fter spending a few weeks wandering aimlessly around the less densely populated portions of the planet Earth, I came to the conclusion that I have a strange affinity for isolated, deserted islands. I noticed, during the course of my peripatetic travels, that I had a distinct tendency to gravitate toward them for some reason that at first wasn’t entirely clear to me. But after giving the issue some thought, I concluded that an island’s appeal to me lay simply in its very independence. An island, after all, is separate from everything else, completely self-contained, relying on no one and nothing else for its continued existence. And I realized, as I wandered about the face of the Earth, seeking out deserted coastlines and islands on which I could alight and be alone in order to think and reflect, that I wished to be something of an island myself. I wished to be self-sufficient, independent, with no attachments to anything or to anyone.
The humans have a saying about no man being an island, meaning that no one can exist independently of everyone and everything else. I had discovered over the past few weeks that I wished simply to prove the human adage wrong, to prove that all that I needed to survive – and even to thrive – was me.
The problem with doing that, of course, was that I still had quite a number of attachments and dependencies. I was rather strongly attached to the Decepticons and to the Decepticon cause, for one thing. More importantly than that, I was strongly attached to two different individuals. I was powerless, at the moment, to do anything about one of those attachments, but the other one…? The other one I was going to attend to at my earliest possible convenience. As in, right at that very moment. I was circling above what had become over the past year or so a very familiar location. And, ironically enough, the location was an island.
I was convinced that I had come to the small Indonesian island that Skyfire was calling home in order to warn Skyfire that it was no longer safe for him to remain there, that he should leave right away or run the risk of being killed. I repeatedly told myself that there was no deeper purpose to my journey other than that one simple mission, a simple errand of mercy. But deep down, I knew that there was more to it than that, indeed.
Much more...
Whenever I had visited Skyfire’s island in the past, I had been damaged, usually severely so. I had made it something of a habit to come to him for repairs after Megatron had…finished with me. But this time was different in that there hadn’t been a confrontation with Megatron at all, at least not in the “normal” sense to which I was accustomed. In fact, Megatron had been far too busy with formulating his latest Brilliant Plan – something about appropriating some kind of “super fuel” that the humans had recently developed – to give me a second thought. Which was, of course, perfectly fine by me. That I’d been spared Megatron’s dubious attentions was unusual enough, of course…but even more unusual was my after-the-fact reaction to the entire incident at the humans’ movie studio.
This time, so far as I knew, I genuinely hadn’t done anything to deserve Megatron’s wrath. Usually, I could pinpoint something that I had done wrong, intentionally or otherwise, something that had earned me the treatment that I subsequently received at Megatron’s hands. But this time…? This time I knew that I had done nothing to deserve the punishment I’d received. And that had enraged me. After all, it wasn’t my fault that Dirge had been damaged en route to Earth. It wasn’t my fault that the humans had decided to film a squadron’s attempt to retrieve Dirge’s inert, powered-down body and its “precious” – albeit ultimately useless – cargo. And how was I supposed to know about a reel of negatives? Was I supposed to be thoroughly familiar with all phases of human movie-making procedures? And it had made me especially angry when Megatron had flown into a rage, plunged his hand into my chest, and ripped out vital components of my body, rendering me unconscious for quite a long time. Megatron had done this for absolutely no reason other than that he had needed someone upon which to vent his frustration. So, for perhaps the first time in my life, I had been furious with Megatron and, more importantly, I was completely without guilt and without fear of retribution for harboring that fury.
So, a day or so after the whole incident, I’d woken up fully repaired and alone in the Med Bay, and I had found myself still angry with Megatron for humiliating me as he had in front of the other Decepticons. So…I left. I decided that Megatron could find someone else to pick on for a while. But even now, weeks later, I was still constantly replaying in my head the series of events that had occurred, trying to understand why it had all happened.
I had spent the past few weeks flying from one remote location to another, just…thinking. Not only had I been thinking about the incident at the film studio, but I had also been thinking about larger issues: about who I was and who I had been so long ago, about Megatron, and, of course, about Skyfire. I knew that things were changing between Megatron and me…but I had to wonder to what end they were changing and if that end would be a beneficial or a detrimental one for me. And of course I had to wonder just how Skyfire fit in with everything that had been happening. But it was all just too huge to contemplate fully. All I knew at the moment was that the longer Skyfire remained on Earth, the more endangered he became…
This, of course, only confirmed my reason for seeing Skyfire this time. For Skyfire’s own safety, if nothing else, I knew that this would have to be my last visit with him. I had to convince him to leave – to leave the island, even to leave Earth entirely, if I could manage it – and, more importantly, to give up on me. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted him to give up on me. In truth, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that issue; rational thought became hopelessly snarled with emotion whenever I contemplated exactly how I felt about Skyfire and whether or not I wanted to be – or knew that I should be – with him. No, all I knew was that I would only end up bringing him death. Or worse. He had to let me go. He had no choice. Neither did I.
Suppressing a small noise that might have been born of remorse, I descended toward the island below me and scanned the sun-splashed, blindingly white beach upon which Skyfire had established his makeshift camp. I realized after a few confused moments of scanning, during which I couldn’t locate a trace of Skyfire, that he had used the natural erosion of the cliffside and a few cleverly-placed boulders – and, no doubt, some anti-scanning technology – to create a shelter. Although it didn’t look very comfortable and it certainly wasn’t well-stocked with amenities, it did manage to completely hide his presence from any airborne observers. A wise precaution on his part. The only reason that I knew that he was there was because I…felt him there. But I dismissed that thought from my mind before it could consume me.
Transforming, I touched down lightly on the beach a few dozen meters from the rocky overhang where Skyfire had constructed his camouflaged base. I took a few moments to look around the island, realizing with a start that it had become familiar to me, perhaps even comforting. The sound of the waves against the shoreline, the tangy smell of the salty air, and the cry of the seabirds constantly circling over my head were all familiar to me, soothing in their own strange ways. So, too, was the cliff off to my left that reared high above me. It was where I liked to sit whenever I visited Skyfire, staring out over the ocean and thinking. And I knew that if I were to turn around, there would be the same dense patch of vegetation behind me, marking the line of demarcation between the beach and the overgrown interior section of the island. All of it, every small feature of the island beneath my feet, had become a familiar part of my life, without me even realizing it, and it had managed to do so in a relatively short period of time. I had only been to the island a handful of times, and yet it had somehow managed to become a part of me.
Perhaps it was because each time I had visited Skyfire, I found myself staying a little longer, talking to him a little more, sharing a bit more of myself and my present life with him. The first few visits had been strained, marred with mutual suspicion and discomfort, but now, after so many repairs and so much contact, I found that I was actually beginning to enjoy Skyfire’s company. As I used to enjoy his company. More surprisingly, I found that I no longer felt that I was doing anything wrong by spending time with him. He was, if nothing else, a close friend. And, technically, he was a Neutral, so I rationalized that I wasn’t really doing anything traitorous to the Decepticon cause by seeing Skyfire, talking to him, being with him, and just…basking in his quiet, reassuring, and gentle presence.
Slowly, quietly, I made my way towards the enclosure that Skyfire used as a shelter, only to find him deep in recharge. As I approached him more closely, I allowed my feet to make soft scuffling noises in the sand, thinking that it would wake him. Of course, it didn’t. I had to chuckle at his antiquated systems and his total lack of safety alerts. Had he been any other Transformer, Autobot or Decepticon, I knew that he would have been instantly awake and on his feet when I’d made a noise, ready to defend himself. But he wasn’t just any Transformer. Unlike the rest of us, he wasn’t a product of the eons-long Cybertronian civil war; he was a product of the eons-long peace that had preceded that war. Still, I was surprised the Autobots hadn’t installed more systems upgrades appropriate to a warrior in the short time that he’d been with them. But perhaps he hadn’t been there long enough…or, more likely, he had refused such equipment, since he was always quick to claim that he wasn’t – and, moreover, didn’t want to be – a warrior .
I stood there for a while and watched Skyfire recharge, realizing as I gazed at him that he truly was exactly the same person he had been millions of years ago. He was still the same pacifistic scientist with that wonderful, calming, quiet presence that had been so very attractive to me so long ago. It was odd, though; I could remember being his mate, and I knew that I had been happy being his mate, indeed, even though that period of time had been a lamentably short one…but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember how that happiness had felt. I couldn’t recall the details of the life that I had led back then. So much time had passed, and so much had happened since then, that I had completely put Skyfire and our relationship and my life back then out of my mind. It had, in many ways, been necessary to do so, or else I could not have moved on with my life after I had lost him, could never again have found purpose and direction and meaning in my life, as I had eventually found such things with the Decepticons…and with Megatron. I had safely tucked Skyfire away in the darkest and most isolated corner of my mind, to the point that, at times, I had been able to forget that he had existed. In short, in order to survive, I had been able to put him completely out of my mind.
But now…now that Skyfire was back and renewing his commitment to me, speaking to me of his undiminished love for me, his need for me…Well, now I sometimes found that I couldn’t get him out of my mind no matter how hard I tried. I thought about him often, sometimes constantly, and every so often, memories of him and of our disastrously brief life together surfaced at the worst of times…and that wasn’t a good thing at all, not with Megatron being so unpredictably violent lately. No, nothing good would come of the whole situation in which Skyfire and I found ourselves mired. I was sure of it. So, Skyfire had to leave, had to forget me as I had once been able to forget him, had to move on with his life or even start a new one, if necessary. He had to do it not just for his own sake but for mine as well.
So, I knelt down beside Skyfire and reached out to nudge him awake, so that I could talk to him, convince him to leave…but I found that my hand froze halfway to its destination. I found myself not really wanting to alert Skyfire to my presence, not just yet. Instead, I sat back on my heels and watched him as he recharged, the machine’s gauge emitting a low, muffled, rhythmic beep as it measured the flow of energon entering his body. After a while, that wholly mechanical sound began to blend with the natural sounds around me, with the constant crash of the waves against the shoreline, the wind, and the omnipresent cry of the seabirds overhead, and I felt a completely unfamiliar sense of peace wash over me. For a time that might have lasted for a minute and might have lasted for an hour, I reveled in that all-too-rare sensation, allowing it to wash over me as I gazed out over the ocean, watching the waves crash and foam against the rocky shoreline, absently noticing that the sun was beginning to set…and then I eventually looked back down at Skyfire.
And for the first time in a very long time, as I studied his peaceful, unconscious face and his entirely relaxed body, I felt safe and completely at ease in his presence, as if I had never belonged anywhere else in the universe. I stopped caring about what I had done so wrong as to cause Megatron to fly off into such a rage, to attack and damage me without cause. I stopped caring about the public humiliation that I’d endured as a result of his rage. In fact, for the next few moments, I stopped caring about absolutely everything associated with my present life as a Decepticon. Instead, I just wanted to remember the past. I wanted to remember who I had been eons ago, before the war, before…everything.
As my mind wandered, trying to remember, I found myself staring down at Skyfire’s hand, which was resting limply on the ground next to me. I reached out slowly, nervously, for I was normally never allowed to touch Megatron without his explicit permission to do so and so over the years I had become hesitant to touch anyone. But I reminded myself that this was not Megatron and that Skyfire was asleep and that I would only touch him for a second. He would never know that I had touched him.
Carefully, almost reverently, I took up Skyfire’s limp hand in mine and lifted it up so I could cradle it in my cross-legged lap. I studied every detail of his fingers as I lightly caressed them with my own. His hands were larger and stronger than mine, of course, but they were gentle and kind as well. They did not represent pain and violence and humiliation and violation. Instead, they represented gentleness. Acceptance. Unconditional love. They represented a past that, at the moment, I desperately and inexplicably wanted to recall.
All of those years ago, I had had something right and good and wonderful…but I had lost it. Or rather, I had been wracked by guilt and had thrown it all away in a desperate attempt to hold on to my sanity. It was, unfortunately, an effort that had not been entirely successful. Although I could function, I could not say that I had been completely sane at the time…and I knew that that fragile quasi-sanity had only degraded further from millions of years of intimate exposure to Megatron and his…peculiarities. So now I found that I yearned for that normality, that rightness that had been mine at the time, millions of years ago when Skyfire had been mine and I had been his. So now I found myself hugging Skyfire’s arm close to my chest, even bending over it so that my lips rested against his hand. I found myself turning my thoughts inward, desperately searching for the person I had been all those years ago, the person that Skyfire had known and loved.
But everywhere I looked and no matter how frantically I searched, I found only darkness and anguish. There was nothing but chaos and confusion and hurt and a wretched shadow of the person I had once been. And that, of course, was the person that Skyfire loved, the person that he was now living for. But…that person wasn’t me. Not anymore. Which meant, of course, that Skyfire staying on his island – waiting for me, repairing me when necessary, all the while hoping that I’d come to my senses – truly was a monumental waste of time. The missing person for whom Skyfire was searching was dead, and his chances of resurrection were, as far as I could tell, completely nonexistent. No one, after all, could resurrect a corpse that had been dead and rotting for ten million years.
But just then, Skyfire moved his arm and let out a small groan, interrupting my troubled thoughts. He was waking up, so I immediately dropped his hand and jumped up to stand a few feet away from him. He started at the sudden noise and motion and, without looking at me, he sat up and grabbed his gun, which had been lying next to him on the ground. At the sight of a gun being pointed in my direction, I instinctively raised my own weapons and aimed them at him. He squinted at me for a moment as he tried to focus sleepy eyes on his would-be attacker, but then, as recognition dawned upon him, he instantly dropped his weapon and grinned a thrilled and slightly sappy grin at me.
“Starscream!” he exclaimed, obviously delighted to find me standing there. Usually no one was happy or excited when they saw me, so I couldn’t help but return a reserved smile as I lowered my own weapon.
“Hello, Skyfire,” was all I could think of to say. For some strange reason, I was suddenly feeling awkward, shy. I had lowered my defenses while I had been holding on to Skyfire’s hand, and it was taking something of an effort to raise them again, especially in the company of such genuine happiness about my unexpected presence. Meanwhile, Skyfire’s smile faded as he stood up, unhooked himself from the recharger and looked at me carefully, penetratingly, critically circling me in order to see me from all possible angles.
“Are you injured?” he asked solicitously, almost anxiously, as he paced around me. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine, Skyfire. Really,” I assured him when he regarded me doubtfully. “I swear, I’m undamaged this time.”
“Oh…” Skyfire responded, nonplussed. And then, after thinking quietly to himself for a moment, he nodded and smiled again as he sat himself down on a nearby boulder. “I am so glad that you’re here, Starscream.”
“Well, you won’t be after I tell you the reason why I’m here,” I answered him flippantly.
Skyfire looked at me askance for a moment after I said that, eyeing me speculatively. Finally, he announced bluntly, “I’m not leaving.”
“How did you know that’s what I was going to tell you?” I responded, taken aback.
“I don’t know,” Skyfire answered with a thoughtful frown. “Perhaps it’s the…”
I knew what he was going to say, of course. He was going to go on and on about how we still had a strong bond between us, blah, blah, blah. Whatever the question was, Skyfire’s answer was almost always, “It’s the bond.” I…really didn’t want to be reminded of that just now. I had a mission to accomplish, after all.
“Oh, don’t start,” I interrupted wearily and then, without giving him a chance to respond, I launched into the speech that I’d carefully prepared and committed to memory on my way to the island, so that Skyfire wouldn’t be able to distract me from it. “Look Skyfire,” I announced. “I came here to tell you that it’s become too dangerous for you to stay here on this island. You should leave this area and find a new place to hide. Better yet, you should probably leave this planet. After a while, I’m sure I could locate you at some point and…”
Despite my careful preparations, my voice still trailed off uncertainly when I noticed that Skyfire was leveling a mutinously determined look at me. I may as well have been talking to one of the cliff faces that stood unmoving and silent all around me, for he was doing a perfect impression of them. I knew, at that moment, that he wasn’t going to listen to anything that I had to say. I sighed exasperatedly and started to pace back and forth in front of the boulder upon which he was sitting.
“Why do you always have to be so stubborn, Skyfire?” I demanded of him. “Why can’t you just listen to me for once in your life and leave while you still can? Eventually, someone is going to become suspicious and follow me here. It’s bound to happen. You know that. And if they find you, they’ll kill you, Skyfire. Bank on that,” I finished bluntly.
“I will not leave this planet without you, Starscream,” Skyfire responded, unmoved by my imploring tones. “Bank on that.” I snorted contemptuously at that, opened my mouth to argue back, but he spoke over me, saying vehemently, “I have to be here…in case you need me,” he added, as if that was all the explanation that he needed
“Fat lot of good you’ll do me if you’re dead!” I spat out with a derisive snort, after which I inwardly winced at my own abrasiveness. Primus, how in the universe did he put up with me? Why didn’t he hate me as much as everyone else did? As much as I did? Again he’d probably say it was the bond, but I couldn’t understand how that made any difference. I mean, Megatron and I hated each other just fine and we had bonded for far longer than Skyfire and I had been together… I noticed that Skyfire was staring past me. I imagined that he was probably thinking about what an ingrate I was.
Bravo, Starscream, a voice in my head sniped at me. You’re always giving him hell when all he does is try to help you. And then you hate yourself for it, which makes you hate him, which makes you hate yourself even more… And then, in order to derail that particularly dangerous train of thought, I made a gesture of exasperated dismissal before making a move to transform and take off while saying aloud, “Oh, just forget it, Skyfire. Stay here, then. Get yourself killed. See if I care.”
“Wait!” Skyfire responded, panic in his voice, before I could take off. “Please don’t leave, Starscream. Maybe…Maybe you are right.” I turned back to face him, saw the placating and concerned look on his face as he continued, “Maybe I should move to a new location. It’d be safer for both of us. There are literally hundreds of uninhabited islands all around this area. It won’t take much effort to find one that is suitable for our purposes—”
“’Our’ purposes?” I interrupted. “Skyfire, I don’t think you understand the true magnitude of the situation here. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on this island or one just like it a thousand miles from here. Megatron will find you and he will kill you. Besides, I really can’t keep coming here. It’s not that I haven’t appreciated your help. I have, and it’s been…nice…to have someone on my side for once, someone to talk to. But this will have to be my last visit not just to this place, but with you, specifically. I…just can’t go on like this, Skyfire,” I finished softly, apologetically. “I’m sorry.”
I watched as complete blankness overcame Skyfire’s expression. I knew that, over the past year, he’d become a creature clinging tightly to a very dim hope, the hope that I would see the light, the hope that I’d leave Megatron and return to him as if nothing had happened, as if we’d never been separated. It pained me to dash his hopes as I was doing, but I also knew that it was necessary. If I could just convince him to abandon the hope that he harbored for me and return to Cybertron or to the Autobots or to wherever he wanted to go, his life would be so much easier. My life would be so much easier. There would be no more agonizing over the situation with Skyfire. No more worrying. If he’d simply let go, then I could simply shut away that part of my life again, just as it had been safely shut away from my consciousness until the day we’d discovered Skyfire buried in the Arctic, and life…would go on. Things would be normal again, back to status quo. I longed for that more than I could say. What I’d told Skyfire was true: I couldn’t go on as we had been. It would, I know, quickly degrade what little sanity I had left.
I knew from the blankness on Skyfire’s face that he was thinking about what I’d just said, that he was carefully turning everything over in his mind, weighing alternatives and exploring options. For a brief moment, I was confident that he’d reach the same logical conclusion that I’d already reached, that he’d recognize the practicality of setting me free, and that he’d then do as I wanted him to do, for once. Of course, that brief hope was dashed when Skyfire finally opened his mouth to speak.
“Being here for you is all that I have, Starscream,” Skyfire said slowly, his voice slowly gaining momentum as he continued to speak. “It is all that I have left in my life. It is the only purpose I have remaining after being…isolated for so long. I will relocate to another island for safety’s sake. It would be both logical and prudent to do so. But I will never give up on you, Starscream. Never. Please…please don’t ask me to do so again.”
There were a few moments of silence as I stood there and tried to figure out how to reply to Skyfire’s last heartfelt statement. I knew from dimly remembered experience that once he made a decision about something important, nothing could persuade him to budge from it. But couldn’t he see that it was foolish to trust someone as unstable as me? Couldn’t he see that he was risking his life for someone who’d probably end up destroying him at some point, indirectly or otherwise? The whole situation was so confusing that it often made my head spin, as it was doing now. But then Skyfire’s soft, determined voice broke into my thoughts again.
“I will stay here for you, no matter what happens,” Skyfire was vowing. “It’s a promise that has become my identity, if you will, and I cannot change it. You are right in that this…this stalemate situation cannot last forever, though. At some point you, Starscream, will have to make a choice.”
As if I hadn’t already made a choice! As if telling him all that I’d told him hadn’t made it crystal-clear as to what my choice was!
“But I have made a choice!” I exclaimed exasperatedly, throwing my hands into the air in frustration. “I am a warrior, second in command of the Decepticon forces. That’s what I’ve chosen! Why can’t you just accept that and leave me and this planet forever, move on with your life and leave mine to me?”
A look came over Skyfire’s face that was profoundly sad.
“I truly wish that it was that simple, Starscream. If all you were was a Decepticon warrior and if you were truly content with that role, then I might be able to leave you, if that was what you really wanted. I think I would still feel quite empty without you, but at least I’d know that you were happy and doing what you felt was important. But when I found out exactly what was happening to you, I could not – and cannot – bring myself to abandon you to that kind of…treatment. You cannot imagine how much it angers me to see what Megatron does to you, how he uses you and manipulates you and then…then…”
Skyfire’s voice trailed off, he turned away from me, and I knew that he was angry. Not with me, perhaps, but he was definitely angry with someone. Megatron, likely. Skyfire’s tight, curt tone of voice, the expression on his face as he’d spoken to me, and his balled-up fists were just a few of the subtle outward signs of his anger. A small part of me was happy that he was so protective of me, that the things that happened between Megatron and me managed to rouse a powerful, protective anger in this otherwise gentle, peaceful soul. The other part of me, however, wished that he would just leave well enough alone, for the sake of my own sanity if not for his.
And of course, Skyfire wasn’t the only one who was becoming angry. For my part, I absolutely hated it when Skyfire dictated to me, in painful detail and with god-like authority, all of the wrongs in my life. I hated it when he essentially told me how much my life sucked. Oh, I knew that various aspects of it were bad, of course; I’d have to be an idiot not to recognize that…but on the other hand, I knew that Skyfire didn’t really understand the situation surrounding Megatron and me. Without that understanding, of course he’d see the situation as abhorrently twisted and repugnant. And, of course, no one understood Megatron and me. No one.
Skyfire, meanwhile, had had a moment to gather his thoughts. And once he did, he proclaimed, as if to mirror what I’d been thinking, “No one deserves that kind of treatment, Starscream. No one should have to tolerate it happening to themselves, and no one with any sense of compassion whatsoever should tolerate it happening to anyone else.”
As Skyfire finished his last sentence, his expression transformed from anger to concern, once he realized from the way that I was glaring at him that he had said too much. He had stumbled into an area of conversation that I had expressly forbidden, and he knew it.
“I-I’m sorry Starscream,” he stammered quickly. “I pushed too far. Please don’t leave. Stay, please, and…talk to me.”
I did want to leave, and that must have shown on my face and in the way I was standing there, my posture stiff and unforgiving… yet I found that I couldn’t bring myself to fire up my thrusters, transform, and take off. I had come to Skyfire’s island with a mission to accomplish, I reminded myself, and it hadn’t been accomplished yet. And although I had been able to calm myself down a bit, I was miffed by Skyfire’s presumption, so I found myself sniping at him.
“How would you know what one does or does not deserve?” I snarled. “I will make the decision as to what I do or do not deserve. Not you.” I said it with all the force and conviction that I could muster because I meant every word of it.
But Skyfire, rather than arguing, just nodded his head sadly and sat quietly, staring at the ground around the boulder upon which he was sitting. I stood a few feet away from him and just watched him. I watched him as he fixatedly contemplated his right hand, tentatively clenching and flexing his fingers as if he was trying to determine if there was something wrong with them. That had been the hand, of course, that I had been holding while he had been recharging, but as far as I knew that shouldn’t have left any kind impression on him. Still, as I watched him I began to feel that same kind of sinking fear that always came over me when Megatron had figured out something that I had done and I knew that I was going to have to pay for it. But it was impossible for Skyfire to know that I had touched him…wasn’t it?
I shouldn’t have done it. It had been a mistake. In fact, coming here again at all had been a mistake, for it had aroused in me memories and emotions that I did not want to explore. So, I was taking a hasty step backward, preparing to transform and escape from Skyfire’s troubling presence, when he suddenly looked up at me, watched me almost stumbling in my haste. He chose not to comment, though. Instead, he said something entirely unexpected, as if he’d been reading my thoughts when I had been holding his hand and trying to remember what I had been like and what my life had been like when I had been with him.
“I remember the person you used to be, Starscream,” Skyfire said serenely as he gazed at me, taking in my panicked expression and yet giving it no heed, saying nothing about it. “The scientist, the explorer.” He smiled warmly. “I remember that person as if I had just met him yesterday.”
His soft, encouraging and comforting expression as he spoke was so familiar, so…inviting, that I felt something inside me begin to soften. My panic subsided immediately as I gazed at his hopeful, upturned face. There was a small part of me, I knew, that desperately wanted to be with Skyfire, to stay with him and never return to Decepticon Headquarters, but it had always been constantly overshadowed by doubt and fear. Ever since we had discovered his deactivated body frozen in the Arctic ice, I’d been fighting an inner battle with myself, and that battle within had become more and more violent as time went on. I didn’t understand all the things that were going on inside me, and that was the most frustrating thing of all. I could feel changes happening….and, again, I found myself wondering where the situation between Megatron and me and between Skyfire and me would lead. I couldn’t change Skyfire, nor, apparently, could I make him leave as I had hoped to be able to do as I’d flown toward his island…
And I knew now, as I gazed at Skyfire, caught somewhere between complete panic and desperate, idealistic hopefulness, that I would never be able to bring myself to stay away from him, either. Still, I knew that I had to be practical. I had learned a long time ago that if I always expected the worst, I’d never be disappointed. And maybe Skyfire needed to learn that lesson, too…
“The person that you remember died a long time ago, Skyfire,” I said bluntly to Skyfire’s still hopefully upturned, still gently smiling face. “Someday you’ll realize that.”
In response to that, Skyfire’s smile actually deepened, and he shrugged at me, as if shrugging off my protestations.
“Oh, I suspect that he is not dead at all, but simply in hiding. I merely hope to bring him out of hiding,” Skyfire gently replied. And then, quite unexpectedly, he raised his arm straight out and opened his hand, palm up. It was, I noticed with trepidation, the same hand I had been holding earlier. Quietly, encouragingly, non-threateningly, Skyfire murmured, “Come, Starscream. Take my hand.”
I had no idea what Skyfire was planning. Never had he invited me to touch him. In fact, other than what I’d done earlier today I hadn’t touched him at all since he’d been reactivated. And, after eons of exposure to Megatron’s touch, I was wary of being touched. So, as Skyfire sat there, patiently offering to take my hand, all of my inner self-preservative alarms went off. I took a step backward and eyed Skyfire warily, ready to take off and fly far away from him at the slightest indication that I needed to do so.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Starscream,” Skyfire crooned soothingly to me, as if I was some kind of snarling wild animal that he had cornered and that he was trying to calm and tame. “You know that. Besides, you’re the one with the weapons, are you not?” he added, nodding over to where he’d left his double-barreled laser rifle by the shelter.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him apprehensively, eyeing him as if he was a horribly disfigured creature intent on devouring me. His hand was still patiently reaching out to me.
“I just want to share some memories with you, Starscream,” he calmly explained. “Please…I think it will be good – for both of us – to remember. To share. No strings attached, I promise.”
Skyfire glanced at his outstretched hand and then expectantly back to me. His expression was completely open, honest, and inviting. And even though I knew he probably wasn’t planning any treachery, I still found it hard to trust that what he was proposing was safe. I remembered what had happened in the Arctic, after all, when he’d learned more about me than I had ever wanted him to know, and that that knowledge was the reason that, now, he was refusing to let me go.
But on the other hand, the part of me that wanted to know these things of the past, that wanted to remember fully who and what I had been at the time, and that had led me here to find out those things, was screaming for me to just shut up and take his hand. And I could feel that part of me winning the inner battle. I took a few cautious, halting steps toward him, as if I was being unwillingly pulled toward to him by a giant electromagnet, and stared at his proffered hand. Skyfire waited patiently. He didn’t move forward or try to grab me; he just waited with his arm stretched out, his hand open, his expression non-threatening and wholly encouraging.
And eventually, after fighting back instincts finely honed by eons of war that warned me of terrible danger, I slowly raised my own arm up and held my hand above his, trying but not entirely succeeding in an effort to prevent it from shaking. I hesitated for a split second…and then swallowed my misgivings and slowly lowered my hand toward his until my palm touched his. Once contact was made, Skyfire’s fingers curled around mine, not in a controlling way, but gently, reassuringly, and…gratefully.
Almost instantly, my mind was suddenly flooded with visions of the past. I saw Cybertron as it had been before the war, shining brightly and buzzing with industrious but wholly peaceful activity. I saw my old lab and the colleagues with whom I had worked. And I saw Skyfire, of course. In this vision or dream or shared memory or whatever it was, he was examining some sort of device in the lab. Then he was looking up at me, smiling a bright, slightly lop-sided grin at me. This scene that I was witnessing, I suddenly recalled, had actually happened millions of years ago on Cybertron, shortly after Skyfire and I had bonded. I noticed, though, that it was from my own perspective, not Skyfire’s. Somehow, physical contact with a conscious Skyfire was helping me to access one of the long-forgotten memories that I had quite deliberately buried deep within my psyche, just as it had happened before in the Arctic a year ago.
As if the visual memory had served to unlock the emotional one – and perhaps that was, indeed, the case – I could feel all the emotions that were associated with the memory that I was witnessing. I could feel my excitement over the device that Skyfire and I had been working on together. And, more importantly, I could feel Skyfire’s love and affection for me. It was so tangible, so very real, that I felt as if I could reach out and touch it, wrap myself in it. It was a safe and comfortable love, and that feeling of safety and acceptance enveloped me, calmed me, and I felt my body relax, release the tension that had been plaguing me since my arrival on the island. There was no longer any fear or uncertainty in my mind. There was just…peace. Acceptance. Mutual admiration and trust. And I felt important, too. Valuable, even.
The feelings wrought by the memory I was witnessing were intoxicating precisely because they were the very feelings that were completely absent from my present life, and their absence of course made me crave them all the more. I craved them intensely, in fact, with all the desperation of one long deprived of them. And now…Well, it had been so long since I’d felt anything remotely close to any of these emotions ; I’d forgotten what it was like. And it was not lost upon me that I was feeling all of these emotions right now, in the present…which meant that somewhere, somehow, that part of me that Skyfire was helping me to access was, indeed, still alive…
The thought frightened me. If those memories and emotions weren’t dead in me but merely dormant, then that meant that they could be reactivated. And that, for some odd reasoning, terrified me. So I hastily backtracked, pulled away from them, convinced myself that what I was seeing wasn’t reality at all. I firmly reminded myself that the present was the only true reality, that I lived in the present and not in the long-buried past. I knew that I had to get away from this seductive memory and the dangerous emotions that it evoked as soon as possible.
Gasping, I jerked my hand away from Skyfire’s and stared wildly at him. He managed a small smile.
“My feelings for you will never change, Starscream,” he said in a slightly shaky voice that matched the shakiness that was suddenly plaguing my own body. The touch, the brief merging of our memories, had had a powerful affect on us both. I stood there for several long moments, trying to sort out all that I had just remembered, and all that Skyfire had said.
“I have to go,” I announced, voice shaking as much as my body was, as I warily backed away from Skyfire.
“Will I…see you again?” he asked hesitantly of me.
“No!” I insisted at first, firmly and without hesitation. But I knew even as I said the word that it was a lie. I did want to see Skyfire again. I wanted that more than anything, in fact. But I simply wasn’t sure if I should see him again. I sighed and then cast a wry look over my shoulder at Skyfire. “Well, maybe…” I amended quietly.
A slow smile spread across Skyfire’s face, and a knowing twinkle formed in his eyes as he nodded in response. And for some reason, I couldn’t resist returning his smile with one of my own. It felt good to give him something, even if it was something as small and trivial as a smile. I knew that he deserved so much more…and I also knew that I wasn’t yet prepared to give that to him.
I turned away from Skyfire then and took off, not bothering to transform. I thought that perhaps feeling the wind in my face might help to bring me back to reality after my encounter with Skyfire. So I circled the island once and then banked to head off toward Decepticon Headquarters.
And, immediately after taking off, a flood of conflicting emotions coursed through me as I tried to make sense out of what had just happened with Skyfire. I wanted to see him again, yes, but I wondered how long I could keep seeing him until Megatron found out about it. I wondered what would happen then , whether or not Megatron would choose to kill Skyfire. If I were put into a position where I’d have to choose one or the other…I really wasn’t sure if I could make such a choice. Then again, maybe I could; I was a Decepticon, so that would have to come first. Wouldn’t it? I shook my head in frustration.
I had too many questions and not nearly enough answers for them all.
One thing I was suddenly sure of, however: I knew that I would deal with Megatron when the time was right. At the moment, I felt as if I wasn’t afraid of him, and I determined that one day – soon, I hoped – I would confront him…and emerge from that confrontation as the victor. With that thought, a renewed sense of strength and confidence flowed through me. This was exceedingly odd because, usually, having such thoughts of dealing with Megatron that way only managed to cow me to my very core. Yet, there it was, a sudden bloom of confidence, of deeply-felt surety in my ability to escape from Megatron’s grasp. And I knew, on an instinctive level, that the feeling of confidence that I was experiencing originated with Skyfire. It was, I supposed, a legacy of the brief mind-touch we’d just shared.
Skyfire had confidence in me, confidence that, somehow, I would find the courage that he knew lurked deep within myself, the courage to overcome my dependence on Megatron, and Skyfire’s confidence had managed to rub off on me. I wondered, for a moment, how long the feeling and the courage and determination would last…and then I realized that it was probably best to attempt to make the most of it while I still had it…