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There were times where Megatron wondered if his other self—the one who had not jumped universes, the one who had gone to the trial on Cybertron—had been the one getting the easy way out. Those times were not very frequently, nor did the feeling persist for very long, because he did, deep down, very much prefer to be alive. Even if it meant being the captain of a crew mostly made up of the most mentally dysfunctional Cybertronians that the Autobots had ever managed to find.
But the thought was there, briefly, when he was heading to the bar after a long day dealing with assorted small fires; Brainstorm accidentally duplicating Whirl; multiple Whirls; Rodimus' utter lack of attention span; Minimus having a nervous breakdown over the Whirls; and Whirls somehow being on fire. Tired as he had been from the events of the day, he had greeted the bots he met on the way with a brief nod as he passed by, only for his processor to catch up moments later, and made him retrace his steps to make sure that, yes, his optics had not failed him, and there were, in fact, no less than six heavily armed bots camped outside a hab suite.
"I am going to regret asking what's going on, aren't I?" Megatron asked with a sigh and a pinch to his nasal ridge to stave off the inevitable headache.
"Streetwise and Dipstick are on a date," Groove replied, using his gun to gesture briefly at the habsuite. "We're just making sure nothing happens, cap't, y'know, with the whole love-curse thing."
"... Love curse," Megatron slowly repeated.
There was a nod from Kindle a little further down the hallway, the pyrobot carrying a minigun more suitable to be mounted on a tank. "Every single couple on the Lost Light goes through tragedy."
"Getaway committed mutiny and brainwashing," Blades added, ticking off on his fingers. "Tailgate's spark exploded on Necroworld. Lug was dead. Skids died. Mirage died. Lancet died. Rewind got blown up and then died. Rook got murdered. Drift and Ratchet's the only exception so far, and Drift got exiled because we thought he'd brought Overlord onboard so that still counts."
"Hence," Groove said, gesturing at the habsuite door again, "us keeping watch. We got the medics on standby, guards outside the ship, and a spark pulse meter on both of the potential lovebirds, until we're certain the curse stayed behind in the old universe."
Megatron hm'd, and continued towards the bar, mentally upgrading his usual energon spritzer to whatever monstrous concoction Swerve had come up with as the special of the day. Getting drunk and then passing out sounded like a very brilliant idea after the day.
Along with a small mental note to not, under any circumstance, let it go public any time soon that he and Minimus were taking their first cautious steps towards courting each other...