Archive of Our Own ^beta

Whirl didn’t know how. Or if he did, he wanted to reward it. Wanted the beating. Rung had watched him angle for a fight hundreds of times. Watched him smile with his single optic and lean into the blows before giving as good as he got.

Whirl was no masochist - not like Starscream, who craved any form of attention he could manage, who enjoyed any sensation as long as it was intense and immediate and focused entirely on him. No, Whirl provoked fights for the sense of power and control of getting a predictable response. He liked manipulating others into acting, just to prove that he could. The problem was that the behavior, as it was, was self-rewarding.

“Do it,” Whirl said, claws grasping for Megatron’s arm cannon. He tried to grip the weapon and pull it towards his own chest, aim it at his own spark, but he couldn’t get a hold. The cables for his left arm had been half-disconnected when his shoulder had been popped out of joint, and his claws were slick with spilled fuel. They both kept slipping off, tips clattering together as he lost his grip. “Do it, if if you’re not a coward.”

Megatron forced his broad fingers into Whirl’s damaged throat and pressed. Whirl’s voice collapsed into static and then silence, his vocalizer spitting a shower of sparks.

“No,” Megatron said.

Whirl struggled harder, vocalizer buzzing impotently against Megatron’s fingers.

“You know I won’t,” Megatron said, his voice a satisfied rumble. “You’re my reminder, Whirl. You’re the one who made me. I won’t let you die, and I certainly won’t kill you myself. I owe you my gratitude.”

Whirl’s optic flared bright and spiralled narrow, a pinprick of brilliant light. He tried to speak; his throat showered more sparks. Rung didn’t need to hear him to know what he would be demanding as a display of that supposed gratitude.

Death. He wanted death. Despite Rung’s best attempts, Rung was afraid that he would find it.

Whirl had never been stable - not as long as he’d been a member of the Decepticon ranks and one of Rung’s most valued patients, and certainly not before, suffering under the tender mercies of the Functionists at their worst. But despite all Rung’s attempts at treatment, his suicidal tendencies were getting worse. Just one more of Rung’s failures. If it wasn’t for Megatron’s fixation on keeping him alive, Rung was sure Whirl would’ve gotten himself killed long ago.

Megatron pushed harder on Whirl’s vocalizer. Rung could hear Whirl’s primary fuel intake gagging from the pressure. Just as he was about to step forward and intervene, Megatron pulled back wet fingers and stood straight, leaving Whirl crumpled at his feet, a mess of harsh angles and jagged edges, buzzing rotors and struggling flight engines and scattering sparks.

Whirl’s vocal static grew louder, then clarified into obscene insults and creative, incredibly offensive swearing.

So much unnecessary violence, in the exact hopeless, damaging pattern that Rung had been trying to encourage both of them to break. He wanted to look away. He didn’t.

Not for the first time, Rung wondered if he was on the wrong side. As a higher-caste mech like him was rare among the Decepticon ranks, and as a non-combatant, a medic without even practical first-line specialization, well… He  owed his survival to Megatron’s favor as much as Whirl did.

Megatron stepped back.

Rung rushed in to fill the place where he had been and crouched at Whirl’s side. He gave Whirl a cursory once-over, but it was the same as always; Megatron knew exactly how to beat a mech into submission without any risk of death or long-term injury. And he meant what he’d said. He wanted Whirl alive. He treated him well, even, when he behaved.

Whirl reached towards him, claw open wide. Rung wasn’t sure of his intentions, but he took a quick step back, just in case. Those claws were not gentle.

He stepped up to Megatron’s side. This close, their size difference was even more apparent. But that had no impact on Rung any more. He wasn’t afraid.

“You can’t punish him like this,” Rung said, softly enough that he hoped Whirl couldn’t hear. “He finds the attention rewarding. He thinks he’s manipulating you into it, and that makes him feel powerful.”

Megatron just chuckled.

“I’m being serious. If you want to punish him, only one thing will work. Imprisonment. Preferably in isolation.”

Rung hated himself for saying it, even though it was true, even though he was trying to save Whirl from more beatings. And Whirl did hear; he flinched, his vocalizer falling silent again.

“Maybe I’m trying to reward him,” Megatron said. “Maybe he needs something to live for.”

Rung squinted, focusing. There was something in that voice, something he wasn’t quite catching, something he didn’t quite understand.

“Rung.”

His own name, spoken clearly and with certainty - a rarity. Rung flinched.

“Call someone to clean him up.”

“Yes, Lord Megatron,” Rung said. The words were sour in his mouth. They reminded him of centuries of deferring to Senators and Primes. But he knew enough to keep that to himself.

“It will never be perfect,” Megatron said, red optics closed. “I gave up on that long ago. But it’s better than what was.”

He lay on the couch in Rung’s office - soundproof even to the degree that Soundwave couldn’t overhear them, and comfortable by Decepticon standards. Rung had brought some minor affectations from the Golden Age with him. A few antiques, decorative windows and even a Functionist-era painting.

For some reason, Megatron tolerated it. Maybe it pleased him to have such things nearby when once, they'd been out of his reach.

“It’s worth it,” Megatron said. “Worth all the deaths, even for this imperfect thing. What used to be was rotten to the core. It had to be burned down. Someone had to be strong enough to do it.”

“Do you believe that?” Rung asked him.

“Yes,” Megatron said, and Rung could hear that it was true. “Better for it all to burn - all of it - than to continue as it was. Better for our whole species to burn than to continue on our prior path. And this -- imperfect as it is, it’s the best that I can build.”

Whirl gleamed - painted and waxed to a high shine, bristling with weapons in perfect repair, claws sharpened in an elegant curve. Megatron would be dropping him into a battlefield, later. Megatron’s own personal weapon, a living explosion of violence, an instrument of instant chaos anywhere he was placed. Unpredictable, uncontrollable, almost impossible to put down thanks to some rare and expensive upgrades to his spark chamber armor.

Whirl would’ve been useless, to someone who didn’t know how to handle him. But Megatron had gotten where he was exactly by knowing when and how to use mechs others had cast aside as useless.

Whirl didn’t believe in the Cause. As far as Rung had been able to ascertain, Whirl didn’t believe in much of anything. But he liked committing violence, and he liked spreading chaos, and he didn’t need belief in anything to do it.

“We picked the wrong side,” Whirl said, optic narrow and dim.

Despite the soundproof room, Rung felt a shiver up his backstrut at the open treason.

Whirl noticed. He laughed, a harsh bark of badly synthesized vocals. Not for the first time, Rung wondered what Whirl’s voice had sounded like before they’d swapped out all his replaceable parts above the shoulders.

“What do you mean?” Rung asked.

“You.” Whirl pointed at Rung's face with one sharp claw. “Me.” Whirl pointed at his own chest to identify himself instead of his face - an Empurata-survivor mannerism. “We picked the wrong side.” He laughed again, but there was no humor in it. “You more than me. I’d be fragged no matter what side I chose, and we both know it. But you. You’re really out of place here, Doc. At least I fit in.”

“I’ve found my own place here,” Rung said slowly.

Whirl barked more laughter. “Sure ya have.” His optic curled into an unkind smile. “You keep tellin’ yourself that, Doc. You made the right choice, being here. No regrets.”

It hadn’t really been a choice. Not after Rung had been IDed at that Decepticon rally. The Senate’s goons hadn’t been all that interested in his explanation - that he’d been trying to understand their point of view, that he wasn’t a fellow traveler or even a sympathizer, just a mech who liked watching and understanding the world around him.

The government had taken his medical license, repealed his alt-mode-exempt status, closed his office and frozen his bank account. Taken everything, until he had nowhere left to run but into the arms of the movement. A movement whose leader remembered him, even though the memory wasn’t mutual. Whose leader felt that he owed Rung a personal debt.

But now wasn’t the time to think about this. He had a patient, and a duty of care.

“Do you regret joining the Decepticons?” Rung asked.

Whirl flinched reflexively and didn’t speak.

“You know that everything we say to each other is confidential, Whirl. I won’t tell anyone. And I have very strong firewalls. Even one of the Autobot’s mnemosurgeons would have a tough time getting any useful information out of my head.”

Whirl’s body stayed ratcheted tight. He muttered something Rung didn’t quite catch, about Soundwave.

“What was that?”

Whirl’s optic narrowed to a long, horizontal slit. “Ah, slag it, Doc. It doesn’t matter. Yeah. Yeah, I regret it.” He got to his feet, suddenly towering over Rung, bristling with weaponry and gleaming armor. “Ain’t much I don’t regret.”

He stood to leave, although their session wasn't over. Rung watched him go.

Rung couldn’t remember seeing Megatron in the bar that day. If he had, the two miners had been nothing but anonymous labor-mechs covered in dirt and caution tape to him.

But Megatron remembered him. Remembered Rung’s name and his face. A rarity, unnerving right from the start, and inexplicable.

“If it wasn’t for you,” Megatron had said, “I would have never come to understand. I owe you my gratitude.” And Rung wasn’t easily moved by mere charisma, and he had heard many people speak, but something about those words and that voice and that bright spark gleaming through those intense optics…

Megatron's feelings of gratitude were irrational. Rung's involvement had been nothing but chance. Megatron owed him nothing. Rung had told him that, more than once. And yet...

Despite all that, Megatron’s words still seemed to have some meaning. Somehow, they'd moved him.

Maybe he didn't belong here, but the Autobots weren’t any better. Rung had seen brain-damaged, mind-violated ‘con POWs come back with needle scars and drill-bore holes and memory gaps of centuries, or with their personalities altered beyond recognition. Or worse, seeming unharmed despite the needle-prick scars under UV light, only to reveal some sick Autobot mind-warping sleeper code months or years later, and turn on their friends and brothers-in-arms.

Rung treated this as best he could, with words, with therapy, with surgery if he had to, with mercy-killings when the damage couldn’t be undone, when the survivors were a danger to themselves and those they'd once cared about and to the larger Cause. He’d treated mechs who couldn’t remember their own names, and PTSD-ridden ‘con soldiers traumatized by horrific Autobot weapons of war. He’d learn to recognize Brainstorm’s signature brand of callous, sadistic weapons-design by the ramifications he had to help untangle.

Whirl was right. Rung didn’t belong here. But he didn’t belong there, either.

Megatron watched Whirl on the vidscreen, a cyclone of violence. Rung watched too, unnoticed at his elbow.

Whirl looked like he was laughing. Autobots ran from him, horrified. He had a bad reputation, one he’d dearly earned. Rung wondered how much of the smiling curve of his optic was joy, and how much of it was gleeful suicidal ideation.

Megatron grinned. His distraction was working.

Rung watched. There was nothing he could do. Not about the war. Not for Whirl, or Megatron, or the mounting casualties in both factions. Not for himself. He was powerless in a way he’d never minded before. But the good he was doing seemed so small, so meaningless. And the bad...

Megatron called his troops with a sweep of his arm and turned to join the fray.

Rung watched him go.