t was, unsurprisingly, Soundwave who found Megatron and faithfully brought him back to Decepticon Headquarters. Only Skywarp, Hook – because Soundwave had specifically requested his presence – and I had been there to meet Soundwave in the docking bay when he’d returned to Headquarters. The situation had been entirely too uncertain to allow all of the Decepticons to know what was going on just yet. In fact, we didn’t know what was going on just yet.
All that we had known was that Megatron and Starscream had taken off by themselves, heading for who-knew-where, and that no one had heard so much as a peep from either of them since their abrupt departure. After almost a full day of not hearing anything from either of them, Skywarp had become antsy about Megatron’s extended, unexplained absence and had suggested that maybe someone ought to go out and look for him. Soundwave, however, had mysteriously announced that no one was to do that…yet. Soundwave, obviously, knew something – Likely, Megatron had let him in on something of his plan, whatever it had been, before he had left – but of course Soundwave wasn’t about to tell anyone else what he knew. But, after two full days of no communication whatsoever from either Megatron or Starscream, even Soundwave had decided that a search ought to be launched for them.
So, a dozen trusted Decepticons, led by Soundwave and his cassettes, had been sent out to find Megatron, Starscream, or both of them while Skywarp and I remained at Headquarters in order to deal with any awkward questions that arose from the ranks regarding our leader’s extended and unexplained absence as well as to coordinate the search parties’ efforts, making sure that every inch of land on Earth was searched, if necessary. The searchers had been gone for two days themselves and had all been just about to return to Headquarters for some much-needed recharge before heading out again, when Soundwave had finally reported that he had located Megatron – and only Megatron – and that he was bringing him back to Headquarters. Other than requesting that Hook meet him in the docking bay, that had been all that Soundwave had chosen to say. Typical.
We’d been shocked by what we’d seen when Soundwave had finally arrived in the docking bay with a limp and unresponsive Megatron cradled in his arms. There wasn’t so much as a mark on him, but Megatron appeared quite dead nonetheless. Hook, though, had quickly ascertained and assured us that Megatron wasn’t dead at all. He’d also added, though, that Megatron’s complete unresponsiveness was something that he had never seen before and that he needed to examine him more closely before he could offer so much as a diagnosis, much less a prognosis. So, Skywarp had ordered the corridors between the docking bay and the medbay cleared, and Megatron had been taken to the medbay. Hook had, of course, disappeared in there with him. Subsequent attempts to check in with Hook had been met with snarled assurances that he would give a full report when he was damned good and ready to do so and that, in the meantime, we were only distracting him from his work by contacting him every five minutes. So, in the end, we’d been forced to take Hook at his word, to trust that he would contact us when he knew anything. Until then, we just had to be patient.
That had been three days ago.
Skywarp, of course, doesn’t take well to uncertainty, much less to waiting. He’s an impatient soul even at the best of times, and his customary impatience was, at the moment, amplified by the fact that the other Decepticons seemed to be looking to him for direction and guidance. Under normal circumstances, he would like that; he is, after all, an attention hound of the highest order, and he loves to feel important and needed. But, in this case, with things being so uncertain about Megatron, he had other things on his mind and didn’t appreciate the fact that people seemed to be looking to him for leadership. Especially because, technically, Soundwave was supposed to be in command in the absence of both Megatron and Starscream. It’s just that most of the denizens of Decepticon Headquarters know that Soundwave doesn’t want to be a leader. It’s widely known that he’s a much happier camper when he’s working behind the scenes, and in general, most Decepticons like it when Soundwave’s a happy camper. An unhappy Soundwave, after all, is a downright scary Soundwave. Besides, there’s no one who can do Soundwave’s intelligence-gathering duties better than he and his crew can do them, anyway. Why mess with success?
So that left “poor” Skywarp. Everyone knew that Skywarp, as Air Commander in Starscream’s absence, was next in line after Soundwave. So, more and more as the Megatron-less days passed, they started looking to Skywarp for leadership, bypassing Soundwave entirely. Skywarp was not at all comfortable with this, becoming progressively twitchier as the days passed. He was irritable with absolutely everyone, perfecting a Megatron-like glare that he leveled freely at anyone who so much as looked at him funny, but he seemed to have a special brand of irritation that he saved just for me, against which I was working on perfecting a Starscream-like ignoring technique. Most of all, though, he was hyperaware of the attention and, as he saw it, the judgment that was focusing upon him more and more the longer Megatron remained out of commission and Starscream remained…well, absent. My own efforts to calm and reassure him with soothing words, lots of attempted but ill-received snuggling, and even more ego-stroking praise and encouragement had mostly been in vain. And to top it all off, he hadn’t recharged since we’d sent out the search parties five days ago, and the strain was definitely showing. All of it had conspired together to create one supremely pissy Skywarp-zilla, and I, frankly, had had about as much of him as I could take. Already I was resorting to inventing increasingly creative ways of killing him that I knew I would never carry out but that were still quite entertaining to ponder.
So, it didn’t surprise me at all when the door to our quarters slid open and Skywarp swooped through them. What did surprise me, though, was the haunted expression on his face as he scooted through the doors as if pursued by a demon from the depths and that, after the door had safely and serenely closed with a soft hydraulic hiss behind him, he leaned wearily against it, sliding slowly down until he was huddled miserably on the floor. Skywarp-zilla was, for the moment, long gone. In his place was panicked, needy-looking Skywarp, the kind of Skywarp that usually sent me rocketing into his arms to be all embarrassingly consoling and mother-henny. I had to fight the instinctive urge to do just that now, as I watched him huddling there. Skywarp just stared back at me for a long moment, eyes wide with what might very well have been fear, not saying anything. He wore that dazed, shell-shocked expression with impressive panache, which only served to further melt my innards. I held my ground, though, not moving, not even twitching. I just stared back at Skywarp, waiting for him to say something. While I waited, I carefully put aside the container of energon from which I’d been absently sipping and the datapad at which I’d been thoughtfully poking while sitting alone in my quarters, reflecting upon what had happened over the last several days and contemplating what, exactly, the Decepticons were supposed to do – or could do – now. Finally, Skywarp broke the silence between us.
“Primus,” he announced fervently, his voice shaking in the same way that I suspected his entire body would be shaking if only he would allow it to do so. “I really hope Screamer decides to come back soon.”
I frowned at that, amazed that Skywarp apparently still believed that Starscream was going to come back, much less that Skywarp actually wanted him to come back. It was, after all, painfully obvious to me that Starscream was likely the one responsible for Megatron’s current condition, whatever the hell it was, so as far as I was concerned it logically followed that the very last thing that Starscream was likely to do – assuming that he was still alive at all – would be to return to Decepticon Headquarters. But on the other hand, Skywarp was fully aware that if Starscream were to return, then all pressure would instantly be off him, and he could safely return to the familiar, comfortable role of follower. He’d always said that he wanted Starscream’s job, but I tended to think that over the past several days he’d painfully discovered that having was not so nice of a thing as wanting. He was probably clinging to some faint, subconscious hope that Starscream would somehow miraculously return and save him. So, I figured I might as well completely shatter Skywarp’s illusions now, if only so that we could look forward and move on with our lives, whatever weird course our lives were now going to follow.
“Starscream’s not coming back, Skywarp,” I said softly, as gently as I could. “Not this time. You know that.”
Skywarp just stared at me for a long moment, stricken. And then his face fell before he hunched over and buried it in his hands, rubbing frantically at his face for a few moments before looking hopelessly back up at me.
“I know,” he muttered in nothing less than abject misery. “I do know that. I do. But this…I don’t know if I can deal with this, TC. In fact, I know I can’t deal with this …” he finished in a small and, I thought, somewhat terrified voice.
I knew then that Skywarp had new information, new information that had floored him and that he was still trying without much success to process and assimilate. I knew, too, that he had come to our quarters because he had known that I was there, and he knew that I would, as usual, help him to sort through whatever it was that he had learned. So, sighing in preparation for the bad news that I knew was coming, I stood, silently walked over to Skywarp, and pulled him gently but insistently to his feet. Then, before he could say anything, before he could protest, I led him over to the chair that I’d been sitting in, pushed down firmly on the tops of his shoulders until he got the hint and flopped down in the chair, and then went to the energon dispenser on the wall and procured for him a large serving of the glowing stuff. It would, I hoped, help to calm him so that he’d be able to talk to me in a somewhat rational manner.
“So…What’s happened now, Skywarp?” I asked quietly of him after he’d had a few moments to down half of the energon that I’d given him in a single gulp and after I’d pulled up another chair so that I could sit facing him and settled myself into it for what was likely to be a long haul.
Skywarp looked at me with studied innocence over the rim of the container holding his energon as he sipped at what was left of it.
“What makes you think anything happened?” he asked of me, going for nonchalance but failing miserably. I could, of course, read him like a book, and I knew that he was anything but nonchalant at the moment.
“Because you’re panicking, love,” I answered mildly, almost tenderly, not able to suppress an affectionate little smile, the kind that usually pissed Skywarp off royally because it was the one that I usually gave him when I was patronizing him. “And you don’t usually panic without a damned good reason.”
Skywarp just sighed irritably at me. I knew that he desperately wanted to spill his proverbial guts to the only person in the universe that he knew that he could spill them to without fear of penalty. But for a long while, he just stared at the dregs of his energon instead, swinging the container back and forth like a pendulum while he gathered his thoughts. When he finally looked up at me, his expression was haunted.
“Soundwave and I got Hook’s report just a little while ago,” Skywarp said, his voice unusually subdued. Tentative. Small. I knew from the tone of his voice that whatever news he had wasn’t good.
“And…?” I prompted when Skywarp descended into worried silence instead of elaborating.
Abruptly, Skywarp launched himself out of his chair, freeing himself to pace manically around the room. It didn’t surprise me; I was more surprised that he’d managed to sit still as long as he had. While he paced, he talked, accentuating his words with wild, jerking hand gestures that expressed his wild, frantic emotions far better than any words that he could say.
“Hook said that Megatron’s spark has been…damaged,” he reported tersely. “Somehow. ‘Fractured,’ was the exact term that he used. He showed us scans of it, and there’re these dark threads in it that look like cracks. And Hook said that he’s never seen anything like it and that he’s searched thoroughly but can find no records in any database on Cybertron of anyone surviving that sort of thing. Ever. But he said it looked to him as if there’d been…too much input or something, that there was some kind of overload that caused the whole…thing,” Skywarp finished, hands waving ineffectually as he searched in vain for a better word than “thing.”
“Input?” I echoed, intrigued despite myself, leaning back thoughtfully in my chair. After a few moments I ventured, “Like…from a bond?”
Skywarp looked sharply at me then, suddenly still as a statue as my words sank into his keyed-up yet exhausted mind. His expression went blank for a second, but then angry comprehension suddenly dawned on his white face.
“Starscream!” he spat as if the name was the vilest of curses, his voice filled with accusation and his face scrunched up with rage. And then, as if further emphasis was somehow necessary, he smacked a fist against the wall, denting it rather deeply.
“Calm down!” I snapped at him, none too gently. When he aimed a questioning glare at me in response, I added, “We have no idea what happened out there. And anger isn’t going to help. So for right now…Let’s just focus on what we do know, all right?”
Sighing, grudgingly swallowing his anger – for the moment, at least – Skywarp nodded. Rather than returning to his pacing, though, he returned to his chair and flopped down into it again, slumping with exhaustion this time.
“What else?” I prompted him wearily when it seemed as if Skywarp wasn’t inclined to say anything more even though I could tell that that there was something else bothering him.
For a long moment, Skywarp didn’t answer me. He just frowned up at the ceiling, staring at it as if there was something mesmerizing to see up there. Finally, he shifted his gaze to look at me, straightened in his chair, and then leaned toward me conspiratorially, as if he feared that his words might somehow be overheard. When he spoke, his voice was a soft, quiet whisper that was full of apprehension.
“Hook says that the damage is irreparable or at least that he has no idea how to go about trying to fix it without doing further damage and that there’s absolutely nothing in the databases on Cybertron that will help him,” Skywarp reported anxiously, the words falling out of him in a fearful flood. “And since the damage is all to Megatron’s spark, he’s pretty certain that Megatron will never regain consciousness. And even if by some miracle he does wake up, Hook seems to think that he either won’t survive long or that he won’t be the same person at all or even that he’ll be completely deranged or…or all of that…”
And that, of course, was what was most disturbing to Skywarp, as his voice trailed off in distress. I knew that he’d been operating on the optimistic assumption that Megatron would recover quickly, and that he’d been thinking that once Megatron was fully recovered, everything would just magically return to normal, as if someone had pressed a giant reset button, and we’d just keep doing what we’d been doing, same as always, the only difference being that Starscream would no longer be around to annoy and infuriate us. That, as far as Skywarp was concerned, would all be a very good thing. No doubt, he’d been envisioning the same outcome as he’d been envisioning when we’d sent Starscream away from Headquarters a few weeks back.
So, the news that that wasn’t going to happen was quite devastating to Skywarp; he knew now that his unofficial new position and unofficial new responsibilities – neither of which was completely comfortable at the moment – wouldn’t be going away anytime soon and, in fact, were likely here to stay for at least the foreseeable future. And at the moment, that knowledge was overwhelming and deeply disturbing him; he just couldn’t see past it to any kind of bright future.
But I could. In fact, as Skywarp had relayed to me his news, I’d had to fight to keep a mutinous grin from my face. I was, after all, seeing possibilities in the situation, many exciting possibilities. The trick, of course, was to present them to Skywarp without him becoming more upset than he already was…
“You know, Skywarp…” I ventured tentatively as I watched my bondmate descend into broody silence, staring miserably at the floor. “This doesn’t have to be a bad thing…”
Skywarp looked up at me sharply, regarding me as if I’d suddenly grown another head.
“Of course this is a bad thing, TC!” he exclaimed after a moment spent staring dumbfoundedly at me. “In fact, this is nothing less than a…a disaster! It means that I’m…I’m…”
He couldn’t finish his sentence. The implications of doing so, I knew, were at the moment too awful for him to contemplate, much less to express. So I, being the ever-helpful bondmate that I am, expressed them for him.
“It means,” I said levelly, “that you’re in charge, and that you will be in charge for at least the near future.”
Skywarp winced at my words, as if I’d physically struck him instead of simply spoken to him.
“Yeah…” he said weakly. “Yeah, that.” And then, in an instant, he brightened and sat bolt-upright in his chair. “Unless Soundwave takes over!” he exclaimed elatedly, having found, so he thought, his “out.”
I let out a weary, resigned sigh.
“You know as well as I do that that’s not going to happen, ‘Warp,” I answered, calmly bursting his bubble. “If Soundwave wanted to take over, he’d have done so by now. And even if that did happen…Well, most Decepticons would much rather have you as our leader, I think. They’re looking to you now. Not to him.”
Deflated, Skywarp sank back in his chair, leveled an unhappy glare at me, and muttered, without heat, “I hate you.”
“I know you do, love,” I said with saccharine sweetness and a lop-sided smile, reaching over to patronizingly pat his hand, for all of which he glared at me in extreme irritation. “But like I said, this doesn’t have to be all bad. I’ve been thinking—”
"Oh, great!” Skywarp snidely interjected. “You thinking is just what I need!”
“I’ve been thinking,” I repeated loudly, not about to let him throw me off-track, “about what to do now, about where to go from here.”
Skywarp sighed a long, heavy, and deeply resigned sigh, sprawling back in his chair in complete exhaustion.
“And just what have you come up with?” he asked wearily of the ceiling, not of me, before he managed to lift his head again to look at me. “Not that I really want to know, mind you," he added, "but I know that won’t stop you from telling me, so you might as well just go ahead and get it off your chest.”
“I really think,” I said with an amused smile, “that the Decepticons need to get back to basics.”
“Basics,” Skywarp parroted blandly, puzzled. “As in…?” he prompted after a moment.
“As in,” I explained, “getting back to why we left Cybertron in the first place.”

“We followed the Autobots when they left,” Skywarp answered with a dismissive shrug. “So?”
“So why did they leave Cybertron?”
“How should I know? To find new energy sources, I guess,” Skywarp replied with a careless shrug, his still-bland, almost bored tone of voice indicating that he was obviously not following my line of thinking.
“Right,” I answered with a nod. “And they were going to use those hypothetical new energy sources to…?” I prompted him.
Skywarp frowned at that, his mouth twisting in thought for a moment.
“Um…to revitalize Cybertron?” he guessed.
“Exactly!” I crowed triumphantly, and Skywarp jumped at the unexpectedness of my shout. “And if you’ll remember,” I continued, “Megatron’s idea was to follow the Autobots so that he could find any new energy sources that might be out there first. So that he could revitalize Cybertron first.”
Skywarp nodded slowly, comprehendingly, finally starting to catch on.
“And we…seem to have lost sight of that whole ‘revitalize Cybertron’ goal thingy somewhere or another along the way, haven’t we?” he ventured quietly.
“Yes,” I replied. “We did. Or at least Megatron lost sight of it. But you can change that, Skywarp. You have the perfect opportunity to do so here.”
Skywarp stared at me for a long moment after that, his mouth occasionally opening as if he wanted to say something but then closing again when he just couldn’t find the words. Eventually, he got up out of his chair and started pacing again. This time, though, his pacing was more thoughtful than it was frantic. He was, I knew, starting to turn over possibilities in his mind, and perhaps he was beginning to like the implications of those possibilities. Finally, after a few minutes of pacing, Skywarp stopped in his tracks, turned to face me and, with an expectant look on his face, he asked the question that I had known that he was going to ask.
“How?”
Smiling slightly, I picked up the datapad that I’d been reading before Skywarp’s arrival and tossed it at him.
“Check that out,” I said as Skywarp deftly plucked the flying pad out of the air. While reading it, Skywarp returned to his chair and sat down in it. And then, after a few moments, he looked up at me again.
“I don’t get it,” he announced with a perplexed frown on his face.
Smiling fondly – because I’d known that he was going to say that, too – I patiently explained, “You remember when Megatron had that kooky idea to bring Cybertron into Earth’s orbit?”
“Yeah,” Skywarp blankly answered.
“Well, when the Autobots knocked Cybertron out of Earth’s orbit, it was captured by Jupiter’s gravity.”
“Yeah,” Skywarp repeated. “I know that, TC. And I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of Shockwave’s endless and entertainingly creative complaints about it, either. So what?”
“So that,” I said, pointing at the data pad that Skywarp was still holding, “is a study of the moon of Jupiter that the humans call Io, one conducted five or six years ago by Voyager I,one of the humans’ exploratory space probes. And if Shockwave had half a brain in his head, he would’ve stopped complaining about where Cybertron ended up parking itself, sent out some probes of his own…and then he might have noticed the goldmine sitting right next door to him.”
At that, Skywarp looked down at the pad again, and his face this time registered surprise as he took in – and this time began to understand – the implications of what he read about the lifeless, geologically unstable, highly volcanic, and incredibly energy-rich little planetoid that was, now, Cybertron’s closest neighbor.
“But how do we go about harnessing it?” he asked. “How—”
I held up my hand toward him to stave off the flood of questions that were about to tumble out of his mouth.
“I haven’t gotten that far,” I answered. “In fact, I’m not sure that I can go any farther. I’m no techie. But I know that some of the people around here and back on Cybertron could figure it out. If someone were to give them the opportunity to wrap their minds around the problem, I know they could come up with something workable.”
Knowing precisely who I meant by that emphasis on the word “someone,” Skywarp looked down at the pad in his hands again, shook his head uncertainly at what he read there, and then looked back up at me just as uncertainly.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I keep wondering what Megatron would do if he was…awake. And I keep wondering what might happen to me if he wakes up and finds me doing something that…that he doesn’t approve of.”
“Stop thinking about that, Skywarp!” I admonished him sharply, with an exasperated sigh. “Look,” I added, talking over him when he gave me a glare and opened his mouth to argue with me, “for all intents and purposes, Megatron is not here. And, let’s face it, from what Hook said, the likelihood is that he never will be here again, really. But you are here, Skywarp. And this could make a difference. In fact, it could make all the difference in the universe. For all of us.”
Skywarp just looked at me, still deeply apprehensive.
“And if it makes you feel any better,” I continued when he didn’t say anything to me, this time more softly, more gently, “just think of it as something to do until Megatron wakes up and we can start doing what he wants us to do again. This is something that won’t antagonize the humans or the Autobots or anyone else and that will help Cybertron and the Decepticon cause at the same time. If Megatron wakes up, he couldn’t possibly argue with that. So just…think about it, ‘Warp,” I encouraged him. “And while you’re at it, stop seeing Megatron’s loss as some kind of curse. Because…”
“Because…?” Skywarp prompted warily when my voice trailed off.
“Because…it isn’t,” I said simply, with a diffident shrug, keeping my words studiously calm and gentle, treading carefully. “In fact,” I added after taking a deep, preparatory breath, “it just might be the second-best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
Skywarp just stared at me, a bit of anger flashing in his eyes as he regarded me.
“How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true,” I answered sincerely. Reaching across the small space between us, I took Skywarp’s hands in mine, gave them an encouraging squeeze, and continued, “Skywarp, whether or not you realize it, I know that you were made for this job. I know from the very depth of my spark that you could be a leader a thousand times more effective than Megatron ever was if only you’d just drag yourself out from under his shadow and Starscream’s shadow and just…be the person that you’re supposed to be instead of the person you’ve been molded into. Just be the leader that I know that you can be and that everyone else seems to think that you can be.”
Skywarp just stared at me, blinking dumbfoundedly, for a long time, digesting what I’d said and the implications of it. Pulling one hand out of my grip, he rested it gently against my cheek, staring at me wonderingly.
“I wish I had the kind of confidence in myself,” he said quietly, hesitantly, “that you have in me.”
“But you do,” I protested, in all sincerity.
“Not really,” Skywarp replied, shaking his head and chuckling ruefully as he lazily stroked my cheek. “I’m just a pretty good actor, is all. You of all people should know that.”
“Sometimes,” I murmured with a philosophical shrug, contentedly leaning my face into Skywarp’s caress, “that’s all that the really good leaders are.”
Skywarp sighed, leaning back tiredly in his chair and staring at the ceiling for moments that stretched into half-a-dozen minutes. In fact, he was utterly still for so long that I thought exhaustion had finally managed to overcome him and that he’d slipped into recharge. I was just getting ready to get up and carry him to the recharge berth in the other room when he spoke again, his voice adorably drowsy, drained with the strain of a long stretch of days without recharge, and yet still cautiously wary.
“Thundercracker,” he said, “would you think I was totally wussy if I told you that I was scared out of my mind?”
I smiled affectionately, reassuringly at him, even though he wasn’t looking at me at the moment.
“Nooooo,” I said, after half a second of careful consideration. “Under the circumstances, I’d think you were totally sane if you told me you were scared out of your mind.”
At that, Skywarp lifted his head off the back of the chair – something that I noticed took a good deal of effort, as exhausted as he was – and grinned at me, obviously relieved.
“Thanks,” he said. “That’s good to know.” And then his head dropped back down, and he was still again. Until, of course, he abruptly lifted his head again a few seconds later. “Waitasec,” he said, frowning thoughtfully at me. “You said Megatron…uh, going away was the second-best thing that ever happened to me. So what’s the best thing?”
I quirked a jokingly self-important grin at him.
“Me, of course,” I said.
“Oh, of course!” Skywarp responded, glancing heavenward in mock exasperation. “How could I have forgotten?” And then he sank down further in his chair, wriggled a bit until he deemed himself comfortable, and then, finally, his exhaustion at last managed to overcome him.
I sat there, just watching him, for a very long time, reflecting on the tumultuous events of the past several years, marveling at how quickly and how drastically things had changed in such a short period of time. As far as I was concerned, all of the changes had ultimately been for the better. Megatron was basically gone, at least for the moment…and I secretly hoped that he would stay gone. Starscream, if he was alive—and I suspected that he was—was finally free in every sense of the word, and I assumed that he was now off somewhere with Skyfire, just as he should be, beginning a new life. And I hoped that, for him, it was good new life; if nothing else, he had earned it. And then there was Skywarp, who had the opportunity of a lifetime—a chance for a new life of his own, in fact—sitting right in front of him, if only he’d reach out and grab it…and I meant to make sure that he did. The Decepticons had, at the moment, a somewhat uncertain future, but if I had anything to say about it, it would be a bright one, one that was full of real purpose as opposed to the largely hollow and, on Megatron’s part, selfish purpose that we had been pursuing for the past several years.
And as for me… For perhaps the very first time in my life, I felt completely at peace. The future at the moment was uncertain, yes, but as I sat there watching my exhausted mate getting some much-needed rest, I somehow knew that it would be, that it had to be, better than the past. If nothing else, I knew that now, for the moment at least, I was in control of my own destiny, and I had never been able to say that before. It was an exciting prospect…but also an intimidating one; I knew what Skywarp was talking about when he’d said that he was scared out of his mind. But it was, I thought, a good kind of scared.