gently set Starscream down on the portable exam table that Jazz had recently brought me during one of his regular supply runs and began to inventory his various injuries. I discovered that, in short, he was a hideous mass of twisted, bleeding metal. One of his wings was gone; I had watched it tear off and fall into the ocean as I’d flown desperately toward Starscream, trying to reach him before he’d crashed into the ocean along with the severed wing.
And the wing wasn’t the only thing missing. I didn’t know if they’d been missing before or if they’d been torn off when he’d impacted the surface of the ocean, but many other large pieces of Starscream’s body were now missing, too. One optic had been torn out of his face, his jaw was shattered so that his mouth hung askew, and there were gashes and burns of varying degrees of severity all over his body, the gashes sizzling angrily with invading sea water.
Starscream’s injury inventory seemed depressingly endless, and I knew it was beyond my ability to address all of it. I’d seen Autobots with far less severe battle injuries die before anyone had been able to bring them to Ratchet’s medbay. How Starscream had managed to fly here at all in his condition was a mystery far beyond my understanding. How he was still alive despite all of his open wounds and his brief dip into the Pacific was even farther beyond me.
I knew that Starscream had not been in any battles. At least, he hadn’t been in the sort of battle that those aforementioned Autobots had been in when they had sustained their injuries. Starscream’s injuries were mostly Megatron’s work, not the ocean’s, and even though I had been dealing with the situation for almost a full year now, I still didn’t understand it. Not really. And as I looked down at the broken, mutilated body that housed the spark of my bondmate, I wondered for a moment if all of my efforts over that length of time had been at all worth it.
At the thought, I clenched my fists and turned away from Starscream, taking a few steps away from him, giving myself some space to clear my mind and gather my thoughts. Staring out across the tranquilly rolling ocean waves, I asked myself, certainly not for the first time, how much more of this situation I could realistically withstand. I recalled telling Jazz that I would wait however long it took to reach Starscream and to bring him back to me. I had been buoyed by confidence at the time, utterly certain that I could withstand years, decades if necessary of this incessant waiting…but for a treacherous moment it occurred to me that perhaps that certainty had instead been an idealistic dream, a delusion that I’d been leaning on in order to keep myself sane during the long weeks that I’d spent on this Primus-forsaken island, waiting…waiting.
Because at that moment, as I stood there with my back to Starscream, contemplating…everything…I knew that he was going to die. In fact, he might as well have already been dead because I knew that even if he survived this latest batch of injuries that Megatron had inflicted upon him and even if I managed to nurse him back to some semblance of health once again despite the limited resources at my disposal and my limited medical skills, he’d only find some excuse to run right back to Megatron, just as he had every single time he’d been here so far.
And then the whole sick cycle would begin again, putting us all back exactly where we had started. Either that, or the cycle would finally end with Megatron finally doing away with Starscream in some brutal fashion that I didn’t even want to contemplate.
Over the past few months, I had often acknowledged the futility of my efforts, if only for a fleeting moment. All of those times, I had managed to convince myself to forge ahead, that my efforts meant something, that one day in some distant theoretical idealized future, Starscream would realize the desperation of his situation, enough so to do something about changing it. But now, faced with a gargantuan repair effort that I wasn’t sure was entirely within my abilities to accomplish… Well, now that feeling of futility was almost overwhelming.
I turned my gaze up to the sky, which was bright and cloudlessly blue and incredibly, perversely, perhaps even mockingly beautiful. I found that it called to me. More than anything, at that very moment, I just wanted to fly away, to be free of Starscream and of this nightmarish situation once and for all. The pull of the sky was intoxicating. The freedom I would have if I were to abandon Starscream was incredibly tempting. I could return to Cybertron…or go somewhere where no one had ever heard of a Transformer. And all it would take was one little internal command…
Transform, Skyfire , an inner voice whispered seductively to me. Transform and leave him and never look back… The voice was loud, insistent…and I knew that it would be so very easy to obey its urging. It would be so easy to be free forever… I was turning the possibilities over in my mind, imagining where I would go and what I would do, fighting to convince myself to just do it, to just fly away and never see Starscream again, to leave him here to die alone and abandoned as he perhaps deserved, to never even think about him again…when a soft groan from behind me interrupted my efforts.
The sound of Starscream’s groan immediately snapped me out of my rebellious thoughts, and I found myself instantly crouched at his side, all thoughts of flying away and abandoning him having abruptly disappeared from my mind, as if they had never existed in the first place. Once again, I knew exactly where I was supposed to be…and that place was right where I was at that very moment: At Starscream’s side, supporting him whatever the cost, no matter what.
Gently, I took Starscream’s undamaged hand in mine as he wheezed and coughed and generally fought his way toward consciousness with, as usual, seemingly single-minded determination. With the other hand, I soothingly stroked the less-damaged side of his face, crooning words of comfort to him, encouraging him to relax, assuring him that I would help him, that he was safe, that I would make the hurting stop.
“You need to shut down and go into repair stasis now, love,” I whispered softly, soothingly as I leaned over him, the endearment slipping out of my mouth without me noticing it. “You’re safe. It’s all right.”
Starscream’s raspy voice and mangled face made his words, when he spoke them, distorted and hard to understand. His one good optic flickered as the little bit of energon he had left was drawn from more vital systems in order to power his speech and vision centers as he whispered back to me, dazed and yet at the same time slightly panicked, “But…I don’t remember…who I am.”
“Listen to me, Starscream,” I said urgently, alarmed that he was wasting energon needlessly by remaining conscious in order to speak to me. “You are severely damaged. Please shut down now. We’ll talk later, I promise.”
Starscream looked at me after I said that, just looked at me with a confused expression on his face, as if he hadn’t understood a word that I’d said. For my part, I was worried; I knew that if Starscream didn’t shut down very soon, he would end up in systemic overload. And if that happened, there would be nothing I could do about it, particularly not with the resources, such as they were, that I had at hand. Starscream’s spark would just quietly and slowly expire, fade away to nothingness. All that would be left to do would be to watch him die. I couldn’t do that, certainly not now, not now that I’d put so much effort over the past year into keeping him alive.
“But…I have to…have to know…” Starscream was continuing to protest feebly, his voice shaking as much as his shattered body was.
And it was then that a loud beeping sound began to emanate from Starscream’s chest. I looked down, through his shattered cockpit window, and there, inside of him, a tiny red light was blinking frantically. It was a warning signal, and it was trying to tell Starscream that he was going into systemic overload. Starscream, however, seemed oblivious to it. Either that, or he was beyond the point of caring…
“No more talking, Starscream!” I yelled at him. “Shut down NOW!” I added, more out of desperation than anger. But my voice must have sounded angry to Starscream because he winced as if he thought he were going to be attacked and then gave me a look of utter sadness and betrayal before promptly shutting down. And after a few tense moments, the bleeping red light ceased its urgent warning and all was quiet once again. I took a deep, relieved breath and then bent forward thankfully, so that I could touch my forehead against Starscream’s shoulder.
“Primus, Starscream, why do you do this?” I fervently asked of him, even though I knew that he could no longer hear me.
There was so much I didn’t understand about Starscream, so much confusion, so much pain. But once again I had to set aside those thoughts and emotions and concentrate solely on the massive repair job that loomed in front of me. As I wearily made my way to the trailer that contained the parts I’d need to repair Starscream’s damage as best I could, I glanced up at the sky again. It was still beautiful and still blue…and there was still that little part of me that wanted to just leave, to get away from the hellish situation I had decided to enter. But I also knew, as I gazed up at the sky, that I could never desert Starscream. The probability of Megatron eventually killing him seemed higher than ever now, and I fully realized that I was perhaps all that stood between Starscream and a painful, ignominious death. Again I knew, deep down, that I was where I needed to be, where I was supposed to be, that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.
With that thought in mind, I retrieved the components I needed from the trailer, heaved a long, preparatory sigh, and got to work.

***

A little over five hours had passed since I’d begun my repair efforts. In that time, I had managed to stabilize his vital systems, so that he was no longer in danger of imminent death. It had been a long and arduous process, and I was practically reeling with mental and physical exhaustion. I was entertaining thoughts of taking a break, of shutting down just for a little while so that I could afterwards address the issue of Starscream’s remaining damage with a fresh mind and a rested spark.
Starscream, as usual, had other ideas.
I had just finished setting and patching Starscream’s shattered jaw back together as well as I could when his one remaining optic flickered stubbornly on, glowing dully but steadily crimson at me. Starscream tilted his head slightly and looked up at me blankly, as if he didn’t recognize me. Indeed, at the moment I realized that he didn’t recognize me at all.
“Who am I?” he mumbled quietly, his voice still hoarse and raspy.
That same odd question again, and I still didn’t understand why he was asking it of me. Did he really not know who he was, or was he just suffering from memory glitches due to the many blows to his head that he’d suffered? I leaned over so that he could see my face a little better and smiled reassuringly down at him.
“If I answer that question, will you promise to go back into recharge?” I asked calmly of him.
Starscream heaved a stifled, pained gasp as he finally realized who I was.
“Skyfire…” he murmured wonderingly. “How…?”
“Never mind that,” I soothed him reassuringly. “Just answer my question.”
Starscream’s ravaged face did its best to pull itself into a frown as he asked, “What question?”
“If I tell you who I think you are,” I repeated patiently, “will you promise to go back into recharge?” After all, Starscream was still far from being at the point where he could be safely conscious again, and I still had a lot of work to do. But perhaps if I answered his question, he’d have some peace; somehow I knew that the question he’d asked of me was of vital importance to him, for it had all of the earmarks of a ritual question. I knew that he likely wouldn’t rest until he’d dragged an answer out of me. He was – always had been – horribly stubborn that way.
So, I watched as Starscream slowly nodded an affirmative, acquiescing to my conditions, while I put down my tools and again took his hand in mine, taking a few moments to gather my thoughts. Starscream didn’t pull away from my touch. In fact, he didn’t react at all; he merely watched me expectantly, his one eye staring unblinkingly at me from out of his ruined face. I realized, though, that this was an opportunity for me: If Starscream wanted to know who he was…Well, then by Primus, I was certainly going to tell him.
“Hmmm, who is Starscream…?” I murmured carefully considering exactly the right words to say to him. “Well, you, Starscream, are one of my oldest and dearest friends. You are a brilliant scientist and an intrepid explorer. You are also a skilled warrior and a gifted tactician. But most importantly, you are my precious bondmate. You complete me, and I will always, always love you, no matter what happens. You, Starscream, are the most important person in the universe to me. You are everything to me.”
Starscream just stared at me blankly as I finished speaking, as if I had suddenly begun to speak a different language that he couldn’t comprehend. He stared at me that way, his mouth twisting in deep thought, for quite a long time as he processed what I’d said. The silence stretched between us, to the point that I was just about to ask him if he had heard what I’d said, when Starscream finally decided to speak up.
“Well…” he murmured quietly, perplexed. “That’s…different.”
I smiled at that, although I was certain that he wasn’t looking at me.
“Perhaps it’s different than what you are used to hearing, Starscream,” I said sincerely, “but it is the truth.” Having said that, though, I could only imagine the horrible things that Megatron would say to him – probably did say to him, if I was right that Starscream’s “Who am I?” question was a ritual one -- if Starscream asked of him that same question. So I added, “Anyone who has told you differently has been lying to you.”
Starscream gave me an odd look after that addendum. I could tell that he didn’t believe me, but I had no idea what I could say to convince him that I was, indeed, telling him the truth.
“It’s not the truth,” Starscream was saying dejectedly, meanwhile. He turned his head away from me as he added, “You just don’t see things the way they really are, Skyfire. You see them as they used to be. You see them as you want them to be. You’ve always been that way.”
I was confused, and I wanted to hear more. But I could tell by the way Starscream was talking that he was tired, that I should just allow the subject drop for now, let him slip quietly back into repair mode so that he could heal. And then, we could talk about all of this further. This, I knew intellectually…
But, on the other hand, I was so very hungry for answers. I wanted so badly to understand why Starscream had become the person that he was, why he had chosen to live the life that he was living, and it seemed to me that now, if I asked the right questions, I might finally get some clear answers. So, I decided to risk keeping Starscream conscious a little while longer, so that maybe, just maybe, I could finally have some answers to some of the questions that had been plaguing me since… Well, ever since I had been reactivated after my time spent buried in the Arctic. I could finally have some peace, some closure.
“So why don’t you tell me all about the way things really are, then, Starscream?” I quietly urged of Starscream, who had lapsed into staring listlessly off into space, trying, apparently to shut me out. “Tell me so that I can understand.” I gently stroked his hand to reassure him as I spoke, but he suddenly jerked it angrily out of my grasp.
“I belong to Megatron now,” he said sullenly, turning his head back to glare balefully at me. “And I always will. Don’t you see, Skyfire? I owe everything to him because he…he…”
It was at that point that Starscream’s entire body began to tremble. In his weakened condition, it was not surprising. I knew he needed to rest…but I couldn’t let him go just yet. I was pushing him, I knew, and some part of me was screaming at me to stop and an even larger part of me was flinching with guilt for pressuring him to talk, but this – Starscream offering cryptic answers to my questions and me being satisfied with his riddles – had gone on for far too long.
I needed to know, once and for all.
“Starscream, look at me,” I said softly, reaching over to cup his chin and very gently turn his head so that I could once again see his one dimly-glowing optic. “Tell me why you think you owe Megatron so much,” I asked of him. “I need to know. I need to understand. You owe that to me.”
Starscream scowled at that and then stared at me for a long moment after I’d asked that question, so long that I found myself wondering what was going through his mind. I wished at that moment that we still had the easy mental communion that we’d had back on Cybertron, before I’d been separated from him. If we’d still had that communion, I would have been able to know instantly what he was thinking at any given moment, without having to pry answers out of him that he didn’t want to give me. As it was, I had to wait for him to decide to tell me, something that he was apparently quite reluctant to do.
“Fine,“ he said, finally, calmly. “You’ve been…kind to me,” he added, “so if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. You won’t like what I have to say.”
He paused then, and I nodded, encouraging him and acknowledging that I was willing to listen to what he had to say.
“I owe Megatron,” he said firmly, “because he made me forget about you. And I needed that more that anything in --”
Interrupting what he was saying, Starscream groaned in pain, his back arching slightly as he wrestled with it. He was at the point, now, where he was feeling the pain of his injuries again. Before, it had likely been so severe that he had simply been blocking it out, and had eventually become numb to it. But now that he was recovering slowly, those pain-numbed areas of his body were beginning to awaken and announce their complaints. He was clenching his jaw tightly, likely to avoid crying out in pain, and I noticed that tiny beads of energon were beginning to form along the fresh seal I’d used to repair his jaw. Alarmed that I was distressing him so badly, that I might be undoing all of the meticulous repair work I had done so far, I relented in my interrogation of him. As much as I wanted to know more about what Starscream was thinking and feeling, what had happened to him after he had lost me, I couldn’t bring myself to ask him more questions that would only serve to bring him more pain. Starscream was simply in no shape to be alert and active right now.
“All right, all right. I think I understand now, Starscream,” I hurriedly soothed him, reaching out to stroke his forehead reassuringly. “Now you should shut down and rest so that I can—”
“No!” Starscream interrupted savagely, raising one arm to bat my hand away from him. “No, you still don’t understand, Skyfire! You still don’t know who I really am. And you have to know. You have to know…what I’ve done.”
I tried to forestall him by murmuring that he’d done nothing that could change how I felt for him, but he was having none of it. Starscream had whipped himself into a pain-maddened frenzy, and he was determined to say what was on his mind.
He took a few deep, shaking breaths and then continued, despite my attempts to quiet him, “I tried to kill you, Skyfire. Did you know that? And I wanted to kill you, you know. I wanted that very badly, and I’ve wanted to for a long time. I’ve even given Megatron the coordinates of this island. And if it weren’t for Thundercracker practically pushing me off the docking ramp, I probably wouldn’t be here even now. I’d be dead, and I’m sure that Megatron would be coming after you. I—”
A fit of uncontrollable coughing and wincing in pain interrupted Starscream’s tirade, and I was becoming concerned. It wasn’t because of the disquieting things that Starscream had said so much as simply regretting what I’d started. Starscream was only upsetting himself with all of these confessions, and that wasn’t something that he needed, as weakened as he was. Rather than responding to what he was saying – although I knew that I would chew on his words for a long time to come, once I’d managed to get him settled down – I simply tried to convince him to go back into repair mode.
“Starscream, you need to—” I began to say.
“No!” he insisted again, still intent on continuing his desperate explanation despite my protests. “Listen to me, Skyfire. I once promised you that I would never leave, no matter what happened. But I did. I left you here, alone, helpless, for ten million years, even though I knew that you were still alive. And then, just recently I promised Megatron that I would never see you again…but here I am. And then I promised myself that I would rid myself of you and be happy about it, but I failed at that, too. My life…it’s just one failure after another, one lie after another. Utterly worthless…”
Starscream was quiet for a long while after his voice trailed away on that final thought. His entire body, out to his wing tips, twitched convulsively every now and then, quite out of his control, before he finally stilled and quieted, completely drained. I just sat there in that silence that was broken only by his attempts to laboriously draw air into his systems. I was trying to absorb all that Starscream had said to me…
After a long while, I started to get up, thinking that perhaps he had decided to shut down after all. But before I could raise myself to my feet, Starscream uttered a few more desolate, despairing words, words that froze me to the spot where I was sitting and that tore at my spark in a way that I had never known before.
“Let me die, Skyfire,” Starscream murmured sadly, almost not loudly enough to be heard. “There is no good reason why I should continue to exist. Please… Just let me die. Let me go. End this .”
“What?” was all I could manage to say in response, as incredibly stupid and inadequate as that was. I had been caught off-guard. I had never heard Starscream speak quite in the way that he had just spoken before, and certainly I hadn’t heard him speak in such a lifeless, listless, hopeless tone of voice…and I didn’t know how to respond to it. I was unprepared for what he had said. And worse, I could tell that he was completely serious. So, frightened beyond words by the abject despair in his voice, I simply stared down at him, stricken with horror and a growing fear as he continued to speak.
“I’m so tired of living this way, Skyfire…” Starscream moaned, heedless of my reaction to his words, so absorbed in his own thoughts he was. “My life is over. It’s been over ever since I lost you, ever since I left you on Earth, helpless. I know that. I do. But I still keep trying to pretend that I’m alive, you see, and all I ever do… All I do is make a mess of things. But I thought I was doing so well, you know? There I was, the star of the War Academy, then second-in-command of the Decepticons. And I even thought that Megatron cared about me. But…I wasn’t doing well…I wasn’t doing the right thing…and he doesn’t care about me. So this is what I deserve. And you deserve to be free of me, to be free of this nightmare that I’ve put you through. So just…don’t repair me anymore, all right, Skyfire? Please stop fixing me and just go away. Just leave me.”
For what seemed a very long time, I sat there, speechless. I stared down at Starscream in a stunned silence. I was stunned not because of what he’d told me to do – He’d told me to do exactly what I’d been tempted to do before I had begun to work on repairing him. Rather, it was the tone of his voice that frightened me. Never had Starscream seemed so hopeless, and never had he seemed so…distant from me, not even in the Arctic when I had first been reactivated and I hadn’t understood that millions of years had passed and that Starscream, during those long years, had changed. I had promised never to give up on him…but what if he had decided to give up on himself? That was a possibility that I hadn’t considered…
“But I…I can’t just…I can’t leave you, Starscream,” I said very quietly, my voice shaking with the overwhelming emotions that were assaulting my spark.
“I’m sorry, Skyfire,” Starscream was continuing to say, as if he hadn’t heard me. Which he probably hadn’t; his voice was an almost monotone drone, as if he’d completely separated himself from me and from what he was saying to me. “I’m sorry you ever met me. I’m sorry that you ever had to be bonded to someone as worthless as me. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you. I’m sorry for leaving you all alone on this planet. I’m sorry for everything, but I know it’s not enough. I broke my promise to you when I left you, Skyfire. I swore that I’d never leave you, but I did just that. And I know that can never be forgiven.”
“But Starscream…”
“And then I met Megatron,” Starscream continued, again as if he didn’t hear what I’d said to him, as if he no longer knew, even, that I was there. “I convinced myself that you were dead, even though I knew that you were not dead, and I took Megatron as my mate. I made myself forget about you. I don’t know why I did such a thing, Skyfire. I…I don’t know why. All I know is that I…hate…Starscream. I hate who I am, and I hate what I’ve become. And I know why everyone else hates me, too. I don’t deserve you, Skyfire. I don’t even deserve to live anymore. I--”
He was becoming hysterical. Guilt seemed to be eating him alive. I knew that I needed to calm him down somehow…but I had no idea how to do that. So, I did the first thing that occurred to me, hoping that it might possibly be enough. Leaning over, I reached down and gently lifted Starscream’s upper body, cradling him in my arms, trying to comfort him.
“Shhh…” I crooned to him. “Calm down, Starscream. Please calm down.”
“No! Leave me alone, Skyfire!” he yelled as he struggled futilely in my grasp. “Stop!”
“I will not leave you alone, Starscream,” I insisted fiercely, holding him tightly yet as gently as possible against me. “I will never leave you. Why don’t you understand that?”
Starscream stopped struggling then and, gasping for breath after his struggles, he lay still in my arms and gazed sadly into my eyes with his one undamaged eye. “But I want you to go away! You don’t understand… Why won’t you just go away?” he asked in a hopeless and plaintive tone of voice.
“Because I love Starscream,” I assured him emphatically, with a smile. “I always have, and I always will.”
Starscream, for the moment, seemed content to absorb my words, contemplating them quietly while still staring sadly up at me.
“But…why?” he eventually wanted to know, both his tone of voice and the expression on his face pleading, as if he was desperate to understand why I didn’t hate him as much as he hated himself.
I knew that he wasn’t asking me that question lightly. And I also knew that unless I convinced him that I truly did love him and clearly explained why I did so, he would never believe me, and he would continue down the self-hating, self-berating path that he’d begun, to its bitter and tragic end. So, for a long moment, I considered my words carefully. And when I spoke, I made sure that my voice was soft and my words sincere.
“Because the past doesn’t matter to me anymore,” I said quietly to Starscream, resting my chin on the top of his head as he lay in my arms, absorbing my words and seeming to cling to them as if he would drown without them. “The choices you made in the past don’t have any bearing on my feelings for you in the present. I’ve never held anything against you, Starscream, and I’m not angry with you now. You say that there is no forgiveness for what you’ve supposedly done to me, but I say that there is really nothing for me to forgive. I love you right now, and I will love you just as much a million years from now. Just let me help you, Starscream, just…let me love you.”
After all those millions of years of harboring such terrible guilt, of having it eat away at his spark, it was no wonder he was tired of living, too tired to go on. I didn’t know what else to say to him, so I just drew his body closer to mine so that I was hugging him against me. He had stopped struggling, but his body was still tense, refusing to relax into my embrace.
“Please Starscream,” I pleaded with him. “Just accept what I have to give you. Let go of this guilt. There is no place for it here, and it only serves to hurt you more. I need you, Starscream, please stay with me.”
And then, just as my voice broke and trailed off, I could feel Starscream’s one hand touch me softly on my chest, watched in delight as he slowly, reluctantly reached up and wrapped his arms around my neck. His grip wasn’t tight, but it was probably the best that he could do, under the circumstances.
“That’s it, love,” I whispered softly, encouragingly, to him. “I’m here for you. I’m right here, and I love you. I won’t hurt you, Starscream. Let go of the pain and guilt and just trust that I love you and that you’re safe. It’s all right…I’m here…I’m here…”
His arms tightened around my neck as I murmured “I’m here” over and over again. He let out a wordless cry of anguish as he held on to me with all the strength he could muster. And then, drawing upon some inexplicable source of strength, he managed to pull himself up so that he could rest his head on my shoulder as he clung to me. Now that he was resting against me, I sensed his consciousness desperately reaching out to me through the long-neglected bond between us. I realized that he had finally dropped all the barriers and walls of self-condemnation that separated us, that he’d been hiding behind. He was finally ready to receive all that I had wanted to give him for so long.
That’s it, Starscream! I encouraged him across the tenuous bond that still existed between us, despite the time and distance that had separated us. Even if he couldn't hear all of what I was saying, it didn't matter; the emotions, I knew, would translate. Let go of it all! See that I have always loved you and that I cannot bear to be away from you. You deserve to live, and you deserve freedom, my love. And you deserve me, too, and so much more. So take all that I am, Starscream…I give it to you freely, willingly…
I didn’t sense a reply, but given Starscream’s current physical state, I hadn’t expected one. I wasn’t sure if he “heard” me at all, but he must have felt something because he let out a little sound that was half moan and half sob and his entire body relaxed against me.
“Thank you,“ he whispered weakly.
I couldn’t begin to describe how I felt at that moment, as Starscream finally – Finally! – accepted what I had wanted for so long to say to him, to give to him. He wasn’t resisting me. He wasn’t fighting me. He was simply…absorbing all that I was communicating to him, letting it fill his spark and strengthen him. But I wasn’t done yet.
“I love you,” I replied. “I love you for exactly who you are, Starscream. You never have to be anything or do anything to earn my love. You will never have to endure any sort of physical punishment ever again. Just…stay with me, Starscream. Don’t leave me again. Please don’t leave me again. I need you so much…”
But at that point, before he could answer, Starscream’s strength gave out. His grip on me loosened and he began to fall backwards. He made a small, frightened noise, but I caught him and laid him gently on the ground, one hand laying reassuringly on his chest and the other gently cradling his head. He looked up at me, his expression dazed and not entirely focused.
“Rest, my love,” I said to him. “It’s all right. I’ll be here when you’re ready to be awake.”
And to my surprise and relief, Starscream immediately allowed himself to slip into repair mode without a fight. His arms fell limply at his sides and his head relaxed in my hand. As I watched him power down, I felt a swell of protective tenderness sweep through my body and, leaning down, I touched my forehead lightly to his shoulder.
“Thank you, Starscream,” I whispered to him. I knew that he couldn’t hear what I’d said, of course, but that didn’t matter. Starscream had finally, for the first time since we were separated, trusted me completely. He had decided to believe what I’d said and trust that I would hold true to my words. Suddenly the day that had seemed to be the very epitome of hopelessness had turned out to be the best I’d had since being awakened by the Decepticons three years ago.
I looked up to the sky once again. It was the same sky into which, less than six hours ago, I had been tempted to fly off, leaving Starscream to a horrible fate and a slow, lingering death. The sky was still beautiful, still inviting, but it wasn’t quite so bright anymore. It was now a darker blue gently fading into soft pinks and lavenders nearer the western horizon. And, more importantly, the temptation to retreat into it was completely gone. I felt only a wonderful sense of peace settle over me as I gazed back down upon my sleeping bondmate, and I knew that Starscream was finally feeling peaceful, too. I hoped with all that I was that that peace would last, that Starscream wouldn’t forget what had happened just moments ago once he awakened again. But I couldn’t worry about that now. There was still much to do and most of it would have to be done with harsh and glaring artificial light. I estimated at least twelve more hours of repair work to be done and then I’d definitely need a rest.
Sighing, I again set to work. Though at least this time I worked with a sense of optimism rather than utter and desolate hopelessness…

***

I awoke with a start, knowing instinctively that something was amiss. I glanced at the spot next to me where I had left a sleeping, recharging Starscream, but he was gone. I had spent two solid days buried in meticulous repairs, and then there had been two more of recovery and recharge, during all of which I had stayed awake and watched over Starscream, hovering over him like a mother hen, in case he had needed me. Thankfully, he had remained in a healing stasis the entire time. But I had also reached my limit and had needed a rest as well, so I had lain down next to my mate and promptly did the unthinkable, given Starscream’s past track record during these recuperative visits of his.
I had fallen asleep.
And now as I looked around myself, a terrible sinking sadness threatened to overcome me. Starscream was gone. He had left me yet again. I knew that he was probably heading back to Decepticon Headquarters – to Megatron -- right at that moment and, worse, I knew that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that I could do about it.
I stood up, crossed my arms protectively across my chest as if I’d caught a chill, and stared morosely out over the ocean. One thought was echoing loudly through my head, so loudly that if someone had been standing next to me, I fancied that they could have heard the plaintive voice crying in my head.
Why did you leave me, Starscream? Why? that voice was saying over and over, begging for an answer that I knew I could not provide.
In fact, I couldn’t possibly begin to fathom the answer. Starscream had acknowledged my love for him, had finally opened up, just a little, to me, but it occurred to me at that moment that perhaps he had been too disorientated from his injuries to remember what had happened. Perhaps he had awoken and thought it all a figment of a fevered, injured imagination. I sighed heavily at the thought. The emotional ups and downs I had been experiencing of late were, I knew, taking their toll. I felt numb and cold inside, wondering how I could possibly go on hoping that somehow, someday, miraculously, the situation between Starscream and me would be resolved. I had dared to think it at least partially resolved this time; I had been wrong. So how, I wondered, could I possibly hope anymore? All that ever resulted from hoping was crushing disappointment.
With a long, weary, resigned sigh, I glanced over at the solar generator off a short distance to my right, wondering if I should even bother recharging, wondering whether I should even bother to sustain my pale semblance of a life, when I noticed that there was something scrawled in the sand next to the machine. Curious despite myself, I walked over, bent down to have a closer look, read the first few words…and realized with a jolt that sent my spark into a state that might have been excitement what it was that I was staring at.
It was a message written by Starscream, no doubt just before he’d left. Carefully, clearly inscribed in the sand, written in precisely straight lines of neatly formed Cybertronian glyphs, it read:
I know you won’t understand, but I have to go back. I won’t be gone for long. You should leave right away, as soon as you see this, and find a place to hide. I will find you, and I will return to you. Thank you for not giving up on me. I beg you not to give up now. I promise that I will see you soon. And that promise, I swear I will keep.
I sat down next to the words in the sand and stared at the message, reading it over and over as if the words could somehow transform themselves into tangible matter and then materialize into the real Starscream so that he could be here, safe with me. It continued to amaze and confuse me that Starscream didn’t seem to understand the magnitude of the situation that he was in. Why couldn’t he understand that his life was in danger, especially so given that Megatron knew about us and our past and present relationship? At least I assumed he knew about us, given what Starscream had said earlier about providing the coordinates of this island to Megatron. It seemed so simple, so clear to me, yet it was something that Starscream overlooked. I knew that he wasn’t stupid. I knew that he understood the danger that he was in. Yet, he continued to ignore it, to downplay it in his mind. That, I didn’t understand at all, just as I still didn’t understand much when it came to Starscream. I realized that it would likely take a lifetime to understand him again as well as I had millions of years ago. I could only hope that I would be granted that lifetime.
I was, of course, grateful for the message that Starscream had left. In fact, there was a part of me that was overjoyed that Starscream had actually remembered our experiences of a few days ago and that he still accepted it for what it had, indeed, been. Almost unconsciously, I reached out and, with one finger, drew a circle in the sand around Starscream’s message. It was a symbolic gesture: I felt an overwhelming need to protect him, but I was, I knew, helpless to do so at the moment. So by encircling the words he had written, I imagined myself encircling him in my love and my strength. And I prayed, prayed to any deity that might be listening, that I would have the chance to be there for him when he needed me most, for I knew that that time was fast approaching.
With that thought in mind, I tore my gaze away from the message in the sand and gazed instead at the recharger, a new and overpowering resolve coursing through my mind and soul, replacing the hopelessness that had been ruling it just moments ago. I determined right then that I wasn’t going to hide. I wasn’t going to scurry to another island in another ocean and simply hope that Starscream would find me again. Rather, I resolved to remain right where I was and face head on whatever the future held for me. Soon, I knew, Megatron would come looking for me. And I resolved that I would be waiting for him, at full strength and ready to give to him everything that he deserved.
Everything.
So, with that determination ringing resoundingly through my mind and my spark, I hooked myself up to the recharger, lay down in the sand, and fixed my gaze upon the sky. I realized as I stared at the puffy white clouds floating serenely above me that over the past year I had gotten rather good at waiting and that, now, still more waiting was in store for me.
Except that now it was not Starscream that I was awaiting…but Megatron. And I would, I vowed, be ready for him. Oh, yes, indeed…