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Confess, Tyrest orders.
He does not.
There is nothing to confess to.
Least of all the ‘sin’ Tyrest thinks he should be guilty for.
There’s more pain. There’s the leash he’s gotten out of, oh, how many times now? Not enough to matter. He fights it but Star Saber gets him in the cell regardless.
The cell is loud and quiet both. He’s been trained for all of this. For capture, for isolation, for torture. He’s spec ops. Skids made it through Grindcore. Getaway can do this.
There’s voices all around the cell but they all come from his head. He aches for external vocal stimulation. He wants to be talked to. Or even talked at. Instead, it’s just his head, just thoughts that go on on on. Hate and despair and panic and more and there’s Prowl, no, where’s Prowl, where’s his rescue? there’s Skids and Skids is fine and Skids isn’t dead and Skids isn’t cold constructed so Tyrest wouldn’t be doing this much to him anyways. There’s bitter anger and hate and so much hate and it’s too much to direct attention on every person he’s known in the world, so it starts directing inward. He wants to hear anything but his own thoughts. He would accept it if Tyrest came in to try to get him to repeat that confession.
He can practically hear Tyrest speaking it anyways. He’s heard the script how many times? Hundreds. He hears it now.
It almost sounds true. Primus certainly isn’t in his cell right now. Getaway wonders if he’ll start to resent that too.
Confess, Tyrest orders.
It’s the same thing every day. The same words, the same tone, he hates how much they’ve wormed into his brain in the absence of other stimulation.
Getaway writhes against the table and stays silent. He knows how to. He knows how to aggravate as well, deflect the pain. He’s spec ops. Spec ops can handle it.
Everyone talks eventually, he remembers Jazz saying sadly once. They’d been talking about the old enforcers. About legal confessions. About people that never committed the crimes they went down for.
It’s not what Prowl taught. But Prowl probably knew it. He knew it and just wouldn’t share it for his spec ops because he wanted them to think they could always win, succeed, not disappoint him.
But everyone talks eventually. They’ll say what they think their captor needs to hear.
Confess, Tyrest says again, another day.
Getaway confesses.
It’s routine still, after that. The only thing that’s changed is his participation. There’s still pain. Saying Tyrest’s little script hasn’t made the pain go away.
You want to burn, Tyrest would say the few times he’s weak enough to try to tease and wheedle his way out of getting tortured anymore.
You want to. It’s your immolation. Doesn’t it feel like absolution?
It feels like agony.
It feels like despair.
It feels like all the thoughts and hate that he’s got waging war inside whenever he’s left alone, all the chaos and noise he never had before.
It feels like it comes back to that name Tyrest is so obsessed with. Primus. Primus. Used to swear. Used to curse or bless. Primus. Primus, who Tyrest is so convinced is real. Who he’s so convinced has abandoned cybertronians.
He’s smoking. The circuitry in between his plating is fried. It’s a constant run of pain. Getaway wonders if he’ll be put into stasis and sent for a medical visit this time. He wishes they kept him awake for those trips to the medic. He wants to hear anyone but Tyrest talk. They know that. They won’t let that happen. They narrow his whole world of speech and conversation down to these sessions.
He’s smoking and writhing and it hurts, it hurts, and Tyrest is standing overhead looking down like he’s something that deserves looking down on. Something. Not someone.
Yes, Getaway agrees frantically for him.
Yes, it’s the pain of immolation, the fires of absolution, the price a worthless cold constructed has to pay.
Tyrest has a hand on his head when the shocks have stopped.
Do you want to confess? he asks, because he’s changed the script.
No. Getaway wants to break the crown’s spikes off his head and shove them through the hole in his face. He wants to get away from here. He wants Skids, and rescue, and there’s again some bitter part of him that thinks we rescued Skids out of Grindcore in less days.
But rescue wasn’t coming. He was left here to rot. To rot, to burn.
It’s absolution.
He rapidly spits out the script.
I am the reason Primus left you. I’m an affront to the life he gives.
I am not Created, I am constructed. My spark is false. Primus never made me. Primus would never touch me.
I am a worthless artificial life.
Primus hates me.
I am a worthless artificial life.
Primus would never have chosen me for anything.
What was anything, anyway? What had he ever held onto getting chosen for? Getaway was content with what he had, before. Before, when Primus was something to swear or showcase excitement and he just took it as a fact that, if the god was out there, he’d blessed Getaway equally.
Tyrest made it unequal.
Tyrest wanted him broken. So it had to be wrong.
His fans were spinning hard enough to knock him into a reboot when he finished. From the outside, he had to make a pretty picture of desperation.
Desperate he was.
For rescue. For argument against everything this crazy glitch kept saying.
It didn’t come. He lay there venting his way into stasis.
There was a hand on his head. Common enough, after confession.
It was always the same thing. Every damn day. They blurred together. This was eternity. This was reality.
Good, Tyrest would say. Flatly, without real passion, because there was nothing to Tyrest anymore anyways. He’d dug a hole in his brain. That sort of damage could completely change a bot. It could take personality or language or emotion or memory away, depending on the part of the module the damage happened at.
Broken. He was broken by someone who wasn’t even there anymore.
That had to be a special sort of low.
He’s not in there forever. There’s some wild accident and the crew of the most incompetent ship he’s ever witnessed finds them on accident. They’re upset over what Tyrest is trying to do. Getaway supposes that should be what they’re most upset about. The kill switch is a pretty appalling thing.
They didn’t come for him. They don’t break out with the purpose of getting him out of this hell. They break out for Tyrest’s sake, to stop the killswitch.
There’s a little orange guy in the cell. He calls himself a therapist. When the rest are in a rush and moving around and ‘saving the world’ because they have a Prime with them and that’s what Primes do, the therapist is the only one to notice how Getaway is slower than the others. He hates that about himself. He’s better than this. He’s the universe’s best escape artist.
He tries a little small talk that Getaway reciprocates on automatic, but it doesn’t last too long before the world seems to implode.
The killswitch must have gone off, because he sees that he’s not the only one to collapse when the agony strikes. It’s like a hot iron directly on his spark. He’s burning from the inside out. There’s fire spitting from his eyes and old fuel intake at his neck and he’s collapsing to writhe on the ground. This is it. His spark is an ember and it’s going to burn into nothing in a moment. His body is a pyre for it. He wonders if the afterspark is real and if cold constructed will be allowed in after they’re burned clean in Tyrest’s flame of absolution.
But it’s a small wonder. Because there’s not much time for thought. There’s only pain.
Pain so bad. Pain, his old friend. It’s been how many hundreds of days with pain?
He’s writhing as wildly as he can, slamming his arms against the ground, vocalizer sputtering.
IamthereasonPrimusleftyou-I’manaffronttothelifehegives-IamnotCreated,-Iamconstructed-IampainIampainstopstop-Mysparkisfalse-andburningstop-Primusnevermademe-Primuswouldnevertouchme-painhurtpain-Iamaworthlessartificiallife-Primushatesme-Iamaworthlessartificiallife-Primuswouldneverhavechosenmeforanything-
He’s on the ground seizing and he doesn’t even realize that he’s spitting out a frantic stream of words until it’s over and the orange mech comes up to him all concerned.
I’m sure that’s not true, he says.
And Getaway pretends he didn’t hear it. Because no chance in hell is he going to explain the confession.
It’s just a conditioned reaction to pain. Say it, get told 'good', go back to your cell. It’s taught behavior. He shouldn’t feel ashamed for it.
He never hears it brought up again and he never finds his way to that therapist’s office on the Lost Light.
Tyrest is gone, Star Saber is gone, the killswitch is gone. So things should be normal.
They should be normal again, right?
Getaway doesn’t remember what normal is.
He’s with spec ops again. Skids is here. Skids doesn’t remember them. Atomizer is here too and Getaway finds himself gravitating to the archer more instead.
One day, he asks him if he believes in Primus.
Atomizer sort of shrugs. It’s not a big deal to him.
Something about that burns. All over his body and from his spark.
He clamps down on a flinch of discomfort.
Your loss, he tells him when the question is turned back to him. I always have.
He’s important. Vital. Everything. He chooses who has worth. Who's lovable. Who will be stared at by a public and looked up to.
He’d probably be just like so many others and loom down over Getaway. He’s not one of his supposed creations and he’s definitely not someone that’d be chosen by a god.
Getaway shakes that off.
On one of the rarer occasions that he actually talks with Skids one on one, he asks him the same. It’s not like he would when they’re in a group with them, Nautica, whoever else joins them at the time. It’s not him being playful. Tied upside down just to show off how he can get himself out of it. They clap sometimes. They’re impressed. He knows it’s because he can get out of anything- he’s the world’s most superior escape artist. He can escape anything except Tyrest. They shouldn’t clap. They’re mocking him, inside. They’re patronizing. They think that he’s just grasping for straws to prove his lost worth to himself and they know it’s impossible. He can see them thinking it, hear them. He thinks he might hate their friendly faces.
Skids stills. There’s something confused on his face.
I don’t know, he admits. I want to- It’s hard to say, because if he is, then- I’m pretty sure there’s a hell, so wouldn’t there be a-
But he freezes there. His hand starts pulling an invisible trigger, over, over. Getaway wonders if the movement is Skids' confession. He drops it and makes sure to nudge gun the entire moment away from Skids later.
It’s for his former partner’s sake. Getaway still does stuff for his sake. Even though he doesn’t remember them as them, didn’t remember to rescue him, thinks Rodimus is an acceptable Prime, and has amnesia making him forget all the plain reasons Megatron shouldn’t get a so-called second chance.
But Rodimus and Megatron are two of the same. They share a similarity. They’re forged. -They’re real.- They have disgusting egos.
Getaway decides he wants them dead.
At first, it was just Megatron.
But Rodimus…
He’s a Prime. He had the matrix. He was chosen by Primus.
-you’ll never be chosen by Primus-
And he’s the most egotistical, stupid, unintelligent mech Getaway has ever seen. He’s all flash. He’s loved. He’s loved for that flash, for those smiles.
Getaway thinks of the way many strangers on this ship treat him. He thinks of how easy it’s been to get little Tailgate to adore him.
What for?
For him?
Or for whatever he chooses to be in order to get a plan done?
Everyone loves Getaway. It’s common knowledge on this ship. Everyone loves Getaway. But nobody loves him.
Nobody knows him.
There’s something empty about that. About spec ops. The masks. He’s not as stable as he was before Tyrest. He shouldn’t find this affecting his sense of self so much.
He can’t just quit. He can’t admit he’s lost.
So he thinks of someone who would know him. Who would know him completely and still chose him.
There’s not really a living person that would qualify.
So Getaway picks a specter instead.
Primus is real. He decided that back in captivity. He had to, because he was constantly suffering and Tyrest had made that about Primus. He has to put something on the pain.
But Tyrest is wrong, he also decides.
Primus is real. He’s the one that made the Matrix. He’s the one that made an Afterspark. When Skids dies, down below on that planet, (he wasn’t supposed to die, they were only supposed to kill Megatron) he has to go somewhere. Getaway tells himself he will. Besides, reportedly the necrobot was real, so why not Primus?
And the DJD had confirmed for him that the necrobot is real.
The DJD are a funny subject. Just like all the aliens he got on his side. None of them believe in Primus. The organics have no reason to. The DJD make it a crime. Getaway really had to go to the unfaithful to get the necessary work done. He knows how Tyrest felt when Tyrest had needed Getaway to build his killswitch.
Ah, well. It’s nasty business, but he gets it done.
And yes, he’s displeased to hear that Tarn and his army decided to kill the rest. He almost agrees to go back down there.
But Megatron must die. The rest are unfortunate collateral. When Rodimus dies, maybe the matrix will be given to a new Prime by Primus.
Maybe.
Getaway could laugh. He’s just teasing himself at this point. He knows very well that the matrix will. And he knows exactly who it’ll go to.
He busts the psychotherapist out of prison for three reasons.
One, he needs the mass mnemosurgery and the serial killer that invaded the ship can do it. Getaway had to get caught up on that whole thing from some of the people not trapped motionless in Overlord’s brig, because all he got out of it was the vague distant sense of something traveling through the ship, baring sins for all. Nothing to fear there, he thinks cockily. He’s already bared his sins and beared them too. He’s got none left.
Two, it’s a symbol to himself of the change in command. The old order locked this bunch up. The new order wasn’t the old order. Getaway saw use where Rodimus hadn’t even tried to see anything beyond his own shine.
Three, he wants this. He wants this play, this teasing faux scene of films and documentaries. He wants to lay back on the couch without a care in the world, vent his feelings, and hear them validated.
He makes sure that Sunder isn’t around for his therapy sessions. Froid assured him that they will respect his privacy. Froid is full of lies.
No matter.
It’s an interesting venture regardless.
He hears that Sunder used to want to be the vessel of Mortilus. Getaway can do one better: he’s going to be the vessel for Primus. He’s well on his way.
That subject comes up. Of course it does. Froid catches his desire and conviction to be a Prime and it’s easy to try to find the root of that. Getaway can oblige.
I’ve heard promises from Primus, he tells Froid easily. Flicks dust from his fingers and keeps eyes half lidded. Like this is a casual admission. Like it’s believable.
Froid keeps humming, soothing, patronizing. He says that Getaway isn’t wrong. He’s full of lies. Getaway finds himself enjoying this less than he wanted to.
Tyrest comes up. Of course he does. Tyrest and his delusions are oh so tied to Primus and Primus is tied to Primehood and here that’s what Getaway had actually wanted to talk about.
But Froid had moved to different waters. He’d prodded. Made promises.
You’ve faced trauma. I can help. The first step is just to talk. To bring it out instead of repressing it.
Repressing it. That was kind of like what Skids did, after Tyrest, with the nudge gun. Wasn’t it?
Skids hadn’t been the same. He hadn’t been on Getaway’s side after.
Getaway didn’t want to be like Skids, then. No repressing.
Besides, this was private. Supposedly. If it wasn’t, the only other listener was a crazy murderer who probably wouldn’t be interested. It’s not like Froid would tell this to the whole ship. Froid enjoys studying him. Froid wouldn’t risk losing that.
So Getaway tries to stay casual and easy and he talks.
I’ve heard promises from Primus and they’ve told me this isn’t true. This isn’t true. Alright?
But I had to say this thing. I was forced to. Dozens of times. Over a hundred, maybe.
They pause. Froid is leaning over his arms on his legs. Hungry. It makes him think of Tyrest. Getaway realizes that laying down on the couch means placing his head at leg level for anyone seated. They stare down at him. They’re all staring down at him.
He spits out the script. It’s easy to do. It runs in his brain almost daily.
I am the reason Primus left you. I’m an affront to the life he gives.
I am not Created, I am constructed. My spark is false. Primus never made me. Primus would never touch me.
I am a worthless artificial life.
Primus hates me.
I am a worthless artificial life.
Primus would never have chosen me for anything.
Froid watches, hungry, the whole time.
His spark was spinning enough to be nauseating. He wondered if it was a mistake to say anything. He wondered if baring such a hidden thing was unallowed.
It’s very brave of you to tell me, the therapist with the serial killer pet praises.
So Getaway tells more of Tyrest. It’s hard. He pretends it isn’t. It isn’t supposed to affect him anymore. It was all lies. He’s sure it was.
Good, Froid says of his admissions, and it purrs as flatly as all the times Tyrest would say it.
He keeps going to those sessions but it’s mainly to hear Froid validate and praise him. He puts a stop to anything personal whenever the meeting starts leaning that way.
This isn’t working as smoothly as he’d thought it would.
Doubt has started creeping up. He’s feeding the crew to a maniac. He’s lost loyalty from many groups. Atomizer is starting to doubt him.
It feels like he’s teetering. It feels like he could easily find himself in disaster again.
It feels like Primus could abandon him. Again.
Or that Primus never came in the first place.
It all sounds like Tyrest’s voice. Getaway wishes it would shut up. There’s no reason for it anymore.
He’s stronger than he was then. He’s immune to the barbs of a delusional glitch.
Tyrest thought himself chosen. But he’d shown Getaway that he was the chosen one.
Thank you, appreciate it, move along now.
The self doubt and biting hatred of inferiority muted more. Still there, but dim. He drowned it out over and over and over again with a mantra on his worth. His bloated fragile worth. His real worth, Primus given, no one could take it away.
Froid didn’t believe in it, but he still agreed to help him foster it.
Froid was a fool like Tyrest. They were blind. Couldn’t they see? Yes, he used to be worthless, but he’s grown above that now. He’s shed that worthlessness. Tyrest told him to accept his immolation.
Tyrest thought that the best fate he’d manage was an immolation strong enough that his false spark might be allowed into the Afterspark. But Tyrest was wrong. Tyrest was always wrong, wrong! Wrong! A tribulation, an evil, an evil that hurt Getaway unfairly, with hurt that was not deserved, never deserved. Primus didn’t want his chosen one hurt like that by another mortal. He’d allowed it, but did not want it. Tyrest was wrong. But the time spent with him was worth it.
He has already surpassed every penance that Tyrest desperately tried on himself. He’s been absolved. He burned completely and came from the ashes, clean, chosen.
The purest metal comes from smelting.
Getaway belongs in that chosen role like no one else could: he’s burned his old self, he’s bared all sins, he became pure in the fire, and now his new self is nothing but perfection. Getaway Prime. A savior. A hero. A loved figure, known by all, admired by all, having worth that all acknowledge. He was that in all but official name, but he was destined to get it when he got the matrix. He was destined. This was what he got out of the hell spent with Tyrest. This was what gave that time its worth.
This felt good.
He was running a constant high. He was looked up to. No one was left to look down on him. He was power. He was strength.
It felt so very nice. And there was a constant deadly panic under it all that claimed they were always teetering on an edge where nothing but despair lay below.
So he couldn’t drop off that edge.
He’d found his place and happiness, finally.
And he’ll do whatever it takes to keep this position.
Tyrest dug the metaphorical hole into Getaway's head and the Light shone through.
He’s keeping that Light now. He’s keeping it no matter the cost.
He ends up contacting Star Saber by choice. Yeah. That’s not something he saw coming either.
The guy is as crazy as always. Tall. Deadly. He looks down on Getaway when he walks down the gangplanks.
It’s funny.
But Star Saber saw him at his worst. He watched Getaway be stripped away until only something tiny and raw remained. He’d seen a process no one should, unless it was also their role to.
So he accepted that role belonged to Star Saber.
Besides, it would be fun to see the tables of power turn. Now it would be Star Saber that followed him, listened to him, acted as a sword controlled by his arm.
He’s taken all the demons of yesterday and conquered them, controlled them, overpowered them.
The crew isn’t happy about Star Saber. Getaway isn’t happy about the crew.
It all balances out in the end, that.
Actually, Star Saber’s presence is a bit more unbalancing than he’d thought. And the crew definitely hadn’t gotten their act together. Getaway found himself readying other measures. They were fine measures. Sane enough. He wasn’t stressed at all.
He’d keep it together. It wasn’t like he’d invited Tyrest on board. Star Saber’s voice didn’t haunt him.
Nobody’s did.
Nobody’s.
There’s a lot of energon on his hands by now, technically. He knows this clinically, but he can’t feel any of it.
That is also funny.
He washes up after Atomizer and successfully frames the mess on one of his problems. He should feel bad about it, shouldn’t he? Atomizer was his closest ally after Tyrest. He’d been there like Skids hadn’t.
He should at least feel angry. The anger was what had pushed him into killing anyways.
He should at least feel the blood.
Once again, as he makes his way through the halls with a skip in his steps, he thinks about Tyrest. There’s just no getting the glitch out of his mind.
Tyrest was riddled in holes. He paid for guilt and sin through the release of pain. It brought him closer to not hating himself. Then the pain wore off and with that the release and he’d be feeling all that guilt and weight and self hate again. There were a lot of holes. Tyrest had a lot to hate about himself.
And he’d played around with his cold constructed experimental subject until he’d managed to cure guilt and sin from him too. But it wasn’t by convincing that experiment to drill holes in himself. It wasn’t release through pain.
Getaway thought he might be sort of the opposite from Tyrest. He’d paid for guilt and sin in other ways and now he didn’t feel a thing. He didn’t need to feel a thing. There was no release in the physical.
He wondered if this was how it felt to be a god. Senseless. Beyond senses.
He thought he might not even feel the fire kill him, after he ran deeper into it.
It’d fallen apart. It felt like lies, lies everywhere. It was panic and hate and hate. Floodgates, open. All that towering self esteem and worth he’d built for himself, up, up, too big to be secure and at risk of collapsing, shattered. It was back to the raw again. Rodimus fragging Prime had dragged him out of the fire and the heat had immolated him down to some pure, raw thing again.
That’s how he’d die. Trying to kill a Prime that didn’t deserve to be a Prime and undoubtedly failing so long as Cyclonus was there.
Good, many people throughout his life would say. Good.
Getaway burned without a fire. They had their backs to him. They didn’t deem him a threat. They didn’t deem him anything. He was a worm on the ground. He was a thing, a jealous ugly thing, and no one had wanted him over a mask.
It was a depressing way to go, but that was that.
And then Primus was there, a glorious standing war god, the god of life, the life of all cybertronians. And he was huge, he was tall, he was power incarnate, floating far taller than him but not looming, shadowing, looking down like the likes of Tyrest or Star Saber or Rodimus ‘Prime’. He was smiling softly and extending a hand.
And Getaway had known it. This brief moment of doubt aside, he’d known it. Primus found him, sought him out. Primus wanted him.
He was wanted. He was chosen.
There was a chant in his mind. Building, louder, excited and more excited.
I’m not the reason Primus left you. I’m no affront to the life he gives.
I am just as Created. My spark is real. Primus made me. Primus will touch me.
I am not worthless.
Primus loves me.
Primus is choosing me over Rodimus, me over Tyrest, me over everyone.
And with a final hope to spite everything Tyrest had tried to make him believe, and all the scrap of society picking someone like Rodimus to be a Prime, and all the disbelief and patronizing Froid gave him over this, Getaway reached up to take the shining hand.