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"Can you state the nature of your relationship?" Prowl asked the seeker on stand.
Starscream looked impatient, stating in a bored tone, "His First Officer, his Lieutenant General, his Chief Air Marshal-"
"So would you describe it as a purely professional relationship?" Prowl inquired, innocently enough.
Megatron's spark filled with dread. He knew what that casual tone meant, and he knew where this was going.
Starscream, apparently, did not, and walked right into it, "Well, I wouldn't call us 'friends', would you?"
"What about lovers?"
Starscream stared in silence. Someone in the back of the court room coughed. Slowly, Starscream's optics rolled towards Megatron. They were filled with accusations and twitching with barely repressed fury. Megatron could already hear the screech of indignity forming in the seeker's vocaliser.
"That would imply there was any 'love' involved," Starscream eventually hissed, glaring daggers across the floor at him.
Megatron dropped his gaze to his chained hands, unable to meet Starscream's optics. Or anyone else's for that matter.
"What term would you prefer?" Prowl sounded unbearably smug.
"Second. In. Command."
Prowl lifted his oh-so-informative data-pad, "But according to our witnesses, of which there are many -hundreds even- there was an intimate aspect to your relationship. You and the accused-"
"Yes!" Starscream slammed his fists against the top of the stand, his crown falling askew, "Fine! I fucked him, are you happy now-!?"
"Starscream," a horrified sounding Optimus tapped his gavel gingerly, "Language..."
Starscream just sneered at the reprimand, clearly in an embarrassed sulk. Megatron sympathised. He would have watched through his fingers if his hands had not been chained down.
"How many times did you interface?" Prowl continued.
Starscream threw up his hands, "I don't know!"
"You 'don't know' how many times you interfaced with a mech you professed to hate?"
The whole court room could hear Starscream's teeth grinding together, "I cannot recall an exact number."
"A ballpark figure, then?"
Starscream's dark face had lost some of it's underlying colour, "...What does this have to do with anything!?"
Prowl looked to Prime.
Prime shifted uncomfortably, "You'll need to answer the question, Starscream."
"How often Megatron got laid should have no bearing on this trial-!"
"Perhaps that would be true if the mecha in question doing the 'laying' was not currently 'Emperor Perpetua'," Prowl met Starscream's stare boldly. "The people of the Free Republic have a right to know how deeply involved their new leader was with the grand architect of the war, do they not? Particularly when you are speaking on his behalf."
Starscream was silent. To the uneducated optics of gathered masses he might have appeared calm. But Megatron could see how it was taking every ounce of his will power not to fly out of the stand and strangle Prowl with his bare hands.
After a sufficiently awkward pause, Starscream cleared his vocaliser and lifted his helm proudly, seemingly recovered. "Dozens of times."
Which was a complete lie.
"Over the course of four million years?" Prowl queried.
"Fine. it was hundreds," Starscream snapped.
This time Prowl didn't need to say anything. He simply stared at Starscream.
"Thousands..." Starscream muttered softly.
Prowl nodded in satisfaction, "And these encounters were consensual and enjoyable?"
"Objection!" Ultra Magnus finally, finally intervened.
Little good that did him. Starscream answered anyway,
"Consensual, yes. Enjoyable? Debatable."
"Sustained," Optimus agreed with Magnus wearily, "Starscream's last remarks will be stricken from the record."
Despite the objection, a smirk has begun to curve Prowl's mouth. He had a card yet to play. "Are you still in a relationship with the accused?"
"No," Starscream snorted angrily.
"To the best of your ability, can you state the time period in which you ended your relationship with the accused?"
"We were never in a relationship," The bars of the stand under Starscream's hands were starting to twist out of shape as he griped them. "We only clanged on the weekends. And on special occasions."
Megatron hoped to Primus Prowl didn't ask what a 'special occasion' was for them. He didn't want to see the look in Optimus's optics as Starscream told the planet how they'd roll around in the blood and ruins of whatever civilisation they'd decimated that month.
Thankfully Prowl continued with his original line of questioning, "So you would consider yourself estranged?"
Starscream studied his claws, "I don't make a habit of taking time out of my busy schedule to visit prisoners on trial for genocide."
Prowl switched data-pads and held up a chart, "Could you explain then, to the court, how your rub mark came to be on the sign in pad for the high security detention cells?"
Unflustered, Starscream flapped a hand dismissively, "Of course, it must have slipped my mind. I have visited in the past-"
"This was from two days ago."
Starscream looked marginally less cool and collected. He glanced at Megatron. "...It's not a crime to bid an old rival goodbye."
Prowl glanced at the time stamps. And Megatron knew, before he even spoke, that it would be Starscream splashed across all the headlines that evening, and not him.
"For four hours," Prowl hummed. "That must have been some goodbye."
It had been, Megatron thought to himself appreciatively. But Starscream wasn't so grateful for the reminder, not with the interested murmurs now travelling through the audience in the court room. A few cameras flashed, forever capturing the caught look on the seeker's face, and the victorious one on Prowls. The murmurs grew in volume.
Optimus banged his gravel for order, but only once. Because next he knew Starscream had snatched it from his hand and flung it with all his might at Prowl's satisfied face.
It nailed him right in the optic.
"It was a good shot," Megatron commented kindly that evening in the holding cells, tilting his helm in the direction of his neighbour.
Starscream, not so powerful and untouchable that he couldn't be held in contempt of the court, glared at him through the bars. "Shut up."
"What I don't understand is why you bothered to come in disguise and bribe the guards at all if you were just going to use your own rub mark on the sign in file," Megatron shook his head in disappointment.
"I swear," Starscream was rolling his helm against the cell wall, listless with anger, "If you don't shut up-
"And 'not a relationship'?" Megatron couldn't help himself. "It was a relationship when you needed me to pay for all of your reformats..."
Starscream didn't respond. Instead he shuttered his optics and reached up to carefully remove his crown.
Which he then lobbed at the electro bars separating their cells. It hit the blue lines with a zap and explosion of molten metals and broken jewels which puddled on the cell floor between them.
"Was that expensive?"
Starscream sighed, "Very."