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The first time they met after Messatine, Orion hesitated before shaking Megatron’s hand.
It was a small thing, but Megatron noticed. He’d gotten more attuned to such details during his time in the pits -- noticing an opponent’s hesitation could win a match, and Megatron’s optics caught on everything now. When Orion did finally reach out and take his hand, the movement was overly quick, too eager, overcompensating for his earlier hesitation. His handshake was stronger than Megatron remembered, but at the same time gentler than he’d gotten used to; Gladiators in Kaon shook hands to hurt.
They found a quiet corner, or as quiet a corner as was available in an establishment like this one, and sat down.
“You’ve changed,” Orion said immediately.
Megatron tried to mask any response. He had changed -- had changed and had been changed, a vital difference, a blurry line in his head that he wished was clearer.
Orion seemed to regret the words almost immediately. He smiled behind his face mask, optics warm and apologetic, as if a smile could somehow soften the truth or make it kinder. “Of course you have,” he said. “Your time on Messatine, and… in Kaon .” He couldn’t say in the Pits . Megatron remembered in a strangely nostalgic rush just how much difficulty Orion had facing ugly realities. An indulgence Orion could afford, thanks to his class.
It should have made Megatron angry. Instead it filled him with a sense of homesickness, a bittersweet and foolish longing, and a rush of fierce affection for his younger self. Some things had changed, he had changed, but some things remained the same. Orion still made him feel , still made him want to write poetry.
“It’s good to see you again,” Megatron said. And it was good, to hear the voice and feel the electromagnetic interference of the mech he’d kept in contact with through letters since leaving Messatine.
The mech whose fault it was that he’d been sent to Messatine at all , some part of him thought, uncharitably. And that was true, but it was also in the past. It hardly mattered. No point regretting what had led him here and now, not when he’d come so far.
“It’s good to see you too, my friend,” Orion said, so sincerely that Megatron wanted to laugh at him even as some unwelcome feeling swelled up in his throat.
The bartender approached their table. Orion ordered drinks for both of them -- a standard engex blend. The bartender raised a brow at the order glanced at Megatron to verify it. Megatron nodded. He wasn’t in the mood to explain the situation to Orion. The intoxicant would be wasted on him, but fuel was fuel.
“I was worried about you,” Orion said, lacing his fingers together on the tabletop. “When you didn’t write, I feared the worst. But Shockwave” -- he didn’t say “Senator,” out of familiarity, not disrespect, and he stumbled over the name as if it hurt -- “said you were safe there, in the nucleon mines.”
Megatron snorted. The thought of any mines being “safe” made it clear they’d never set foot in one. And the idea that the state would be satisfied to imprison him off-world and then just leave him be was almost as laughable.
“Were you?” Orion’s optics gleamed with concern. His brow furrowed. “No, I suppose...” He trailed off.
“Your senator friend pulled you out of danger,” Megatron said. “A shame he couldn’t have extended that protection to me too.”
“In the end, he couldn’t even save himself,” Orion said, the warmth faded from his voice. “You’ve heard, I’m sure.”
“Yes.” Word of that scandal had even reached Messatine. “Empurata.”
“Not only that. His mind, they…” Orion exhaled, struggling for words. “He isn’t who he used to be,” he finally said, softly.
Shadowplay. Well, that explained Senator Shockwave’s sudden shift in politics. Megatron had assumed that he’d been shamed and frightened into line, not… altered . Megatron had trouble summoning up much empathy for the flashy high-class mech who’d left him to be buried and erased beneath miles of snow and rock. But a chill crept down his spinal struts. He repressed a shiver.
“A shame,” Megatron finally said -- the best that he could manage. He wondered if the senator had expected his status to protect him. Maybe he’d thought the Functionist elite actually believed their own rhetoric. Shockwave had certainly internalized that rhetoric himself. Common failings, sadly predictable from the upper classes, even the ones who ostensibly sought some kind of social change. They mistook the power to act within the system for the power to tear down that system. They refused to see that the state would grant them the first, but never the second.
It was the same mistake that Orion was prone to. A mistake Megatron couldn’t make clear to him, even now.
Megatron flinched at a sudden light touch against his hand. Orion had taken Megatron’s silence and his dark expression as sorrow, and reached out to grasp his hand in an attempt at comfort.
A fundamentally misplaced gesture, reflective of just how poorly Orion understood him. But a fundamentally compassionate one, too. Megatron couldn’t find it in him to refuse it. He let his hand go slack in Orion’s grip, and watched Orion’s fingers curl around his own.
It was a nice feeling. The first time someone besides a medic had touched him without violent intentions in... a long time. Maybe since Messatine. Megatron realized that he'd missed it. He returned Orion's grip, awkwardly threading their fingers together. Orion's hand was warm, his touch gentle.
Megatron could tell him.
The idea was absurd on its face, and grew even more absurd as Megatron turned it over in his mind. He hadn’t told anyone what had been done to him on Messatine. Not even Soundwave, although he suspected Soundwave had picked hints of the memory out of his head. He hadn’t even considered telling anyone.
Megatron would have told Terminus. He had no doubts about that. And there had been a time when he would have told Impactor, long ago. But here? Now? There was no one left to tell. Was there?
The top of Megatron’s head prickled under his helmet. He looked at Orion’s hand clasping his own.
The bartender swept in with their drinks, and Orion’s hand lurched. Megatron made an abortive attempt to hold him there, but when Orion tried to pull away a second time, Megatron let him. The bartender placed their drinks on the table, and put a large tray of chips between them.
“Sorry, we didn’t order--” Orion began to say.
The bartender ignored him. “On the house,” he said to Megatron before leaving the two of them alone again.
Orion stared after him, clearly baffled.
“Fans sometimes give me gifts,” Megatron said. “It’s easier to just accept them”
“Fans?” Orion repeated, and then his optics widened. “Oh. Of your… fights.”
“Yes.” Megatron was certain that Orion didn’t - and would never - approve. Gladiatorial combat was reflective of everything that made them different; Megatron would always prefer dragging unpleasant things into the light for everyone to see, and Orion would always prefer to look away from them if he could.
Megatron lifted the cube of engex to his lips and drank. The bartender had given them the good stuff, undiluted. Megatron was no longer accustomed to the taste of engex. It wasn’t exactly pleasant. He drank it anyway. His FIM chip, permanently engaged for years now, prevented even the slightest buzz.
“I’ve…” Orion faltered. “I’ve seen them. Some of your fights.”
Megatron nearly choked. He put his cup down, coughed until his intake cleared, then stared at Orion across the table. Orion met his optics almost shyly.
“You’ve what?” Megatron finally managed. He tried to picture Orion among the bloodthirsty Kaon crowds, shouting demands for carnage and spilled fuel. His processor fritzed at the idea and refused to provide an image.
“Holovids aren’t difficult to track down.” Orion glanced away. “As you said, you have… fans. They make the videos available for those who ask. And I have missed you.”
Megatron stared, silent, for a very long moment. Then he laughed. More than one mech in the bar turned nervously to glance at their booth; Megatron’s laugher had violent associations these days. Megatron shook his head, still grinning. Orion gave him a questioning look.
“I’d forgotten how you can surprise me,” Megatron said. “Every time I think I have you all mapped out, you go and do something I don’t expect.”
Orion seemed touched by the words. His optics gleamed bright. “I feel similarly about you,” he said, with disarming sincerity. “I thought -- if I watched your fights, I thought maybe I’d understand.”
“You don’t.” Megatron took another drink of his engex. Orion hadn’t touched his, yet. He still wore his face mask.
“No,” Orion said. “I don’t.” He looked down at his drink. “I want to understand. You’ve never been… It can’t just be meaningless violence. And you… In the past, you’ve seen the meaning behind things well before I did. What meaning do you see in that ? What meaning could there possibly be? I--”
Orion’s hand moved, reaching across the table. Megatron thought he was reaching for the chips, or his drink. By the time he realized that Orion was reaching for his hand , attempting to take it in his own again, Orion had already lost his nerve and pulled away.
“You could come to a fight,” Megatron said, surprising himself with the suggestion as much as Orion. The pits had felt like a side of himself that Orion could never share. But maybe, maybe… “I could arrange it.” He could, easily. Soundwave could keep an eye on things -- Orion was big, strong, and street-smart, but he still walked and talked like an Ioconian cop, and Soundwave’s presence at his side would go a long way towards defusing any potential issues that might cause. And there were things Megatron would prefer Orion not to see at all. Soundwave could prevent him from discovering anything untoward.
“I--” Orion actually considered it, looking down at his hands. Then he shook his head. “No. Thank you, but no.”
The answer Megatron should have expected, but somehow he still felt the sting of rejection. The silence dragged on between them, increasingly uncomfortable. Megatron helped himself to the chips -- metal-rich, crispy, the kind of indulgence he’d rarely been able to afford in the old days, although the heavy fuel sauce in the center was pure Kaon-style junk food. The bartender knew Megatron’s taste very well.
Orion put one hand to his face and removed his faceplate. Megatron watched sidelong, attempting not to stare. It had been a very long time since he’d seen Orion’s bare face; he rarely removed his mask in public. Orion picked up his cube and took a long drink, half-draining it.
Orion’s expressions were astonishingly transparent with his mask removed. Megatron could see the moment the engex hit his system -- he had his FIM chip disengaged, and he hadn’t expected such a strong drink. He shook his head, then leaned across the table, staring intently at Megatron’s face, optics over-bright. Megatron met them.
“Tell me about Messatine,” Orion said.
Megatron hadn’t expected the question, especially not with such directness. For a moment, he struggled to find words. “You’ve read my book,” he finally said. “You know what happened there.”
“You didn’t put everything in your book,” Orion said, with a certainty that made Megatron’s head prickle. “I’m sure of it.” Orion lowered his voice. “There wasn’t any poetry.”
“I--” I put in everything that mattered , Megatron wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. He didn’t want to lie to Orion -- not about this, at least. Absurd as it was, some part of Megatron still wanted to tell him.
The burn of the needles, the profound sense of violation that still clung to the memory and made it hard to think about, even now. The way Megatron had repeatedly purged his tanks afterwards, retching into a bucket on the evacuation flight from Messatine and blaming it on motion sickness while his fellow miners laughed. The months of probing the edges of the wound inside his head, trying and failing to understand just what had been taken, just how he had been violated, just how much of who he was now had been shaped by what had been done to him…
He’d considered putting it in his book, considered telling everyone. Withholding it felt wrong. It felt like a weakness. The ugliness of the state should be dragged out into the light. The perverse lengths that they would go to control their population should be made known to everyone. Megatron knew that.
But the pain was too tender, the experience too raw, the shame thick enough to choke him. And when he tried to write about what had been done to him, the words only came out as poetry.
Megatron realized that he was rubbing his own helm to ease the tingling burn at the top of his head. Orion was watching him, nothing but concern on his bare face. Megatron withdrew his hand.
“I’ve upset you,” Orion said. “I’ve overstepped my bounds. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked--”
“No.” Megatron shook his head. “You’re right. I--” He exhaled. “There is poetry. My editor on Messatine had no eye for it. I’ve kept it to myself. If you’d like to read it…”
“Yes,” Orion said immediately, optics gleaming, leaning forward against the table. “Yes, please.”
Megatron’s spark ached. He looked away, unable to meet optics so bright and open for very long.
“Messatine was cold,” Megatron said. “Profoundly and pervasively cold. It wasn’t like Nova Point or even C-12. You couldn’t go above ground in between shifts and see the sun, or the lights of Iacon or Kaon on the horizon, gleaming below the stars. On the surface of Messatine, there was nothing but snow, thick enough to bury you. Some miners died like that. Intentionally, maybe. Or...”
Megatron himself had found their corpses, more than once. Frozen where they sat, cracked open by the expanding ice formed in seams and joints, faces still turned towards the horizon. The medics marked them down as accidental deaths and shipped their bodies back to Cybertron for recycling. Eventually, Megatron had stopped going to the surface, stopped looking for something he knew he wouldn’t find.
“I thought,” Megatron said. “I wrote. I worked. Cold led to clarity. That stripping away of everything -- perhaps it was what I needed.”
“It’s my fault that you were sent there,” Orion said, face downturned with guilt. “I shouldn’t have read them your words, or given them your name.”
It was the truth. Megatron refused to argue it away. Orion needed to understand the way his actions rippled down to others, the way his choices unfairly and disproportionately affected those in lower classes. Megatron let him sit there with his discomfort.
“I survived,” Megatron finally said, softly. “So did you. Learn from your mistakes, Orion. Move forward, and don’t make them again. I’ll try to do the same.”
Orion seemed to take this much seriously, at least. He thought about it for a quiet moment. Then he shifted his weight in his chair. Megatron could feel the heat of him, faint under the table. They didn’t quite touch. It would have been easy to shift his position ever so slightly, to push up against Orion’s legs under the table. But he didn’t.
“You said you had an editor. On Messatine?”
Megatron should never had mentioned Terminus. He’d been careless. He was too often careless when it came to Orion. Some day, he’d pay for it.
“Yes,” Megatron said, after a too-long pause.
Orion smiled. “I’m glad. I hate to think of you being alone there.”
At first, Megatron had been alone. Ripped from the mine that had been his home, without even a chance to say goodbye to the mech who had been his closest friend, dragged lightyears away from Cybertron and deposited among strangers, his arrival shrouded with isolating rumor. Megatron had never been good at making friends. With Impactor and then with Terminus, those who wanted a place in Megatron’s life had always come to him, never the other way around. Even with Orion, if this thing they had could be called a friendship...
Megatron shouldn’t be pursuing it. He shouldn’t get attached . What did Terminus’ death matter if Megatron didn’t take that lesson to spark?
But, “I read them,” Orion said. “All your essays from Messatine.” And the warm eager fluttering pulse in Megatron’s spark at the words betrayed him. “They were…” Orion paused. “Your writing has improved. Your editor does good work.”
Did , Megatron wanted to correct him. He bit his tongue.
“But you disagree,” Megatron ventured. He watched Orion struggle to find the right words, watched his hands move and his optics flicker, the minute twitching of his lips.
“I disagree with some of it,” Orion said. “Not all. You’re right that things need to change. You have a noble goal. But you don’t think of the people you’ll hurt in achieving it.”
“And you don’t think of the people you’ll hurt by delaying that change.” Megatron couldn’t keep the emotion from his voice. He sat up a little taller in his seat, mind racing, spark whirring. “Every day -- every moment of delay comes with a cost. Manual laborers dying in the mines. Disposables getting cast aside. Political prisoners getting their minds altered.” That last one, at least, would definitely strike home; Megatron felt vindicated when Orion flinched.
This was hardly new ground between them. They’d discussed this through letters for months. Hashed out their ideological disagreements in depth. Megatron relished it. Orion was wrong of course, wrong and blinded by his own limited vantage point and lack of perspective, but he was clever and sharp. Grappling with him about politics was like facing off against a particularly good challenger in the pits. Megatron always came away stronger for it.
But for some reason, Orion seemed less than eager to argue. Unwilling, in fact. “Perhaps… not now,” he said, optics averted. “Later. We should discuss this later.”
Megatron didn’t want to discuss it later. He was keyed up for a fight, and he didn’t like being denied.
But it had been a very long time since he’d seen Orion’s face. Megatron found it difficult to refuse him, with his mouth bare and his optics so sincere, the texture of his electromagnetic field so close.
Megatron was still eager to argue, his spark burning hot in his chest. He didn’t know what to do with the feeling. He took another drink of his engex, although it did nothing to alter his mood. His FIM chip’s queue ticked up -- every swallow added another half-hour to the time estimate on his HUD before the engex processed into evenly-burning energon.
Megatron’s permanently-engaged FIM chip was another gift from Terminus. Another gift Megatron hadn’t wanted and hadn’t asked for but had grown to value.
Orion drank too, watching Megatron’s face over the rim of his cup.
“Here.” Megatron pushed the plate of chips towards him. “Eat. Before it gets cold.”
Orion took one and, after a moment of hesitation, ate it. His brows shot up, and he reached for another, more eagerly this time.
Megatron shook his head. “No, you have to dip it in the sauce first.” He demonstrated, dunking one corner of the metal-rich flaky chip in the glowing dark pink sauce and eating the entire thing in one bite.
Orion followed his example, with substantially less sauce. Megatron expected him to react in disgust; instead, Orion’s brows lifted again. He chewed slowly, trying to puzzle out the flavors, then swallowed.
“What is that?” he asked, as if uncertain he wanted to know the answer.
“Bunker fuel.” Megatron tried not to laugh. “All the heavy stuff left at the bottom of the barrel after they distill out the engex and the energon.”
Orion actually gaped in horror; without his mask, his transparency really was endearing. “But that’s full of impurities,” he said. “I thought they only used it to fuel machinery .”
Megatron grinned. “Miners are machinery,” he said with a chuckle. “Haven’t you heard?” Orion didn’t laugh -- he lacked Megatron’s dark sense of humor. “It’s a Kaon specialty. An acquired taste. Puts a real glow in your spark.”
“It is… interesting ,” Orion said, eyeing the dish of chips. He sat there hesitating for another moment, then went back for a second helping, scooping substantially more sauce onto the chip this time.
“Go easy on it -- your tanks aren’t accustomed to this kind of fuel.”
Orion snorted. “I’m not a newbuild , Megatron,” he said, going back for a third helping. Megatron rolled his eyes and let the subject drop. Let Orion learn it the hard way, if he insisted.
Megatron sat and watched him eat. It came surprisingly easily -- this comfortable, quiet peace, this lack of fear. It brought old times to mind. Sharing drinks with Impactor. Sharing fuel with Terminus.
Don’t get attached .
Megatron had left Terminus to die. Not to save his own life, but to save his work -- his cause . It was done, and there was no undoing it. He had chosen his work, his cause, over his friend’s life. And now he was tempted to risk that work, for what? Orion? A mech who would never be able to fully accept him? A mech who would never truly have his back or support his cause?
But Megatron wanted so badly to reach out. Orion was warm and close, within easy reach. If Megatron told him, told him the full truth, he was sure without a doubt that Orion would believe him. Megatron wanted to be heard and to be believed.
“Your senator friend,” Megatron said. “How did you know?”
Orion looked up. His optics were a pure, clear, brilliant blue, like the sky over Nova Point at midday. Megatron squinted, then turned away.
“How did you know that his mind had been altered, and not just his body?” Megatron clarified.
Even as he asked, Megatron knew that it was foolish. Orion was reckless and blind. He’d blurted out Megatron’s questions to the Senate and his carelessness had gotten Megatron imprisoned on Messatine. He couldn’t be trusted to act reasonably, or to think long-term. And Megatron shouldn’t -- couldn’t -- allow himself to get attached. His goals were more important than personal connections and desires that would only ever hold him back.
But this attachment had been formed before Megatron had been taught that lesson. It wasn’t easily severed.
More than that, Megatron wanted this, the way he’d wanted to breathe fresh air and see the bright sky after months of being underground. He didn't want to let it go.
When he glanced up, Orion looked pained. “I knew immediately,” Orion said. “It was obvious. I tried to deny it, at first. But I couldn’t. He’d changed.”
Megatron had changed, too. Orion had noticed it immediately.
“When you realized what had been done to him,” Megatron asked, voice barely audible, “what did you do?”
“I--” Once again, Orion looked away. It was strange to see shame on his face. “I tried to save him, at first. To find the mech he used to be in who he is now. But he’s gone. I had to accept that. To let him go.” Orion swallowed, still refusing to look up. “I… try to be true to the memory of who he was.”
Megatron let Orion's words settle in his head. He wondered what “staying true to the memory of who he was” would look like, if Orion decided that he was also “gone.” It was a profoundly uncomfortable thought.
Megatron was still himself. Whatever had been done to him, it had been superficial. His choices, his views -- they were still his own. He was sure of that.
Would Orion be sure of it too?
It was a question Megatron couldn't answer. Not without telling him, and watching those blue optics grow warm with compassion, or sad, or distant. And once he did that, he couldn't take it back.
Would Orion blame what had been done to Megatron for their many differences? Would he use this truth against Megatron, if he felt he had to?
Megatron didn't know. But it was all too easy to picture -- Orion shouting out this truth to the world, just like he'd shouted out the private, unfinished words from Megatron's personal datapad.
Orion was kind, and in his own way very loyal. But much damage could be done by the well-meaning.
Orion tried to catch Megatron’s eye across the table. He reached a hand out, palm up, and left it there, open and welcome and waiting.
Megatron could tell him, and he wanted to, but he knew in his spark that he would regret it if he did. He looked at that open hand, but didn’t reach out and take it.