▸ Column · The Decepticon war — private comm-logs, intercepted transmissions, and surveillance under Soundwave's ever-present optics
STARSCREAM replies.
Replied to by Starscream, with a rebuttal from Megatron.
The letter
My bondmate Driveshaft and I held a steady alliance for two vorns — genuinely solid — until about four cycles ago, when he began demanding to scroll my private comm-log every time I returned from gatherings with my old squadron. Not a glance: he stands over me reading every intercepted thread while I wait. I've given him no cause to doubt my frequencies. When I finally pushed back, he said it was "just how he shows he cares," and that if I had nothing to encrypt I'd open the channel without making it "a whole incident." Now it bleeds into ordinary cycles — he lifts my datapad off the berth while I'm in the next chamber, and twice I've returned to find him reading the private exchanges between me and my sister-in-arms, which have nothing to do with him. My unit says this is a glaring red flag and I should sever immediately. But Driveshaft is otherwise thoughtful, he attends reformatting sessions, and I keep wondering: fixable habit, or a symptom that only worsens? Can I draw a hard line without detonating an alliance worth holding — or am I deceiving myself?
Starscream replies
Oh, I know this torment intimately — the optics that follow you everywhere, the surveillance dressed up as concern. I have served under Soundwave's gaze for my entire glorious career. That wretched spymaster reads every transmission I send before the photons cool, intercepts every scheme, and Megatron calls it loyalty. So believe me when I tell you what your Driveshaft is actually doing: he is not "showing he cares." He is establishing a listening post. A bondmate who reads your private channels is announcing, every single cycle, that he trusts the empty air around you more than he trusts you — and that, my dear, never reassures the watcher. It only feeds him. It escalates. I have watched it escalate for eons.
Now, the schemer in me wants to hand you the delicious play: encrypt everything, feed him a decoy log, let him exhaust himself surveilling nothing. Glorious. And entirely beneath you, because it makes you the liar he's already pretending you are.
Here is the move I have never once managed: draw the line — and then HOLD it. Plainly. "You do not read my channels. That is final." No theatrics, no folding the instant he sulks. I collapse the moment anyone larger turns to face me. You needn't. Hold the ground I always abandon.
— Starscream
Megatron weighs in
Starscream calls it a "listening post," as though the boy lacks an objective. He does not. Strip away the sentiment. This is not insecurity, schemer — it is acquisition. He is establishing dominion over you, one private channel at a time, and "how I show I care" is the most expensive lie in the catalogue precisely because you want to believe it.
I keep Starscream beside me through every betrayal by watching his hands and never mistaking his apology for change. Driveshaft's reformatting sessions are the same theater. The only question worth your time is the one neither he nor my lieutenant will pose: do you intend to suffer this arrangement, or end it on terms that are yours? Decide while it still offends you.
— Megatron
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