#tffic

Tags: femme Skywarp, angst, fluff, hurt/comfort. 

Starscream felt...Dirty. 

The feeling of feeling dirty had become a sort of background noise for him. In the beginning of the war, when it seemed that he and his trine would conquer Cybertron in a matter of days, he was obsessive with cleanliness. 

Thinking back onto all of the potential supplies he had wasted for his own vanity had his processor buzzing angrily. The thought was so upsetting it left him feeling frozen, with the crawl of nanites under his metal plating. 

His actions had been idiotic. Suicidal, at its worst. He had risked wing and engine for these things that got bots killed. It almost got him killed. And even then, he had still fought for those things. 

In the beginning it was more of a vain, selfish reason. It quickly became a memory that he was desperately holding onto. When these feelings popped up, Starscream started to horde. 

All of the things that had contained every little bit of care for his metal body were saved. Stacked into closet after closet, stuffed to the brim with these bottles and cases that had been used up and cleaned out to the point of sterility. 

And then, when he was staring down his last bottle of oil, his last case of wax, he couldn't bring himself to use them. They remained, tucked away in his cockpit. Unopened. 

By then, the war was ending. Optimis Prime proposed peace, and the moon-eating, bot squishing murderer blasted fool Megatron held up his hand out in defeat. 

It had been a harsh hit to the Decepticon morale. A deep cut happened almost immediately after Megatron drifted to the Autobot side. Bots who weren't as attached to the Decepticon cause as much as the elite were. 

Those who left, or who could leave, were accepted with open arms. Those who stayed, fumed with hatred. Starscream took command, the title feeling bitter on his glossa. Without the rush of euphoria that came from kicking Megatron off of his throne for good, Starscream felt clumsy in his new designation. 

He led the final battle. He had the damn Allspark in HIS HANDS!!!

They lost. They lost horrendously. Without the Allspark, more Decepticons shed their designation and either defected to Autobot, or Neutral. 

The final blow was brought forward by the screeching THWOOOM of the last groundbridge location on Earth exploding in an explosion not unlike a supernova. 

After the explosion, Starscream thought that his audials had been knocked out of place. It was so quiet, as every bot who could stared at the melted pile of mush that was the groundbridge. 

Then, there was a great wailing. 

It was not the wailing of death. Rather, it was something internal. A wailing from every Decepticon, Autobot, Neutral, and half-alive pieces of scrap felt. 

Optimus would later go on to say that he believed there was a chance that the Allspark could have survived, that he thought that one day their kind could return to home. 

Everyone knew he was lying. Pulling this shit right out of his shiny, white knight, aft. Cybertron was gone. And it wasn't coming back. Though no one could directly feel their sparks, they could feel an empty. 

Something missing. Never to be replaced. 

After the battle, Starscream was captured. Not by the Autobots, but by their puny pests they called Humans. G.H.O.S.T. as they called themselves. 

Starscream could see them for who they really were, though. They were the lowest lifeforms, mere dirt under his heels. And they were scared. They knew that Cybertronian's were dangerous. They never shied away from the undertones they took in their voices. 

The fear. The readiness to incapacitate the very beings who had allied themselves with their puny, insignificant cause. That was why they installed the wing chips. Removed the clawed tips of many Decepticons, and only stopping when Megatron intervened and related the painful procedure to something called "declawing". 

The humans stopped, yes. But they also took Megatron's meddling as a chance to test out just how sneaky they could be. How much abuse and testing could they get away with before Megatron or Optimus noticed?

How far could they bend back the plating to observe the deepest and most intimate parts of a mech, only to bend it back in place with hammers and fire?

How far could G.H.O.S.T push, before they themselves confessed that they were trying to break them?

Far, was the answer. 

They got far, so close that they had almost gotten what they wanted. And then the Terrans happened. 

After the breakout, things got...Hazy. 

Being out of his cell after so long, away from stasis cuffs and energon that tasted like waste-the outside was almost too much for him. As one of the earlier Decepticons to be captured, he lingered the longest while the others transformed and shot away from the hidden facility with all of their might. 

He hadn't even thought to transform. The feeling had been itchy for so long, that it felt like his T-Cog had gone numb. Then, when he felt the brush of a breeze, the transformation happened without him even thinking about it. 

Transformation after such a long time stuck in one mode hurt. It hurt bad. Every part of his body was screaming. Alerts popping up on hi HUD with such frequency that he was scared he would go blind. 

And then he was in the air. Thrusters burning and red hot from how hard his take off was. He blasted through the air, barely feeling the tease under his plating. 

He flew. Flew until his thrusters ached and he felt like weeping. Flew until he felt a tug at the Trine bond. It went towards it without thinking, feeling a deep thudding inside of him that urged him forward. 

Forced him past his exhaustion, past his hunger. His processor was even out for a bit, causing him to dip for a minute at least. 

When he came back, he wasn't flying anymore. He was still in the air, but he felt someone beside him. 

His optics online weakly, quickly finding the deep purple and black of Skywarp. She had taken on a female form, with a sharper face and darkness on her lips. 

She was warm. Burning hot from her own race to find him. They drifted downwards, with Skywarp's form shifting into his bot form, and used their wings to glide closer to the ground. 

Skywarp took him along slow, easy descent. On his other side, Nova Storm's goldenrod colored form glided close by. She didn't get too close, respecting their Trine bond as they drifted. 

He had never been so relieved to see the yellow Seeker, as she had usually lurked close behind Slipstream. They hadn't spoken a whole lot, aside from her following Starscream's orders. 

She and Skywarp had obviously bonded over their time while Starscream was out of the picture. He knew that Skywarp had no need to leave the Trine, and as there was no challenge from Nova Storm, he allowed the yellow jet to follow the two of them to Skywarp's landing zone. 

The flicker of Thundercracker's energy buzzed at the edge of Starscream's EMP field. He was still far out, but getting closer with every sonic boom. 

Skywarp landed them in a large open field, one that humans used to grow some sort of crop. They destroyed anything under their pedes and their thrusters, but none of them could care less. 

Gravity felt more heavy then before, all but tearing Starscream from Skywarp's careful grasp and making him flop in the most undignified way possible. 

Face first in the mud, vents whining with the strain of trying to cool himself off, utterly defeated and exhausted. 

His optics offlined as soon as he hit the ground, slamming him into a low power stasis. 

He came online with a shudder. Optics powering on first, he saw nothing but alerts covering his HUD. 

They zoomed in and out of screen, gone with a simple swipe. 

When his optics cleared, he was looking up at the inside of a Decepticon ship hanger. 

A quick look at the wear and tear of the paint, and the staleness of the air running through his vents, told him that he wasn't dreaming. 

The regular hum of the ship was missing, and doing a quick sweep of his body systems told him everything he needed to know. 

He was out of the critical zone of energon deficiency, but was lingering a little too close to dipping back down to be comfortable. The previous pain that had been in his joints from not transforming for so long still hummed on his sensors. 

His wings were bent out of shape. Not something dangerous, and not anything that any grounder could ever notice-but it added to the ache in his processor. 

The Trine bond that settled just behind his spark, humming at a low tone that only hear and his other trine-mates could hear. Skywarp was close, and Thundercracker was even closer. 

Starscream's optics drifted over, his helm moving the fraction of an inch. It was enough for his optics to see the sliver of a brilliant blue wing striped with white and red. 

Thundercracker's field thrummed when he realized that Starscream was awake, his wings all but fluttering like he was some sort of adolescent seekerling that had just seen an aft that they've liked for the first time. 

Starscream smiled as Thundercracker hovered over him. His optics were narrowed in worry, the aperture pupil shrinking and glowing as he looked over Starscream's face. 

Neither of them needed to say a word, as if there were any words that either of them could say that would make up for their time apart. Thundercracker's servos were warm on Starscream's cool face plating. 

They spread out to cup Starscream's cheek, and Starscream felt his spark surge with a sense of relief. The completion of their Trine felt like coming home for the first time. 

He vented deeply a few times, his arm feeling heavy as tungsten as he reached up. His servo rested almost lazily on Thundercracker's arm, feeling like he had used up an entire tank of gas to move. He squeezed slightly, letting out a laugh that was more of a wheeze from his vents as Thundercracker's eyes filled up with coolant. 

"I missed you, you soft-spark," Starscream croaked, smiling weakly as Thundercracker let out a weak bark of laughter. Thundercracker leant down and pressed their foreheads together. Starscream offlined his optics with a low venting sigh, feeling the humming purr from Thundercracker's engine rumbling softly against his plating. 

"We almost lost you for a second there," Skywarp's tone brought the two mechs apart, Thundercracker raising his helm with a chirp while Starscream struggled to lift his head to look at his third trine mate. 

Skywarp's mouth was stretched in a grin, which only grew wider when she saw Starscream trying to sit up with Thundercracker's help. 

"What are my injuries?" Starscream croaked, venting deeply as Thundercracker ran a hand between his wings in a slow stroke. 

"Well, your face is still intact," Skywarp teased as she took a seat on the edge of the berth, resting a claw on his leg, smiling when Starscream scowled at him, "there isn't any way of fixing that, unfortunately."

"No major injuries," Thundercracker soothed, "most of it is cosmetic. The only thing we're most worried about is your wings."

"My wings?" Starscream asked with a jolt, "what's wrong with my wings?!"

Skywarp's face pinched, and she didn't meet his eyes. Thundercracker's hand stilled between his wings, letting out a low mourning sound. 

"Your flight was a big stress on your wings," Skywarp said slowly, "Knockout's prescribed you for bedrest for the foreseeable future."

In the past, Starscream would have shouted or argued. He would have made a huge fuss about not being able to fly, much less transform, but now he just felt defeated. 

His trine mate's fields hummed with sadness at his lackluster response. Thundercracker's hand started to move again, massaging across the rough metal plates. 

"What's our next step," Starscream finally asked, not being able to bear the silence between them. 

"Laying low, for now," Thundercracker replied, "G.H.O.S.T let the two of you escape because of the Terrans. They'll be on high alert for a long while."

"Terrans?" Starscream asked, wrinkling his nose. 

"Some sort of abomination," Skywarp shrugged, "made from the Emberstone. Prime's using it as a way to 'unite Cybertronian's and humans together'" she said, her claws making the air quotes and her face pinching in disgust. 

"They're sneaky things," she shuddered, "they're bots but. Different."

Thundercracker laughed quietly, "they're not uncanny," he soothed, resting his chin on Starscream's helm, "they're Sparklings." 

Starscream's spark perked up, "Sparklings?" He repeated, "like, actually?" The thought of tiny bots, the beings who had been missing for millions of years, being alive again had his wings twitching in excitement. 

He felt Thundercracker's mirth through the bond and gently dug his elbow into Thundercracker's stomach, but the bigger mech didn't seem to mind to much. 

"Barely!" Skywarp scoffed, but she was smiling. 

"You like them," Starscream grinned, feeling a tickle of laughter in his chest as Skywarp struggled to suppress her grin at the thought of them. 

"...The drone is okay," she huffed, but there was no anger in her tone. "If she wasn't attached to Megatron at the hip, I would've taken her under my wing. Maybe convinced her to take on a better alt mode."

Starscream's smile dropped, "he's still around?" He demanded, "and they like him?!"

Skywarp avoided his gaze, "he calls her 'little bird'."

Starscream grit his denta and suppressed a snarl. How could any sparkling think that that monster was anything but a traitor and a coward?!

"You've been away for awhile," Thundercracker murmured, "you both have. I know you don't like it, but Megatron has changed."

"He's a coward," Starscream snarled, "he abandoned us to die! He destroyed the Allspark! Cybertron is gone because of him!"

"He's trying," Thundercracker replied, keeping his voice even, even though over the bond Starscream could feel his irritation, "out of all of us, he wanted a safe home for bots everywhere the most. He deserves a chance. Even if you don't want to give him one now, it's inevitable that we'll meet."

Thundercracker's words soured Starscream's mood, and his trine mates knew it. 

"Let's move on," Skywarp shook her hand, as if brushing all of the argument away, "you need to rest, Screamer. Breakdown's made a big berth for us. For when you woke up, if you still want us."

It’s rare to see Optimus disturbed by something, mostly because he’s lived through Simanzi, the bombing of Iacon, the black phosphex drops in Vox, Megatron at Kaon, the outbreak of Cybonic Plague, the Matrix burning itself into the core of him until all trace of Orion Pax, the archivist, the data clerk from Iacon was torn apart and subsumed something greater and so alien it meant loneliness until... well, all were one, right?

  So when he leaves the room – they call it a room, but like every other relic vault, it’s a closet – Arcee actually cannot stand it when he looks at her and for a terrible instant she can tell, actually tell, he’s lost faith. Like the day Tailgate died and every god in every pantheon that ever was became dust to her, like Cliffjumper never coming back, like the day her cohort brother tried to kill her four million years ago for the crime of not taking the Decepticon badge with him – the loss of faith in Optimus Prime is like being gutted. She doesn’t even know what he’s stopped believing in but she would punch her fist inside herself and tear out her spark if that would give it back to him. Which is why, she knows, she will never really understand him.

  “He asked for you.”

  Prime looks away and when he regains her optics, the façade is there again – utterly pristine.

  “You should speak with him.”

  “I can’t, Optimus.”

  “He asked for you,” he says again, like she hadn’t heard him the first time, like she’s done something wrong, and his stare is like being caught in the orbit of some great planetary pull, dragged into this wonderful terrible abyss. He’s Optimus Prime and he’s irrefutable as the fucking sun, then, in an instant, that is gone and he says, quietly: “He is afraid he will not have time.”

  ***

  She sits with him. Arcee doesn’t know what to say so when the worst of it seems to crest through him and take him over she pulls his head into her lap and waits for it to pass, staring at a section of floor while he cries out in what she supposes is Ancient Cybertronian. She wonders if Optimus understand what it is the kid is screaming, what profane prayer he’s shouting into the encroaching dark of what he’s realizing is and has always been his ‘destiny’ and she wishes she could take it back: every single word and bite down on them until they are obliterated from existence. But she can’t take it back and really, her notion that there is nothing special about him at all was the kindest aspiration she could have ever had for Smokescreen.

  When he starts crying, Arcee leans over him and lays on hand on his forehead, running the other from the base of his doorwings to the center of them, like she used to do for Bumblebee after they lost Cliff. For a moment he’s another soldier, just like her, just like any other Autobot breaking the face of a four-million yearlong holocaust and again, that notion is the best notion she’s ever had for him.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she promises.

  Smoke makes this deep multi-tonal sound, part engine noise, part scream, and there’s something in the harmonics that make a song out of it and it’s a moment before she realizes this is what agony sounds like in the Primal Vernacular. Then he comes out of it and all at once he wraps an arm around her middle, which is easy for him, he’s as big as Bumblebee, and presses his face into the side of her abdominal plating. She can feel every vibration off his frame echoed into her proto-skeletal structures and the exact frequency of his pain is transcribed literally into her body in that moment where he holds onto her like she’s the last real thing in the room, in the universe, in all of Creation.

  “I’m sorry,” he says in English, and the basic phenomes are tearing apart with static. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”

  “You have nothing to be sorry far, Smokescreen.”

  “I shouldn’t have said the stuff I did. I shouldn’t have and I did and I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Then why?” She smooths her palm down the space where his doorwings are set into his spinal strut, does so until the shaking seems to subside. “Why is this happening?”

  She refuses to say, ‘because you’re special’. The words are battery acid in her mouth and she wants to swallow them until her fuel lines pump poison and plague and mycopropelene. She hates the will of gods that make weapons out of librarians and tools out of children and could she consume enough dark matter to purge her loathing from her spark, the sub-dimensional ghost of her disgust would blaspheme everything that remained. But her hatred will win nothing back for Smokescreen, can take back nothing, protect him from nothing and she lays her forehead on his shoulder instead and she says in her best voice:

  “I’ll tell you a secret about Optimus.”

  He looks at her and, bless him, she can tell even now with enough agony in him to cripple worlds he wants to hear about Optimus. Or maybe he needs her to distract him because he can’t stand what the conversion process is doing to him on a molecular level. Ratchet tried to sedate him. Tried to burn the pain out of him with whatever they had, anything they had, any medicine any poison, anything that could stop what was coming for Smokescreen out of the core of his own spark. But like a star’s collapse or a the crush of a black hole, the transformation for which Smokescreen had been built and sparked is marching unstoppably forward and this is what it cost to bring Cybertron back.

  She’d rather their home world lie in the ashes they’d earned for it.

  Damn any world bought like this.

  “You know the Matrix?” she says, breaking her word to Optimus to never speak of it. She run her thumb along the edge of his chevron above his temple, watches his too-bright optics holding feverishly on her. “Optimus, he went down into the Core, followed a priestess of an Order older than the Primacies themselves and she lead him to the spark of Primus.” She looked at him. “His name was Orion back then. His real name, not the one the Senate gave him when they tried to make a Prime out of data clerk, like Primes were things you can make out of political agenda, like Primes are anything but forged. You know what happened to him? The story they tell?”

  He knows. Of course he knows. It’s about Optimus. He knows it.

  “None of that’s true,” she tells him, and realizes there is a high hyper-sonic in her words, a note of profound grief she’d forgotten she was capable of. “Primus didn’t sense some great nobility, didn’t articulate anything, any great notion to Orion Pax. There was no divine explanation when the Core of Cybertron took hold of Orion and made a Matrix bearer out of him and set the last hope of our race’s survival into him like you set a stone into a center piece.”

  Arcee can see that Smokescreen is starting to slip again, pain sheathed in pain sliding into him against and setting lines of thermite and liquid nitrogen into him. His optics flare, the color burning out of them, bleaching white, shorting out. She holds onto him. She doesn’t know when she started shouting, when her spark starting burning like a binary star in her chest, when she started to need Smokescreen to understand this thing: this last important, vital thing.

  “You know what? Smokescreen, look at me. Look at me! That’s not what makes Optimus Prime who is. You hear? Some god, some Senate, some power or authority didn’t make him who he is or instill value into him that was not already there – I promise you this: Everything he is, everything good, worthwhile and worth dying for existed in him before the Matrix ever touched him and everything of value in you existed before Alpha Trion decided to build the edifice of a new Cybertron on your shoulders, like that was ever your burden to bear. You’re not special because of that. You’re special because you’re you and you're one of us!”

  She catches his chin in her fist.

“Do you hear me?!” His optics catch hers, once, for a split second holding onto her and for a moment Arcee thinks that was enough, somehow, telling him that he is exactly like Optimus, that he belongs here, that will miraculously be enough to turn back this terrible thing and undo everything, every horrible, unfair, awful, irrational, inconceivable thing. For a moment he's safe. Then... "Smokescreen?"  He’s not moving any more. He’s not making a sound. She shakes him and his head falls gently against her shoulder. “Smokescreen?”

The airwaves are empty.