A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time…

No, wait. That isn’t right. This isn’t your average fairytale, after all. I’m no prince, she’s no princess, and we’re living this time right now. This isn’t a beautiful story, this isn’t a love story, and this definitely isn’t a story about the good guys. How often do you get a fairytale from the perspective of the villain?

But, anyway, there were two ‘bots. The first time we met, I fell all over myself to win her, and I thought I did. Oh, I thought so. She looked into my optics with that sweet, poisonous little smile on her lips as she whispered what she knew I wanted to hear.

Do you know what “I love you” means? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Or rather, it means the world to the one it’s being told to, but nothing to the person actually saying the words. She might smile at you and say the three magic words, make your fuel-pump skip a beat, but then she’ll turn on you. Love? What’s that? It’s a word, nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t mean a thing unless there’s something behind it.

You’d swear that she meant every word, every promise of a future together, but she’s a good actress. She disguises a frightening mix of cruelty and intelligence inside those curves, like rotten filling in a candy-coated sweet, and she even sells herself with whispered nothings to the eager ‘bot who wants a taste. Buyer beware: she’ll convince you that it’s spice, not rot, that fills her. And once she’s inside you, the center of your world, the focus of your life…that’s when suddenly she pushes you away.

She couches it in the calmest of words before leaving you behind, shocked, hurt, and unable to do more than stare at her back. If it were anyone else, you’d put a dagger there. But it’s her, and you love her, and so you can’t. Clever, isn’t she? I still love her even as she walks away, hanging off of her new toy’s arm without a glance back at me. She has no more use for me, and now it’s time for her to start another game with someone who holds what she wants.

She leaves a hollow behind her where she once was in my life. What takes her place? What’s left for me now? The guy always falls for the girl in the fairy tales, but there are no Predacon fairy tales. It’s always the good guys who win. I know how it is; when the war’s over, I’ll be shown as the villain she escaped from. I don’t have any hope of winning the Beast Wars, of being on the side that turns out to be good. There aren’t any delusions of benign intentions in the Predacons. I ain’t Silverbolt, though, to be turned away by a lack of honor.

Some people can change over to the Maximals. I can’t. Oh, for her I might have tried, but what’s the point? She doesn’t want me. I’ll never be the hero.

In my own way, though, I have my honor. With me, she would have always been the special one. Ladies are to be protected, cherished, and, above all, respected. I had manners no one ever saw except around her because that’s what she brought out in me. I would have gone through the middle of a pitched battle to save her. I would have given anything, done anything, if she’d have just stayed with me.

But all I have left of her is a painful hole in my life. Nobody else can fill it. I know that she used me, but all I know is that it hurts to have to shoot at her in battle. So I’m stuck. I love her, but this hole in me fills with bitterness. I can feel it poisoning me. It turns everything I would have given her into a toxin. I don’t want to, but I think that I may learn to hate her someday. Up until I met her, however, I wasn’t the bad guy from the fairy tales.

Now…

He was waiting impatiently for the signal from Megatron when a shadow fell over him. Looking up, he yelped at the sight of Silverbolt soaring over him. “Boss-bot! We got company!”

“Attack, you fool!” Megatron yelled back at him.

Quickstrike popped up over the top of the boulder he was crouched behind, already aiming his snake-head at the Maximals below his position—

--and Blackarachnia stared back at him.

He hesitated. She didn’t.

Cybervenom paralyzed his systems. “Sugar...bot…”

“Idiot,” she sneered, and she walked away toward the battle.

Once upon a time, a ‘bot fell in love with the most beautiful femme in the land. She betrayed him.

Funny how I’m still the villain.