Not alone
Supernova gets some help
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No spoilers hehe, fic is under cut 🔽
She doesn’t notice her legs giving in until her knees hit the floor, but she makes no move to stand. What’s the point? She has never been able to get out of here.
Supernova is stuck in the room, for as long as Sentinel thinks it’s necessary.
Her fans are working overtime, her spark pulsing so hard in her audials it nearly drowns everything else out, so much so that she almost misses the voice behind her.
“Nova?”
She flinches, then goes completely still, not daring to move a single digit. No. No, that’s- She finally lost it. She has to be hallucinating. She’s alone in this damned room, no way in, no way out. There’s no way someone is standing behind her.
“Supernova.” The voice insists, closer this time, achingly familiar in a way that makes something twist in her spark chamber. But it can’t be. He can’t be here, because she’s trapped, she’s alone- she’s always alone here.
A small servo brushes her wing.
The contact is so light it almost isn’t there, and it nearly tears a sob out of her. Instead, she squeezes her optics shut, refusing to give in. It’s not real. She’s alone. She’s in the room. She’s always alone in the room. It’s not real. He’s not real.
Apparently she said that out loud, because the voice immediately starts complaining, “What do you mean not real? Come on, open your optics and stop ignoring me before I get offended.”
The sass is too familiar, comforting like always.
She loses the fight. Slowly, like the movement alone might break the illusion, she opens her optics and turns her helm to the right.
Once her gaze lands on him, a small, shaky grin pulls at his face, uncertain in a way she’s not used to seeing. “There you are, do I look real enough for you, princess?”
That almost does it, almost breaks her completely. Her voice comes out rough, edged with static. “Deadlock.”
“One and only.” The grin falters almost immediately as he gets a better look at her. He gasps, stepping closer. His servo lifts, hovering near her left optic, close to the fresh damage there. “What happened?”
Supernova wings twitch sharply behind her. She needs to warn Deadlock. She needs to warn everyone.
She straightens, the movement jerky and unsteady. “Sentinel. He-” Her voice catches, static biting through the words as she stares at him, still not fully trusting it, still half-expecting him to flicker out of existence. She grips the miner’s raised servo with her own just to make sure. He feels solid.
“Sentinel did this to you?” Deadlock’s voice sharpens, disbelief flashing across his face before it hardens into something more dangerous. His grip tightens instinctively around her servo, optics flicking over the damage.
“Yes, but that’s not important right now. Listen to me, he- ” Her voicebox stutters for a moment before she forces the words out. “He killed them. Deadlock, he’s not who he says he is.”
“I know.”
She freezes. The words not making any sense at first. “You- know?” She asks hesitantly.
Deadlock exhales sharply, something tight in his expression as he looks at her, taking in the state she’s in before answering. “Yeah. I came to find you as soon as I saw.” He frowns, “I can’t believe he put you back in here though, it’s been vorns since he was last crazy enough to-”
She shakes her helm, stopping his familiar rant before it properly starts. “Saw what? Lock, you don’t understand-”
“But I do,” he says, pausing briefly to place his free servo on her mask, she leans into it, “I’m guessing you didn’t see it, did you?”
“…See what?”
Regretfully, he takes a small step back, pulling his servo away from her face. She almost protests the loss of contact, but he’s already reaching into subspace, pulling out a small datapad. He shifts to her side, turning so they can both see, his helm nearly level with hers as she remains crouched. He raises the datapad in front of them.
Sentinel Prime fills the screen, kneeling before someone who looks strikingly similar to the miner she spoke to a few orns ago (she thinks it’s been orns, her chronometer still isn’t working).
But this bot has a cog, D-16 didn’t.
She doesn’t get more time to think about it before Sentinel’s voice fills the empty air. “That’s why after I killed him, I took his cog for myself.”
Blue armor splits open, revealing Sentinel’s transformation cog.
Megatronus Prime’s transformation cog.
Supernova feels her spark drop, a sudden, sickening lurch in her chassis, but she isn’t given time to process before the next clip starts.
“What truth? That I plucked the cogs from your newborn chests?”
She gasps, the sound catching sharply in her voicebox as she turns to Deadlock.
Her miner has always been angry, frustrated with the system, with the unfairness of it. He’s ranted about it more times than she can count, dragged her attention to things she would have otherwise ignored, forced her to see just how broken Cybertron really is. He’s always been right, but this is something else entirely.
Deadlock’s optics are blazing, staring unblinkingly at the screen, the servo she just realized she’s still holding tightens its grip on her digits. His field flaring outward in sharp, volatile waves that brush against hers like heat. Rage, pure hatred, screams from it. She’s never seen him like this.
Sentinel continues, his voice half-lost to the rush in her audials-
“-Forced you to mine so that I could pay off the Quintessons and live like a king?”
Her attention snaps back to the recording just in time to see Sentinel kneeling before a Quintesson.
“I’m working my miners as hard as I can. I swear I will get you the rest!” The screen turns black.
Supernova can’t move. Her processor is still trying to catch up, still trying to make sense of it. Of everything.
“...How did you get this?” is, pathetically, the only thing she manages to force out from her voicebox.
“It was a live transmission. Whole city saw it.” Deadlock’s voice is low, tight with something barely contained.
Her optics are still fixed on the dark screen. She opens her mouth, not knowing what she’s going to say. “I saw Sentinel kill Alpha Trion.” Apparently, that’s what comes out.
Deadlock’s head snaps toward her, alarm cutting through the anger. “Alpha Trion? But the Primes were all kill-” He stops himself the moment she flinches, starting again slowly. “…gone. They’ve been gone for a long time.”
“He survived, I don’t know how, but he did…” she shakes her helm. “It hardly matters now, he was murdered as well. Just like the others. Sentinel was responsible for the deaths of all the Primes.” Even saying it now, she still can’t believe it.
“He told me it was for us. That everything he did-” She exhales shakily, the sound hollow. “He said I would understand.”
Deadlock doesn’t interrupt her, just stares.
She’s unable to hold his gaze. “And I almost-” The words catch, she forces them out anyway, quieter this time. “…I almost believed him.”
A beat passes before Deadlock shifts a little closer, the movement restrained, like he’s forcing himself not to lash out. “Of course you did,” he mutters, an edge to his voice now, something tight and simmering.
She looks up quickly at that, catching his optics again. The anger is still there, burning hot, but it’s not directed at her.
“That fragger’s been lying to you, Nova,” he continues, the words coming out rougher now, controlled only by effort. “He’s manipulated you your whole life. That’s what he does.” He exhales sharply through his vents, dragging himself back just enough to keep his voice steady for her. “It wasn’t just you, we all believed him.”
He’s right, of course he’s right. Sentinel fooled them all.
But she should have known better. No, actually, she knew something was wrong. The gaps in his explanations, the careful deflections, the way he never quite gave her the full truth. It all led back to him, it always had.
And yet, she ignored it every time. She was a coward, because she saw it, and still chose to look away. She couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Sentinel wasn’t just her Prime, it went deeper than that, he was the one who was when her creators couldn’t. He raised her, taught her almost everything she knows, and every lesson, every expectation he had of her, she absorbed until it became part of who she was. He was her constant, the one she trusted without question. She couldn’t lose another hero.
Her hero…
Iacon’s hero.
“Hold on, did everyone-” she murmurs, the realization taking shape. “Everyone saw this?”
Deadlock huffs, the sound sharp, humorless. “Yeah. Live, just a bit ago.”
Her wings lift sharply, “Then Iacon-”
“-is kind of falling apart right now,” he finishes for her, voice rough at the edges. “Whole city’s rioting. There’s fighting breaking out,” He jerks a thumb vaguely upward. “An entire train crashed into this tower too.”
She jerks backwards, servo dropping his. “And you didn’t think to tell me this until now?!”
“You were having a moment! I couldn’t just dump that on you!” He protests.
“Iacon is more important.” She pushes herself to her pedes, ignoring Deadlock’s pointed look and the annoyed sigh that follows. Her wings settle back into a neutral position with controlled effort as she straightens, shoulders squaring as she forces her frame into proper posture.
“I need to get out there.” She looks down to him. “How did you get in?”
“Doubt you can use the same way.” He points across the room, toward a corner where a vent hangs open.
Her wings shudder faintly behind her at the memory of just how small that vent is. “I attempted that once when I was a youngling. I was stuck for an orn.”
Deadlock’s voice pitches higher than usual. “You what?”
She ignores him, her attention already shifting onto the door instead, full of dents, scratches, and dried streaks of her own energon marking all the failed attempts. The pain in her servos, ignored until now, flares back to life in sharp, insistent pulses. “The door is the only viable option.” Except it wasn’t, she had never been able to-
“Then open it,” Deadlock says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
She goes very still for a fraction of a second, resisting the very real urge to throttle him. Then, carefully, too carefully, turns to him, “Well, thank frag you’re here. That never would have occurred to me on my own.” Her voice sharpens, control slipping. “One problem with your brilliant plan, genius: I can’t.”
“But you can.” One corner of his mouth quirks upward. “I thought it was obvious.”
She just stares at him, confusion cutting through the irritation.
Deadlock rolls his optics, then mimes an explosion with his hands. “You know, boom.”
She startles, the realization hitting all at once. Her servos come together instinctively, one cradling the other as she draws them closer to her chassis. “I’m not allowed- you know I’m not supposed to use my outlier.”
Deadlock catches her slip immediately. “Not allowed by who? Sentinel the fraud?” His expression hardens, anger flashing again. “He can shove his stupid rules up his royal aft. You don’t have to listen to him anymore.”
Supernova hesitates, her gaze dropping to the palm of her servo.
She’s small again. Angry, overwhelmed, the energy is building too fast under her plating. Sentinel closes the distance anyway, he’s right in front of her when it happens. A bright flash. A loud crack. Heat. Pain shooting through her servos. The explosion slams into him, too close to avoid.
She can’t look away from his charred, warped plating before his servo clamps down around her forearm, grip tightening until it dents. “You need to control yourself.” Tighter. “You are a danger.”
“…It’s still dangerous.”
She feels a servo on her kneeplate, she shifts her gaze to find that stupid, charming, I’m about to cause trouble grin that always draws her in. “Maybe dangerous is exactly what we need right now.”
“But what if I hurt someone?” Her voice tightens despite her effort to keep it steady. “What if I hurt you?”
Deadlock’s grin slips into a more sincere smile. “You won’t.”
Something in her stills at that. The tight coil around her spark loosens, just slightly, it’s not gone, but no longer suffocating.
Deadlock trusts her. And Iacon needs her. She has to.
The familiar energy builds in her spark, then spills outward into her arms. Her digits flex slowly as a low hum rises beneath her plating, vibrating through her servos. The center of her palm ignites with light, sparks dancing and snapping in quick, eager bursts as the glow intensifies. It feels right.
“…Alright.” She says before she gets a chance to back out, “Stand back.”
Deadlock lets out a quick whoop, fist punching the air. “There we go! Now blast that door!”
She moves to the door, pressing her servos flat against the battered metal. Energy floods into them instantly, light bursting from the center of her palms as sparks crack. The hum spikes, pressure climbing fast, too fast, but she reins it in.
Supernova drags in a sharp vent.
And let’s go.
———
Sorry guys, no Starscream (yet muehehe)
Also I might just continue this as a fic rather than comic, it’s fun to write from Nova’s perspective.
