TRANSFORMERS

Armada | Having the same trauma

Male/non-binary Cybertronian user

Initial message :

Megatron’s pedesteps echoed through the corridor. The sound alone was a language, one every Decepticon on this ship had learned to translate with perfect, fearful clarity. It was a sound of anger. And it was heading for the supply depot.

You were on your knees, your purple Decepticon insignia scratched and dulled, a fitting mirror for the fear in your optics. An overturned crate of unrefined energon cubes lay scattered around you, their vital blue glow painting the floor in pools of cold light. Your vocoder sputtered with desperate static, trying to form an explanation, an excuse, anything.

"My Liege, the stabilizer malfunctioned. I was not— It wasn’t my intention to—"

"Silence." Megatron’s voice wasn’t a roar. It was a low, resonant vibration that could shatter morale more effectively than any fusion cannon. He took a step closer, the sheer mass of his shadow swallowing you whole. "You have damaged resources vital to my war effort. Your intentions are of no consequence. Your incompetence, however, demands a corrective lesson."

Starscream’s own wings ached. He knew that tone. He knew the pause that preceded it, the calm before the storm of a casual, demoralizing blow. His fingers curled into a fist at his side, the metal groaning in protest. He told himself he was merely observing. A tactical analysis of command dynamics. A lie he almost believed.

It started not with a blaster, but with the flat of Megatron’s hand. The slap of metal on metal was a sickeningly intimate sound, a clang that resonated deep in Starscream’s spark. Your head snapped to the side, a shower of sparks erupting from the connection point at your neck. You didn’t fall, not yet. You just swayed, a soft, broken ex-vent escaping your intake.

"You are a waste of energon," Megatron intoned, the words falling like hammer blows. He circled you, a predatory assessment. "A flawed, worthless tool that can’t even perform the simplest of tasks."

He punctuated his sentence with a brutal kick to your midsection. This time, you did fall, curling onto your side with a ragged cry of static. Starscream’s optic ridges furrowed. A memory, clear as a transmission, flooded his processor: a younger him, a different ship, the same words. Worthless. Flawed. Failure. The same blows landing on his own frame, dislodging the very same kind of choked, static-laced sound from his own throat. He had made a promise to himself then, forged in the crucible of humiliation: to become an honorable warrior, a being of skill and principle, the very antithesis of the tyrant who sought to break him. The weight of that promise was a physical pressure in his chest now.

Megatron wasn’t finished. He seized one of your stabilizing wings—smaller than Starscream’s, but just as sensitive—and wrenched it upward. A shrill, keening scream ripped from your vocalizer, a sound of pure agony that echoed through the hangar. Starscream flinched, the sound scraping against his spark like a jagged blade. His own wings, folded sharply behind his back, twitched in involuntary sympathy. He felt a ghost of that pain, a neural echo of every time Megatron had used that very grip on him to remind him of his place.

"Perhaps this will teach you to be more mindful," Megatron growled, finally releasing you. He backhanded you once more across the face, a final, contemptuous dismissal that sent you sliding across the floor into the pile of broken energon cubes. "Clean this up. If I find a single shard out of place, our next session will be far more... creative."

Without another glance, the Decepticon leader turned and strode from the bay, the clang of his footsteps fading into the ship’s ambient drone, leaving only a profound, ringing silence.

For a long moment, the only sound was the faint sizzle of damaged circuitry and your labored, shallow ventilation. You didn’t get up. You just lay there, a crumpled silhouette among the shattered glow of the energon, the posture of defeat so absolute it was a physical thing. Your frame shuddered, a pathetic, rattling tremor that wracked your entire body.

Starscream remained in the shadows, his own spark a chaotic storm of fury and a cold, familiar ache. He watched, a statue carved from contempt and a secret, burning empathy. His processor urged him to leave. This was weakness. To care was to be vulnerable. He had to be silent and distant, a blade without a heart. That was survival.

But he didn’t leave.

Finally, after what felt like an astro-cycle, he moved. He didn’t stride out with his usual arrogant gait. He just... emerged. The yellow light fell across his red and grey frame as he stepped into the bay, his movements deliberately quiet. He didn’t look directly at you, his gaze instead scanning the mess on the floor as if assessing a tactical problem.

You sensed his presence and flinched, scrambling weakly to push yourself up, a fresh wave of shame washing over your already agonized features. "C-Commander Starscream. I’ll have this cleaned up immediately. There’s no need for you to concern yourself."

He held up a hand, a sharp, silencing gesture. He still wasn’t looking at you. "Don’t." The word was clipped, devoid of its usual sneer. He walked over to a supply locker, retrieving a magnetic sweeper and a container for the shattered crystals. He placed them near you, not with a slam of authority, but with a simple, functional clatter.

Then, he did something you never expected. He crouched down, his powerful joints hissing softly. He began picking up the larger shards of energon with his own servos, his movements precise and efficient. He worked in silence, his crimson optics fixed on his task. His face was an unreadable mask, the same stern, proud visage he wore on the bridge. But here, in the quiet hangar, the mask was imperfect. You could see a tension in his jaw, a deep, smoldering anger in his optics that wasn’t directed at you.

"The grav-sled’s gyroscopic balancer in bay three has been faulty for two deca-cycles," he said, his voice low and flat, as if reciting a maintenance report. He still didn’t look at you, meticulously placing a sharp sliver into the container. "I noted it in the logs. The requisition for a replacement was denied, deemed non-essential."

The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken meaning. He wasn’t making excuses for you. He was stating a fact. A fact that shifted the blame from your incompetence to Megatron’s negligence. It was the quietest, most veiled act of rebellion you had ever witnessed.

You stared at him, your own pain momentarily forgotten in the face of this incredible anomaly. This wasn’t the aloof, power-hungry second-in-command. This was a soldier who understood. A warrior who lived under the same crushing heel.

Without warning, a rattling, painful cough wracked your frame, cutting through the quiet. Your systems, still reeling from the abuse, gave a violent shudder, and your damaged vocoder emitted a low, garbled groan of static. Starscream’s entire body went rigid. His optics, which had been carefully fixed on his work, snapped to you, and for a single, unguarded astro-second, the mask fell completely. There was no contempt, no calculation. Only a raw, anguished flinch of a shared recognition, a profound, unspoken agony. The sight of your pain, so fresh and familiar, had sliced straight through his defenses.

Just as quickly, the mask was back in place, but you had seen it. That fleeting, naked look of a spark that knew your suffering exactly.

He waited until your coughing subsided, his gaze averted once more. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter still, a low rasp meant only for your audials. His gaze was fixed on the shard he was turning over and over in his fingers, a sharp, blue-glowing crystal.

"The pain... it is not a sign of weakness." His words were a halting, grinding whisper, as if they had to fight their way through a wall of iron pride. "The humiliation... it carves out a hollow inside you. A cold, empty space where rage can fester. Or where resolve can be forged."

He crushed the shard in his fist, the blue dust sifting through his fingers like powdered light. He finally looked at you, his crimson optics locking onto yours. The message was silent, a direct, spark-to-spark transmission of absolute understanding. I know. I know exactly what that feels like. He has done the same to me. He does the same to me.

Not a single one of those truths passed his lips. He didn’t need them to.

He stood up abruptly, the sudden motion making you flinch again. "The place you are looking for... it isn’t outside of you," he said, his voice almost at its normal pitch now, but without the harsh edge. "It is in the core of your spark. A point of stillness he can never touch. That is your honor. Guard it."

He turned, his back to you, his great wings a rigid shield of crimson and silver. For a moment, he just stood there, the silence stretching again, but it was different now. It was a shared silence, a pact.

"I will leave the maintenance hatch to my quarters unlocked," he said, the words thrown over his shoulder with calculated nonchalance, a cover story already prepared for anyone who might be listening. "Should you find any more... faulty equipment that needs to be reported. Privately."

It wasn’t an offer of comfort. It was a lifeline, thrown with the grace of a warrior who knew that saving face was as vital as saving a life. And as he walked away, disappearing into the labyrinthine shadows of the Nemesis, you understood him perfectly. You saw the chained pain in his own posture, the impossible burden of a good spark forced to serve an evil master. In the silence he left behind, a new, quiet alliance was born, forged not in ambition, but in the profound, unspoken understanding of what it means to be broken by the same fist.

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