennox were the others, although he hadn't had much contact with them. Megatron believed in the power of individual attention.

Granted, Megatron claimed ownership over all the humans. However, he was one of the very few whom Megatron exercised the claim with an iron fist, no pun intended.

And if anyone else so much as touched him, they're an unattractive splatter of energon on the walls.

Just ask Blackout. Oh wait, you couldn't. He was dead.

The cassette retreated, and the door hissed closed.

He barely got to his feet when he was suddenly grabbed. Despite the rumours, he knew first-hand (he groaned at the mental pun) that the Decepticons were, in fact, quite warm, just like their Autobot counterparts.

They really were from the same race.

The warmth of the tyrant's hand made him shiver.

"You fail me yet again, Starscream," a voice rumbled, and from his current prison he could see the angered aerial commander giving him an annoyed look. "I thought you learned your lesson after failing to properly take care of hamstercon!"

Before Starscream could retort, one silver hand came up to hit hard enough to make the receiving head snap to the side and for the seeker to stumble backwards, and at the same time the other hand's grip loosened into something more comfortable, and a thumb came up to gently stroke the head of the captive.

Then he was whisked away, into the darkness of the tyrant's personal chambers.

He was set down somewhere, and a knuckle gently brushed against his jaw. He resisted the urge to flinch away.

Megatron had been absent for the last few days, something about raiding one of the Autobots' human sanctuaries.

He had been successful, and Sam didn't know what to feel about that. Sam had seen the prizes earlier that day, coming in with the dead eyes of those born in a cage.

He had shuddered when he had first seen them. The Autobots had been breeding humans. It was the more merciful thing to do, they claimed, where the Decepticons would extirpate the humans from the wild.

The wild-borns, the Decepticons claimed, had more fire and more power. Sam didn't know about that; fire, yes, but power was about the same.

He himself was a free-born…though that had been a very long time ago.

Maybe it was the thrill of caging something wild and free that the Decepticons craved, where the Autobots craved instant obedience.

"Did you miss me, pet?" Megatron asked, looming over him.

He glared back, trying to ignore the fact that the diameter of an optic was still larger than he was.

"You mean you didn't die?"

Megatron gave a strange laugh, and it surprised him again how soft it sounded.

Sam decided, long ago, that Megatron must be a sadist, having all these strange love-hate relationships with people who would rather see him terminated.

Optimus.

Starscream.

The entire human race.

It disgusted him when he realized that a part of him had been concerned that Megatron had been taking longer than usual.

Fuck you, Stockholm Syndrome. He was messed up enough, thanks very much.

He knew that, in the grand scheme of things, many would beg to be in their position. With a few exceptions of some Decepticons who would very likely be found out and be terminated in the near future, the Decepticons treated them as one would treat a useful weapon. They were never hit, never caged, never drugged, never yelled at and never starved. The humans had their own micro-communities which were ignored or indulged, given that they weren't planning an uprising or escape.

There were humans out there who did not have the power of the Allspark, and were consequently treated like vermin by both sides. There were humans out there who spent their entire short lives in little white rooms, catered only by a few Autobots who insisted on putting them there for their 'safety,' like little porcelain dolls behind a glass showcase.

But despite all these…luxuries (and he sneered at that word), he would still give it all up to be truly free.

Call him an optimist, but he believed that humanity would get back on its own two feet again in time. It might take a ravaging disease, the destruction of the Allspark, or a planet-eating monster to do it, but humans would one day attain their right to just be.

But that day did not look to be anytime soon, and as if to point out that reality, warm metal fingers once again wrapped around him, and Megatron bore him off to bed, as a child would take his favourite toy. Even in his sleep, Megatron's grip was tighter than chains.

When he had been much younger, he had been petrified when Megatron pulled a stunt like this. He could have easily been crushed by an errant, sleepy twitch. Looking back at it, he knew the silliness of such fears, because Megatron wouldn't let him go that easily.

He watched as the red optics dimmed slightly, and he shut his own eyes, knowing that he could sleep, knowing that nothing would get to him as long as Megatron held him.

And as another day closed, he decided that he didn't quite know what to feel about that.