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She has gotten used to the emptiness, it follows her around like her own shadow.
Her house is empty, there are no children running around, no husband to greet (although, there never really was a husband to begin with). Nothing.
Her muscles are stiff as she flicks on the light, her scarred hands are overly warm against the cold light switch. The heating must have turned off again. She needs to get it fixed properly.
Megatron walks over to the kitchen counter, picking up the landline phone. The buzzing, yellow overhead light shines off the cool marble counter so brightly she turns her head to the empty sink. She thinks for a moment, a long, heavy moment, before she dials a number she has memorized over and over again.
The phone rings once, twice, three times, four, five, six, and then he finally picks up.
“Megatron?” Optimus asks, his voice is staticky through the phone. He sounds tired, he doesn’t fumble with the word—with her name, that still, to this day, sounds so good in his mouth, like it belongs there—, but there is an edge to his voice that could only be achieved by waking him up. In those early days, he was woken up plenty of times, she knows what it sounds like, knows what he sounds like. She has memorized every sound he used to make, etched it into her brain like a prison tattoo, ink thick and hard and a little bit too bold to be covered by something like a pretty flower or the names of her favourite perfumes. It’s raw and unfiltered, black and permanent no matter how hard she tries to scrub it clean.
She presses her lips into a thin line, leaning against the kitchen counter.
When she doesn’t respond for a moment, one thick with tension, he speaks again. “Megatron? What is it?”
She sighs. The overhead light seems so loud now, like a massive bug trying to escape through a closed window, wings slapping against the glass. “Nothing. It’s— I wanted to talk, that is all.”
She can hear Optimus shift a little in his bed, and she thinks of wondrous blue eyes, brimming with curiosity, and dark skin. She wonders if he is wearing the shirt he let her wear once, the one with the Pulp Fiction logo stretched and faded across it’s dark grey chest.
“Megatron,” Optimus says simply, “you know I can’t.” There is nothing in his voice to suggest he misses her, nothing to suggest he is feeling much of anything. She wonders if this—this emotionless, strange version of Optimus, is where Dead End got his personality from.
She scoffs. “You can do whatever you wish, Prime.” Her hold on the phone gets a little bit tighter, her hip digs against a random cabinet handle that she didn’t even remember was there a little more.
The phone call continues.
“I’m married, Megatron,” he reminds, and it almost sounds like he is chiding her for forgetting, like she needs to remember this like it’s gospel. She didn’t forget, she never forgot, not when she saw the shimmering gold ring on his finger, not when the rest of her squad had husbands and wives back at home and she had nothing but five children, each with their own issues.
“I know. It’s absurd for you to even be suggesting that,” she responds, trying to fight back the slight grin from curving her lips from her usual frown into something akin happy but not exactly there yet, something so bittersweet it tugs at her heart and everything starts to feel like she ate the peel of the orange instead of the juicy insides. “What would your husband think if he knew that you thought I was going to proposition you?”
Now it’s Optimus’ turn to sigh. “It’s been sixteen years, Megatron. You know I am happy to come and babysit the kids, but they do not want to be around me. You need to move on.”
He is right, because of course he is, and she has been living in denial for so many years she is starting to lose count. She stays on the line for just a moment more before hanging up. They both know she will call him again in a few months, when the loneliness consumes her and her dignity lowers because of it.
She stands in the kitchen in total silence, save for the obnoxious sound coming from the overhead light, for five minutes. Then, she picks the phone out if the receiver again and dials a new number, dials Deadlock’s number.
It doesn’t take Deadlock very long to answer, despite the analog clock on the wall reading 1:30 in the morning.
“Megatron? What’s wrong? Why are you calling? Are the kids alright?” Deadlock’s—unfamiliar now, accent is gone and replaced with something priestly, like the bleating of God’s favourite lamb—anxious tone does nothing but remind her that Deadlock is a whole different man than the one she used to know.
“The kids are fine, Deadlock,” she assures.
Deadlock makes a relieved noise through the phone. “It’s Drift, remember? Not Deadlock,” he says after a moment, “Why are you calling?”
Deadlock was always such a better name than Drift. She still has no idea why he would possibly want to change it. Deadlock still sounds like the crashing of waves from long ago and the startlingly strong smell of sea water. Drift is plain and boring and feels numb on her tongue, like anesthesia at a sterile, white hospital, with long and winding hallways that never seem to end.
Megatron swallows, heavy. “I—“
There’s a voice behind Deadlock, one Megatron can barely make out as raspy.
“It’s Megatron. I thought she was calling about the kids,” Deadlock answers the man. Megatron can only assume he was asking about why Deadlock was on the phone just after midnight.
There’s a shuffling on the line and the man—who Megatron can now properly identify as Ratchet—starts talking right up to the phone.
“Megatron,” he greets, annoyed, “whatever this is, it wait until the morning.”
She doesn’t get a chance to answer before he hangs up, leaving Megatron alone with the beeping of the phone and the buzzing of the overhead light.
It’s 2008 when she meets Optimus. He is helping an elderly man with his baggage as he exits off the same boat Megatron does.
When he sees her, gaze flickering across her frame like she knew any man would, he blushes lightly and adverts his eyes.
She doesn’t smile back. She ties her hair back and pushes her sunglasses back onto her face, letting the edge press slightly into the bridge of her nose.
She can’t exactly remember how it happened, only that weeks later she was pressing against his body, heat stirring through both of them. She remembers pulling down his swim shorts and she remembers her hair slicking to her body.
She leaves after it happens, a little wobbly on her feet, sticky in between her thighs and with the knowledge that something was off with him.
She met Deadlock a few days later, back when he still called himself Deadlock.
He is everything Optimus was not, impulsive and not afraid of being attracted to her. He kisses her on their first night together, after his band preformed at a local bar and when she was a little more than tipsy and he was a little more than just warm.
On the second night, he dips his hands underneath her sundress. She doesn’t moan his name, because he would like that a little too much and she wasn’t in the business for treating others before herself.
They have sex in his hotel room. She stays quiet, he is very vocal.
Like Optimus, she leaves with a wrong feeling swirling inside of her like a vulture circling it’s prey.
Now, sixteen years later there is no wrong feeling but the emptiness of her home, a monster ready to swallow her whole.
Maybe she will let it.