Sparkling

This prompt came from Lady Wraith1 (I'm still trying to think of something for "sweetly treacherous" that isn't really overdone and cliche for this pairing...it might take a while). I've always been under the impression that Starscream is much younger than Megatron, hence this drabble.

"Shame," Megatron thought to himself idly as he inspected the debris around him, recognizing slowly that this had once been the workshop of a famous sparkling creator. The name escaped him - the mech was offline now, what did it matter? - not that he cared for sparklings anyway. Their chirruping and clicking irritated the Lord Protector no end, the few times he had been in contact with one. Just a liability, a weakness that needed too much attention for its own good.

Which was why he was not impressed when he saw big, round, glittering optics staring up at him from under the debris.

The guardian roughly plucked the baby up from the wreckage by the back of its neck. The delicate armour snapped off, too frail to take the weight of the sparkling - but it didn't make a sound as it dropped unceremoniously into Megatron's outstretched claw.

"Rather young to be used to pain, aren't you?" he murmured, considering the tiny being in his hold. Its legs were damaged - whether they hadn't been completed by its creator or if they had been crushed by the falling building, he couldn't tell. Two stumps on its back - designed to be a flier, then. Its armour was pale and translucent, shrapnel stuck between tiny wires, and Megatron realized this little sparkling wasn't even supposed to be online for another few cycles at least.

"Better put you out of your misery, little one," he said, not at all disturbed by the thought of killing the tiny being. He shifted the baby into the dead centre of his palm, flexed his claws, crunched them forward, crushing the sparkli-

- until he realized that his palm was empty; the baby gripped onto his knuckles with miniature claws of its own. Megatron chuckled to himself. Perhaps this sparkling wasn't as helpless as he had thought.

From a distance, Blackout called to inform him that Scorponok had dug out the device they were looking for from the wreckage. He deliberated a moment, and then placed the sparkling underneath a chest plate.

.

His lover lies exhausted in recharge from his attentions, while he strokes the wings that he watched grow from tiny little stumps. Without a doubt, his ugly duckling grew up to be a swan; his deadly bird of prey. But whether it was worth all the treachery, power struggles, violent taming, compromising his cruelty to give way to a tiny piece of love, he does not know. Starscream shifts closer in his sleep, unconsciously reaching for Megatron's chest plates, and for a moment, Megatron pretends that his little lover is a baby again.