Chapter Text
The call had come late into yesterday's shift cycle, but Megatron had stayed up, wearing away the grip from the bridge decking with his pacing, as he waited for confirmation on the bounty hunters' skiff entering the system.
It had been months since Starscream had defected without ceremony, slipping away from the ship -and his berth- in the dead of the night. Megatron had waited, patiently at first, for the coward to come slinking home, but as the days passed into weeks, and irritation grew into fury, he realised Starscream wasn't coming back.
Not under his own power, at least.
Megatron had placed the bounty after a night of misery and heavy drinking. Then upped it by a couple hundred-thousand shanix the next morning when his overcharge did little to abate his temper. The bounty, much like his rage, only grew as the months went by.
And now? Now that Starscream was once again to come within his grasp? The anger swarmed within him like a live thing, as fresh as it was the morning he'd woken to find his berth sheets cold and empty.
His fingers twitched with anticipation of throttling the miserable cur. It would have been one thing to defect, but for Starscream to have seduced his way into his berth first, just to stick the knife of his inevitable betrayal that much deeper? That was personal.
His comm crackled. Megatron turned on his heel and was marching from the bridge before Soundwave had time to finish his sentence. "Cargo: entering hanger six."
"I'm on my way," he growled.
By the time Megatron had arrived at the hanger, the bounty hunters' skiff had landed in it's designated bay, it's crew and 'cargo' waiting at the bottom of it's ramp. It was not alone. Another ship was in the process of landing beside it; a run down old freighter. It's hull was smoking and sparking with damage from the firefight that had taken it down. It wobbled back and forth precariously, struggling to hold steady, before crashing with a floor shaking thud on it's broken landing gear.
Megatron strode down the steps from the raised walkway with purpose, his optics locked on the seeker kneeling at his captors' pedes. Soundwave was with them, exchanging words -and shanix- with the bounty hunters.
Starscream was staring at a fixed point on the floor. He didn't look up once. Megatron was pleased to see they had cuffed his hands behind his back, and even more delighted at the muzzle they'd locked across his mouth to gag him. Starscream's shrill, whining voice was one thing he hadn't missed.
"He was holed up in this thing," one of the hunters thumbed back at the run down old freighter when he saw Megatron approaching. "Made some awful fuss about not leaving it behind."
"I have no interest in purchasing scrap off you," Megatron said distantly, too busy studying the seeker to take much notice of anyone or anything else. He looked smaller than Megaton recalled him being, but that may have been his due to his posture. His paint looked unattractively dull, his frame weak. "Payment for the bounty is all you'll receive."
The hunter shrugged, "Take it. Maybe he hid some evidence, something you can use for his trial."
Another hunter snorted, elbowing him. "Traitors don't get 'trials'..."
"Soundwave, remove these pirates from my ship." Megatron ordered, finally lifting his gaze away from Starscream. "And have this sad excuse for a seeker taken to the brig."
Soundwave's optics briefly looked over Starscream. There was a beat of hesitation, barely detectable, before he nodded. "Affirmative."
Megatron waited, looking down his nose at Starscream's slumped, unmoving form as the hunters were corralled back onto their skiff and Vortex and Onslaught came to take the prisoner away.
He watched as they lifted the seeker roughly to his feet. Starscream stumbled. He had a nasty limp, not something the Combaticon's accommodated for. Megatron had to bite his own tongue to stop from reprimanding them for their harsh treatment as the seeker was all but dragged from his sight.
Starscream hadn't met his gaze once.
Good. It was either from shame or fear and both were appropriate.
It was tempting to follow them down to the brig. To lock himself in a small dark cell with Starscream and force the seeker to look at him. To rip that gag away from his mouth and demand he explain himself. To shake an answer out of him. To beat an answer out of him.
But he had waited months for Starscream's return. It was only fair he leave the seeker stew in his own terror for a few hours, abandoned and alone in the brig. Let Starscream feel an iota of what he himself had.
With the hunter's gone, and Starscream where he belonged, Soundwave lingered behind with him. Megatron glanced back, thinking he was waiting for further orders. But he was looking up at the freighter.
"Destroy it," Megatron told him.
Soundwave turned to look at him slowly.
"What?" He snapped.
"It is not a large freighter." Soundwave intoned. "It will not take long to search."
"To what end?" Megatron snorted. "We won't find anything of value. Starscream left with nothing."
"Material value: unlikely." Soundwave agreed. "Freighter; may hold answers."
And with that, Soundwave began to climb the lopsided ramp up into the ship. Megatron worked his jaw back and forth impatiently, before giving in to his curiosity and following.
The freighter was dark inside, the dim lights flickering in places. It's narrow walkways felt claustrophobic and creepy, and it smelt faintly of hydraulic fuel and burnt plastic. The bulkhead's had no panelling in places and it's millennia old wiring was exposed to the elements. Most of the auto-doors were unpowered and had to be prised open by hand. There were crates stacked upon crates, full of spare-parts and rubbish, littering the small hold and most of the cabins.
Just as Megatron had predicted, it was a waste of time. There were no answers here. Just a brief glimpse at the misery Starscream must have lived through during his misguided defection.
Soundwave was in the freighter's flight deck, a space too tight for Megatron to comfortably inhabit at the same time. He stopped outside and glared through the doorway, "Anything?"
"Medical supplies," Soundwave gestured to the co-pilots seat, covered in empty packets of sensor-blockers and patch-kits.
Megatron studied the seat closely, and thought he could see traces of fresh energon staining the metal. He hummed, thinking back to Starscream's weak and pallid disposition. It was likely he needed proper medical attention.
And he could have it. Later. Megatron wasn't going to be a soft touch and have Starscream rushed to medical all because the stupid fool hadn't known how to take care of himself. Most likely he'd run that overactive vocaliser of his around the wrong mechs and gotten into a fight or too.
There was just the Captain's Quarters left to check, a place Megatron had deliberately avoided. But Soundwave was still downloading the ships's nav-computer, so they could trace back Starscream's whereabouts over the last few months. It looked like it was going to be up to him to investigate.
He shouldered open the unpowered door. It shot along it's track and bounced back to thunk against his arm. He scowled and stepped through sideways, grimacing at the mess on the decking. Empty cubes, data-pads, more medical supplies...
The bunk was a mess of stained, threadbare blankets. But peaking out amongst them, bright and impossible to miss, was a fabric toy.
It was too bizarre to dismiss. Megatron brushed the blankets aside and lifted it out. It was a bright blue, mesh-fabric plushy, sown into a juvenile shape that only barely resembled a cyber-fox. The stitching was loose, like it had been pulled all out of shape, and it looked as though something enjoying chewing on the pointed ears.
Megatron looked around his pedes, wondering it Starscream had adopted a pet, some mangy alien guard dog. Nothing came running out to maul his ankles though.
He went to sit on the bunk, when something hanging above it knocked against and then tangled around his helm. Cursing, he reached up to dislodge it, and knocked down a crudely built mobile, with hanging stars and planes. The type a sparkling would have suspended over it's crib.
He stared at it, uncomprehending, the cyber-fox plushy held loosely in his hand.
"...Soundwave!" He called, needing a level-head present before he started jumping to conclusions. "Get in here!"
He could hear Soundwave leaving the flight-deck to join him. And from an entirely different direction, he heard something else moving.
His spark, already fluttering nervously, began to pound in his chest at the sound of shuffling from inside the small storage unit next to Starscream's bunk. Megatron set the plush aside and slid off the bunk, into his knees before it. His hands were shaky but cautious when he began to slide the top drawer open.
It was only open a couple inches when he flinched back with a jolt of horror at the sight of tiny thruster-feet kicking. "No," he breathed, summoning the courage to slide it out all the way and reveal the tiny frame of a seeker sparkling, weeks old at most, fussy in it's nest of blankets. "Oh no..."
He heard Soundwave arrive, freezing in the doorway with a sharp intake of breath. Megatron couldn't tear his optics away from the contents of the draw to look at him. The sparkling squeaked softy, optics dim and squinting, hands grasping at it's blankets.
Megatron didn't know what to do.
Numb, he gave the sparkling the cyber-fox plushy. The sparkling squealed and shoved the toy's ear into it's mouth.