Author's Note- Hello this is a TFP fic set post-Crossfire. Uncensored is up!

Pairings- Megatron/Starscream, later Starscream/Knock Out. Past Knock Out/Breakdown. Unconsensual Megatron/Knock Out.
Unbetaed.
Disclaimer- I do not own Transformers or its characters.
Warnings (uncensored version on archiveofourown)- Rated MA. Non-con/graphic rape, consensual slash, violence, Transformer swearing, angst, depression and death. Major Character Death in later chapters.
Units of Time:-
Astrosecond- 1 second
Klik- 1 minute
Cycle- 1 hour
Orn- 1 day
Decacycle- 1 week
Meta-cycle- 1 month
Solar cycle- 1 year
Vorn- 1 million years
Italics- Flashbacks/thoughts/memories/link speak.
Bold- Comm speak.
Recognisable lines are borrowed/paraphrased from Transformers: Prime and please expect massive spoilers for the series.
I hope you enjoy the chapter and please review.

And This Time, Stay Dead!

Chapter One- Possessions

Starscream stumbled haphazardly out of the freezing water, glad to be protected from its chill, and dragged himself up the sandy beach he had come across until his pedes met a less irritating surface. Might may beat flight but both meant nothing if the wielder was exhausted and half-starved. Leaning against a tree which promptly fell under the combined weight of him and the Apex Armour, he crashed cursing to the ground.

The grounded Seeker rolled over to give a brief longing look at the sky, aware he had been disloyal to the one entity he had sworn to himself he eternally belonged to, and silently apologised to it. Raising a servo, he pressed it against the icy blue metal directly above his spark and the armour folded in on itself until it rested innocuously on his chassis.

For a moment he intended to stand but the former Decepticon found that he was actually quite comfortable curled up on the firm but somehow still soft grass beneath him.

Elation that he had gotten not only a lovely new toy, but a good few hits on the Autobot leader and the usurper, who had stolen his rank and rightful place as, at the very least, a superior officer in the Decepticons, faded slightly in the face of hunger and ever-present anxiety. While things seemed to be improving slightly and he relished living alone, answering to no one but himself and doing as he wished, the uncomfortable lack of security his relatively new lifestyle offered unsettled him.

What could he ever hope to accomplish if he carried on like this?

Ruling the Decepticons was a dream even further from his grasp than it normally was. Arcee's presence in the Autobots ensured that he would never be welcome there; even though he was sure there were some Cons he had known by designation that the motorbike herself had killed the little hypocrite. Neither faction, then, would welcome him. The neutrals feared him, as they should.

What was left then, the humans? Vile creatures that had brought him strife even before theymutilated him. The lone creature scoffed quietly, he would never allow himself to fall so far again as to seek the aid of those beneath him even in his diminished capacity.

A small part of his processor sighed part-knowingly part-resignedly that he would one orn find himself crawling back to his former Master.

Whether Megatron would accept him back was another matter and so was only an option if Starscream was sure beyond any doubt that he was ready to face deactivation should the situation come to that.

A bird flew diagonally across his vision singing cheerfully if it could do such a thing and Starscream found himself tempted, in a flash of jealousy, to try and shoot it down but quickly subsided.

Waste of ammo, if nothing else.

Engines humming lightly, an amber light came up behind his optics requesting that he recharge. A quick scan of the terrain revealed him to be alone with the natural wildlife and, gradually, he slipped into a much welcomed rest.

Two cycles later a Warp Gate materialised several yards from the Seeker but Starscream remained undisturbed having fallen into a deeper shut down than he had intended.

A large figure stepped out and strode purposefully towards the small Cybertronian sleeping peacefully on the floor, partly shielded from view by a large dusty-red rock, both seemingly out of place in their surroundings. Though oddly centralised the two harsh beings, one of stone the other metal, were enclosed by glass land, trees ranging from ancient to young saplings and the ocean a few steps away.

Perhaps the rock had been washed up by a wave that had cleared the small beach having stolen it from its original location and that was why it clashed so harshly with its surroundings…

Like the mech and the little trinket the once-flier held as Starscream rested had been taken from him.

For a few kliks he hesitated, servo convulsing as the idea to withdraw his weapon from subspace flickered across his processor as he remembered all the trouble the slighter being had caused him and was sure to create in the future.

But then, life would not be so entertaining without Starscream around. Knock Out was fun to play with but it just was not the same.

And… the Seeker seemed to be regaining his usefulness, taking the Apex Armour right from under the nasal ridges of Optimus Prime and Dreadwing he begrudgingly admitted was no small feat. Starscream had had the gall to come aboard his ship and take his energon, though the performance he had given before killing those two Vehicons on discovery was quite entertaining to watch on the security monitor later.

His berth was growing lonely without his favourite toy and it should not be hard to convince Starscream to return, willingly or not.

His former second was quite clearly malnourished and was no doubt craving the sky. Energon and a T-Cog were not such a high price and Dreadwing was developing… disquieting sympathies of late if what Soundwave informed him was anything to go by, so the offer of Starscream's old rank was not out of the question either.

As the vain medic had insinuated it was a fact that since reaching Earth, Starscream was the only one among them to successfully accomplish killing an enemy. Even Hardshell, supposedly the strongest of his Insecticons, failed him in that regard.

Perhaps Starscream was not the failure Megatron previously thought him to be.

Thinking of instances where his Seeker disappointed him brought to mind the punishments he had put Starscream through, the recharging flier appeared mangled before his optics for a moment before the image vanished a blink later. How strange it was that, while he had harmed his soldier in every way imaginable, he would not tolerate others doing the same.

He even once struck Shockwave for beating Starscream over the loss of their first space bridge, reminding his scientist that the Seeker was not the cycloptic mech's property nor test subject.

Starscream was Megatron's, and his alone.

Picking the flier and Apex Armour up carefully, not wanting to disturb him and hear his grating, though strangely intriguing, tones worsened by pleading shrieking just yet, Megatron stepped back through the portal to return to the Nemesis.

A few decacycles prior to the mad dash for the quartet of relics, Knock Out swayed drunkenly into his empty med-bay.

Another night cycle, another nameless drone.

Overcharged, the satiated smile soon dropped from his faceplates to be replaced with melancholy as his optics took in the dark and lonely area he both used as sanctuary by day and avoided as much as he was able by night.

He tried to show Megatron the proper care and concern he knew was expected of him, but the tyrant was even more foolhardy and stubborn than Starscream had ever been when he was injured.

Using dark energon of all Primus-damned things without any consideration of the consequences.

The larger mech was clearly insane regardless of how easily Soundwave slammed Ara- her down when she hinted at it, the fact remained.

The medic still could not believe how deliberate the action was of Megatron sending his betrothed bondmate, to her, to his death. It almost seemed planned by the tyrant it had been so foolish, sending a mech after a femme he had, Knock Out was loathe to admit it, a history with. No, they had never been physically intimate as the former Wrecker was unfailingly loyal to his partner, but Breakdown was a curious mech, attracted to the different and unique.

Knock Out and Arachnid fulfilled those qualities completely, and so piqued the large mech's interest without him being able to help himself.

The strawberry red mech remembered vividly when he first met that young Autobot on the battlefield, the thrill of fighting Breakdown had electrified his circuits and the nature of their dance soon altered, passion heightening with each passing astrosecond regardless of their comrades who watched on.

The Autobots lost that fight, badly, and the Decepticons gained a new recruit.

Closing his optics, Knock Out fancied he could almost hear Breakdown calling him, but the fantasy faded like violent ripples on water distorting the image it presented.

Megatron had even succeeded in driving Starscream, a creature whose thirst for power knew no limits, away from the rank he'd held so jealously for so many vorns.

His lover and the closest mech he had to a friend both gone in such a small space of time.

Starscream may have ruined his finish and threatened him but, to the medic at least, he became more tolerable when not in charge. Of course the other side of the coin was that Megatron ruled over them now and, even before then, the Seeker at least bothered to learn the weaknesses of his officers so as not to throw them into situations that left them vulnerable so the missions they were given should have been nothing they could not have handled. Though the medic lamented the Seeker having such knowledge over him, at least he used it wisely, arguably fairly he supposed.

He had pushed his commandant a bit far that orn, though he would never admit it.

Arachnid had been a weakness of Breakdown's that Starscream, had he still been here, would have known. Megatron did not use that sort of information to his advantage, if he bothered to learn of it at all, expecting his soldiers irrespective of personal ability or sheer common sense to complete the tasks he gave them. Which could be exactly why they failed as often as they did.

It was one area of leadership that Starscream perhaps surpassed Megatron in.

And now they had these completely revolting, so far useless, Insecticons aboard ship.

It was all enough to make the ruby mech despair, throwing him into a dark spiral bordering on depression.

Slag it!

Giggling, sobbing, he felt his way along the walls until he reached the entrance to his overly-large quarters and stumbled inside. For one thing there was an extra berth which, even when it's owner had been around had seen little use; only being recharged in when his dear partner needed the space to recover from injury.

Breakdown…

Throwing himself on his, their berth, Knock Out gave a stuttering sigh that juddered through his vents. He knew he couldn't go on like this; the others would come to see it as an unforgivable weakness that, particularly as he was a medic- a healer not, primarily, a fighter- he could not afford to show. They would tear his spark out, as he had seen happen to other mechs, shell-shocked warriors, when the strain of war had broken them.

And their cruel laughter would ring out throughout the Nemesis.

Shuddering, Knock Out began to shut down his systems, before his outer door sliding open disturbed him. It took a couple of kliks to override his internal order in his inebriated state and bring himself back to full waking. Blinking his optics rapidly to hurry the process along, the medic's paintwork nearly jumped clean off his armour when Megatron strode in, a look in the tyrant's blood-red orbs that terrified him beyond measure.

He opened his mouth to ask if the former gladiator was injured or required assistance and raw panic spiralled through Knock Out's systems when the massive mech grabbed him and flipped the cherry mech over on his front.

For an instant he was reminded of Breakdown when the former Wrecker would get into one of his rare dominant moods, but the absence of the feeling of safety quickly destroyed the brief memory.

Megatron quickly gagged him, wrapping his servo around Knock Out's throat to hold him still, then harshly bound the CMO's wrists behind his back.

Using his larger frame to pin the medic to his bland berth, Megatron trapped the slighter frame as he would have done Starscream in Knock Out's place.

To administer the medic's lesson, he need not physically harm him, that was not the intention, not here. Megatron wished to maintain his reputation as a good lover after all. Even Starscream, with all his criticisms, could not fault him there.

Edited to fit TOS

Half a cycle later, the tyrant exited Knock Out's quarters, satisfied that the CMO would seek to satisfy him now and would no longer degrade himself and the other officers by sharing himself with any drone that the medic crossed paths with.

Still, now he had indulged himself in the medic, it left him aching- at least physically- for his former second.

Perhaps, it was not unthinkable for him to retrieve Starscream without killing him after all.

As the tyrant's pedesteps retreated, Knock Out quivered on his berth, disgusted at the stained state his leader had left him in and the feeling of betrayal that had resulted from Breakdown's death, burrowed its way painfully deeper into his spark.

Hatred burned through him accompanied by a loathed sense of helplessness and a weakness he refused to tolerate.

If that was what Megatron had done to Starscream, then it was no wonder the tyrant had moulded a traitor in the Air Commander.

And now a second one in Knock Out himself.

To think he'd been loyal to that mech when he'd first arrived here! How foolish he had been, how naïve!

Cursing everyone, both mortal and deity, that he knew, Knock Out eventually fell despite his dirtied frame into an exhausted recharge which, in defiance of his earlier state, was most assuredly sober.

Thanks for reading and please review.

Edit 14th September 2012- Replies to reviews:

Thank you guys.

Guest: Yeah, sorry about that, none of my stories have been abandoned I promise. I'm just primarily focussing on Acid Rain at the moment so the others are going to be updated a bit sporadically, but they will be updated :-). Megatron's attitudes will be explained in more depth as time goes on and I hope you enjoy future chapters.

Kirite: Thanks :-) I hope you enjoy the uncensored version.