Work Text:
Megatronus lay awake in his quarters, staring at the darkened ceiling while his thoughts flashed like welding sparks behind his eyes. So many thoughts, so many ideas that spread like stars across the sky of his mind and gleamed as invitingly. Ways to make the world more fair, things that could be improved so easily, and yet remained inexplicably as they were. He turned onto his side and winced at the pull of new welds in his chestplate, barely healed from his fight with Soundwave. It had been a draw, but he still felt that he'd lost. He'd never have such a good opportunity again for the grand speech that still lurked in his mind, composed on nights such as this when sleep had escaped him.
Soundwave had taken that chance from him, but had given him his counsel and his words, relayed by his minibot companions, played over in Megatronus’ mind. He had urged caution, just as everyone else had, said that if he was to spread this idea it must be as a whisper, rather than a grand shout. But Megatronus was a gladiator, he lived in grand gestures and spectacle, how could people hear his message if he did not speak it?
The blank, windowless wall in front of his face suddenly felt oppressive, enclosing, and he rolled to the other side only to find that wall barely any further away. With a grunt of effort, and perhaps a little pain, he pushed himself to his feet and held the wall until he no longer felt pathetically weak. He had been allowed out of the medbay but he still had a lot of recovering to do, and it galled him. Was he not the indomitable scourge of the arena? He growled under his breath and forced himself up, then made his way out into the dim corridor and towards the exit with a muttered apology to the tiny cleaner who darted out of his way.
The night air was still muggy and hot despite the fact that the sun had set several hours ago, but it was slightly fresher than the claustrophobic corridors of the pit complex, with only a faint tang of hot metal and ozone. They may have sufficed for a smaller bot but he all but hit his head on the ceilings in some places, and out here he felt a little more able to vent freely. The streets were far from empty, but the thronging crowds of the day were gone and he could walk without being jostled, observe the world at his own pace. Even now, it wasn’t entirely dark; the sickly yellow glow of streetlamps formed pools on the ground, and a few pairs of eyes flashed in his direction and quickly flicked downwards before their owners went about their own business.
He walked and he observed; street cleaners sweeping dirt and garbage from the road; a scrapper crouched in an alley over an indistinct form, pale face and red eyes bright against his battered black paintwork; a grubby greyish bot curled up in a doorway trying to recharge unmolested. Something flickered above him and he looked up as one of the big screens halfway up the side of a tower block crackled to life, the face of a news reporter looking back at him with something he could only interpret as disdain. He shook his head. That was ridiculous, it had to be the painkillers talking.
The clouds above him, though, were no illusion, and as he watched the screen he felt a droplet of rain fall and fizzle on his faceplate. He breathed a curse and ducked his head, long legs carrying him swiftly beneath an overhanging shop front in time to watch the few people around scatter as the rain really started coming down. Wonderful, trapped like a cyber-rat at the whims of the weather, he thought irritably. It was strange to see the streets so empty, only the patter of the rain and the voice of the reporter above his head, describing some uprising that had occurred and how swiftly it had been put down because of course only incompetent fools would disrupt the utopia the Council wished to create, about the importance of listening to the Council and how they only wanted the best for them, how they could all build a better society if only they would listen, that the Council would raise them all up if only they would reach out and truly mean it.
Megatronus tuned them out. He’d spent most of his early life being good, doing what he was made for, and all he had to show for it were scars and chipped hands and memories of painful empty tanks. And yet so many thousands had no idea that they could do anything different, so many still toiled in those awful conditions when he had managed to escape. How could his thoughts ever reach them? Subtle, Soundwave had said, a whisper passed from person to person. But how to start it? He had no idea.
The words swirled in his head as he stood, matching the rhythm of the rain and the cadence of the newscaster’s speech, but there they stayed. They seemed to echo in the closed space and the quiet, taunting him with power beyond his reach to harness. If only he could just reach out, pluck them from the ether and flick them into the heads of those passing by. His vents opened and huffed a cloud of heated air in irritation. Flights of fancy. Not useful.
Something shuffled behind him, and he glanced around to see a smaller, pale bot looking up at him from the shop’s doorway. His eyes were yellow, one substantially brighter than the other and flickering slightly in the dark; a tell-tale sign of substance abuse. That, perhaps, might explain the slightly awestruck expression on his face, if he hadn’t opened his mouth. “You’re… scrap, you’re Megatronus, aren’t you?” He breathed, just audible above the rain. Megatronus couldn’t help but nod, caught somewhere between pride at the recognition and frustration at being interrupted. “Pit, nobody’s ever gonna believe I saw you out here. I heard you got hurt real bad, glad to see you’re still standing and everything.”
“It will take more than one defeat to prevent that.” Megatronus assured him, and the smaller bot grinned at him, sharp little dentae flashing in the low light.
“I told ‘em that. People were saying you were dead. I told ‘em it’d take more than that. You’re a real inspiration for us down here in the gutters, y’know? They say you were forged to fight but we all know better. People remember when you first showed up, y’know, who you were? You help us pretend maybe things can get better. I mean, if that’s not a weird thing to say.”
“It’s a dangerous thing to say, perhaps.” But it was strangely pleasing to hear, reassuring. Sure, he was only a guttermech, but wasn’t this the exact kind of person who his words would help the most? “But I agree. Things can get better, and they should. We should be allowed to say things like that; bots like you and I outnumber those who think they have control, if only we knew it.”
It was one of his weaker lines, he thought, but the pale bot’s eyes widened in surprise and he nodded eagerly. “It’d be pretty great to stand up to the enforcers sometime. Kick them while they're down for a change. Just hard to get enough people together not to just get yourself shot. I guess maybe if you could get a message out without anyone knowing who wrote it. I’ve seen stuff like that on the walls down in the old transit system but I dunno if anything ever came of it.”
The pale bot’s eyes dimmed for a moment and he swayed a bit, and Megatronus put a hand out to steady him without really thinking about it. Whatever he’d taken, it seemed to be wearing off and taking his talkative energy with it. But he’d left the seed of an idea in Megatronus’ mind. Words, perhaps, didn’t have to be spoken to be heard. It was just a case of finding a large enough audience. He was so lost in that revelation that he didn’t even notice the street bot had fallen asleep on his leg until he heard a staticky snore from somewhere around his knee. He frowned, considered it for a moment, then crouched and scooped him up over his shoulder. If he was going to preach compassion and opportunity for all, he had to start somewhere, right?
The rain had eased and eventually stopped, and he set out for the arena complex once more. The newscast still droned on overhead, but his own words drowned it out as he spoke them under his breath, to himself. Words nobody else had heard, that met only the empty street around him but seemed to glow with promise. Words that, he hoped, would soon fill others with the warmth they gave him, the hope he seemed to inspire in at least one down-and-out.
He ignored Knock Out’s protests when he deposited his new acquaintance in the medbay, using the distraction to filch one of the medic’s datapads, then disappeared into his room to write.