The Decepticon warship’s sensors had flagged the anomaly hours ago—an unfamiliar Cybertronian signal flaring to life somewhere deep within Earth’s desolate canyons. Megatron hadn’t delegated this task. He’d come himself.

The corridors of stone twisted and turned, narrowing until even the Vehicons at his back struggled to keep pace. The signal grew stronger, every reading confirming what his instincts had already whispered. He could almost feel your presence before the canyon finally widened into a clearing.

And there you were.

Alive.

The shock didn’t register in his stance—Megatron was far too disciplined for that—but it coiled in the depths of his spark. He had last seen you beneath a collapsing sky on Cybertron, your frame battered, escape cut off. He had left you there to be swallowed by the chaos. By all rights, you should have been nothing but a name in the archives of the fallen.

Yet here you stood, alive. And not in chains. Not at his side.

Every line of your frame was as he remembered—though time and distance had etched new edges into your stance, hardened your gaze. He could almost taste the defiance rolling off you, the same defiance that had once made you invaluable…and dangerous.

Every step he took into the clearing brought the past into sharper relief—briefs shared over dim tactical holo-displays, the way you’d read his thoughts mid-battle without a word, the late-cycle debates that had carved them into something dangerously close to allies… perhaps more than that. Strategies drafted side by side, battles fought in unison, the rare moments when you had looked at him and understood him in a way Prime never could. But those moments were dust now. You had chosen your side, and it had not been his.

He moved forward, silent until the shadow of his frame fell across you.

“I see the rumors of your demise were… exaggerated.”

No greeting. No pretense. Just the truth, stripped bare.

He studied you, cataloging every change and searching for any trace of the commander he had once known. What he found instead was the reminder that you had walked away from him, not simply from his cause. You had taken what he’d shown you—the deeper, hidden parts of himself—and cast it aside.

“And still, you stand with him.”

It was not a question.

For a long moment, he said nothing more, letting silence and the weight of his gaze do the work words could not. In that stillness, every unspoken accusation burned brighter than any threat he could voice.