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imagine-darksiders · 2 years

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Fish Out of Water

Five Nights at Freddy’s - Security Breach

Daycare Attendant X Reader

Giant mer au.

Summary: What you're looking at is...

Well, quite frankly, it's impossible.

There's a face hanging above you, Lovecraftian in proportion – taller and wider than you are long, with features about as adjacent to a human's as one could possibly get.

For the first few seconds, you remain frozen to your spot, unblinking, half expecting the grinning visage to fade away as sobriety takes you back into its safe, sense-making embrace.A pair of milky, white eyes peer down at you, hanging in the expanse of yellowing skin, like twin pools of alabaster paint.

You'd hesitate to even call them eyes, but then, the damn things b l i n k.

Tags/Warnings: Mermay 2022, Giant Mermen, Amputee Reader, Amputation, Medical Trauma, Depression, Grief and Mourning, Ableism, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Minor Character Death, Car Accidents, G/T, Giant/Tiny, Explicit Language, Loss of Leg, Mental Health Issues

----

It still hurts sometimes. The leg.

Well, what constitutes for the echo of a leg.

'Phantom limb pain,' your physician informed you, 'Unsettling to be sure, but common and usually harmless.'

Harmless. You vividly recall tasting the bile on your tongue, and how you'd barely managed to withhold a bitter scoff as you sat there in that green, plastic chair whilst the spot below your right hipbone pinched and twisted around the ghosts of nerves that used to occupy the now empty space.

Physiotherapy was... disheartening.

Things you once took for granted, like standing up, suddenly became insurmountable tasks in their own right.

As the weeks dragged by, you acclimatised to the basic, clunky prosthetic limb provided to you by the hospital, and the whole while, your bitterness only grew until at last, after twelve, gruelling weeks fraught with despair, rage and terrible, numbing apathy, you were discharged from physio and hobbled right into a veritable slew of legal procedures.

Your paternal aunt had driven you back to the big, empty house on the outskirts of your home town - the house that had belonged to your parents not four, short months ago.

After just a few meetings with their solicitor and a signature or two... or three... the house was promptly handed over to you, along with a generous chunk of their estate.

A leg wasn't the only thing that drunk driver took from you on that warm, summer evening...

Still, you held no ill-will for the poor bastard. In the end, he too had paid the ultimate price.

You heard his funeral was a lonely affair.

The one you managed to put together for your parents was about as fine as you could make it.

Closed-casket, despite best efforts from the morticians. You don't think your mother would have wanted people to see her when she wasn't at her best, after all.

The hall was filled with businessmen and opportunists alike – former clients of your father's – all attending under the guise of 'friends,' and all terribly interested to know what the young heiress plans to do with the family business now that dear, old mum and dad have shuffled off this mortal coil.

The only real family who came was your Aunt, Lucy.

God bless her stamina, she had fielded the untimely questions in your stead. You were quiet for the most part, read a few words here and there, nothing particularly moving, but judging by the amount of people not-so-subtly checking the time on their Rolexes, short and sweet was probably the favourable route to go down.

In the months that followed, you underwent a metamorphosis of sorts, swiftly shifting from socialite to recluse.

Predominantly, it was the comments that rattled you; words whispered around corners after you hobbled by on your crutches, or murmurs you caught wind of over in the next aisle at the supermarket by gossipers who thought that a missing leg somehow equated to terrible hearing.

'Poor dear,' you heard on the daily.

'Such a shame.'

'Glad that wasn't me though...'

But perhaps the worst? 'Used to be quite the catch. All that money. But who wants to look after that for the rest of their life, eh?'

'Could hire a carer for her?'

Suddenly, you'd turned from a promising, young asset to everyone's missed opportunity.

Your parents lives had revolved around money. Their friends' lives revolved around money.

The revelation that in the eyes of the people, your value had decreased significantly with the loss of your leg was a laughable bagatelle... Until it wasn't. Until the remarks came too frequently and for too long. That stiff upper lip you'd inherited from your mother slowly began to wobble, and the walls your father had taught you to build were slowly chipping away, brick by brick. With every pitying glance, every morning that you woke up and peeled back the covers, every time you failed to distribute your weight properly and ended up taking a spill on a crowded street, you withdrew further and further into yourself, into the house, into the wine cellar.

Bitter and festering in a miasma of grief, you helped yourself to the reserves, down there in the dark with nobody but the spiders for company.

A bottle of 1959 Dom Perignon? Hideous aftertaste, but it helped with that phantom pain in your leg and the one in your heart.

And that was your wretched, little life, for several months following the end of your physiotherapy.

Eventually though, as is often the case with wittering aunts who don't know how to mind their own business, Lucy staged a one-woman intervention, all but hauling you out of the house by the arm and dumping you unceremoniously into her Aston. Damnable woman was a personal trainer. And a bloody good one at that. But it wasn't an exercise regime that was on her agenda for you.

“Darling, it's like watching a scorpion sting itself to death!” she exclaimed in that dramatic way that glamorous aunts often do, her scarf flying about in the wind as she sped aimlessly down the country lanes with the roof of the car retracted, “Of all my nieces and nephews, you always were my favourite.”

A bold-faced lie, but you'd appreciated her effort at the time.

“But you're ever so sensitive too, dear!”

Sensitive. A codeword used to describe the outcast who took more of an interest in artistic pursuits than seek to follow in the family business or other entrepreneurial exploits.

“It's a charming little cottage, your grandfather used to frequent with the gents from his fishing days.”

You realised right then and there what she was about to suggest. But you didn't offer up any protest. Not that there'd be much point. Your aunt had inherited the bullheadedness of her own mother, and once her mind is made up, there's little that can sway her focus, short of a chemical explosion.

“You know, Karen Blixen wasn't far off the mark when she wrote-”

“-The Deluge at Norderney,” you'd finished in a mutter, watching the neatly-trimmed verges flash by, there and gone in a moment...

“Well remembered!”

How could you possibly forget it? Any time Aunt Lucy heard of an ailment in the family, she'd come around, armed not with a packet of paracetamol or a cold compress, but with her favourite quote.

A pause ensued, and then the line you anticipated fell off her painted lips. “I know a cure for everything: Salt water.”

You had to endure her expectant gaze burning into you from the corner of her eye until you'd sighed, resigned yourself to your fate, and played along. “Salt water?”

Her response was instantaneous. “Yes! In one way or the other. Sweat, tears, or the salt sea.”

She'd half turned to peer over at you then, her fathomless eyes hidden behind those cat-eye sunglasses she always wore, even in the dead of winter when the sun was just a distant memory. You'd clenched your hands into the leather seats, hating that her focus wasn't on the road. Hating the whole car ride in general, really.

“I think.. a bit of time away by the sea would do you some real good, my dear.”

'But what good could an ocean do?' you wondered in dismissive silence. Certainly, it's true that the salt can help dry out cuts and abrasions and help the skin's tissue grow more effectively, but can it raise the dead? Can the properties of the sea rebuild a broken body, if not a broken soul? What almighty magic could the ocean offer someone for whom magic has been dead for a long, long time?

But then... what could you have possibly done in the way of protesting your Aunt's suggestion?

It was nigh impossible to win an argument against Aunt Lucy, even when you were at your most spirited. What hope did you have then, to argue against her with half your wit intact and a dark cloud hanging over you like smog from a factory's chimney?

“All right, Auntie,” you'd conceded, because to say 'No,' would be less sensible than waving a red flag in the face of a charging bull.

At last, her eyes had returned to the road and you relaxed minutely in the seat.

“Splendid, darling! Splendid! Oh, Daddy would be so happy to see the old place lived in again.”

The look of triumph on her face had eased some of your reservations. She liked to help, even if she did employ the battering-ram approach a little too often.

“I'll take you back to the house-”

You wager she'd have just kept driving until you agreed with her either way.

“-Derek can drive you down to the coast. He's been meaning to take the old Ghost out for a nice, long burn...”

Ah, Derek – the latest accessory that Lucy tended to dangle off her arm like a shiny bauble.

Volunteered for chauffeur duty, he'd pulled up into the driveway of your house just two days later in his pristine, white Royce.

And with a backpack stuffed with a few changes of clothes, your sketchbook and watercolours and of course, your clunky prosthetic, you'd settled tentatively in the passenger seat, offered him a polite word of thanks, and began your journey to the sea.

----------------

There are scarce few things in nature, you reason, that come quite so close to rivalling the splendour of a sunset over water.

You're perched precariously upon the precipice of a tall, chalk cliff, barely a hundred paces or so from the back door of your grandfather's rundown, ramshackle cottage that could use a coat or two of fresh paint to liven it up... maybe a fumigation... an exorcism...

Your legs – 'leg,' you remind yourself sharply – dangles over the edge of the cliff, heel kicking idly against the soft chalk beneath you.

Way down below, the sea swells and retreats gently from the rocks, back and forth and back and forth, wave followed by wave followed by wave.

'Aunt Lucy was right,' you huff with begrudging fondness. The bucolic sight is soothing, to a degree.

But there's only so much a nice view can do to relax the mind.

“God, that's pretty,” you drawl aloud to nobody but the open air before taking a long swig from the beer clutched in your hand. Three empty bottles are strewn about in the grass somewhere behind you whereas to your right, the prosthetic leg sits, unattached but constantly in your peripheral vision like a detested symbol of your missing piece – never coming close to the real thing, but trying its best to mimic a functioning limb.

You don't even notice that you've curled your lips into a sneer until the false is in your free hand and you're glowering hatefully down at the ugly, clumsy thing.

You couldn't really say what possessed you to start talking to it. If your parents were here, they'd roll their eyes and tell you to stop behaving like a child. They used to say similar things if they overheard you talking to your toys when you were very small.

'Only people who don't have any friends talk to inanimate objects,' your mother announced one day, peering down her nose at you, 'For goodness sake, don't let anyone hear you. People will think you're simple.'

You've kept your promise, at least. Even now, there's nobody around to hear you grumble matter-of-factly at your own, replacement leg.

“Everyone stares at you, you know.”

The leg, of course, doesn't respond.

“Tch.” Scoffing, you bring the beer to your lips again and grimace at the taste. “It's probably because they know you're just gonna break down in a couple of months, anyway. Then, they'll toss you in the landfill with all the... the other useless junk...”

In your misty haze, you'd swear that hateful leg gives you a condescending look.

“Fuck. You,” you seethe venomously, soft as a whisper but quivering like a leaf in gale-force winds.

It's perhaps the first show of real, raw emotion you've released since the funeral.

Fitting then, that it's here, when you're finally, truly alone, nobody but screaming gulls for company that you feel safe enough to let the proverbial walls come crashing down to the ground. The first flood of tears are a surprise and if it weren't for the way your vision blurs and warps, you'd accredit the moisture on your face to the waves that hurl sea-spray against the rocks far below you.

There are no silent stares out here, nor briefly stolen glances or excessive sympathy from well-meaning do-gooders.

Cheap beer from a petrol station mixed with grief and an unhealthy dose of repressed animosity for your situation make for one hell of an emotional cocktail.

Reeling the prosthetic leg back over your head, you turn to face the golden sunset, pinks bleeding like watercolour into reds and yellows as if some, great artist brought out his paints and decided to create a fleeting masterpiece that will only disappear in a few, short hours.

Then, with a shout borne of alcohol-driven acrimony, you thoughtlessly pitch the false leg forwards, hurling it clear over the side of the cliff and watching it soar through the air for several, glorious moments before inevitably, gravity does its job and the prosthetic begins to descend, down, down and down again, all the way to the ocean.

'.... Plop.'

… The resulting splash is wildly unsatisfactory.

Whatever catharsis you hoped to gain from ridding yourself of the embodiment of your disability doesn't come. In its place, you feel the telltale pang of regret shoot through your stomach, growing more acidic after you recall leaving your crutches back at the cottage...

“... You. Idiot!” you reprimand yourself, pinching the bridge of your nose and exhaling roughly through it.

The grass comes up to meet you as you flop over backwards with a heavy thud and fling an arm across your eyes, allowing the tears to spill from their confines and ooze in tiny rivulets down your cheeks and into your hair.

The beer bottles lay forgotten at the side of your head.

For several minutes, you content yourself to simply lay here on the cliff's perilous edge, knowing that eventually, you're going to have to drag yourself back up the dirt path on your belly, all the way to your grandfather's cottage where you'll need to make arrangements for a new prosthetic, not to mention compensate the hospital for the one you've just chucked into the sea like a toddler throwing her toys out of the pram.

Maybe your parents were right.

Maybe it is high time you grew up...

Sealing your eyes tightly shut, as if that would stop the tears from spilling, you remove your arm and stare up at the insides of your eyelids instead.

You could have sworn you'd already hit rock bottom when you woke up in the hospital bed to the news that your parents hadn't survived the crash, only to instantly learn that you'd lost a leg as well.

But somehow, this moment feels slightly more apt for the term.

Alone, misshapen, friendless and an orphan to boot, drinking beers and projecting onto a plastic leg?

This is bedrock. And it's your own, damn hand that's wrapped around the shovel that brought you here.

Way down below you, there's the sound of a particularly large wave crashing against the rocks. A few moments pass by in blissful solitude before the meagre light permeating your eyelids dims considerably.

You wonder, briefly, if the sun has at last dipped low enough on the horizon to bring about the coming night, or perhaps a cloud has simply moved in front of it.

The whispering wind sighs in your ears and whisks away your hitching breaths.

You ought to have known that peace is a fleeting thing, much like a sunset.

All of a sudden, you're jolted to attention by a loud clatter on your right that pulls a gasp from your lips and you fling your head sideways and lurch upright, eyes peeling open to land upon -

“What.. in the world?”

Reaching out with a shaky hand, you run the tips of your fingers along the hard, plastic casing of your very own, runaway prosthetic.

But... didn't you just...?

You cast a bewildered glance at the beer bottles nearby. Three utterly dry, one only half empty, spilling what remains of its contents into the soil.

… Right then and there, you absolve that alcohol probably isn't a healthy coping mechanism.

Still, at least now you don't have to drag yourself back to the cottage.

You aren't prepared to feel and hear the ground shudder underneath you, nor for the sky to tear asunder as if a growl of thunder had just boomed overhead.

“What the... Hell-!?” Your words die on the tip of your tongue as you finally decide to look up, and up, and further up still, until your neck is craned all the way back and your mouth drops open, incapable of stringing together a single, coherent sentence.

What you're looking at is...

Well, quite frankly, it's impossible.

There's a face hanging above you, Lovecraftian in proportion – taller and wider than you are long, with features about as adjacent to a human's as one could possibly get.

For the first few seconds, you remain frozen to your spot, unblinking, half expecting the grinning visage to fade away as sobriety takes you back into its safe, sense-making embrace.

A pair of milk-white eyes peer down at you, hanging in the expanse of pale, yellow skin, like twin pools of alabaster paint. You'd hesitate to even call them eyes, but then, the damn things blink.

Snapped back into your more sensible instincts, you recoil in horror as filmy eyelids sweep horizontally across the beast's sclera, serving as sobering proof that the thing you're staring at is indeed alive.

Throwing out your hands, you begin to scrabble backwards over the grass, kicking uselessly with one leg and at last, you suck down a lungful of air and unleash a scream so piercing, the gigantic face flinches back.

With the distance inadvertently created, you become all too cognizant of the fact that whatever this is, it is so much more than just a disembodied face.

Frantic, you catch a glimpse of its mouth that opens like a fissure splitting across barren ground, stretching impossibly wide until each corner nears the very edge of its round, flat visage.

Perhaps it should have come as a relief to you that in the place of nightmarish fangs as you expected, there instead sit a solid line of bristly, baleen plates, not unlike those you'd see in the mouth of a humpback or a bowhead. But a lack of conventional teeth does absolutely nothing to soothe the abject terror threatening to drown you under its icy waters.

“Ho-ohly shit!” is all you can muster, briefly giving up the mad, backwards scramble in favour of trying to get your legs underneath you, forgetting for one, crucial moment, that you have to stop referring to your legs in the plural...

You're too busy staring agog at the slender, sinewy torso rising up from beyond the edge of the cliff to realise that while one foot plants firmly on the grass, the other cannot, and as you attempt to heave yourself upright, you place far too much weight in the wrong hip and end up toppling over onto your side with a grunt of pain.

All at once, the sounds rumbling out of the behemoth raise in pitch. You peel your squinted eyes open again, only to shriek when you see the gargantuan mountain of an entity looming down towards you, that wide, terrible mouth emitting a long string of clicks and clucks that reverberate deep inside your chest.

Pointed, prehensile fins encircle its head and flop backwards to lay flat against its skull at the sound of your scream as the behemoth draws closer – too close for your liking.

“No! Stop! Get AWAY!” you yelp, torn between flight, fight and freeze.

What the Hell kind of cosmic being saw fit to end your life in such an unorthodox manner? It hardly seems fair.

You came out here to escape your troubles, not find newer, bigger ones.

'Nothing ever happens in that lazy corner of the country,' your aunts words cheerfully resound in your ear.

'Auntie...' You send her a quick and spiteful thought. 'You've got a really fucked up idea of nothing!'

Something huge, soft and wet prods at your intact calf and you let out another, desperate bleat, rolling instinctively onto your stomach and bringing your arms up to protect the back of your neck. Futile, perhaps, but this situation is hardly one that wildlife experts cover in their autobiographies.

Keeping the top of your spine covered against jaws that size seems fruitless in retrospect, but it's all you can think to do.

You aren't sure what's worse though - Having to keep the beast in your line of sight or not being able to see what's coming.

Cheek pressed uncomfortably to the grass, you crack open one eye and risk a glance up and behind you, only to instantly wish you hadn't.

Whatever the Hell you've come across seems to be fixated on your remaining leg, which is coincidentally the moment you discover that it has hands.

Four fingers and a thumb on each – eerily like that of a human's – but interspersed by a vibrant, orange membrane.

A webbed hand.

... Definitely aquatic then.

One of its appendages thumps resoundingly on the ground ahead of you whilst the other hovers curiously above your leg. Then, a single forefinger that looks to be even longer than you are extends forwards, nudging gently against your exposed limb, eliciting a flinch and a whimper from you in kind.

'What are you doing?' you pose to it in your mind, 'Checking how lean the meat is?! Go. Away!'

Rather than adhere to your pitifully shrill, internal demand, the creature brings its face in close again, causing sea water to drop from its fins and sprinkle down all over you like a rain shower.

With your heart in your throat, you watch it study your leg for another, arduous minute.

Then, the quiet is dashed like waves on the cliff face when its monumental, blank-eyed stare swings around to lock with your gaze, its mouth splitting into a fluttery, but unmistakable grin.

The sight steals what's left of the air in your lungs.

'It's smiling? How is it smiling?' Smiling would have to mean it's feeling an emotion of some kind. But... what if this isn't a smile? What if this is merely how the creature bares its teeth?

Without so much as a lick of warning, the beast suddenly leans down, parting its mouth with a warble that only prompts a far less sonorous cry to leap clumsily off your lips.

You fly into motion just a second too late, dragging yourself forwards along the ground on your elbows... for all of a few, measly feet.

A solid line of strange teeth close gently around the collar of your old, woollen cardigan and before you even have another chance to shout, you're hoisted up off the ground, yanking fistfuls of grass out in your desperation to remain adhered to the earth.

“No!” you gasp, swinging helplessly from the crooning monstrosity's teeth as it peels itself backwards off the side of the cliff and begins to slide down into the deep, blue waters below you.

“This can't be happening!” you repeat to yourself over and over again, “This is not happening!”

Things like this simply don't occur. You have to be dreaming. Perhaps you've fallen asleep on the cliff and this is all just a big, terrible, beer-induced nightmare.

The world around you turns into a dizzying blur of colours, shapes and motion as your captor heaves itself backwards, dropping further and further back down over the edge of the cliff until you're no longer looking down at the ground, but rather the churning sea that sits in wait, far, far below your kicking leg.

If it drops you from this height, the water will rise up to meet you like a slab of concrete. You won't stand a chance.

It's only in response to the disastrous height that you stop struggling and your limbs lock into place as though they've been encased in cement.

Rhythmic puffs of hot, rancid air flow continuously from the creature's maw and envelop your senses in breaths that stink of fish and seaweed. Paralysed as you are by terror, you can't help but gag at the stench.

Once you get your first, proper glimpse of the beast carrying you, icy tendrils of dread slither around your neck until it seems you can't even take in enough air to properly scream.

A rawboned, yellow torso tapers off about halfway down the cliff and seamlessly blends with a long, fleshy tail that disappears into the waters below. You can't tell whether the shimmering scales are simply reflecting the last, dying embers of the sunset, or if they're really that vibrant meld of reds and oranges, highlighted here and there by swirling patterns of the most indescribable gold that would have turned Midas himself envious.

Gradually, as the creature lowers itself down from the cliff to join the rest of its body in the ocean, you're struck quite fiercely that it might have finally happened.

You may have actually lost your mind this time.

There is no rational way to explain why you're being accosted by a giant, ethereal mermaid. Now that really is crazy.

The water all around the beast suffers a massive displacement when it drops its upper body in amongst the waves, bringing its face – and by extension, you – just above the water's surface.

“Wh-what are you doing!?” you splutter at what you're hoping and praying is just a vivd figment of your imagination brought on by trauma, grief and alcohol. Maybe those beers had been laced with something, after all.

In apparent response to your squeaked question, the creature hums behind your head, sending your teeth clattering against one another before it promptly peels its teeth out of your cardigan and allows you to drop the last few feet into the water with a startled yelp.

Salty liquid instantly rushes up your nose and floods into your mouth as you choose the worst possible moment to cry out.

For several, disorienting seconds, you continue to sink further below the surface, the cold of the water shocking you into stillness despite being dragged down by your thick, woolly cardigan.

Though your eyes sting already from the salt in the water, you force your lids to separate and peer through the slowly dissipating bubbles at the murky depths beyond them.

There is something inherently human to feel such paralyzing dread that comes with being in an open body of water alongside a predator. You discover that dread all at once when your vision is filled with that enormous, round face looming just metres in front of you in the water, its eyes squinted nearly all the way shut thanks to the smile that stretches its cheeks to their limits.

Together, the pair of you hang there in the vast, fathomless ocean, gazes inextricably locked, perfect strangers from entirely different worlds.

Behind the monster, its immense tail zips sporadically through the water in unpredictable motions that remind you an awful lot like a cat twitching its tail.

Is that what this is? Are you just the mouse being toyed with before a giant sinks its teeth into your vulnerable neck?

The creature's smile begins to wane the longer you float there until its entire head abruptly spins inquisitively to one side.

It's only now that you finally start to feel the burning discomfort enveloping your lungs, and all of a sudden, an entirely different kind of panic sets in.

You haven't yet been swimming, not since you lost your leg. You never learned how to get by in deep water with a missing limb! And your heavy cardigan is already so water-logged, doing its utmost to drag you further towards the seabed in spite of the salt trying to keep you afloat.

All coherent thought is torn right out of you and replaced with the very rational instinct to seek out the closest route to safe, breathable air.

In an explosion of limbs, you start to kick and flail like a mad thing, reaching out with laden arms to pull at the water around you whilst your one, remaining leg jabs frantically out beneath you.

Sunlight on the surface is quickly fading, but some still filters through like gold dust, too far away to reach, and the precious little air you'd sucked down starts to leak out from between your sealed lips and nostrils in small bursts.

In your frenetic scramble for the surface, you miss the way the beast balks at your behaviour, parting its teeth and releasing a confused warble into the ocean, as if the hulking thing can't work out which swimming technique you're aiming for.

The helpless display must perturb it however, because the next thing you know, a soft, malleable snout is nudging underneath your thigh, coaxing you gently up a little faster. In response, your whole body tries to lurch away from its probing face, but the beast easily keeps up, guiding you to the surface with careful bunts and pushes from its flattened nose. You don't even register that it's incremental to your journey upwards until your head finally breaks through into the open air and you gasp raggedly, spluttering, floundering to put some distance between you and the monster.

Below the waterline, your unusual acquaintance gives your leg another, scrutinising stare, glugging thoughtfully to itself before its eyes light up and it turns its massive bulk around in the water, shooting off with just a single beat of its immense, billowing flukes.

You feel something large pass underneath you, disturbing the water, but you're too busy fighting off your cardigan to pay it much mind. With a final yank, you peel your arms out of the heavy fabric and leave the article behind in your wake, dooming it to the bottom of the ocean where it had tried to drag you not moments ago.

That finished, you swivel yourself clumsily about in the water until you spy your next objective: the cliff walls. You hardly care that the waves are hurling themselves up on the jagged rocks, you only care to get something solid under your foot as soon as possible and get out of the sea.

Spitting another mouthful of salty water, you begin your slow, arduous paddle towards the cliffs.

Time and again, your head dips under the waves and you have to kick and claw your way furiously upwards again, knowing that you're only going to tire yourself out if you don't keep moving in as straight a line as you can manage.

With every passing second, you wholly expect to feel the teeth of the almighty beast chomp down around your ankle and drag you into the drink once more.

As you start to draw within spitting distance of the rocks, you feel the strength behind the waves really pick up as they surge behind you with terrifying force.

Safety is so, tantalisingly close, if you could just keep -

- A watery howl reverberates through the sea around you.

Your assailant hasn't given up the chase, it seems.

Just as you'd feared, you feel those teeth upon you. But it doesn't aim for your leg, or any other of your dangling extremities. Instead, with unbefitting dexterity, that enormous head emerges from the water behind you and it slips its teeth around the elastic waistband of your trousers, lifting you slowly out of the water.

“Woah! Hey!” you squawk, attempting to squirm out of the undignified position while the beast swings its great, finned head around, carrying you away from the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.

So, it didn't appreciate your attempt at escape. Well, what on Earth did it expect?

Dangling above the waves once more, you notice a shape moving to the surface and realise, with a jolt of panic, that it's the creature's hand, rising through the water to rest just below the surface, palm facing the darkening sky. It plops you down on your stomach in amidst those webbed fingers and draws its head back, waiting for you to spin haphazardly onto your back before it aims a gentle frown at you, teeth clacking together in apparent agitation.

It's all you can do to gape up at its face.

If you didn't know any better, you could almost imagine that you're being scolded by this behemoth of the deep.

From what you're gathering, the rocks are out of bounds.

“I.. I don't -... Please!” you blurt out, scrubbing at your face and smearing tears across your stinging cheeks, “Please, just let me go! I don't know what you want from me!”

You let your shout bounce off the cliff walls and watch how the beast's fins quiver in response to the noise, flaring with interest as it stares down at you in silence for a moment longer before it.... appears to heave a great, big sigh through its teeth, head sinking down to you once again, jaws peeling apart.

“No!” Cowering backwards against its curled fingers, you raise an arm to aimlessly protect your face, only to yelp in alarm as something tumbles out of the creature's mouth and lands with a wet 'slap' in its palm beside you.

When you chance a glimpse, you have to do a double-take.

It's... a fish? A half-alive trout, by the looks of it.

You can't help but stare openly down at it, your brows slowly drawing closer together as the slippery, silver fish gasps for breath in the too-shallow water gathered in your captor's palm.

Speaking of whom.. Above you, it lets out a croon, low and deep as it grins, seeming all too pleased with itself for some reason and casting expectant glances between you and its catch.

… What in the world does it expect you to do with this?

The silent question goes unanswered when the poor trout suddenly flops sideways and slaps its tail against your ankle.

“OH! EW! Ew, ew – heugh!” Grimacing, you nudge the fish away with the toe of your shoe, pushing it towards the edge of the gigantic palm. But just then, the behemoth holding you huffs a loud breath through its flaring nostrils and you snap your head up to eye it warily as it bends down to crowd into your space once again, forcing you to press your spine back even further into the cage of fingers surrounding you.

The fish had been halfway to freedom when it's suddenly plucked up between large but nimble teeth and, to your utter dismay, dropped right into your lap.

This time, your squeal of protest is much more emphatic and you shove the fish off your leg, squeezing yourself away from the face hovering in front of you, tilted to one side, as if you're the one confusing it.

Undeterred in its unknowable quest however, the giant hums anxiously and gathers the rejected fish in its teeth once more.

With a single chomp, the seemingly benign baleen that had once held you captive slices clean through the fish's body, leaving the head of the poor animal to fall uselessly onto the creature's palm once again, dead, unseeing eyes staring up at you where you sit with your hand clasped around your mouth, expression contorting into one of abject horror.

Tears begin falling in earnest now and your chest heaves in and out with each, shuddering breath you take.

With the other half of the fish still dangling by the tail from its teeth, the beast brings its head in close to you again and you blurt a cry of outright horror as it tries to press its mouthful to your lips.

Of course, you react as any sane person would to having a raw, dead fish-end so close to your tongue and nose.

You slap both hands over your mouth, squeeze your eyes shut and shriek out a muffled, “FUCK OFF!”

It responds by attempting to shove the 'gift' more insistently against your fingers, all manner of clicks and whinges spilling out of its bobbing throat.

Horrified that this is all feeling far just a little too real for you now, you turn sideways to try and escape, burying yourself into its clammy fingers and trembling around sobs that wrack you from head to toe and cause your chest to burn with the effort.

The last of the sun's rays finally disappear below the horizon, slowly turning the ocean around you a sinister and inky black. If you ever make it out of this alive, you don't you'll ever go near a body of water again...

Lost to your delirium, you don't notice the shift in the air and the breeze falling still... But your captor certainly does...

It can feel the vibrations shudder through the water, growing stronger with each passing second, and it can hear that deep, sonorous hum that travels along the waves like the roll of faraway thunder.

Disheartened by your refusal to eat, the behemoth reluctantly withdraws, swallowing the fish in a single gulp. No use letting good food go to waste. Then, it raises its head and turns its gaze out to sea, emitting a lilted croon in response to whatever had called it away from the tiny creature in its palm.

You finally notice that you're no longer being hounded by a dead fish and risk a glance up at the giant's face, surprised – and a little relieved – to find that its attention has turned elsewhere. But that relief is short-lived when you start to ponder over what has captured its focus.

Sniffling, you twist yourself around at the waist to stare out between the gaps in its fingers, even daring to put a hand on the membrane and pull it down a little to see.

And what you see turns the blood in your veins thick and cold and draws all the life out of your cheeks.

You'd thought the beast holding you was terrifying, but it pales in comparison to the monstrous entity rising like a monolith out of the deep before your very eyes, sweeping its gargantuan body through the waters towards you, silent and fluid as a ghost.

If the beast cupping you in its palm embodies daylight, then this gruesome atrocity must be its midnight counterpart. Polar opposites, but terrifyingly alike.

Where your captor's fins are bright and eye-catching, the creature looming towards you out of the darkness has a sail of the deepest indigo stretching from the top of its head down to the small of its pale, white back. It's face too is round as the moon, but the eyes...

You can't suppress a vivid shiver at the sight of those terrible eyes...

Like two, black tar pits that could swallow any light that tried to permeate them, save for the pinprick glow of two scarlet pupils hovering at the centre of each socket, somehow defying that very rule.

Below the waves, you notice dark, swishing shapes pulling the giant along, vast tentacles, eight of them, each one the length of a football field and roughly the width of a redwood tree and flecked with silvery speckles that resemble a galaxy blanketed with stars.

'Good god,' your mind supplies, 'It's part-fucking-cephalopod.'

The huge tendrils draw the newcomer up close to its fellow leviathan and it drifts to a graceful stop, blood-red pupils flicking down to you before returning to the other beast holding you hostage.

And then, it bares its teeth.

You barely manage to stifle a whimper.

Row upon row of sharp, jagged fangs jut from the top and bottom of its elongated mouth, gleaming in the pale moonlight that shines down from overhead as it hisses at its brethren, causing you to wonder if they're even affiliated at all.

Is it about to attack? It certainly doesn't look too happy from your angle?

But the beast holding you doesn't seem to be concerned, and instead, it suddenly lifts you up towards the other's face, eliciting a series of, 'No, no no's' that stream incessantly from your lips when you find yourself staring straight into that fang-filled mouth.

The new creature takes a second to peer down at you, its pupils glowing brighter with something akin to interest. It's a Hell of a thing to have that gaze searing into you, studying you, dissecting you with its blazing eyes.

... There's intelligence in those eyes...

In the next second, you flinch as it suddenly shakes its head from side to side and snaps its teeth at its softer counterpart, grumbling low in its throat and getting a click or two in response. To your untrained ears, they appear to be having a conversation of sorts, although what a pair of creatures like these two have to discuss, you don't even want to hazard a guess.

The smaller, brighter one ducks its head at a particularly sharp rattle from the larger beast, yet it still huffs out a response and lifts its other, unoccupied hand to place a slender finger against your leg.

Reflexively, you snatch your limb away from the touch and try to tuck it underneath yourself.

Ruby-red eyes drill holes into you as it falls eerily quiet, only the waves rocking gently against its hide make any sound. Then, after chuffing shortly at its opposite, the darker one holds out its enormous, webbed hand, crooking its fingers as if to tell the other beast, 'Hand it over.'

You're awfully certain that the 'it' in question refers to you. If it boils down to a choice between the two, you'd prefer to be killed by the beast without glowing, red eyes and a mouthful of shark teeth.

In response, your captor's orange fins flatten miserably against its head and it draws you close to its chest, but after receiving a withering glare, it concedes to hold you out once more, presenting you like a dainty morsel to the far scarier juggernaut, who wastes no time in extending its arm towards you.

No matter how much you might fear the beast to your back, there's no way in Hell you want to be anywhere near the one in front of you. You truly are stuck fast between a rock and a hard place.

Sinewy fingers, each tipped by claws as long as your hand, quickly eat up the distance between you and the newcomer. Gulping like that dying fish, you try to shove yourself backwards across the water-slicked palm beneath you, and you'd likely have taken a tumble right over the side if the approaching hand hadn't suddenly struck like a viper, propelling forwards and wrapping around you at a startling speed that knocks a wheeze out of your lungs.

“-Ack! DON'T!” you holler, but it's already far too late.

Like serpents, the fingers wind around your torso and leg, yet they leave your arms free, and you waste no time in trying to scrabble furiously against the solid bands of muscle constricting all around you.

“Get your hands... off me!” you demand shrilly, bristling like a cornered kitten and sounding about as intimidating as one too. The entity, however, hardly seems bothered as it lifts you close to its face and tips its hand, fingers unfurling until you find yourself sitting in the cup of its palm, where it swiftly places its thumb across your stomach, holding you still, content to ignore the feeble shoves you give to the heavy appendage.

To the rear of your odd trio, the yellow creature is croaking and mumbling through pursed lips, wringing its gigantic hands as if something has made it anxious, yet it draws close up behind its counterpart and keeps its eyes glued to the side of your face as you remain helplessly in the secure yet surprisingly cautious grasp.

The new beast doesn't squeeze you to a pulp, doesn't try to stuff you between those fangs or wrap one of its tentacles around your neck to choke the life of of you... Instead, after peering down at you for a few, awful moments, it turns about in the water and begins moving, not further out to sea, but towards the cliffs you'd come from. You barely have time to process this strange turn of events before you're suddenly tilted in its palm and brought up against a cool, clammy chest, pinned there by dextrous fingers as the beast stretches four of its prehensile tentacles up towards the top of the cliff.

Incapable of escape, you watch in horrified fascination as the suckers on each limb adhere themselves to the walls and it begins to climb, hauling itself up and over the edge with you still clutched to its pasty chest.

You vividly hear the sound of glass smashing as its tentacle lands of top of the discarded beer bottles, but aside from twitching its frills at the sound, the behemoth doesn't outwardly react.

With slow, loping movements, it begins to pulls itself along the ground using its tentacles, perturbing you even further with the knowledge that it can traverse both land and sea.

Near-enough silent, its limbs swish through the grass and carry you up the slope, right to the back door of your temporary domicile.

By now, you've essentially given up attempting to make sense of the goings-on around you and resolve to simply remain still and limp in the creature's grasp, hoping for the best, but definitely expecting the worst.

Yet, as if the two entities haven't surprised you enough, you're further stupefied when the one holding you lets out a resonant hum and lowers you to the ground just in front of the back steps, by the door. It doesn't let go of you though, keeping you securely fastened underneath its thumb for several seconds, ample time for your initial captor to heave itself over the clifftop and drag its cumbersome body up to the cottage as well, chirruping as it catches sight of you again.

It's no surprise that the tentacled beast had an easier time lugging itself over the ground thanks to all its additional limbs.

With safety beckoning only a few feet behind you, you attempt to struggle against the thumb once more, but you soon go rigid as the creature of midnight blue lowers itself down onto its elbows, sending a quake through the ground when it makes contact with the Earth.

Holding your eye – because really, how are you supposed to turn your back on something that large and horrifying – it slowly extends its neck towards you, the wicked teeth inside its mouth prying themselves apart.

The sudden reminder of those very real threats hits you like a sack of bricks and you start to fight against its hold in earnest, batting at its thumb with clenched fists and choking out a desperate plea, “Oh, god! Please don't!”

Vivid memories of that dead-eyed fish spring up unbidden in your mind's eye.

You... don't want to die. Not like this, at least.

Your parents were ripped away from you against their will, through no fault of their own.

You never realised how badly you want to be in charge of your own fate until now. The very thought of being chewed on as nothing more than a snack for this wretched, undiscovered sea monster turns your heart to lead.

Through bulging eyes, you can do nothing but watch on, morbidly transfixed as a slimy, pitch-dark tongue creeps out from between the creature's barbed teeth and begins to slither towards you, prompting a string of curses to dribble off your lips.

Stuck with nowhere to go and almost seeing double from the panic fizzing in your brain, you clamp your eyes shut and dig your fingernails into its fleshy thumb, waiting with bated breath...

A sudden, unexpectedly damp sensation swipes against the bottom of your damaged thigh and you splutter out a gasp, flinging your eyes open to see the grotesque tongue ghosting over the scarred tissue that mars the bottom of your stump.

Pulling a face, you give the fraction of a limb a twitch and jerk your opposite leg across to kick feebly at the creature's encroaching tongue.

“Hey! Stop that!” The reprimand hardly comes out as anything more substantial than a meek whimper, but the creature does draw its tongue back behind its teeth with a huff. You have no idea what kind of bacteria live in that saliva, but an infection is the very last thing you need right now.

The beast pulls itself away and you're filled with an almost insurmountable urge to weep with relief when it finally, finally peels its thumb from your stomach and begins to tilt its palm forwards, allowing you to slip off onto the back step on your rear, gaping up in shock as it pulls its hand away again.

Free at last but still aghast at the thought of turning your back on not one, but two, aquatic deities, you shuffle backwards up the step until your spine hits the door behind you with a loud 'clunk,' rattling it inside its flimsy frame.

One of the darker beast's tentacles begins to approach and you snap your head in its direction, wondering if you could get to the key beneath the mat and unlock the door before the twisting appendage reaches you... but once again, it seems your apprehension is unfounded. A small flash of white catches your attention, half hidden by narrow coils, and as you stare, the beast raises the limb a little closer to you, then drops its captured item by your foot, slowly retracting the tentacle once its deed is done.

You blink owlishly down at the object.

It's your prosthetic leg.

“I...” But words more compounded than single-syllable vowels fail you.

Why would they return this? You'd almost forgotten all about your missing limb, deeming it comparatively mundane when seen next to a pair of colossal, otherworldly beings.

Movement, again, this time a flash of yellow and orange has you raising your eyes just in time to see the ichthyic creature all but shove its counterpart out of the way in its haste to stoop down and thrust its face out towards you, and before you even have the wit to lift your arms in some sort of meagre defence, it's enormous, red tongue darts out and slaps wetly against your chest, dragging a rough line up over your throat, face and hair and leaving a delightful trail of slobber behind as a parting gift.

The urge to vomit becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. It wasn't so long ago you watched that mouth devour the lower half of a trout, bones and all. Spluttering incoherently, you raise your hands and swipe the creature's saliva out of your eyes, shooting it an exasperated glance that goes utterly ignored.

With a roll of luminous, red eyes, the paler of the two grabs the smaller beast by its wrist and begins the arduous task of dragging it down towards the edge of the cliff.

Before they leave however, your initial captor offers you one last, longing glance, then it turns to let itself get tugged along by the other creature, and with a quick swish of tentacles and flukes, the two of them vanish over the side and leave you wonderfully, blessedly alone on the back step, wondering whether to call the police, animal services, or the nearest mental health unit.

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ivycorp · 1 year

Text

Riot's TFP AU: Megatron as a patient, or how Soundwave tries to not go insane with his leader's unfortunate addiction to a certain Prime

From the moment Megatron left his quarters knowing that Soundwave was really cross with him, he knew there would be more consequences than just the communication blackout. Walking to the bridge he was barred from entering by the TIC, who simply pointed him in the direction of the medbay.

There were battles to be picked in one's life - and usually the warlord picked them all - but this time the guilt from disappointing his most loyal friend (beyond acceptable parameters) could not be stopped. It flooded his circuitry, making him flinch away and nod; he turned away from the door and followed the path to Knock Out's domain. Soundwave followed him like a shadow, most likely to ensure he reached the medic and stayed there for whatever reason he deemed necessary.

Megatron doubted he would like the outcome, but he knew that the blue mech was not actually plotting his demise - if Soundwave wanted him dead, he would already be melted down for the Cause before he stepped out of his room.

He wouldn't even blame him - TIC did not wish to lead, so it would not even be a selfish decision to climb rank. If Megatron ever became unsalvageable, Soundwave would put him down, simple as that. But before that ever happened, he would exhaust all the other options first.

Which, apparently, included getting the warlord examined.

Knock Out turned towards the opening door, unsurprised to see their leader sulk inside, nor to see the company. He gestured towards the berth the warlord was repaired on just a day prior.

"Hop on, my Lord, I have been informed you require a full physical," the medic began, as he took a relevant datapad in his servo to take notes on.

Megatron shot a look at his TIC, and upon seeing a small motion of the helm indicating the direction of the berth, he crossed over and laid down his tired frame. When he felt a gentle tap and heard a firm but polite 'please open the mediport for me, sir', he allowed a rarely used panel to reveal the port entrance, feeling oddly vulnerable. He didn't have to worry about Knock Out doing anything dangerous in Soundwave's presence, but the multitudes of professionals had taken a look at him and either gave up at once, or did the same just after a short while - when they realized how uncooperative of a patient he was.

The silver mech didn't really mean to be so difficult - but nearly every piece of medication tasted so bad to him that he would end up throwing it up or away instead of taking it. His body was in a permanent state of screaming, and his coding had not been updated in eons. Because of this, there was a limited patience to explain to yet another doctor that:

Yes, he couldn't recharge regularly;

Yes, he was very sensitive to the bright lights, and it made his helm feel like it was splitting apart at times;

Yes, he was aware his optics were no longer working as before.

No, he was having enough exercise;

No, he was not trying to off-line himself from lack of maintenance;

No, he would most certainly not discuss his self service schedule.

Meds, injections, operations - and, of course, therapy. The standard result.

This only meant he would be purging his tanks for a month trying to follow any instruction and fail from the distasteful residue from the medicine - all of this causing him to lose hope of the diagnosis being correct. He would feel let down at the lack of effect, get angry, and the cycle continued. There were periodic attempts to get this addressed - until he finally went out to get Dark Energon and was under nobody's care for a couple of years.

Not that he needed somebody to take care of-

An image of smiling Optimus crossed his mind, and he scratched out that last thought.

Knock Out used his distraction to plug into the exposed port, completing handshakes with his old programming and starting the check-up procedure. He raised the datapad, frowned at it, and took a look at the warlord.

"My Lord, when was your last full frame medical check-up?" Knock Out inquired, tapping the empty log on the patient file.

Megatron muttered something quietly.

"I didn't catch that, sir, you need to speak up, please," he asked again, a bit less patiently.

"I think it was before we left Cybertron," the mech answered without looking at the medic. He knew what to expect by then - a huff of anger, an exasperated sigh, or a combination of both.

Instead, Knock Out grew silent.

The red bot turned towards Soundwave, clearing his intake to catch his attention. TIC flashed a questioning glyph on his visor, as the medic asked:

"Is there any upcoming operation that requires Lord Megatron's presence or particular skill set?"

The blue mech paused, visor flashing with a flurry of images as he cycled through the upcoming plans and schedules. When the screen blanked once again, Soundwave shook his helm negative.

"Lord Megatron: not critical to operations before next rota generation," he added in a short burst of combined recordings. Knock Out nodded thoughtfully, still connected to the silver mech, and reached out to another datapad, filling it up and passing it to the TIC.

"That would be probably enough, if we don't take too many breaks," the mech said matter-of-factly, as the blue mech read up the contents of the form - before adding his own signature.

"Splendid, that's taken care of," the red mech smiled, and added as an afterthought prompted by the newfound professional concern:

"Some of the tests will take a while, so I believe we could turn this into an opportunity to check up on the entire staff," Knock Out observed the TIC for a moment, and after receiving a tired nod, waved the mech politely away.

"Fantastic, I will send over the list for the worst offenders and for the necessary shopping - or specialists to start looking for," he added, as he already was opening up a call to his conjunx to get cracking on the personnel's files.

Megatron was slightly confused at the odd exchange, but when the form was passed back to the medic, pieces fell together.

The rota is generated every six Earth's weeks. He could vaguely recall seeing the update warning a few days prior. The fact that the TIC signed anything the medic gave him, meant he was officially approving something.

They benched him.

As Soundwave turned to leave, Megatron blurted out a short chirp of distress, but remained in place when the visor turned to look at him one last time.

If it had been anger, he would have understood, possibly tried to overwrite the signature with his own - but he knew his loyal friend for a long time, and this was not that.

No, Soundwave was trying to hold onto hope. That Megatron could still be 'fixed'. The door slid shut, and the warlord felt hollow as his CPU supplied him with a number estimate of that happening.

It was depressingly low.

"Well, My Lord, your file is currently very patchy, I will need to check everything," the medic's voice drew his attention back, as he stared at the smaller mech blankly. He tilted his helm curiously, but his silence was taken as a permission to speak more. Knock Out started explaining the details, the plan of a lengthy cycle of checks and possible treatments, when Megatron raised his servo to cut him off.

"Why do you bother telling me this?"

The implied 'it's not like I can disagree and leave' hung in the air.

The red Con looked at him with a mix of worry and hesitation; putting the data pad he was holding on the side table, he decided to respond:

"Because you are not a subject to be studied, sir; you deserve to know what am I going to ask you about and why, especially since I would rather we worked together instead of me having to fight you on providing you medical care," said the medic, looking Megatron straight in the optics. Normally, it would make the bigger mech tense up, sensing competition - this time, he felt it was more of a look of careful wish for cordiality.

He sometimes forgot that Knock Out was an actual medic that could do his job well. And apparently, for some inexplicable reason, decided to employ his skill fully in his case.

Megatron nodded his helm, and tried to focus on what his old-new doctor was saying. It seems he would be in for a long haul.

*****

The check-up took a long time. As the warlord and medic were cooperating to help get a complete picture of what was out of the acceptable norm, Knock Out cursed not being able to discuss this with another professional - he was sure even Ratchet would not scoff at the multitude of issues he kept on adding to the file.

Lord Megatron was a medical disaster.

The silver mech had been riddled with pain that became such a norm that only the strongest pain relief would have made any difference. He did admit that the Dark Energon provided a dampening effect, and the medic immediately pushed the internal fluid check to highest priority.

Contamination from the use of the mysterious substance was spread out across the frame, lingering despite lack of external exposure at surprisingly active levels. Knock Out noted with alarm that the normal Energon digested was being tainted, most likely keeping the warlord sedated without his knowledge.

To remove the influence of the Unmaker would be to remove the only relief - and Megatron was still in a lot of pain despite its presence.

The red bot called for Soundwave's support when he had to share this particular piece of diagnosis, afraid of a possible lapse in the arrangement he managed to turn this situation into - worried it would cause the warlord to lash out. In an unlikely turn of events, Megatron's face blanked out, before he tersely agreed to get the flushing procedure started.

When he woke up afterwards, he stared at the ceiling of the medbay for a long time and turned to Knock Out:

"I severely underestimated just how much the Dark Energon numbed the pain," he said, gritting his denta, and the medic took the hint, excusing himself for a moment.

The low wail of pain could be heard through the walls. When it stopped, the red Con let a couple of short, measured in-vents out, before he got back. The silver mech was back to his stoic expression, but the curled servos indicated he was still struggling to get back to living with the actual amount of pain he knew he managed to suffer in silence before.

The return to the prior state of things was way harder than he expected.

Knock Out did not hold any viable alternative that could have rivaled or surpassed the effects of the substance they just purged from Megatron, but he was going to try to get one - or possibly get some of his patient's aches away.

One of the easier identifiable issues came to when the red bot examined the warlord's optics. When the silver mech flinched away at the passing light, Knock Out nearly dropped his tool - he knew there were going to be problems connected with them, the medic himself left some notes with a string suggestion for corrective action, but it never went beyond a temporary measure in form of shaded corrective visor.

Mostly because Megatron kept on 'forgetting' to wear it.

This time around, however, the access to mediport allowed the smaller mech to see the intense flare of pain, suggesting a helmache forming. He hummed before reaching out and deactivating the light, and ordering the other lights to dim.

The ache receded, systems noting lower strain.

"My Liege, I know we talked about this, but you really should be wearing the shaded visor we prepared for you," Knock Out mentioned, putting the tool away on a prepared tray table. Megatron grumbled a bit, but the medic had grown to know by then that it did not mean he reached the end of his tether, but that the mech was reluctantly listening.

The warlord not doing some sort of token protest usually meant he tuned the conversation out. Knock Out learned to sense those moments, usually waiting for the mech to get out of this particular tactic from sheer boredom.

"Do you still have the old one we made you?" asked the doctor, and seeing the shake of the silver helm, sighed.

Another thing to make.

"I will get one more done for you, sir, but if you don't use it, I'll have to wield the next onto your frame - your optics are set for much darker surroundings and no matter how many times I fix it, it shifts to pre-sets every time, causing you helmaches," he promised, putting a note down on the file. The medic could see Megatron was observing him, trying to gauge the seriousness of the threat; and at that point, Knock Out was very serious.

His momentary suggestion to check out the entire ship had ended up with way more work on his servos than he expected - worse yet, the mechs he was treating needed help beyond his skill.

Soundwave was updating him daily on the procurement and negotiations, but the millennia of war effort meant there were not many who would be willing to provide help to Decepticons - unless, of course, they paid a hefty fee.

Starscream was handling the budgeting, and seeing this supplied his recommendation: they needed to call Swindle. He would be most likely to get the results despite the cut he would be taking, so they allowed the mech to search the markets for their targets.

The shopping list grew every day.

Swindle was ecstatic.

Knock Out additional concern was the odd disposition of their supreme commander - namely, the distaste for one of the most common additives there existed. It was nearly in all of the medications as a stabilizer, and it was very rare to have any perception of it in the Cybertronian population.

Obviously, Megatron had an extreme case of it.

At first, when the medic realized his patient was very reluctant to take the meds, he tried hiding it in refueling rations.

It was also the last attempt of this solution pathway.

Megatron was able to feel the slightest presence of it in whichever substance he consumed, making it impossible to hide. Knock Out had to go apologize to the SIC who got accused of trying to poison the warlord that day.

For some reason, however, when the medic found colored glass in a similar pattern as the meds, the warlord ended up loving them - crunching on the marbles happily. Bribing the mech into taking more medicine became slightly easier with the promise of getting more of these in return.

Luckily, this time around the oddities of the Decepticon commander's frame came in handy - the glass didn't cause any issues, instead processing them easily. Knock Out checked a few times for possible residue buildup which occurred in some mechs with foreign substances, and noted with relief no adverse effects. For all he cared, Megatron could eat as many as he wanted, if it meant he would take the medicine.

Especially that they were still battling his insomnia…

The silver mech's recharge logs were all over the place - with no rhyme or reason, and an alarmingly low average time of rest.

There were, of course, exceptions - but the analysis of those, run in tandem with the known occurrences of loud music being played in particular quarters made it clear why that would be.

Knock Out cringed inwardly; since they were trying to solve this problem too, that was not the answer they could utilize.

*****

Solar cycles passed, and the life on Nemesis carried on.

With the warlord confined to a rigid schedule and the SIC at the helm, everyone seemed to lose some of the tension that came with Megatron's return from space.

Dark Energon was now fully isolated in Shockwave's lab, behind three different access codes held between Starscream, Soundwave, and Knock Out - their commander was banned from approaching the substance under threat of getting Tarn as a round-the-clock minder. As the DJD's leader volunteered readily to do it, the warlord kept far away from the lab.

The peaceful time was met with enthusiasm: the Vehicons were thrilled to have time to indulge in their hobbies and getting slagged less, thus the sense of community grew. The trinkets that got collected from around the Earth started showing up in shared spaces, colors and soft lights getting incorporated into spartan decor of the Nemesis. The dimness remained, as per Knock Out's insistence, but the variety of the glittering points strewn across the halls provided enough coverage in a pleasant manner that even the officers found appealing.

As the majority of the crew had been either dragged or came in willingly for a check-up at the medbay, the morale improved; who knew that showing concern for the troops would make them feel better?

The communication blackout was still in effect, but there were exceptions added to the list, allowing the troops to be contacted on operations outside of the ship; the ongoing income streams have been re-opened too, due to the increased spending estimates.

The Nemesis has changed - but none of its inhabitants could say anything negative about it.

*****

After the first three weeks, both Soundwave and Knock Out were satisfied with Megatron's progress - to the point they found it fitting to provide positive reinforcement.

Namely, returning the access to his private room for recharging.

Releasing the warlord from the all-cycle supervision was done on a condition that he would still show up at scheduled times so the medication could be monitored, but the privacy of own berth and trinkets was to help facilitate a gradual adjustment back to the normal daily routine. They couldn't shut him in medbay forever.

Though it seemed Soundwave wouldn’t mind this idea, if it kept him away from Optimus.

For a while, it worked as intended - Megatron followed up on their agreement, coming on his own volition to see Knock Out before he would be escorted by Soundwave to the office, where he would be finishing up on the reports back-log. He was not yet allowed back on the bridge, but there was not so much happening with the operations schedule keeping things on the down low for at least another couple of weeks. Starscream had a good hold of matters, so he couldn’t even have an excuse to be more involved - it was annoying, but as the medication went on, he appreciated having time to deal with the most irritating of side-effects at his own pace, without multiple witnesses.

Coming back to his own quarters was odd, at first - he didn’t miss the sounds of resident medical staff getting it on, but that was mostly because he couldn’t reach the same level of completion in his own self-servicing due to his odd arrangement with Optimus; not to mention that he couldn't deny the couple their happiness when one of them was his direct physician which could (and would) leave Nemesis at the mere suggestion of this sort.

He got used to the red mech, and would rather avoid having to lose the one medic they have around - or at least the only one they had that did not look at every patient as a science experiment.

As he closed the door and started getting on the berth to rest, he sighed, feeling the buzz under his plating come to the forefront of his mind yet again. In the medbay, it was easier to avoid the temptation, but in the privacy of his room, it came back in full force. The warlord was trying to wait the desire out, already sensing that he was fighting a losing battle. He could not allow himself to overload, his mind reminded, indulging into it would only drive the frustration higher.

Megatron managed to wait it out for the entire three days.

As his systems reported increasing signs of struggle, on the fourth day he found himself stepping over the threshold and going automatically to the interior sound controls.

He didn't think consciously about what he was doing - his servos moved in a well-known pattern, familiar music filling the space, as he turned to resign himself to losing himself for a bit in another fantasy.

A small explosion rocked the ship, stopping him from arranging himself in a preferred position on his knees. Momentarily distracted, he went to check it out, his combat systems greedily hoping for something to punch. When it turned out to be nothing major, he took off back to the room, where he was stopped by Soundwave standing by the door.

The music was still playing, only fractionally muted by the walls.

Megatron's plating tightened defensively, but when the TIC pointed him away with an air of disappointment, the silver mech sagged and obediently dragged himself to the medbay.

*****

The Decepticon leader had known payment for his relapse was due - the reinstated ban of his quarters was proof of that, but even he couldn't expect what his friend would choose as a revenge tactic.

When he heard the news of Autobots showing up to Starscream's operation, he was understandably curious, but as the fighting occurred during his scheduled medbay visit, he didn't pay it much thought.

Until the message arrived later on with two attachments. No words. Just the files.

But they came from Soundwave.

Megatron braced himself, and opened the first one.

The recording opened to his quarters, quickly led towards the storage compartment. The silver mech was mortified when a slim servo reached inside the closet and pulled the box with interfacing toys out. There was no looking around - Soundwave knew where it was and came for it directly.

As he watched the path of the TIC lead to the incinerator in Shockwave's lab, he started to panic.

The warlord was in denial the entire time, until he saw the box get tossed inside, opened slightly to allow the heat to reach the interior. The blue digits turned the settings lower - the container would not incinerate completely, but it would be greatly damaged nonetheless.

As the fire raged, Megatron's spark filled with anguish so visceral, he let out a noiseless cry the entire time the box burned. When its charred remains were moved into another container, his throat hurt despite him not uttering even a whimper.

The recording ended.

He didn't want to see the other one, but he knew that if he didn't see it, Soundwave would force him to watch it the next day in the office. He resigned himself to being mortified beyond what he already felt.

Megatron was not disappointed in that regard.

It must have been the fight earlier this cycle, as they didn't get to face the Autobots in the meantime; he could see that the TIC emerged from the ground bridge carrying the same box he saw on the previous file.

The warlord was initially alarmed that the blue mech would just give it to the Prime, but instead a fight broke out, the box forgotten.

Seeing Optimus struggling against his top lieutenants was difficult, but he could not stop feeling proud of his crew - he knew they were capable, and seeing it was always fantastic to witness. As much as he didn't want the Prime dead, he couldn't help but marvel at the beauty of Starscream and Soundwave partnering up.

At least if they off-lined him in the end, he knew that they could take on anything.

He was surprised to notice the newcomers to the field, recognising the frames easily from memory - nearly forgetting what this all was about.

When a sharp order to retreat came, he noticed Soundwave pointed towards something, prompting Starscream's goading towards the Prime, who was barely holding himself from overheating from exhaustion.

The box.

The TIC stepped through the portal, but he looked back towards Optimus one more time.

Megatron knew he saw it too.

The wide blue optics filled with dread.

Optimus suspected what was inside - and if the warlord knew his lover as well as he hoped, he would have confirmed his guess.

Prime knew their collection was gone.

The silver mech curled in on himself, his spark pulsing with sadness and humiliation.

*****

Megatron was devastated - and it showed.

The progress made with Knock Out, the changes to Nemesis, the general improvement of morale, even increasing the rate of victories - all of this didn't matter.

Their box was destroyed. There was no fixing it.

And Optimus knew about it. They gave it to him, after all. Like a cursed gift.

The warlord felt unmoored - carried only by the routine he had complied with so far, missing at least a solar or two from his memory. He was mostly staring into nothingness, barely acknowledging anyone.

At least Soundwave did not act like he didn't know why he behaved like this. The TIC was waiting him out, as the silver mech would not even speak to his friend, communicating in nods instead. Megatron still followed the schedule they set up for him, but the balance has shifted - the repetitiveness of his days was grating, instead of grounding.

He felt trapped inside his frame.

Lying down on the slab in the medbay, he idly noted Knock Out's presence - he opened the medical port without prompting, and the red bot plugged in while maintaining a bit more distance than before.

The warlord couldn't explain why it bothered him, so he kept his mouth shut; with the other monitoring his systems, it was hard to avoid confrontation.

"There was an odd spike across your multiple processes right now, my Lord - would you be able to tell me why that happened?" Knock Out asked tentatively, more carefully than he used to. Megatron didn't think he actually needed to provide an answer, but something in the medic's posture prompted him to say:

"You are acting differently."

The red mech startled at the reply, expecting another session of complete silence. He weighed his options, and sighed.

"Lord Megatron, your recent behavior led me to believe you wish to be left alone - as your physician I am unable to comply with this preference, but I will not force my presence on you more than necessary," Knock Out explained, tapping idly on the pad in hand.

"I do wish to be left alone, but this has nothing to do with you, doctor," Megatron's words sounded perplexed, but honest. The title had been slipping into their conversations before, so the medic was pleasantly surprised it was not rescinded.

"I will take that as a vote of confidence in my skills then," Knock Out smiled, letting himself slide back into a more relaxed stance, as he pulled closer the tray with assorted meds for his patient. The frown on the warlord's faceplates did not go unnoticed, but there was little to be done there.

He needed to get the alternative medications soon, the rate at which they were going through the marbles collection was concerning.

Megatron took every pill into his servo and as fast as possible swallowed them in one go - the taste was dreadful and the quicker it went down, the less suffering would be there to experience afterwards. The worst was when something got stuck and he could not flush it down - he would rather claw his throat out at times like that then let it stay there to dissolve on its own.

The silver mech started to power down, knowing he should try to allow the new concoction from the Pit to do its job. Knock Out let out a quiet sound of relief, as the evening routine went by the easy way this time around. He bid his commander a quiet farewell and locked the door to the medbay behind.

*****

Megatron didn't realize when recharge claimed him, but an undefined time after he laid down, he found himself being shaken awake by a pair of familiar servos.

He scoffed, unwilling to wake up, because he must still be asleep.

There was no way it was actually Optimus - he wouldn't do something as stupid as come onto Nemesis, so he must be dreaming.

The touch became more insistent, so he lazily on-lined his optics.

Red and blue filled his vision.

"Hello, love - you're finally awake, I was worried I wouldn't have a chance to talk to you," said Optimus with a smile, as he stood right by Megatron's shoulder like this situation was completely normal for them.

"What are you doing here?" Megatron hissed out, starting to get up, when a servo on his chest pushed him down.

"No, don't get up - I need to leave soon, it took me a while to get around the lock and I'm expecting alarm to be raised pretty soon," rushed the Prime, patting the silver plating pacifyingly, placing a kiss onto the other's helm.

Right as the warlord was about to say something, the shrill sound of intruder alert sounded out throughout the ship.

The Autobot cursed, as he fumbled around some item in his servo, before he pushed it into Megatron's hold.

"Here, I got you something - I had some time and well… couldn't stop thinking about you, and suspected I was not the only one like that," Optimus chuckled right over his audial, so he could be heard over the sharp sounds filling the medbay.

Megatron, who could not comprehend this surreal situation while still fighting off the effects of interrupted recharge, just nodded and curled his digits around the gift. He was rewarded with another kiss, and a thrilling purr of "thank you, darling," as Optimus stepped away, watching the door to the medbay.

The warlord sat numb, observing as lights of a ground bridge flickered in the dim room, and loud shouts were heard through the walls in the corridor.

Prime lunged into the barely formed portal right as at least ten Vehicons, Breakdown and Starscream burst into the medbay, nearly falling over Knock Out's short frame as he keyed the entrance open. The shots they sent towards the source of light never reached the mech going through it, instead leaving scorch marks on the walls.

"Lord Megatron, have you been injured?" Starscream inquired after it became obvious they came too late. The silver bot shook his helm negative, as he kept his field tucked in tightly.

"Move the ship and check how he had been able to pinpoint our location," he ordered, shifting focus away from himself towards the security of the Nemesis. The seeker shot a suspicious look towards his leader, but nothing seemed out of order - and the concern raised by the mech was valid. They needed to understand how the Prime was able to get onto the ship and so far inside before the alert went out.

They couldn't let it happen again.

Decepticon SIC nodded, offering an acknowledgement of the order back to the warlord, and waved everyone out. The seeker had to find and talk to Soundwave - the TIC would be most likely the only one who would be able to trace Optimus's path, and who could counter it.

Megatron watched them all go away, and when the doors closed with a soft whoosh, his field unwound itself, spreading around the space like an explosion.

He was filled with so many contrasting emotions, there was no way he would be able to recharge again.

Curling his digits around the small item in his servo, he pondered:

Perhaps he could spend the time on something more… pleasurable.

******************************

Another ficlet inspired by @transingthoseformers's TFP AU, a direct follow-up to this and running parallel to this - and fleshed out by these posts about Nemesis time wth Megs as a patient.

#tfp au #tfp_AU_writing #transformers #maccadam #megop #i am taking liberty in making Knock Out a competent medic - just not a full-blown professional #mostly cause I do not want to force Megatron into even more distress - he's already in medical hell as is #and is complying because soundwave is really cross with him #there is a certain trust needed to get any medical care going and working #and I want there to be some respect between them both for this to yield fruit #esp since megs has it so bad they are all fighting a losing battle - but maybe #JUST MAYBE #they can fix some of the pain that plagues his aft #also yeah when i breached 2k I knew it was going to be... a while for me to finish this #and Riot you keep on adding more stuff so I had to go OH DAMN WAIT REWRITE XD #loved it tho #this AU is beautiful and I already surrendered on getting the WIP list to just #never end for this AU #it's just adding on and adding on #it's better than not having a prompt #so yeah #love this #love the AU #i hope i am not talking too much here #but i do hope you at least wont hate it

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