t had, I knew, only been a few weeks since I’d last stepped foot on Cybertron, dealing with rebellious Combaticons; it just felt like it had been half a lifetime since I’d been there. Now, just above the horizon hung the huge, sulfurously-hued planet that the humans had named Jupiter after one of their ancient mythological deities. Its famous red spot happened to be facing Cybertron at the moment, a huge and, indeed, god-like Decepticon eye glowering down in displeasure at its recently acquired moon.
It had, I reflected, much to glare at. If nothing else, Cybertron’s capture and abrupt insertion into Jupiter’s impressive array of satellite planetoids hadn’t been at all easy on the poor planet. In fact, I was surprised that Cybertron hadn’t been completely torn apart by what had happened to it, that it hadn’t been reduced to a ring of rubble orbiting Jupiter in mute testimony to the destructive power of tidal forces. As it was, the gravitational havoc that had been wreaked had, in a relative instant, done more to decimate the Cybertronian landscape and its inhabitants than the entire eons-long war between the Autobots and the Decepticons had ever managed to do. Ruin was everywhere, all around me in all directions as far as I could see; I just hadn’t taken the time to notice it during the last several times I’d been to the planet.
Yet Cybertron still existed, was still in one piece, was still surviving quite well, thank you, despite the overwhelming odds against it. And, perhaps even more amazingly, amidst the wreckage there were encouraging signs of life everywhere on Cybertron. Dim lights flickering fitfully in unexpected places and in the midst of utter ruin gave me hope that my devastated home planet would one day be reborn in a blaze of phoenix-like glory.
And that hope, in turn, gave my devastated psyche hope for its own kind of rebirth, its own very different kind of transformation. It hadn’t happened yet, and it might not happen in the foreseeable future, but the possibility was stubbornly clinging to existence, clinging to life, just as Cybertron was.
Two weeks had passed since the “battle” between Skyfire, Megatron, and me. It was a battle that, as far as I knew, had had only two survivors. In the aftermath of that battle, Skyfire and I had been completely exhausted on so many different levels that we’d both been unconscious for I knew not how long. I only knew that, upon awakening, still in Dr. Archeville’s abandoned laboratory, I’d found Skyfire already awake and, although he looked like he shouldn’t be up and about at all, he had been busily attaching his portable energon generator to me, easily shoving aside my feeble protests that he should recharge first. I remember lifting my head and seeing Megatron lying not far from me, looking lifeless, and a deep shudder passing through my body as I’d lapsed back into welcome unconsciousness and recharge.
Once I’d reawakened, somewhat renewed and re-energized, Skyfire and I had talked for a little while about many things. We had decided that we needed to leave, that nowhere on Earth would we be safe from the wrath of the Decepticons once they’d learned of Megatron’s fate and had figured out who had been responsible for it. The only place we could think of to go was back to Cybertron, and so…here we were, in this abandoned yet structurally stable – for the moment, at least – building that we’d found and that we were using as a base of sorts while we figured out what to do with the rest of our lives. Skyfire was at the moment stretched out on the floor in a room several stories below me, but I…? I had been restless and, in order to avoid disturbing Skyfire’s peaceful recharge, I’d gone up the roof to think, to sort out things in my mind that I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to address in the wake of everything that had happened. In fact, so much had happened over the last several weeks that I hadn’t really had time to absorb it all, to feel any of it, to accept all of it as real. But now, as things began to settle down—although I was quite certain that this respite was merely the calm before the storm—it had all started to become real to me. Real and…frightening.
I so wished that I could reach out to Skyfire, talk to him about these troubles of mine, about all that had happened to me, to us. But for some reason, I just couldn’t do so. Not now. Not yet. I was, of course, grateful for all that Skyfire had done for me, for all that he had sacrificed and suffered for my sake. And I was happy to be with him again…but I felt that I still wasn’t ready to be his mate again. In fact, we hadn’t yet renewed the bond between us precisely because I was deeply uncomfortable with the very idea of doing so; for me, bonding had come to have very negative connotations. But on the other hand, I longed for the emotional and mental closeness to Skyfire that I knew that I would feel again if only I could overcome and squelch my inhibitions. I longed for Skyfire to be able to sense my emotions, my mental state, again so that he could then offer the comfort that one could only offer if one truly knew what the other was feeling. And I longed for him in so many other ways, as well. So on the one hand I wanted Skyfire with all my being…but on the other hand I was deeply afraid of him. So now I felt quite strongly that I needed to be alone for a little while, if only to begin to sort myself out, even though I wasn’t entirely sure that I could succeed in the effort.
For the past two weeks, I had been feeling…empty. It was, I knew, the effect of an the severed bond; the severance and its accompanying flood of emotions and sensations had all happened too quickly to be properly processed and assimilated. The pain had finally subsided to the point where it was now just a dull, occasional twinge instead of the all-consuming agony that it had been during the whole first week after Skyfire and I had forced Megatron out of the bond. Once the pain had mostly gone away, though, I was left with a feeling of complete numbness, completely disconnection from reality. I felt completely adrift, attached to nothing and no one as I had not been for close to ten million years.
It was, in a strange way, a comfortable, cushioning sort of feeling; I hadn’t yet had to deal with reality or with the future. But now the numbness was wearing slowly off, and a flood of emotions had roared in as if from a burst dam to fill the void. Suddenly, I was feeling too much and all of it was assaulting me at the same time, in a confusing and often conflicting jumble.
Somewhere in the mish-mash that was my emotional state, I did feel elated, joyful. Like I could just fling myself off the roof upon which I sat, soar to the heavens, and never come down. Megatron, after all, was gone. He would never again torment me. The bond between us was broken, completely severed, and I was almost completely healed from the physical effects of that severance. No remnant of him remained to haunt my spark, so for the first time in millions of years I was completely alone in my own spark. I was free and from that freedom sprang joy. It was just that all of the other emotions that were rampaging through my mind and my spark were effectively damping that joy, tempering it with caution and deep apprehension. I knew that I was facing a wholly uncertain future, and that was somewhat…disquieting, to say the least.
For millions of years, after all, my entire identity, my entire life, had been predicated more or less upon only two things. The more benign factor was simply being a Decepticon, a choice that I had made without hesitation and, indeed, without regret. The other far more complicated factor was, of course, Megatron. For millions of years he, more than anything or anyone else, had defined my identity, and he had molded and shaped that identity according to who and what he had wanted and needed me to be at any given time. It was something that, as completely steeped in the situation as I had been, I hadn’t had a hope of recognizing it for what it was. But now that I was free from it, now that I was viewing it all from outside of the situation, it was all blindingly, painfully obvious to me.
I hadn’t known – or at least I had forgotten – who I was and, worse, when I had occasionally made the effort to understand who I was, I had only believed what Megatron had told me, the estimation that he had enforced with countless beatings both physical and psychological. I hadn’t believed what Skyfire had told me, without fail, every time that I had been to his island to visit him. I hadn’t believed what even Thundercracker had tried, in his diffident, tentative, roundabout way, to tell me. I had only believed Megatron. And Megatron, of course, had used that power to define me to my own great disadvantage. I knew that now. But at the same time, the position had been an oddly comforting one, in a deeply twisted sort of way. It had been a secure position. I hadn’t had to think about who I was. I hadn’t had to try to find out who I was. I hadn’t had to worry about what my future would hold. I’d had someone there to rigidly define and map out all of that for me and, in an odd way, that had almost made life easier. For all of its occasional unpleasantness, my life with Megatron had been surprisingly simple.
But now…Now, my life was vastly complicated. Now, Megatron’s influence and his violently reinforced definitions of who I was and who I should be were gone. My high status in the Decepticon hierarchy was, likewise, gone. I was, in fact, no longer a Decepticon at all, which wasn’t a conscious decision that I had made so much as it was simply a consequence of intervening in the “fight” between Megatron and Skyfire. Likely, once they pieced together what had happened, if any Decepticon caught a glimpse of me, he’d do his best to kill me. So, that way of life was, for me, suddenly and irreversibly closed off, gone as if it had never been. Yet the Decepticon way of life and the Decepticon way of thinking were in many ways all that I knew, all that I understood. In some ways, being a Decepticon had been my anchor in reality when the rest of my life was heading off in crazy and self-destructive, not to mention self-abusive, directions. But now that anchor was gone, and as a result, I was feeling rudderless, directionless.
So, ironically, even after all that had happened over the past month or so, I still didn’t know who I was, really, no more so than I had known who I was, say, in the aftermath of a bond with Megatron. I was no longer Starscream, second-in-command of the Decepticon Empire. I was no longer Starscream, Decepticon warrior. I was no longer Starscream, bondmate of Megatron. I was…just Starscream, and I was entirely alone in the universe but for one other person. And there was nothing, save for Skyfire and a dimly-remembered pre-Megatron life, to replace all of those other identities that I’d lost in that fleeting instant when I’d accepted that I had to help Skyfire in his fight against Megatron even if it meant my own death. I knew that, now, I would have to build an entirely new life, an entirely new identity, and an entirely new purpose because the old ones were gone, were forever out of my reach even if I had wanted to embrace them again.
In fact, what I needed to do was to rediscover my old life, my old identity, my old purpose, but I wasn’t sure that I was capable of accomplishing that goal. On one level, I knew that Megatron was gone and that I was free of him. Yet, on another level, I had to admit that I was still waiting for him to swoop down upon me and extract his revenge for what I’d done to him. Old habits really do die hard, as the human saying went. But that feeling of impending doom only proved to me that in my own mind my freedom was not yet a reality. And of course my old pre-Megatron life had happened so long ago, and so much had happened in the intervening years, that it all seemed dreamlike, like something that had happened to someone else, that I had just been an outside observer of it all. It, at the moment, wasn’t real to me, either.
Yet, it had all happened to me. I knew that. I knew that I’d had a life prior to Skyfire’s loss and the beginning of my association with Megatron. I’d been a scientist, a successful and innovative, if just slightly eccentric, one. True, I’d also been something of a social outcast, just as I had been amongst the Decepticons…but it hadn’t bothered me in the least back then. In fact, I distinctly remembered being happy back then. I remembered being settled, satisfied, and content with my life, with Skyfire, in a way that I’d never been as a Decepticon. It was all hazy, though, all quite unreal to me, and the thought of trying to resurrect it all, the thought of starting over where Skyfire and I had left off when Skyfire had first spotted Earth eons ago was…a little overwhelming. So, mixed in with the joy I felt over being free from Megatron there was also the massive trepidation I felt that was born of being free from Megatron. Had Skyfire not been there, I don’t know how I might have handled it… Chances were that I wouldn’t have handled it at all.
But, of course, Skyfire was there. He was in the very building upon which I was, at the moment, sitting. And at the thought of him…Well, the joy began to edge out the trepidation, indeed. For all the apprehension that I was feeling about my future, I knew that, right at that moment, I was where I belonged. True, I may have managed to forge a hollow semblance of an identity and a purpose with Megatron and amongst the Decepticons, but it had never truly been where I belonged, had never been truly what I was meant to be. It had all been a sham, a misguided attempt on my part to be something that I was not, perhaps to be more than I was meant to be. But now I knew with spark-felt certainty that my destiny was to be wherever Skyfire was, to follow wherever he went, to complement whatever he did. Skyfire had been my entire life millions of years ago…and he would, I knew, be my entire life again. In fact, he already was.
He was, after all, all that I had left.
And yet…a frustrating but very familiar part of me refused to believe that Skyfire still wanted to be with me at all. I didn’t feel…worthy…of Skyfire’s devotion. He’d done so much for me, but what had I ever done for him? Well, I had left him for dead after his disappearance on Earth all those millions of years ago, for one thing. That was surely a sign of my everlasting devotion. And once I’d found him again, I had promptly put him through hell several times over, even gone so far as to be perfectly content to kill him. So, it amazed me that Skyfire could forgive me…much less that he would want me around in the wake of my faithlessness, my cruelty to him. Yet, he did want me. He’d told me as much many times since we’d left Earth, most recently last night, when we’d come quite close to renewing our bond…only to have me run away in badly-disguised terror, retreating to the very roof upon which I now sat. It had become my haven when I needed to be alone, which was distressingly often. Skyfire understood, so he said; I just hoped that he’d continue to understand, continue to bear with me and my host of issues…
He probably won’t , a malicious voice in my head suddenly whispered. He’ll get tired of waiting for you to get over your cowardly fears, and in the meantime someone a lot better will come along and he’ll realize what he’s giving up in order to coddle you. He deserves better than the likes of you, Starscream.
I knew the voice that was speaking, of course. It was the one that had suddenly taken up residence in my head during the long, torturous trip back to Cybertron millions of years ago, after I’d lost Skyfire on Earth. It was the voice that had, ultimately, led me to Megatron and that had subsequently, over the next…oh, couple of eons…convinced me that, whatever Megatron did to me, I deserved it all and more. It was, essentially, the voice that had destroyed my life. So, I knew that I shouldn’t be listening to it now. It was wrong, and I knew it. It had made my life a living hell, and I knew that, too. But the voice wasn’t easily dispatched. Apparently, I couldn’t just will it away. It was there, in the background, constantly monitoring my thoughts and trying to steer them in the direction that it wanted them to follow. Dealing with it – and hopefully quelling it – was yet another thing that I had to look forward to in the future. It was a future that, at the moment, seemed both bright and bleak at the same time. I wondered, as I sat there with my legs dangling over the edge of the roof, staring at the sparse lights glowing weakly here and there in the ruined city that surrounded me, what that future had in store for me, for Skyfire, and for everyone else that I knew. I tried, as I contemplated that issue, to focus on the good and hopeful aspects of the future, to be optimistic about it all, but I had developed over the years a distinct tendency to spiral down into extreme pessimism. Especially when I was alone. I didn’t tend to do well when I was alone…
So it was fortuitous that, at that very moment, I heard a heavy footstep behind me. I had been so deep in thought that I hadn’t heard anyone approach me until whomever it was was quite close to me, just a few paces behind me. Reflexively, upon hearing the footsteps, I cringed, gasping in surprise as I did so. I had automatically expected, after all, that my visitor would be Megatron, and I further expected that he had come to punish me for what I had done to him. What a relief that, instead of the intense, focused pain of fusion cannon blast, I felt only the lightest, gentlest, and most comforting caress on the top of my shoulder.
“It’s only me,” Skyfire said gently in response to my automatic cringe as he sat himself down next to me. He took a few long moments to stare at the bleak view in front of him and then, when I didn’t say anything, he softly added, “When I awoke and you weren’t there, I thought that perhaps you had…left.”
There wasn’t any sort of accusation in Skyfire’s voice, yet I knew that I had probably worried him. Tilting my chin up, I looked up at Skyfire, up into his calm white face, into his tranquil blue eyes as they looked down at me, concern flickering in them.
I hoped that my expression was sincere as I answered, “I’m not going anywhere, Skyfire.”
Skyfire was quiet for a long while after that, and I wondered if he was thinking about the same sorts of things that I had been thinking about: What happens now? What do we do now?
"You’re thinking,” I eventually informed him mildly, leaning sideways to nudge him with my shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”
For a long moment, Skyfire didn’t answer me. He just continued to stare at Jupiter hanging just over the horizon. I followed his gaze and noticed that the Spot was no longer visible, leading me to wonder just how long I’d been sitting there. But, putting that aside, my gaze traveled back to Skyfire, wondering at his silence. His face was entirely calm, his expression collected, but I could feel the tension that was radiating from him. I was just about to prompt him to speak again when he finally decided to speak up.
“Starscream, do you think,” he asked tentatively, “that we killed him?”
It certainly wasn’t the question that I’d expected him to ask. And of course, I didn’t have to ask whom Skyfire meant by the word “him.” And I immediately knew the answer to Skyfire’s question, too.
“Yes,” I answered calmly, matter-of-factly, with complete certainty. “I can’t…sense him anymore. Not that I ever could sense him all that strongly, but I can tell that there is no trace left of him in me now. So I would assume that means that he’s…”
When Skyfire sighed deeply as my voice trailed off, I knew what was bothering him, knew that Skyfire had always thought that life was a precious thing, that he never actively sought to destroy it, no matter what form it took, and no matter how…evil that form was. Looking back, I should have realized that, if only for that reason, Skyfire never would have been happy amongst the Decepticons. And I also realized, at just that very moment, that I used to have that same appreciation for life in all of its forms, as well…
“That…bothers you, doesn’t it?” I asked of Skyfire, if only to distract myself from that final disturbing thought of mine.
“Bothers me?” Skyfire echoed mildly as he looked down at me, his expression somewhat surprised.
“Yes,” I said. “I know you’re not a warrior, Skyfire, not a…killer. Even when it comes to someone like…him.”
Skyfire considered that for a long time, staring down at me as I stared back up at him. I couldn’t really tell what he was thinking, not yet. I knew that we’d have to renew our bond before I’d have that sort of instant, intimate communion with him. It had been so long, after all, since we’d been together in that way…and there’d been a wedge lodged between us for most of that time, as well. So, I was left to wonder what Skyfire was thinking for that long moment, as he contemplated my face. And then, just as I was about to ask him what he was thinking, he answered me.
“There are some things in the universe, Starscream…some people,” he said slowly, deliberately, and with that calm, unshakeable certainty that was uniquely his and that I’d always admired, “that simply deserve to die. I know that. But that does not mean that I have to like it. I…believe in second chances, I suppose. And third, fourth, and fifth chances and beyond even that. I think that everyone, no matter what they’ve done and no matter how evil they’ve been, can change if they really want to do so and if someone believes in them enough to help them…”
Skyfire was serious, too. I knew that. If nothing else, he hadn’t given up on me when I’d given him a million-and-one reasons to do so. He’d kept believing in me, kept fighting for me – sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes in more overt ways – even though I’d repeatedly rebuffed him. He’d kept offering me nothing but unconditional support, acceptance, and love even though I’d developed a rather nasty habit of hurting him in one way or another over the past couple of years. But rather than rejecting me, rather than leaving me to dwell forever in the pit that I’d quite happily dug for myself, Skyfire had offered me…redemption.
Yes, “redemption” was the right word for it, indeed. Skyfire had offered me a chance to start over, with all my sins forgiven, free to be the person that I was supposed to be rather than the person that someone else wanted me to be. And for once in my life, I hadn’t been so foolish as to reject such an offer. True, it had taken me quite a while to accept what Skyfire was offering to me, but eventually I’d been smart enough to grab hold of the lifeline that he’d thrown to me and then to hold on to it as if my life depended on it…because it had depended upon it. I knew that, now.
“So, in other words,” I said quietly, smiling up at Skyfire as his voice trailed off, “you believe that everyone is redeemable. Even the lowest of the low.”
“Yes,” he agreed succinctly, nodding absently. “Even the lower than the low, actually.”
“Ah, so that’s why you didn’t give up on me, then!” I exclaimed lightly. “To prove your happy little philosophy.”
Skyfire looked surprised at that for a moment. Then he smiled down at me, no doubt realizing just at that moment that I was teasing him. He reached around me and wrapped one comforting arm around my shoulders, pulling me a bit closer to him. And much to my surprise I didn’t cringe or reflexively stiffen when he did so. I didn’t feel completely relaxed, but neither did I feel completely panicked. It was progress.
“No, Starscream,” Skyfire was saying quietly, after a long moment of just holding me against him. “I didn’t give up on you…because I love you. And you never quit on the people you love.”
“Oh really?” I responded lightly. “And who came up with that profound bit of wisdom?”
Skyfire smiled enigmatically for a long moment, as he stared out across the ruined Cybertronian landscape that spread out around us, before he answered, “A very wise man named…Sparkplug.”
“Really?” I responded, genuinely surprised. I had been conditioned to believe that the humans were largely incapable of stringing meaningful words together, and the few to which I’d been personally exposed for any length of time had been distasteful examples of the species that hadn’t led me to believe otherwise about them. Yet, in this case, the human was right and, indeed, somewhat wise, if just a little too far on the schmaltzy side for my tastes. But then, at the moment, I suppose that I was a bit inclined toward schmaltz, myself…
“Really,” Skyfire was confirming, meanwhile. “And he’s right, too.” He was quiet for a moment after that, staring off into the distance, thinking. But then he refocused his attention on me and quietly but rather intensely added, “I know that we have a long road ahead of us now, Starscream, on many different levels. I know that you have…issues that will take time to heal. But you need to know that I will never give up on you. I will always be here for you, no matter what happens in the future. That, I promise you.”
Skyfire’s words warmed me. For so long, I had been yoked to someone who believed me to be worthless and who had quite easily made me share that belief. For so long, I had lived in the shadow of someone who tolerated my presence only because he could use my weaknesses to counteract his own, to make himself feel powerful and in control of everything and everyone around him. But now…Now I had Megatron’s opposite in just about every way. Skyfire saw worth in me and so had begun to reignite in me my own sense of self-worth. And he didn’t want me in order to use me, but simply because he…loved me.
I wanted so much to be able to turn to him, to wrap my arms around his bulk and just lose myself in him, to show him without having to say the words how I felt about him. But I couldn’t do that. Not yet. And it wasn’t just because I feared the whole bonding experience; it was also because it was very hard to break out of the pattern of thought and behavior that had both defined and fettered me for millions of very long years. Breaking away from that kind of extended and all-consuming conditioning wasn’t going to happen in one day or even, I imagined, in several thousand days. All I could do, I knew, was try. It was going to be difficult and I was fully aware of that, but I was determined that, one day, I would heal. And during that process, I was determined that I would be the best person that I could be, if only so that Skyfire would be proud to have one such as me as a mate. He’d once been proud of that, I knew. I could only hope that he would be so again…one day… That longing for him, all of him, rose suddenly in me…and this time it took longer to subside.
“And I promise that I’ll…try to be worthy of your promise, Skyfire,” I eventually said, my uncertainty betrayed by a voice that was choked with the conflicting emotions running through my body and spark and by the fact that I couldn’t look him in the eye.
Skyfire didn’t answer me for a long time, so long that curiosity finally got the better of me and I looked up at him questioningly. He was looking down at me speculatively, his expression one of affectionate confusion.
“But…You’ve always been worthy of that promise, Starscream,” Skyfire said, his voice nothing if not sincere. “Always. And you always will be.”
I smiled what was likely a very wan smile up at Skyfire, trying not to look too uncertain as I did so.
“I…hope so,” I said timidly.
“I know so,” he answered encouragingly and he tightened his arm around me for a moment, as if to reinforce his confidence in me, before he released me. He’d learned from experience that I could not yet tolerate close physical contact for extended periods of time.
Skyfire and I sat there for a long while after that, watching the few lights visible in what had once been the largest and most densely populated city on Cybertron. Tomorrow we would begin exploring Cybertron, hoping to find a Non-Aligned encampment somewhere that we could join and that, along with them, we could work toward forging a better future for ourselves and for our home planet. But for now…Now, it felt good to just be there with Skyfire, basking in his comforting presence. I wasn’t quite sure how long we stayed there, but eventually I became aware of Skyfire’s gaze on me. I could somehow sense that he was wondering about me, wondering what I was thinking.
“Starscream?” he finally asked of me. “Are you all right?”
And I just then realized, at the moment that Skyfire asked that question of me, that I was all right, or at least that I would be all right, eventually. I had been through much over the years. I had learned much about myself and about the universe in general along the way, but I had also suffered more than perhaps any one being should have to suffer in any one lifetime. Yet, I had survived it all, and I had managed to do so with my sanity more or less intact. I had beaten the odds, just as Cybertron had beaten the odds when it had survived being captured by Jupiter’s gravity.
I had won.
I had escaped.
And I suddenly felt lighter than I had felt in an unimaginably long time.
“I’m fine, love,” I murmured quietly, uttering the endearment without consciously realizing that I had done so. My voice, as quiet as it was, was happy, genuinely happier than it had been in a long time, and it was tinged with a certainty and an optimism that I wouldn’t have thought possible a few months before. Skyfire must have picked up on the feeling, though, because the smile he bestowed upon me was more radiant and hopeful than I had ever seen, and it filled me with a warmth the strength of which I couldn’t remember ever having felt before.
It was true that I didn’t know exactly what the future held for me, and it was true that that was frightening. I had always thought that I knew exactly what the future had in store for me, and I had been completely certain that I was right, so it had been something of a shock to my system to discover that I had instead been completely and wildly wrong. My destiny had taken a very unexpected turn, and now I couldn’t even begin to guess what would become of me. But on the other hand, I did know that, whatever was in store for me in the future, I would no longer have to face any of it alone, and that knowledge was enormously comforting.
For me, for now, it was enough to know that, so long as I had Skyfire with me, I could easily face whatever the future chose to throw at me.