Broken Ties (Chapter One, Part Four)
Part four of four of Broken Ties chapter one.
Perceptor shivered on his berth, wrapping his arms around himself. He couldn’t calm the torrent of memories invading his mind. It had been so long since he had walked those dark corridors that housed his childhood, his secrets.
He could swear that he heard the echoes, the echoes of his past, ringing in his audios. How he wished he could dispel them forever.
“Please Fa… Megatron, just let me go.”
Did that really come from him? That small, vulnerable whisper? Did he really almost slip and call that ghost Megatron in his mind ‘Father’ again? He hadn’t done that for millions of years.
Oh please Primus, make his creator let him go.
“Little one, are you alright?” Finehold asked, leaning forward a little to get a better look at Perceptor.
“I am… unsure,” Perceptor said honestly. “Finehold, what is an Autobot’s attitude towards life?”
“Ah, that’s probably the defining difference between the two factions. How we look at life.” Finehold leaned back and shuttered his optics, a thoughtful look on his face. Perceptor waited patiently for the old mech to tell him. Finehold always answered his questions.
“Decepticons-pardon me if my observation is flawed-see life as expendable. Does it matter if the life of a ‘lower’ being is lost? It doesn’t, not to them. Forgive me if I offend you, but I’d even venture to say that if you were to lose your usefulness, they wouldn’t care about your well-being or survival either. I do not believe they even care about your well-being now.”
Perceptor couldn’t help but agree. One small bob of his head let Finehold know this.
“Autobots are the opposite. From the smallest of organics to the greatest of machines, all sentient life, and some not sentient, is cherished. Autobots don’t fight because they want to. They fight to protect life and to protect those that they love. They don’t fight for power.”
Perceptor was silent, his fingers laced together. A foreign feeling rose up in his spark. Longing.
“I… can’t say that I’m familiar with that sort of attitude. All I have known is destruction and a feeling of worthlessness. But a life of protection? Not needing to take another life? Of simply living?” Perceptor held a hand over his insignia and looked into the distance. “To be loved? I don’t think… I don’t think that my creators ever saw me as more than a tool. Perhaps Soundwave, but in the end he looks upon me not as a sparkling but as a machine that must be taken care of. I… don’t enjoy killing. I enjoy learning. All I ever wanted was to learn.”
Perceptor looked at Finehold and huddled closer to him. His optics shined with a childlike hope that the Autobot couldn’t remember ever seeing there. “If I was a part of them, would they mind if I didn’t fight back with fists if someone was hurting me? Would they look at me like you do, like my value isn’t measured by how effectively I kill the enemy? Would they mind if I just tried to find out everything there is to know? Would they care about me, like I always wished my family would? Would they…” he looked down, “would they hurt me?”
Finehold picked up the sparkling and held him close. “They would love you, young one, and they would never hurt you. You would have friends, people who you loved and who loved you. You would be allowed to learn what you wanted. They wouldn’t care if you didn’t want to fight a lot; there are many pacifists in their ranks. You wouldn’t have to fear.”
Perceptor buried his head into the older Autobot’s chest, something he had never dared to do with any other mech. “I hurt Starscream terribly today. I do not wish to do something like that again, but Megatron wants me to. I think… I think I know a way to have the Autobots rescue us, rescue all the prisoners here.”
Finehold smiled down at the sparkling. “I don’t doubt it, little one. You are a clever sparkling, a genius in fact, and let no one tell you otherwise. When they come, we can tell them that you are from Trinox. Trinox was recently sacked and many of the civilians taken by the Decepticons. We’ll tell them that you were forced to serve. We’ll figure out anything else when they come.”
“Yes, Finehold.”
“There’s no way that’s right. Perceptor doesn’t lie. He doesn’t lie to us. He just doesn’t do that,” Ratchet said again and again, rereading the list.
“Well, it’s obvious that he did, so it’s all the more obvious that he doesn’t want us to know,” Wheeljack said, blinkers flashing with irritation.
“But he doesn’t lie.”
“Ratchet, just let him keep his secrets.”
The sparkling glanced both ways down the hall outside the control room. If he was found out now, he would be killed. He didn’t mind if he died, but then who would help get Finehold saved?
He worked a plate of metal from the wall, glancing at the wires within. He stuck his hands in and began to tap into his universal emulator. The best way to get the Autobots to swarm here was to send an Autobot distress signal. With any luck, it’d work. Without any luck… he’d prefer to not think of that.
Perceptor woke up from his fitful sleep yet again. He remembered that moment so clearly in his mind. It had indeed worked. The Autobot forces had arrived within the hour, and in the confusion he had slipped in among them. They had swallowed his story easily, hadn’t even run a background check, and Finehold had taken him as his apprentice.
None of the Decepticons had forgotten his betrayal, however.
Perceptor valiantly ignored Megatron’s furious gaze burrowing into the back of his neck. It had probably killed the Decepticon overlord inside to ask for the scientist’s help, but he couldn’t be choosy with a disease eating away at his armor. And besides, there was still a lingering mixture of fear and love inside the scientist’s spark for his creator, something that rendered him unable to actually kill or refuse medical assistance to the Decepticon.
“I hardly believe that I can work to my optimum level if you are so intent on watching my every move,” Perceptor said primly, not even looking up.
“I know how well you can work. Staring doesn’t do anything to you, does it, traitor?” Megatron sneered.
“It would probably be wise to not antagonize the one who is working to create a cure for you and your men, especially given that the person in question has no objective reason to help you in the first place.”
“I’m offering peace, Autobot,” Megatron snarled, optics burning in fury.
Perceptor simply raised an optic ridge coolly. Megatron never had been able to control his temper that well. He hated being in close proximity to the creation that had betrayed him, in his mind. “You must truly think me an idiot if you think I believe you. I know you, Megatron. Many millennia haven’t changed that.”
“Well then why are you helping me? We both know you were never afraid of getting killed,” Megatron said, crossing his arms and leaning back and snarling still.
“Your rather poor job of raising me made sure of that,” Perceptor said, a trace of contempt in his voice. “You very well know why I’m helping you.”
“That is weakness,” Megatron spat.
“And it’s that weakness that’s saving your life, so I would think you should be grateful,” Perceptor snapped. He never acted this way, why was he doing it now?
Simple: he resented his creator. Perceptor would even go as far as say he hated the Decepticon. But his sparkling self still clung to the strain of love that he had felt for the mech that had helped bring him into being, but the love had been twisted and contaminated by centuries of abuse and fear. And then further twisted by the millennia of fighting him, of seeing through clear optics what he had done.
Megatron frowned and leaned back on his berth a little. “Those Quintessons always were angry that we were forcing them to work on a project they didn’t want to work on. They probably meant for this to happen.”
“Of course they did, you fool. They recognized that you just wanted a mindless yet ingenious war machine, so they made sure to give me the spark of a pacifist. I figured that out long ago,” Perceptor said scathingly.
Megatron snarled, but he didn’t fire. He needed the Autobot scientist, and Perceptor was probably the only one who could get away with speaking to him in such a way.
“I see you have become more insolent over the years.”
“Probably because I’m not a sparkling anymore.”
“You were definitely more manageable as a sparkling.”
“Then I should thank Primus I grew up, shouldn’t I?”
Megatron sneered, something that seemed to happen a lot in the presence of his creation, but then his expression turned thoughtful. “Come, Perceptor. Why don’t you join us again?”
Perceptor looked up in surprise. “What?”
“Why don’t you join us again? You are right, you have grown. I could give you a position of power, or if you don’t want that you could stay a scientist. I’d be lying to say that I wasn’t impressed with what you have done with yourself, but I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t think it to be a waste for you to use your talents for the likes of the Autobots. They could never appreciate you. You haven’t even told them about me, have you?”
Perceptor glanced away guiltily. That was answer enough for Megatron.
“What about your Decepticon heritage? Your triplechanger status? Your tank mode? Have you even told them about your universal emulator?”
Perceptor looked increasingly guilty with every question. He looked back to his work, trying to ignore the overlord.
“They wouldn’t appreciate your talents, would they? They wouldn’t understand if you told them the truth. Even that yellow minibot, Brawn, doesn’t trust you as you are now. Is it simple dislike or does he have good intuition? I can understand better than any of them can. I am your creator, I helped design you. If you come back, you don’t have to be afraid of anyone finding out your secrets.”
“Megatron…”
Perceptor turned around slowly, his optics unreadable.
“I wouldn’t join you even if Primus himself came down and threw me into the Pit,” he spat at the overlord, and Megatron’s lips curled back to show teeth.
“If you don’t join I will reveal every one of your secrets to them publicly! They will abandon you the minute they find out about me.”
“That may be so, but I don’t fight you for the sake of war and bloodlust like you. I fight you because what you do is wrong, and no matter what you told me when I was only several centuries old, I’m going to fight in what I believe.”
Megatron’s expression darkened and his dental plates clenched. “Have it your way, then.”
Perceptor knew that Megatron would dispose of him the minute he was done with the cure, but he didn’t really care. He turned back to his work and began to concentrate.
Megatron had yet to tell the Autobots, but Perceptor knew his creator well enough to know that it wouldn’t be long until he made good on his threat.
He woke up from his half conscious state when he heard his door open.
“Hey, Perce, are you okay? You were making some odd sounds,” Wheeljack’s voice came from the doorway. Perceptor turned around to see two shadowy shapes, assumedly Ratchet and Wheeljack, come into his room. His hand drifted to his cheek, and he noticed that it was wet. He had been crying during one of those memories. Which one, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure if he had been crying during one he recalled at the moment.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You don’t sound fine.”
Perceptor flinched and his hand went up reflexively to deflect his creator’s fist from his face, only to jerk it down when he realized that it was only Ratchet’s finger that had touched his cheek.
“You don’t feel fine, either,” Ratchet said, tracing a small wet line down the scientist’s face.
Perceptor played with the idea of lying again, but he had already told enough lies. He decided on not saying anything.
Neither Ratchet nor Wheeljack pried. Instead, they both just sat on his berth. Wheeljack took his hand and squeezed it while Ratchet gently stroked his helm. Perceptor wondered vaguely if he should tell them to stop and go back to their berths for the sake of professionalism, but he decided against it. It called up shadows of memories in his mind, but not bad ones. Ones of listening to Finehold talk during one of his visits to the dungeon.
“You know, if you ever want to talk about something, me an’ Wheeljack are here to listen. We won’t judge you no matter what you tell us,” Ratchet whispered.
Perceptor thought about the medic’s words for a moment, shuttering his optics at the soothing hand on his helm. “I know you probably wouldn’t. I hope to tell you one day, but today isn’t that day.”
“I can live with that.”
“So can I.”
Perceptor let a small smile cross his face before falling into deep recharge. He didn’t need to tell his friends now. They could wait.
Perceptor appreciated it.
Perceptor shivered on his berth, wrapping his arms around himself. He couldn’t calm the torrent of memories invading his mind. It had been so long since he had walked those dark corridors that housed his childhood, his secrets.
He could swear that he heard the echoes, the echoes of his past, ringing in his audios. How he wished he could dispel them forever.
“Please Fa… Megatron, just let me go.”
Did that really come from him? That small, vulnerable whisper? Did he really almost slip and call that ghost Megatron in his mind ‘Father’ again? He hadn’t done that for millions of years.
Oh please Primus, make his creator let him go.
“Little one, are you alright?” Finehold asked, leaning forward a little to get a better look at Perceptor.
“I am… unsure,” Perceptor said honestly. “Finehold, what is an Autobot’s attitude towards life?”
“Ah, that’s probably the defining difference between the two factions. How we look at life.” Finehold leaned back and shuttered his optics, a thoughtful look on his face. Perceptor waited patiently for the old mech to tell him. Finehold always answered his questions.
“Decepticons-pardon me if my observation is flawed-see life as expendable. Does it matter if the life of a ‘lower’ being is lost? It doesn’t, not to them. Forgive me if I offend you, but I’d even venture to say that if you were to lose your usefulness, they wouldn’t care about your well-being or survival either. I do not believe they even care about your well-being now.”
Perceptor couldn’t help but agree. One small bob of his head let Finehold know this.
“Autobots are the opposite. From the smallest of organics to the greatest of machines, all sentient life, and some not sentient, is cherished. Autobots don’t fight because they want to. They fight to protect life and to protect those that they love. They don’t fight for power.”
Perceptor was silent, his fingers laced together. A foreign feeling rose up in his spark. Longing.
“I… can’t say that I’m familiar with that sort of attitude. All I have known is destruction and a feeling of worthlessness. But a life of protection? Not needing to take another life? Of simply living?” Perceptor held a hand over his insignia and looked into the distance. “To be loved? I don’t think… I don’t think that my creators ever saw me as more than a tool. Perhaps Soundwave, but in the end he looks upon me not as a sparkling but as a machine that must be taken care of. I… don’t enjoy killing. I enjoy learning. All I ever wanted was to learn.”
Perceptor looked at Finehold and huddled closer to him. His optics shined with a childlike hope that the Autobot couldn’t remember ever seeing there. “If I was a part of them, would they mind if I didn’t fight back with fists if someone was hurting me? Would they look at me like you do, like my value isn’t measured by how effectively I kill the enemy? Would they mind if I just tried to find out everything there is to know? Would they care about me, like I always wished my family would? Would they…” he looked down, “would they hurt me?”
Finehold picked up the sparkling and held him close. “They would love you, young one, and they would never hurt you. You would have friends, people who you loved and who loved you. You would be allowed to learn what you wanted. They wouldn’t care if you didn’t want to fight a lot; there are many pacifists in their ranks. You wouldn’t have to fear.”
Perceptor buried his head into the older Autobot’s chest, something he had never dared to do with any other mech. “I hurt Starscream terribly today. I do not wish to do something like that again, but Megatron wants me to. I think… I think I know a way to have the Autobots rescue us, rescue all the prisoners here.”
Finehold smiled down at the sparkling. “I don’t doubt it, little one. You are a clever sparkling, a genius in fact, and let no one tell you otherwise. When they come, we can tell them that you are from Trinox. Trinox was recently sacked and many of the civilians taken by the Decepticons. We’ll tell them that you were forced to serve. We’ll figure out anything else when they come.”
“Yes, Finehold.”
“There’s no way that’s right. Perceptor doesn’t lie. He doesn’t lie to us. He just doesn’t do that,” Ratchet said again and again, rereading the list.
“Well, it’s obvious that he did, so it’s all the more obvious that he doesn’t want us to know,” Wheeljack said, blinkers flashing with irritation.
“But he doesn’t lie.”
“Ratchet, just let him keep his secrets.”
The sparkling glanced both ways down the hall outside the control room. If he was found out now, he would be killed. He didn’t mind if he died, but then who would help get Finehold saved?
He worked a plate of metal from the wall, glancing at the wires within. He stuck his hands in and began to tap into his universal emulator. The best way to get the Autobots to swarm here was to send an Autobot distress signal. With any luck, it’d work. Without any luck… he’d prefer to not think of that.
Perceptor woke up from his fitful sleep yet again. He remembered that moment so clearly in his mind. It had indeed worked. The Autobot forces had arrived within the hour, and in the confusion he had slipped in among them. They had swallowed his story easily, hadn’t even run a background check, and Finehold had taken him as his apprentice.
None of the Decepticons had forgotten his betrayal, however.
Perceptor valiantly ignored Megatron’s furious gaze burrowing into the back of his neck. It had probably killed the Decepticon overlord inside to ask for the scientist’s help, but he couldn’t be choosy with a disease eating away at his armor. And besides, there was still a lingering mixture of fear and love inside the scientist’s spark for his creator, something that rendered him unable to actually kill or refuse medical assistance to the Decepticon.
“I hardly believe that I can work to my optimum level if you are so intent on watching my every move,” Perceptor said primly, not even looking up.
“I know how well you can work. Staring doesn’t do anything to you, does it, traitor?” Megatron sneered.
“It would probably be wise to not antagonize the one who is working to create a cure for you and your men, especially given that the person in question has no objective reason to help you in the first place.”
“I’m offering peace, Autobot,” Megatron snarled, optics burning in fury.
Perceptor simply raised an optic ridge coolly. Megatron never had been able to control his temper that well. He hated being in close proximity to the creation that had betrayed him, in his mind. “You must truly think me an idiot if you think I believe you. I know you, Megatron. Many millennia haven’t changed that.”
“Well then why are you helping me? We both know you were never afraid of getting killed,” Megatron said, crossing his arms and leaning back and snarling still.
“Your rather poor job of raising me made sure of that,” Perceptor said, a trace of contempt in his voice. “You very well know why I’m helping you.”
“That is weakness,” Megatron spat.
“And it’s that weakness that’s saving your life, so I would think you should be grateful,” Perceptor snapped. He never acted this way, why was he doing it now?
Simple: he resented his creator. Perceptor would even go as far as say he hated the Decepticon. But his sparkling self still clung to the strain of love that he had felt for the mech that had helped bring him into being, but the love had been twisted and contaminated by centuries of abuse and fear. And then further twisted by the millennia of fighting him, of seeing through clear optics what he had done.
Megatron frowned and leaned back on his berth a little. “Those Quintessons always were angry that we were forcing them to work on a project they didn’t want to work on. They probably meant for this to happen.”
“Of course they did, you fool. They recognized that you just wanted a mindless yet ingenious war machine, so they made sure to give me the spark of a pacifist. I figured that out long ago,” Perceptor said scathingly.
Megatron snarled, but he didn’t fire. He needed the Autobot scientist, and Perceptor was probably the only one who could get away with speaking to him in such a way.
“I see you have become more insolent over the years.”
“Probably because I’m not a sparkling anymore.”
“You were definitely more manageable as a sparkling.”
“Then I should thank Primus I grew up, shouldn’t I?”
Megatron sneered, something that seemed to happen a lot in the presence of his creation, but then his expression turned thoughtful. “Come, Perceptor. Why don’t you join us again?”
Perceptor looked up in surprise. “What?”
“Why don’t you join us again? You are right, you have grown. I could give you a position of power, or if you don’t want that you could stay a scientist. I’d be lying to say that I wasn’t impressed with what you have done with yourself, but I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t think it to be a waste for you to use your talents for the likes of the Autobots. They could never appreciate you. You haven’t even told them about me, have you?”
Perceptor glanced away guiltily. That was answer enough for Megatron.
“What about your Decepticon heritage? Your triplechanger status? Your tank mode? Have you even told them about your universal emulator?”
Perceptor looked increasingly guilty with every question. He looked back to his work, trying to ignore the overlord.
“They wouldn’t appreciate your talents, would they? They wouldn’t understand if you told them the truth. Even that yellow minibot, Brawn, doesn’t trust you as you are now. Is it simple dislike or does he have good intuition? I can understand better than any of them can. I am your creator, I helped design you. If you come back, you don’t have to be afraid of anyone finding out your secrets.”
“Megatron…”
Perceptor turned around slowly, his optics unreadable.
“I wouldn’t join you even if Primus himself came down and threw me into the Pit,” he spat at the overlord, and Megatron’s lips curled back to show teeth.
“If you don’t join I will reveal every one of your secrets to them publicly! They will abandon you the minute they find out about me.”
“That may be so, but I don’t fight you for the sake of war and bloodlust like you. I fight you because what you do is wrong, and no matter what you told me when I was only several centuries old, I’m going to fight in what I believe.”
Megatron’s expression darkened and his dental plates clenched. “Have it your way, then.”
Perceptor knew that Megatron would dispose of him the minute he was done with the cure, but he didn’t really care. He turned back to his work and began to concentrate.
Megatron had yet to tell the Autobots, but Perceptor knew his creator well enough to know that it wouldn’t be long until he made good on his threat.
He woke up from his half conscious state when he heard his door open.
“Hey, Perce, are you okay? You were making some odd sounds,” Wheeljack’s voice came from the doorway. Perceptor turned around to see two shadowy shapes, assumedly Ratchet and Wheeljack, come into his room. His hand drifted to his cheek, and he noticed that it was wet. He had been crying during one of those memories. Which one, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure if he had been crying during one he recalled at the moment.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You don’t sound fine.”
Perceptor flinched and his hand went up reflexively to deflect his creator’s fist from his face, only to jerk it down when he realized that it was only Ratchet’s finger that had touched his cheek.
“You don’t feel fine, either,” Ratchet said, tracing a small wet line down the scientist’s face.
Perceptor played with the idea of lying again, but he had already told enough lies. He decided on not saying anything.
Neither Ratchet nor Wheeljack pried. Instead, they both just sat on his berth. Wheeljack took his hand and squeezed it while Ratchet gently stroked his helm. Perceptor wondered vaguely if he should tell them to stop and go back to their berths for the sake of professionalism, but he decided against it. It called up shadows of memories in his mind, but not bad ones. Ones of listening to Finehold talk during one of his visits to the dungeon.
“You know, if you ever want to talk about something, me an’ Wheeljack are here to listen. We won’t judge you no matter what you tell us,” Ratchet whispered.
Perceptor thought about the medic’s words for a moment, shuttering his optics at the soothing hand on his helm. “I know you probably wouldn’t. I hope to tell you one day, but today isn’t that day.”
“I can live with that.”
“So can I.”
Perceptor let a small smile cross his face before falling into deep recharge. He didn’t need to tell his friends now. They could wait.
Perceptor appreciated it.