skulked in the depths of a darkened, shadowy corridor, studiously trying to ignore the absurdity of my efforts to blend in with my surroundings. Stealth wasn’t really my thing, yet there I was, nonetheless... There I had been for many hours, in fact, waiting…waiting…
Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? one of the omnipresent inner voices that lived in my head suddenly demanded to know, and it demanded to know at a decibel level that made me cringe even though I knew the voice was all in my head. Ravage?
Shut up , I mentally growled back at the voice, and for once it huffily subsided into an offended, brooding silence, and I went back to waiting.
And waiting…
I was in the corridor that ran outside of the medbay, had stationed myself a hundred meters or so up the corridor from its heavy double doors. I was trying to blend in with the shadows even though I knew it was a vain attempt. I was a warrior, after all. As such, I was designed to stand out and be intimidating, although rare were the times when I actually felt truly intimidating. Still, I was trying to go unnoticed. And the few medbay workers who'd left the bay after completing their duty shifts hadn't noticed me – or at least if they had noticed me they hadn't bothered to acknowledge my presence as they'd passed by. No doubt, even if they had noticed me, they wouldn't have wanted to…I don't know…anger me or something by challenging my presence there, anyway. Or maybe they knew why I was there, and their lack of a reaction to my presence was some sort of unspoken approval of what I was about to do…?
Now you're just getting all stupid and mushy , that inner voice snickered in amusement at the exaggeratedly heroic turn of my thoughts.
Shut up, I inwardly growled once again.
I was nervous. I was extremely nervous, in fact, and my wandering, argumentative thoughts were a symptom of that. I was standing there with my back pressed as closely as possible to the bulkhead behind me, energon pump hammering frantically away in my midsection, so loudly that I could feel it and hear it, and I wildly imagined that anyone three decks above or below me could hear it, too. My fingers were digging anxiously into the cool, smooth expanse of purple-grey bulkhead behind me. It was a reassuringly solid presence, a presence that should have steadied me, that should have made me feel more secure, more at ease…but it didn't. I was, in fact, more nervous about this "mission" that I'd spontaneously assigned myself than I was before I charged into a pitched battle with the Autobots, even one in which I and my comrades were vastly outnumbered and there was a fairly strong possibility that I'd end up crashed, burned, and in a world of hurt.
That's because then you simply have no choice in the matter , that nagging inner voice cheerfully, helpfully informed me. That's because then you're just carrying out orders…and if you don't obey those orders then you know that you're liable to meet up with Megatron's fist, if not the business end of his fusion cannon, too. So fighting an uphill battle, in that case, is just the lesser of two evils, so there’s no sense in being nervous about it.
But this? Ohhhh, this is all your own doing, Thundercracker my boy, all your own crazy idea. And woe to you if you get caught...
"I told you," I muttered, this time aloud, "to shut up."
And then I abruptly clamped my jaw shut, biting back a surprised gasp, as the medbay doors parted with a disgruntled-sounding hiss and Hook stomped his way out of the medbay. Fortunately for me, the Constructicon surgeon's attention seemed to be completely absorbed by the small datapad he cradled in the palm of one hand. He was scowling ferociously at the small device.
"I swear to Primus that he can be a bigger menace than all the Autobots put together,” Hook suddenly and quite clearly announced, shaking his head in what was probably exasperation as he gazed at the datapad that he held. “And of course I’m the one who always gets to put him back together again.”
Hook spoke as if there was someone with him, standing right there next to him. He made absolutely no effort to muffle his voice or to rein in any notions that the casual passerby might construe as mutinous. He just shook his head again and then, much to my relief, he turned neatly on one heel and stomped toward the elevator at the far end of the corridor, heading in the opposite direction from me. He was still muttering as he went and still glaring ferociously at the datapad he carried.
The identity of the "he" to whom Hook had referred was obvious, of course. Anyone who'd seen the damage that Megatron had inflicted upon Starscream would have known that easily. I suppressed a shudder and quickly shoved that thought as far to the back of my mind as possible as Hook finally reached the elevator, stepped aboard, and then silently zoomed off to who-knew-where.
Other than Starscream, Hook had been the last remaining person in the medbay, at least by my count and according to the duty roster. Now was the time to make my move. Still, I waited for a few long moments, just in case Hook decided to return for some reason. But after ten minutes, during which the corridor remained blessedly though somewhat oppressively empty, I began to inch my way cautiously toward the medbay doors, keeping to the shadows as best I could, just in case. The journey seemed to take forever, but eventually I reached my destination. The doors slid open obligingly for me, revealing the darkened, deserted complex within. Cautiously, I poked my head into the main ward, in order to take stock of the situation inside before I fully committed myself to entering the premises.
The place reeked, as usual, of death. Contrary to what one might think, the Decepticon medbay was often not a place where lives were saved but rather a place where they were lost. Those unfortunate individuals brought here were those who could not help themselves for whatever reason, and they were often so close to death's door that it was usually quite impossible to drag them away from it. As a result, the place often seemed haunted by the restless, unfortunate souls who had lost their lives there, and there was always a lingering, faint scent of the energon that they had spilled, no matter how often the berths and the floors were scrubbed and the various instruments cleaned.
I hated the medbay, and under normal circumstances avoided it at all costs, but today the circumstances were not at all normal, and I felt drawn to the place. Briefly, before stepping fully into the medbay and committing myself to the brash, brazen but still quite vague plan that I had sort of formulated in my head, I considered why that was, why I was feeling deeply obligated to help someone who could, at times, irritate the living hell out of me…
It didn’t take me long to arrive at the answer: Once last night had happened, there had been no going back for me. There was no chance that I could ignore what went on between the two of them anymore. There was no chance that I could just look the other way and go on merrily about my own business as everyone else – enviably, from my point of view – seemed to be able to do. There was no chance that I could tolerate the effect that their behavior had on everyone in Headquarters, from the pinnacle of the Decepticon hierarchy down to the lowest menial laborer.
Last night, Megatron had crossed a line, some invisible threshold that I hadn’t known that I’d had until I’d unwittingly walked into Starscream’s quarters. Never had Megatron done such horrific damage to Starscream as he had done last night. Never had he left him for dead without a medic on standby, waiting to put him back together again. Never had Starscream, to my knowledge, required such a long, extended visit to the medbay – where no one went of their own volition – in the aftermath of Megatron's attentions.
Something had changed in their relationship, and it had changed very abruptly, very drastically…and very recently. Specifically, Starscream himself had changed. It was a subtle change in some ways, but Skywarp and I had both noticed it since, of everyone in Headquarters, we were the ones who most often dealt with Starscream. We had discussed the subject of Starscream’s transfiguration just days before this latest incident, in fact. He had become less obtrusive over the last few months, less argumentative, as if he hadn't wanted to draw any undue attention to himself. But there had also been a noticeable, unfeigned self-confidence about him, an aura of peace the likes of which I had never seen in him. The result had been, for one thing, that Starscream lately hadn't felt so much of a need to be as loud and as arrogant as everyone knew that he could often be. Rather, Starscream had lately become a much quieter person…
…With everyone except Megatron, that is, and a dangerous, powerful friction had been developing between them over the last few months, culminating in Starscream going off and creating the Combaticons. He had challenged Megatron’s authority, and he had come close, very close, to winning…but not quite close enough. He’d been exiled, but that hadn’t lasted long. It had only postponed the reckoning between him and Megatron for a few days. After that reckoning, Starscream had been confined to quarters and then there had been this latest instance of…unpleasantness.
In its wake, I was left vastly conflicted. I was used to living in a state of constant conflict within myself, true, but in this case, it was a much more powerful-than-usual conflict. And after last night, I simply had no choice in the matter anymore.
Yet still I hesitated on the threshold of the medbay. To cross the threshold fully was to commit myself fully to the course of action that I’d decided upon, regardless of what the consequences of that course of action might be should my intervention be discovered. But not to intervene, not to cross that threshold was ultimately unconscionable. No amount of arguing with myself would dispel the desire to do, for once in my life, the right thing. So when I stepped fully into the empty medbay, my chin was high. My back was ramrod straight. My shoulders were meticulously squared. Rarely did I feel so completely comfortable with a decision that I had made, and that comfort had suffused me with a confidence the likes of which I had never felt before. Even as the medbay doors swooshed closed behind me with a ponderous, foreboding finality, I didn't flinch, not even in my always-argumentative mind.
There was a dim pool of light that was seeping like spilled energon from under a closed door off to my left. I walked toward it cautiously, although I had no idea why I felt the need to be cautious. I knew who was behind that door, and unfortunately I knew exactly what his condition was, or at least I knew what it had been when Starscream had been taken to the medbay because…
Because it had been I who had carried Starscream there late the night before. It had slowly, dimly dawned on me, after yet again overhearing a commotion in Starscream’s quarters and then listening for a long while to the utter, obscene silence that followed it, that this time no one seemed to be coming to help Starscream. I had lain there, indecisive, not knowing what to do, for quite a while. But then I made a decision, and I had crept out of my own quarters, careful not to disturb Skywarp, who had miraculously not been wakened by the ruckus a few doors down. I had slunk down the corridor toward Starscream’s quarters and, finding the door curiously unlocked, I had all unwittingly walked into a scene from the Pit.
The room had been completely dark, but in the light that spilled into the room from the corridor behind me, I could see that the walls were dented in places, deeply dented in a few areas. I could see that the furnishings were overturned and wrecked, that the computer equipment had been smashed. Liberal amounts of energon were splattered everywhere, trickling down the walls and pooling darkly on the floor. And, bizarrely, one of Starscream’s wings had been embedded in the wall directly in front of me. Frozen in horror in the doorway, I had stared at Starscream’s dismembered wing dully, not believing what I was seeing, not able to absorb it at all, not able to absorb anything. I had stood there for I know not how long, until a muffled sound that was half whimper and half moan had brought me crashing abruptly back into reality. I had turned reluctantly toward its source, preparing myself as best I could for what I’d see but still shocked nonetheless when I saw it.
Starscream was a broken, mutilated, half-conscious heap on the floor, curled defensively on his wingless side, shudders wracking his entire body. He seemed completely unaware that I was there, showing no response to my presence even as I had numbly approached him and, after a few moments spent staring down in disbelief and in horror at him, had carefully knelt down and picked him up as gently as I could. Starscream’s arms had reflexively clamped themselves around my neck then, mindlessly and desperately clinging to me, as he whimpered pathetically in pain, as he begged me in slurred and almost incoherent words not to hurt him anymore, desperately assuring me that he would do whatever I wanted him to do from now on just so long as I wouldn’t hurt him anymore.
He hadn’t realized that I wasn’t Megatron, despite the soft, comforting sounds that I murmured at him, words the likes of which I doubt Megatron would ever say to anyone, much less to Starscream. He hadn’t heard them, hadn’t understood them, too lost in his own his own shattered psyche to be aware of what was being said to him. He had been quite out of his mind; it had been shattered as surely as his body had been. And I, not caring whether or not Starscream’s survival had been part of Megatron’s plan when he’d left him alone to suffer in silence and solitude, not caring, at that moment, that my actions in helping Starscream might result in consequences from Megatron, had gently carried Starscream to the medbay.
Reliving that memory yet again, despite my efforts to push it aside and out of the forefront of my thoughts, I felt a distant flickering of anger, a flame that licked out from my own conscience. It was steadily building, feeding on the emotions that I hadn’t consciously been acknowledging, that had been numbed by what had happened, but that were now, hours later, beginning to emerge like a flood that the strongest of dams could not hold back. Barely suppressed rage made me smack the panel that controlled the door in front of much harder than was necessary.
The door slid quietly aside, and I blinked in the cold, cheerless, and uncomfortably bright wash of yellow light that subsequently spilled out into the main ward. I had been skulking in darkness for so long that it took a few moments for my sensors to adjust to the different ambient light level. Once they did, I tentatively crossed the threshold into Starscream’s little room and faced, finally, the daunting task at hand.
I stared at Starscream for long moments. He was lying there deeply and perhaps mercifully unconscious on the medical berth, although a twitch still ran its way through his heavily damaged body on occasion, as it had been doing when I’d brought him here hours before. And just at that moment, I fully realized, as I had only vaguely realized it before, that I had to get Starscream out of Decepticon Headquarters. Somehow. I knew deep down in the depths of my spark that if he didn’t get out soon, he would die. Not right now, perhaps. Not tomorrow, maybe. But soon. It was as simple as that. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this latest “lesson” of Megatron’s would teach Starscream nothing. At one time, it might have cowed him for a few weeks or maybe even for a few months. But not anymore. Starscream, once he’d sufficiently recovered, would only be enraged by what Megatron had done to him…and then he would only get himself killed because, much as Starscream wouldn’t admit it, Megatron was vastly more powerful than he was and most of the Decepticon army was quite loyal to him. They would be on his side, not Starscream’s.
But I flatly refused to let Megatron have the satisfaction of killing Starscream. Not after all that had already gone on between them. Not after what that conflict had cost the Decepticons. Not after I had had to sit in my own quarters on more occasions than I wanted to count and listen to what went on between them. Not after what I had seen last night.
But Starscream really was in terrible condition. I had known that, of course, since I was the one who’d brought him to the medbay. But I was only just then fully realizing how badly off he was, as I scrutinized him. He was in no shape to move, much less to fly. Looking at him, noticing damage that I’d been too much in shock to notice the night before, I found it hard to believe that he was still alive at all. His head was a complete mess, half of it crushed, caved in, the underlying cranial circuitry exposed and occasionally sparking ominously blue. One of his eyes, disturbingly, was gone; Megatron must have forcibly ripped it out of his face. The rest of his face had been pummeled, too, his jaw hanging askew on one side, a thin stream of energon running steadily out of the corner of his open mouth, puddling under his head.
Suppressing a shudder, I looked away, looked elsewhere, but that effort was pretty much futile because no matter where I looked on Starscream’s body there was similarly horrifying damage… All that was left of Starscream’s missing wing was a narrow, jagged, uneven lip of metal. There were dents and tears and scrapes and scratches and burns of varying degrees of severity on almost every part of his body. Entire sections of his outer armor were gone, his inner workings exposed and damaged, sparking in places. Hook had done a good deal of work on him already, sealing off most of the damage so that it was no longer leaking energon, at least, so that it was no longer immediately life-threatening, but he still needed major work.
I knew that before I could even contemplate smuggling Starscream out of Headquarters and advising him to stay away for his own good, I had to get him to the point where he’d at least be able to fly. For this reason, it was a good thing that warriors tended to avoid the medbay like the plague. Because, of course, that meant that we had to find other ways of getting minor – or major – damage attended to, and that meant that most Decepticon warriors had knowledge of basic repairs. Starscream’s injuries went far beyond the basic and were really much too severe for my meager skills, but I would have to make do…somehow… Sighing deeply at the enormity of my self-assigned task, I got to work.
I became so deeply engrossed in my task that I didn’t hear the main door to the medbay slide open, didn’t hear uncertain footsteps approach the door to Starscream’s room. I was, in fact, entirely unaware that someone else was present until that second door slid aside. Gasping in surprise, I whirled toward the door, powering up and raising my weapons as I did so. In that split second, I was completely prepared to destroy whomever it was that had caught me unawares. Fortunately, I managed to push aside those well-honed warrior instincts before I fired, long enough to recognize my visitor.
“Whoa!” Skywarp responded to my threatening posture, ducking reflexively. “Whoa, relax, TC! It’s only me.”
Hastily, I lowered my weapons and leaned weakly back against Starscream’s medical berth as the panicked urgency of my reaction passed.
“Primus, Skywarp!” I fervently said to him. “Don’t sneak up on me like that! I could have killed you!”
“I’m sorry,” Skywarp apologized contritely – and contrition unlaced with deep sarcasm was quite unusual for him, of course. “I thought you would have known that I was coming,” he further explained.
Which was a reasonable assumption on his part, of course. Had I been paying even the slightest bit of attention, I would have known that it was Skywarp who had arrived in the medbay. In fact, I would have known that he was coming before he’d even arrived on the same level as the medbay. I’d simply been far too absorbed in my task to notice Skywarp’s approach, a fact which was somewhat unnerving because, if nothing else, it could have gotten me killed, had Skywarp been anyone else.
“You weren’t exactly enthusiastic about this idea this morning, you know,” I rather sullenly informed Skywarp, accusingly waving a laser scalpel at him. “I didn’t think you wanted any part of it, so I didn’t think you’d be showing up here.”
“I didn’t want any part of it,” Skywarp answered levelly, shrugging as he casually leaned back against the wall and folded his arms loosely across his chest. When I shot a puzzled glance at him and opened my mouth to ask him why the hell he was here, then, he further explained, “At the time I didn’t, at least. I thought you were out of your mind, yeah. But then I thought about it more…about the things you said you had…seen, and… Well, you can’t really fault a guy for changing his mind, can you?”
“I suppose not,” I answered quietly.
“Besides,” Skywarp was adding lightly, attempting, as usual, to lighten the mood, “I’m kinda stuck with you, you know, and I’d prefer not to see you wind up dead. And since you’re always trying to prevent me from getting myself killed, I thought I’d return the favor for once. Sooooo… Here I am, in all my considerable glory.”
At that, I leveled a ruefully amused gaze at Skywarp, though I couldn’t quite conjure up the same sort of light, teasing grin that he was wearing. A wan ghost of a smile was all that I could manage.
“Thanks, ‘Warp,” I said quietly, simply, sincerely.
“Oh, don’t thank me,” Skywarp airily replied. “Once we get rid of him, his job is mine.”
I knew he was kidding – mostly – just from the expression on his face, but I still felt compelled to wryly deadpan, “Spoken like a true Decepticon.”
With that, Skywarp flashed an evil little grin at me and then pushed himself away from the wall against which he’d been leaning, and as he did so his expression abruptly morphed into one of deep concern. Typical of him. Skywarp was often moody, but the nice thing was that he also had an insanely short attention span. That meant that any one of his moods – especially his few darker ones – never lasted long. He was always impatiently moving on to the next mood on the roster. Approaching me now, Skywarp flicked a distasteful glance down at our mangled wingmate and then laid a supportive hand on my forearm. His concern, after all, was largely for me, not for Starscream.
“How is he?” he asked quietly as I stared down at Starscream, trying to decide what part of his mutilated body to tackle next.
“Not well,” I answered with a deep, shaky sigh. “Hook has no reason to fear for his job because of my skills, that’s for sure,” I added.
“Well now,” Skywarp said with a mischievous grin, elbowing me suggestively. “That kinda depends on what ‘skills’ you’re talking about, doesn’t it?”
At that, I shot him a surprised sideways glance.
“You’re bad,” I murmured, trying to sound disapproving, but a traitorous grin, I knew, was struggling to display itself on my face.
“And you wouldn’t have me any other way,” Skywarp immediately, brightly responded, with a lecherous grin. And he was right, of course. But then he sighed wearily and looked down at Starscream for a moment, shaking his head sadly. Looking back up at me, he quietly added, “Well, then. Four hands are better than two, yes?”
The look that Skywarp gave me as he said that – affectionate, hopeful, and unswervingly supportive – just…melted me. I stared at him, gaping for what seemed a long moment, blinking in wonder.
“You’re the best,” I said simply, in lieu of gushing in any more embarrassingly effusive way.
And in response to that, Skywarp grinned impudently, widely at me.
“Oh, I know that!” he asserted, proudly puffing out his chest and giving me his patented “I’m all that” look.
That did it. Skywarp had accomplished his nefarious goal. I chortled, tried to hold back, but then I laughed. Loudly.
“Oh, be quiet and hand me that spanner there, would you?” I said, still chuckling, when I had mostly recovered.
And then both of us bent to the task at hand, working in tandem, in a silent, cooperative communion. Although it didn’t rival, for instance, the Constructicons’ depth of communion, it would still be quite impressive – though perhaps quite eerie, as well – to an outside observer. That communion of ours served Skywarp and I well on the battlefield, of course, where we could function as one instantly and instinctively, without having to pause to discuss anything between us. It served us equally well here, while we struggled as one with the gargantuan task of getting Starscream back online and functioning.
It took us… Well, actually, I have no idea how long it took us to do so. I could have checked my chronometer, sure, but I was too exhausted to do so. All I knew was that, a least several hours later, I found myself huddled on the floor, shaking, with my knees drawn up to my chest and my body slumped against the bulkhead behind me. We’d needed to get Starscream re-energized for the little adventure that we were planning to send him on. Without raiding Headquarters’s energy reserves – not a smart thing to do, given that such a drain, no matter how small, would be easily noticed – there had been none available. Except mine. And now, I was drained and trying to recover. I thought I might have blacked out for a little while, even, since there was an alarmingly long stretch of time that was quite fuzzy in my memory. Part of it, in fact, I couldn’t remember at all. But for the moment I was conscious and, apparently, my energy levels had stabilized. They were languishing at a very low ebb, though, and I was, therefore, quite exhausted.
Skywarp, on the hand, seemed to be consumed with nervous energy, and he had taken to pacing manically around the small confines of the room in order to work it off. His pacing was just beginning to annoy me, and I was just about to tell him so, when a small movement from the medical berth hijacked my attention, instantly pushing all other thoughts out of my head. It apparently caught Skywarp’s attention, too, since he abruptly stopped pacing, whirled around, and approached Starscream’s berth. Sliding one thigh up to rest on it and folding his arms across his chest, he settled down to watch Starscream expectantly, waiting. Meanwhile, I wearily pushed myself to my feet, leaning against the bulkhead until the world stopped spinning quite so crazily around me, and then stumbled over to station myself on the opposite side of the berth from Skywarp, leaning against it for support.
Together, Skywarp and I waited nervously for Starscream to regain consciousness. Time was of the essence, of course. The longer the three of us lingered in the medbay – We’d already been there too long, probably – the more likely it was that we’d be discovered before we could even begin to get Starscream out of Decepticon Headquarters. Our already-tiny window of opportunity was getting smaller with each passing second. Skywarp was impatient, too, which wasn’t surprising because even under the best of circumstances, impatience was one of Skywarp’s overriding personality characteristics.
“C’mon, Sleeping Beauty…” he was saying loudly to Starscream, trying to rouse him. “Time for wakey wakies…”
Starscream let out a feeble groan in response and the hand that was currently resting on his midsection twitched, but that was about as far as he got.
“Maybe you should try kissing him, ‘Warp,” I suggested, half-seriously. I reasoned that if Starscream was remotely conscious and could hear what we were saying, then the prospect of Skywarp doing as I suggested might just nudge him into full, appalled alertness…
Skywarp, meanwhile, looked over at me, grinning.
With a wink, he said, “You think it’d work? I mean, I do have it on pretty good authority that I’m really good at it and all, but…”
In response to that, I snorted tiredly, opened my mouth to answer…but Starscream beat me to it.
“Don’t,” he croaked. He was going for a threatening tone, of course, but his voice was horrendously weak, muffled and slurring around his still-broken jaw, and the single word he had uttered gurgled around the energon that was still slowly dripping into his throat despite mine and Skywarp’s best efforts to patch up that particular leak.
Starscream sounded truly horrible, yes, but the good news was that he sounded much worse than he looked. At least, I thought that was good news… Oh, he wasn’t going to win any beauty contests any time soon, of course. We’d repaired the damage to his head as best we could…but our best wasn’t all that good and the results weren’t all that attractive. His jaw still hung at a distinctly odd angle, too, since we hadn’t had a firm idea as to how to fix that. And we’d had to replace his missing wing with one that had happened to be lying around the medbay, and of course it didn’t match the rest of him. It was mostly a dusky shade of lavender, and it clashed horribly with Starscream’s red. But at least it would do the job it needed to do. Or so we hoped, at least. And he still had that missing eye, which rather unsettled me. But there was nothing to be done about it. Skywarp had scoured the medbay for a replacement to no avail…and that had inspired him to suggest that we rig some sort of eye patch for Starscream and then re-christen him Long John Silverscream. It was a brief moment of amusement in what had been a long and arduous repair session. It was a moment that was, oddly enough, made funnier – to the point of hysteria, even – by the seriousness of what Skywarp and I had been doing, by the fact that what we were doing could, conceivably, get us both killed. Or worse.
But besides all that, Starscream was still scratched, dented, and burned everywhere, all over his body. There was simply too much damage that wasn’t immediately life-threatening; we hadn’t the time to fix it all. Repairing Starscream’s life-threatening damage and getting him re-energized enough to send him on his way had been the priorities. And, overall, I was fairly certain that we’d fixed enough of Starscream’s damage and given him enough energy to allow him to get wherever it was he needed to go…provided that place wasn’t halfway around the world.
Which, of course, it will be … one of the voices sighed wearily, feebly at me, but it was as exhausted as I was, apparently, and so it was easily ignored. And Skywarp, thankfully, saved me from having to answer the voice by answering Starscream instead, distracting me in the process.
“Spoilsport,” Skywarp was muttering as I refocused my attention on him and Starscream. Skywarp’s tone of voice was light, though, joking. He and Starscream didn’t often get along at all, but even so, I knew that Skywarp was worried about Starscream now. I could feel his concern for Starscream as strongly as I could feel my own, after all, and I could also tell that his concern shocked Skywarp, too, which I found vaguely amusing, even under the somewhat tense circumstances.
Starscream didn’t answer Skywarp, though, no doubt because it probably hurt like hell to talk at all. But he did glare meaningfully at Skywarp for a moment…and then managed to lift a shaking hand to rub gingerly at his face. He shifted just a tiny bit on the medical berth as he did so, too…and a pained wince creased his damaged face in response. I noticed that he sucked back the yelp that wanted to escape him, though. It was, in a way, a good sign. It meant that he was well enough to worry about appearances, after all, rather than being quite beyond caring about such things, as he had been when I’d brought him to the medbay. And after a moment, of course, Starscream’s exploring fingers found the empty hole where his eye was supposed to be, and he frowned as he gingerly felt around it.
Utter confusion settled over his expression, and he weakly asked, trying not to move his mouth as much as possible, “What…happened?”
I glanced uncertainly across the berth at Skywarp. I had known that Starscream would ask that question, and I had been dreading it. What the hell were we supposed to say to him? There was no easy or gentle way to inform Starscream of what had happened to him if he couldn’t remember it for himself. And Skywarp, of course, had no easy answer to that question, either...
It’s probably better not to be gentle, anyway, he thought resignedly at me. I mean, the whole idea here is to convince him to leave and stay away, right?
Which was true, but that didn’t make things any easier…
Fine. You tell him, then, I thought sourly back at Skywarp.
Oh no, TC, Skywarp responded with a wry mental chuckle. This is all your crazy idea, not mine, remember? You tell him…
In response, I smirked wordlessly at Skywarp…and Starscream, meanwhile, apparently became annoyed with us, as he usually did when he knew that Skywarp and I were silently communicating, especially if he suspected that he was the topic of discussion.
“Stop that,” he hissed at us, weakly smacking Skywarp’s arm with the back of one hand to get his attention, staring up at Skywarp expectantly with his one glowering eye. He was probably figuring that Skywarp would be the one to do the talking since Skywarp was usually the ringleader when it came to mischief-making. So it wasn’t entirely unexpected that Starscream should look rather surprised when it was I who spoke up rather than Skywarp.
“What do you remember, Starscream?” I asked gently, looking down at him, my concern for him very much evident in my voice…which was deliberate on my part, of course.
For a very long moment, Starscream simply gave me an odd look in response – I suppose he didn’t expect a gentle and concerned tone from me, for one thing – but then slowly his expression transmuted itself into a mask of… Well, “abject, unguarded horror” would be just about the only way to describe it. And I knew, then, that Starscream remembered all of it, that he remembered everything. And I certainly didn’t have to be bonded to him to sense his remembered terror as it all came back to him in what must have been a horrible, soul-rending rush. It was plain to see on his face and in the sudden tension that held his body in a vice grip.
An odd feeling passed through my own mind as I watched Starscream remember. It was almost as if I could feel what he had experienced, in a way. And, in response, a jumble of emotions ran through my own mind: Pity, horror, revulsion…along with an overriding and powerful anger at Megatron, of course. My fists clenched reflexively at my sides as I fought back that anger…and I think I would have lost that particular battle had Skywarp not intervened…
Eeeeasy, TC, he crooned soothingly in my mind. His voice in my head distracted me…which was a good thing. I looked over at him, met his gaze. His expression was a mixture of understanding, concern for me, and even a touch of foreboding. Getting all pissed off isn’t going to help the situation here…
Skywarp was right, of course, and his voice and his concern for me steadied me as well, stabilized my anger at a more manageable level. After I managed to calm myself somewhat, I nodded at him in acknowledgment. And as I did so, Starscream finally spoke up. While I’d been fighting with my emotions, he had apparently mastered his own, and his expression, such as it could be with the damage he’d sustained, was now dispassionate and completely closed. His face revealed nothing of his thoughts.
“I…remember…all of it,” Starscream managed to wheeze, his voice barely audible, in answer to my earlier question.
Silence hung between the three of us for a moment. I didn’t really know what to say to Starscream, and I’m sure that Skywarp felt the same way. But something had to be said, and it was apparently up to me to say it. So I tentatively laid a reassuring hand on the front of Starscream’s shoulder nearest to me. It was just about the only place on his entire body that wasn’t marred with some sort of damage, so it was the only place that I felt I could touch him without hurting him. And then, gathering my courage, I said what I needed to say to him. And, to my vast surprise, the words came to me and flowed out of my mouth far more easily than I thought they would. They weren’t very eloquent – thinking was my thing, not talking – but I hoped that they would get the message across.
“Listen to me, Starscream,” I said to him quietly, sincerely, and with almost desperate urgency. “You can’t do this anymore. Leave here. And stay away this time, for Primus’s sake!”
Obviously taken aback, Starscream had stiffened at the physical contact between us, but he had, surprisingly, made no move to break it, though perhaps that was only because his desire not to move outweighed his discomfort at being touched. He just stared up at me for a long moment before I added, “Let us get you out of here, Starscream.”
Um…What’s with this “us” thing, TC? Skywarp immediately queried in my head. And then, seeing the surprised look I shot his way in response, he added, Hey, I helped fix him, yeah, but I didn’t say I’d go any further than that…
I sighed exasperatedly and then shot back, Haveyou ever heard the saying “In for a penny, in for a pound,” Skywarp?
Heard it, yes, he answered. But agree with it, in this case…?
I just blinked dumbly at Skywarp for a long moment. He had instantly become an integral part of my plan once he’d shown up in the medbay. Or, more accurately, the plan had only occurred to me once Skywarp had arrived. If he backed out on me now, I was…What was that word the humans used? “Screwed” was the word, yes. If Skywarp backed out now, I was well and truly screwed. So I realized it was time to pull out the really big guns…
C’mon, ‘Warp! I wheedled imploringly. I really need your help here… Pleeeeeeease?
I knew Skywarp could never resist me when I begged, no matter what I was begging for, particularly when I used even body language, not just words, to do it. It was a weapon that was all the more powerful precisely because I used it wisely, only hauling it out when I knew I really needed it, when I had no other options available to me. This was one of those times, and I watched as, after a moment or two of deliberation, Skywarp’s expression suddenly softened and his shoulders slumped.
Aw, man, TC… he finally moaned in defeat. Did ya have to use the “p” word?
I smothered the knowing, victorious grin that wanted to pop up on my face and instead whispered to him sincerely, gratefully, Ahhh, Skywarp…You are the best, indeed…
He grinned a little at that.
Yeah…and don’t you forget it, buster, he admonished.
Never, I answered with utter sincerity…and in response the object of my affection blew me a kiss, one of those odd human gestures he’d managed to acquire just in the relatively short time that we’d been forced to live amongst the species.
I shook my head at Skywarp, amused, but before I could answer him, Starscream smacked my arm this time, glaring meaningfully at me.
Skywarp heaved a long, weary sigh at Starscream but obliged him by asking aloud of me, “So what’s this brilliant plan of yours, TC?”
“Who said anything about brilliant?” I responded with a wry chuckle.
“Well, it had better be brilliant,” Skywarp asserted, “or else you’re gonna get us all killed.”
This was true. The trouble was, though, that I wasn’t really a planner. I left planning things to leader-types like Megatron. Or Starscream. Or even Skywarp. But now I had two of the above staring at me, waiting for me to come up with something really good, and the expectant expressions on their faces thoroughly unnerved me. I was just about to blurt out that I hadn’t the foggiest notion of what to do when something occurred to me, from out of the blue.
So, after a quick check on my chronometer, I said with far more confidence than I felt, “Simple. Megatron and Soundwave are out, off scouting a location for that superlaser thing that Megatron’s been drooling over for weeks now, but they’re due back in about a half-hour. So, I’ll go and raise the docking tower now, so that it’ll be waiting for them. You’ll give me about a fifteen minute lead, Skywarp, and then you’ll teleport yourself and Starscream up there. And then you,” I said pointedly as I turned toward Starscream, “will fly away. Far, far away. And you will stay away.”
By the time I’d finished my speech, both Skywarp and Starscream were regarding me with amusingly similar expressions of horror on their faces.
“Don’t look at me like that!” I said to Skywarp before he could say anything, pointing one finger at him almost accusingly. “I know first-hand that you can teleport one other person along with you.”
Skywarp blinked at me a few times before answering, “I…can, yes. But you also know first-hand what it does to the teleportee in question. And Screamer here’s—“
—Not in the best shape,” Starscream finished weakly, dismally.
“Do you have a better plan then, O Great Air Commander?” I asked sarcastically, turning sharply toward him.
Starscream tried to scowl at me again before he recalled that it wasn’t a good idea to do so. So he just regarded me thoughtfully for a moment…and then he laboriously sat up and turned so that his legs were hanging over the side of the berth. His head slumped forward for a long moment as he fought back what was, I imagined, an overwhelming tidal wave of dizziness. But then, finally, Starscream looked up at me and said simply, “No.”
So, about ten minutes later, I was wandering – as slowly and as nonchalantly as possible – through the corridors of Decepticon Headquarters, taking a circuitous, unhurried, non-attention-grabbing route to the main docking tower. I passed others in the corridor, nodding casually to some of them here and there as if to say, “Don’t mind me. I’m just going about my normal business here. Move along now.” Outwardly, I was calm and composed. Inwardly, I felt as if every single person I passed could read my mind and subsequently know exactly what I was doing and why I was doing it, and that they would then run to Megatron to tell him all about it. The paranoid feeling almost made me quicken my pace…but I fought against the impulse. The more rational part of my mind knew that those I passed couldn’t possibly know what I was up to. They wouldn’t suspect that I, a top-ranked warrior, might go against Megatron’s orders, that I might openly defy him, especially in this way.
Oh, if only they knew…
With every step I took in the direction of the docking tower, it seemed I became increasingly nervous and self-conscious, all my senses and reflexes on high alert. It seemed the longest walk that I’d ever taken in my life, but eventually I reached my destination without incident, worked the controls that raised the docking tower about the ocean’s surface, waited the few minutes it took for the thing to extend, and then rode the elevator up to the docking bay. It was a long and torturous ride, just as the walk had been…and what I saw when I finally entered the docking bay wasn’t all that much easier to deal with, either.
The docking bay was, unsurprisingly, empty but for two occupants. The only people in the bay at the moment were, of course, Skywarp and Starscream. The latter was leaning heavily against the former, and I imagined with much amusement that Skywarp was just loving that.
I’d expected, naturally, that the two of them would be there. That was the plan. And I certainly knew what it felt like to be teleported if you weren’t designed to do it, as Skywarp was. “Unsettling” couldn’t begin to describe the overwhelming feeling of complete displacement that the experience provoked, and since Starscream was already weakened, I’d known that the ride to the docking tower, even though it had been nearly instantaneous, would be rough on him. So, I wasn’t surprised to see Starscream clinging to Skywarp as if his life depended upon it. I knew what he was feeling, after all.
What I certainly hadn’t expected, however, was the desperate “Help me!” look and the bond-sent feeling of deep exasperation that Skywarp had shot my way even before I had passed through the docking bay doors.
“He doesn’t want to leave,” Skywarp announced without preamble as I approached the two of them.
“What?!” I demanded.
Skywarp shrugged and shook his head helplessly. He was just as surprised at the development as I was, apparently.
“He’s out of it, I think,” he said in a voice just a notch above a whisper, as if he thought that maybe Starscream wouldn’t overhear him if he spoke quietly enough. “From the teleport, maybe. Keeps babbling something about a promise he made to Megatron never to go back to whatshisname…Skyfire. I think he’s afraid to leave. Or…something.”
Skyfire? Well, there was the answer to that question, at least… Skywarp and I had just recently been speculating about where Starscream disappeared to for days at a time sometimes…and why he came back in more or less perfect condition. Skyfire made a certain amount sense. They had history; they had been friends, before the war. While it seemed to me that Starscream had broken off the friendship in a rather spectacular sort of way, perhaps he’d had a change of heart or something. And I hadn’t seen Skyfire hanging around the Autobots much in…in… Well, in a long time. So, mystery solved.
Meanwhile, I heaved a thoroughly exasperated sigh. We’d come this far, so there was no way we were going to turn back now. Besides, at that moment I didn’t see that there were any viable alternatives. If there had been alternatives, after all, I wouldn’t have done anything about Starscream in the first place. And now, quite simply, we didn’t have time for doubts and hesitation…which was something that I might have found ironic, given my proclivity toward both, if I’d had the time to do so. But I didn’t have that time. For whatever reason, right at that moment, the docking bay was empty…but it wasn’t likely to remain that way. If nothing else, Megatron was due back soon…
Turning to Starscream, I regarded him critically. He was still leaning against Skywarp, his forehead resting against the top of Skywarp’s shoulder, apparently too weak or disoriented – or both – to stand on his own. A thin stream of energon was flowing from the corner of his mouth that I could see, dripping down Skywarp’s chest. I doubted that Skywarp had noticed, or he probably would have pushed Starscream away in disgust. Starscream wasn’t in the best of shape either physically or, apparently, in his mind. But I knew that he had to leave. Had to. Now. There was simply no two ways about it…
So, as gently as my impatience would allow – which wasn’t very gentle – I pulled Starscream away from Skywarp, turning him to face me and forcing him to stand on his own. He swayed in place, and his head hung limply forward, and the stream of energon dripping from his mouth pattered in what seemed an obscenely loud fashion against the deckplates…but he could apparently stand on his own. So, suddenly determined, I reached out and lifted Starscream’s chin, raising his disoriented gaze to mine.
“Listen to me, Starscream,” I said to him with I’m-not-taking-no-for-an-answer urgency. “You have to leave now. It’s your only chance. If you don’t, if Megatron comes back and you’re still here, he’s going to finish you off. You have to see that. And you have just enough energy and are functioning just barely well enough to get you where you need to go.”
Or so I hoped, anyway. Starscream just blinked at me, but my words, judging by the expression on his face, were getting through to him. For a moment, he twisted so that he could glance longingly over his shoulder at the open docking bay door, but I could tell that he was still undecided. So, I launched one final volley. Moving my hand from under his chin down to his shoulder, I gave it an encouraging, comforting squeeze. Starscream looked sharply back at me then, surprise registering on his battered face, but I spoke again before he could say anything.
“Skyfire is your only chance at life right now, Starscream,“ I said quietly and, hopefully, persuasively. ‘Take it. While you still can.”
It was silent for a long moment, while Starscream stared at me in…wonder? Disbelief? Exasperation? It was hard to tell, really, as broken as his face was. Skywarp, meanwhile, broke the silence with exaggerated sniffling noises.
“Gee, TC…” he burbled mockingly at me. “That was so…so beautiful!”
Starscream glanced at Skywarp and tried to smile – or scowl; one of the two – but couldn’t quite manage it. Meanwhile, I found myself disconcerted by what I’d just said and, ignoring Skywarp’s joking, hastily jerked my hand away from Starscream’s shoulder, straightened my own shoulders, and said hurriedly and more gruffly even than usual, “Well, the least you can do is leave, since we risked ourselves to get you out of here, you know…”
“What TC means to say, Screamer,” Skywarp added lightly, “is to stop being such a moron and get the hell outta here before I kick your sorry aft end into that nice, cold ocean down there.”
In response to that, Starscream aimed a narrow-eyed glare at Skywarp for a moment, and then he glanced at me with an unreadable expression on his face. He lowered his head for a moment, thinking, before raising it again, meeting my gaze levelly. And this time, determination showed on his face.
Just barely audibly, his voice gurgling around the energon still accumulating in his throat, he murmured, “Thank you.” He glanced quickly at Skywarp and added, “Thank you both.”
I nodded solemnly at Starscream and then silently jerked my head toward the open docking bay door, my expression encouraging. And with that, Starscream walked unsteadily, staggering once before catching himself, toward the bay door. He lingered a moment at the edge of the extended landing platform outside, pausing to glance just once over his shoulder at Skywarp and me, as we stood side by side in the doorway, watching him. And then he leaped. His takeoff was weak, and he plummeted almost to the surface of the ocean far below before ungracefully pulling himself up so that he was skimming at most a few meters above the swells. From there, he slowly and determinedly gained altitude. Had he been anyone but Starscream, though, I doubted that he’d have been able to fly at all. As it was, I figured that desperation mixed with Starscream’s customary stubbornness were all that was keeping him aloft.
I watched Starscream fly off, my arms folded tightly across my chest, my thoughts swirling through my mind like a tornado, second guesses floating against my will to the surface. Skywarp, meanwhile, was standing silently next to me. His posture was relaxed, but he was regarding me with solemn concern heavy in his expression. After a moment, he turned to me, reaching out to run one hand comfortingly up and down my upper arm.
“You OK?” he asked quietly of me when I didn’t noticeably respond to his touch. His voice, as quiet as it was, still echoed off the walls of the large, empty docking bay.
“Do you think we just did the right thing, Skywarp?” I asked softly.
Skywarp just looked at me, his face the very portrait of uncertainty for a moment. But that moment passed an instant later, and my beloved self-confident mate was suddenly back again.
He sighed deeply, squared his shoulders, and said, “I’ll admit that I’m not thrilled about it.” He paused then and laid one comforting, concerned hand softly against my cheek. “But I know that you care about all of this, Thundercracker,” he said tenderly. “And I’m tired of seeing you torn up by it. If getting Starscream out of here once and for all for whatever reason stops that tearing up, then…Yeah, I think we did the right thing.”
The look on Skywarp’s face as he said those words to me was openly concerned, loving…and somehow achingly vulnerable because of it. Skywarp wasn’t usually one for such serious and emotional sorts of confessions, so I wouldn’t have expected him to say something like that in a million years. I stared back at Skywarp, smiling slightly, warmed by his concern for me. I lifted my hand to take the one of his that was still resting against my cheek, and gave it a thankful squeeze.
“Thank you, Skywarp. For…everything,” I said simply but with heartfelt sincerity.
He smiled at that and gave my hand a return squeeze.
“You’re welcome, love,” he said, equally simply and with equal sincerity. “Come on,” he added, tugging me toward the elevators at the end of the corridor. “Let’s go home.”
I was all too happy to follow him. He didn’t need to do much insistent tugging on my arm in order to get to me moving. For one thing, the thought of a nice long recharge cycle was a very enticing one, given that I’d been drained of a hefty percentage of my energy reserves. But the thought of distancing myself from the day’s events – not to mention the idea of spending the rest of the day in seclusion with Skywarp – was even more attractive. And, for that matter, I realized as Skywarp and I stepped into the elevator and the doors slid shut behind us that I was, for once in my life, happy. Tired, yes. Exhausted, even. But happy, nevertheless. After all, I had managed to do a good thing today. So, for that moment in time, as Skywarp and I rode the elevator down to Headquarters and then headed toward our quarters, I could honestly say that I was satisfied and happy, so much so that I could easily ignore the voices in my head that pessimistically wondered just how long that happiness would last.