Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For all his struggles, the countless plans he placed in motion only to have failed, Starscream had little foreseen himself landing in this position.

His free servo paws at the rough, chipped scaley pillars in front of him. 

Trees . He assumes.

He sluggishly flings himself forward on his feet from tree to tree for guidance, ambling shakily in the dark. His vision is absent of any feedback to regularly guide him as his optics cycle in and out uselessly.

He paws clumsily on another tree and catches himself, scrambling to keep moving.

There is a gaping hole in his side. Deep, gagged grooves cover the metal and mesh of his side. Energon and water leak past his digits onto the grass floor.

Starscream ventilates heavily with each step, triggering a new error message in his HUB, completely pitch black except for the alarming diagnostics of several missing components. The number of notifications alarms him and forces him to run faster to reach a place to rest.

Starscream yelps as he feels the ground disappear under his feet and his center of balance evaporates. His frame meets the ground, hard, rolling down the grassy terrain and his crumpled, ruined wings slam and bend against the hard ground.

He yowls as his frame finally slows, hissing in pain as he reaches to gingerly touch at the torn wings— cracked at various places and waterlogged. Inoperative.

Starscream ex-vents on the ground, rolling to his intact side and covering his face in his servos, counting his losses.

His optics refuse to turn on. Offline.

His T-cog once sat in the vacant spot. Missing.

Only they weren’t, Starscream knew well enough where the cylindrical organ was located. 

In pieces on the Nemesis’ floor.

The precious organ that allowed him the power of flight had been torn away by his former lord and master, Megatron, in an… unfortunate discussion while placed under arrest after his time as a rogue had come to an end. 

All because he just had to have a scrap of Energon crystal. 

The thought of Energon makes his tanks twist with a hollow ache.

His desperation had led him to an Energon mine, only to be discovered by that wretch Arachnid and her Insecticon pet. Weakened from his tanks being low on Energon, he had tried to strike a deal with her to terminate Megatron.

Only for that vile femme to sick her pet on him, enact HIS plan without his involvement, and then PIN IT ON HIM when she failed to terminate Megatron. Not only that, but the Autobots had survived the encounter and likewise now knew of his lie in intel that Arachnid’s attack was not posed to mankind, but he weaponized that wretch and her Insecticon against them.

He’d likely not get medical assistance from the Autobot medic any longer, not without good purpose and as of now he has nothing in mind to trade, nothing he’d like to part with either.

He was found by a Vehicon division of miners while digging in a cave system, on his servos and knee plates for Energon he’s managed to scavenge and kept a secret from Megatron’s forces. His plan was to hoard as much Energon reserves as he could and sustain himself just long enough to eventually come up with some plan to put him back on top.

Starscream swallowed thickly, tasting the precious cerulean lifeblood that coats his glossa from a few stray coughs as his systems bleed internally. 

The irony of the situation is not lost on him.  

But if he could just survive the next cycle, he could retreat to those mines and use his emergency rations to carry himself into the next cycle. And the next… and the next…

He pulls himself back up to keep going, managing another few steps before slumping. The disorientation of being unable to see and having his other senses assaulted with a panicked frenzy of survival instinct cause his tanks to turn, forcing him to stop. 

He covers his intake, not wanting to expel any more precious Energon. 

Letting a low rumbling cough,  he settles his weight down carefully against a pine, shivering from the water droplets that endlessly run down his frame. He ex-vents, exhausted while taking a mental count of his wings. 

He flexes his right tail wing, far too relieved to feel it mostly intact. Unfortunately, he cannot say so about the rest. 

He’s sure he lost both of his flight wings upon making contact with the lake. Megatron’s talons, having delivered a long cut at the base of his wings, which combined with the impact with the surface tension of the water, had ripped them clean off.

The extreme pain of having been beaten once more for his slip-ups is a discomfort, but a regrettably familiar one. This particular defeat leaves a deeper welt of boiling, writhing of something anxious in his chassis. He’s never lost so much before.

His spark twists on itself alongside his empty tanks. Starscream vents steadily, unsure if he’s experiencing starvation or the desire to purge.

He swallows whatever it was back.

Megatron has thwarted every plot he’s placed in motion in the past. His hubris blinded him once more, his chassis blooming triumph into his being at the possibility of pulling one over Megatron, even in the down-trotted state he was in previously. He had foolishly led himself to believe that this, this time , he could outwit Megatron and rise above.

Once again, not seeing clearly before acting… and now he’s unable to see at all. How poetic.

It was avoidable, and that was the worst part. 

Another detail was missed, another point was ignored, and another bot was giving him up. Again. 

Another, another, another.

Now with another crime hanging over his helm, and Dreadwing at Megatron’s beck and call, Starscream supposes it’s time to cross off the option of ever returning to the Decepticons or their ship again. Perhaps, his only maybe -ally, Knockout, would assist him…

…or maybe not . 

Thinking back, Starscream had noticed the doctor was present during his public would-be termination. Though the cherry red medic didn’t look particularly celebratory at his brutal assault, he didn’t look particularly moved either. 

While Starscream isn’t sure what he had expected, he had not expected his spark to rush into a panicked frenzy when Knockout hid into the sea of Vehicons watching impassively. 

He’s certain Knockout would likewise, in his current predicament, slip silently into the background. So unlike his grandiose flamboyance that commanded attention, he’d slink away at the first indication of trouble and abandon their plots halfway. The survival tactic of a coward.

…That’s most likely why he’d made such a pair with Knockout at times-- Two cowards, opportunists but skittish and pathetic when plans erupt in their faceplates. 

He wasn’t given a single sympathetic pulse through the EMP fields surrounding him as Megatron crushed his T-cog in a single servo.

He scowls up at the vast nothing, bitterly and thunks his head against the wooden support at his back.

He wouldn’t have returned to this painful pit again had he the foresight that any choice he makes of his own accord, anything that strays from his current path of subservience, would return him to it. Now he’s left with nothing, but to grovel to the Autobots for assistance. 

This humiliation he keeps returning to has become too acquainted with his spark.

He should’ve just given up.

Starscream swallows thickly and ventilates heavily, trying to keep his tanks from purging as he reabsorbs his diminishing Energon. The jagged remains of wings hold as still as possible, ignoring the twinges of pain from the dangling piece of his tail wing. A few wires and surviving mesh hold it together.

He closes his optics. It doesn’t get much darker.

He wonders if Megatron knew where he was this whole time and only let him get this far to punish him so severely for it later. 

This last encounter had stolen something from him that was so innately part of him. He’d gotten so lucky the first time with M.E.C.H.’s attempt to steal his T-cog, back then he’d had the energy for a quick getaway into the sky.

Now, the loss radiated a knowing heat under his servo. The acknowledgment of his frame towards the piece that gave his body a liberty of flight that was a privilege to some, but natural to a seeker. 

His nature had been disturbed.

His private fantasy, one that came to him in replays of memories during his recharge cycles aboard the Nemesis, to once again leap off of impossibly tall heights on Cybertron with the security of survival was now reduced to that-- mere fantasy. 

His ability to ensure a quick escape for his life is no longer certain. His best innate ability to navigate himself in and out of situations, to weave his body through the air like he weaves his life into the future-- to cut through the atmosphere with graceful tactical artistry in his body that was in his nature to wield-

His ability to promise himself a tomorrow… is gone. 

Now he is left to crawl like a pathetic creature. Blind, grounded, starving, and terribly, terribly frightened.

The rest was shrouded in darkness as Starscream launched a missile and ran for dear life, his spark dropping to his tanks as he felt himself step off solid ground and plummet.

Starscream furrows his brow, his faceplate heating as he swallows again, but it’s not to keep in any stray Energon this time. 

He may regain his wings. He might even, through some miracle, regain his sight.

But he’d never be able to fly again.

He resists placing his servo atop where his spark chamber insists on pulsing hollow aches off into his chassis and chasing down his limbs. The shocks at his system leave his head buzzing and his mind paranoid at his loss, an alarm system built into his body that makes him feel like wailing with each pulse of his spark.

He removes the error notifications in his processor and blocks out the alarming noise of the system diagnostics alerts. 

There’s a persistent noise that hums in his audials, but he ignores it in favor of adjusting his servo at his side. The Energon stains his digits and numbs the receptors within, consuming the servo in a dull thrum.

Starscream absently wipes away a heavy drop of coolant that leaks from the corner of his optic, face set in a heavy scowl. He jumps between being thankful that no other Decepticon or even Autobot is present, and wishing that there was someone to come across for help. 

There is no doubt someone has a ping of his signal from the exposed Energon steadily leaking past his digits.

It wouldn’t be long before someone came looking for him, whether to terminate or confront him. 

The Autobots have always hindered themselves in that weakness of over-valuing and extending themselves towards the weak.

…But his earlier alliance with M.E.C.H. to remove the Autobot Scout’s T-cog, and then his destruction of the organ by his hand …

As well as giving false information to the Autobots during the whole Arachnaid fiasco…

…has most likely placed him back on the Autobot’s bad side. They might not be so keen to assist him anymore, especially since there is no helpful intel on his end to trade.

This must be his penance from the universe for doing such a thing. See how he likes it done to himself.  

Starscream thumps his helm back against the tree.

He lets his wing remain to finally tilt and fall low, the sickly slosh of water within makes him feel ill as his weight settles on the Earth. A steady puddle of Energon and water mixes under him and makes him feel all that much colder. 

The buzzing in his helm grows aggressive and eclipses further thought. He lets his audial receptors begin to go into sleep mode, his processor cycles through a few stray lines of thought that lazily weave together in his exhaustion. 

He can’t fathom the sadness that fills his mind at the moment. He wonders if the momentary expression of numbness in his circuitry was a final acknowledgment of his state or a mercy his mind is granting him to put a name to the experience. 

He wonders if whoever comes across him next will feel a similar sort of sadness, or perhaps feel pity for him. Neither thought comforts him particularly, but he would’ve hoped his absence would have meant something to someone by now. 

He supposes he won't know either way if it happens, so he shouldn’t place so much care on such a trivial matter.

He faintly muses to himself as he shuts his systems down that it would be nice to be found and regarded by someone if they were to stumble upon him. 

That he…

He drops the thought and lets his mind quiet. His processor finally goes blank with noise and darkness.

He doesn’t register the shine of a ground bridge opening a short distance in front of him.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-;

You sit at Ratchet’s workstation, curled over and hugging your legs. Your knees dig into your cheek while you blink lazily, watching Ratchet’s servos glide over the holo-panel.

 You’ve grown used to the warbling noise of the interface, having spent so much time in the base hearing it, that it now lulls you to sleep.

As your eyelids drop closed, Ratchet’s optics slide from his workstation to you perched sleepily to the side. He pauses his work and lifts a digit up to your chin, nudging it up. 

“Hmm, whazzat?”, You hum as your eyes flutter open to regard the Autobot’s CMO, who watches you back.

“Don’t go into recharge there, you’ll fall,” Ratchet scolds gruffly. You hum again in affirmation as he pulls back. He furrows his optic ridges as you go back to your original position, unperturbed.

“Typical,” He scoffs, shaking his helm. His typing sounds grow the slightest bit heavy-handed.  “Distracting me from my work to ensure you don’t injure yourself from your own negligence,” 

You smile at him. “Aww, the grumpy ‘ol doubt cares about me!” 

Ratchet waves a hand dismissively. “I’m simply pointing out that humans have a bad habit of falling asleep in odd spaces like those feline organics of your planet.”  He rolls his eyes. “Then, you wonder why your frames suffer subsequent damage from your poor choices.”

“ ‘s not that much of a poor choice,” you mumble back with a yawn, before closing your eyes again with a serene look, nuzzling your cheek back into your warm knee and shrugging sleepily. “What’s a little scoliosis in like- what? Fifty years?”

“ Primus ,” He mutters under his breath, long-suffering. He tilts his head to you, optic ridges pinched into a set scowl with a huff. 

He gestures in your direction with an open servo “And what could you possibly benefit from this option of recharge that you couldn’t from the couch in the human-designated area?”

“I can listen to you work better from here. It’s really soothing.” Your eyes remain closed, unbothered as your face draws into a smile. “Besides, I know you’d never let me fall.”

Ratchet’s audial fins tick up and linger there. They flick and then drop back down to their original positions as he turns his helm back to his workstation, but the beeps and slides don’t sound out as quickly as before and you peer one eye open.

“Poor posture can result in damage to the spinal strut in the long run,” Ratchet pauses and types a bit more. “But… I suppose a single recharge cycle won’t be enough to do anything, and it seems you’re secured enough.” He gestures offhandedly at your arms tucking your legs close.

“You like my company.” A grin spreads on your face and you can’t help but open both eyes to see his bewildered scoff. “Admit it, Doc-bot!” 

Ratchet grunts and waves you off, going back to work. You snicker to yourself before settling back down but find that you’re woken up enough to have sleep evade you. 

You lift your head up fully when the sound of engines rings out from the tunnels, Ratchet not bothering to lift his optics away from his work.

Optimus and Arcee ride in within their Alt-modes before transforming back into their regular frames. Arcee stretches and walks over to the both of you.

“Easy day?” She places her hand on her cocked hip-plating. You smile wide at her.

“Seems like it! But doc-bot here is locked in. His toxic gamer persona is coming out!”

Ratchet shoots you a glare from the corner of his eye, to which you stick your tongue out at him and he rolls his optics. Arcee chuckles. 

“Currently,” Ratchet gruffs out, continuing to input information on the screen. You squint at the symbols against the green light of the holo-plane but none of it is in a language you understand, and no doubt, Ratchet refuses to switch the settings bar to English. 

Switching through pages on the screen and displaying whatever findings and radars are displayed on them, Ratchet gestures to the information as if you had any clue what any of it said. 

Although you suppose it’s not for you to know. 

“No Decepticon activity to report. Nor any of M.E.C.H.” Ratchet mutters, pulling up more pages.

“Finally! A bit of peace and quiet so you guys can rest for a second .” You stretch your arms over your head, hearing the bones pop in your shoulder blades. Ratchet glowers at the noise. 

You lower your arms to rest comfortably behind your head. “You guys are always on missions and getting all banged up at the end of ‘em.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much.” Arcee smiles and tilts her head Ratchet’s way. “Our good doctor patches us up well.”

Ratchet waves a non-committal hand and grumbles, pulling up another radar on his screen. 

“He’s a talented Doc-bot!” You smile at the grumpy medic, who scoffs but your grin widens when you catch his dermas twitching. You giggle but the smile slides off your face as you look at all the bots.

“But I’m serious, Cee. Fowler’s working you all too hard.” You throw your hands behind your head and stand up. “I know you guys are made of metal and stuff, and Optimus and Ratchet don’t know the concept of sleep-” 

The two bots in question both look over to you at the mention of their names.

“-but you guys gotta get tired too of the constant activity. That type of stuff doesn’t give you time to breathe.”

“‘That type of stuff ’,” Ratchet begins as he turns away from his workstation to regard you with an irate lilt. “-is a war . We don’t have the luxury to sit around and wait for an obvious sign of movement from the Decepticons! 

He turns back to the screen and starts typing once again. “We have to anticipate and catch every movement as they come.”

His expression turns somber and pensive, optics cycling and flitting across the screen. “Any one of those advantages could tip the scales of this war in our favor.”

Arcee nods her head in agreement and addresses you. “Even on break, we have to keep our guard up, pipsqueak.” She pats your head. “We need to take every chance that could give us an advantage over those ‘Cons.” She walks away to retreat to her hab suite. 

“Although things may be quiet for now, a surge of activity could happen at any time,” Optimus adds, his deep voice rumbles the air around you and you feel it rattle your spine. “We must be vigilant lest we let ourselves be surprised and overturned in battle.”

You nod, lowering your head and fiddling with your hands. You don’t mean to play down their war, it just isn’t your fight as much as it is theirs. 

Optimus notices your shrinking posture and lumbers over, he drops into a kneel to bring himself at eye-level with you with a soft smile on his face. Though you see a deep concern simmering below the surface that leaves you itching uncomfortably under his gaze. 

You know it’s reached his audials that you have been spending more time in the base, awake far past the hour of a human’s regular recharge cycle to await their returns after missions. You’ve offered no explanation when Optimus has probed to ask, only moving to help Ratchet with his equipment to patch them up.

“Your concern for us is duly appreciated.” Optimus taps his digit on your knee. “We do not wish harm to befall on you either and we will ensure it doesn’t. Trust that we will be fine.”

“I just-” You sigh, shaking your head and meeting the Prime’s optics. “I just wish there was nothing to worry about at all, Optimus.” 

He doesn’t respond right away. 

He pets your head gently and rumbles softly, optics matching his kind croon. “I do as well, little one.”

You reach your arms up to hug Optimus’ servo, studying his frame with idle concern.

There are always a few patches of scraped paint peeking out of all the Autobots’ frames, but lately the number has been increasing. There has been less and less time for them to patch them up with a coat of paint. 

Bumblebee and Bulkhead had often retreated to their quarters to cover any of the more alarming damage before picking up their charges. Arcee had done so less, trusting Jack to be more rational in his approach to seeing his guardian a little worse for wear at times and not lose composure as quickly. 

Ratchet didn’t bother with his own unless you and Optimus convinced him to take care of himself, but it was an uphill battle with Optimus to convince the Prime to slow down. 

Even then, addressing the actual damage that lies beneath had become more difficult for all of them. Holes could be patched, but cut wires and burnt circuitry were delicate jobs that required time they didn’t have. 

As much as you could offer a helping hand, carrying equipment for Ratchet and soldering finer injuries, it wasn’t nearly enough for 4 metal giants constantly getting injured. Had they been human, it unsettles you to draw the parallel of a person returning home with chunks and pieces ripped off their skin. 

You offer him a weak smile.

Optimus takes in your silence, uncertain if his words had any effect, and frowns as he sees your frail smile. It doesn’t escape him that it’s reassurance for himself .

Optimus ex-vents, squeezing you back gently. “We Autobots have endured millennia of these circumstances, we are equipped to handle these circumstances.” 

He smiles but there’s a resigned look to him. “We are prepared to endure for the sake of our cause and to protect Earth as our home.”

“We’re the only ones who can, given your minute stature,” Ratchet cuts in pointedly. You pull away from Optimus, crossing your arms at him though he cannot see it from his turned back. 

“Oh please, we’re small but we can carry our own weight!” You cock your hips and shake your head at him as you ask, “Have you ever asked Fowler to see if he and the people on his payroll could take on the M.E.C.H. assignments to lighten the load?”

You tap your chin in thought. “Maybe even send you guys an engineer or two to help patch you all up?”

Ratchet slams a hand on the interface and causes it to glitch out for a second. “And have more humans lingering about the base?!” He shakes his helm with a shudder. “No-hoho, thank you! We have enough vermin to deal with as is.”  

You scoff with a disbelieving smile. “‘Vermin?’” 

Ratchet gives you a withering look. “A common handful of creatures who cause problems and are hard to control. Yes, vermin.”

You roll your eyes at the CMO, used to his unfavorable disposition of your kind. One look at Optimus though and you can’t help but laugh at how he shakes his helm, a servo coming to pinch at his nasal bridge. 

You snicker. Poor Optimus. 

A sudden series of beeps alert everyone in the room and draw attention to Ratchet’s vital readings and signal radar on screen. A pale green dot pulses on the radar and unknown vitals begin to show a spiking wavelength. 

Ratchet types quickly to pull up diagnostics and profile charts you’ve seen him use for the other Autobots, and even Decepticons, during transmission calls. 

Optimus stands to full height, arms at his side and servos clenched at the ready. “What is the situation, Ratchet?”

“I’ve received a life-force signal, seven Klicks from our location.” Ratchet types and his fingers glide to input whatever information is needed to try and gain a read on who it is. You crane your neck to watch the symbols of information be input by Ratchet’s digits flying across the holographic monitor. 

He finally pulls up a full profile as Arcee comes running in. She stops at Optimus’ side, but the Prime keeps his eyes on the screen. 

“What’s wrong?” She asks and you go to respond, prying your hand off your side and forcing your heart rate to go down.

“Someone’s signal showed up on Ratchet’s screen all of a sudden, he’s trying to figure out who,” you explain, a little clipped as your eyes get drawn to the picture of Starscream on the monitor. 

“Starscream?” Arcee spits out with venom, causing you to glance at her from the corner of your eye. 

Her optic ridges are set into a deep dip, rageful and sharp as her derma pulls back into a grimace, servos fisted and posture agitated. Optimus places a servo on Arcee’s shoulder plating. 

Cliffjumper still laid fresh in her mind and Starscream was a sore subject to bring up for the two-wheeler.

Ratchet hums, studying the vitals on his screen. “His spark is giving erratic signals.”

“Perhaps he is in distress?” Optimus rumbles out, he walks over to Ratchet’s side to observe over his shoulder. “Are there any transmissions from Starscream we might have missed?”

Ratchet shakes his helm. “Negative.”

You suddenly freeze, losing track of the conversation as a chill grips your spine. Something disturbed gets launched into an uneasy prickle on the nape of your neck that stands your hair on end. 

Something is very wrong.

You place a hand on your neck, rubbing nervous circles into your skin. “Heyya, Ratchet?” 

The medic turns to you with a questioning glance. You gesture to the monitor. “Where is Starscream right now?”

Ratchet’s face twists in a twinge of concern and his intake opens to question you, but he shakes his helm and drops the notion just as quickly. He turns to pull up a 2D render of the radar, but as he glances at the rapidly changing numbers of Starscream coordinates his intake drops as he lets out a confused huff. 

“His coordinates aren’t making any sense. He’s not moving on a horizontal axis across the board… perhaps-” Ratchet places two digits on the holo-plane and flips to a 3D render, and Starscream’s signal is going straight down.

And down. And down. And down.

“What in Primus…?” Ratchet whispers out, confused and you keep your eyes trained on the dot. It keeps going straight down, and you turn to look at Optimus, the large bot turning his helm to look down at you. 

“Is he falling?” You ask, but Optimus doesn’t seem to know how to answer as his face twists a little at how soft your voice comes out, mounted with a slowly growing horror. You swallow it down a bit as you notice Arcee looking at you with a raised brow on her questioning expression.

You sink into yourself a bit, feeling uncomfortable at the scrutinizing look, something you didn’t expect Arcee to subject you to. 

Still, you can’t help the reflex. Seeing a plane go down is hard to conceptualize as a human, much less stomach, even if it is a Decepticon… or does it make it worse that the aircraft is sentient? 

 You pick at the wrinkles of your knuckles. “Starscream flies, so he’s gonna pull up, right…?” 

Optimus doesn’t answer, looking away and turning back to watch the screen. Your stomach flips as you do the same. The bots around you just silently watch the dot on the screen and wonder why no one is moving to open a ground bridge.

Though you know that it may not be a good idea to bridge Starscream here , and who knows what state he’s in. 

Monumentally uncomfortable, you watch the signal fall and fast approach the ground without pulling up. 

“Ratchet?!” You call out anxiously, looking to your grumpy companion for answers. But Ratchet only looks down at you with widened optics brimming with awe and uncertainty, with no answers. 

His face drops to concern as you feel your chest hollow further and he wordlessly places his hand, cupped, in front of you, like a wall blocking your vision of the screen.

You dread to know what the feeling of seeing the green dot flash to red would feel like. Curious, you turn your head to watch the bots around you and feel your throat go dry as you see all of their eyes trained on the monitor. 

Your friends look sturdy in their stance, their expressions narrowed with intensity, bracing for impact. It dawns on you again, this not having been the first time, that these bots have seen their people be killed. 

Whether or not they were Autobot or the Decepticon, you couldn’t fathom the idea of having been around someone enough to know their name, their mannerisms, their quirks— only to be rendered out of existence with you as their witness. 

Even if the death is fueled with the deepest hatred for that person as possible, it’s inconceivable to take in the full gravity of owning the life of a person through their death. 

Then you live in a sort of cycle from then that most people can never pull themselves out of.

You weren’t sure you were prepared to see a person die. Yet, you peer above Ratchet’s digits, compelled to watch as if your witness will stop something from happening.

It wasn’t that you had any particular soft spot for Starscream, you had only seen the seeker in passing which was most likely for the better. Yet it felt like you were complicit in some sort of grand theft. 

You let your eyes rest on Arcee in a moment of curiosity and you see the anticipation on her face that teeters on the edge of excitement and it makes you feel a little ill. You understood mourning could be done in various fashions, and none were invalid ways to grieve, but this feels like you’ve been told a secret you shouldn’t have known. 

You’re startled by it.

You squeeze yourself to Ratchet’s index finger, clinging to it like a stuffy to try and ground from your racing thoughts. Ratchet spares you a second’s glance, curling his digit the slightest bit, before going back. 

You feel your eyes shake back to the screen and your stomach grows weak as the dot strikes the surface of the map… 

…and then it just sinks below the map before pausing. The green hue doesn’t change from the dot and you blink in surprise.

“He stopped! Did he pull up?” You look around at the bots, confused. “I thought only helicopters could remain stationary in the air.”

“No. Starscream has landed in a lake.” Ratchet responds to you with a quick search of the coordinates on a geographical map. Sure enough, a large lake appears with an outline of trees surrounding it. “ Deep within a lake. A forest away from civilization. A grand national park, it seems.”

“Woah, woah! He just fell out of the sky, Ratch. That’s not normal for any plane, let alone him , unless Starscream has decided to become an Olympic diver.” You turn to Ratchet whose gaze is now intently reading the vital charts onscreen. 

You let go of Ratchet’s servo to let him concentrate. “Is he injured or something?”

“He’s surprisingly not taken flight yet and his vitals are spiking at random.” Ratchet points to the wavelength of Starscream’s spark, peaking and dropping erratically. “It’s… possible. It may also be that he was already weakened before the fall.”

“So… he’s not flying and he just took a tumble— a high tumble, freefall into a lake. A fall from that height, at that speed, would totally decimate a commercial Boeing. A F-16--.” You clap your hands together for emphasis, paying little mind to the disturbed looks sent your way. “How is he still even alive ?”

Arcee crosses her arms over her chassis and turns away to look at Ratchet, expecting an answer. Ratchet places a servo to his chin in thought.

“He appears conscious..” He mutters to himself. 

The dot signifying Starscream begins to move out of the lake and Ratchet gestures to the other monitor with the vitals. “But his movements are unpredictable and it’s not guaranteed Starscream is exactly weakened. There’s a chance it could be a staged occurrence to catch our attention.”

An idea comes to you and you snap your finger. “Or he’s running! I mean, a fall from that high-- the Nemesis most likely, the quick exit, the weird vital signs and all. He could have duked it out with Megatron and he’s making a break for it.”

You look up to see Ratchet and Optimus, seeing them draw to the same conclusion as you. “This might be the upper hand you guys need!”

Arcee is less than enthusiastic. “And what? We cut a deal with Starscream for intel again and expect him to hold up his end of the bargain. He’s a sniveling, deceitful slag heap!”

“Regardless of Starscream’s abnormal behavior,” Optimus cuts in, stepping forward. “He is now on ground level.” 

Optimus’ face grows grim, his eyes trained on the moving dot on screen. “Whatever his intentions may be, he must not be allowed to roam freely. Any further exposure could lead to further consequences of human encounters and it is unpredictable what Starscream will do if cornered.”

Optimus stands at full height and flips his battle mask on, optics narrowed with determination. “I will not risk human lives to negligence on our behalf by allowing Starscream to roam freely.”

You watch as Optimus places a servo to the side of his helm, coming Bulkhead and Bee. “Autobots, return to base immediately and rendezvous at my coordinates.”

Bulkhead and Bee’s profiles appear on the monitor with their voice wavelengths spiking as the comm back.

“Heading back, boss bot. What’s the hurry?” Bulkhead.

A series of beeps. Bumblebee.

“Starscream has landed on the ground and is trekking on foot. His movements and vital signs are altered and erratic, unpredictable. His intentions are unknown and backup is crucial for a confrontation.”

“On it! Heading back now.”

“Whirrr, beep!”

Ratchet quickly begins inputting information to order up a ground bridge as Starscream’s dot begins slowing down. “I’ll open the bridge at a distance from Starscream should he not be alone.”

Optimus nods. “Understood.”

You watch as Arcee goes to join Optimus but the Prime turns to face the two-wheeler with a stern yet sympathetic expression, and you feel your stomach tighten a bit knowing this will not go well. 

You tap Ratchet’s arm plating, watching as Ratchet’s audial fins twitch to let you know he is also listening.

“Arcee, you are to remain here.” There it is.

“Optimus, with all due respect, this is Starscream we’re talking about. Cliffjumper-”

Optimus cuts in firmly. “-Is clouding your judgment. We need to ensure that Starscream’s presence on Earth is not correlated to a grander plot put forth by the Decepticons.” 

Optimus clenches his servo, placing it over his spark. “Such information that would be lost if we are to have too much haste.”

Arcee still steps forward. “You need all hands on deck and I know how to keep myself in check.”

“Your temperament in the past has proven your patience to be slim with Starscream and has led to further complications.” Optimus shakes his helm. “I’m afraid we cannot afford to throw more caution aside in an already unpredictable encounter.” 

Arcee crosses her arms and looks ready to argue further, but Ratchet cuts in. “He’s stopped. Now is a good chance to get close. I’ll open another bridge for the others.”

Optimus nods, taking one last look at Arcee and then one at you. He’s frowning with a sympathetic worry shining through his optics, something apologetic in the way he carries his massive frame. 

Optimus is such a gentle bot, despite his many eons of being in command of a faction armada in high-stress, extinction-scale war, it makes your heart hurt to see him falter in confidence at knowing how to handle these situations.

Looking over at Arcee, your heart hurts for both of them. 

She holds her arm, looking downcast to the side with a simmering rage underneath and dissatisfaction boiling into the surface of her face. You wish she could find closure in the deaths of her partners, Cliffjumper and Tailgate, but you’re not necessarily eager to see her murder anyone. 

Her thirst for vengeance with Arachnid alone has proven to be troublesome for everyone involved whenever Arcee insists on fighting the Insecticon femme one-on-one. Two vendettas are two too many.

You wish it had been some nameless Vehicon who had killed Cliffjumper and Tailgate instead, maybe it would’ve forced Arcee to move on from revenge just by the impossibility of trying to single out one in a sea of duplicates. Maybe, she could have taken all that time to try and heal. 

Or maybe she would turn around and try to kill every single Vehicon that ever came into existence…

Either way, killing their murderers won’t heal that piece of her that’s wounded from loss. You know that.

You’re also certain that arguing against it with her would not end well either. 

It’s not long before Bulkhead and Bumblebee both make it back, rolling in and ready to depart back out again in alt-form. Ratchet pulls the lever to the ground bridge and the green wormhole swirls open. 

“Hey, kid!” Bulkhead throws casually as he greets you. Bee chirps at you in greeting, waving at you as the two walk up to Optimus, ready for debriefing.

But just as Bulkhead and Bumblebee come to join Optimus’ side you catch movement from the corner of your eye and watch as Arcee transforms quickly and speeds through the portal herself.

“Arcee!!!” You call out, extending your arm out as she disappears. Optimus and Ratchet turn to you, alarmed at your scream only to catch a last-minute glance of Arcee. 

Optimus’ optics widen above his battle mask and he rushes to the portal. “Autobots, roll out now!” 

Bumblebee and Bulkhead exchange a worried glance before rushing through behind Optimus, and you feel your fight or flight kick in as well. 

“She rushed through!” You quickly go down the stairs of the railing and break into a sprint after her in a cold sweat. Ratchet sputters as he’s caught off guard and is torn between manning the ground bridge or addressing the unfolding disaster. 

“And just what do you think you’ll do!?” He attempts to grab you gently as much as he doesn’t feel settled, to hold you back from getting mixed up in a battle between giants. “You’ll be unable to catch up to Arcee either way!”

Reaching out for you, but you shove his digits back. “She’s gonna kill him, Ratchet! You saw her! She tore out of here like a bat from hell.”

Ratchet scoffs. “I hardly know what that even comes close to meaning, but Optimus won’t allow that to happen.” He looks uncertain. “As long as Starscream is not a threat-”

“Ratchet, she’ll always consider Starscream a threat. She’s not thinking straight right now,” you wriggle around to face the medic. “If Starscream’s down for the count, it won’t matter to her if he’s not fair game. It’s easy target practice.”

“The others will handle it.” Ratchet scoops you up into his palm, but you struggle and jump back out.

“Then count me in as a deterrent to keep them from hulking out completely!” You grunt, not comforted by his words. He yells your name as you slip past, expression twisting in impatience.

“It’ll be one less Decepticon for us to worry about. Leave it,” Ratchet shouts in frustration. 

You gawk at him. “It’s wrong!”

“It’s a war!” He grits back.

Growing frustrated that he doesn’t get it, you turn to face him with as much earnestness as you can muster in your haste. “It’s not just a moral quandary, Ratchet! Starscream may be a bad person and a war criminal, and he may have killed Cliffjumper-”

You open your arms out wide at the expanse and stand your ground.

“- But Ratchet, do you honestly think that killing Starscream will make her feel any better after?” 

You pressed on, your face was sullen and tone grave. “Will killing him help her grieve?” 

Ratchet looks put off by your words. You search his face for a few fleeting seconds but only feel your heart grow heavy at his hesitation.  

You don’t wait for his response, rushing through the portal you quickly entangle yourself into the kaleidoscope of swirling blues and greens, hearing him call your name faintly as you do.

Though as disorienting as putting your body through such an unnatural journey, you’re even more uncomfortable with the notion of standing by while one of your friends becomes a murderer in an altered state. 

You know there’s a difference when two soldiers are up in arms and in peak condition, choosing to fight. It’s different when you have a fish in a barrel and you shoot at them with a gun.

You won’t allow Arcee to go that far if you can help it.

You know it won’t make her feel better.

Your feet carry you out of the bright tunnel back onto Earth, grass and dirt cushioning your steps as you barrel your way up to your Cybertronian companions, wheezing with gratefulness that they aren't too far away. 

A quick glance behind you also shows the portal to be gone, meaning Ratchet stayed behind and won’t be coming after you. 

“Arcee! Step back from Starscream and stand down.” Optimus.

“Arcee, you need to calm down and put the gun away.” Bulkhead.

A series of frantic whirrs. Bumblebee.

You pop up from behind a few bushes to see the mech trio surrounding Arcee who’s standing next to a tree. Her helm is tilted down and blueish-pink eyes are slanted in concentrated rage, arm blaster trained on the slumped figure beneath. Starscream, who’s dead to the world, unconscious against a tree and… 

Holy shit, he’s bleeding-- A LOT!! 

You feel your jaw drop in slight horror. Starscream has never looked worse for wear in all your time with the bots. It makes you double-take to make sure you’re not looking at a corpse.

“Arcee! Stop!!” You scream as you wave your arms frantically, successfully getting the two-wheeler’s attention as she turns to you with wide eyes. Nearly tripping over yourself, you rush down the hill. “The fuck are you doing?!”

Optimus, who had been trying to calm Arcee down, servos in a placating gesture, straightens as he sees you tumble down the hill. He calls your name. “What are you doing? Return to base. It is not safe for you here!”

“The hell it ain’t!” You yell back, breathless as you come to a stop in front of the unconscious body of the seeker. 

He looks worse up close. 

You pant from the exertion and stretch out your arms to bar off Starscream, although you doubt your diminutive size would pose any formidable barrier to the Autobots in front of you.

“What… in the fresh hell… is going on?!” You wheeze out, swiveling your head at all of them, eyes landing on Arcee. “Arcee… I’m serious, girl. Chill.”

Arcee states your name firmly. “You can’t expect me to let Starscream go off easy. Not after what he did. To Cliff! To Bee-!”

You give her a sympathetic look, flexing your palms anxiously as you tread carefully. “I’m not expecting you to get over Cliffjumper anytime soon, Cee.” You swallow thickly. “But you seriously can’t be considering killing him just outright, right?”

Arcee’s glare hardens. Bumblebee begins whirring anxiously at Arcee and you feel yourself pale a little as it sounds like pleading.

“Arcee, we have discussed this previously,” Optimus says warningly, discreetly trying to block Arcee’s view of Starscream and you for interception. 

“Optimus, you may not condone the termination of Starscream,” Arcee grits out, disappointment and resentment inflecting in her words. “But I don’t carry that same sentiment.”

“Arcee, for real!”, you plead. “This isn’t gonna help or do what you think it will for you!”

“It’ll offline him,” Arcee bites out, determined. She shakes her blaster at the unconscious seeker. “Cliffjumper would want me to offline the con who did it, in his honor.”

You wave your arms, frantically as you see her optics narrow back up to Starscream. “Arcee, look, I’m not gonna argue with you on that because you know Cliffjumper better than I do, and I can’t fathom what that was like for you- But you don’t need to carry that with you!”

She glares daggers at you. You stutter in your ramble and scramble for words. “K-killing Starscream right now would be seriously fucked, c'mon, please, Arcee! Just let it go for now. This isn't right and you know that!”

“Make no mistake, Arcee,” Optimus speaks up, taking a reproachful stance while stopping just close enough to interject himself in between you two. “I do not wish for Starscream’s crimes to go unpunished, but he is wounded and unconscious at this point in time. The termination of a defenseless life form, any lifeform, be they Decepticon, Autobot, or Human, is morally unjust.” 

“Frag Morals,” Arcee spits. “Starscream has none. He makes a deliberate choice to offline our own cruelly, our numbers are dwindling and I won’t stand by while he takes another life.” She moves to sidestep Optimus, taking aim once more. “I am ending this.”

Optimus optics harden, unsheathing his blades and jumping into a defensive position. “I cannot allow you to do that.”

“You guys, stop it!” You wave your arms frantically, vehemently trying to catch their attention as Bee whirrs a low, stressed noise and Bulkhead fidgets anxiously, helm swiveling.

“Arcee, please,” you implore. “Out of anyone, listen to Optimus! He’s- I mean- C’mon, you can’t seriously tell me you’d be 100% okay doing this. The guy literally cannot defend himself right now! It’s unethical!”

“It’s justice!” Arcee roars.

“No, it’s not!” You bellow back. “It’s a self-imposed punishment! You need to back off because-- This. Will. Not. Help. You. ” 

The femme steps forward still, and it’s starting to hit you-- you’ve become a wall against a being that is 10 times taller than you. Oh, you’re fucked.  

“Arcee, you are out of line.” Optimus rumbles, stepping forward with his posture ready to pull Arcee back. “Stand down before we are forced to apprehend you.” 

You huff a stressed breath in relief. Seriously, thank the thirteen fucking Primes for Optimus!

“And you’re defying Optimus’ orders-!” Bulkhead tries but Arcee snaps him with a death glare. “...which is unlike you… and maybe jumping the gun a bit here...”

You swallow. “Y-Yeah, we haven’t even found out what could’ve caused him to book it like that or what put him in bad shape!”

You clap your hands together anxiously. “Isn’t there an- uh, an interrogation step we should be following here?”

Bee’s wing doors flutter nervously while he beeps out a response, you only really catch his uncertainty in the tone and the shrug he gives. Your face falls. They are not seriously figuring this out as they go along!

“Our friend is right. Arcee, you must restrain yourself,” Optimus takes another step forward, slowly . “The possibility of gaining more information from Starscream to further our cause is high at this point. An allyship could come about aiding Starscream.”

“‘Allyship?!’” Arcee spits out, causing you to wince and Optimus to frown. “Optimus, this-- this fragger has never shown an ounce of loyalty or sincerity in all the times we’ve had to work with him.”

She whirls back to glare at Starscream’s battered frame. “He’s a conniving piece of slag who’d sell us to Megatron if he gets the chance. If tables were turned, he’d offline us without remorse as he did Cliff.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed to Starscream being out of the picture entirely ,” Bulkhead mumbles out sheepishly. “He’s a pain in the aft to deal with.”

“Okay but isn’t there some sort of ‘don’t shoot a man while he’s down’ thing?” You pleaded. “Even the Geneva Convention on Earth says to treat injured and sick soldiers humanely, on both sides.”

You gesture to the unconscious seeker. “And he looks like he got mauled! So he totally counts!”

“Your human laws don’t apply in our war, kid. When will we ever get another chance like this?” Arcee’s arm loaded with her blaster twitches up slightly and Optimus narrows his optics. “We can cut down on the Decepticon’s numbers right here and now.”

“I am not okay with this.” You pointedly said, pointing a finger at her gently in emphasis but not softening the disappointment that naturally blooms on your face.

You cannot abide by this. 

Arcee’s glare hardens.

“Then move.” Arcee lifts her arm with the canon, raising it above your head and ready to fire at Starscream. Optimus straightens up blasters ready at his arms, Bulkhead looks anxious while Bee is whirring frantically, head turning to and fro.

Seeing them step up to someone unconscious, even if that someone is Starscream, only to kill them without them even being aware and ready to go, is not fair. He looks as if he’d been through Hell. A 50-foot mech with several gashes on the verge of dying in the middle of a forest and dripping with lake water doesn’t just happen. 

So you stay put. “No!” 

Arcee’s cannon flares with light, but her optics flick up at the last minute and widen.

A missile explodes, taking out a tree behind the Autobots, the trajectory thankfully missing any of the bots’ heads. You cover your ears from the explosion but find your ears ring violently despite the buffer of your hands.

You can’t hear anything as you raise your head out of the confines of your hands.

You think your life flashed before your eyes. Damn, it was quick.

You’re caught off guard with Bulkhead tackling Arcee and restraining her. Bumblebee’s optics are pin-pricked with shock and his hands transform into blasters, aiming at whatever is behind you.  

Optimus stands at the front of the group, strong and steady as his gaze behind his battle mask. His optics and cannons are trained fiercely in the same direction as Bumblebee’s are.

Shakily you look behind you to see Starscream pushed off from the tree he was once laying against, optics grayed-out but doing little to retract from the vicious snarl on his expression. His frame-plating expanded off his body, bristling, rising, and falling with his rapid ventilation. 

The Seeker’s snapped wings twitch erratically with stray water droplets flying off them from the movements. His arm that rested at his side was now raised, the red missile on his forearm missing and-

You look over to see Arcee’s arms de-transforms and her forearm that was aimed to fire now sports a long streak stripped of paint. Above Starscream’s crouched body, just where his spark chamber would’ve been, there’s a scorch mark of the blaster on the tree.

Oh. Oh…

Your body shakes an incredible amount as the ringing lifts.

“--Executing me?! In my sleep!? ” Starscream screeches indignantly, frame puffed up with raised armor plates. His chassis heaves and he coughs from the strain of each labored intake. 

His cough sounds wet and gurgles, Energon spittle flying from his mouth. “You Autobots always paint yourselves to be some noble crusade,” Starscream hoarsely grits out spitefully. “Yet here you are putting one of your kind down without granting him an ounce of dignity!” 

Arcee growls and struggles harder against Bulkhead. “You’re not deserving of it!”

Bulkhead tilts back. “Arcee! Calm down!”

Starscream scoffs, laying back. 

He keeps his servo cupped over his side, you notice it plain as day, despite the darkness. The eerie glow of pooling Energon beneath his hand gives you a good hunch on why he’s keeping it there.

Optimus turns to regard Arcee, stern and face set hard in a way that makes you shift uncomfortable. You rarely see that look on Optimus, frustrated, as he looks down at the femme. “Arcee, stand down. That is an order. ” 

Arcee, wholly outnumbered and seeing Optimus stand before her with a tense expression, borderline angry expression on his face, finally relents and slackens in Bulkhead’s hold. She ventilates heavily with her dermas set in a stiff line.

You vaguely hear Ratchet’s loud voice over the comms of your friends. Hearing him shout, asking what just happened. You drop to your knees, feeling weak as you hear Ratchet’s voice and reveling in the faraway comfort despite not being able to call him yourself. 

You think you left your phone at home. You set your head on the ground.

Shit.

Bee breaks off from the group to attempt to fetch you, beeping worriedly as he catches the tremors wracking your body. His optics cycle as he whirrs sympathetically and moves to scoop you up, only to be interrupted as Starscream flinches and backs himself into the tree with a snarl. 

He clumsily grabs you, twisting his digits around your waist and haphazardly jerking you upright as you yelp in alarm. “Hey, what-!” 

Your words die on your tongue as you see a missile pointed at Bee, who stands frozen. “-gives…”

Holy shit, Starscream just grabbed you like the last Dr. Pepper in the fridge! You feel like laughing inappropriately as slight hysteria rises into your head, but you refrain.

“Step back!” Starscream screeches, pushing himself up against the tree with his denta bared fiercely. He holds you up in front of him like a loaded gun. “Or I’ll crush your pet flesh bag!”

He squeezes you for emphasis and you wheeze as you feel your back crack. You think the others might hear it as at least Optimus’ audial fins cycle before he calls for everyone to train their guns on Starscream. Even Bulkhead drops Arcee to aim his own and everyone goes silent at a deadlock.

You gasp for air, thumping your hands on the servo holding you. “Dude-! Stop! You’re gonna make things worse!”

“Quiet, insect! Lest you want me to crush you!” Starscream flexes his servo and tightens his grip, and you gag as it leaves you breathless. Bee’s vocalizer rings out a series of frantic beeps and the sound of blasters revving sound from multiple directions.

You watch dazedly as Starscream’s helm snaps and jerks from place to place in a clumsy fashion, and his grayed-out optics cycle quickly but twitchy and uncertain. It hits you then, he’s gone blind.

“Starscream!” Optimus’s gun revs up to shoot. So does everyone else’s and the adrenaline causes you to gather all the breath in your lungs. 

“Guys-! Wait-!” You force out from your narrowed airway, shaking your hand at them. “Hold on! Don't- ghk-! Don’t… shoot!”

Starscream’s optics cycle once, then twice, and he slowly turns his head to stare at you. He eases his hand and you gasp in air, swallowing as much as you can into your lungs. 

“Hgn-! Guh…Thank you,” you wheeze out, strangled from air loss. You miss the way Starscream’s optics widen.

“Take- *gasp* -it's easy, man,” you croak out, choosing your words carefully. “No one here is gonna hurt you-” You wince and wave a hand half-frantically, still dazed. “Anymore-! Anymore, I mean.” Starscream fumes.

“Foolish fleshling! They’ve already attempted to! Do you not see!?” Starscream jerks you to look at all the Autobots who stand stock still watching you. They look frightened for you.    

He tilts his head up to gesture at the smoldering hole in the tree, right above his head. “What good will your puny ‘word’ do when that deranged two-wheeler has clear intent to assassinate me?”

You glare at him, finally gathering your bearings. “Arcee isn’t deranged!” 

“Of course she is! What else could she be?!” Starscream yells indignantly. 

“It’s called grief, you asshat!”

Optimus calls out your name warningly.

You yell into the face of the mech holding you before you can think better of it, “Why don’t we talk about you? Your crazy ass looks deranged!”

His face turns furious, and in his rage, he shakes you in his hand violently, up and down. The whiplash stalls your ability to think or breathe and your vision blooms with black dots as you squeak from the lack of oxygen. 

“Starscream! Enough! ” Optimus roars at him, rushing up to him and knocking his arm off trajectory, sending the missile flying into another tree with a boom. 

Your ears ring and you hold your head, faintly feeling Bumblebee rush up to pry you out of Starscream’s hand as Optimus pins the Seeker’s arm up, darting down to pin the other up as well. You breathe a little easier in Bee’s grasp and pat the muscle car Autobot’s servo, soothingly.

‘M okay, Bee. You think you say, but you can’t quite hear it leave your mouth so much as hear it reverberate in your skull. Bumblebee sags in visible relief, however. 

Thank god there’s no more ringing in your ears this time though.

You pat your ears with the ball of your hand, trying to knock your brain in place, and Bumblebee eyes you with big worried optics. You smile and pat his helm in comfort. 

He moves back with you in hand at a safe distance away from the altercation with the Prime and the Seeker. 

You watch as Optimus crouches down to eye-level with the seeker, to which the Seeker responds by pressing himself further back into the tree at the sound of the large mech’s pedes stepping in approach.

Optimus’ glare is piercingly cold as is his voice as he growls, “Do not think we are foolish enough to leave our allies in your hands for bartering, Starscream.” 

Optimus optics narrow. “State your business here, Starscream.”

Starscream bares his denta in a low growl, “Escaping my own execution, it seems my former master has decided my time as a rogue Decepticon has come to an end, via his servos.”

“‘Execution?’” Bulkhead repeats, baffled. 

“So even Megatron has had enough of your treachery?” Arcee bites out coldly.

Optimus eyes Starscream’s side where the seeker’s side is now exposed and steadily oozes out softly glowing Energon. “Your T-cog?”

Starscream looks away,  “You have Megatron to thank for that.”

Your eyes widen as you take that in.

You had heard a little bit about Starscream and Megatron being at odds with each other from the bots and sometimes the kids, usually Miko. Starscream having gone rogue from banishment was a surprise to all of you but you had figured it was kinda merciful if what you’d heard about Megatron’s style of punishments towards the seeker was true. 

But you’d never imagined Megatron could do something to Starscream that would look like this.

Why would anyone keep a second-in-command they’d hate this much? Enough to do this? Long enough for it to lead to this?

You feel sick again from the terrible implications and thoughts running through your head that you fail to notice Starscream’s wings twitching and his neck cabling straightening. His helm tilts slightly in your direction, almost negligible. 

You watch instead as Optimus hums to himself, expression deeply pensive as he looks to weigh the options in front of him. 

You suck in your lips and worry them between your teeth. He has no easy solution to this situation. Whatever he picks is bound to piss someone off. 

“If--” Optimus rumbles out carefully. “--You provide us with information privy to the Decepticons that would be beneficial to our cause-” He pauses. “We shall provide medical assistance to you.”

“Optimus you cannot be serious!” Arcee straightens, outraged. “You’re giving him a chance to go free?!”

Optimus continues. “My only condition beyond assisting us is that you will remain in the Autobot base under our supervision to ensure you do not interfere with humankind, nor allow for the possibility of further alliances with Autobot enemies.”

Starscream’s derma lifts in disgust. “Whatever happened to neutrality? Wasn’t that an option in this war?! To choose neither faction and swear allegiance to one’s own survival!”

Optimus narrows his optics. “That option is no longer available to you.”

Starscream snarls and opens his intake to protest but Optimus lifts a servo to stop him.

“Our losses have proven astronomical on both ends of our war,” he continues. “Where once there was a population large enough to have indecision as an option, now there are so few of us that survival now depends on who we can rely on.” 

Optimus’ voice hardens. “And you have historically proven yourself unreliable and self-interestedly opportunistic, Starscream.”

The Seeker scowls at the ground. 

“I will no longer allow more losses by your deceitful servos.” Optimus leans back, looming over the former Decepticon. “Your days of siding with the extinction of the Autobots are over.” 

Optimus, decisively, lets Starscream’s arms go and the Seeker quickly takes his wrists back. “So choose to side with us. Become our ally and ensure a future where your termination doesn’t linger overhead and a better future for what remains of our kind.”

Arcee scowls, looking off to the side. Optimus’ audial fins cycle and stop. 

Optimus ex-vents. “At the very least your alliance with the Autobots grants you an opportunity for survival if that alone appeals to you.”

Starscream doesn’t respond right away, instead making a show of weighing his options before lazily tilting his helm up. 

“Being the Autobots’ caged pet? Spilling information into your servos? For mere scraps when regardless I will be placed on trial and terminated at the end of this war?” Starscream leans forward, hissing venomously. “Go frag yourself.”

Optimus is taken aback, quite literally as he stands up and isn’t sure how to respond to the Seeker.

Likewise, your jaw hands open in shock. You’ve never seen anyone ever curse at Optimus of all people. Maybe Fowler, once or twice indirectly, but even Fowler wasn’t that cagey as to do that. 

“Watch it, Screamer,” Bulkhead rumbles out, brow ridges furrowed. “We’re being real generous offering you help while you're in deep scrap.”

“Who said I needed any assistance?” Starscream hauls himself up, grunting and giving a muted, wet cough. He glares, unfocused, towards the group. “Especially from the likes of you Autobot scum.”

“Haven’t they helped you before?” You point out, tilting your head at the seeker.

“Shut your intake, insect! I’ll-” Starscream’s head whirls to snarl at you again, but his face slackens as his frame stiffens, denta bared in a hiss as his body curls to protect his side.

“Dude, you got your shit seriously wrecked.” You gesture to Starscream’s body in general. “Let them help you, man. You’ll die if you keep bleeding out like that!”

“Merely a dramatic wound! Nothing that cannot be welded by one’s own hands” Starscream scoffs. “Besides, I’m not interested in placing a target on my back for a dying faction reduced to guerilla warfare tactics to survive.” 

He straightened himself upright with a wince before tilting his helm up arrogantly. “Working closely with you marauders will only prove troublesome to me,” he snips. 

“I needn't give my former master further reason to have me executed creatively , either.” He pauses to cough, Energon spitting out of his intake. “Keep your- * cough*  - lucrative offers to yourself, Optimus Prime.”

Starscream makes an effort to push himself back up, supporting himself against the tree he was slumped over and standing shakily to his full height. You feel a cold shiver run through your spine, but it’s not out of fear of seeing Starscream tower over you. 

You’re focused on the way his frame sways as his side leaks more Energon to the ground, running in several streams down his right leg and disappearing into the crevasses. His wings are cracked and torn clean in half except for one, and his eyes stare dazedly at nothing.

“So what will you do?” You speak up, Starscream’s helm tips the slightest bit in your direction but he doesn’t bother to turn. “You have no equipment, you’re barely able to stand-- how on Earth do you think this is gonna go your way?

“I am Starscream,” he proudly announces, tilting his helm up. “I know my place in this world and will align myself to that. Not to a faction. Not under anyone . ” 

He shakes his helm as resentment bleeds into his raspy vocalizer, “Never again.”

He aims his arm up so quickly that your fight or flight sense doesn’t kick in, until after Bumblebee has rapidly turned around to shield you with his body. You cry out in alarm as your ears are destroyed once again by the sound of a missile exploding at too close of a proximity. 

You lift your poor head out of your hands once more to see another tree smoldering on the ground with bits of wood still aflame and the surrounding trees bearing the shrapnel. You swivel your head around, slightly dazed as you eye your friends, each talking amongst themselves in visible alarm.

Starscream, you notice, is missing from the frame, and only a puddle of leaking Energon and the missile remains indicate his presence that was once here.

You notice Arcee and Optimus talking to one another but given Arcee’s ansty expression and the way her frame fidgets impatiently with desire to run off after Starscream, you decide you’ve had enough for the night. 

You’re pulling out your injured soccer player card.

‘Hey, guys!’ You holler out to the group. All their optics turn to you and you tap the sides of your head. ‘I don’t mean to interrupt, but I can’t hear a goddamn thing right now. Call Ratchet!’ That gets everyone’s attention and several intakes move at once.

You don’t hear them. ‘Can’t hear ya guys!’ Their faces fall further. 

You hiss in concern as you tap your chin in thought, ‘Huh… you know what? Maybe… DON’T call Ratchet! This might actually make him freak!”

Bulkhead slams his fists together, sparks flying out in all directions and you think he might be doing it on purpose because you see an expectant look on his face. 

You shake your head and point to your ears. ‘I got nothing!*

Bee adjusts his grip on you, his big optics cycling with visible worry. You pat his hand, comfortingly. ‘Sorry, Bee! Can’t hear your beeps either!” 

Optimus starts looking seriously worried and walks off from Arcee who’s equally as disturbed. You start feeling a little bad for pulling the injured card, but at this point, maybe you should be concerned that you seriously haven’t heard anything but ringing in the past few minutes.

‘Hey, how loud am I!?’ You call out, attempting for a bit of brevity to cheer up the femme. There’s no hard feelings on your part, you figure. 

Arcee jumps and smiles with a wince. She makes a so-so movement with her servo, holding her arm to her side awkwardly after. You frown at her crestfallen demeanor.

You jump as Optimus stops in front of you and Bumblebee, leaning down. You rub the back of your neck with a sheepish smile as you see Optimus lower his battle mask to say something, his brow-ridges are pinched with concern. 

‘Hey, big guy. Sorry, I can’t understand what you’re saying. I can’t read lips- er, dermas?’ 

You shake your hand next to your head. ‘Ringing! Lots of it!’

He tilts his helm at you in question. You smile at the hopeless gentle giant. ‘Tinnitus! Look it up!’

You watch as Optimus seems to pause, his optics cycle before widening in alarm. You marvel at how cool it is for them to be able to search up an infinite web of knowledge within their own minds. 

Optimus stands back upright, decidedly placing a digit to his audience with a determined look. His intake moves and then, not a second after he’s done talking, a ground bridge opens up and lights up the night. 

You sag in relief in Bumblebee’s hold, ready for the night to be over. 

Though you’re not excited to know what Ratchet might’ve been told through the comms, no doubt he was probably agitated right now hearing three explosions… and given that Optimus’ intake moved way more than giving out an order for a ground bridge alone, you suspect he might’ve asked for med-bay for you. 

You tuck your hands behind your head and blow out a long breath. One by one, they all step through the ground bridge and you turn to Bumblebee as you both enter the wormhole. 

‘Hey, Bee, you think Ratchet might know how to fix this?’ You ask, nonchalantly while pointing at your ears.

You don’t hear Bumblebee’s stylophone response, but his optics look semi-confident. Definitely, hopeful. 

You smile with a groan, pressing the balls of your hands to your eyelids, laughing humorously. ‘God, this is gonna piss him off tremendously.’

Chapter Text

It turns out your assumption that Ratchet would be deeply agitated by the time you got back was correct.

He was, indeed, very pissed off.

You lay on your back in Bumblebee’s arms, swaying gently in his hold as he walks through the swirling wormhole and into the familiar cave and metal structural fusion of the Autobot base. Stepping in though, the normally comforting sight of the common area was disrupted with the furious presence that was Ratchet.

You wince, recalling his earlier insistence that you stay out of the situation for your own sake. You suppose his stressing on that matter wasn’t so unfounded because, no doubt, the doctor had entered a panic at the prospect of treating an unprecedented injury on your end. Several unprecedented injuries.

A human injury that could range in severity depending on the terrifyingly long list of things that could’ve happened on your end. Given his limited knowledge of the encounter was transmitted through audio, you’re not surprised he’s blowing a gasket over it with the way he glowers at you.

You suck in your teeth in worry. He’d likely heard the several explosions on the other end of the comm line and that alone is enough to have you drop your head in your hands with an exhausted groan.

You didn’t even want to explain the whiplash Starscream gave you. 

Nonetheless, it wasn’t a panicked friend that greeted you, but a well-seasoned doctor who gave sound advice and now had to deal with an idiot patient, who ignored said advice.

You hold your right ear and drape an arm over your abdomen protectively with a small nervous grin. You’re not met with one back, instead, his scowl deepens.

A wariness floods into your stomach, flitting between just how to carry a conversation where you can actually defend your actions about Starscream being spared… while also not being able to hear jack shit. 

You don’t feel like monologuing either. Your head is killing you. 

Ratchet turns off the ground bridge lever with a whirr, his optics make eye contact with you and he studies you in Bumblebee’s grasp. His gaze darts around you analytically, doing a once over, before transferring to everyone else and quickly observing their frames for visible serious injuries. When he finds nothing major, he moves in for a closer look, pulling away from the ground bridge controls.

Ratchet's features are narrowed, steady, and intent with focus, frame coiled up ready and jump into action to provide care, but there’s an edge to his walk and his chassis looks stiff from shallow ventilations. There’s a stressed tightness to him that prickles at you and has you pulling out your most charming grin to save yourself.

Hey, Ratchet,’ you greet timidly. ‘So, uh, it worked?? I came back in one piece at least.’

You cringe when his brow ridges dip further down in a scolding lour.

An indignant muffled shout is about all you can hear from Ratchet’s end as the medic fumes, storming over with a harsh scolding glare in your direction. You feel your neck heat up while tucking your head into your shoulders like a turtle.

It’s safe to say that Ratchet’s vocalizer is the first thing you faintly hear after your injuries. 

He’s muffled and you don’t catch any words when he’s turned away from you but you get an idea of what he’s trying to say from his tone, despite the ringing drowning him out at times.

Ratchet’s stressed demeanor lessens as he asks Optimus some questions off to the side, turning to Arcee and carefully examining her arm for a bit. He taps the scrape and gestures to the med bay, to which Arcee keeps her gaze downcast and just nods, strolling over with her arm tucked to her side and taking a seat on the huge medical berth.

You watch as Bulkhead goes to say something to Ratchet as well, his deep voice managing to peek through the ocean of internal feedback from the damage in your ears. 

Bulkhead isn’t done talking before Ratchet jumps and his helm darts in your direction, optics cycling wide and pining with alarm. His posture is tenser than before and he doesn’t hide the startled expression that screws up his features. 

You swallow, scrambling for what to offer your friend as an explanation after how you left the base earlier. You won’t find any words either before he stops in front of you and Bumblebee. His servos reach out, then pull back, twitching with uncertainty as to whether or not to touch you. 

Your eyes widened as you realized the reason for his hesitance. He was looking at your midsection where there were a few undeniable stretched stitches in the crumpled fabric of your shirt from the rough handling you received from Starscream.

Bulkhead, judging by the Wrecker’s nervous fidgeting with his hands as he watches Ratchet try to tend to you, he’d most likely filled Ratchet in on the finer details of you being used like a living maraca. Thinking back on it now, you realize Bumblebee isn’t touching your sides, cradling you instead on your back, and quite carefully too. Optimus hadn’t dared touch you earlier either.

When you look up at Bumblebee, the scout looks uneasy and though he holds you tenderly, his posture is tense and his brow ridges are low and sad. No one else is doing much better, optics all lingering on you as you sit up slowly, face twisting as you feel your ribs ache significantly now that the frenzy of activity has allowed the adrenaline to finally pass.

You gulp down a pained whine as you drag your body up fully. In truth, you had almost forgotten about the terrifying experience after being discombobulated from the final missile boom. You sway a little as your ears disorient you further with a constant empty ringing and the room swirls within your eyes. 

You’re quickly growing more apprehensive about whether or not your brain sustained any damage from the rough jostling.

You run a hand through your hair, dragging your nails to your skull in a delayed reaction to Ratchet’s probing, missing the dismayed grimace Ratchet’s face makes at your non-response. 

Ratchet’s digit firmly, but carefully tilts your head back up to meet his alarmed gaze. You think he says your name but you’re not sure. Your head throbs dully under your nails.

He gently knocks your hand with his digit, trying to dislodge it from your head, giving a few firmer knocks as you don’t budge right away. You sluggishly unfurl your fingers from your scalp and let go with a hum. ‘Sorry. ‘Just a little stressed.’

Ratchet’s posture relaxes a tad bit as you let go, nodding and he pointing to your sides, digits hovering but not touching you. You follow his lead and hold your sides absently, feeling the ribs that were squeezed by Starscream and press, cringing as you’re met with twinges of pain or response to testing them. A deep shudder passes through you that doesn’t go unnoticed.

‘It’s not that bad,’ You mumble distractedly, fingers sliding gently over your other. No one looks comforted. You hold your hands up and try to smile, but it comes out looking more like a grimace. ‘I’m a little bruised and my sides are sore, but nothing’s broken, I don’t think.’

Ratchet’s face is enough to tell you no one is buying your weak attempt at reassurance. You blow a small defeated breath. You’d figured at this point your injuries were too internal to do much about.

You don’t want to scare them with how intricate human injuries are, but you guess they’re already scared.

You bring your hand up to cover your right ear, softly lying, ‘I think my ears are the only thing really messed up. My head feels a little weird too.’

That last part gets their attention as Ratchet stiffens and his armor flares with stress. He lifts you by the armpits and gently slides you into his palms, quickly carrying you over to the med bay where Arcee has taken refuge by a nearby wall.

Ratchet quickly snatches the human stretcher in the far corner of the med bay for injuries, setting it down and locking it on the floor. 

You’re slid onto the bed gently, but just as you settle into the stretcher, your eyes are assaulted by the blinding light of Ratchet’s medical scanner running over you. 

‘Yow-! Ratchet! A warning next time, please!’ You yelp as you cover your face with your hands. Ratchet pulls your arms back down with his digit and says something that resembles scolding to hold still.

The scanner light flits back into his arm as he reads the results. He’s exclaiming all sorts of things that even if you could read lips, you would never be able to read them that fast. He shakes his helm, exasperated. You frown at the defeated and panicked expression on Ratchet’s face as he shakes his helm and says something to the team who linger back, out of the way.

Optimus comes to kneel directly in front of you and says something that you can’t quite hear, but he looks perturbed in a way you don’t see unless he’s unsettled from a perspective change. 

He carries that look often when talking about their war affecting humans, his guilt overflowing as he’s expressed his deep regrets of leading this war to a “peaceful planet.” It makes your heart hurt with how naive and indiscriminately trusting Optimus is with all of humanity. 

You feel the deep apologetic rumble of his voice within your chest and you frown at him sympathetically. 

‘Sorry, big guy. I can’t carry a conversation right now, I’m still deaf right now…,’ You trail off, shaking your head as he keeps trying to speak. His intake closes with a disconcerted pinch of his brow ridges. 

You reach out to pat the servo perched on his knee plate. ‘If it helps, I don’t regret doing what I did, Optimus,’ You shake your head, reassuringly. ‘There’s nothing to be worried about.’

Optimus shakes his helm back, sternly. You sigh.

‘We'll talk about this once I can actually hear you.’ You slump a little. ‘ I’d write but I don’t have my phone on me and my head is killing me right now.’ You hold your cranium during one particular throb and Optimus straightens while simultaneously calling Ratchet over, whose audial fins had slid up as soon as you’d mentioned your head.

You dig your fists into the sides of your skull, rubbing circles with your knuckles as the room momentarily spins.

By now, the ringing has lifted the slightest bit to allow muffled noise to come through up close, but not actually enough to get a clear picture of what was being said. You didn’t need much context, however, as Ratchet just rushes back to where the stretcher was to collect the First-Aid kit that hung next to it.

You poke at the tragus flap of your ear and plunger it into the opening, fidgeting with it as the ringing in your ears starts to get uncomfortable to listen to internally.

Ratchet turns around as you fidget, optics shooting daggers at you and you jump a little as he wags a finger at you, shaking his helm firmly with a scowl. He looks annoyed, but there’s an anxious energy to him that betrays his worry as he reprimands you.

No messing with your ears. You sigh and let go, hands already itching to try and clear your ears.

Bee, taking notice of your ansty body language, comes up to you and takes a seat on the floor beside you. His metal digit taps at your knee in an attempt to distract you. You tap his finger with your own in a tired, but playful appreciation and softly pull your lips into a smile.

You watch as Ratchet swiftly turns back to the med bay, helm swiveling as he finds the First-Aid kit suspended on the way. He grabs it, speedily making his way back, but distractedly bumping his back plate onto his workstation from the haste. 

You wince when he knocks over a tool and it shatters into a million pieces, Ratchet reacting to it by yelling something through his furiously bared denta. 

He probably needed that.

Ratchet drops the unopened First-Aid kit next to you on your bed, but it looks dented and slightly crushed on the edges, unlike before. He kneels down to watch you.

You unhook the latches and pop it open but there really is no point. All your injuries feel internal or are in hard-to-reach places. Hell, you don’t even know where to start with your ribs. 

You thumb the gauze roll with uncertainty. Do doctors just wrap them or do some specific technique with the gauze? 

You close the kit with a sigh, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do with this either.’

Bulkhead gives you a confused look. He flicks with his fingers at the side of his helm, mimicking a light switch. 

You shake your head, ‘No, I can’t switch my hearing on and off. It doesn’t work like that for humans. Once you're like this you go a little more deaf each time it happens.’ You pause, squinting. ‘Wait- you guys can turn your ears on and off?’

The bots don’t respond, instead looking at each other and then at you with severe apprehension.

Your heart drops to your stomach in the realization that they were operating on the idea that you had control over your hearing-- you don’t. Tinnitus may not always be permanent but they don’t know that and you also don’t know that.

They, no doubt, think they fucked you up for good.

Optimus strides up, gently placing a servo on Ratchet’s shoulder plate and your heart hurts as the medic seems to deflate further. 

‘Hey, it’s okay! Listen, I'm gonna be ok-’ You stand up from the bed to go towards your friend, but you stumble and your knees hit the ground as your center of balance is non-existent. Your eyes cross involuntarily and distort the word as flashes of black dots scurry about your line of vision. It doesn’t help that you feel like your neck is tilting back constantly from how heavy your head feels.

Bee jumps next to you, pulling you up gently and his optics cycle quickly, pin-pricking and dilating repeatedly and anxiously. You cover your mouth a little as you feel your head pound angrily and the ringing makes you want to sink into the ground and block out everything.

‘M okay, just dizzy. Give me a moment,’ you pant out, muffled. You slowly switch to cover your eyes, trying to get your bearings.

Ratchet and Optimus both stretch out their servos to hover around you, ready to catch you should you fully collapse. You manage to hold yourself up with the bed, holding Bumblebee’s offered arm. 

Turning, you see the helpless lingering of Ratchet’s servo in the air, and you feel your chest warm sadly and linger with your present nausea. You reach up and grasp Ratchet’s index digit in your hand, swallowing and exhaling.

‘...It’s okay, Ratchet,” you say, shuffling a little closer. ‘It was probably a stretch anyway. Human ears and head stuff are not simple to treat for humans either.’

Ratchet shakes his helm and says something, but you just stroke his servo. 

‘I think I definitely need to go to a hospital,’ You muse. ‘I hate to say it, but someone call Fowler, please.’

Optimus pulls away and heads towards the main computer and begins to type something, but Optimus’ massive frame blocks your vision. You see Fowler’s contact page with his photo brought up and Optimus presses the call button.

Optimus looks somber, face pinched in concentrated determination, but it’s stressed. You swallow, feeling an ill wave in your stomach over being placed into the perspective of how much your friends don’t understand the human body and are thrown for a loop over it.

You think back to a time when you had found a small injured animal and had to hold it in your palms for a bit. It was nerve-wracking just holding it. It terrified you when it spontaneously died. 

You flinch at the comparison.

It does warm your heart that they care. Still, you wish you knew how to explain this all to them, but just like you don’t know what each part of a circuit board and wire does in a mechanism off the top of your head, you don’t exactly know how to explain what parts of you are damaged either. Much less how to fix them.

Cells, nerves, and crossed wires are so intricate and complex… maybe it’s for the best that they’re calling the irritable agent to take you to a hospital where someone does know how to treat you. 

At least you know you won’t die, but your wallet might.

God, please, no surgery. Anesthesia would MURDER your bank account. 

You pray silently in your head for your wallet, when out steps Agent Fowler from the elevator, conveniently already here as he rants on his way in waving his arms dramatically, looking as if he were close to having an aneurysm. Optimus turns to him, surprised and they both say something to each other, and you just barely begin to hear it.

“...PRIME!!! There-... reports-… giant gray robot-… scaring locals-… had to pull several strings-…” Fowler mouths off, irate. “What-… Sam Hill-… doing-… on ground level?!”

A wide manic grin stretches on your face as you begin to pick up more and more words as the ringing lifts the barest amount. You’ve never been so happy to hear William Fucking Fowler complaining in all the time you’ve known the frazzled government agent.

“He’s here to steal our women and precious metals!” You chime in with a shit-eating grin, eager to contribute coherently despite not following the full conversation.

The bots all turn to look at you and so does Fowler, all in surprise but for different reasons. 

“Let’s fucking go! That’s what I’m talking about!” You throw your arms up without thinking. “We’re so back, bab- YOW!” 

You tuck your arms back to your sides as your ribs give harsh protest. “Okay-!” You wheeze. “Shutting up now.”

“...-! What-… still doing-… base?” Fowler asks. 

“‘Need a hospital,” you explain curtly. “I got my shit wrecked by Starscream.”

Fowler makes a bewildered and abashed face. You burst out laughing, wincing as you hold your aching head, “In a non-sexy way, mind you. That asshole popped my ears and shook me like a rag doll!” 

You poke your finger into your ear, unhelpfully trying to plunge your ear drum as if that would make the muffled ringing stop. Ratchet gives you a hard look, and you stop immediately, twitching your hand back down.

“Um, I might need to borrow your insurance… also maybe a ride to the hospital would be great too,” You smile sheepishly. “But, like, only to make sure my ears aren’t eternally fucked.” 

Fowler looks like he wants to kill himself. “Are you-… pain in my-… Seriously, right now ?”

You shrug. “What can I say, man? F-16s are loud. Well, technically his missiles were.”

Fowler gives a long-suffering sigh. “...Car-… give call to-… won’t be taking any of-… give the staff-…” He gestures at the bots.  “...heart attack.”

You chuckle. “Aw, man? We can’t even take Bumblebee? I’m sure the nurses would adore him.” Bumblebee rubs the back of his neck cables bashfully, looking away.

Fowler gives you the stink eye. 

You sigh. “Fine! Fine!” You pat Bumblebee’s arm as you hop off the stretcher, swaying heavily and leaning onto the scout's arm for support. You pat his armor plating. “Sorry, Bee, no cute nurses for you.” 

You look up at Fowler, grinning with a guilty expression on your face. “Hey, could you help me up the stairs? I think I might have a concussion on top of some puréed ribs.”

Fowler’s eye twitches as he rolls his neck. “Oh, for the love of…” he goes down the stairs anyway and loops your arm around his neck and one at your side, helping support your weight. 

Ratchet steps forward as Fowler directs you up the stairs. “...Escort… I… emergency vehicle… sirens…. faster.”

Fowler raises a finger pointedly at him with a deep scowl. “No!… cannot-…anymore tonight-!… Autobot Shenanigans!” Ratchet doesn’t look pleased, but he hesitantly relents. Crossing his arms, he leans back while eyeing you carefully.

The tired agent turns to you and mouths words out slowly, loud enough to break a little better through the phantom noise-canceling barrier within your ears. “Concussion? You sure?”

You nod. He loops his finger around in the air in a circle. “No Car. Going… helicopter. Private. Military. Hospital… Good?” He gives you a thumbs up and raises a brow.

You give a thumbs up back. “Sounds good!”

You pause, turning around to spare a glance at the bots who all tentatively retreat back to their spaces, except Arcee. She’s standing off to the side, keeping to herself, still holding her arm in a self-soothing hold. 

You haven’t really seen her talking to anyone after the encounter with Starscream and worry blooms in your chest for the two-wheeler. Despite her brash-spiritedness and erratic behavior tonight, you honestly cannot bring yourself to be particularly upset at her.

She wasn’t the one who messed you up, and given her track record for self-isolation, you’re not willing to let these deeply emotionally stunted bots sink further into their own minds. Especially not Arcee. 

“Hey, Cee Cee.” She lifts her helm up as you call her, and you walk over to the railings to close the distance just a little. She eyes you warily, and you clear your throat as the words you were gonna say dry up. “You okay?”

She gives you a deadpan look and you hold your burning neck. “Okay, stupid question. I know.”

You take a deep breath. “...We’ll talk about this stuff later-” Arcee’s shoulders hike up defensively but you quickly move to build on the sentiment. 

You shake your hands non-threateningly, “Eh-eh! Not cuz I'm upset with you or anything, but cuz I wanna make sure you’re okay.”

Arcee blinks a couple of times. She says something slowly. You can’t quite hear it but you assume it’s denial as she shakes her helm.

“I’m serious,” You stress. “I’ve never seen you like that, it’s getting scary. Lately, this…,” you gesture with a hand at nothing in the air, searching for the right word. “…this revenge thing has been ramping up and you’ve been making huge lapses in judgment-- Tonight you almost made a big one.”

She gives you a pointed look that needs no additional words to let you know she disagrees. You shrug your shoulders, ignoring the pain in your neck. 

“I just don’t want you carrying that death with you forever, any of theirs,” you mull out gingerly, picking at your knuckles. “I don’t want to tell you how to grieve, and I'm not trying to do that right now. But there are ways to go about it that don’t involve taking someone’s life in retribution. I’m telling you, it won’t ever match up or pay back what was taken from you.” 

The femme drags her crossed arms closer to herself and looks away. 

You clasp your hands together and intertwine your fingers, your expression sympathetic. “I’m not… saying this cuz I want to argue with you or make you feel bad, and I don’t want you to feel bad about tonight either.”

You tap your chest with a closed fist. “I just want you to know that you can beat this.” Arcee gives you an unsure look.

You shuffle hands together, looking up at her, kindly. “One day, you’re gonna be able to move on but it’s gotta be the right way.” She narrows her eyes at you and you add on gently, “In a way where you’re not hurting yourself.” She darts her eyes to the ground.

“Just think about what I said until we get our next chance to talk, okay?” You pull away from the railings and rap your knuckles on the metal with a clang, walking backwards and towards Fowler, not breaking eye contact with Arcee just yet. 

She doesn’t respond, but at the very least she gives something of a half-nod and that’s good enough for you.

You smile. “‘Aight.” 

You do a quick double-take before you leave and gesture to her scratched-up arm. “Hey, and make sure Ratchet takes a look at that-- ‘looks painful!”

You turn around and watch Fowler step into the main elevator. You eye the metal box warily. A long distrustful whine slinks out of your throat while carefully stepping inside.

“Goddamn, living on flat terrain-” You mutter, holding onto the inner railings and death clinging to Fowler’s suit sleeve. “If this thing goes down, I’m taking you to hell with me, Fowler.” 

    ----------

The ringing in your ears persisted far longer than you cared for.

The hospital staff had held you in a quiet room overnight, however, it was more for watching you in case of vomiting and seizures should you have a delayed reaction to any internal injuries from the strain of whiplash on your neck and head. 

The 24-hour monitoring required you to go through several tests that’d lasted into the late AM, but after the first few hours you’d managed to get some sleep, comforted as you slowly began to hear the constant beeping of the heart monitor get louder in your ears.

The main doctors tending to you had managed to explain there was a significant amount of damage done within the ears, but the deafness would be temporary as there was only intense swelling in response to block out further noise. They advised you to please stay away from loud explosions in the future.

Both for your ears and your general welfare.

They’d managed to get an ear surgeon to come and administer steroid injections to control the swelling, leading to the ringing lifting and you feeling slightly better (though Fowler nearly got his hand crushed in your anxious grip during the injections).

As for your ribs, an X-ray revealed no damage to the bones, just surface-level bruising. Pain meds had been the most they’d given you for it, nothing you couldn’t get over the counter.

Besides that, it had been surprisingly more peaceful than visiting a regular hospital’s ER and you couldn’t be more thankful for Fowler’s connections to the government, for once.

Speaking of which, the overworked agent had dozed off in a nearby chair next to your hospital bed. He’d looked disheveled earlier with his tie loosely done and shirt crumpled. He still looks run-ragged even asleep in his chair, his arms are crossed over his chest while he snores, though now there are visible dark bags under his eyes. 

Looking at the clock in the dimmed room, you realize he came into the base close to midnight. 

Usually, he’d only come in while it was still daylight, but he’d coincidentally been at the base, within the elevator ready to debrief the Autobots on Starscream sightings from confused locals when Optimus had gone to call the agent.

Had the cases of Decepticon and M.E.C.H activity really been so frequent that they were closely monitored at all times?  

You feel thankful you and the kids have the choice to sleep through the night still.

Fowler had stayed until the early hours of the morning, yawning as he excused himself to go to work, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he stole some egg from your hospital food platter.

“My eggs!” You complained as you watched him scarf them down. 

“What? I’m hungry,” he muffles out, adjusting his tie while he chews and swallows. He gives you a mischievous smirk. “Consider it payback for you and the bots waking me up so early.”

You pout, but relent as you open the fruit cup near your plate. You pop it open, tilting it around to spot the different types of fruit, and stretch it out to him. 

His eyes sparkle as he rubs his hands in anticipation and takes out the melon slices and strawberries. 

“Thanks, Agent Fowler,” you’d said, picking up a blueberry and popping it into your mouth. 

You set the cup down and pick at your yellow hospital bracelet. Your eyes dart around the darkened room as the agent stops eating to watch you. “I know we don’t talk much and we don’t see eye to eye a lot… but you really helped me out in a pinch here. You didn’t have to stay overnight either.”

You rub the back of your neck. “Thanks, seriously.”

Agent Fowler remains silent for a moment, then shrugs. “Those Autobots care for you , a lot .” He adjusts his blazer back on his person. “Our interactions have been more amicable as of late due to the strengthening of their bonds with humans, with you .”

He rubs the back of his neck, groaning as it cracks. “Don’t get me wrong. Jack, Miko, and Rafael are good at getting those overgrown robots to settle down and drop the extraterrestrial mambo-jumbo for a bit.” He rolls his shoulders. “But I think having you around as another adult figure has allowed them to understand and respect people as equals.”

He pauses, looking up at the ceiling with a reproachful look. “Well, except for the medic, of course.”

You laugh. “Ratchet will come around, you’ll see. I think I’m wearing him down!”

Fowler sighs, opening his phone with a scowl. “Which reminds me, I have to answer the various phone calls these damn robots left me.” He closes it with a click and a huff. “They want to know how you’re doing.”

“You’re not gonna answer them yet?” You ask, tilting your head. He gave a gruff, long-suffering whine.

“No, It’s too early to deal with these disaster giants this early,” he said exasperated, rolling his eyes. “Sweet Mary and Jesus-! I still have to do all the coverup paperwork and calls from that Decepticon being spotted like he’s the goddamn Bigfoot!”

You let a small smile grace your features, amused at his frustrated cadence. 

You think you’re starting to understand the eccentric agent a little if there’s a chance he’s just going nuts from sleep deprivation. He’s not so bad when he’s not behind a screen, losing his mind from another building raided by Decepticons or the Autobots destroying public property.

You’re pulled out of thought as Fowler turns to you, brows furrowed in confusion. “So… what did end up going down last night for-“ He sweeps a hand to gesture at your entirety. “-this to happen?”

You clasp your hands together, leaning forward with a tired sigh. “‘Tried to keep Arcee from killing Starscream and it kinda backfired.”

“‘Kinda?’” He echoes, lifting a brow at you. You give him a helpless shrug. 

He straightens after a beat, clenching both eyes shut and pinching his brow with his thumb and forefinger as he tries to process what you said. “Wait, hold on. The ‘Con? Why would you interfere with taking down a known enemy of the Autobots and Earth?”

You splay your hands open, bobbing your head with a frown. “I don’t fucking know! He was hurt and unconscious, Arcee totally flipped and went rogue-!! “

Fowler whistles low. “Slow down. Was it during a fight?”

You lean back. “No. The Autobots found him like that and Arcee tried to give him a lethal injection with her blaster gun.” You do a half-hearted gun motion with your hand.

 You huff out a breath and run a hand through your hair. “She’s got caught up in getting revenge for Cliffjumper. She said it was for Bee too but I don’t know, I think it’s more her thing.” You drag your hand down your face. “With these grudges, she’s carrying and she’s been getting sloppy on missions-- Arachnaid- you know Arachnaid, right?“

You pause when Fowler looks a little lost. “I’m not exactly privy to all of the interpersonal relationships between the Decepticons and the Autobots. It’s not in my job description.” 

“Dude, you’ve known them for years,” you point out flatly.

He rightfully looks a little sheepish. “I’m a liaison, not an ambassador. I just connect them to our resources and our government.” 

You exhale a deeply disappointed breath. “Anyways,” you continue. “Arachnaid killed another one of Arcee’s partners back in the day, at least that’s what I heard from Jack. She doesn’t talk about him a lot, but Cliffjumper was like a repeat of that. It’s clear she never healed from it.”

“Clear, how?”

You pick at your hospital band. “For the record, I don’t care for Starscream much. That asshole literally landed me in this hospital.” You gesture at your ribs and ears. “But he was also, like, really beat the fuck up. He was blind and grounded , Fowler. That type of shit just doesn’t happen out of nowhere.”

You sigh, splaying your hands out. “But it did and Arcee wanted to take the chance to avenge Cliffjumper right then and there.”

“...And I’m assuming she tried to break the Geneva Convention with a downed soldier?” He asks with a knowing look.

“Yep,” you say with a pop at the ‘P.’

Fowler nods, eyes widening in understanding. “Right, Arcee has personal feelings on matters of Cons.” 

You tilt your head to him. “Her partner got murdered by Starscream, of course she does.”

Fowler blows a breath. “You know what I mean. She’s a liability when it comes to missions regarding the subjects of personal grudges.” He rubs his neck. “Usually, in such cases, people with personal feelings would be separated from assignments where encounters like that could happen.”

You settle your cheeks on your fisted hands, slumping forward. “Only she wouldn’t listen to Optimus and ran out before anyone could stop her.” You shrug. “So… I got involved and now here we are.”

Fowler’s eyes are wide open in stunned shock. “Huh…” He swirled his tongue inside his mouth, clicking his teeth incredulously. “That’s… new. And concerning.”

You hum in agreement, letting the topic drop for now and Fowler, luckily, seems in agreement.

You settle back into the hospital bed, looking around at the IV bag next to the stretcher. You hadn’t really drank water in a while and you’ve been a little nauseous from your headache, so the doctors had planned to install an IV for the duration of your observation period.

“Think they’d let me chug whatever this is?” You ask in an attempt at levity. You poke the bag, watching the liquid slosh and settle into the bag. 

Fowler gives you a perturbed look, utterly dumbfounded. “No???” You blink owlishly at him and he stresses to add, with a stern expression, “Don’t drink that.”

“I’m just saying, it’s basically salty water!” You poke the bag again. “It’ll be inside of me soon anyway. What’s the difference between chugging it and having it injected into me?”

“It’s saline ,” he begs of you and slouches into a defeated slump as you poke the bag again. “And have you ever drank ocean water? People throw up from it.”

You wave a hand. “They couldn’t commit to the saltiness!”

He crosses his arms. “Young lady, I threw up from inhaling too much ocean water during an overseas assignment.”

You hum. “Skill issue.”

He scoffs, offended, and gives you a look as you mischievously go to unhook the bag for the bit. 

He suddenly smirks and lifts a brow, challengingly. 

“A bag of saline costs a hundred to five hundred bucks on the hospital bill.”

You swiftly put it back on its hanger.

Fowler lets out a huffed half-chuckle at the averted crisis and turns away to the door.

“Fowler, you think if I slow my heart rate down enough it’ll scare the nurses?”

He gives a desperate look up at the sky. “God, help me. It’s. Too. Early.”

“It’s noon.”

He gives you a withering look and you can’t help but grin cheerily back. Fowler shakes his head, utterly exhausted with your antics, and leaves not looking back.

You sit up after him, a split second after he leaves, craning your head as you call out to him.

“Wait- hold on-! You choked on ocean water during a mission?” Your curiosity goes unanswered.

-/-/-/-/-;

You closed the door to the taxi cab and paid off the driver with the money Fowler left you for the ride home. Slinging your overnight bag onto your shoulder, you squint off at the distance where you keenly spot your lot, your home. A small dealership that still looked exactly how you left it from the last time you were here-- months ago. 

There was really nothing keeping you tied out here when you already had a home with the Autobots. You figured there was no real need to come back “home.”

You adjust your bag and make your way onto the off-road path on foot. 

You haven't been here in so long that you can spot, even from afar, a good amount of sand and dust covering your old cars. You huff a breath and make a mental checklist to dust those off before you leave.

You’d planned to return home for your phone after yesterday’s debacle. Better to be safe than sorry. 

Besides, despite your promises, you’re not eager to get into an argument with any of the bots over your admittedly reckless behavior from yesterday.

You scratch at your wrist where your hospital bracelet still sits biting your skin, trying to recall where you even left the little piece-of-crap flip phone. You hadn’t needed it since you were always with the Autobots anyway since they’d first picked you up all those years ago. 

You’d been one of the first non-government-affiliated humans they’d made contact with.

Accidentally, that was. 

You eye the downed power line that you distinctly remember Bulkhead tripping into. It’s still fallen over on the ground. 

You smile to yourself at the memory though you should seriously call someone to fix that, you’d been having to turn on the backup generator whenever you’re here.

You walk up to the steps of your house and take a look around. It’s just as you left it, clean but bare of any food in the fridge. You know there’s some non-perishables in the cabinets but nothing interests you except your phone. 

You make a round-trip around your home before you finally find your phone, of all places, in between your couch cushions. 

You dust the cellular, quickly turning on the generator in the back before placing your phone on charge while you go get a drink. You get a cup of water from your kitchen filling it with water from the tap, sipping away absentmindedly as your phone charges. 

You look out the window at the clear blue skies of Nevada, taking a calming breath… until you choke when you spot a long, gray metal leg sprawled out on your lot.

Your face blanks as you crane your neck to see Starscream sprawled out in the parking lot as if he’d passed out. 

You snatch your phone, wipe your face of water, muttering spontaneous and rapid curses as you peek your head out your front door.

He looks like he partied too hard on your lawn, sans any alcohol bottles, glitter, or pink flamingos in a pool. 

Though, given his injuries, it’s safe to say it wasn’t a very fun party.

There are pieces of foliage and grass stuck to him and he’s covered in a fine layer of sand. Dried Energon sticks to his abdomen and, to your great concern, there’s a fresh patch of darkened blue sand beneath him, still wet. 

His wings look dry, but in the sunlight, you can visibly see that his long flight wings have been snapped clean off leaving him with stumps of once-functioning jet wings. The remnants hang limply, tipped towards the ground, with only his right tail wing fully intact on his back now while the left base dangles its wing piece.

He’s perfectly still otherwise.

You let your door close back up again and slowly step down from your porch, walking over to the downed Seeker slowly. You don’t want to risk pissing him off if he’s asleep, though you guess that isn’t really your fault. This is your fucking lot after all. And-

Did he seriously step on your Dodge Omni?!

Your favorite car’s roof is crushed to pieces and the once-functioning vehicle looks like a crushed soda can. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

That car made me feel like I was in Breaking Bad-- MOTHERF-

You decide to fuck the consequences, running up and give the Seeker a kick on his heel, barely moving the colossal mech and despairing at the pieces of your car still impaled by the tip of his pede. “Hey! Hey, fuckass, move!”

He doesn’t move. You roll your eyes. This bitch! ---------

You walk all the way up to his outstretched arms on the pavement, climbing over them. You eye the missiles re-loaded on his forearms as you sling yourself over, squinting at them for a second in thought. 

You choose to ignore them, despite the twinge of desire to give the vain seeker a rude awakening. You’d probably blow yourself up too anyway.

Stepping up to Starscream’s helm you find his face slackened with sleep, or as close to sleep as these bots can get. He almost looks endearing with the way his intake hangs open a little and his optics remain lightly closed…

Wait— he’s not dead, is he?!

You lurch forward to grab the red crest on Starscream’s helm and give him a good shake. 

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” You plead nervously. You really don’t want a dead alien robot fugitive on your lawn. What would you even do with the body???

“What-!? What is the meaning of- YOU!” Starscream squawks in alarm before snarling, claws twitching, and for a moment you think you might be sliced to ribbons. You let out a breath of relief as he slumps back down despite his efforts. “How dare you touch me, beast!?”

“Good Morning to you too! Glad to see you’re not dead,” You greet politely, taking a deep breath before your face contorted with rage. “The HELL is wrong with you?! First, you fuck my ears! Then you fuck my car! My fucking Dodge Omni-!”

“What a revolting lie!” Starscream makes a sour face. “I have never interfaced with something as disgusting and disgraceful as a primitive grounder vehicle or a flesh bag like you.” He gags for emphasis.

“Car fucker! Ear fucker!” You taunt, angrily. “Big gray motherfucker!”

Starscream sputters, disgruntled and flustered with offense, “Big gray… what?”

You ignore him, crossing your arms over your chest while looking down at him. “What are you doing in MY swamp?”

Starscream blinks. “...This isn’t a sweltering marshland, imbecile.”

You roll your eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Starscream settles his helm back on the floor, uncaringly.

“This was the only place I could think to rest at where I would not be harassed by the local elements,” Starscream mutters against the pavement where his dermas are squished against the asphalt. 

He flutters his snapped wings and a thin layer of dust comes off of him.

Your eye twitches. “Dude, there is sand everywhere .” 

Starscream gives a deadly snarl. “I know that,” he hisses, venomously. “I was talking about you hairless vermin.”

You throw your arms up. “Well whoop-dee-doo, one lives here, numbnuts!” 

Starscream growls in disgust, baring his denta and making an effort to twitch his long claws. “You vulgar, vile, little vermin-!” 

“Ah-Ah! Save the alliterations for someone who cares, you owe me big time, asshole!” You point a finger at the center of his faceplate. “You, sir, owe me a new car!”

You pull back as Starscream snaps his denta at your hand to try and bite you. You squint at him, flabbergasted and offended. “The. Fuck.”

“I don’t owe you slag , your puny vehicular scrap heap got in my way!” Starscream wiggled his pede for emphasis causing you to wince as you heard the grating metal and falling glass. 

But turning around, you see one of your potted plants-- a cactus (despite there being multiple cacti everywhere and yours being wholly unnecessarily potted) on the ground with the soil spilling out. It was part of a small garden you were building in the corner of your lot that you were just starting.

You let out a bloody murder scream causing Starscream to flinch and bare his teeth as his audials are assaulted. “OOHH!! You murdered it!”

The cactus was fine. Starscream was also nowhere near it; it probably fell on its own.

“What nonsense are you spouting!? I did no such thing!” Starscream complains, validly. Still, you glare at him with deep offense as you hold your (not) murdered cactus. 

You sigh, deciding to drop the matter as you place your cactus on top of a car hood. “Dude, seriously, what are you even doing here?” 

Starscream goes to speak but you beat him to it, pointing a finger warningly at him. “And if you start cursing at me, threaten me, or give me bull, I'll call Optimus to come stomp your ass.”

Starscream closes his intake. He hesitates and sucks his dermas in for a moment. “I… find myself in need of Energon and much-needed rest.” 

“So… you came here?” You tilt your head at him. 

Starscream ex-vents. “Regrettably.”

You squint, confusion blatant on your features. “How did you even manage to do that if you’re blind?”

“Internal coordination software,” Starscream offers in a dull huff. “It was just a matter of walking in the direction of the marked coordinates.”

“You know where I live?” You ask, slightly unnerved. 

Starscream gives you an annoyed glance. “Naturally. We Deceptic-” He pauses, correcting himself with audible bitterness. “There were files thoroughly marked on the Autobot’s human pets.”

“Not a pet,” you disagree, sitting on your haunches and watching the ex-Decepticon’s faceplate shift in your direction with darkened optics. Creepy. “So, why come here specifically? I mean, not that I’m not thankful that the kids weren’t kidnapped or tripped over-”

Starscream growls at you warningly. 

“-but why me?”

Starscream pauses. His body releases its tension with a blow of air, deflating softly. “It seemed like a viable option after our previous encounter,” he adds slowly. “At least the most relevant.”

Your frustrations ebbs and your face lifts a little.

He suddenly glares in your direction. “Don’t flatter yourself,” He says sharply. “I came here because my choices are unfathomably limited to mediocrity.”

Starscream lifts his pede out of your car’s ceiling gingerly, grimacing as glass slides off of his heel. You flinch as you see your precious car’s gaping windshield cracked all to hell.

And now there are pieces of it all over your lot. You drag a despairing hand down your face.

It hits you just then that a highly dangerous Decepticon passed out on your lot by tripping on your stuff like an idiot burglar. And like a stray cat you fed once, he followed you home and wants to stay. 

The mental image of Starscream looking like a wet, ugly, feral thing makes your face crack into a grin against your will and then giggles begin to pour out of you. It only intensifies as you remember the car once stuck to Starscream’s foot. 

Starscream irritably snarls at you. “What is your malfunction now, insect?!”

You cackle, doubling over. “You totally tripped on my car and cracked your face on the pavement. Didn’t you?”

“...”

You howl with laughter slamming your hand on the ground on your hands and knees. “Oh my god-! You ate shit! HAHA!”

“I did NOT!” He screeches vehemently, convincing no one. 

There are tears in your eyes that slip out as you hold your aching sides. “Oh my god-! That’s priceless! Get wrecked, dumbass! That’s sweet karmic payback for yesterday!”

You fall over on your side cackling. “My beautiful Dodge Omni avenged me!” You blow a kiss to the sky in honor of your car. 

“Cease your fragging screeching, you vile little scraplet beast!” Starscream screeches, but makes no effort to move, probably unable to. “I could crush you effortlessly and finish the job, you pathetic, detestable fleshling!”

“Oh yeah, like you crushed my Dodge Omni?” You taunt, laughing to yourself as you pull your flip phone out. “You’d trip yourself over my dead body!” 

“I would not!” He gawks in offense, you smile and blow him a raspberry. Starscream snarls back at you in disgust.

You shake your head to yourself, walking at a distance to let the seeker sleep a little while you make a call.

However, Starscream tenses as you walk away. “Where are you going? Do not turn your back to me, insect! You are to assist me, vermin! I command you!”

“Relax!” You roll your eyes at the dramatic seeker. “I’m calling up some help for you.”

He stiffens. “...The two-wheeler?”

“No!” You laugh. “She’d pop your head off, I’m calling Ratchet and Optimus to tell ‘em you’re here.” 

“WHAT?!” Starscream’s helm shoots up. “But-! But I told you why I am here-! I- I am cooperating, you moronic glitch!!” Starscream tries to lift himself off the ground to flee, but the metal of his frame groans with strain and he drops back to the floor with a wheezed ex-vent. 

You feel a twinge of concern shoot through you as you catch a glimpse of the seeping wound on his abdominal tubing. The sand beneath him is a dark indigo, saturated in Energon.

You observe the downed Seeker pant and shudder his stubbed wings from agitation. He’s frazzled and though he was coherent laying on the ground before, he looks dizzy and on the verge of passing out. 

“Dude, chill out. You’re gonna be okay.” You go back up to his helm and place a hand on the side of his helm, pushing him back down gently. “You’re not gonna get arrested or executed, or whatever.” 

“How would you know?!” He spits at you but relents, letting his helm rest back on the ground. You smile and his face goes slack with wariness, offlined optics cycling at you.

“Cuz I'm gonna sweet talk boss bot into giving me a bit of Energon, a few band-aids, and a lollipop for you.” You dial them up as Starscream squawks, deeply offended. He bristles and flaps his wings with a restrained temper tantrum in body, but not in voice. 

“I am not a sparkling!” He shrieks angrily, slumping as the loud cry takes the energy out of him and leaves him in an exhausted heap.

“Shh! Quiet, ya big baby.” You smirk as you put the phone to your ear. “The adults are talking.”

You chuckle at the perplexing image before you, a little dumbfounded at the incredulousness of the situation.

There’s a Decepticon in your lawn and you’re laughing! Somehow, you’re laughing and not cut up into a thousand little tiny cubes or crushed under someone’s foot. Who would’ve thought?

Chapter Text

“Hey, guys-- don’t freak out. I got good news and bad news.”

Starscream blinks his offline optics lazily, listening to the snippets of conversation he manages to pick up on your end. He passively tracks the smoke that identifies you in his dark field

“Good news is I got my hearing back and got cleared by the doctors! Yay! The bad news is… um, Starscream is on my lawn.” A pause. “Like… right now .”

A crunched piercing audio rings out from your vicinity that Starscream doesn’t bother to tune into, already becoming annoyed with the infuriating quality of the audio transmission. 

“Ratchet-! Ratchet… Ratchet-!! Hey-! I- Listen. I’m gonna- I’m gonna need you to not yell into the receiver.” 

Starscream pulls his dermas into a chittering snarl.

A mere battle wound should not-- will not lower the mighty Starscream, Air Commander of the Decepticons, to grovel for assistance. He doesn’t need to be patronized by the likes of the naively altruistic Prime, nor his half-wit lackeys and their pets. 

Their sorry excuse of an army, lacking in Cybertronian tech, and resources-- their reliance on the local life forms for assistance-- all are a poor reflection of their highly intelligent and advanced race. It’s a disgrace to be associated with such a pitiful group.

It fills him with an unbearable embarrassment to even imagine limping his way to their ranks for a single cube of Energon, metaphorical in this case, but no less humiliating. It’s as if he's some pathetic mini-con needing protection from getting crushed under-pede rather than the formidable pinnacle of grace and power he’d like to be recognized as. 

Not that all his hard work paid off anyhow. He’s somehow such a pitiful sight that even a human insect takes pity on him of all people.

“No, he hasn’t hurt me again.” Starscream tilts his head up, listening to you. “I actually wanted to ask if I could get some Energon or some medical assistance for him- Ratchet-! C’mon, no yelling!” 

A muted scornful yelling comes from what Starscream supposes is your primitive communications device and he doesn’t need the other half of the conversation to know this isn’t going in his favor. 

Starscream growls low in his vocalizer and shuts his optics tight, letting the aching rumble in his vox die down into a whining vocal fry. He’s never needed anyone’s pitiful scraps after a confrontation with Megatron and he could reject such mediocrity just as easily! 

He feels his processor glaze over in a momentary loss of focus from the strain of his efforts to retaliate and another error pops up in his dark HUB, signaling his Energon reserves to be critically low. His equilibrium stabilizers echoed the sentiment and produced another error message that Starscream felt was wholly unnecessary as the vertigo itself was enough of a sign of his unwellness.

His general unwellness.

He grouses pettily at the obnoxious windows as he closes them, submerging his pounding helm into darkness once more to rest idly within his blank mind, except for the faint smoke of light that follows your voice. His field, no matter what the state of his optics was, could still detect your presence regardless of whether or not he chose to establish a line of communication and engage with your miniature bubble of consciousness.

He lets his processor emptily trail your rudimentary field.

It had hit him last night, after the confrontation with the Autobots, that he had no idea how he would replenish his Energon supply.

No equipment to mine Energon will starve his tanks, eventually leading to a system shutdown and, shortly thereafter, his offlining. He wouldn’t have the strength to dig with his claws either. He was utterly fragged.

“Alright, I give up! Pass me to Optimus.”

The only viable option was to plead with the Autobots, and Starscream had initially resigned himself to the idea before another less insulting idea came to mind: threatening their human pets. 

You, specifically, since your presence and defense of him last night had… intrigued him. 

But it was just merely a new possibility to gain resources from the Autobots! 

Soundwave had once done a meticulous file on the whereabouts of the Autobot pets and their residences. They’d not acted on the information since such efforts would go wasted in comparison to Energon scouting and faceplate-to-faceplate encounters with the Autobots. 

With the Iacon relics becoming a relevant subject once more, the Decepticons had little interest in humans at the present moment. Remembering such fine detailing of the chief surveillance officer had served to benefit Starscream greatly at the moment and had the Seeker preening at his own intelligence.

At least until he’d tripped on that Unicron-damned piece of slag grounder vehicle and slammed into the pavement of your residence.

“Hey, Optimus… Yeah. Yeah, he’s here.” A pause. “He’s in my car lot. No, he hasn’t harmed me, I’m fine. He just destroyed a car, that’s it.”

Your flame flickers and it shifts. Despite its shapelessness, Starscream is oddly aware you’re looking at him. “No, he doesn’t need to be detained, not really.”

You try to make your voice pointlessly quieter as Starscream dials his input audio levels up to hear you. “I think he needs help, like, bad. He hasn’t gotten up in the past several minutes and he’s still bleeding, Optimus. I’m starting to get worried.”

Starscream gives a scoff that slides into a gurgling cough.

Initially, for his plan, he’d figured your status as an “adult” would grant him the advantage of finding you alone in your habitation, unlike the human sparklings who were surrounded by guardians or their equally annoying peers. To a lower extent, his curiosity was peaked at what peculiar circumstances could have cultivated you to offer you unwanted assistance the previous cycle and now. 

But upon stumbling into your abode and consequently “eating shit” as his blind foolish body had led him to step on one of your pathetic ground-mode vehicles and slamming face-first into the ground. His exhaustion had won out and his frame had given up trying to move forward.

“I know resources are low, and I know Starscream said he wouldn’t come back to base. Probably for the best as he’s not anyone’s favorite bot right now… B-But maybe I could reach a middle ground here with him and get us all something out of this situation!”

Given the time of his internal chronometer, he’d figured you would have been recharging inside the plain infrastructure in the lot. 

…But yelling expletives at the shelter had not yielded him any results and so he’d just laid to waste in the lot until morning, until your irritating meddling with his frame and complaints had raised him from recharge.

This asinine plan of his had once again blown up in his face-plate, again, and had proven his intellect to be the choice of ridicule for the universe to poke fun at. He ex-vents as frustration bleeds into his field.

“Hey, Screamer!” You call out to him and his processor singles out your wispy field once again. 

“What?” He snaps impatiently. “And do not call me that insulting designation!”

“Will you give us the locations of a few Decepticon Energon mines with stuff left over, pretty please?” Your field gives a giddy pulse and it drips into his helm like dark energon sinking into his frame.

He frowns sharply. “I would never agree to such a thing.”

Your field gives a mischievous flare and his chassis stutters, befuddled. You’re barely containing the smile in your vocal response. “He said ‘yes.’”

Starscream sputters, outraged. But your glowing ball of a field has the gall to shush him. 

“I’m cutting us a sweet deal here, man.” You whisper. “You don’t even have to do much, just give us a hand with finding the resources to feed you. We wanna get some Energon back in you, riiiight?”

Starscream notes the use of “we” but chooses not to comment, and instead chittering testily with a deep glower.

“Plus if you tell us, we’ll be able to feed you faster~!” You carol with an enticing flare. 

Starscream falters, his empty tanks twisting while he circles the details over in his processor, making a show of thinking it over but his mind is already made up. He’s desperately in need of Energon and his frame is already prepping for stasis lock as several prompt messages have lingered open in the background of his HUB in the past several groons. 

At any given moment he’d be thrown into a long, restless recharge should he lose consciousness once again and he’s already powered down into an extended sleep mode twice now.

He cannot afford another delay.

“I.. suppose I see the logic in this arrangement,” He carefully articulates, testing the words out on his glossa, ignoring his initial stand-point on the matter from the early night cycle before. But his mind hissed uncomfortably and his spark despaired at the loss of his scrounged mine locations.

He’d worked tirelessly during his exile to find those. They belonged to him alone.

Now these- these thieves would take what he had engaged in tirelessly to achieve as a means of stability for himself. His only true possessions would be traded in and taken off of his servos, leaving him only with himself.

And what worth does that have anyway? Especially as a near-lifeless scrap heap.

“Cool. Now, be quiet and play ball!”

“I refuse to be roped into your inane games, cretin!” Starscream hisses, but your wispy frequency doesn’t flash even a flicker to suggest you’re perturbed. He pours mournful rage into his spark to overflow into his expanding field and drown yours somehow with his own, yet nothing happens, to his dismay. 

He can’t exude a single ounce of strength over you.

“Aw, not even ‘Rock, Paper Scissors?’” You ask, mirth present in your faint field and pollutes his own outstretched EMP signal. He pulls back his reach in sudden recoil, his spark galvanized with the immovable object of your own electromagnetic marker, or otherwise, meeting him with the softest breach of surface tension.

Starscream’s wings swivel as closely in a droop to tuck into his back strut, eyeing you warily though not unthoughtful. It frustrated the seeker to no end that such a weak creature was the only thing visible in his perception, and yet the only thing he could not retaliate against physically or mentally. 

Previously he’d been unbothered by humans and their disgustingly primitive and fickle fields, but it seems his blindness has heightened his awareness of it and you, and he loathes his inability to block out the noise. He couldn’t anyway. He’d be floating in an endless void if he did, which regrettably his survival coding demanded he not do.

You’ve remained quiet, he noticed. Most likely, your attention has been placed back on the comm and he further notes that the white noise in his processor has returned. He allows the dial-tone static to flood over his mind and lull him gently into a half-awake state, clinging to the image of your smoke pillar form at the corner of his mind, lest he lose himself to a stasis lock.

Roughly, a breem passes and you give a few more stray answers and assurances, transitioning into good-bye’s cut through the static and pull his mind back from light recharge.

Starscream has half a mind to turn his audials to max to pick up what is on the other end of the receiver but he finds he’s not in the mood to be insulted by whatever comments are being flung his way. He ventilates deeply and continues to listen in silence.

It isn’t long before he hears the telltale click of plastic of your comms device and then your blurry illusion approaches closer to him. He can feel something akin to the sun in liquid form seeping into his field and he can only describe the data as satisfaction rolling off of your form.

He lifts a brow but drags it down into a calculative scowl as your field vibrates with baffling excitement. “What are you so happy about, insect?”

“You’re getting medical attention, doofus!” 

Starscream’s spark jolts and his frame freezes. He ignores the insulting designation. “How-?”

“Well, you’re mostly getting fixed.” You interrupt, but before he can tell you to shut your intake, confusingly, you begin to ramble a bit as if you’re apologizing to him. “Ratchet only agreed to keep you from dying BEFORE you give us info, but- hey! You’ll stop looking like a drowned fish.”

He squints. “Your aquatic creatures cannot drown, moronic fleshling.” 

“Fine! Like Aquaman drowned then.” 

Starscream doesn’t bother looking up what an ‘Aquaman’ is in his processor. His frame sags into the ground with an oddly relieved ex-vent accompanied by his strung hydraulics un-tensing with a hiss.

He lays his head back on the ground, feeling his chassis lift and ventilate deeper than it has in cycles. For the first time since perhaps his initial decision to commit to a rogue Decepticon existence, he feels his spark settle into a trepidatious sense of certainty over something.

It’s a feeling he hasn’t had in months about anything .

Perhaps this plan had not come to a complete waste.

He feels your fleshy servo pat his helm. “You’re welcome, by the way!” 

He snaps his denta at your arm and, with vicious satisfaction, feels you swipe your hand back as sparks of disgruntled surprise pepper your field. 

/-/-/-/-/-;

A portal opens up and Bulkhead walks through, arm raised with his blaster cannon on display. His optics sweep the area and catch sight of you. He gives you a smile before bursting into a hearty laugh as he sees Starscream facedown on the pavement with the crushed Dodge Omni at his pede.

“C-Cease that at once!” Starscream snarls from his position on the floor, his face flushing with outraged fury and embarrassment. “You- You pit-spawned ground-pounder! Terminate your incessant howling this instant!”

Bulkhead laughs harder.

Starscream rattles his wing bases violently but drops them with a huff as it takes too much effort out of his exhausted frame. He deflates into his starfish position again, but his demeanor is no less murderous.

You grin back at Starscream cheerily, holding in laughter at the ridiculous image of a big, bad Decepticon melting into your floor in mortification. If looks could kill, even Starscream’s vacant stare could not save any of you from the painful death the Seeker promises with tempestuous intensity in his contorted rage-full expression. 

Unfortunately, you need Ratchet to come lift him off the ground for you since you can’t exactly bear the weight of a towering colossus made of metal. Starscream will just have to bear through the inevitable mortifying experience of being lifted off the ground by his enemy faction’s medic. 

Does this make you Starscream’s life support button because he’s fallen and he can't get up? 

You cover your mouth with your hand, shoulders bouncing with barely contained laughter. Somehow, Starscream manages to shoot you a glare either way.

Bulkhead presses his digits to the side of his helm, still chuckling. “A-All clear!” 

Ratchet steps through and, surprisingly, he doesn’t look as mad as he sounded on the phone. He just looks like his regular, generally pissed-off sort of way. One of his servos carries the medkit meant for Starscream but his optics are locked on you.

He kneels down in front of you. “Are you hurt anywhere?” He prods you with his tungsten digits, lifting your arms up to feel your sides gently.

You hold your side on reflexive instinct as he presses on a tender spot. You hiss, “Still hurt, yes. But not from anything new, don’t worry.”

Ratchet leans back, tapping the side of his helm. “What about your audial receptors?”

You cup your ears from behind and flap them like butterfly wings. “Good as new!”

Ratchet’s frame plates relax as he ex-vents. 

Starscream, having grown impatient at being forced to wait, drags his talons on the ground to lay scratch marks in the sand before flicking a rock in your direction. 

“Your human pet is fine!” Starscream grits out, craning his neck up off the ground with tremendous effort. “Help. Me.”

Ratchet scowls at Starscream, pushing you back gently behind him with his servo. “First, you are to give us the location of the Decepticon mining operations. Energon deposits.”

“What?!” Starscream gawks. “Can you not see I am in need of immediate medical attention?!”

Ratchet hums, unbothered. “You’re still conscious.” Starscream gapes at him in offense, but Ratchet just crosses his arms sternly. “Coherent enough to give me the locations of those mines.” 

“He tried to bite me,” You offer unhelpfully to the conversation. 

“Quiet, you!” Starscream hisses at you with a scolding glare. 

Ratchet darts you a concerned look. Starscream ignores you.

“I am not some miserable mini-con to report to you, doctor, ” Starscream snarls, spitting his words through Energon-stained dental plates. 

Ratchet stands up, glaring down at Starscream with an impatient look. “You’d do well to speak quickly, Starscream. I am not in the mood for your imperious prattle or your complaints.”

Starscream stares back hatefully at Ratchet. “Arrogant rusted medic! You take delight in your mal-practice towards me! Aren’t medics a neutral party in this war?! How dare you let me suffer needlessly, you pit spawn?!”

Ratchet’s features flare with anger and he rises to stand. “As Optimus established with you previously Starscream, that isn’t an option for us as a people anymore!” He leans, a darkness passing through his expression and Starscream somehow recoils back at the switch.

“To set the record straight,” Ratchet states coldly. “I don’t much care for your continued existence, in fact, it would save me tremendous amounts of trouble patching up your frag-ups, Starscream.” 

You wince, biting your lip worriedly at the mounting tension. It’s palpable in the air as the two rival parties glare at each other, and one look over to Bulkhead’s intrigued but apprehensive expression tells you you’re not the only one who feels it.

Ratchet had a particular hatred when it came to the Decepticons, Megatron especially, for the destruction of their home planet. You were aware of it. 

Nevertheless, recalling Ratchet’s indifference over Arcee’s willingness to dispatch Starscream had been startling at that time, but you were even more taken aback by Ratchet’s unwillingness to assist on the phone and here now. You’d never known him to have a strong dislike towards the Decepticon’s SIC, even after Cliffjumper.

Yesterday must’ve really rattled Ratchet up.

Ratchet tilts his helm and his brow ridges dip into a begrudging scowl. “However, it is Optimus’ sentiment that given your offer to trade valuable information, you should be spared-”

“Spared?” Starscream bites out, inflamed with outraged fury. “Please! As if your knock-off medical certification could live up to Decepticon standards of medicine. I have seen what you’re capable of!”

“I studied at the Iacon Academy of Science and Technology,” Ratchet seethes. You swivel your head nervously between the two, mouth opening and closing uselessly. “I saved countless lives-- I saved your life -!”

“-You didn’t save slag!” Starscream roars back, wings vibrating in his rage. “You extorted my condition for information and still considered leaving me to rot!”

“You offered to make that exchange Starscream!” Ratchet meets the seeker with intensity. You raise your hand and awkwardly let it hang in the air as you’re uncertain if it’s a good idea to step in. “You’re servile! Pathetically scrounging for scraps from others to build yourself up before you usurp them because you’re treacherous and disloyal, but you’re too much of a coward to do so outright.”

“Do not presume to know anything about me!” Starscream screeches, his frame trembling as he picks his head off the ground to meet Ratchet’s glare.

Ratchet narrows his optics. “I don’t need to because your sense of who you are, Starscream, is that blatantly on display. You’re too fragging transparent to infer on! It’s pathetic, and it’s a miracle that somehow you’ve gotten this far in your conniving schemes without having Megatron grow tiresome of you earlier.”

Starscream’s face sharpens intently.

“And you have gotten nowhere!” He hisses with deep hatred. “Such dedication to your cause that it has cost you everything and yet your function has amounted to nothing.” 

Ratchet’s optics widen before a vicious snarl twists into his faceplate. You feel anxiety shoot through you. 

“Ratchet?” You call. He ignores you.

 “I cared for my patients, every single one, when Cybertron wasn’t a desolate wasteland, no thanks to you Decepticons!” He grits out. 

Starscream scoffs rolling the calipers of his optics. “We can argue about semantics, but here and now,” he smiles in false sickly sweetness. “How many of those precious patients of yours have survived this fragging war? How many comrades?”

Ratchet’s servos ball into fists. “You and your compatriots murdered them.” 

“And yet the Decepticons survived-- thrived!-- while the Autobots struggle for scraps and straggle over to primitive planets to hide!” Starscream jeers ruthlessly. 

“You wished for the extinction of those who opposed your politics!” Ratchet argues back fiercely, frame shaking. “You aligned yourself with the perpetrators of the destruction of our home! Do not dare defend your crimes by claiming self-preservation as a worthwhile equivalent!”  

“At least I maintained my Cybertronian roots and pride, the privilege! Look how far your morals betrayed you, Doctor ,” Starscream purrs in false sickening sweetness. “In squalor, unable to go home, unable to save your patients in a mass extinction of your kind-”

“Dude!” You yell, aghast.

“-inferior, in every sense. Debasing yourself with these fleshy lifeforms and their crude technology your own ‘high-education’ cannot salvage.” Starscream lunges himself forward and cranes his neck up to Ratchet, rasping spitefully. “You couldn’t even save that insect of a scout’s vocalizer when you had the resources!”

Ratchet slams his fist down, a fury as you’ve never seen on his face as his audial fins flick down with the baring of his gritted denta, optics slitted and locked on Starscream as the medic rumbles his way towards the obnoxious seeker. You gasp, jumping up.

You wrap your arms around his pede and uselessly dig your heels onto the ground only to get dragged. “Ratchet! Stop! He’s not worth it!

“You’re a failure of a medical officer and a disgrace to your academy! Your curmudgeon reputation preceded you even before the war!” Starscream taunts with a vicious and victorious smile. “You had terrible bedside manners and distressed your patients far more than you could treat them!”

“Starscream! I am fucking warning you!” You bellow, glaring at the emboldened Seeker with wide eyes.

“You’re old, useless in battle, and close to expiration,” Starscream jeers maliciously, pausing to spit Energon from his intake. “You should’ve just settled and lived a quiet life on Cybertron when you had the chance! What a waste of an existence you’ve led!”

Starscream smirks viciously. “Such a pointlessness for someone who claims to be so gifted and intelligent. Yet your offlining as a scrap heap in the ruins of Cybertron would have rendered no different outcome.” 

Ratchet throws himself forward with a furious roar. 

“Bulkhead!” You call out to the stunned wrecker who’d been standing in the background observing, stunned, suddenly shocked back into action at the sound of your voice. 

Bulkhead rushes up to hold Ratchet back as the CMO transforms his arms to blades and gives a snarling yell as he lunges for Starscream.

“Say that again, give me a reason!” Ratchet roars as he swings wildly, nearly toppling Bulkhead and himself over. You jump out of the way of a pede with a yelp. 

“Gladly! It would be my pleasure~” Starscream drawls spitefully.

And you’ve just about had enough.  

“Starscream!” You roar with a thunderous expression making everyone freeze. 

“I swear to god- Shut the fuck up, or I’ll make you. ” You snap, face twisted and tone incensed. 

“What was that, fleshling? ” Starscream hisses arrogantly with narrowed optics.

You turn around and march up to him. “I’m serious. You want to play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And guess what you’ll win outta this?” 

You crouch down to eye level with him and he leans back at your bold proximity to himself. “You starve on my lawn and you die,” you coldly state.  

You tilt your head at him, boring your eyes into his optics, nevermind the impossibility of the connection through sight but wanting to get the point across either way. “Is that really what you want to get out of this? Do you want to die?” 

You lean forward. “Because if you do, I won’t stop you,” you assure him, shaking your head with unwavering promise in your voice. “You want to talk to someone about being waste, a scrapheap?”

You tap Starscream in the space between his optics, hearing both Bulkhead and Ratchet call for you to pull away. You don’t. 

“You hypocritical idiot,” you remonstrated, shaking your head in disbelief. “You’re the one on death’s door and yet you can’t seem to stop digging yourself deeper into this shithole you’re in.”

Starscream snaps his denta up to try and bite you, but you purposefully move out of the way and grab his crest to slam his head back down. 

Starscream blinks, caught off guard and rumbling angrily. “I do not need your pity!” 

You feel frustration bubble in your throat and your brow dip angrily. “If you didn't want help, then why did you come here? To perish?”

“And what of it if I did?” Starscream narrows his optics at you challengingly, a hateful scornful expression that you match with your own. 

“Then die,” you state impassively, letting his crest go and shuffling back to observe him icily. “Do it. Take the satisfaction of taking that chance away from anyone else to kill you, if you want it so badly.”

Starscream’s optics cycle wide and he rears back slightly.

“Just remember,” you warn. “ You . Came. Here .”

You tap your knuckles on the sand. “It’s up to you what happens next. Say the word and we’ll leave you in peace.” 

You stoically maintain the one-sided staring match, Starscream meeting yours back but there's a wideness to it that remains startled, even after he attempts to reform an intent glare. 

Yet, as seconds of silence pass, slowly, Starscream is whittled down. Losing his nerve halfway, he sharply turns his gaze down at the sandy floor beneath him and drops his helm back down with a puff of sand spraying out.

“Respect yourself enough to know when to stop next time,” you advise the seeker as you stand. Starscream's offlined optics flick around to various nothings on the ground and his dermas set into a firm line.

You walk back up to Ratchet, placing a hand on his pede worriedly. “Hey, it’s okay.” 

The mech takes a few calming ventilation, optics still glaring daggers at Starscream but slowly calming down. He leans down and pats your arm gently with his servo, letting you know to pull away, nodding in thanks to you.

Ratchet stands to full height, reassessing Starscream with 

“I stand with the Autobots above all else,” Ratchet relents with a deep gruff, displeasure seeping into his tone and you pat him comfortingly knowing he was struggling to play his part in all of this.

“However,” Ratchet forewarns, looming over Starscream with a deep set scowl, disdain for the seeker on full display. “If you do not have anything that we can benefit from this infuriating agreement, enough to keep you online, then I see no reason to extend our precious and few resources to you.”

You lower your head pensively, feeling your ears heat up as a buzzing stress fills your head as Starscream refuses to answer Ratchet, who looks ready to leave at any moment. You don’t wish for your efforts to go to waste, but if Starscream doesn’t cooperate, there’s really nothing you can do. 

You bite your fist in your hand as the Seeker sulks in silence. 

Ratchet turns to you. “Are you certain that he has information we can even use?”

“Mine locations-- Energon mine locations.” You run a tired hand through your hair, deflating a little. “I may have prematurely signed him up for thi-” 

Ratchet responds to your trailing off with a heavy ex-vent, raising his servo for you to stop, having heard enough. He looks absolutely done for today.

“We’re wasting our time,” Ratchet mutters pessimistically, reaching out a hand to lift you up with him.

You blink at his outstretched hand, considering and sorting through the current exchange in your mind. You look back at Starscream and weigh if this is a disaster you want to associate yourself with, to involve yourself with. 

Starscream was lashing out, that much was clear to you. He’s wounded, his pride is flaring up in response to compensation, and the self-destructive self-important Seeker was talking himself into a one way ticket to oblivion. 

The only two options available to you now are to let Starscream rot away or allow Arcee or Ratchet to kill him. 

…Neither is a good option. 

Not when it’s clear he wants to live, especially when he ran all the way out here to do so.

He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t want to live.

You straighten up and gently push Ratchet’s digits to close, confusing him. You stride up to Starscream’s helm, frowning down at him and settling on your knees down to his eye-level. Not for his sight, but to steel yourself into this decision to commit yourself to assisting this choleric seeker.

Starscream pulls his head back, eyeing you in suspicion. You squint at him.

“Dude, you don’t have many options here.” You tilt your head at him, watching for a reaction. “I thought we reached an understanding earlier, man.” You watch him patiently for a reaction. You don’t get one and you blow out a frustrated breath.

You breathe in through your nose, mustering as much patience as you can before you release it. “What happened?” you ask, opening your palms out flat in front of you. “Help me understand.”

Starscream’s optics cycle in your direction and dart back out to the open, but a low growl builds in his chassis and he vocalizes with contempt, “You-! You put words in my mouth!” 

He bares his dentas with disdain as he regards you. “You placed me in this pit, expecting me to comply like a fragging mindless Vehicon!” Starscream murmured under his breath venomously. “I agreed to nothing.”

“No actually, I recall you did,” you frown at him, holding your hands up passively as his glare grows icy. “Sorry. I’m not trying to put you down, I wanted to help and when we talked about this plan you seemed fine with it.”

You gesture at the entirety of him. “You’re not exactly in a good position to make demands right now, and you’re really struggling. I know what’s going on must be stressful-”

“-Don’t assume you know how I am faring in my predicament!” He cuts you off dangerously. “You know nothing of what I have gone through in the past several orns !” 

“You’re right. I don’t,” you admit. “So help me understand what’s going on with you.” Starscream stiffens. 

Sinking back into the ground, he glares dejectedly at nothing ahead. “I wish not to be humiliated further and jolted about between factions. I have grown tired of this state of destitution I have been cruelly condemned to.”

He clenches his fists. “I survived on my own, regained my independence and re-fostered pride in my own spark. My resourcefulness and cunning, the only things I could rely upon that served me well, insect.” He lets his stare fall to the ground. “Until they didn’t, but at least then I still had my dignity intact.” 

He closes his optics, dispirited. “I don’t even have that, anymore.” He flutters his broken wings tiredly at his back, dropping them carelessly.

Your frown, rubbing the back of your neck as you watch Starscream be muddled in his chagrin. It had been beyond bizarre to find Starscream in a predicament like the one in your lot, but the shocked amusement within you had died down at the aggravating provocation for a fight Starscream was willing to throw himself into. 

You feel a slight frustration clinging to your throat as you search for solutions and options to suggest, finding nothing really that you’re comfortable saying to Starscream. You couldn’t guarantee anything and found it difficult to excuse the disrespect and uncalled for cutting insults towards your friends or anyone else.

But somehow you found it for this wounded animal of a person and managed to give way to concern for the testy injured Seeker. 

You reached your hand out, hesitating for a second before resting it atop Starscream’s helm. He flinches at the touch but does not pull away, frame gone rigid.

“You just gotta get over this hoop for a little while, and then you’ll be back up and running soon enough.” Starscream looks as if he wants to argue but you continue before he can dispute. “It won’t take long.”

You turn to smile at Ratchet. “We got the best medic after all!”

Ratchet looks away, off to the side.

Starscream’s face twists into disgust in his direction, and you’re seriously suspicious that the Seeker can still see somehow. But sympathy for Starscream or not, you will not tolerate disrespect being thrown at your favorite CMO anymore for today and snap your fingers in Starscream’s face to redirect his attention.

“C’mon, deal or no deal?” You ask, raising a brow.

Starscream scrunches his face into a restrained snarl and you almost think he may attempt to bite at you once again with how he rears his neck cables back. However, Ratchet takes a step forward and Starscream seems to abandon that plot. 

His irked expression remains but his optics cycle, abstractedly gazing at you. After a beat, he turns away, brow ridges furrowed in a resigned sulk.

“Fine!” He spat. “There’s a few locations of note I am willing to disclose for the purposes of this transaction.”

It’s somehow beyond you how you manage to smile at that, despite the tense atmosphere, and yet you can’t help but revel in the small victory. At least now you can hopefully sleep tonight knowing no one had died on your lawn that morning. 

It is still early though.

Chapter Text

“Yo, Bulk. Do you think this may be the most batshit thing that’s ever happened here?”

“Um, what does batshit mean again?”

“Crazy. It means crazy.”

Bulkhead hums, rubbing his helm worriedly. “I think it’s more of a ticking time bomb situation.” He waves a hand at the relative area. “Megatron being here once was the ‘batshit’ part.”

You nod in agreement.

Starscream’s voice strains out in a dazed, deep confusion. “...Megatron was here?”  

“Yeah, during the Unicron re-awakening or whatever,” you scratch your head. “It was wild. Ratchet wouldn’t let any of us humans near him though.” Ratchet gives you an obvious glower.

“Safety concerns, I know,” you say with an easy smile. “Just admit you care about us humans, docbot!” Ratchet rolls his optics at you and wordlessly resumes his work.

You and Bulkhead both stood a ways away from Ratchet’s workstation where he stood over Starscream, who lay on the medical berth. His shattered wings laid flat beneath him and a long Energon infusion patch tube was attached to the opening in his cracked abdomen.

Ironically, that natural disaster that was Unicron’s summoning was the very reason you were able to convince Ratchet to bring him into the base for a proper patching up. 

“Screamer can’t sell us out to Megatron if he can’t see any of our shit anyway, right? Besides, there’s nothing here Megatron hasn’t seen- AND-! Signals get scrambled here; no coordinates to trade in either. Starscream’s got nothing on us.”

You’d argued fervently that Starscream would be the equivalent of a pissed-off parrot with a blanket over his cage. Starscream hadn’t taken lightly to the comparison but he could only curse at you in another language for so long before he got blue in the face and passed out.

The two of you had taken to watching Ratchet work on Starscream warily, slightly on edge from the previously inflamed argument between the medic and the Decepticon’s former SIC. Ratchet has insisted you stay a wide berth away this time around while dealing with a “volatile and unpredictable patient.” You’d allowed the irritable medic his space to work, but it was silently decided that you’d not stray too far, Bulkhead especially. 

Realistically, you could only do so much if Ratchet decided to Homer-Simpson-style choke out Starscream. 

The patch tube placed over the oozing wound in the Seeker’s side worked steadily to pump the blue lifeblood of Cybertron into the opening and ideally maintain a closed loop in Starscream’s fuel lines. The less Energon he loses, the more his frame can actually use the resource to repair internal systems is what you’d gathered.

Over the course of a few minutes, Starscream had come back to consciousness and only managed short questions or a lazy loll of his helm to address a person. 

For now, Starscream lay still, helm turned away from Ratchet and towards a wall. His optics blinked slowly and apathetically at nothing as he slowly regained strength. The usually bright, ambitiously intense red optics you’d come to associate Starscream with, however, had yet to make an appearance.  

 You lean over to Bulkhead. “How long do we have before Arcee gets back to base?”

“Another half a groon is my guess,” he shrugs. “Bumblebee’s with her.” He throws a thumb over to Starscream. “He’ll keep her busy just long enough while we sort out Screamer.”

Starscream gives a displeased grunt at the nickname.

You breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank god!” You rub your face. “I’ve had enough of everyone trying to kill each other for a bit.”

Bulkhead huffs in amusement. “You don’t have to keep getting in the middle of everything, you know?” He nudges your side, playfully. “We got this.”

You smile up at the big bot, elbowing his digit back gently. 

“I know, but what would ya’ll do without my ever-wise voice of reason?” you bemoan with a hand draped dramatically on your forehead. 

“Most likely be able to concentrate better,” Ratchet grouses from his end of the room, shooting you both a glare. “Now quiet down, I need to examine these system diagnostics.” 

Ratchet curtly turns back to the holographic monitor beside him while you rub your head with a bashful grin. Bulkhead chuckles.

You tuck both your hands and intertwine them behind your head nonchalantly, taking in the calm expanse of the base. It was a weekday, so the kids were likely at school, thank goodness. You don’t want to even imagine the trouble Miko alone could stir up with the deeply agitated Decepticon in the room.

Even thinking about thinking about it gives you a slight headache.

Speaking of, you tilt your head at Bulkhead, still feeling conversational. “Say, how’s Miko doing? I haven’t seen the kids much since that Optimus-Orion debacle.”

“She’s doing alright,” The wrecker smiles. “Still getting into trouble though and skipping out on her classes.”

“Oof, did she skip out today?” You ask, craning your head up at him. “I don’t blame her, I would’ve skipped more if I could, back in the day.”

“Nope,” Bulkhead replied, crossing his arms. “As much as I love having Miko around, I want her to be able to keep a good standing in school, ya know?”

He taps the side of his helm. “Get all smart and stuff for when she’s older.”

You feel your face soften into a sweet smile, feeling your chest warm for the large Autobot. “You’re doing right by her, like a good dad.”

Bulkhead jumps a little at the title. He rubs his helm, unsure. “I wouldn’t say that…”

“What?” You tease with a disbelieving grin. “That girl loves you, and it’s clear you love her too. It’s sweet you’re able to step in for her as a guardian who actually cares about her but like- ya know.”

You throw up a Rock and Roll sign with your fingers. “You vibing with her shows her that you care about her interests too.”

It has often bothered you to hear about Miko’s host-parent’s flippant attitude towards the girl, including her whereabouts. A kid her age shouldn’t be out late at night without good reason or a trusted guardian, and knowing Miko’s not actually from America should be even more of a reason for concern to her host parents when losing track of the girl.

It should. But it isn’t.  

All Miko had to say when questioned about it was dismissive statements of, “They don’t care,” or at worst, “I scare them.”

You’ve never wanted to strangle two people that you’ve never met, more than Miko’s hosts.

“You’re like her most important person,” you remark affably. “You’re Miko’s whole world.”

You look around at the base. “All of you guys are the kids’ whole universe, you’ve given them an experience that they’d normally never have in their regular human lives, but you instill a confidence in them to search for more in life.” 

“June seems to think differently,” Bulkhead rumbles unenthused. “I don’t have a problem with her, but she insists the kids don’t need to be involved in our war. ‘S not like we mean to have them involved-- she insists that the kids have a normal human life separate from ours.”

You scoff. “Pfftb-! Who’d want to be human anyway? Being ‘normal’ is overrated and a ploy to make more conforming, complacent people to have as factory workers; cogs in the machine. It’s why I used to live away from ‘pleasant pedestrian society.’”

Bulkhead gives you a befuddled look. 

“Look, personal philosophy aside,” you add in a smooth transition. “Your existence alone gives these kids a window to choose a life past the monotony on Earth; To be more. There’s nothing wrong with living a mundane life if you choose it, but these kids now have more choices now.”

You turn to the Wrecker, with utmost sincerity in your tone, “They can live a life knowing they can meet amazing people like you and the other Autobots and search for adventure outside of Earth. Find their place in the wider universe where they’re not tied down by a preconceived line of living.”

You raise your hands to the ceiling in a dazzle. ”That’s what you’re giving Miko! That girl now has an upbringing where she can be herself and not be shoved into an inoffensive box just because she’s not a conventionally passive kid. Adventure! Choice! Acceptance!”

You turn your head to Bulkhead with an encouraging grin, patting his pede. “That’s everything,” you assure him.

Bulkhead’s optics are wide in slight surprise, but a slow proud grin appears on his faceplate. “Yeah, I guess so.”

You nod happily. A thought occurs to you as you turn to look over at Starscream for a conversation switch. 

“Hey Starscream,” you call out. The quiet seeker tilts his head in your direction, brow ridges furrowed irritably. 

“What is it now?” He groans slowly, unamused. 

“What were you up to during the whole Earth meltdown with Unicron?” You loop your finger in a circle. “There were lots of storms and stuff during that day. Did you get to see the twister in the area during that time? Or did you migrate North?”

Starscream squints.

You flap your hands. “You know, like a bird?”

“I know what a ‘bird’ is, foolish flesh bag!” Starscream snaps. “I merely paused because of your idiotic fallacy. Your planet’s flying rodents migrate South, not North for the winter. ”

“No, I meant North,” you respond confidently, listing things off with your fingers. “Tropical storms, remember? Monsoons, Typhoons, hurricanes, the Bermuda Triangle-- they’re all south of the Equator.”

Starscream scoffs. “They’re all pathetic natural phenomena.” 

“So… you did migrate?” 

“I am not a diseased avian nuisance!” Starscream hisses. “The only thing they’re good for is target practice when I fly”

You make a face. “You look like a bird.” You giggle at his outraged look. “Do you shoot yourself each time you fly?”

“I do not!” Starscream yells, offended and wings rattling beneath him and shaking the berth. He falls back down with a huff as another wave of vertigo passes over him.

Ratchet calls your name, scolding you. “Do not provoke him further, please. I don’t need the additional work of placing another patch tube.” He reaches out to push the tube back down securely, to which Starscream winces with a testy snarl at the medic. 

You whistle to redirect Starscream’s attention to you. “So you were saying,” you clap your hands together. “Tahiti? Or-“

Starscream gives you a look as if you’re stupid. “That is located South, stupid.”

“Tomato, tomato.” You said the same word twice without inflection.

“I think they’re supposed to sound different,” Bulkhead points out.

“No, I think I said it right.” 

No, you didn’t.

“But, seriously,” you continue, dropping the teasing. “Were you good? Cuz last I checked, you were still out on your own during the worldwide meltdown.”

“It is none of your business, you pestilence-ridden creature,” Starscream gripes, narrowing his optics into a defensive scowl.

You frown. “Just asking if you did alright, man. There were lightning storms and blizzards everywhere- were you not freaked the fuck out with the literal apocalypse happening right in front of you?”

He stares daggers at you. “Frag your fragging planet! I! Don’t! Care!” He hisses each word out deliberately. “I didn’t care then for the dramatic displays of your planet’s demise, and I still don’t find myself moved in the slightest now, fleshing.”

You roll your eyes, resisting glaring back. “You don’t have to be a dick about it, dude. I was just asking how you were doing.”

Starscream’s optics slit further as he regards you, and for the eleventh time, you wonder if he has a sixth sense to make eye contact with people. His optics cycle, refocusing the circular calipers of his optics before he drops his helm back down and slides his gaze away in feigned disinterest. 

“Spare me your inane drabble, insect,” He rumbles. “I have no need to speak with you unless I wish to be offlined from the processor damage I will likely sustain from entertaining such idiocy.”

“...You got swept up by the fucking hurricane didn’t you?”

He whirls back to you, enraged. “I said, shut up, insect!” 

“No, you didn’t, you said Nonya.”

Starscream blinks. “I did not- What does that even mean!?’”

“Nonya-business,” you giggle out, clapping your hands in triumph as you land the joke. Bulkhead chuckles alongside you, celebrating your victory. Starscream doesn’t seem to get it though and his face grows more frustrated.

“How dare you? You insolent cretin!” He snarls. “I ask you one simple question and your idiocy cannot even grant me the courtesy of-”

“Nonya,” you deadpan, bobbing your head as if it’s not obvious. “It’s short for ‘none of your business.’” 

Starscream’s face blanks. His optics twitch before he growls and turns his helm away in a huff. “Useless human prattle…”

“Can you all keep your volume down?!” Ratchet bellows, brows furrowed deep with frustration, and about ready to burst a circuit. “For the last time! I cannot concentrate with all this racket!” 

He turns to pick up a data pad on his station, pinching his brow and muttering under his vents. “By the All-Spark, the majority of the humans aren’t even here and yet the noise doesn’t cease.”

“Hey! It’s not always the humans, dude!” You pout, crossing your arms. Ratchet told his optics, waving a hand dismissively with a huff.

You rock on the balls of your feet, unbothered. “By the way, what have you found on the scans, Ratch?”

Ratchet sighs, bringing up the scanner results up on his monitor. “Nothing we haven’t been able to observe from the outside.” He gestures at a computerized version of Starscream on the monitor.

Starscream’s helm doesn’t move but his wings twitch against the berth. You note it as interesting that he doesn’t bother to look towards the screen.

“Missing T-cog, torn wings with frayed hydraulic ligaments, various dents and cosmetic scratches along the surface…” Ratchet hums as he cups his chin, leaning in for a closer look.

“His eyes?” You ask, curious as you peek up at the image of Starscream’s head.

“Rest assured, Autobot pet, still offline,” Starscream snarks contemptuously, tapping his optic ridge with a claw. “Your putrid base still remains unseen to me, much to your delight, I presume.” He baits but you don’t take the chance to argue with him, instead focusing on the imaging.

The picture doesn’t show much of anything, only that Starscream’s eyes are darkened out and labeled “inactive.” Your fingers raise to the side of your temples where your eyes are lined up, rubbing softly in acknowledgment. 

“No indicators as to what the issue might be,” Ratchet states. He taps the monitor, squinting. “Except for a particular dent at the back, just below the cranial edge.”

Ratchet points to a concave crater in the back of Starscream’s helm, beneath the horizontal keel lining ending at an apex in the rear. The metal is dented flat and strained, depressed concerningly enough to where you have to hold the back of your own head from your sympathetic nervous system giving a deep ache.

“Oh, jeez,” you whisper breathlessly, caught wholly off guard. “What…”

You turn to look over at Starscream, he stiffens before looking over in your direction.

You nervously bite your lip, “Was that… also Megatron?”

The answer comes almost instantaneously, curt. “Yes,” Starscream states with a stinging bluntness. 

He doesn’t turn his helm when he speaks, lifting a servo to gesture with a grabbing motion loosely, claws curled inward. “Megatron found it fitting to rearrange the workings of my ‘malfunctioning delusional processor’ within his servos and made use of my helm to hammer the floor.” He slams his servo down on the side of the berth with a sharp bang. 

You jump a little, holding your hands over your chest, to which Bulkhead straightens up and holds a steadying servo to your back comfortingly.

You swallow thickly, feeling your tongue uncomfortably swell in your mouth because…

Well, just what the fuck do you say to that???

Your mind supplies you with the image of Megatron, impossibly colossal and unfathomably overpowering in strength, taking Starscream’s slender delicate frame by the face into his claws and slamming the Seeker’s head down harshly into the floor. 

The sound of crunching metal, the pounding noise as the Seeker’s head meets the unforgiving ground, and the gut-wrenching image of Starscream’s panicked optics going dark make your stomach turn uncomfortably with a sort of heartburn that boils at your chest.

Eyeing Starscream’s rigid frame once more, you find the same trembling from before, residing within the balled-up fist he’d slammed in the hard on the berth. There’s an indent in the metal but you don’t think the shaking is from pain. The lift of his chassis is heavily restrained as if being forced into cramped containment. 

You tear yourself away from the sight to look back up at Ratchet, missing Starscream’s helm tipping in slight delay towards you.

Ratchet pulls away from his monitor with a contemplative expression, you can see the cogs turning in his head as he studiously searches for a proper diagnosis for the image. “Surprisingly, it would seem that the central processor’s optic controls weren’t severely damaged in the process.” 

He frowns, narrowing his optics. “However, Starscream’s optics have not responded to the added stimulus of Energon.”

He drops his servo with a huff, flexing his digits and picking his words carefully. “Unless… I were to perform complex surgery on Starscream’s optics and remove them to find the internal issue-”

“No!” Starscream rips himself off of the berth, grimacing and twisting into himself with his snapped wings rattling behind him perilously. He holds the tubing in place with a servo as he steadies himself with the other, sending a dangerous look to Ratchet. “I refuse to be placed into stasis! Do you take me for a fool?! You will dispatch me as soon as I am at a disadvantage!”

“Woah!” You hold your hands up placatingly, uselessly. “Starscream calm down! You’re gonna hurt yourself more!” Starscream stays in a fidgety defensive posture, ready to book it should he be held down, but his gaze swivels to you as you call to him in concern. 

You try anyway to calm him down further. “No one is gonna put you to sleep,” you shake your head slowly, stepping forward. Ratchet holds a hand out to stop you from getting too close. “I promise. It’s just to take a look at your eye-“

“You dare try to lull me into a state of defenselessness?!” He screeches, outraged. “I know of your tricks, Autobot pet scum! They will not work on the mighty Starscream!”

He venomously slams his servo down on the berth again, cracking it from strain as he appears to try and get up to grab you. You duck back as Bulkhead steps in front of you, arm ready with his ball-like mace.

“No, back down you go!” Ratchet exclaims and rips Starscream’s hand up off the surface, his other servo planted on Starscream’s back strut in a firm grip.

Starscream attempts to rip his servo away from Ratchet’s hold but cannot. He growls with an animalistic trill, but Ratchet matches his rageful expression with one of his own, laced with barely sustained patience.

You watch with Bulkhead, unaware of the flaring hissing fields surrounding the two polarized forces. 

After a solid minute, Starscream gives an angry chitter leaning into the medic’s faceplate with a menacing look. “Keep your psychopathy away from my frame and out of my processor,” he spits brusquely, tearing his servo away finally from Ratchet's stern hold, shrinking into himself from Ratchet’s scrutinizing glower.

The wingless Seeker holds his servo to his chassis, averting his gaze.

“You realize you won’t be able to see if the doc doesn’t take a look, right?” Bulkhead points out but gets a fierce look from Starscream. His look is sharp but looking down at Starscream’s hands you can clearly see the sustained trembling in them.

“So be it,” he bites out. The shrouded remains of his wings tilt up high, meant to be imposing. 

Ratchet makes a disinterested noncommittal noise. He half-shrugs as he thumbs through a sheet metal container on the side for patch-ups and soldering done on bigger wounds. “I cannot force a patient to consent to a procedure if they do not wish so unless in cases of emergency to save an Autobot life.”

He picks up a sheet, dusting it off. “Starscream is neither an Autobot nor a priority for advanced time-consuming procedures.” Ratchet doesn’t hide the disdain in his voice. 

Starscream bares his dental plates at him in a snarl.

Ratchet walks around the berth to Starscream’s side, assessing the patch’s progress in infusing Energon. You inch up to both of them.

“Is it possible to start patching Starscream up?” You ask.

“So eager to get rid of me, are you?” Starscream sneers in your direction and you stick your tongue out at him. He doesn’t react.

You falter. You thought that would’ve gotten a reaction out of him. So can he, or can he not see?

Weird…

“Ep-Ep-Ep! What did I say about proximity?” The CMO scolds as he swiftly scoops you up. 

He frowns down at you as you yelp in protest, gently setting you down further away instead of answering your question. 

You frown at him expectantly with a raised brow. “Raaaatchet?”

Ratchet ex-vents heavily. “Ideally, we would wait for the exposed Energon on the outer frame to evaporate while the inner protoform seals itself.”

He taps the sheet metal in thought. “But we have, at maximum, a couple of breems to do a full solder.” His brow ridges burrow. “And I am not confident in the effects of Energon and a soldering torch in such close range…”

“We could move him to my lot again and do the soldering there!” You offer. “I have a pretty big space for you to work in Ratchet, and no one will be able to pick up Starscream’s signal now that he’s not leaking Energon everywhere-“

“No, absolutely not.” You blink.

“But, what about-“

“What about what?! ” Ratchet exclaims, exasperated. “If he escapes? And what do we do if he decides to open fire at us within the confines of your property with multiple vehicles containing flammable fuel?”

“We could remove his missiles,” you suggest. 

Starscream makes his refusal known with a jerk of his arms pulling away from the three of you. 

You wave the idea off. “Eh, I guess the fact he’ll blow us all up in an Energon explosion he WON’T survive in either is enough of a deterrent.” Luckily, for you Starscream’s posture slumps in a defeated gesture because you’re likely right. 

If the bots and yourself while in peak health cannot survive an Energon-infused blast, Starscream definitely won't.

Ratchet gives a dismissive huff. “This is ridiculous. That plan would be more trouble than it’s worth and I won’t risk us being pinged down by the Decepticons in the middle of a plain desert.”

You open your mouth but slowly close it, restructuring your argument on the fly. You didn’t think you’d have to argue this much with Ratchet on the topic. In fact, you’d expected quite the opposite at the offer of more space to work in.

Placing your hands on your hips you sigh. “…O-Kay… but what other options do we have? It’s the second most secret place there is, with no traceable signal to be found. No census stuff either-- It’s not even marked on google maps either!”

Ratchet gave you an unamused look. “And what about that power line near your home? It’s a clear indicator of your residency there! A dead giveaway to any person with half a processor!”

You sputter, groaning loudly as you throw your arms up, defeated. “Okay, remember when I said I would call someone to fix it? I lied. It’s still tipped over from when Bulkhead first slammed into it.”

Ratchet shouts your name in reprimand.  

“I forgot!” You plead. “But that’s why that place is as good as a wasteland! Starscream won’t be found there and he can’t run anywhere for shit unless he wants to be gunned down by the U.S. military in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.”

Starscream scoffs, offended. “I will not perish to the likes of your kind.”

He gestures to the missiles at his forearms. “I’ll annihilate them before they even get close.”

You give a scornful laugh. “Yeah? With what aim, asshole?”

He shakes with barely contained rage. “Vile, glitched, slag heap!”

“Your mother!”

Bulkhead raises his hand hesitantly to cut in. “Uh, Optimus agrees with moving Starscream over to your dealership.”

Ratchet balks. 

You press pause on your fight with Starscream. “Wait, Bulk- How do you know that?”

He bashfully looks away. “I may have commed Optimus since the whole… thing back at your place.” It’s clear he wants to say the near maiming session that happened in your lot, but glancing towards Ratchet, who slowly looks to be losing his cool, he awkwardly rubs at his neck cables. “....”

“You pulled a nine-one-one caller on us, Bulk?” You ask, disbelieving. 

“He listened in!” He shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know-- I panicked!”

“How unbecoming,” Starscream graveled out snidely, staring a hole into the wall. You scrunch your face up at him.

“Shut it,” you snap, sighing as you address the Wrecker. “So… Bossbot is… what? Is he coming back to base?”

“Has been for a while,” Bulkhead squints his optics up at the ceiling in thought. “Optimus was confirming the mine locations Screamer gave us and called for Bee and Arcee to switch places with him as he ‘scouts-’,” he does quotation marks with his digits. “-for more Energon. ‘Should be on his way back now.”

Bulkhead gives a sheepish thumbs up, “He’s good to meet us back at your residence, kid.”

You clasp your hands together with a deep breath in. “Excellent! So we’re all in agreement, even Optimus,” you gesture to the entirety of the room. “That we should-“

“I am not in favor of this,” Ratchet protests, crossing his arms disapprovingly over his chassis. 

“Yeah, well, Optimus is already meeting us there,” you shrug at Ratchet who’s expression darkens further in disapproval. “Can’t disappoint the big guy, ya know?”

His frown dips further. 

“Look, if we leave now, we’ll be done with this sooner rather than later.” You give the CMO a double thumbs up. “Sound good?”

Ratchet clicks his glossa in a half-scoff, but gestures for you to continue. 

“As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted by our resident doctor,” you say back, emphasizing with an intense sweep of eye contact with everyone present. “We’re all in agreement that Arcee should NOT know about this for now, or in the foreseeable future.” 

Ratchet tilts his helm back with a resigned look. “This arrangement would be far more complicated if we didn’t.”

“She’s not gonna like this,” you muse, shaking your head while biting your lip worriedly. “...but I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it and maybe some extra Energon in the ‘ol Autobot inventory will soften the blow…?”

Your hopeful question is met with twin uncertain looks and a tense expression from Starscream. You throw your hands up. “Great,” you say, smiling miserably. “We’re so dead.”

-/-/-/-; 

Starscream flinches and pulls away from Ratchet with a shocked yelp as the torch’s blaring flames lick near a transformation seam on his upper abdomen. “Ach-! Watch where you weld, you-!” 

Starscream sucks in his dermas as Ratchet aims the flame close enough to his faceplate for his heat sensors to go off. He swallows, restraining a snarky comment. “Continue, doctor,” he drawls, waving a servo half-heartedly in the air.

Ratchet scoffs, returning to his work. “What is it with the welding procedures that no one can follow simple instructions on?” he grumbles, irritated. “Always complaining when all you need to do is-“ he yanks Starscream back into place as the Seeker subtly tries to uselessly scooch away. “-hold still!”

Starscream bares his teeth but his grimace loses its edge when he gasps at Ratchet pulling the heated metal back out of the cavity. The Seeker gives a low hiss when Ratchet moves in to further adjust the metal, claws digging into the dirt and leaving trails.

The late afternoon sun simmered the four of you in a cooling boil as the sky began to color a bright orange hue. You sat atop the hood of a truck as you listened to the sounds of metalwork and fire crackle from Ratchet’s ministrations. 

The Autobot medic was kneeling on the ground next to Starscream, arm transformed into his signature blowtorch and swiftly firing the cracked metal of the gaping wound at the ex-Decepticon’s side. 

He’d been fixing Starscream’s abdominal tubing, annealing the pieces of the hydraulics, shaping them back into their original place. Starscream had insisted he stay awake for the entirety of the procedure and had been relatively silent throughout, except for the actual adjustments. 

The caved-in nature of the injury had hidden just how many missing components there really were. Fragments of metal were missing from the equation and revealed a gaping hole on Starscream’s side. The Seeker had turned his face pointedly away when he’d prematurely taken a peek at the progress of Ratchet’s work. 

Craning your neck, you spotted a vacant darkness within the wound where you assumed Starscream’s T-cog once was. You frown at the sight, brows furrowed somberly.

When Bumblebee had his own T-cog taken, the black and yellow scout had taken it hard. The sweet and bubbly Bee had been quicker to anger, irritable as he paced around the base like a caged tiger at the prospect of never racing down the long-stretched highways anymore.

But a jet alt-mode that can’t fly?

Starscream always had wings visible on his frame. You don’t know much about what the difference is between regular Cybertronians and Seekers, other than the few things Ratchet has said in passing about the Seekers being natural-born flyers. 

Not once have you ever seen him as anything other than a jet, nor did his form leave behind his wings. You’ve seen the odd, wingless alien-like craft of Megatron’s alt-mode, a flier, but not a natural one. Optimus had explained Megatron was once a miner and you find it hard to believe a mech working underground would naturally be given wings he’d never use.

You assume then that before taking an Earth-model aircraft, Starscream must’ve made use of Primus-given wings for a Cybertronian aircraft, soaring through the starry skies just for the hell of it because he was made to do so. 

Cool.

His wings are torn but those can be fixed. His T-cog, on the other hand… not so much. 

Conceptualizing Starscream as a mech who can no longer fly, especially as his form is meant to do so, registers weirdly and sits awkwardly in the pit of your stomach. You don’t much like the thought of it and by the way Starscream avoids even glimpsing at the wound, you don’t think he’s taking it well either.

You cross your arms loosely over your stomach, beneath your breasts, letting out a long, tired sigh. You lazily blink, tilting your head over to Bulkhead who’s warily eyeing the remnants of your Dodge Omni. 

He taps the ceiling curiously, but even with the barest contact more glass shatters and falls into the seats within the destroyed vehicle. You whimper despairingly at your beautiful car.

“I’m holding a funeral for him,” you say, absently. 

Bulkhead raises his helm, alarmed. “Huh?”

You tip your head to the crushed car. “The Omni. Starscream murdered him, and my cactus.” You wipe away a tear. “They were too young.”

Bulkhead looks over to where your cactus sits undisturbed looking healthy as ever.

You stretch your back with a yawn, slipping into a playful smile. “You wanna come? I’ll have a punch bowl and some snacks. You don’t have to stay for the scrapping of the car though.”

You squint worriedly at him. “You guys don’t find cars getting smashed, you know… weird?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. Two words. Monster Truck Derbies.”

“I think that’s three words, Bulk.”

He blinks. “I thought ‘Monster Truck’ was lumped together.”

You both burst into laughter.

“So a funeral with… punch, is it? For your crushed car?” He says chuckling, rolling his neck cables good-naturedly. “Sure, if I’m not busy on a mission, I might be able to stop by.” He looks over to the other vehicle models in your parking lot.

“You aren’t gonna scrap the rest of these too?” He sweeps a hand around to the other old cars. 

You shake your head. “No need! I only do that if I can’t salvage the car. Fix ‘em up and you can sell 'em for a good buck,” you throw a thumb at the Omni. “That one was a gem I managed to fix up and it’s pretty rare! Worth a lot at the bank.”

You give a mournful whine. “Or, well… it used to be.”

“But you don’t spend a lot of time here,” Bulkhead points out and you stiffen a bit at the callout, ducking your head down between your shoulders. “Why keep them if you don’t stick around long enough to work on them?”

You hiss out a breath between your teeth, uncertain how to answer.

“Er, I dunno honestly,” you trail a finger down the windshield, drawing circles in the dust. “I just kinda drifted away from the hobby.”

You rub the back of your head, shuffling your hair into your fingers. “After meeting you all, it just-“ you open and close your mouth, looking up at the sky, fruitlessly searching for answers. “-I just realized… I could be doing something more with my life, something exciting.”

You hug your knees to your chest and loop your arms loosely around your legs.

“It was just kinda easy to just drop everything and do something different, ya know?” you muse. 

Bulkhead furrows his brow, confused. “You… don’t miss your old routine?”

You snicker. “You guys really have no idea just how cool you are, do you?” You shake your head. “Nope! I’d give it all up in a heartbeat all over again, for this.”

Bulkhead chuckles fondly. “Glad to hear it, kid.” He reaches down to ruffle your hair gently. “We love having you here with us.”

You preen happily at the attention, sagging contently and going back to watching Ratchet tend to Starscream, who take pauses to quip and snap at each other. You bask in the presence of three alien robots on your lawn, reveling in this existence you found yourself living. 

Despite the injuries and the high stress of world-ending events, there’s no other place you’d rather be. 

You lay back on the windshield of your truck, ready to nap while Ratchet finishes up his work. You find that despite your comfortable position, your brain buzzed with a persistent nudge to have a conversation with Ratchet.

The medic had been in a poor mood since yesterday’s incident and today hadn’t granted you both a chance to unwind and interact further than Ratchet scolding you, both audible and inaudible. Though Ratchet was often in a curmudgeon state, as his prickly personality would have it, you weren’t used to the edge Ratchet was carrying himself with at the moment. Even more, it was uncomfortable to have it be pointed at you.

Your train of thought is interrupted as you hear the sound of a truck horn. Looking over the top of the truck, you spot a Peterbilt driving down the lone street, beams alight as darkness inks the sky above. It takes a diverging turn from the road, making its way over down the dirt path to your place. 

You perk up, waving a hand. “Over here, Optimus!”

The Prime blinks his lights twice in greeting.

Ratchet pauses his welding to watch as Optimus pulls in, his frame relaxing slightly from its rigid posture. Still, Ratchet’s furrowed brow and frown don’t lift and you’re certain that if he were human, there’d be visible stress lines marring his features.

Starscream doesn’t bother turning around to address the Autobot leader. His only acknowledgment towards Optimus’ arrival is a slight twitch of his working tail wing.

“Greetings, everyone,” Optimus says as he transforms back into bipedal mode. He takes a few steps forward, pausing as he takes in the sight of Starscream still seated. 

The Seeker’s injuries are clear on display, though Starscream’s face twitches into agitation and his wing bases tip forward and spread to shield himself from Optimus’ studying gaze.

Surprisingly, Starscream makes no move other than that to retaliate. He’s passive this time around, but you can’t tell whether it’s out of exhaustion or simple disinterest to engage. 

You frown.

“The coordinates Starscream has provided have proven viable as a resource,” Optimus reaches into his subspace and produces a chunk of vibrant Energon. “Arcee and Bumblebee are collecting the remainder of the finds while I review other mine locations.”

“Stupendous,” Starscream drawls sarcastically, holding his side as he comes to a stand at full height. “Now, I can see myself out of this wretched wasteland-“

Starscream takes a single step before the full weight of the Seeker collapses back down into the sand, knees first. He watches himself on his servos, but slides further down as he grimaces from the jolt of inertia and pain. You jump back a little, watching the grounded ‘Con heave and ventilate deeply, wings twitching, alarmed. 

Optimus frowns as he observes Starscream’s form on the ground. “Our assistance does not mean you will be able to retain your freedom of movement, Starscream,” he rumbles sternly.

Optimus looks off to the side. “I admit, during my… indisposition the Autobots benefited from your intelligence on the location of the space bridge under Decepticon control.” 

Starscream squints up at the Prime. “So then is that not enough to provide me leeway?” His wings raise indignantly, “I’ve helped your Autobots retrieve your hapless, ignorant shell; Orion Pax! I have proven useful!”

“Yet your current state has proven an uncertain variable to your status as a rogue,” Optimus states before his brow ridges pull down in condemnation. “Your willingness to dispatch humans is not a kept secret and your inability to receive visual feedback has opened for the possibility of human lives being lost should you stumble upon their civilizations.”

“What do I care if some human insect sees me?” Starscream spits as he hauls himself into an upright kneel.

Optimus’ face grows serious. “Our careful separation from humankind has provided safety for both our kinds and continued collaboration with our human comrades. Should you come across civilians, your presence will cause consternation and unrest, leading to injury or the ire of law enforcement.”

Starscream sneers. “Please! Don’t make me laugh, Optimus Prime.” He pulls a vicious smile and slams his clawed servo on the ground. “I’ll smite those puny beasts where they stand. They’re ridiculously fragile! And should they stand against me-“ he swipes his servo across the ground leaving large, jagged marks across the sand and rock. 

He swipes his servo up with a cloud of dust, studying his claws with callous apathy. “-then they are more foolish than I originally thought.”

You feel your hair stand on end and your neck buzz anxiously seeing how deep the marks went into the compressed, hard, dry ground. You place a soothing hand on your neck to steady yourself from the gruesome image your mind provides from the implication.

Looking at Optimus’ face, you feel yourself take a step back as you see a stormy expression rest heavily on his faceplate. 

“I will not allow it,” the Prime rumbles. “You will be placed under arrest until we can ensure your continued presence will not affect human life, or Autobot life, in any capacity.”

“What?! You cannot keep me captive- we-!” Starscream sputters and the ridges of his empty optics widen in alarm as his wing bases rattle. 

“That is not how this works!!!” He snarls, frantically hauling himself onto unsteady pedes. He wobbles in his step, losing his balance quickly as he slams himself back onto another vehicle on your lawn when he fails to catch himself. Shattering glass ringing and cascading down to the ground as his servo clumsily slams through the windshield for grip. 

You suppress a desperate wince as another one of your vehicles is crushed needlessly.

But when you open your mouth to admonish the Seeker, you pause.

His optics cycle anxiously and though his brow ridges are narrowed down into a rageful grimace, you notice his trembling arms and his broken wings tipped up front. He backs himself further up and his plating flares as he settles himself into a tight defensive crouch. 

“…Optimus, hold on a second. Didn’t you say before that you guys don’t have the resources to hold a Deception imprisoned?” You don’t know what compels you to speak, reeling back as you’ve stepped outside of yourself and pressing the tips of your fingers in slight shock to your bottom lip as if it were the culprit.

Turning around, everyone’s optics have handed on you, minus Starscream’s who flits between each individual erratically. You shake yourself out of your stupor.

 “Um, right?“ You turn to Optimus, who likewise has turned his gaze down to you. 

He hums affirmatively. “The circumstances unfortunately remain the same.” His optics stray over to Starscream. “But an exception must be made.”

“Then, how will that even work, big guy?” you kindly interject, working up courage. “I mean, you said it yourself, OP. The base is too small to keep Starscream locked up in and no included jail cells. He’ll be basically lumped in with you guys at close proximity or locked in some broom closet.” 

Starscream looks particularly discomforted at that and tilts his wing remains forward, around himself.

“We could find some room. Maybe in the back?” Bulkhead provides as he looks over to Optimus. “There’s those storage hangers with nothing really in them. We could clear one out-“

“You will not leave me in a filthy hangar!” Starscream snaps as he heaves himself forward, nearly tipping sideways as his optics blink erratically.

You ignore the Seeker as you address Bulkhead, “Back of the base?” 

He confirms with a nod and you snap your fingers as your eyes widen. “Ah, see! Then there’s a problem: No one on base can conveniently keep an eye on him!” You level them an insistent look. “Not without bringing you guys down a fighter or a medic and that’s a big loss with how short-staffed we are.”

“We?” Ratchet asks, shaking his helm incredulously with a cynical smile. “You will not be a part of this.”

“Huh?” You open your hands out, disbelieving. “What did I do?”

Ratchet falters slightly, before scoffing. “Nothing. None of the humans will be involved with Autobot matters as long as Starscream is on base grounds.”

“But what about the kids?” Bulkhead asks as his face drops into concern. “How do we keep them safe if we can’t have them close by?”

You look down at the ground in thought.

“This short sight could prove dangerous to our wards,” Optimus rumbles softly, unease plain in his tone. “Our human allies would be left vulnerable to Deceptions willing to exploit them as leverage against the Autobots.”

He shakes his helm. “I am not willing to risk their lives as they have done so much for ours.”

You feel a bubble of jealousy surprisingly rear its ugly head in the pit of your stomach. It’s not that you dislike the kids, not at all! 

But…

Only recently were you taken to base because of the imminent dangers of the Decepticons becoming a present issue again. Despite having known the bots for much longer, you were somehow the last to be picked up again to come to the base in a semi-permanent residency. 

You’re not certain anymore that it doesn’t bother you sometimes to hear about the stories of the escapades the kids have gathered in just a few short months with the Autobots.

“Are you sure Ratchet wouldn’t be able to?” Bulkhead continues, interrupting your train of thought. “He stays inside all the time.”

Ratchet shoots him a sharp glare and Bulkhead awkwardly sinks down into his shoulder plating.

“No offense.”

You shake your head. “He can’t. Starscream would have to be in the main common area with him at all times-”

Both mechs send each other an equally pointed look of detestation.

You make a box figure with your fingers. “-or Ratchet steps away from his Batman monitor setup to watch Starscream. Which means no quick ‘order-up’ ground bridging or medical attention, ” You shrug. “And given the amount of activity lately, that’s a no-go.”

“You’d be right on that front,” Ratchet narrows his optics. “I’m busy patching Autobots up constantly and tracking Decepticon movements! Emergency response with the ground bridge controls or medical attention holds an even higher priority. Important work that cannot be set aside, should it cost us another Autobot.” 

His optics spare you a second glance. “Or a human.”

He shakes his helm with a scoff, crossed arms over his chassis making his resistant stance clear. “FURTHERMORE,” he emphasizes. “I’m not gonna be reduced to a sparkling caretaker.”

You bite your tongue before you can say he already is one for the kids.

“Keeping Starscream in the common area would pose a risk whenever a ground bridge is needed,” Optimus gravely adds, expression increasingly becoming more troubled. “Should one of us arrive injured-”

“Oh please! Do you think I would attack you?” Starscream complains with a scoff as if it’s the most ludicrous thing anyone has ever said. Which it isn’t, as no one answers the obvious question causing the former SIC to pout petulantly, sinking his helm into his shoulders despite himself.

“Yeaaahhh— I’m not comfortable with tying him up to the radiator in plain sight. Too much risk of him picking a fight with you fellas, or the kids…,” you mumble out as you bite your knuckle, pausing mid-bite to murmur out worriedly. “Besides, there’s Arcee to worry about too.”

No one bothers to offer a solution for that one.

You slap a hand on your forehead as you blow a wary raspberry. “I think it goes without saying, Arcee on guard duty is a BIG no-no.”

“Bee and I could do shifts,” Bulkhead suggests.

“Perhaps on downtime,” Ratchet shakes his helm. “That won’t work if we have a crisis on our hands.”

You nod in agreement with Ratchet. “You guys are the muscle of the group. You’re too valuable when there’s a fight that calls for you two present.”

Bulkhead wilts and nods as you continue, “Besides we wouldn’t just be barring Starscream from going wild and free, we’re also guarding him from Arcee.”

Optimus lingers in silence for a moment before he opens his intake hesitantly. “I… perhaps I would be able to-“ 

“Nope!” You speak up, immediately.

That’s a hard no.

Ratchet follows you up firmly, turning to the Prime, “Optimus you are too integral to the leadership of our expeditions and encounters with the Decepticons. Should you be indisposed again at a critical juncture, we might as well be handing victory to the Decepticons!”

“Not only that,” you turn to the Prime worriedly. “Optimus, please. You’re always patrolling, fighting, or scouting for Energon— you barely get rest.”

“I shall endure,” Optimus insists resolutely. “I will be fine.”

“No, I’m with her on this one, chief.” Bulkhead places a hand on Optimus’ shoulder. “You’re needed out in the field with us.”

Bulkhead ex-vents heavily, a somber expression befalling his hearty features. “I’m gonna level with you Optimus, we… struggled-- badly -- when you were out for the count. I don’t think watching Starscream is really worth having us fall apart like that again.”

Optimus' brow furrows at Bulkhead’s honest rebuttal, dermas set in a serious line. His brow ridges furrow as he looks over individually at each of us before nodding his helm in resignation. “Understood.”

Ratchet ex-vents exasperatedly, “Great! Now that we’ve settled what options are not available to us, we’re right back where we started.” 

He pinches his nasal bridge as he grouses, “What in Primus are we supposed to do about him?” He gestures to Starscream, the seeker pointedly ignoring the CMO.

An idea comes clear to you as you straighten up.

“I have an idea,” you offer. “You would be able to keep tabs on Starscream and stuff but not have him on base.”

Optimus says your name in an intrigued acknowledgment. He tips his helm down to you, listening. “What do you propose?”

You slowly expel a trepidatious breath out into the fog in the slowly cooling night air, preparing yourself for a frenzy of arguments soon to come. 

You decide to start off small. “At this point, we can’t leave Starscream unguarded regardless by himself or at the base,” you thread your fingers through your own hair. “Cuz it’s not one person we’re watching. It’s two.” 

You clasp your hands together. “I… don’t want to doubt you guys, but I think the issue with Arcee is kinda… bad. Really bad…” You flex your hands for something to do, picking at your knuckles. “I don’t like the options we have so far; I’m worried someone will get hurt.”

Right, start off from a place of concern. Ease them into the idea!

Luckily, Optimus is receptive as he kneels down to your level compassionately. You look up to the big, worried blue optics of your friend and soften.

You tilt your head up with a shy cough. “I know Arcee can be a really competent fighter and she’s so level-headed in most situations, but it’s just bad timing after Starscream made buddies with M.E.C.H. and stole Bumblebee’s T-cog. She’s a little inflamed, rightfully so.“ 

You worriedly wring your earlobe. “-I don’t want a repeat of last night. Ever. Last time we got lucky no one was really in danger-” You ignore the pointed look Optimus sends to you. 

It screams his disapproval at your omittance of yourself getting injured last night. 

You swallow thickly at the slip-up but proceed before you lose your nerve.

“-but it’s a pattern now, with her.” A saddened frown twists into your expression. “I don’t think she’s got a handle on herself right now and having Starscream around the base to taunt her will only make it worse.”

Starscream at that moment chooses to flare up. “Why are you worried about her? What about me!?” He screeches as he rattles his wings, his frame plating matching his inflammatory reaction. “She tried to kill me! That Unicron-blooded pit-spawned femme has completely lost her mind!”

You give him an obvious look. “Yeah? Well, you killed her friend! Let’s be frank, dude, it’s completely expected.”

Optimus hovers out a servo as he calls your name with caution. “Enough.”

“You abhorrent creature!” He hisses through bared, sharp denta. “Yesterday you preached my defense, yet here now, you side with that glitch heap’s plan to assassinate me?!” Starscream drags himself forward, arm raised above you.

“One more step and you’re gonna get it, Screamer,” Bulkhead thunders as he steps forward with his mace at the ready should Starscream take a swipe at you. Ratchet has stepped forward as well, pede pushed forward to launch into a sprint at any given moment to intercept.

Even looking over to Optimus, the Prime has his optics trained on the Seeker. 

It begins to dawn on you that in the time it had taken for Starscream to raise his servo to strike you, you had only stared back defiantly. You had yet to notice the alarm bells in your head that made your ears give a dull ache to remind you of injuries your previous carelessness had caused you. You finally take a step back, self-preservation arriving into your body to finally do its job to keep you from being shaken violently again or worse. 

You really, really, really, REALLY, don’t want to go back to the hospital again.

Yet, a surly frown enters your face and your brows dip inwards. “Hey, man. I am not on your side. You get me?” You clarify. 

Ratchet shoots you a look telling you to keep your mouth shut that you purposefully ignore as you stand your ground against the enraging seeker.

But what meets you instead of a poisoned-filled spittle of argument is Starscream’s resentful expression burning hot and etching deep creases on the Seeker’s face. What you don’t expect is the hint of betrayal you spot when his wings tip down in a defensive fashion, bordering on disappointment... Is it disappointment?

And why does it feel bad to receive that from him of all people? 

“But expecting something to happen and deserving it are two very separate things,” you apprise, confusingly gentle, even to yourself.

Starscream blinks his optics rapidly, confused. You feel your neck prickle a little in apprehension as you maintain awareness that your friends are listening into your conversation. 

After a moment, Starscream opens his intake open for protest, and-- Seriously could everyone stop trying to argue with you for two seconds so you could get your thoughts out?

“I am not saying I agree with her; I am also saying I understand where she’s coming from..” You shrug awkwardly. “I still don’t stand by it; I don’t think it’s right to kill you as you are.”

Starscream’s face loses a bit of its edge as his snarl loosens and his brows tick up. 

“So what do you suggest then?” Ratchet huffs, thoroughly exasperated. “We don’t have the resources to properly contain Starscream in a holding cell, Agent Fowler is an unfavorable option given your species’s inability to leave well enough alone-” 

You shoot him a slightly offended look as Ratchet continues ranting, “-and having him at the base would pose a problem with his knack for seeking trouble.”

There’s a pun in there that you don’t bother to point out as Ratchet’s irritable disposition would ruin the humor of the situation. To his credit, you’re also starting to grow frustrated.

“If you’d let me finish, I have a solution,” you remark flatly. 

“Do you, now?” Ratchet throws his servo up flippantly. “Do we cut him loose to wreak havoc on the human population? What about we leave him at the doorsteps of Jasper?” He hoots sarcastically. “Won’t that be nice?”

“You could leave him here.” There, you said it!

You resist the urge to slap a hand over your mouth. You hadn’t meant to cut the cord that quickly on them, and wish for something to stall the reactions that have yet to register from them. Sweat condenses coldly on your skin as the silence falls over the scene making you feel like the ground has been pulled from under you and left you aimlessly afloat.

Optimus’ frame expands with a held ventilation, his hydraulics flexed tensely. He says your name, and there’s an edge to his tone that you know means he’s about to say ‘no.’

Miraculously or horrendously, you begin to ramble.

“I mean, think about it! No traceable signal, middle of nowhere,” you turn both ways to look at the expanse of desert surrounding your property. “No one ever comes along here-“

“And what if he runs?” Bulkhead points out nervously, crossing his arms. 

But you don’t even have to say your answer. It’s clear enough on your face that even before you speak, Bulkhead looks even more uncomfortable with the idea.

“I could stay and keep an eye on him,” You tip your head to your shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I mean, I'm not really doing anything-” 

“Absolutely not!” Ratchet barks out from your right, having come up to you while you were talking to Bulkhead. “Out of the question.”

“You?” Starscream remarks incredulously, inserting himself into the conversation. He leans forward with a raised brow. “How do you plan to stop me from leaving, insect?”

You smile unaffected by the subtle threat. “I don’t need to. You can’t see three feet in front of you and if the government spots you running, they’ll blow you up.” You mimic an explosion with your hands.

Starscream’s glare slips into an apprehensive hitch before sharpening back into a disgusted edge at you. You smile pleasantly back.

“Kidding! I’ll just call you guys if he tries to book it,” you say, gesturing to the Autobots.

“We’d have no way to track Starscream if he decides to run,” Ratchet argues back. “Which he will, given his reputation of treacherously slipping past encounters of the consequences of his actions.” Ratchet pauses as he looks at Starscream’s wings. “Well, except for this last occasion.”

“Shows what you know, ancient grounder slag!” Starscream snarls at him, enraged.

“You guys already are placing him under arrest and stuff,” you twirl your fingers as you ring through ideas. “Can’t you just slap his frequency for good on your monitors and stuff? Like a tracking chip!”

“No! I refuse to be collared in such a way!” Starscream shrieks as he rattles his wings at you threateningly, claws digging into the dirt and cracking the dried, solid soil beneath.  

“Would you rather be bleeding Energon all the time so they can track you?” You whirl around, done with the Seeker making negotiations difficult with the bots. Starscream falters, reeling back slightly as his wings dip.

“I- No?” 

“Then don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” you advise snappily. 

“What does that even mean?!’ Starscream demands, beyond irritation.

“It means stop talking, dumbass!” 

“You cease, infernal animal!” 

You let a low growl from deep within your throat, frustrated and all too eager to get the vocal mech to quiet down enough for you to argue your point. 

God knows why because you certainly don’t know why you want to offer Starscream an out.

“I’m trying to find a compromise here and you’re making it very difficult. Now could you kindly-” You put your hands into a prayer position. “ -- shut the fuck up. Please and thank you!”

It’s not like you’re setting him free. You’re just making sure he doesn’t get murdered in jail… but then are you like- the special cell block that keeps his ass from trouble? 

Your thoughts begin to spiral as you start thinking through your impulsive decision at rapid speed and find yourself starting to flounder at the question of if you really are Starscream’s only advocate here-- and is that a good thing?

Is your empathy making you do something really fucking stupid???

Starscream to your relief seems to take pause, but it’s cut short as you see his faceplate shift like he’s examining you. You see his optics cycle once in your direction, then twice rapidly as his brow dips further down and he leans back with a distrustful look in his eye, apprehensive but he remains quiet.

You feel uncomfortable under the scrutiny of Starscream’s calculative gaze, but you’re unable to ask him if he’s actually seeing you as Ratchet takes a step in your direction, ushering you further down your lot.

You yelp as he taps you forward, nearly shoving you away. “Ratchet- what are you doing-?!”

“I’ve had enough of your recklessness for a deca-cycle,” he grumbles. “You will not be involving yourself in our matters.”

You struggle against his hand, moving out of the way of his coaxing servo. “Ratchet, stop corralling me like a goddamn sheep! I wouldn’t have offered it if I didn’t think it was possible that I could do it.”

He ventilates a scolding noise, his frame shaking with the force of the irked action. “And what makes you think you could do something of the caliber of the importance of containing a high-profile Cybertronian, in our war, under arrest as a human?”

You feel your body jolt with nervous adrenaline that pools in your stomach, feeling a powerful surge spark at your tongue as a fit of steady anger begins to boil over. 

You puff your chest out. “Ratchet, I don’t know what your problem is with humans, but all that shit needs to stop. Right now.” 

Ratchet leans his helm back affronted.

“I get it. I’m insignificant or whatever.” Your eyes feel traitorously moist as you force the words out from the knot wound tight in your throat. “I can’t do much in the sense of the grand scale of this war going on and I’ll never, ever be able to understand the millions of years of what went on in your lives.” 

You wet your lips at their uncomfortable staring, biting at the inside of your cheek and your ears flare scorching hot in humiliation of how pathetic you must look to them. “But I want to help.”

“That is not your burden to carry,” Optimus rumbles out hurriedly, nudging his servo to you and regarding you with such fragility. His saddened look makes a sob want to work its way up your nose and eyes that you force back down.

You pat his digit that touches your side. “I know but what other choice do we have, big guy?”

“Can’t we just leave him with some of Fowler’s people?” Bulkhead suggests urgently, helm swiveling for approval. 

“No, unfortunately, we cannot just drop him off somewhere else!” Ratchet grits out angrily at Bulkhead, and you feel your displeasure with the medic coil tight within your stomach. 

You can’t recall the last time you’d been this upset with Ratchet of all people and you don’t understand where the animosity within the CMO had arisen from today. 

You’d never had a major problem with his derision for humans. More often than not, you’d laugh at the hilariously exaggerated complaints of the medic, but they’d never been so directed towards you for no reason you could discern. 

It was becoming mind-numbingly difficult to keep from angrily retorting back.

“Starscream in the hands of humans might as well be allowed to roam free without a Cybertronian to meet him with the force required to properly restrain him,” Ratchet argues.

Bulkhead tilts his helm. “But if M.E.C.H. could do it, I’m sure our guys have some way-“

“I would rather not entertain the idea of handing one of our own to a parliament of government we cannot reach at all times,” Optimus says, shaking his helm. “Should the humans grow curious and attempt contact, Starscream would have ample opportunity to breach containment and could turn the situation fatal to those involved.”

Starscream, who’d been surprisingly quiet during the conversation, cranes his neck from where he sits. “Oh, I shall guarantee it will,” he sneers.

“Then let me minimize the collateral and have him stay here,” you call out insistently, steering the conversation back to your fold.

Optimus is quiet but his faceplate is slackened with receptiveness. Ratchet groans in disbelief. 

“Optimus, you are not seriously considering this, are you?” He pleads with the Prime but Optimus gives no immediate answer. Ratchet’s intake drops open in bewilderment of the situation.

“So we’re just gonna let her put herself in harm's way?” Ratchet asks, stressing the fact as his frame plating flares up and steam begins to rise from his angered, overheated frame. “Have you all got a screw loose I am not aware about?”

“Hey, I want to help you in any way I can. I can do this!” You emphasize by striking your hands into your chest and extending them out to them in blatant offering. “I want you guys to be okay! Let me do this for you!”

“I don’t want to be a damper on your enthusiasm, but there are other ways to be useful without putting yourself in danger, kid,” Bulkhead points out, his faceplate saturated with unease.

Before you can think better of it, you give a flippant shrug. “I don’t give a shit about me. I can move my stuff around just fine.” 

Silence greets you around except for your heart hammering in your chest.

“What in the absolute frag are you insinuating?” Ratchet grits out slowly.

You kick a rock to distract yourself from the tight feeling in your chest. “I practically have no obligation to tend to outside of the Autobots, and I don’t do much other than help Ratchet with tools and stuff. I don’t even go on missions like the kids do-”

“Those are completely by accident!” Ratchet bellows. “The children are not supposed to be there.”

“And yet, they help you guys out!” You assert back. “I can do the same with this, here. I promise you, it’ll be okay.”

Ratchet sputters, raising his servos and rubbing his face plate in deep agitation. “Has your processor lost all functionality in the last 24 hours or what is wrong with you?”

“Hey! Don’t call me stupid, just because I want to help!” you exclaim in your defense.

It’s the wrong thing to say, you realize, when Ratchet’s face clamps up into a hard scowl. Wordlessly, he turns around to walk away and somehow that makes you feel worse than if he’d just screamed at you. But Ratchet doesn’t even seem to hear you as he kneels to the ground collecting his things with his frame turned away from you, effectively shutting you out.

“I’m done with Starscream’s repairs. I’m returning to base,” he calls out to the others as he tucks his materials back into the medical kit at his side...

You feel yourself whittle up and hollow out on the inside and you rush forward. 

“Ratchet, wait!” You exclaim as you stumble up to him. “C’mon! Level with me, please. Cuz-“ you cut yourself off with a disgruntled half-startled puff. “-huh! When it’s the kids getting involved in dangerous shit, no one bats an eye! But when it’s me-”

Ratchet doesn’t acknowledge your plea, giving you a dark glare that shuts you up and makes you suck in your lips. He averts his gaze, shaking his helm with a deep ex-vent, “I’ve had enough of this.”

He waves you off with his back turned to you, coldly. “If you want to endanger yourself so badly, then do so without my interference, if you so please.”

You feel your heart sink and you warily reach out for him, “Ratchet, I-”

He transforms into his alt-mode, his ambulance sirens blasting on with the shining spin of his red and orange alarm light atop. He drives off before you can get another word in.

You feel a beam of self-consciousness shoot up your spine and into your sickening stomach. You’re tongue-tied, nervously looking up at Optimus, and feel your skin prickle hot with embarrassment at the sad, apologetic looks sent your way. 

The only one not looking at you as such is Starscream, who only watches you intently with an impassive look. You turn away, not in the mood to entertain any antics or remarks from the Seeker, should he choose to make an unwanted comment.

“Kid?” 

You turn over to look at Bulkhead, quickly composing yourself and rubbing your eyes dry with your wrist dragging across your skin and collecting the tear drops that managed to escape. “Yeah?”

Bulkhead’s optics are wide and anxious, uncertain as his intake hangs open and closes. “Sorry about… yeah…” 

He rubs the back of his neck cables awkwardly. “You okay?” He looks so utterly worried, and it breaks your heart to see the boisterous Wrecker in such a state over you. 

“‘Fine,” you mutter, sniffing quietly and blinking rapidly to hold back more tears. You nod. “I’m fine. I’ll talk to him later.”

He doesn’t look convinced but doesn’t push the subject further.

“Anyways, that’s my two cents. Leave Starscream here, it’s no skin off my back.,” you mutter tiredly, catching the Primes’ attention. You flick an imaginary piece of dust away into the air with your fingers half-heartedly. “We can sort out fine details-- make sure it’s airtight.”

Completely emotionally exhausted with everything, you loathe that you can’t just seem to stop digging yourself into this hole you’ve dug. And still, you turn to speak to Optimus.

“Please, let me at least help you all for the moment with Starscream so you guys don’t have to carry more stress on your shoulders,” you ask. 

Honestly speaking, if the reason you initially asked for the arrangement was to spare Arcee from a stressful situation, you now think it’s more for your own sake more than anything.

It boils your insides in a sort of shame that you wish to have anything to do other than to go back to base and see Ratchet anytime soon. Perhaps it’s also to prove that you can be of use to the Autobots as a friend, and not as some lone vagabond trailing them like a lost aimless puppy.

Optimus’ expression shifts into one of stupefaction at your request, torn between options and his own assessment of the situation. His intake hangs slightly open, but no words are spoken as Optimus finds nothing to respond with immediately, utterly startled by your declaration of your life. 

“I do not agree with this assessment you have of yourself,” His helm stutters in its movements as he attempts to shake in denial, but you nod yours back insistently.

“It’s not about me,” you lie. “I just want to offer you guys an alternative.”

You sigh, deciding to press the warring grief threatening to choke you out away for the moment and save it for when you collapse in bed tonight to, no doubt, cry. You give a long sigh.

“It’s nice and safe, it’s out of the way, and no one will be able to find him-- I mean, you all found me because I was so far from civilization that you all thought there’d be no one there. It’s perfect and-!” You gesture to your lot, forcing a teasing smile to present your regular goofball front. “He can hide amongst the cars and I can claim he’s just a scrap metal project.”

Starscream shoots you a nasty look.

Optimus still looks worried as you pat his servo. “Don’t worry,” you reassure him. “I got my cell back, I can call you guys if something goes wrong or if he books it. I promise you’ll be the first to know.”

You wave around your hand. “Think of it like a house arrest, but you know, Starscream is under arrest at my house.” 

“What of the Decepticons? Should they find your whereabouts and find you here, your safety cannot be guaranteed within the safety of the silo.” 

You frown. You hadn’t yet taken into account that you wouldn’t be able to come back to base to see them if you’re watching over Starscream here. You’d have to give up one for the other.

Although you suppose Ratchet giving you an unbearable cold shoulder had made that decision much easier for you. 

You feel your chest prickle with a blooming pain with the despair locked away within yourself, but you’ve already made up your mind and you’re not going back on it now. You put on your best smile.

Showtime.

“I’ll put you guys on speed dial,” you offer confidently with a wink, covering up the sinking feeling in your stomach as you double-down for the ‘Con you found passed out on your lawn that morning. Yet despite your grand gesture of support and assistance, you’ve managed to dish out and power through, you feel smaller than ever in the presence of these giants you’ve called friends.

You ache to feel the comfort of your bed as you hold in tears for the rest of the evening as you go over details with Optimus and Bulkhead, smiling brightly as ever, and you hoping they’re none the wiser. You’re unaware they can see your field bleeding out around you.

They courteously don’t mention it to you.

Chapter Text

You’ve concluded, over the course of events today, that the universe is set on causing you as much collateral damage as possible with any decision you make. It seems no matter what you do, you’re bound to choose wrong. 

So you don’t. You sit stagnant on the hood of a car, looking off to the distance as you pick at your knuckles absent-mindedly.

You won’t give god, or whoever is laughing at your walkthrough of Murphy’s law, the satisfaction of making this day any worse for you-- Or you making this day worse for yourself.

You are pointedly ignoring the conversation in the background between the remaining Autobots and Starscream, lest you get involved and shoot yourself in the foot in the process. Your track record has been pretty miserable with mediation as of late.

Much to your initial displeasure, however, you’d caught pieces of their conversation despite your best attempts to block out the argument from your frayed nerves. Not enough to repeat anything back perfectly if asked, but you had an idea of what was being discussed.

While Optimus had budged in favor of your plan, something you’re still coming to terms with believing, he put forth his own conditions on your plan so he’d feel comfortable enough to allow for your assistance:

One: You are to call the base should anything happen. (That was already something you had in mind to do despite whether or not you were instructed to. You can’t exactly call 911 to handle a giant alien robot for you.) 

Two: Bulkhead would be checking in with you twice a week in-person to confirm your health and wellbeing, while also dropping off Energon for Starscream for the foreseeable future. 

(Optimus had made it clear to you that this would only be a temporary arrangement until they could confine Starscream some other way. He wasn’t keen on allowing Starscream a wide enough time frame to grow comfortable and plot his escape, or your murder, though that went unsaid by the Prime. Still, no estimate of time could be given until they discussed with Agent Fowler what their options are and Starscream would need to replenish his Energon reserves, regardless.)

Three: Starscream’s missile cannons would be removed. 

While you had no complaints and were especially relieved to know your ears would no longer be in danger of sustaining more damage from another explosion, or in general be blasted into oblivion, Starscream was inconsolable in his outrage. He’d been less than thrilled to have his only remaining long-range weapons taken after his lack of a t-cog reduced his transformation-necessary equipment inaccessible. 

Optimus and Bulkhead’s attempts to convince their arrestee to give up his weapons were in vain as Starscream has crouched inwards, defiant and oppositional as he tucked his arms in. Given past experience in getting too close to the agitated seeker and Ratchet’s words echoing in your head, you found it best that you don’t give input for now and keep your distance.

It saddens you somewhat that your distant approach is yielding results so far as nothing has gone wrong. Yet.

The tension of your previous loud disagreement with Ratchet still hangs above your head like a stormy cloud, but at least its humidity has remained consistent rather than getting any more claustrophobic. Still, the congestion in your chest makes you feel cramped with the air in your lungs refusing to move freely, restrained, and filling you with the energy of being cornered with explosives strapped to your sternum. You’re bound to blow any second now.

Your sunken eyes linger at the point in the road you saw Ratchet drive off and disappear over, the expanse of the desert’s horizon line is shaded in darkness as the sun has long set. 

He won’t come back, you know that. When Ratchet is pissed, he retreats into solitude and hides himself away in his hab suite as soon as possible. When he can’t, he’s immersed in his work, but he’ll purposely freeze out company with his short temperament and biting remarks. However it must be done, the result is still the same as Ratchet creates a wide berth of space for himself to seethe and scorch the air around him and anyone unfortunate enough to interact with him.

It’s suffocating and painful to be around him when he’s like that. You’d gotten so lucky to slip past the cumbersome medic’s defenses and stay on his good side despite your inclination for mischief and constant tagging along with him at base, since it’s not like you really went on missions… at all.

You’d thought, admittedly naive, that Ratchet and you just clicked perfectly as friends and you’d somehow bypassed his aversion to humans that made him initially so infamous around the kids and Fowler. It made you feel special. That maybe there was just some quality to you that this several million year old being had seen and sought after your companionship for specifically.

Maybe it was only just a matter of knowing Ratchet long enough to see that was not the case.  

Still, it doesn’t stop you from looking for him on the horizon.

You drop your head into your arms with a crestfallen huff and close your heated eyes filled with unshed tears. 

You should’ve just stayed in your hospital bed and avoided all of this, slept through this whole day and called it quits. You should’ve left Starscream alone when you found him. You should’ve left well enough alone with Arcee. You should’ve just swallowed up your protests with Ratchet.

You should’ve, you should’ve, you should’ve-

“…I refuse to abide by those terms!” Starscream shrieks nearby in outrage, pulling you from your thoughts in a rapid dunk back into reality.

A tired moan strains out from your throat as a steady ache builds in your body and skull. The sounds of a scuffle nearby and metal getting crushed catches your attention enough to open your eyes impassionately to spectate. You feel a dull anger simmer as another one of your cars is damaged by Starscream, his only remaining tail wing flapping in alarm and slamming through a window, while he scrambles back into the vehicle carelessly to corner himself away from Bulkhead and Optimus. 

“Hey! That’s my…” You call half-heartedly, before slumping. “Ah, forget it.”

While you don’t blame Optimus or Bulkhead, or even Starscream, for not being careful with an inanimate object when dealing with the arrest of a high-ranking enemy commander— and Starscream handling his own arrest— you wish they’d take pity on you and cease their bickering. At least respect the space and who it belongs to, but somehow the thought feels unworthy of you.

You school your expression to look  devoid of frustration as you watch another one of your belongings be carelessly smashed, then curse yourself for caring enough to flinch and further making yourself miserable. 

Why do you even care? You haven’t even been here in months.. and then you remember this will be the first night you’ll be spending at your house since being picked up by the Autobots. If you were honest, in the privacy of your own thoughts, you never thought you’d be back. You had settled comfortably as a sort of assistant to Ratchet and assumed you’d be doing that until you died. 

You swallow the noise that threatens to crack out from your throat and wish you could stop caring about anything at all. 

You tune back into the conversation to keep yourself from furthering your breakdown, only to catch Starscream doubling over on himself deliberately with a scowl. Already the sight causes a heavy frown to pull at your lips. 

Things are already going to shit.

“I’ve done enough for you as it is by providing you with those coordinates.  I will NOT go any further than that.” He grouses. “Being in this dump is humiliating enough without being further stripped of my assets.”

You feel your eye twitch, impatiently, quickly growing tired of Starscream fighting his help at every step of the way. Calling your house a dump also doesn't help elevate your mood or opinion of your new charge.

“Can you just NOT, for the rest of the night, please?” you murmur your plea under your breath to no one in particular, but Starscream correctly guesses it’s himself as he whips his helm around with a dark look.

“Quiet, you cretin!” His reprimand misses you as his gaze lands in your general vicinity, but not directly in your direction as he blindly shoots into the dark.

You suck your lips in to stop yourself from giving a retort.

“This is a non-negotiable condition, Starscream.” Optimus asserts firmly. He turns his servo up with an open palm. “For you to reside outside of the confinement of the Autobot base, the threat you pose to mankind must be reduced as much as possible.”

Starscream gawks. “I- I am already at a clear disadvantage! What more could you possibly want?!”

“The missiles, Screamer,” Bulkhead grouses with a furrowed brow. “What in Primus are you even gonna use them for if you’re supposedly gonna be under our arrest?”

Starscream’s optics flick wildly as his servos slip and shove uselessly against loose gravel. “Sentimental reasons,” he quips sarcastically. “It is none of your concern, processor-glitched wrecker slag!”

Bulkhead growls low in his vocalizer and his engine rumbles with an angry start. He’s inching forward about to beat Starcream’s aft for the insult, and you don’t blame him, it sounded bad. He’s only held back by Optimus placing a hand on his shoulder plate, gentle, but there is a command there to not escalate the situation. Bulkhead relents, though his gaze burns a hole through Starscream.

You sigh, rubbing your hands across your eyelids and cheeks, resting your face on your knuckles and marveling at the patience of your two friends, Bulkhead a little less patient than Optimus, but still admirable. 

“Optimus, I don’t think Screamer’s gonna cooperate. So… how do we do this?” Bulkhead asks towards Optimus, clapping his servos together. “Hold him down and just take the ammo from him?”

Starscream shakes his helm resolutely, aghast and furious. “Keep your filthy, brutish servos to yourself!” He declares while rising to full height, quickly gaining Optimus and Bulkhead’s blasters set on him. 

“Starscream, stand down.” Optimus’ battle mask snaps on with a “shnk” as he gives a warning tilt with his blaster cannon. Your body prickles with a rise of adrenaline and you tense in your seat, but don’t move a single muscle aside from that. 

“No! You cannot-- will NOT take this last of the ammunition I use to defend myself with!” The wingless Seeker hisses, trying to maintain a steady stance despite his stabilizers beginning to tremble and sway with weak knees. “Not on your sparks!”

“Oh, because there’s just so much to defend yourself against if you were to stay here, right?” Bulkhead points out with a challenging cock of his helm, daring Starscream to admit his plan of escape that he’s no doubt already concocted in his processor. 

“I am out in the open-- Exposed!” Starscream argues vehemently, his vox peaking with popping crackles at the edges of his speech as his composure crumbles. His servos twitch anxiously. “And what of Megatron?!”

Optimus’ optics are narrowed with skepticism, but they’re not angry or outright distrustful. “Do you believe Megatron would continue his search for you?”

At this, Starscream begins to laugh hysterically. You shuffle uncomfortably as you find no humor in his dry and harsh cackle. “By the Pit! Is that even a question?”

Starscream’s optical lens pinprick as the apertures spin tight. “I barely managed to escape with my spark chamber intact as is.” He covers the space over his spark with a cupped servo for emphasis. “He’ll come finish the job, I just know it!”

Optimus’s optics slide to the side with a look you can’t place. “Megatron… was never one to abandon prospects of punishment for disloyalty.” 

Starscream and Bulkhead go quiet, and you can only watch from your perch as something unspoken passes through each of them. A solemn millennium of memories of something you have no knowledge of, but take in with the density of the silence now.

“You understand the gravity of my situation, then?” Starscream gravels low, tucking his servos close to his abdominal plating, suppressing the tremors running through his long digits that you still catch with your eyes. Optimus’s optics soften the slightest bit but not enough, much to the disgruntlement of the seeker.

“You must know, Prime!” He stresses. “He’d take every opportunity to rip the helm from my neck cabling, he’d only ever restrained himself out of amusement for his belittling of me. You know this, you know what he’s like! You’ve seen it!” 

You feel an iciness spread in your stomach. If ‘belittlement’ means what you think it means, the thought of Optimus standing by and doing nothing is disconcerting to an upsetting degree. It must be a misunderstanding.

This time you cannot keep your curiosity quiet. “‘Belittlement?’” You ask, afraid of the answer.

You’re not the least bit comforted by Starscream’s expression turning into something dark and intense. “An accessory to toy with, a pawn in his grasp. Something to bestow punishment upon when he so pleased or when he felt a ‘lesson needed to be taught.’” He wags his digit scornfully. “And don’t think he wasn’t prejudiced in that.”

The lump that’s formed in your throat with every passing word makes you feel sick. You subtly eye Optimus and Bulkhead, the former being the only who looks back at you. Optimus optics are earnest but there’s something somber about how downturned they are. Your face pinches with distress. Did you know about this? 

Are you okay with this???

Starscream clasps his servos upon his lap. “Perhaps at one point, my presence in his army held merit, but he has grown bored of me now, weary. I will not be spared again.” 

“Bored of your schemes,” Bulkhead reminds everyone. “It’s no secret you’ve wanted that cushy title of ‘Leader of the Decepticons’ since Megatron came back.”

Starscream shoots the wrecker a deathly glare.

“Then, why stay this long?” You ask the question you’ve wanted answered since that first night, seeing Starscream slumped against that tree, beaten, bleeding, and broken. “If you hate him, because you obviously do, then why even stay for a job title you’re not gonna get? Why not just leave and cut your losses?”

“Do you think it’s that simple, human?” Starscream rumbles, cutting you off. “You have no understanding of this war, nor what allegiance to one’s self is. Your understanding of basic concepts is lackluster, subpar, and you are further lacking in comprehension skills that extend beyond you and leave you in the dust of insignificance and idiocy.” You shuffle in your seat when  Starscream leans forward towards you, only stopped by Optimus stepping up to intercept. 

“I am not here to answer your useless queries, insect,” he hisses, rubbing the word in with the grit of his drawl. “If you wish for history lessons, talk to your rusted, old medic.” He turns his helm up. “He was correct in his assessment of you: blithely ignorant and foolish enough that you don’t even realize your own worthlessness in opinion, vapid and attempting to interject yourself in our matters.”

He leans in with a cold snarl, “A stupid animal.”

You flinch back, mouth pulling into a line, startled and tender. 

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Bulkhead juts in, stepping between you and Starscream with a furious expression aimed at the seeker. “Just because she doesn’t know the in’s and out’s of everything doesn’t mean we don’t want her around.”

You swallow thickly. “It’s not like I didn’t try to ask about stuff,” you mumble out, but find no sense of bravado in your words and wither out into silence. Bulkhead seems to have heard, however, turning to look down at you with something stricken and apologetic.

“Then she should have educated herself,” Starscream scoffs as he talks over you to address Bulkhead, only to be grabbed by the shoulder plating and dragged back into place with a squawk by Optimus who’s open disposition has since closed to Starscream, now scrutinizing the seeker. 

Starscream scrambles to regain his favor and tips his wings as low down as they will go and eases back into a submissive crouch. “Should Megatron find me again, I shall be executed for treason against the Decepticon cause,” he attempts, but Optimus’ face hardens further.

“Do not think I am not aware of your various attempts to usurp control from Megatron during your time as his lieutenant, Starscream,” Optimus warns with a thundering rumble in his vox, pulling away from Starscream’s appeal. “You are not innocent in this matter, nor in others. Your desire in further continuing the Decepticon campaign under your rule places the crimes of Megatron and other officials on your already dubious character.”

Optimus’s optics burn brighter as they narrow with a controlled anger. “One who proudly takes delight in dispatching my Autobots.”

Starscream sputters, claws twitching anxiously as his wings threaten to drop. “T-That was a mistake-! It was the rules of war!” Starscream’s frame plating flares defensively as he spreads his wings behind himself to fool height, despite his crumpled form on the floor. “I never got a chance to lead without being crushed under-pede of Megatron’s shadow!”

Unwilling to let the matter drop, Starscream starts up his engine with a snarl, “I was disrespected, from the moment I joined the Decepticons, then had the weight of millenna of war and expectation placed upon me. Cliffjumper’s casualty was not-”

He clamps his intake shut when Bulkhead and Optimus’ expressions tighten, and whatever he was about to say dies on his glossa with a swallow. You don’t realize the breath you've been holding until your lungs begin to burn.

Starscream doesn’t hide the shivering of his servos as he holds them up placatingly. “Please, I assure you I have been humbled by my experiences. I will not interfere with your affairs. I am at a d-disatvantage, I swear,” he pleads. “I only wish to have the means to defend myself, a sovereign party.”

Optimus’ expression doesn’t change as he examines Starscream. Whatever he finds, it’s not hopeful as he gives a dissatisfied ex-vent and shakes his helm resolutely. “I have already decided that is not a path available to you. You will remain under our arrest and follow our protocol. You will give up your arms.”

A hissing whine stings at your ears as the turbines on Starscream’s frame rattle on and vibrate the air with noise, a warning. Though you and Bulkhead go to cover your ears and audials with a wince, Optimus seems unphased except for his audial fins cycling down, once.  

Your push past the sharp pain of the noise cracking open your skull. Alternatively, taking to watching in interest as the uproarious seeker makes himself small, not expecting the gesture. Like a snake coiling into itself with the intention to power up their eventual deathly strike. Although his faceplate is every bit as fierce as the former Air Commander of the Decepticons could twist it into, he’d made no move to swipe at anyone either with his claws as he had done to you. No one was close enough to his range of movement.

In fact, Starscream was trembling and oscillating dangerously in an unsteady teeter that looked involuntary, and whether or not his engine running was exacerbating that was almost a null point. The vibrations of his turbines seemed to rock him violently in an intense shiver that barely kept from knocking him over. His optics blinked rapidly at points and the question of whether Cybertronians had a concept of blood pressure built into their systems was nagging at the forefront of your mind. 

Optimus steps out towards Starscream, as if to steady him but only receives a warning snarl from the injured seeker and a clumsy swipe. He holds his gaze on the heaving form of the injured seeker for a moment, before allowing his cannons to de-transform back to base form. He reaches into his subspace and your nosiness gets the better of you as you peek your head up to catch a glimpse.

Optimus’s subspace and what he kept within was an intriguing revelation to anything in regards to the large Autobot, much like emptying your pockets at a traffic spot could reveal a lot about a person. But Optimus seemed nothing if not practical, given that he pulled out a single Energon ration from his subspace, still having its safety locks on the vertices of the cube. 

You see Starscream’s optics widen in recognition of the Energon in front of him and his turbines halt to a stuttering whirr, and you suspect it must be an instinctual recognition of their fuel source near them. 

He extends the cube to Starscream, who grows confused as the presence of the Autobot has slowed to a halt in front of him. He opens and closes his intake, before his face hardens with suspicion. “A bribe?”

You're uncertain if Cybertronians feel hunger, but if they could, the longing swallow and wide eyes paint Starscream with the desperate longing of someone starved. You're suddenly less comfortable with bearing witness to the exchange.

“If you allow this process to continue without interruptions,” Optimus sternly starts, presenting the Energon in his servo. “We will supply you with this ration post-disarming your cannons, and thereafter more rations in a steady schedule.”

Starscream curls his dermas with displeasure. “Like a pet in need of scraps, Optimus Prime?”

“A prisoner of war,” Optimus clarifies. “A prisoner with rights.” 

Starscream furrows his brow testily but his claws twitch and betray his defiant expression. You could see the gears turning in his helm, optics cycling fast in thought, before his grip turns slack and so does the rest of his frame. You search him carefully for a second-wind of sorts to arise within Starscream, a bluff surrender before he attacks.

A twitch in his servos, a planting of a foot, anything to suggest he might launch forward and attack Optimus or Bulkhead. 

To your surprise, the unexpected happens. Starscream slackens and the fight leaves his body, servos untended and his posture curling in ever so slightly. 

“Do what you must,” Starscream mutters bitterly. He moves his cupped servos up to take the cube, but Optimus pulls away for a second.

“Only after we disarm you,” Optimus says, placing a solid perimeter not laced with any level of taunt, but one all the same if Starscream’s angry uptick of his wings is anything to go by. Still, the seeker only tilts his helm down and shuts himself off from further conversation as he drops his servos to the ground.

“As you wish,” he purrs venomously, and goes silent.

Optimus nods, waving Bulkhead over and the two quickly get to work. Optimus’ flat servos easily access the finer latches of the machinery holding the chamber shut, popping open the rotary ammunition wheel, while Bulkhead stands by for assistance, looking slightly out off as Optimus hands him the first off-loaded missile. The wrecker cautiously balances the explosive at the plates of his forearms with a wary twist in his expression.

It’s fast work, and you catch the glint of Optimus’ optics flickering up occasionally to Starscream, but the wingless mech remains static. You think it’s a mixture of the Prime’s cautiousness at being at such close proximity to the ex-Decepticon, but there’s a speck of an empathetic attempt to engage with the seeker in such an uncomfortable formality. Optimus works a touch faster after that. Whatever reasons he may have for doing it, you speculate it’s to not further drag this process out and invade Starscream’s space for longer than necessary.

You feel your lips twitch up at Optimus’ courteous nature and his subtle gestures of well-meaning. If there’s one thing Optimus struggles to hide, it’s that.

Though it’s not all that appreciated by Starscream, as his near-lifeless form has gone distinctly limp. Optimus holds up the dangling arm of the seeker as he works and you realize there’s no strength behind any of it. If Starscream is still putting up a resistance, it’s akin to dragging one’s feet on the ground. Annoying but better than a continuous fight. Optimus doesn’t mention any complaints he may have.

When he finishes settling the missile rockets on the ground, all of them placed in a neat pyramid pile, he then pulls out the cube from his subspace and hands it to Starscream, who’d already begun to reach out for it.

There’s a wildeness to Starscream’s optics that suggests that if his LED’s were on within his optic lenses, there’d be a glimmer of hunger in them. You can almost imagine it already in his optics with how his servos eagerly transfer the weight from Optimus’ servos into his own, and a swallow shifts his neck cables in a palpable sign of want. It’s such an old concept for human bodies to recognize the sight of a hunger so blatant that it almost makes Starscream pitiable with how innocent and simple the universally human concept looks on him.

But something in his expression shifts and just as soon as the energon container settles within his palms, Starscream’s faceplate falls and his brow plates dip into a look of deep consternation. You shift in your spot to get a better sense of the subtle switch microexpressions but Starscream slouches in a way that shadows his faceplate and keeps it from view.

Eventually, Bulkhead carries a small pile of missiles in his arms, carefully stretched out and away from himself. He strains his neck cables back further to angle his helm away from the volatile weapons with a strained grimace. Optimus follows close behind him with a small pile of his own, pressing a pair of digits to his audials, and soon after, a ground bridge spawns before you and covers everyone in the vicinity in a glowing green hue. 

You jump a little at the portal opening, knowing Ratchet is only a few steps away through the signature link between spaces that he’s built. The sight fills you with an anxiety that whispers conspiratorially into your ear and makes you itch to dart back into your house to hide, before Ratchet decides to make an appearance and take further pot-shots at you. 

You slide off your car and plant your feet on the gravel. If you do decide to book it, at least you won't be sliding off the car face-first into the rocky floor. 

But Ratchet paying you a visit so soon may be beyond you, as he doesn’t step through after the first few seconds. Your heart still hammers in your chest regardless.

Bulkhead, too preoccupied on his own task to notice your turmoil, shuffles past you towards the portal, a few feet at a time with utmost care and vigilance over his cargo. He grunts your name over his shoulder distractedly, but as warm as he can muster. Your chest flutters as you remember the apologetic look he’d leveled you with earlier.

“I’ll see you later, kid,” he says softly, disappearing gradually into the swirling space of warped matter and light.

As Bulkhead passes through the portal, Optimus turns back to make direct eye-contact with you that causes you to tense up. His expression is wrung fraught with apprehension and there’s worry behind his bright optics. His frame is frozen in time, except for his optics going offline and online once. 

He looks like he’s debating if he should really step through and leave with his decision intact. To leave you behind with Starscream. He seemingly starts to waver as he leans his body to come over and retrieve you, but you quickly shake your head before he can actually take a step.

You really don’t want to go back to base the way things are right now.

“I’ll be okay,” you assure him, your voice nearly drowned out by the whipping vortex of the ground bridge. His helm tilts, optics squinted in question that goes unsaid.

‘Are you sure?’

You give him a wry smile and a thumbs up. It does little to lift away the ridges of his grave expression, but he drops his stance in an ex-vent, giving in with a singular nod. He turns to the ground-bridge and disappears in a flash of light. The portal shuts not a moment after, leaving you and Starscream alone in the wake of the darkness that shrouds the night.

“Good riddance,” Starscream remarks, full of snark. “Finally I can forsake this disgusting hobble.” 

He picks  himself up clumsily with the energon cube in hand, heavily swaying as he walks, half-crouched to a corner of the lot. He slides himself near your chain link fence, startled when his pede hits the rattling wall. He taps the fence again with the toe of his pede a few times in a wider angle, continuing to hit the fence. In an attempt to raise his foot higher, he only manages to hit the wall again. You think he’ll try again, but to your relief, his leg joints seem too weak to lift up higher than your fence and that seems to be enough to deter Starscream from just up and leaving right now.

He growls as he drops the cube before him carelessly, settling onto the floor as he finds he’s hit a dead end and isn’t capable of moving beyond that. He crosses his arms tightly over his knees, and though he is inert, displeasure is rolling off him in waves that already make you feel tired as you think about being at the brunt of it.

You expelled a tired sigh out of your nostrils. 

Your personal grievances and speculation aside, Starscream is now in your care and needs to replenish his supply of energon. 

Watching his wavering about hadn’t been at the forefront of your mind admittedly, but when replaying his stumbling form ambling about shakily it is discomforting to think Starscream may lose consciousness at any given moment should he jostle too hard or move a certain way. You’re uncertain how you would even assist him if he were to fall over unconscious. Would you need to call someone?

You REALLY don’t want to call Ratchet.

You can’t help but press your lips into a firm, pensive line.

You walk up to him and clear your throat. Starscream ignores you and you’re not the least bit surprised.

You point at his cube of energon. “You gonna drink that soon? It’ll help ya.”

Again, no response, but Starscream’s frame curls tighter and his faceplate gains deep trenches from a venomous scowl that twists impatiently.

The cube sat full before the sullen mech, glowing with an enticing radiating hue that promised nutrients needed for healing and much needed energy. Still, he hadn’t made a single attempt to drink any that you’ve seen. Instead, he glared at the cube with a quiet resentment that you’ve never seen before on Starscream’s faceplate.

The molasses feeling in your head makes it hard to worry about his purposeful starvation, however. You’ll worry about it in the morning if it’s still there.

You don’t realize when you decided to walk over to stand next to him, but you clock back into the present with the tapping of your shoe knocking at the heel of his pede. You clear your throat to catch his attention. 

Starscream lets a low noise ring from his vocalizer and shows his dental plates with an open sneer. You step away from him at the wordless warning, choosing to keep a healthy distance from provoking him, hands up.

He shifts his pede away swiftly from you and grits his denta. “What do you want?” 

He twirls his servo angrily. “Anything else you want to further put me through? Further humiliation you insist on instilling upon my battered frame, pest?”

“No,” You shake your head, not having the energy to entertain the obvious simmer of anger the ex-Decepticon wishes to take out on you. “Just… setting up some ground rules. You’ll be staying here for a while too, so… you know.”

You shrug, sighing, “It’s a good first step to settle you in.”

“What false niceties,” he growls derisively, crossing his arms and locking them on his knee plating. “As if I’ll follow any parameters you set for me, fleshbag.”

“You know what?” You dust yourself off, needing to do something to clean off the heavy, growing feeling of lifeless apathy from your frame. “I don’t have the energy for this, so— basics!”

You point towards chain fences of your lot. “I don’t know if you can see the fence boundaries around my place-“

“I cannot,” Starscream confirms with a low grumble. “Imbecilic creature.”

“I said I didn’t know.” You drop your hand. “Then, just know that I will hear you if you trip on any of my stuff while trying to get away. You do that, I call the Autobots.”

Starscream gives a dismissive grunt, but his wings twitch downward. “Acknowledged.”

“And one more thing.” You squint and point a finger up at him. “ If you try to swat at me or kill me in my sleep, you’re toast! I am not covering for you, you’re outta here-“ 

You snap your fingers. “-Like that!”

Starscream gives a halfhearted laugh, cynically amused. “And how will you enforce my eviction if I send you, smeared, into oblivion?” 

You tap your chin. “The Autobots. A-doy! Optimus will literally kill you.” You cock your hip as you list off on your fingers,” Bulkhead would smash you to bits, Bumblebee would deck you infinitely, Arcee will double kill you -“

“And your medic?” Starscream leers, pointedly cutting you off. “I imagine after your little lovers spat, you aren't exactly his favorite fleshy at the moment.“

You wince, feeling your heart throb full of hurt at Starscream’s word usage. “He’s… a bit rough around the edges with humans-”

“And yet, he favors the human sparklings just fine as I have borne witness to,” Starscream smugly inputs. “Seems like you’re the only one left out in the cold.”

His words make the incessant buzzing in your head get louder and ache in yearning for your bed and pillows to scream into.

His plating flares from his frame and hisses a billow of steam, long-trapped in his over-stressed body. “You have such a nerve to lecture me on valuing the merit of my own life. Yet you, a being weaker than I, place yourself in danger recklessly without merit. For the sake of external validation? The Autobot’s acceptance of you? The medic’s?”

“I don’t need their validation. I’m good enough as is.” You don’t sound confident, not even to yourself.

“And yet you seek out my company and make conversation with me, because no one else will entertain you as an equal, or even less a companion,” he bites out coldly.

You glare defiantly back at Starscream. “I’m out here because of you, remember?”

He bristles at that. “That isn’t my fault.”

“I didn’t say it was!”  You grit as you feel your eyes heat up. “I saved your life, though. The least you can do is not be a dick to me!”

He lunges forward with a snarl. “I never asked for your pity or assistance in the first place! You did this! You brought me here! ” 

He gains the strength through his rage to claw at the ground and raises his helm off the ground to loom over you and force you several steps back. “You are using me to give meaning to your pitiful existence to prove something to your feeble ego, then blame me for your own situation? Please! If you hadn’t involved yourself-”

“I was trying to help!” Your voice rings out.

He scoffs. “And look where that got you.” He shoves a digit sharply where he finds your  side and jabs you with a folded knuckle link, shoving you onto the floor. “This is on you.”

Starscream leans back and crosses his arms. “You’re a vulgar, filthy creature, undeserving of my time and respect. I don’t need your pathetic excuses of ‘good intentions’ to assist me.” 

He gives you a conspiratorial smirk that makes your skin crawl with a feeling of being exposed. “You reek of desperation and loneliness. Your guise of assisting the Autobots with my arrest is nothing more than just a way to prevent the inevitableness of your own useless insignificance.”

“I'm just tired of today, man.” You say, trying to level with him, infinitely more exhausted than you’ve ever been. “I’m tired of having a fucking headache and feeling like I'm gonna puke my guts out at any moment. I’m tired of my ribs hurting, my ears ringing, being shaken, cursed at, yelled at. I can’t catch a fucking break this week.”

He groans. “My, aren’t you full of complaints. You want to know mine?”

He leans down with a swiftness you didn’t think he would be capable of at the moment and gets up in your face. “I resent having been brought here,” he rumbles darkly, the vibrations of his voice uncomfortably reaching the skin of your face from how close he is.

“I resent having to owe my spark’s continued beatings and pain to you, of all beings. I resent the mockery you have made of my plight,” He continues, clearing his rattling intake as static fills his vox from the exertion. “I resent that I will be online and conscious for an uncertain amount of time and spend the rest of my existence a crippled scrap-heap awaiting my execution under Megatron’s servos if the Autobots’ don’t encircle theirs around my throat first.” 

His fanged denta flash in the rageful grimace he directs at you. “I resent you.” 

You back away, feeling painfully small at the directed hatred in your direction, even if it is from someone like Starscream. But the thought of this near stranger hating you through your already limited interactions somehow hurts just as much. But you clench your jaw and twist your lips shut tight.

You won’t cry. Not in front of Starscream.

He catches the twist in your expression, and despite the anxious tremble in your chest threatening to choke you, he relentlessly presses further into your space with a look of pure righteous scorn. “You are the cause of your own misery, so don’t go blaming me for being insufferable to all of those around you. You should know better by now.”

While you stand there with baited breath, he switches on a dime and theatrically shakes his helm down at you, voice dripping with false sympathy. “You’re merely an unfortunate stray, whom the Autobots pitied— those leaking sparks. But whom nobody wants enough to keep around.”

You’ve just about had enough as you burn holes at Starscream’s helm as he cocks his head at you haughtily, daring you to speak back to him. You muster every ounce of restraint within you to swallow your swirling emotions down into your chest where you feel the tenderness of being called out begin to bloom hotly. The worst part is that he smiles at the moment tears burn hotly and spill accidentally from your eyes and you feel more exposed than you’ve ever been in your life.

He’s just provoking you, he wants me to lash out so he can make fun of me. “Fucking poke the human about to have an emotional meltdown because it’s funny” game.

“Fuck you,” You bark out, cringing at how your voice teeters at the end with a despairing warble. You bare your teeth with a shallow swallow. “You don’t have to rub it in that you’re right.”

Starscream blinks, craning his neck back in confusion.

“I just wanted to show them I could help,” You offer helplessly, growing monotone as you work overtime to pull yourself through this interaction without giving him anymore fodder for his amusement. “So, whatever. It’s pointless anyway, right?”

You wave a hand all around. “There’s the door all around you. Just leave if you want. Go jump in a lake, starve, go fight Megatron and get your head knocked off your body, or something. I don’t care anymore. This was a stupid idea.”

You start walking off, no longer interested in keeping up the appearance of being unbothered. You’re very bothered and holding on by a thread as is.

Starscream straightens with a scowl. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“None of your business soon enough if you’re gonna leave anyway,” you respond dismissively, opening your door to walk into your home, letting it slam shut behind you.

You sigh, kicking your shoes off hap-hazardly, increasingly growing more sagged in every step as you approach your bedroom door. You throw it open without much care, but find that you only deflate further at the sight of your untouched room, covered in a thin layer of dust.

It was exactly as you’d left it.

It made the aching pit in your chest and stomach even worse.

It was like returning to a point in time, as if your room had been paused into a void, a limbo state, awaiting your return. To some it would’ve seemed comforting, you’re sure, but the thing is… you never planned to come back.

If anything, it feels like failure.

You can’t help but feel like fate knew you’d end up here before you did. Perhaps you were always meant to come back here and you’d just put it off in favor of staying within the fantasy that you’d spend the rest of your time on Earth with the Autobots. You’d stayed in denial, and now reality has come to settle in like a slow moving monolith. 

Maybe its stinging presence now is much more pronounced because it’s always been there, just buried beneath distractions.

Maybe you’re the only one that didn’t see it.

Maybe Ratchet did and he’s been trying to tell you that.

You let out a heavy breath from your nose, compliantly slipping into bed and sliding your arms beneath your pillow. It’s still the nice and cold material you liked sleeping with, so at least there is that minor comfort, but the stale smell of detergent it’s taken in your absence is off-putting. It smells like storage, but you never did store any of your “belongings” away. Just abandoned them.

It’s ironic they’re the things that have come back to comfort you now.

You make a note to pick up some new detergent and conditioner to erase the smell later from your bed.

You attempt to close your eyes and doze off, but the buzz that persists in your head numbs your sense of sleep and forces you to flit through your day’s events in rapid succession. You unwillingly take a mental count of everything that makes a part of your reality now, your injuries, who you’re in good standing with, who you’re not.

You think the only two people who aren’t mad at you for something may be Optimus and Bulkhead. 

Your lips twist in displeasure with yourself at the low count of friend-friends you have.

Even Bee, sweet, happy Bumblebee who’s always been nice to you and amicable from the beginning, may not be so quick to warmly greet you the next time you see him. You did just help the ‘Con who nearly crippled him for good. You wonder if he knows what you just did and if anyone told him.

Then there’s Arcee. She’ll probably never forgive you for keeping this from her, “conspiring” with keeping her from Cliffjumper’s killer. 

Shit. You still need to talk to her.

You don’t mean to get involved in her business, but no one in the Autobots seems keen to address her proclivity for working alone on dangerous missions regarding Arachnid. You didn’t want her chasing after another boogeyman in her life. She likely just assumes you don’t understand her situation and are condescendingly micromanaging her grieving process. 

Likely they all think you’re delaying monumentous progress in their war by giving sanctuary to their enemy within your backyard. To them, you might as well be hiding Megatron from them.

You think of Ratchet finally, the one Cybertronian whom you’ve had the privilege to get so close to. The one Autobot who wishes to go home more than anybody. You wonder if he hates you for what you’re doing. Would he ever allow you to see him again to say you’re sorry?

If Cybertronians live longer than humans, and humans are capable of holding a grudge for a long period of time, how long would Ratchet be mad at you for? 5 years? Ten? Fifty??

Are you banned from the base for good now?

You groan into your pillow as a few tears finally spill from your eyes and saturate the pillow below you. You grip the fabric as you bury your face into it.

A sniffle escapes you, and before long you’re crying, heaving sobs wracking your frame as the pain of several days builds up and washes over you. Your bruised ribs creak and throb with hot blood beneath the skin, warning you of the immense pressure you’re placing on them as your lungs fill with air to wail as loud as you can. 

By the end, your head aches so much more than before you started crying and your eyes are deeply swollen. You curl up into a ball and pull the sheet up to your neck, fists wrapping around the fabric tightly as you lay your head back onto your now damp pillow. Dehydrated and unwilling to leave bed to take care of yourself, you slip into a sorrowful sleep.

-/-/-/-/-/-;

His arms felt lighter.

That’s the first thing that runs through his processor as his servos run over the now empty chambers, Starscream absently registering the further impairment of his frame. His final protection had been stripped from him. He’s reduced to using his own servos as a means of self-defense like some cogless miner in the subterranean networks of Iacon.

Starscream pressed his tightly fisted servos into his helm with a frustrated groan. He didn’t need to break down the hypocrisy of his own statement, wholly well-aware he’s practically the caste system class he looks down upon. At least the cogless miners were purposely forged without their transformation module. He had his stolen and crushed.

A seeker should have never allowed a grounder, a monstrous war-frame no less. to get close to him. Any self-respecting seeker would have easily escaped capture and taken to the skies before allowing anyone to steal their wings.

He’s better than this. 

But he isn’t. His wings were torn alongside his cog to prove that point.

He gives a heavy ex-vent as he clenches his useless optics closed, growing aware of the micro-vibrations that distinguish energon’s natural effigy that sits before him. The pulse of Primus imprinted on the fuel source is steady, an ancient call, and instinctively activates a code within himself to consume the much-needed resource with haste. His system gives a ping to his H.U.D. to ready optimization protocols towards prioritizing fuel usage into healing integral systems. The UI is flooded with imminent system malfunction warnings that beg for him to take the energon offered to him.

He denies the requests hastily, closing the alerts and clenching his servos tightly, willing the thrum of the energon to subside in his audials and his spark to become blind to its existence. He seals the digits in his palm and bars himself from picking up the cube, a miserable reminder of his own weakness.

He’d become embarrassingly obsequious as soon as Prime had waved around the prospect of refueling. He’d easily submitted to his captors for the fastest route of gratification for his sorry state. He recalled how his tanks had twisted in what he’d believed was only an indication of his haggard frame’s need for the fuel source and his spark was bursting in relief at the end of his scarce-nutrition period.

Yet upon receiving the cube in his awaiting servos, having given away his missiles for this measly single cube, the excitement of refueling had quickly vanished and he was carved from the inside-out viciously and left hollow as he held the empty weight in his servos. He’d been betrayed by his own senses to accept something so trivial and depend on the Autobots for his fuel.

He agreed to dependence.

Starscream’s engine gives a low rumble within himself as he swallows down a rageful scream, his frame bristled with tension as he clenches his being tight in some form of resistance against the world. His frustration ebbs as he digs the heels of his pedes and shoves away the gravel beneath them, dragging stones outward to give way to his need to express his displeasure with their presence making the ground unstable to walk on.

He gives a muffled yell between twisted dermas as steam pours from his frame, his fans kicking on to cool his overheated systems, but not spinning fast enough to really lower his temperature. A command prompt to increase the speed only brings back a warning of insufficient energon reserves for the action, the heat making the aches in his frame become all the more more noticeable and that much more unbearable.

Of all the things-- did his pain receptors really have to be the one thing that went undamaged?

He growls low in his vocalizer, kicking his pede out sharply and shoving as much sand and gravel as he could, before he jostled the side of the grounder vehicle at his hip. His processor boiled over with blinding fury and his servos rattled with the urge to smash the pathetic man-made object to pieces. His field bled murderous intent all around him and if another Cybertronian were present to perceive it, they’d without a doubt jump back far away from him.

Though before he can carry through with any impulsivity, his attention is stolen towards your abode, where he can feel the seeping the radius of the Autbot’s pet femme’s field broaden in a weeping puddle. His own field braces against the onslaught of what he can only categorize as a despairing agony that has his own frame shudders to shake off. The wave of gloom mingles with his own spark before he roughly places a barrier between your signals and his own. He catches the taste of sodium chloride and dihydrogen oxide at the tip of his glossa that culminates into the mammalian phenomenon of optical lubricant; tears.

Earlier, listening to the argumentative tone your tiny frame had taken up in the defense against his imprisonment sentence at the Autobot base, had admittedly caught his interest at the start. Your puny field that had initially whispered out, roared into a fiery projection that burst at points as your frame was wracked with thought and new points to argue. It had flared alight with an odd desperation, a tiny flame begging to be given second thoughts. Then soon he was disappointed with how frail you’d become as the Autobot medic had abandoned the conversation with a dismissiveness towards your kind.

It was a pathetic display to be an unfortunate part of as your tiny field infected the air with unbridled despair. It was deeply annoying to see you put up such a fuss when your problems compare to nothing against theirs.

Although, the denounced SIC could not deny his interest in the dynamic between the little femme and the medic. 

It was obvious that curmudgeon of a medic, Ratchet, had a particular interest in this female fleshing. Enough to grant you a modicum of respect and listen to your pleads to allow Starscream refuge with you, even medical attention. 

You were willing to risk the stability of your relationship with the old Autobot in order to satisfy your curiosity, or other means, with him. 

Why?

Starscream sneers at the ground in disgust in swift reprimand to himself.

Since his early days, Starscream had little patience for the personal matters of others. His interest in the goals and conflicts of others was null and none, too busy building his own career and adjusting to the bustling cities of Iacon and Kaon to waste his time furthering the fantasies of those unimportant to him. Everyone always wanted something from him anyway and conversation was idle prattle before their self-serving desires approached conversation and made Starscream rattle with annoyance, and sometimes discomfort.

He’s long lost tolerance for such a waste of his time. 

Yet, he decided against deafening his audials to listen in on your conversation, only to find himself bored as it was a predictable squabble; A human who thinks their worth measures as much as a Cybertronian, and a Cybertronian who obviously disagrees for appropriate reasons. 

There were so many of your kind on this mudball, petty and little, self-important fleshlings.

At least he found the display amusing, until he was condemned to remain in your deserted little hobble, surrounded by rusted and weathered machinery. Ground-based machinery.

It was a pathetic sight to be seen like this. A seeker of his caliber shouldn’t be sandwiched between non-flight frames in a garbage yard.

He shouldn’t be contained in such a cramped space at. His wings creek as he tenses them to fit neatly on his back strut and not get caught on the chain link fence’s gaps. His struts itch to drag himself to his pedes and march out of confinement. For a moment, he contemplates his opportunity for a quick exit. 

You’d said so much that you did not care whether he left or not, even implied he was free to do so. You’d invited the possibility.

His brow ridges furrow in concentration as he recalls the bold tone you’d taken with him, so defiantly unafraid of being struck down by him. You’d spiritedly cursed at him and excused yourself for the night. 

And the gall to blame HIM for your own doing?

He sealed his dermas with a barely-held roar, steam pouring from his vents and leaving him dizzy as his tirade of anger from his recalled thoughts simmered back down. He holds his helm and battles down the pressure valves’ hiss within his hydraulic systems that beg him to untense his frame and keep his ventilations to a minimum force. 

He huffs. Maybe he should leave, if he has the chance, might as well. 

It’s not like you could actually help him anyway. It had been naive of him to allow you to take control of the situation and have him placate the Autobots for some abstract concept of chosen survival. Starscream’s autonomy had been taken when he stepped into your home and lied on the ground, uttering those blasted coordinates to your communications device and co-opperating. 

Your concern for him hadn’t been anything of interest as he’d initially believed. The glances you’d taken at him, the flares of uncertainty and wariness in your field when you’d heard pieces of his situation, all the times you picked and prodded at him to interact with you had been a ploy. Y ou’d just wanted something from him.

He plants his servos into the ground, knee joints creaking from the angle he stands at as he cranes himself up and straightens his backstruts and neck cabling. He sees nothing but darkness ahead as no other lifeforms light his path except for the nearly imperceptible one of his human warden, from within her nest. 

He lets a disgruntled noise rumble from his vocalizer as he frowns deeply in annoyance. Of course the only life signature he had to be stuck with was one far too weak to be perceived, even through flimsy structures of wood and tree pulp masquerading as insulating walls.

There’s no use kidnapping you in the state that he’s in, not even for ransom. He wants nothing to do with those Autobots or their handouts. Killing you would result in an even worse situation for himself and regretfully validates your warning taunt of being flogged to scrap by five incensed Autobots. He’s utterly defenseless and would likely perish whether he ran or not.

Regardless, he takes a few steps, deliberately abandoning the cube that brushes against his pede as he moves away.  

He wouldn’t take energon from the Autobot’s hands. He wouldn’t give in. Not to their attempts to subjugate him. Especially through a means so demeaning as preying upon his malnourishment from banishment, and furthermore after his arduous time injured and grounded. 

He wouldn’t give them the gratification of winning over him.

As he inches another step forward, the substructure within his pede gave a sharp crunch as he put his weight on the heel. Before he knew it, he was falling. He’d already hit the ground in a heap of sharp pained hisses and wide optics, servos planted roughly on the ground as he ventilates rapidly in alarm. An instant, intense fear clouded over him as he shot his arm down to pat at the center of his pede, wings shivering from the confusion of his senses tripping into darkness and wanting to reset his frantic systems.

A quick pat to his side assure him that the gaping hole, where his t-cog once sat, was not further damaged in the fall. 

But his luck quickly runs dry as nimble digits quickly find the problem. A broken axle. But…

He searches his processor for an answer and comes up wholly in disbelief at what he concludes. His spark feels as though it fell out of its chamber and extinguished itself within his tanks.

That wretched grounder vehicle he’d tripped on when he arrived at your habitation coordinates must’ve-

PRIMUS.

Starscream’s spark boils within his chassis, an ache so torturous as it swirls with the cagey frenzy afflicting his spark. His optics burn with cleanser as his dentas clench together and grind with sparks flying out. His ventilations grow heavy and fast as he drags his servos inwards and curls his sharp claws into the palms, pressing so deep he draws droplets of Energon and has to constantly reset his sensory net that screams at him to stop.

He throws his helm back with a clenched jaw and muffled growl, pulling his servos back to slam into the ground and puncture holes in the hardened earth he feels exist beneath him in the darkness

He shoves his servos deep and cuts, scrapes, cracks, and bends the dead floor beneath him.

It brings him no relief or delight and only serves to jostle his frame enough to gravitationally pull heavy droplets of cleanser from his optical nozzles, and trail down the seams of his faceplate. He ignores the injuries on his side to double over and bury his faceplate to the ground, resting only atop his balled servos as he continues to ventilate heavily.

His arched back strut only gives a single heave before he un-clenches his jaw hinges and bellows a stressed, wailing scream onto the ground. 

The sound echoes on nothing as it moves into the empty air. Though he’s certain you’ve heard it. He doesn’t care.

He lets cleanser spill freely, gather at his optics rims, and fall in drips that land into the nothingness that surrounds him. His crest buzzes profusely as it works overtime to reorient him with so little visual data and no wind speed processing through it. It’s as if the universe had taken the opportune chance to drop him into liminal space with no coherent conditions to pivot himself with. No data points beyond coordinates in this solitary sandbox.

His senses are confused, he’s infinitely tired, his body is restless and perturbed with the overwhelm of boundless painful stimuli assaulting his systems, and his tanks beg for fuel to aid in his recovery. Yet his appetite is the lowest it’s been in cycles and he cannot bring himself to even think of savoring the energon. Out of principle or not, the thought of it makes him sick.

His anguished screaming strains his voice box until the sounds that emit from him slide into a vocal fry so low that his vox malfunctions altogether and leaves his intake open with the efforts of a silent exclamation. It’s just fuzzy static now. When the sensory net at the hinges of jaw plating begins to send alerts of pain he’s regretfully forced to cut his outburst short.

He closes his intake with a click, but it only makes his chassis feel too cramped for his racing spark. He claws at his chassis as the open-air lot becomes a small, dark room closing in and walling him off from the skies. An instinctual fear of having his wings be crushed by the moving walls forces him to scramble backwards from where he came, but not knowing if he’s in any true directional path or scooting blindly off a precipice. If he falls, he supposes haphazardly that’ll be the end of him.

He’s only certain of the one truth his spark beseeches of him: This place is too small.

He feels his panic swell and lightning strike down his spinal strut, causing his wings to tremble and try to expand. His tactile data modules, he knows, are being tricked by the abyss in his optics and he wheezes out rapid breaths as he digs his servos further on the ground to solidify a logical plant to orient himself and get away from the invisible danger surrounding him. 

He kicks his struts out and madly scuttles backwards with open-intake gasps.

The claustrophobic feeling only elevates as he grows increasingly aware that his lack of t-cog will not allow him to ever open up his spark chamber to check his internal systems for damage. His spark thumps hard against the walls of his chassis plates to try and leap out from its unwilling prison. His ventilations increase in speed and decrease in depth.

When his back struts and shaking broken wings slam into something solid, he fears he’s hit a border where he will surely be crushed. Only to frantically paw at his surroundings and find a small slot between two solid planes and slides himself into the tight fit. 

His coding panics at the feeling of his wings being pinned behind his spinal strut in the confined space, his one working tail wing swinging wildly to one side to measure out the available range of movement and bashing wildly into the wall next to it. Regardless of his discomfort now, at least the wall that would consume him whole would not be able to reach this crevice he’s hidden in. 

In the darkness, he becomes aware of the barest flicker of a presence to his left, where he finds you standing a fair distance away, signified by your blurry, primitive field.

He’s all too aware now that you witnessed his panicked scrambling in an embarrassing display of fearful helplessness. In another kilk, he realizes he may have hallucinated the entire thing and conjured up an imaginary shrinking room, making a fool of himself over phantoms.

Full of burning shame, he tucks his knees to his chassis, angling his struts to fit inside the confines of his hiding space and locking them in with his arms. He keeps to himself, forgoing addressing you and hoping that is enough to deter you from whatever it is you may do or say. 

He knows you are watching him. It’s an old reflex he has come to learn to detect for his own sake. Decepticons, Autobots-- Cybertronians in general, seemed to have a problem with staring whenever he was in their vicinity. Their motives were all the same and something he wanted no part in. Being aware of who was decidedly interested in observing him allowed for him to make a quick exit and vanish into obscurity. It had worked with all but Megatron.

You’re too far away to discern any clues as to what you may have seen, or even more to his interest, what you are concluding about him from what you’ve seen. 

He’d never been so adrift and unable to situate himself, it makes him wary that your speck of light is the only vertice his spark has to anchor to.

After about a breem, according to a quick glance at his chronometer, your field had thinned back into nothingness and likely you’ve retreated to your habitation facility. You do not return, but Starscream still feels the sensory net along his spinal strut go aflame with alerts of being observed.

You’re still watching him from somewhere.

The thought is discomforting. He doesn’t know why you’re expressing an interest beyond him disturbing your recharge with him making noise. Perhaps you’re waiting to see if he shall attempt to escape.

He’ll have to disappoint, if you think he can even stand upright at the moment.

He slips into recharge uneasily in the next groon and is plagued with data surges of Megatron’s attempted execution of him until the next solar cycle, when he blearily awakens. His spark sluggishly pulses in his chassis and he tries to chase away the exhaustion coating his frame in a heavy tar.

His processor aches something fierce and he can only dig the heel of his servo into the divot of his optics to try and relieve the pressure of the overheated equipment. His engine gives a chugged gurgle as he stirs and a new alert of low fuel levels assaults his main controls.

He dismisses the pop-up.

Little by little, as the ache dissipates in his motherboard, he once again finds he is not alone. You stand at a short distance before him, perfectly dropped into his radius of perception.

“What…” he rasps, attempting to demand an answer for your continuous observations of him, but it comes out more as a confused stutter as his voice-box malfunctions from overuse from the previous cycle.

Your field pulses out an indiscernible response, and it’s then he registers your field being as muddy in color as his own feels. It’s tired. You’re tired.

“Don’t mind me. I'm just having lunch,” you say, and there’s a lower treble to your voice that suggests wear. The crinkling of a wrapper sounds out and the sound of your organic intake munching on something fills his audials. 

“You had a rough night,” you muffle out.

Starscream tenses, ready to deny any claims of what you saw should you use them as justification to judge him, but you say nothing else on the matter. His own prompting of speech just has his vocalizer releasing a fried noise, high in pitch and unintelligible. 

Your field surges out and sends a quick and barely coherent highlight to something in the corners of his peripheral magnetic senses.

“You should drink that.” Another muffled noise and the sound of masticating. “I don’t think energon spoils, but you know. Better safe than sorry, right?”

He doesn’t respond, instead focusing on the thrum of the cube that he now visualizes at the foot of his hiding space. 

How did he not notice that? He could have sworn he left it somewhere else. Did you move it closer to him?

He ruminates in the increasingly disturbing questions regarding his lack of awareness as he toes at the cube with his pede. He makes no move for it other than that.

He won’t drink it. 

Despite this last horrible recharge and further injury of his pede, he won’t give anyone further opportunities to perceive his weakness. You’ve already seen too much and it’s more than he can bare to have such a private moment be catalogued by your witness for later. 

His field reaches out to violently dismiss and push out your unresponsive smoke, but he just passes through, true to his description of your minute EMP signature. He doesnt find the strength to bat you away and his vox crackles heavily with static, in desperate need of a reboot. One he cannot operate with the lack of energon in his system. 

Out of options, he waits.

And waits.

And keeps waiting.

You. Still. Won’t. Leave.

He concludes solemnly that he can wait you out. He can be patient. He’ll find an opportune chance to slip away from your monitoring in due time anyway. If not by escape, then by other means. He has all the time in the world.

The cube remains untouched no matter its beckonings to his spark.

/-/-/-/-;

You’d thought Starscream would’ve desperately needed the energon with the way he freaked out completely on his own and expended so much energy exerting himself. If you were honest, you had gotten quite worried when Starscream had backed himself between two of your vans and refused to stir from the spot he’d hidden himself within.

He’d screamed so loud that it had woken you from sleep and had you rushing out the door to see what had happened. Seeing Starscream terror-stricken and shaking so hard you thought his plating would hall off his frail form had been the last thing you were expecting.

You’d kept a close eye on him after that. 

After a few days of repeating the cycle of taking breakfast and lunch next to Starscream, nothing much had changed. Starscream, for all his trials and tribulations, had refused to suck it up and take the Energon offered to him. He’d stubbornly turned down your every suggestion of consuming it and though he swayed and trembled violently at points, he refused to drink the fuel source.

You stopped insisting after the third day, willing to accept that if Starscream hasn’t collapsed yet from starvation, maybe he knows something you don’t. 

You shrug the thought off. It’s Starscream’s business what he does with the Energon in his possession, you figure. 

A little after that, the energon cube disappeared from sight and you’d managed to relax. Of course he drinks it the moment you stop watching him.

Now you peer at him occasionally from the window of your kitchen, keeping an eye on him while you prepare yourself breakfast. You’d likely be able to forgo babysitting Starscream for today as he’d drank his ration and would finally be on the mend. Now it was just a matter of time waiting for Bulkhead to bring the next shipment of energon rations.

From your vantage point, you notice Starscream still sits in his narrow slot, wings tilted down and helm hidden in his arms. He’d made no attempts to move from his space between two parked vans. You’d hoped he would have switched places by now so he’d have much more space to use during his recovery. Sitting up with his kinds of injuries must not be comfortable and it’s harder for you to monitor the gaping hole in his side.

Would his wings even have space to move freely in such a tight area?

You tilt your head with a confused huff, idly scratching your head as another question fumes into your mind. Why hasn’t he tried to flee yet? 

It’s not that you don’t appreciate the lack of disaster after promising the ‘Bots that calamity wouldn’t happen if you kept Starscream in your corner. It certainly helps your credibility that things haven’t gone to shit yet, but you weren’t exactly able to keep Starscream from booking it if he wanted to. You would’ve guessed he’d have broken into a sprint as soon as Optimus and Bulkhead drove off.

You sigh. There's no use looking a gift horse in the mouth anyway.

Leaning back against your counter, you watched your water boil to prepare a nice cup of plain oats you’d found in your pantry. They were old, mildly dusty, and potentially wouldn’t taste as good as they would pre-expiration date. Still, they’re better than nothing and the expiration date is just a mere suggestion by food and drug companies. 

Oats ARE on the list for shelf-stable food must-haves for the apocalypse. At least according to google.

As you hear the whistling of the kettle reach a high pitch, you’re caught off guard as a loud earth-shattering crash assaults your ears with noise and the floor shakes beneath you. The sound of a blaring car alarm fills the air for a moment, before going silent in a swan song. 

Your hands fly to your ears and the piercing sound of eardrum damage makes you grit your teeth as you peel your eyes open and gingerly peek through a window, adrenaline coursing through your shaken form.

You search for the source of the impact and are surprised to see Starscream on his side, slumped over and fully crushing the van on his right side with his weight to a crunched slab. His optics are fully closed and intake open limply, completely inert in reaction despite the awkward position. Your heart jumps to your throat at the sight, your legs carry you to the front door before you can even register them moving and tear out the front door, down your lot.

“Starscream!” You call out, alarmed as you drop to your knees before the seeker’s helm on the floor. 

Anxiously, you pat his faceplate with open-handed smacks to rouse him, or at the very minimum, receive a sign of life. Despite your efforts, Starscream’s optics remained closed, but to your relief and immediate worry, you could hear Starscream’s ventilations drag haggard through his system. 

As you pulled back, you noticed your hands scorching against the hot metal, buzzing with the biological warning of a potential burn. You yank your hands back to yourself with a yelp and blow on them to relieve the stinging sensation. But as you did, you could faintly hear his fans whirring beneath his plating, quietly chugging along, much too sluggish to actually cool off any mechanical system, much less someone as large and complex as Starscream. 

Feeling yourself begin to panic, you whip your head around to search for help. A chill travels down your spine despite the heat of the desert, eyes zeroed in on a still-full Energon cube tucked behind Starscream’s leg. You let out a guttural noise from your throat as wrath bubbles through your chest along with worry. You push yourself back on your feet, rushing over to haul the hidden cube towards the downed seeker’s intake.

“Goddamn you, Starscream,” you grunt, straining as you drag the cube through the gravel and sand. “You fucking menace. Go on to starve yourself on my lawn and think you’re gonna get out of this by dying?! Fuck you!”

You yelp as the cube gives way and you finally set it before Starscream, near his parted dermas. You double over from exertion and turn to face him, huffing, “‘Making it my fucking problem— what the hell am I supposed to do with your corpse, asshole?” 

You quickly flip the lid of the cube open, standing face to face with exposed, refined Energon for the first time. It’s remarkable. 

What you originally thought would be akin to water is unlike anything you’ve ever seen as the crystallized liquid looks closer to a slime-like consistency and shines a brighter hue than any picture of the ocean you’ve ever seen. Though you’re sure most of those pictures are edited anyway, that just elevates the alienness of the substance as something uniquely impossible to recreate on Earth.

You’ve never seen Energon outside of a context of patching bleeds that is identified by its dull glow indicating the energon as already cycled and nutrient reduced by the frame that consumed it. A small part of you finds delight in having a private moment to gaze upon an element that most of humanity will never see. 

You allow yourself a few seconds to stare, mesmerized at the viscous, blue liquid within.

Shaking yourself out of your fascination, you rush to get anything to scoop the Energon out of the cube. There’s no way you’re gonna stick your bare hands into radioactive, glowing slush, no matter how much you want to satiate your curiosity. It’d do you no good to make yourself sick while trying to keep Starscream from dying.

‘Someone has to survive this,’ you think to yourself sarcastically as you yank an empty oil pan from under a car nearby.

Sliding on a pair of gardening gloves, you carefully scoop out the energon with the pan, furrowing your brow as you find the substance to be surprisingly heavy. Gingerly, you tip the pan into Starscream’s open intake and watch as the energon falls in. The crushed van acts as an impromptu pillow to angle Starscream’s helm at just a degree that the energon slides into his neck cabling and initially retreats into him.

But as a steady trickle forms at the edge of Starscream’s intake, it’s apparent none of it is being consumed and beginning to overflow. You drop the pan with a stressed whine, abandoning your emergency feeding to instead massage at Starscream’s neck cables in a lackluster attempt at a Heimlich maneuver.

You knead at the thick cabling, frantic firings of questions dart through your mind of whether or not Starscream may have a built-in swallowing reflex. You’re further disturbed by the concerning gaps in your knowledge of airway-related first aid for Cybertronians. If a chassis is made of metal that ideally is not supposed to bend, then is there such a thing as chest compressions for Cybertronians?

You feel a bead of sweat trail down your forehead. You’re not even sure if Cybertronians even need to breathe.

Either way, the energon doesn’t seem to go down and your hands are chafing against the thick rubber of the cable coating. Your face is red from the strain of your efforts, but your heart continues pounding. 

“God, please don’t drown. I do not want to be responsible for any of that mess,” you pray, pressing your hands in a little harder with each stroke. “Work. With. Me. Please.”

Then, like a miracle, Starscream’s neck cabling tenses and un-tenses. The energon pooled in his intake drains and disappears down his throat, slowly dissipating. You slump back on your heels, dropping to the ground with a back step and huffing out a hysterical laugh, “Oh, thank god! I didn’t kill anybody! Oh my god!”

Your laughter turns strained and a few tears peek through your eyes, rolling down your cheeks as you thread your hands through your hair, sniffling.

You don’t know how much more things you can handle on your conscience and you’re hanging on by a thread as is. Having not heard from anyone at base for days is also not making you feel any better. You haven’t gone a day without talking to any of the bots in months. 

Ratchet, more often than not, was your main company as the medic stayed behind from missions and begrudgingly indulged your questions, acting aloof but still being open to answering and even contributing to conversation points with a surface-level personal anecdote.

He’d taught you basic Cybertronian first aid after so many hours spent at his desk, watching the medic work tirelessly to keep his team intact and coordinated. He was always watching over and protecting his family, your learning was meant to take a load off him.

Your heart aches with longing to tell Ratchet of this success, only for that hope to plummet and die. 

At the very least, you could savor the outcome of your intervention this time. 

Except, Starscream’s vents only hitch up slightly and stutter with a worrying crackle of an engine long starved, interrupting your minor celebration. Wiping away your tears, you haul yourself up and take the discarded pan, continuing to feed Starscream the blue mesophase element. 

The repetitive motion of the task soothes you slightly. It’s comparable to feeding a loved one chicken noodle soup when they’re sick. 

Your face scrunches up at the thought and you sternly dismiss it, not willing to give Starscream, the unconscious wreck he is, the credit of endearment to you. He’s done more than enough to get on your nerves and that is without mentioning his murder of Cliffjumper, which he apparently proudly boasts about. 

Yet, despite all that, you felt pity for the seeker in your care. At least enough pity to feed the bastard while he’s out cold and on the brink of starving to death. It’s not a very affectionate place you’re coming from, but whatever place you are has enough of an awareness of Starscream to feel disturbed at his state and want to fix it.

Did you seriously just cry over this asshole?

You give a disgruntled hum at yourself. The root of your life’s upheaval began from you getting overly involved in Cybertronian matters, as so kindly explained by Ratchet in his dismissal of you. You have the chance to stand back and just let nature run its course, as if you never existed at all and vanquish this vexatious, dangerous enemy of your friends.

And still, you can’t find the resolve to pull away from the injured mech next to you and continue nursing him. Your curiosity on whether or not Starscream will awaken in a better mood or state or be outrageously angry and indignant at being handled by you keeps you rooted in place, and you silently mutter curses under your breath. 

Whatever drives you now, you hope it’s worth it.

You just hope Starscream doesn’t try to take a bite out of you while your hands are so close to his face.

-/-/-/-/-/-

He little anticipated the pounding in his processor or the soothing feeling of his starving tanks receiving energon for the first time in a decacycle. He feels his glossa and intake buzz with the thrum of the nutrient-rich energon pouring as he suctions in the precious fuel, his spark stirring in his chassis after having duly shone and receded into darkness in the last several groons. 

The stark contrast of the sensations cradling his spark simultaneously had roused him from a deep stasis lock he’d been unable to force open since he’d last given in to his latest recharge cycle. A deathly sleep.

He hadn’t meant to have deteriorated and fallen into the trap of shutting his optic shutters, but exhaustion had overtaken him and subdued his better senses. As soon as the Earth’s accursed rotation cycle had reached 9:00 ante meridian on his chronometer, the numbers were accompanied with the scorching sun that torched his battered frame and he’d no longer been in control of his systems. 

Though Starscream reckons he hadn’t had much involvement in piloting his frame as his coding did, dragging him into the next solar-cycle and refusing to let him offline. He’s conscious of that fact and does not delude himself with the idea of his own control.

At some point, even his refusal to consume the energon cube before him had rendered him deeply into feverish hallucination that filled him with doubt that the cube was even there in the first place. The awareness of the cooling sensation of energy as it enters his ingestion lines and leaves a near-numbing sensation on the tip of his glossa as it passes through, brings a great feeling of delirious relief to know he’d not been far from resources.

Now on his side, his wing remains splayed behind him on the ground, he drifts in his data-banks, idly making note of his fuel tank levels rising. His optics shift about behind his closed shutters, scanning for stimuli that could be causing these sensations. It’s only met with a dull glow that manages to confuse him, but Starscream doesn’t bother to lift his shutters as he draws up the data of the previous days’ logs and onwards. 

Reading his system diagnostics only makes the aches in his plating and frame begin to throb as he brings awareness to them.

Something exhausted curls into his processor, and he gives a wheezed, long ex-vent. He’d hoped it would have all been a simulation conjured up by his tired mind that he would exit upon onlining once more. Or maybe just one he’d exit entirely and have the blessing of passing quietly.

His overheated frame gives a strong shudder as he feels a cold sheen be draped over his plating and noise crackle in his audials. He moves his glossa inside his intake to drink the energon that enters, soothing himself in its consumption.

As he reaches an adequate level in his fuel tank, he begins the command prompts to pump the energon into his cooling fans, bringing them to a steady stream. The pressure in his chassis alleviates as his strained spark receives the downtrickle of his systems coming online and reinstating ideal conditions.

Despite the positive changes in his condition upon awakening from stasis, he’s startled to find that his vision had been overtaken by a soft glow. Its abstract in concept, but he can feel his own spark latching onto what he can only assume is an EMP field that he’s detected.

It’s only when he prods at the field and feels his consciousness pass through the wispy smoke of presence, does Starscream know whose frequency stands before him. At a far too close proximity, he adds testily in his own mind.

Cracking open his optics lids, he brings the EMP field into no greater focus than before, but does make it flare with sparks of surprise as the light tenses. The energon being poured into his intake stalls.

The human femme, he thinks with a grimace pulling at the edges of his dermas.

“What are you doing?” He rasps in a far weaker tone than he’d like, though it still manages to draw out a surprised pulse from her tiny field.

You drift into uncertain signals and he can faintly feel your magnetic pulse waver against his own field. “I- I’m feeding you energon from your ration cube.”

He blinks his optics at the response, becoming aware finally of the buzzing thrum of the refined lifeblood sitting on the ground close by. A sign of weakness. 

“How dare you?!” He hisses, feeling his spark flare at the violation of his own vow. “Taking advantage of my unconscious state?! I should shred you to ribbons!”

Your light jumps back away from him in alarm and while it brings a satisfaction to his spark to reprimand you, he doesn’t get to enjoy it.

His intake fuel line crackles with energon and he coughs spittle as his vents struggle to keep up with his aggravated speech. He is annoyed to feel your annoying field spike at his fit and ruin his concentration to reel in his vocalizer’s specialized ventilation system. He feels your presence draw away behind retreating footsteps and is unsure whether to feel glad your disruptive influence is no longer in his vicinity, or slight discomfort at not having a fixed point to ground himself to in his disorientation.

Your footsteps don’t completely fade, but you’re definitely at a distance from him. Wherever you are, your EMP signature is too far to read or see. He snarls at the inconvenience of being stuck with an organic.

Useless creatures.

He resets his voice box, clearing the vents with a sharp, but minimally forceful ex-vent. He’d seldom noticed when his servo came to cup his frontal neck cable to soothe himself.

His vents whirl loudly in his audials and nearly deafens his train of thought, if not for another noise joining the cacophony and he suddenly feels the aching burn in his helm’s plating ease. An odd texture of something vaguely metallic, a foil of sorts but soft, lays above his crest and cranial plates, dragging across the surface with his movements.

He reaches a servo to inspect for himself, before he feels a tiny fleshy hand smack at the back of his, startling him into halting mid-air.

“Don’t,” he hears you say. “It’s keeping the sun from hitting your head dead on. Leave it there.”

He rips his servo away from your touch and opens his intake to argue, but despite his disdain at your boldness, he pauses. His internal systems cool down significantly and his vents are actually siphoning cool air into his critically heat-damaged components instead of simply spinning his fans with no results. 

He can actually hear himself think, though as sluggish and tired his restless processor may be.

Though he is still bristling at your tone, he allows his arm to drop to the dusty ground. Then, hesitantly, retreating his servo under the cover of the metallic sheeting you’ve placed over him. It really does help.

He fans his wings behind him as he sends a soothing stream of air out near his spinal strut, able to afford the extra expense of energon. His broken wings, suffering from the aches and pains of being torn so abruptly are temporarily relieved by the cool air and their painful presence lessens. His battered systems still send notifications to his H.U.D. but at a slower frequency so he can read them.

He ex-vents. Most of these, if not all of these diagnostics, are to be seen and tended to by a certified physician— a physician he does not have on hand and the only available treatment being that blasted Autobot doctor who openly despises him. Which is fitting because he also despises the weathered medic.

He’s interrupted out of his thoughts by a light knock to his crest, sending vibrations through his helm. He tilts his helm up to snap at the femme, who undoubtedly stands there with her faint yellow glow.

“Can you open your mouth back up again?” You ask plainly.

It takes Starscream a few seconds to circle back around from being taken aback at the nonsense question. “You want- what?”

He hears you ex-vent deeply. “I need to keep feeding you the energon in the damn cube.” Your field vibrates with weariness. “Because I know you won’t do it.”

He snarls at you heatedly, embarrassment flaring within his own field, though he’s grateful it’s imperceptible to you. “I don’t need to be watched over, or fed, like a sparkling!”

“No, but you need to be watched like someone on suicide watch!” You yell back, your field flashing a brightness that has his optics blinking to register. “Yeah, don’t think you’re so slick, Starscream. I know you hid your ration, and here’s the best part! It’s still just as full as it was 3 days ago. ”

Your words register in his processor and reignite his ire for your meddling, horribly self-conscious as he understands he is being scolded by a being a fiftieth his size. He keeps his helm from ducking into his neck cables. 

“I am not suicidal,” he defends, but cannot find the energy to do more beyond scrunch his face plating at you with derision. 

“Right, and I haven’t had to shovel energon into your mouth to keep you from dying.” You punctuate yourself with the sound of sloshing liquid and a buzzing reaches out to his closed dermas. “Open-“

He flicks the container away with two digits before you can finish. 

“Ugh-! Why did you do that?!” You scream. He feels your field give a violent pulse as something raw, your earlier patience evaporating into an angry zeal that snaps at the edges of his field. 

“Because I do not want to be fed from that fragging cube,” he hisses, at peak frustration and at his wits end with the human femme insect. “It’s a sign of weakness.”

“It’s food,” you stress to him, annoying and pesky with your scolding tone at him. “Food you traded in for. This is your food that I am feeding you.”

“It’s not a matter of ownership!” He growls, wings tipping up and scraping against the ground, to which he hides his wince with a sharper scowl. “It’s that- that trade-! It wasn’t worth it- it was never worth it!”

His wings shake treacherously. “I was injured and delirious, and my weak spark wanted sustenance,” he grits, and his spark squeezes with a caged feeling of wanting to scream his frustrations out again. The crackles in his vox warning him of the already present damage are the only thing stopping him. 

He swallows the static down, resetting his voice box with a stuttered click.

“I wanted sustenance, and for that I traded in my own safety?” He warbles weakly.

He instantly regrets opening his intake to speak as a whiny static drenches his words and saturates them with a pleading shriveled speech. He’s further floundered as he cannot hide the exhausted wheeze that escapes his vents as his raised wings clatter to the ground and catch your attention. Your field stands there, you, something weaker than himself is the one left standing in this conversation.

A tiny human female can stand and see him, he cannot even raise himself from the filthy ground or be certain he’s making eye-contact.

Unable to take the humiliation that burns through his frame at his own feebleness, he curls his digits around the sheets given to him and drags them further over his helm, hoping it somehow swallows him whole and leaves nothing in your line of sight. It is impossible, given his size in comparison to you, but he hopes regardless. 

His hope is slashed as you knock on his helm once more.

“Leave me be,” he commands weakly without directing himself at you, still able to feel your presence trying to reach his field with thin tiny tendrils.

“About the thing you said a few days ago… you’re right. I shouldn’t be blaming you,” you say with a near imperceptible softness in your slow speech. “I chose to keep you here. I chose to step in and stopped the Autobots from… yeah.”

He freezes, quietly awaiting anything to hear anything more and refraining from letting the rasp in his vents drown out whatever may come next. He’s all too surprised at the turn in conversation and his absolving of blame, though he knows there is no rationale in him being the party at fault for his being here.

… well, maybe a little.

Still, it’s more than he usually gets from most conversations where the topic is condemning him for something.  

You break the silence, however, by being a pest again. “I still need to feed you.”

He rolls his optics the best he can without sight. “I don’t need your pity. Nor do I want the energon.”

“Please.”

His faceplate wrinkles impatiently. “What part of ‘I don’t want the energon’ do you not understand?”

“You’re not drinking it,” you assert, baffling him for a moment as he’s certain your processor has malfunctioned. He is consuming the energon. 

Your field saturates with a light, airy playfulness. Something conspiratorial but so unserious that he fails to categorize what the firings in his circuits as a response could mean. 

“I’m casually pouring it into your intake without your involvement,” you add suggestively, as he finally looks up to see your field sauntering away and crouch with the clinking of the metal pan ringing as you lift it from the ground. “You’re technically not doing anything.” 

He catches up a moment later, testing your words with a swirl of his glossa within his intake and mimicking tasting some bitter oil. “I grow tired of your inanities, fleshling.”

Your field rises to its full height, still small, but noticeable to him that you’re standing upright. “Will you drink the energon later, if I leave you alone?”

He ex-vents, fatigued. “Will you not simply drop this subject?”

Your field remains unchanged, though still meek. “I’m still… I don’t know what to really do with you if you die. Your body, that is. Or who to tell.”

“It wouldn’t be murder if that’s what’s plaguing your feeble mind,” he clarifies. “You’d technically have ‘zero involvement’ as I am the one who is choosing to forgo my rations and allow my systems to offline,” he echoes your own words back at you, but the suggestion falls flat as your field tightens in discomfort and draws away from him.

“I’d… be watching.”

“You’d be free to tell the Autobots as much,” He tightens the sheets over himself. “No doubt it wouldn’t bother them beyond losing a few coordinates.”

“It’d be on my conscience though.”

“Frag your conscience,” he retorts, unkindly. “You’re weak for some moral quandary such as guilt to be your undoing.”

You give a tired groan. “The reason I tried to keep you alive was because I had a moral quandary. This whole thing is a moral fucking quandary cuz I don’t particularly think killing you is right! Nor do I-” You stop and lose your wind, deflating as your aura packs further into itself and becomes unreadable. “Never mind.”  

He lifts a brow ridge, but you don’t explain yourself beyond that, and it’s exasperating that out of all the times he wishes you would stop talking, you censor yourself and information he wants most. You’re nothing if not a black box of impulses he can’t puzzle together, and your initial aloof demeanor in your encounters that confused him has since evaporated and left a weary, jaded thing at his pedes. He’s even more perplexed at this version of the femme.

Why did you keep him alive?

This unorthodox situation he’s found himself in grinds at his gears and singes at him to demystify this scheme you’ve concocted of taking him into your care. He knows it’s a part of your motivation to prove something to the Autobot medic, but it’s obscured by your willingness to… give him the benefit of the doubt?

He’s unsure what to discern from this.

“You don’t particularly what, fleshling?” He pushes, easing his tone to coax whatever looms in your nebulous field to somehow give away your state of mind.

Instead, you give an obscure amused huff. “I don’t particularly like doing suicide watch with you and would rather just chill out, knowing you won’t keel over and crush me if I take my eyes off you.” Your field moves back over to retrieve the pan. “Knowing you, you’d take me out with you.”

“You’d be correct in your assumptions, but are a blatant hypocrite.” He clicks his glossa irrately, knowing you’re changing the subject but leaving it be for now.

He tilts his helm. “You are one to speak of having a thin desire to live,” he drawls, almost pleasantly though the topic is anything but. He nods to where he can feel the blue life-blood thrumming. 

“The energon you are handling acts as an exposed energy source with waves and particles exuding from it as we speak. A form of radiation .” He feels your field jolt and comically flare with a pang of instinctual fear at the mention of the buzzword. “One you are handling with your bare hands-”

“I have garden gloves,” you point out hastily.

He can’t stop the squawk of disbelieving laughter that rushes out of his intake. “And what good will that do?”

But despite his attempts to frighten you into abandoning your task and having you waste more energon with the telltale clatter of the pan, you don’t move. Instead, you handle the full container in your servos and your field falls into a state of flummox. 

“I don’t want to die, screamer.” You plainly state, using that wretched designation he loathes. 

“Watch your loose glossa, before you lose it.” He threatens, but you blithely ignore him.

“The glove thing? I just didn’t know it was that toxic. I’m not looking to jump off the mortal coil anytime soon.” You puzzle out, and he furrows his brow as he is left with little reaction to observe than your own deliberation. “I just got nothing better to do than this, and it just so happens that a lot of what I'm doing now could… kill me? God, I sound like an adrenaline junkie.” 

Your detestable form exudes uncertainty, your breath catching as you search for your own answers. “I don’t know. Whatever this is, it’s better than doing nothing like I did before, so I… know I’ll keep doing it. Maybe.”

He is stumped to find the answer is satisfying enough, or at least, understandable enough to pass through his scrutiny. It oddly harkens back to his line of decisions in recent decacycles. 

Monotony is always somehow worse.

He sharpens his features quickly to escape his thoughts. 

“Lazy beast,” he grits, catching you off guard. “Do not just stand there philosophizing. I…” He groans. “I… cannot lift my arms for long enough to consume the energon directly from the cube on my own. If you insist on transporting it manually to me, then do so already!”

Your field stands there, discombobulated with a hopeful astonishment.

He growls. “With haste, insect.”

You kick a pebble at his plating at the degrading designation, which he swiftly shields with the foil sheet you’ve given him, but at least you begin to move toward him. He will review his processor’s logs with extreme methodicality as soon as he has time alone before his recharge cycle.

-/-/-/-/-/-

Fixing the van Starscream had crushed was an impossibility. The poor thing had been crushed before it could do a full alarm cycle rotation and was hauled aside to a corner of your lot, along with any scattered pieces you found lying on the ground.

By coincidence, when picking up the steering wheel strewn on the ground, you’d find it was a model similar to the one in your Omni previously. Not a perfect match but adjustments could be made.

This brought you to the current moment, pushing your cart of car repair and maintenance supplies along the unstable gravel path.

The wheels of your cart screeched, parched, and in desperate need of oil. Your belongings rattled atop of it and threatened to jump ship from their shelves. Your hair had long come undone as you leaned forward to press your weight into the side for momentum.

You’d gotten a rock stuck in the gap between one of your wheels.

Starscream listens from his spot, having remained rooted right next to the van he hadn’t crushed when he’d collapsed. He still refused to move, but at least now he had more space to sit crisscross on the ground. Currently, he’s lying down, better after having drunk the energon offered to him but still woozy from the effects of starvation and Bulkhead is a couple of days late in his delivery.

You’ll call the base later when you have the time… or maybe just phone Agent Fowler and save you the awkwardness.

You eye Starscream’s curled up form under the reflective car sheets you’ve lent him.

You wonder if Agent Fowler knows about any of this? 

Starscream’s optics flit open and jolt you out of your pondering. 

His face takes on a look of mild disgust. “What are you staring at?”

You turn away, feeling your cheeks heat up at being caught. 

Seriously how does he do that????

“Nothing,” you respond quickly and keep pushing your cart with twice the amount of force and drawing a curling whine from your throat at the effort.

Starscream clamps his servos to either side of his helm as he clenches his dental plates.

“What in Primus are you doing that is causing all that infernal racket?” He demands. “Don’t you have anything better to do? Maybe something less disruptive?”

“Disruptive to you, maybe!”  You turn around and start pushing with your back. “You’re the only one complaining!”

He fully pokes his head out of the sheets, highly offended. “I was recharging, you simpleton!”

“Oh, you were?”  That gives you pause and you immediately shove away from the cart, panting. You rub the back of your head, suddenly bashful and embarrassed. “Ah, sorry.”

You go to gesture at the broken van, but drop your arm last second. “I’m fixing up my Omni with pieces of the van you crushed yesterday.”

He raises a metal brow. “Does that happen often?”

“My cars being pancaked into metal shaves and pulp?” You laugh humorlessly as you budge the cart forward another inch. “No, only when you’re around.”

His wings rattle behind him in agitation. “I meant you fixing your scrap automobiles with other pieces of things?!” He snarls.

Your mouth falls into a small ‘o’ and you rock on the balls of your feet. 

“Yeah, sometimes.” You pause to wipe away a bead of sweat. “I have to make do since there’s not really any repair shops around here and all my business revolves around the cars being in tip-top condition to sell.”

Starscream’s irritated expression lifts into something pensive and his optic actuators cycle a few times. 

“So you’re resourceful?” He finally asks and by that point your interest in the conversation has fallen.

“Yeah yeah, the human is smart enough to hammer metal together, whatever,” you flippantly dismiss, not willing to let the conversation continue and divulge into a roast session on your intelligence, which for some reason is everyone’s favorite conversation topic with you.

Starscream looks as if he’s debating whether to say something else before he shakes his helm with a deep ex-vent. You eagerly keep pushing your cart to escape, but catch from the corner of your eye as he shuffles uncomfortably in his sheets.

He slides his optics shut with a clearing of his intake that sounds like a cough. 

“Vos was a city-state sovereign from Cybertron,” he begins primly. “It was not engaged in the direct power vacuum occurring in the cities of the grounder vehicles. Instead, proudly self-governed and foreign.”

You jump a little in surprise as Starscream pulls the reflective covers further along himself, absently.

“Are you… from Vos?” You ask slowly.

He gives a sharp glare in your direction. “Yes, you idiot! Pay attention!” 

“Sorry, I don’t know the geology of your fucking planet! I don’t exactly have a map!” you argue, stepping back and ready to disengage and continue on your tasks quietly. “Why tell me about someplace I don’t know crap about, anyway?”

“'Geography,’ you wretch,” he corrects abrasively. 

“A slip of the tongue,” you quip back, brow furrowed and feeling self-conscious all of a sudden. “That doesn’t make me stupid.” You scoff, clapping your hands together with a huff. “You know what, I don’t even know what I’m talking to you for.”

Quickly growing frustrated, and still sore on the topic of how much you don’t know about your only company and friends in the past several months, your social battery quickly drains. You continue pushing the cart away with a grunt, struggling against the gravel obstructing the wheels. 

You expect that to be the end of it, the conversation shut down by another ‘we’re gonna stay tentatively quiet for the rest of the day’ routine, but Starscream’s raspy voice sounds again from behind you. 

“You wanted an education on my involvement in the war. Did you not?” Starscream asks, and it’s abrupt but not offhanded. It was likely the most neutral talking point he’d offered during his time here.

An invitation. He’s inviting you to speak with him.

It’s enough to freeze you where you stand and cautiously humor the olive branch shoved into your proverbial hands. You wracked your brain for an instance when you did ask such a question to him about his past but come out short.

“I… asked about your involvement with Megatron and stuff,” you trail away quietly. “But I didn’t-”

“Then, shut up,” he hisses harshly. “I will not be repeating myself again if your inferior audials miss something.”

“... you’re giving me a lore drop?” You ask, bewildered. 

Starscream is thoroughly unamused at the description of his life story and bears his denta, from which, at such close proximity, you catch the glint of fangs protruding from the plates. “Quiet, fool, before I change my mind.”

Despite your hesitance at his rudeness, your lips press closed. Though the Autobots dropped tidbits and pieces of information about the war, no one talked about the event at length. Optimus had once mentioned the mass exodus of their planet when you first met as an explanation for the Autobots’ presence on Earth, but nothing more. 

You were frankly starved for information, and however inappropriate it was to enjoy the pursuit of this specific knowledge, you felt it sacred to hear the account of the ex-Decepticon in front of you. A hallowed glimpse into a history that long extends past you and several lifetimes over.

“I was the Chancellor of Vos, at one point.” He pauses, flitting his optics back open sluggishly. “Only under the Winglord, appointed directly by him as head of government and foreign affairs, proudly adorned with recognition of being a skilled fighter, having a high education, and having the prestige of pedigree.”

You study his face for any reaction to follow and mirror amicably but find no leads as Starscream’s expression is blank. 

You throw a shot in the dark. “Sounds like you were really powerful…?” You wince at the uptake in your own voice underlining your uncertainty to him, who turns to look at you. “No duh, I mean-- Uhm, but… did you like it?”

Starscream doesn’t mind the dull comment, and if he does, he doesn’t make it outwardly known to you. He only gives a low hum in response. “I find myself lacking in complaints, even now,” he drones and it sounds far away.

“It was an experience of nothing else.” His wings slightly twitch as he waves a servo up. “I would fly above the skies of Vos to the highest point of the capital, surveying my dominion as the sun in our system rose to cover the city in a shining light.”

“Did you have a ‘everything the light touches is yours’ moment with your dad?” You ask lightly with a joking smile, but Starscream scrunches his faceplate with distaste. 

“No, you pest,” he scolds. “I earned my place through grueling work, not through the nepotism of your cartoon mammalians.” 

It’s your turn to raise a brow. How the fuck does he know what the Lion King is?

You don’t get a chance to ask as he continues. “I was well-respected and recognized among Vossian citizens-- seekers-- but not so much in Iacon, where my status meant little more than business proposals and unwanted advances for the sake of power-plays from grounders who marveled at the ‘elusiveness’ of my kind.” His voice takes on a sour tone as he speaks before he’s outright grimacing in thinly veiled disgust.

“People like that don’t respect anybody,” you voice quietly, a similar disdain seeping through in your tone that has Starscream’s helm turning to face you in faint interest. “Those types of people just want what you can offer them. They’re so unashamed of their behavior, they don’t even hide it, how obvious they are.” 

He tilts his head to you and you mirror him. “It happens here too,” you explain plainly.

His helm lingers in your direction for a moment, pauses, and waits for you to continue, then turns away after you make no move to say anything further.

“Regardless of circumstance, I attended and graduated top of my class at the Iacon Science Academy. I-”

“What did you study?”

Starscream blinks, resetting his vox with the quietest pop. “Pardon?”

“You went to a science academy, right? That’s a pretty studious field, so you must’ve been super smart to get in,” you repeat, watching as Starscream’s optics slowly continue to widen. “So, what did you study?”

“... Geology,” he answers hesitantly, stiffly. His vocalizer hums with a static as he slowly adds, “I had an interest in geology as a subject.”

He blinks, straightening and haughtily tilting his helm away from you with a sniff. “The coursework was simple for me to complete and I found it quite dull at points, including most of my peer group.” He vents in a huff. “They could not tell simple mineral groups apart from one another and the oafs made fools of themselves on our tests and fieldwork.”

You roll your eyes. “Right, because you were such an expert of Cybertronian geology that you-“

“Earth.”

It’s your turn to be tripped up as you look over to Starscream. “What?”

“I was assigned to study Earth,” Starscream replies simply, and you feel there is somehow more to say behind that.

“Did you-“

“-like it?” He asks with a raised brow ridge. He scoffs. “I was assigned to it, I studied this miserable planet because it was mandatory.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” you deny, pleasantly surprised to find a trace of piqued curiosity lifted into his scrutinizing expression. “Did your thesis focus on anything specific here?”

Starscream paused, expression flitting back to something nervous as if caught in a lie. “Landscapes and weather, though I enjo— preferred— cataloging the mineralogy of baser materials found in Earth's topmost layers of sediment.”

His faceplate scrunches up in discomfort. “Seekers do not bode well underground, I’m afraid.”

You nod, deeply interested in these tidbits of information you’d never have thought would be associated with Starscream. You feel compelled to ask something further, however. 

“Were there any humans…?” You ask, a weird sort of anxious, cramped feeling balling up in your chest as you duck your head at your own question. “When you visited, I mean. I’m sure they looked different than what we do now, depending on when you came.”

“If there were, we never saw them,” Starscream dismisses with a shrug of his shoulder plates. “We always flew over most landscapes until we found a clearing land on. No engagement with the local wildlife was necessary as our field didn’t require information on such a useless subject.”

You deflate a little. You were interested in hearing a younger Starscream’s thoughts on humanity, one not tainted by war-efforts or conquering. Though you note his use of the word “we.” Before you can ask, he gives you a sharp nudge with his claw.

“No more interrupting, fleshling,” he hisses, then clears his intake once more. “Anyways, my personal studies aside, I had switched careers and engaged in general engineering and chemistry.”

He leans his helm back to look at you. “That was my delegated mastery.”

He taps his slender digits on the ground as he contemplatively looks up with a nostalgic gleam to his greyed optics. 

“Shortly thereafter, I applied for the Cybertronian High Guard,” His neck cabling straightens from its hunched position and his broken wings expand to his sides. A smirk accentuates his expression. “I was accepted immediately.”

You can’t help but smile at the unfiltered pride he displays in his achievements. Like a proud bird displaying its beautiful colored feathers, he looks every bit as you had observed of Starscream in the past, from afar— Boastful with a strong ego. Yet, this was a self-regard that wasn’t born out of how many Cybertronians he had killed on the opposite team, or his callous disregard for your species, but one that was young and inspired by passion, goals well-achieved, and decorating a part of his pre-war life.

A scientist, you note privately to yourself. 

“Congrats,” you offer genuinely, leaning over a car hood with your arms crossed, supporting you. 

Starscream’s injured right wing flicks, but he doesn’t verbally respond, brushing past you. 

“Word of my recruitment to the guard soon spread as I rose up in rank. Many of the members were fellow seekers, all skilled fighters, many having honed their skills in Vos, before departing to the cities of Cybertron on the main planet.”

He peeks both servos out from below the reflective sheets, fanning his digits out and beholding an imaginary figure. “Those loyal to me would look to me for sole leadership, ‘Chancellor of Vos’ some would refer to me in private. It was a loyalty that no grounder could sway without my endorsement and when Iacon, ‘The Golden City of Cybertron,’ revealed itself as the corrupt capital of the elite, my seekers closed ranks and followed my lead.” 

His broken wings swivel up fully as he straightens his spinal strut, revealing a heated expression from beneath the blankets, jaw set. “ My involvement in the Decepticon cause won Megatron various victories, numbers, skilled warriors, power.” His dermas curl back. “He never would’ve gotten so many seekers and flight frames on his side, if it were not for me. Their backing, their vote, their allegiance-- I did that! I practically gifted him that power, and what do I have to show for it?!” 

His servos curl into fists and cut into the fabric, claws poking through, but you don’t ask him to refrain from ripping apart the material, feeling the moment is too fragile to interrupt, lest Starscream retreat into himself if he’s reminded he has an audience.

It does no good either way. Starscream in a beat, seems to flip on the dime and slacken his hold on the fabric. His emboldened, righteous anger loses its edge as his faceplate slides into a detached expression. “No seekers remain now, except for myself and Darkwing, but he will not listen to me.” His expression retreats to something guarded, but no less displeased. 

“Why not?” you tentatively ask, pressing carefully. “He’s a seeker, like you said. Wouldn’t he follow you before anyone else? You’re like their king!”

“Not a king, per say,” he corrects monotonously. “Regardless, it’s been too long of a time stretch. It has been centuries since my previous title meant anything to anyone. Not since Cybertron fell, at least.”

“But, what about that loyalty you talked about?” You argue gently, not wanting to push and turn the first constructive conversation you’ve had with Starscream into a screaming match. “Surely there must’ve been people who didn’t care if your title was valid anymore or not.” 

Starscream’s optical apertures dial inward, pinning but not quite pin-pricking or dilating. He says nothing before a near inaudible ex-venting leaves his frame and sags him further into the ground as his optics go half-lidded. His wings, that had once been held high in his bravado, slid down to rest on the ground with a dull “thunk.”

“Little after I joined the Decepticons, I was beaten in front of my troops,” Starscream mutters slowly. “They weren’t mine after that. I never did regain that same amount of respect back.”

He curls further into the covers. “I couldn’t leave, not until I got it all back.”

Your mouth falls open in a wordless gape and you don’t ask any further questions. You’re not sure what you could say anyways. Saying sorry feels odd to say when you don’t know Starscream well enough and you can’t fathom the loss of a concept of respect from people, your people. 

You’ve never had people to begin with, except for the Autobots, though you feel that connection is further away on some days and stuck on an endless loop of being caught unaware of how much you’re not as integrated with them as you think you are.

Still, “sorry” feels appropriate.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” you say, and it feels earnest in a way that opens your chest up and leaves you vulnerable. 

It’s a small thing to say, but Starscream tips his helm to it all the same, though he looks absent and in another place when he does it. You decide not to bother him about it anymore and step away to continue salvaging the Omni.

For now, Starscream and you at least share this space of limbo and quiet. Awkward in ending and solemn in nature, but there’s at least an understanding that furthermore doesn’t need to be said from either of you. You rest in that balance beam with him for the duration of the day.

Chapter Text

Starscream had proven to be less of a threat to your life than you had anticipated initially. With a week gone by, he’d spent most of it inert and docile, except for an occasional derogatory comment towards you. However, those have lessened too since you’ve been feeding him by hand.

The problem now is how to continue feeding him as your pan now scrapes the bottom of the glass cube.


You stretch yourself forward as much as you can without falling in, but once your compressed lungs run out of air and your pan can’t scoop out anymore energon, you’re forced back up for breath. You’ve been holding your breath in case of fume traces from the Energon. You can’t quite remember if they do release vapor.

“We’re reaching the bottom of the barrel here,” you mutter despondently to yourself as your feet plant on the ground. “Barely enough to fill a pan anymore.”

You stare at the miserable puddle in the tin, swishing it back and forth as if it’ll multiply the amount. It only does so visually.

The amount is comparable to a spoonful in Starscream’s proportions. 

You sigh, expelling the air heavily through your nostrils as you turn to your quiet companion beside you.

“Rationing this out is gonna be a lot harder if we don’t get you more soon.” You state the obvious, if only to strike up a conversation with Starscream.

He doesn’t react.

You had forgotten how unnerving it was to be in a place so quiet for so long. Starscream, you imagined, would’ve been a barrier between the current reality of the empty silence surrounding you now, given the lack of people or Cybertronians to talk to.

But beyond your out-of-place, almost pleasant history lesson a few days back, Starscream hadn’t said much more than a few disgruntled remarks about your close proximity to him. Starscream, being a creature of habit as you’ve come to find out, has kept true to his routine of saying little and recharging in long cycles in the same spot he’d carved out for himself when he first arrived.


You spent the week arranging cars and trucks around the space to provide proper cover for your begrudging guest. Starscream had complained about the noise until you explained the necessity to hide him from plain sight, then had made no other demands, except not to disturb him from his spot. 

You note that he’s never once complained about his untreated injuries. You also note they’ve been healing far too slowly, and he awkwardly balances himself when he sits up as if it pains him to do it. 

You shift your weight between each foot before switching tactics. 

“It’s good timing,” you say with a smile. “We’ve been keeping you on a re-feeding syndrome dosage schedule so you’ll have at least enough for a couple more days. ‘Think you’ll be ready to up your intake of energon once we get a new shipment from Bulkhead?”

Starscream’s brow furrows downwards slowly as you talk, before he finally raises his helm off the ground.

His offline optics squinting at you, disgruntled. “What nonsense are you on about a syndrome?” 

Despite his impatient tone, there’s genuine confusion behind the question that renders it as non-rhetorical. You leap at the chance to talk.

“Refeeding syndrome,” you repeat. “It’s pretty much in the name, it happens after you start feeding someone again.”

Starscream slits his optics, glaring warningly at you. You feel yourself start to stumble a little.

“Um, you know, since you’ve been, uh…” You trail off at the words. Starving yourself.

Since your recent neutral interaction with Starscream, the topic of his purposeful refusal of food had been a sensitive topic to broach. At least for you, it was.

It was morbid to hold the aftermath of that moment as the pivotal event that marked a significant improvement in your cohabitation with Starscream. Morbid because acknowledging that, you’d also have to carry the “what if’s” if you hadn’t been so quick to get him to refuel when he was unconscious and overheating.

Starscream eventually breaks his stare and looks off to the side.

“I do not understand,” he admits, sounding frustrated. “Do humans have such a concept of illness related to fuel consumption?”

“When we stop,” you clarify for him. “When we don’t eat for a long period of time, it can make it hard for our bodies to process even a regular amount of food, er, fuel. We can get really sick.”


You shift the pan again. “Or die.”


Starscream’s optic wheels do an exaggerated roll up to the sky, and, optic lights on or not, you know what that gesture means.


“Dick,” you mutter under your breath.

You come up to a stop before his faceplate, taking notice of all the scratches on the surface of his metal face up close. There's a deep cut on his cheek plate that looks old, given that no traces of energon are dried on the jagged metal or freshly leaking from it. You don’t think you’ve ever seen it on Starscream’s icon picture on the base’s main computer.

You bump the pan to his intake with a ‘dink!’

Starscream’s optics flick, the apertures moving at the contact but you can’t tell where they land without the pupils to help guide them. He opens his intake and silently suctions the energon off the tin pan. 

You watch as the energon drains, watching his chassis expand with air.

“Our systems don’t require refueling schedules,” he mutters as he pulls back to swallow. You blink back up to his face as he moves back in for more.

“No?”

Starscream's optics cycle, before he pulls off from the pan, the energon in the pan having been drained.

“No,” he answers after a beat. “Our systems are able to process energon without any time delays or consumption blocks. Unless we’ve gone without refueling long enough that our fuel tanks rust from building condensation.”

Starscream sneers with a dark glower. “Something that your planet has in abundance.”

“Didn’t your engine get drowned in that lake you fell in?” you ask, watching him stiffen up at the mention of the body of water.


“My… engine sustained some water damage,” he admitted slowly. “Although sustained starvation would be more catastrophic to my frame due to our energon lines having to simultaneously distribute energy and draw the required energy from already limited resources, including our sparks.”

Unaware of the horror dawning on your face, he tips his helm up in thought. “I suppose in a sense Cybertronians do bear such a limitation in regards to engine damage from water, but given your arid landscapes and infernal ground temperatures, I will dry out quickly. And as long as I am well-fuelled soon, the rust build-up should be--” 

“You’re telling me you get the equivalent of heart damage, and you’re not the least bit concerned?” You cut him off incredulously, aghast, running a gloved hand through your hair thoughtlessly. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Starscream’s optics slit into an impatient look. “You already did the necessary steps.”

“Yeah, but on a fluke!”

“I thought the medic taught you something about Cybertronian medicine. I can’t imagine he’d be a riveting conversationalist beyond his areas of comfort.”

You pause, suddenly embarrassed. “He… didn’t teach me much beyond how to weld up scratches and dents.”

Starscream’s helm slides back in your direction. “Nothing else?”

You shake your head. “No, I was on minor bumps and scratches duty.”

Starscream’s dermas pull into a light frown. “Strange. I was under the impression that…” 

“What?” You ask, self-conscious and curious. 

The interest you show seems to make Starscream deflate as he schools his expression and levels you with a bothered glare. “Never mind, fleshbag,” he curtly waves away.

You scrunch your face into dissatisfied scrutiny but relent with a roll of your eyes and turn to refill the oil pan. 

“I have a name, you know,” you remind him, changing the subject. 

“Good for you,” he purrs, thick with sarcasm and disinterest. “Do you want recognition for such a mediocre accomplishment?”

You slump into a blank expression. “Right, right. ‘Can’t ask for miracles.”

You dip yourself forward into the energon cube but quickly grow restless as the tin pan makes a sharp scraping noise against the glass bottom, making your eardrums shrivel. What’s worse is that your body, without the ungodly density of the energon holding the case down, tips forward, and you nearly dunk face-first into the eerie, glowing mesophase liquid. 

You swear your heart stops beating when you can feel the humming of the energon kiss at your nose.

You yank yourself back up quickly, darting a hand out to steady the cube back onto the ground as you settle your heart rate back to normal. You quickly check that your hair is still tied up tight behind you and happily find that none of it has dipped forward and dunked into the energon below. 

Unhappily, however, you’re now left with an even more pitiful amount of energon in hand than that of the previous serving.

It’s definitely not worth taking a nosedive into Chernobyl’s second foot right beside you. 

As you place your hand over your racing heart, that very simple gesture is enough to suddenly cause your stomach to tighten up with the furious writhing heat of anger. Your previous panicked face hardens as your brush with casual death ignites a very fiery desire to voice your displeasure in strong words to someone.

Someone should’ve checked up on you by now, and it’s only now that you realize how much it hurts that no one has come to your aid or give you a break.

“Ok, I’m done,” you declare, patience quickly shriveling up. “Someone better have a good explanation, cuz I swear to god, they’ll need one when I get a fucking hold of ‘em!”

You set the pan on the ground and quickly pull off the gardening gloves on your hands, fishing out your phone from your pocket. Starscream’s helm follows after the noise of your irritated pacing against the gravel.

“Where are you going?” He calls after you.

“Nowhere.” You eye the first number on Speed Dial to the base, but find yourself scrolling past it. 

Ratchet’s the most consistent person able to answer communications at any given time, and given that he hasn’t made so much as an attempt to contact you since the last time you’ve talked, you don’t want to complain to him.

In fact, you don’t want to talk to him.

“I’m calling Agent Fowler,” you reply distractedly as you punch the number on your phone. “Bulkhead should’ve shown up by now with a new ration of energon and to touch base.”

Starscream’s faceplate gains an annoyed pinch to it.

“Must you have that loud oaf invade this space?” He grouses. “He’s a nuisance.”

“Bulkhead or Agent Fowler?” you ask distractedly.

“Bulkhead, you worm,” Starscream rattles angrily. “I don’t even know who this ‘Fowler’ character is!”

You furrow your brow. “Agent Fowler,” you repeat. “The government human agent guy.”

Starscream doesn’t react to the attempt to jog his memory. Your mouth drops open in disbelief.

“The guy you kidnapped and tortured for intel, just a few months back?!” You try, voice going up in pitch. “You electrocuted him with a rod, for god’s sake!”

Starscream’s expression doesn’t lift into recognition like you hoped it would; if anything, it drops further into irritation. 

“Oh, please, you’ll have to be more specific than that,” he groans. 

You actually don’t even know what to say to that.

“… he flies an F-16?” You hiss out in a pleading tone that makes it sound more like a question. “Sometimes a helicopter.”

Those details seem to be what makes a glimmer or recognition flash through Starscream’s faceplate.

“Oh, that one,” he remarks unimpressed. He waves a servo around flippantly. “Do what you like, but do not have him come here. He’s an insult to my frame type and to flight modes everywhere.”

“Well, I think he’s pretty good at flying,” you poked, enjoying the disgusted sneer Starscream raises at you. “I think you just don’t like that he can fly better than you.”

Starscream scoffs. “Tch! That pathetic flesh bag was captured by the likes of Laserbeak. I would not give your agent such high honors.” 

“Laserbeak?” You questioned. You don’t recognize the name.

“Soundwave’s deployer,” Starscream elaborated, but you still feel the explanation is flying over your head.  

“What’s a deployer?” You tilt your head. “Is that another type of Decepticon?”

“A frame type, imbecile,” Starscream corrected sharply as his expression grew suspicious. “I thought you’d be familiar with basic identification of key Decepticons, given your human pest-pack’s previous meddling involvements with our kind.”

Your breath hitches. “I… I’ve only been around full-time for a few months, give or take.”

Starscream holds his glare at you for a few seconds longer, searching for an inkling of dishonesty before turning away.

“Strange they wouldn’t consider informing you of the designations and descriptions of enemy forces,” he considers out loud, an edge of amusement coating his voice. “How negligible of them to send you out into your measly habitats without proper warning of potential dangers beforehand.”

You blink up, owlishly at him as his words wash over you. Though there’s a level of admonishment and mockery towards your friends… Starscream has a point.

Of course, if you were suddenly swept off the street by some mech you didn’t know or recognize from base, it’s logical to assume it could be a Decepticon. The obvious logo decorating their frames could also tell you as such.

But does that even matter when Cybertronians have cloaking technology and disguise themselves well enough to fool most people?

Identifying them beforehand as a preventative measure would help with that.

If you see a bot with this paint color scheme and carrying this weapon, and blah blah blah, they’re X amount of dangerous. Stay away from them!

Would it be so hard to show you a picture and give you a warning?

Do the kids already know Lazerbeak? Or are you the only one who doesn’t?

At least at the base, you didn’t worry about the potential dangers of the outside world beyond the cloaked walls of the canyon-hidden outpost, but you have no such security in numbers living out here alone. It’s part of the reason why you chose to stick around base once Optimus explained the increasing danger of leaving their human allies vulnerable and alone. 

Now, being back at home, you’re floundering because of the feeling that you’re no better off than a sitting duck. At least the kids lived in the suburbs or within the city bustle to be cloaked enough amongst other humans who could report to the authorities. Parents, teachers, schoolmates.

And you’re just… here. Alone, if not for Starscream in your yard.

Why are you the only one that doesn’t know shit about who could come after you? When you think about it, truly, you don’t even know what SOUNDWAVE looks like.

Asking Starscream about the dangers… is an option. That is, if he decides to stay estranged from the Decepticons and if he wants to indulge you.

That’s a big “if.” 

Going back to the Autobots, assuming that you would’ve at some point commuted out of the base to your previous home--not that you would’ve, but for the sake of hypotheticals--would anyone have told you about someone like Lazerbeak? About the dangers, for the sake of your safety, while living alone? 

When you stop to think about it, you’re already living the worst-case scenario of unpreparedness.

WHY are you in the WORST-CASE scenario???

“They probably just forgot.” You uttered, far delayed in responding to Starscream, that the words hang awkwardly off your tongue and stick into the air like a blatant sore. 

They sound too weak to be convincing. You’re unsure of your answer enough as it is.

Starscream’s optical lenses are cycled once more, dilating and pining, but again, you don’t know where they land.

You shake your head to drive out of your doom-spiral and finally dial the number previously prepared on your phone. As Agent Fowler’s name slides across your miniature screen and you hear the dial tone ring out, you feel your chest tighten at the prospect of finally getting some answers. 

Without telling you, Starscream turns his auditory input range up to tune in to your conversation.

-/-/-/-/-/-;

You rub your temples, eyes closed. “Just double-checking my numbers, because maybe I just have my dates mixed up, but I thought Bulkhead was supposed to be here a couple of days ago.”

||”No, your math is correct.”|| You hear the shuffle of papers and the scribbling of a pen on the other end.

“Aaaand?” You pinch the phone between your ear and shoulder, clapping your hands. “C’mon, Fowler! Give me the deetz. What is going on over there? Cuz I’m literally going bonkers over here trying to figure out if anyone’s still alive out there or if I’m getting ghosted.”

More like searching for whose neck to wring out.

You pace around your lot, phone tightly held between your fingers, trying to slow your angry speech while talking into the receiver. Despite the sun being high in the sky and baking your head to a crisp, you desperately needed the space to walk off the excess energy, lighting your feet on fire as an anxiousness pools in your belly.

Bulkhead was late by about a week.

You thought you would’ve heard back from someone by now, but you hadn’t heard a peep from the Autobots. Starscream wasn’t particularly disturbed at this since he seemed quite pleased to have the space for himself to lounge carelessly in as he recovered.

Currently, he’s on his side, curled under the reflective windshield shade sheets you’d given him. He’s tucked them all around himself as best he can with all the singular sheets laid on him, all previously belonging to your cars and repurposed for Starscream now.

You lift a brow as you watch his servo twitch to catch a sheet that was slipping off his arm.

Maybe you could pull out an old sewing machine from storage and sew the pieces together in a large space blanket for him. It’s certainly easier for him to handle than—

||”-Are you listening?”|| You hear the raised voice assaulting your eardrum closest to the speaker and rattling you out of your thoughts. Starscream’s helm slides in your direction at your jolt.

You wince, switching the phone to your other ear. “Yeah, yeah, Fowler. I’m here. Just a little distracted.”

You kick a small pebble with your shoe. “And hungry. Dude, i got, like, no food left in my fridge or pantry. I need someone to come take--”


||”Take what?”||


You pause.


You weren’t sure if anyone told Agent Fowler about Starscream being left in your backyard, and don’t think he’d appreciate being told over the phone without a conversation with Optimus first.


For your sake, you hope someone told him. You don’t want the man to scream into your ear and have a hernia over the line if you were the first to tell him.


You’d rather not poke that particular bear and out yourself unnecessarily if they hadn’t.


You swallow before catching yourself. “Take me out to the baaaall game~ Bridge me out of this hellhole desert~! For just five minutes, so I can stop living on stale oatmeal and grits.”


||”It takes longer than five minutes to go get groceries from your location. And don’t you have a car, young lady?”||


You glance at your crushed Omni a few feet away. “Engine trouble.”


||”Well… It’s been real busy over here lately.”||

“Still… no one could’ve, I dunno, called me to tell me they’d be late?” Your neck and ears heat up. You feel stupid for asking, though you keep reminding yourself that it’s not an unreasonable ask. It’s still not enough to stop your face from burning in embarrassment.

||”Typically, this sort of info is on a need-to-know basis between government personnel and the Autobots. Civilians wouldn’t--”||

“--wouldn't count as a ‘need-to-know’ party,” you finish for him monotonously, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Yeah, I figured.”


You are unable to hold back the scoff that comes out of you.


“Funny how I don’t get told squat when I’m an adult capable of understanding shit,” You start, feeling unable to stop the rising indignant lilt to your tone. “But when it’s the kids, they get to know about world-ending events and sneak out on missions— hell, they get invited to them!”

You can’t help the sharp, angry huff that leaves your mouth as a rebellious voice rallies into your mind and burns at your chest at the hypocrisy.

You throw your offhand up, tipping your head up to the sky, “I’m not asking for much here, just a phone call to know what’s up. I’m still part of the base’s team, aren’t I?”

Fowler forces out a few cut-off syllables to spill from his mouth before he trails off, uncertain. Your neck heats up as you listen to him struggle for a response with a slow-sinking horror.

||“...It's just a matter of circumstance, I guess.”|| He pauses, before sternly adding, ||”And for the record, those kids shouldn’t be participating in missions.”||

“Didn’t you let Jack go to Cybertron?” You counter, unable to keep a slight bite to your words.

Fowler scoffs. ||“I didn’t intend for it. It was some ‘chosen one’ Luke Skywalker rule. I only helped the boy get there safely.”||

“Right,” you say dryly, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Makes perfect sense.”

||“Well, I’m not the George Lucas here. Prime is, apparently, and I’m not sure that giant tin can or the others even know what a child is.”||

You lift a brow. “Don’t they have the concept of that with sparklings?”

||”Sparklings?”||


Starscream makes a noise in the background that has you flipping him off over your shoulder.

“It’s their word for babies.”

||”Oh.”||

His stunned silence stretches long enough that you call out his name again to get his attention. 

He clears his throat. ||”I… don’t ask about that.”||

“Afraid you’ll learn too much?” You tease with a smile.

An audible shudder passes through the receiver. ||”’Afraid I won’t learn how to forget is more like it.”||

You laugh stiffly.

||”Though, the matter still stands. You wanna talk about… things?”||

You bite your lip hard to keep yourself from jumping at the offer, desperately wanting to confide your frustrations with someone rather than keeping to the echo chamber of your mind.

But…

…You don’t want to sound like a raging asshole who’s got it out for them. They barely even know you, and you’re pretty sure you’ve heard Miko ask, more than once, why you’re even there.


As much as it hurts to hear that, you know it’s not her fault when you don’t go out of your way to talk to the children. Not really.

You spend most of your time hiding from the other humans in the base, except for Fowler. You’re unnerved at how discomforted you feel at the kids’ presence sometimes. Not because they’re children, but because you feel like you’ve been thrown into the deep end of something you got a last-minute invite to.

You smile sadly. “Nah, I haven’t had the best luck lately opening my big, damn mouth.” 

||”If it helps… they don’t tell me everything either,”|| Fowler presses gently, though his voice does drop into a disgruntled grumble.


You wisely keep your mouth shut.


||”Didn’t get much of a report when that cowboy-type hammerhead maverick made a surprise visit at home base.”||

You lift a brow with an amused twitch to your lips. “He's got a name, Fowler.” 

||”Wheeljack.”|| Fowler amends the name with a very annoyed grit. ||”A rare sight to see, but he certainly leaves a lot of property damage behind to mark his whereabouts.”|| 

You snicker. “Meaning paperwork for you, huh?”

||“… it’s honestly cruel how much there is.”|| 

That cracks a smile out of you.

Fowler then quiets down to a probing tone. ||”So, what’s this about you putting your foot in your mouth lately?”||

You freeze, sucking in a wary breath. 

“Erm, it’s… complicated?” You run a hand through your hair. “A series of unfortunate events, if you will.”

An exasperated huff. ||”Complicated? With those automobiles, what isn’t?”||

You rock yourself backward and recline on a stack of tires, dusting them quietly with your offhand.

“I’m in the doghouse,” you offer plainly, pressing the wobbly edges of your tone flat.

You can almost see the way Fowler’s head must be tilting on the other end of the receiver. ||”For what exactly?”||

“The whole thing with Ratchet and--”

Then clasp a hand to your mouth, but by then it’s too late. 

||”About what?”|| Fowler’s voice takes on a suspicious edge. ||”What did you do?”||

You furrow your brow, feeling your heart rate pick up slightly. “‘Don’t remember starting a game of twenty questions, Fowler-Buddy.”

Fowler draws out your name in the lightest scolding tone of a parent.

You clench the phone between your shoulder and ear, pressing your fingers together in a conspiratorial, scheming peak worthy of a Bond villain.

“Tell me what’s going on in base and I'll indulge you in gossip,” you demand curtly.

Fowler sputters. ||”I don’t gossip!||

You wait patiently until you hear a defeated sigh.

||“Fine. Answers for answers, then.”||

He leans into his phone, his voice clearer and lower in volume.

||“Mech soldiers have been spotted entering a national park earlier this week, armed to the teeth and accompanied by Silas.”|| 

You don’t notice Starscream’s helm shoot up from the ground in alarm. 

Fowler drew a weary breath. ||“No idea what they could’ve been doing there, we lost surveillance when the tree density increased too much for our sky drone to follow.”||

Your mouth pops open with surprise. “Ah. So is that why I haven't heard from anyone at base in a while?”

||“Outpost Omega 1, I imagine, ideally wouldn’t be contacting anyone outside of the bots’ built-in comm-links.”|| He sternly says before pausing. ||“Well, ideally either way. The kids have the-”||

“Ask him where they are located.”

“W-what?” You ask, a little lost.

You whirl around a half-second late, startled when you find Starscream’s face looming over your shoulder. Your head swivels back and forth from his original nesting spot to where he is now, bewildered as he’d made no noise.

“Useless creature,” he hisses. “Ask him for the coordinates of Mech's last recorded location.”

Fowler calls your name, alarm rising in his voice. ||“—Who is that?!”||

You pull away from the phone and wave your off-hand frantically at Starscream. “Dude! SHH!!”

“You, SHHH!” Starscream growls, leaning further into your space while using two claws to pluck your hand holding the phone towards him.

“Human, relay the coordinates of the forest MECH was spotted entering,” He demands, but he bristles impatiently as Fowler starts to yell something into the phone. “Quit your screeching! It is of utmost importance!”

“Why do you even want to know?” You ask, yanking your arm back as carefully as you can from the sharp points of his talons. 

“If they’re anywhere near here, I shall be an easy target for them,” Starscream growled, punching a fisted servo into the dry earth and causing the ground to shake. “Should they catch wind of my whereabouts, they’ll make quick work of dismantling me.”

He shivers. “With how easily they captured Breakdown, and his time kept under their dissection lights, they would know how to operate on our bodies for something as obscure as a T-Cog in no time.” 

He groans, scrubbing his servos down over his faceplate and dragging down. “And I gave them explicit information on our biology--! GAH!”

“I thought you wouldn’t be scared of a puny human?” You retort sarcastically, though you find yourself frowning as Starscream turns his helm away with a strained expression.

“Silas is not to be underestimated,” he grits, but the snarl he tries to form on his faceplate looks more like a frightened grimace.

It’s startling how quickly it disarms you.

You furrow your brow, eyes flicking around his faceplate sheepishly as you realize he’s actually really freaked out about this. “I guess I wouldn’t know. ‘Never met the guy.” 

You, in reaction to Starscream’s sudden weariness, ignore your better judgment and reach out to pat his shoulder plate. He flinches at your touch, blocking you away with his forearm but not outright throwing you across the yard. 

You blink owlishly at each other before you speak.

“I'm sure it’s fine. We would’ve seen Silas and his by now over the horizon if they were gonna storm the place.”


You go to reach again, but think better of it and drop your hand back to your side. “No one besides me and the Autobots knows you’re here.” You pause. “And Fowler.”

There’s a skeptical look on his faceplate, but it drops into a scowl as he waves you off. 

“Spare me your false sooth-sayings, fleshling.” He snips, turning away with a haughty look, but he lets your arm go. “That disgrace of a flyer human is still screaming into the receiver, by the way.” 

“How do you even hear that?” You ask, cowed, pushing his faceplate away from you, only to pull back when Starscream snaps his dentas near your elbow. “Hey! No biting!”

“You’re not to touch me, insect!” 

You ignore him in favor of answering the frantic agent at the other end of the line. 

You clear your throat as you nervously return the phone to your ear. “Helloooo~?”

||”Kid?! Where are you? Are you hurt?”||

You uselessly hang your tongue out of your mouth as you slouch into your shoulders from embarrassment. 

“Uhm, so remember the thing with Starscream that happened recently?” You start hesitantly.

The silence is barely broken by Starscream lifting his head in response to his own name. “What are you telling him about me?” 

“Your deepest darkest secrets, now, shush!”

You turned your back on a now-fuming Starscream before hesitantly pressing the speaker back to your ear. “I… may have taken Starscream in as a refugee? Prisoner??? I don’t know.”

“I am no one’s prisoner,” Starscream growls. “I could end your miserable life, right now, insect!”

||“IS THAT STARSCREAM?!”|| 

“No, this is Patrick,” you counter flatly.

Starscream ventilates out a huff of air. “As if my likeness could be captured in such a mediocre, disgusting cartoon character.”

You squint. “You both share a name.”

Starscream’s frame rattles in outrage. “Do not-!”

||”KID!”||

“Everyone just— QUIET!” You defend, covering your receiver with your hand, already anticipating that whatever of Starscream’s voice Fowler just heard, it was enough to freak the frazzled agent out further.


Incidentally, you hear a sharp, America-oriented swear and frantic shuffling on the other end.

“Seriously? No one told you,” You grit out, teeth gritted in a nervous half-smile, half grimace. “I thought the Autobots… heh…”

||”No and obviously those damn bots are gonna get Hell when I get to them.”|| Shuffling is heard on his end. ||”Now-- Coordinates?”|| 

“Oh, goody, he’s coming here,” Starscream purrs sarcastically, displeasure rolling off of him in waves. 

“Buzz off, eavesdropper,” You whisper-yell at him away from the receiver, but it’s no use as Starscream only bares his teeth at you in a warning snarl. You wrinkle your nose up at him.

He taps his claws, quite noticeably, might you add, next to you. His sharp digits click audibly in impatient succession, but his sharpened smile displays all his dentas in a too-wide display, eager. Like a cat well aware of the family bringing home a caged canary. 

It’s predatory.

Your ribs choose this moment to ache and remind you that Starscream is not one to shy away from snatching humans up for stress balls. Starscream’s blaise comment of keeping people away seems more of a warning than the offended, irritated comment you’d blown off earlier.

You dart the phone back up to your ear. “Fowler, don’t come here.”

Fowler’s voice pitches up in tone. ||”WHAT?! What in Sam Hill are you talking about?! Fuck it! I’m tracking your phone.”||

You rub your temples. “Oh, c’mon, it’s under control. I just need the big, sick bird’s food.”

“For the last time, I am not a sickly, disease-infested avian!” Starscream squawks from the sidelines.

You grit your teeth. “Oh my God! It’s military airplane terminology. Look it up!”

You press your phone closer to your ear and turn up the volume. “He’s just here temporarily for holding,” you explain as calmly as you can muster.

||”Holding my ass!”|| He cusses. ||”I’m tracking your coordinates and getting you out of there.”||

Your eyes widen.

“No, seriously. Whatever you’re gonna do, DON’T.” You turn away from Starscream, walking away and lowering your voice despite the seeker’s sounds of outrage, demanding to know where you’re going. “He’s been on good behavior, and he’s even given the Autobots some energon mining locations. We’ve got a good deal here.”

You chance a glance behind you, only to cinch your teeth together warily as you catch Starscream’s burning gaze from the corner of your eye. 

You swivel away, unnerved. “He might… also… try to kill you…?”

||”He’ll. Kill. You!”||

“He hasn’t yet!”

||”You wanna wait till he does?!”||

You teeter your head. “Not particularly.”

||“What’s the catch then, Rookie?! No way a ‘Con wrote out a goddamn peace treaty.”||

“Not really a peace treaty, no,” you mutter. “More like a tentative free trade agreement, you could say.”

Your eyes slide to the ground when Fowler doesn’t drop the subject and awaits your explanation. “I… keep Arcee from killing him… or Starscream from killing anyone else on base,” you finally answer, shrinking into your shoulders. “In exchange, we get resources… yay!”

||”That’s it?!|| Fowler bellows on ||“What’s keeping him from taking off and killing someone?! A civilian! O-Or any military personnel, should they have to respond?!||

You squint a little in thought. “Wouldn’t it be the Autobots responding?”

You hear the clacking of his dress shoes on tile as he paces. ||”Yeah, and aren’t they a ‘BIG HELP’ leaving you there-- ALONE-- with the damn CON!!”||

You wince at that last comment enough to tuck your head back into your shoulders with a flinch. 

Starscream has had the opportunity to kill you. Even now, with your back turned to him, he could smack your body into a bloody pulp with his servo or swat at you until you stop moving.

And yet he hasn’t taken a single swipe at you.

“He’s been on good behavior,” you cut in gently, much to Fowler’s disgruntlement. “He hasn’t made an attempt to leave or do anything.”

||”YET! Keep in mind, this is the same psycho who strung me up and electrocuted me!”||

You have to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one, pressing your lips in a firm line. 

“Is he still agonizing over such a small transgression?” Starscream complained, angling forward to make sure he was heard on the other end of the line. “Petty creature. I don’t think about him.”

“Oh my god! Shut. UP!” You yell, striding over to the far end of your lot and away from Starscream. “How are you even hearing this?!”

You huff in irritation, taking a deep breath before you circle back into the conversation. A note of somberness you can’t bypass filters into your tone as your shoulders deflate. “You’re right to be freaked out that there’s a war criminal in my backyard. You’re right, you’re right.”

||”Sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself of that.||

“I’m experiencing a dissonance here,” you admit before rubbing at your shoulders as you quiet your voice further. “He’s been kinda… off, lately.”

Fowler’s quiet on the other end for a moment, voice closer to the receiver when he returns. ||”Off… how?”||

You suddenly feel an unbearable sense of being watched, the skin on the back of your neck prickling. You turn just enough to catch Starscream’s helm turned to you, grey optics watching you with an unshakable intensity, and you’re so unsure if you’re actually being perceived or if this coincidence of meeting his optics is purely that. An unsettling coincidence. 

You shiver under his glare and grip your phone tighter.

“He lugged off to a corner of my lot and he just kinda… sat there--depressed,” you whisper into the mic. “We had a minor incident the other day, but he’s just been really, really inert and quiet.”

||”You sound worried about him.”||

You snort. “Just alert. Gotta keep an eye on him in case he falls over on me from sadness.”

||”Im serious! What’s keeping him from killing you?”||

You pause. You hadn’t really entertained your own speculation about that, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth. The turmoil of the past week has also not granted you the time to do so, either.

You’d assumed Starscream would be too weak to grab you or really cause harm, but… he’s gotta be thirty times your size. His grabbing you would be the equivalent of picking up a mouse.

“Maybe he likes me, maybe not. Maybe he’s too weak to pull it off,” you say, gaining strength in your voice. “But he’s got everything to lose if he decides to go off. So… mutually assured destruction it is, then.”

||“I don’t want you betting with your life.”||

“Believe me, I don’t either,” you defend helplessly. “I just… want to be of service and this is… yeah.”


You rub your temples while giving a humorless laugh into the receiver. “Me and my big mouth, right?” 

||”…I’ll come visit you.”||

You afford yourself a touched hum. “Bulkhead’s coming today, or he’s supposed to.”

||”I’ll hound at him to hustle then.”|| The beeping of a dial marker sounds on the other end. ||“Expect to see him in the next hour.”||

You whistle low. “Boy, aren’t you confident?”

||“Persuasive.”||

That gets a genuine laugh out of you, and you hear Fowler’s low, matching chuckle.

||”Take care. I mean it.”||

“I will,” you promise softly with a fond smile. “You too.”

He hangs up and the line goes dead.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/; 

“Well, Fowler’s gonna try his best with the phones. ‘Get their attention that way.” You clap your hands together. “So now we wait.”

Starscream huffs, his frame puffing up in irate discontent. “Isn’t it a bit reckless to leave such perilous information on my whereabouts on your primitive telecommunications device?”

You tilt your head, waggling your phone in your hand. “It’s a secure line. Fowler wouldn’t risk having conversations about living, giant robots getting out to any yahoo on a radio signal.”

Starscream hacks a laugh, crossing his arms. “Please! Find a wavelength Soundwave wouldn’t be able to decipher the encryption with enough time, especially with your primitive firewalls.”

“You guys tap phone lines often?” you asked offhandedly, picking at the battery panel of your phone. 

Starscream scoffs. “Such a misuse of Decepticon time and resources is beneath us—erm, me, or was.” His upper derma curls up. “Human technology is an embarrassing, pitiful advancement of a race compared to Decepticon engineering and technology. You’d be hard-pressed to find any self-respecting Decepticon who’d engage with such dull rendering fodder.”

You scrunch your face. “So… you wouldn’t waste resources scouring the web, but… you’d waste resources and manpower on tracking me?”


Starscream’s faceplate scrunches. “I wouldn’t waste scrap on you.”


“So you just magically know where I live?”

Starscream opens his intake, then shuts it, opens it again, then snarls, sitting up. “It-- It was a one-time thing! You--You were pathetically easy to track once we triangulated an increase in alien sighting information on the World Wide Web!”


Your face pales dramatically. “M-my internet search h-history?!”

“An ingenious idea, I know,” Starscream purred dramatically. 

“I took the liberty of noting all of the human comrades the Autobots had been spotted canoodling with.” Starscream's optics close as he boastfully places a delicate servo on his puffed-out chassis. “Being that I’m thorough, and you’re a first encounter, I’d ordered meticulous notation on all information about you.”


He deflates with a sneer as he kicks out a pede and plumes out dirt dust. “Including your wretched gravel pit’s coordinates.”

Your eyes dart all around his proud expression, blurring as you feel yourself sink into a stunned perplexity. “Why did no one come after me then?” 

Starscream paused. “For you? What for?”


You sputter incredulously, face heating up. “I-- I dunno! Like, bait or something?”


Starscream tilts his head up towards the sky to consider, dermas twisting in thought. “Humans are the weak links, I’ve always said that.”

He heaves himself off the floor into a seated position, wincing as some joint unknown to you creaks loudly with a metallic groan. Mylon sheets scatter off his frame and onto the floor, their reflective material momentarily blinding you as you look back at Starscream, whose gritting his denta as he adjusts, optics squeezed shut. His frame hisses a strained ex-vent as he continues. 

“The Autobots hadn’t bothered taking you to any secondary location all those years back,” Starcream explains idly as he drags his ankle up to rest against the other. “I’d figured that since you’d have no information on their presumed whereabouts, other than fleeting encounters and sparse talk, you’d be a lackluster asset--merely a point of visitation between the years--nothing truly irreplaceable as another human pet.”

Starscream picks up the fallen Mylon sheets and gingerly places them back on his shoulders. “I’d assumed correctly. Not a few solar cycles later, they would find those infant fleshies they’d gotten so uniquely invested in.”


He rolls his neck before redirecting his helm forward. “Humans are and will always be the weak link of the Autobots, but to be a link worth taking, it must be attached to the larger chain first. Securely. At least to give the illusion that it's attached securely and could cause enough of a rattle in the chains.”


His helm tilts further towards you. “And you? All alone, all the way out here-- you gave me no such impression.”

Your chest suddenly feels caved in and all the air sucks out. 

“Yeah,” you whispered hoarsely in agreement, wiping at your upper lip with your thumb. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Starscream’s damaged wings tick downwards in a stutter before pulling up. “...Naturally.”

You turn for a moment, swiftly wiping at your eyes as discreetly as you can.

You turn back towards your house to retrieve your tool cart, to give you something to do. If you have to spend time here with this fucking asshole, you’ll do it in silence while you work on your poor Omni. The poor bastard of a car is just gonna sit there like a crushed can anyway.

Not unlike Starscream, but at least the car can’t say anything cutting to you and make you feel like screaming.

You drag the rattling cart backward and grit your teeth at the scraping sound of the wheels dragging on the gravel, feeling frustration crackle at the embarrassed tears in your eyes and throat. The tools jump in every direction, some wrenches falling off the side into the stones before you snatch them back up with a grunt and slam them into a rusted toolbox.

You continue to tug, but the cart keeps getting stuck with every few inches of progress you make.

Starscream, furthermore, appears affected. Whether by the sound of the cart or from the lingering uncomfortable silence in the air, he’s craned his helm into his shoulders just enough to look like a scrunched in with a deep scowl on his faceplate. 

“Must you always bother with that infernal thing?” He asks, sniffing with abrupt disdain. “It’s grating.”

You pause. “The rolling cart?” You wipe a sniffle with your arm and wave him off. “It’s where I keep my tools to fix the car you stepped on, so yeah, I need it.”

Starscream clicks his glossa. “I am merely suggesting you do something else to waste your time. Something that doesn’t grate my audials, perhaps.”

That gets you to let go of your cart and look over at him with incredulity. “Dude. It’s my house.”

“And you are annoying me,” he counters snootily with a grit of his denta. “Now do some other activity before I throw your stupid little tray with wheels into the sky!”

“Like what?!”

“Anything,” he growls as his optics slit into a venomous look.

-----------

You drop a large pile of paper in thin pink plastic bags onto the dusty ground before dropping yourself down in a crisscross sit.

“Games! We’ll play one,” you explain simply as you thumb through the multiple dust-filled, musty newspapers. “The newspaper still has their puzzle sheets and games page somewhere… there should be a recent edition here if I’m still getting these damn things jammed into my mailbox.”

Starscream squints. “What do you want me to do?” He bares his denta in unpleasant derision. “In case you have forgotten, I cannot see. How in the Pit am I supposed to do any activities from your minuscule organic print data?”

“You’re gonna help me finish a crossword puzzle,” You explain with a beaming smile up at him, like a cat who caught the canary. Your amusement is so richly palpable, you could taste it in every saccharine sweet syllable spilling from your tongue. “You said to pass the time another way; This is how humans pass their time.”

“I meant for you to do so in silence,” Starscream snarls irritably as his wing scraps ruffle and lift behind him.

You shrug. “You should’ve said so earlier.”

“I am still unable to see.”

“You don’t need to see to know words in the English dictionary.” 

“Is your brain so heavily glitched you require assistance in juvenile activities?” He snaps. 

“Your brain is like a fucking supercomputer! In comparison, sure, I’m braindead,” You respond distractedly as you slide the paper stack out of its bag. “Besides, these puzzles get tricky sometimes, and I only know so many words that go past 6 letters--Look! This column has twelve spaces, right here!”

“I CAN’T SEE IT!”

“I’ll describe it to you!”

He tosses his helm back with a frustrated, bemoaning groan of utter maiming restraint, but you ignore him, licking your thumb and flipping through to the crossword section. You get your pen at the ready. “O-kay! Five-letter word for-”

“Imbecile.” He spits venomously.

You pout. “No, for an irate emotion!”

“Vexatious insect.” 

You give him a deadpan look. “That’s two words.”

“Cease,” He hisses out warningly.

“Not an emotion.”

He growls, chittering and fuming, before aggressively thumping his helm into his knees in agony. He spits curses and words you can’t understand from the rage slurring his speech. You crane your neck to watch him throw his tantrum, giving him a moment. 

He finally stops, ex-venting heavily. You eye him, in no hurry, pen still hovering over the paper.

“You got anything yet?” You tap your pen as you tip your head at him with a creeping smile. “I’m just gonna keep asking you. Especially that 12-letter row one, I dunno any long words like you probably do.”

He curls a lip and turns his helm further into his knee cover blades.

You sigh out of your nose, rolling your eyes. “C’mon, man. I’ll just keep playing this, musing to myself for, probably, hours. Out loud.”

He doesn’t answer, but his scowl deepens.

“I’m really stumped here, Starscream. What better advantage against human games than--” You tip your head up poshly. “--a being of superior intellect?”

For a long moment, everything is quiet, until a long hiss of hydraulics begins to pitch its tone in the air as Starscream ex-vents heavily, slumping in his seat, not bothering to lift his helm.

“...wrath?” He mutters, rubbing at the bridge between his furrowed brow plates.

You grin from ear to ear and write it down. “Wrath, it is!”

-/-/-/-/-;

“...What the fuck do you mean the first one was ‘Anger?’” You hold the paper closer to your face as if that would change the answer sheet. Starscream taps his talons impatiently on his crossed arms.

“Out of all the enrichment choices you could have picked, you chose the one with the most pedestrian language terminology?” Starscream fumes.

“Hey! I don’t know what’s in them until you read them,” you defend, downtrodden at the stupid crossword puzzle. That one first word had messed up the entire board and, given that Starscream had chosen to give the most complicated non-conversational words in the English (and sometimes not even that) dictionary, you were left with a tangled mess of words.

All of which were written in pen.

You toss the paper aside. “Okay, so Sudoku may have been a better idea-”

“Worse,” Starscream drawls. “The idea of that inane game bores me.”

“All you have to do is guess a number between one to ten.”

He side-eyes you with a withering scowl. “Do I give off the impression of a clown?”

You stutter in a guffaw before catching yourself. “How do you know what a clown is?”

Before he can answer, you hear the familiar crunching of Goodyear tires on dry sand and a telltale engine that sends your heart rate spiking. You’d initially been ready to grill into the wrecker for not giving you notice of his absence and silence, but over the past hour, the fight had simmered down to a low boil. If you tried now, you weren’t sure you’d find any of the right words to say to convey the hurt.


Bulkhead’s familiar form wheels into the dust-covered driveway before pulling further into the lot and into the carefully arranged space, his dark olive green paint reflecting the sun enough to make you squint just a bit as he comes to a stop in front of you.


You reared up to lay into him… or at least a gentle scolding. You aren’t sure; you’ve always liked Bulkhead. The proclivity to let him off easy is there.


However, when he opens his door, your jaw drops open in disbelief as Miko steps out with an eager look in her eyes, searching.


“Where’s Megatron’s groupie pet?” she asked, vindictively enthusiastic. “Is he as beat up as Bulk said he was? I need a pic of that for the records on ‘Con takedowns!”


You shoot Bulkhead a sharp glare to which he, surprisingly, manages to look sheepish even in car form as he rolls back on his wheels an inch.


Goddamit.


“Nope, nope, no,” you deny, waving your arms as you step forward to block the way and barricade her from stepping closer to Starscream. “I can’t believe you bots. Bulkhead! Do you want Miko smashed into a human pancake?!”


“I tried to detour, but Miko snuck out of school early and Ratchet’s too busy to watch her!” Bulkhead’s paneling shifts in a cascade of noise as his base form molds back into that of his familiar trademark, albeit a look of confusion on his face. “What’s a pancake?”


You gesture with a fist, smacking your offhand palm flat. His optics squint with a visible wince. Message conveyed.


You turn to Miko. “Alright, you. Snack-run. On me, let’s go.”


“But I wanna see the ‘Con!” she argued back, her flipphone already out and ready to film.


“Too bad, Starscream’s a cranky fuck and needs a nap,” you answered back, fishing your keys from a lone can in your tool cart.


“I do not need to power down, fool!” Starscream said as his helm perked up at the derogatory mention of his name. You stuck your tongue out at him.


You thumbed through the keys until you found the one for the Saturn. It still worked as far as you knew.


Miko tried to slip past your grasp “But--!”


“I'll get you a burger too,” you added, crossing your arms when a knowing look as her stance turned hesitant. “C’mon, I know school lunches sucked, and you skipped school today. You must be hungry.”


She groaned. “Okay, fine.”

Bulkhead looked startled at the switch, looking between you and Starscream. “What am I supposed to do with him?”


“Find a way to entertain yourselves,” you said, waving a hand at him dismissively. “I want food that doesn’t taste like dust.”


“You’re leaving me with the dull one?!” Starscream screeched, his one working lower wing flapping with irritation as his claws twitched on the ground.


“Oh my god,” you groaned under your breath, guiding Miko towards your Saturn. “Lalalalala, I can’t hear anything. Bye.”


-/-/-/-/-/-;


“Are those your host parents?” You ask, eyes flicking back and forth from Miko’s phone and towards your dusty sideview mirrors, wiping them with your sleeve. Miko gives a noncommittal shrug.

You hiss your teeth together silently as you lean in for a closer look. “They look… pretty Hallmark.”

They look as though they’re pulled straight from a ’50s housewife catalog. At least the wife does. The husband looks like the J. Johna Jameson guy from Spiderman, and it’s really bugging you out a bit.

“It’s like looking at a sandwich in an airport,” you mutter. “It’s like, normal looking, but… really crisp and unnatural for some reason. It’s making me itchy.”

Miko groans and declines the call with a very staunch “ignore.”

You muster every ounce of care you don’t particularly have to play your part as a responsible adult. 

“You don’t wanna give 'em an update on where you’re at?” Despite your words, you start your car. “I can’t imagine they’d be calling about anything else.”

Miko buckles in. “I technically got detention today. They’ll get the memo soon,” she drawls boredly, waving around her flip phone nonchalantly. “Besides, what would I say?”

You are inclined to agree.

Detention would be easier to explain than telling your hypothetical host parents anything about an alien race of giant metal beings, and hanging with a lady they don’t know. 

Though you doubt Miko exchanges any meaningful words with her host parents about any disciplinary attempts the school has tried to take on with her. 

You’re more than certain the institution’s attempts are all in vain as well.

“Enough chit-chat!” Miko claps her hands together and points out to the horizon. “Let’s go get some snacks!”

“You’re the boss.”

You back the car as best you can out of the driveway, looking back and forth for any rubble that may get your wheels stuck, finding none in your way. You look over to Miko, whose gaze had already wandered from the horizon line to busy herself by fiddling with the crank-up windows of your car. 

She spins the crank up, then down, watching the window move. “Old-school.”

“Very,” you add distractedly as you turn the car towards the dirt road. 

You turn back to look over at the lot one more time, Starscream seated in the very back with Bulkhead right across from him. You’re guessing from down the road-- the main asphalt road-- they won’t be visible, but you’d taken precautions to move the trailer to block any view of your “visitors” from the public eye.


Movement catches your eyes as you watch Starscream’s helm swivel over towards your car, blinking his optics blankly as if registering the noise. You find it a little odd that he doesn’t turn away as your car rumbles its way out of its parking spot and out of your lot.


It’s almost as if he’s trying to gauge if you’re actually leaving him, like a dog watching an owner leave.


You huff. You honestly can’t read what Starscream wants sometimes, and the notion that he wasn’t being all that sarcastic is a confusing one. Perhaps he just doesn’t like Bulkhead that much.


Still, he threatened to flatten Miko like a pancake, and you’d really rather avoid both of you getting flattened if Bulkhead decides to sock Starscream for the comment.


The further you get with the car, you’re a little relieved, at least, that they can’t be spotted too easily if they were to get into a heated argument in your absence. 

While there is not much you can do with a vast desert flatland, you do have to squint to see them even now, and if you didn’t know what you were looking at was a Cybertronian, you’d think it’s an odd car. At most, a strange sculpture of car parts in a metal scrapyard, a fitting setting amongst old cars.

You thank Primus and whatever higher force exists for having chosen his medium to be transformable metal.

“So, what’s your deal?” Miko asks nonchalantly, but it’s so sudden to you that you’re ripped from your thoughts as your head swivels to her. Your tongue ties itself as your brain starts to catch up. 

“Um, my deal?” You sputter as you steer the car towards the main road.  

Miko, in turn, pulls out her phone to play some game you don’t recognize.

“Yeah, you’re like a middle-aged lady living at the base for, like, half a year-”


“Middle-age?! How old do you think I am?!”


“And furthermore-!” Miko pauses as she furrows her brow to tap at a series of little bubbles, unaware or uncaring of your offended face. “Then you just vanish one day and land out here with a ‘Con. Reeeeal suspicious if you ask me.”

She leans away from her phone, side-eyeing you intently. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” You feel a little nervous despite the incredulity of the bizarre impromptu interrogation.

Miko sits up. “Did you and Doc-Bot get in a fight? A bad fight? Bulkhead made it sound like a fight.”

“He told you—!” You shake your head, utterly disgruntled with the lack of privacy. “Well, Bulkhead’s gonna get an earful from me when we get back, for one.”

You give her a hard look. “Second of all, I’m not middle-aged, I’m in my twenties, brat.”

She teeters her head in a ‘yeah, whatever’ fashion before tapping at her phone again, losing interest quickly. 

“So, no fight?” She asks monotonically, bored. 

You let out a very slow breath. “Eh… but I can’t see why it’d be any of your business.”

Miko’s face spreads into an interested grin as she snaps her cell closed. “Ooo, drama~”

“It isn’t all very fun in my opinion,” you grumbled, flicking on your turn signal as you come to the mouth of the road. 

“What was it about? Did you leave the team because of it? Does Optimus know? Was Starscream a part of it?”

She squints her eyes in suspicion of you. “Did you band-hop and join the ‘Cons?”

“What— No!” You exclaim, pulling the car into a turn before addressing her. “It was just a really stupid fight over… responsibilities and crap, and we disagreed. That’s all.”

You swirl your tongue around your mouth before you reluctantly add, “It was about Starscream staying at my house while he’s under arrest, for a short while anyway. So… that got decided, at least.”

“And Optimus agreed to that?!” She exclaims, utterly dumbfounded, before crossing her arms and slumping in her chair. “Man, that’s so unfair— Screamer just skipped straight to parole!”

You shrug helplessly. It kinda does feel like your job is being Starscream’s parole officer sometimes, minus having to nurse him back to consciousness from his string of dumb decisions. Maybe it’s more like an AA sponsor. 

“Why were you arguing about responsibilities anyway?” Miko asks after a moment, sounding deeply confused. “That sounds like a dumb thing to argue over.”

“It was,” you agree immediately, eyes flicking out towards the road as you see a car pass by the opposite lane. “Wish I hadn’t said anything, to be honest.”

Miko tilts her head at this and sets her phone fully aside. “What’d you say to Ratchet?”

You freeze in your seat. 

“I don’t even remember what I said,” you say after a beat, and it’s mostly the truth.


You’d cried your heart out over the last few days. At some point, the words got blurred in your mind, though you remember the pain it sparked in your chest. The feelings beat you down into a derivative of the fresh pain, now just tender aches, and left you with heartbroken inklings of an idea of what he’d said and flashes of words.

But most of all, it was just the image of Ratchet’s dark expression of pure scorn and pinched derision that tore at your stomach and left you empty of your entrails, unable to breathe except through sobs.

You feel an untimely lump form in your throat just thinking about it. You promptly swallow it down.

“I don’t remember what he said either, really.” You thumb your fingers on the wheel, heart hammering. “I just know it hurt my feelings.”

Miko takes on a pensive look. “Bulkhead told me about it. Sounds like he was pretty steamed up.”

You recall his jab at your intelligence, but feel your neck warm in embarrassment at having anyone, besides Starscream, who already knows, know that it got to you. Or worse, for anyone to know that it was even said outside of those who witnessed it, especially not any of the kids.

You’re already a sore thumb between them all, why can’t you have the fucking privacy to deal with something this embarrassing?

You nod stiffly, rolling your wrist as you curtly paraphrase in clipped words. “‘Humans aren’t as good as Cybertronians. You’re no help. You’re in the way--”


“He gave up on you and left mid-conversation, right?”


You feel your throat clench up.


“...Ya-da, ya-da,” you finish lamely.

Miko huffs. “So he said something bad about humans? When doesn’t he?”

“He hasn’t been like that in a while,” you state. 

She lets out a big puff of air, blowing her pink bangs up. 

“Big whoop!” She says. “He says stuff like that all the time at base. You know he’s always grumping about ‘useless human technology’ back at base?”

You give her an uncomfortable look. “I guess, but he’s never--We usually get along so well, man.”

Miko gives you a skeptical look. “Ratchet getting along with a human, just casually? We talkin’ ‘bout the same Docbot here?”

“We didn’t get along just as is.” You shake your head. “I’ve given him a hand fixing up himself and his Autobots when they come back all scratched up from missions. I’ve known him for years. It’s taken years.”

You allow yourself to let a proud, little smile cross your face. “‘They’ve been in a fair amount of scraps since I've known them. It’s only recently that I started sticking around to help Ratchet full-time.” 

You feel your proud smile slide off as your chest seems to squeeze into your ribs and steal your breath in a painful pang.

“Or when he needs it,” you add after a moment, a little more solemn. “It’s taken a while, but we got to be good friends after a point.” 

Miko deflates a little, suddenly uncertain. 

“I thought Ratchet doesn’t like us that much-- Well, except Raf, but they’re both nerds.” Miko slumps into her seat. “And he likes Jack ‘cuz he’s Optimus’ ‘Chosen One.’”

You frown, brow furrowing as you tear your eyes from the road and back to the girl, who’d suddenly gained a despondent disposition at the prospect of… Well, you don’t want to assume, and you might just be projecting--

“What do you mean?”  

Miko crosses her arms. 

“It’s just-” She groans, exasperated. “Why would they choose Jack over ME? I get he’s the oldest and a guy, and Optimus and Jack are cool or whatever, but he was a total fraidy cat when he learned there were giant alien robots-”

“Any regular person would be afraid, initially,” you amend gently, a little surprised at her jab at the older boy. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Not everyone is as cool as you under the pressure of the Earth-shattering revelation of alien life.”

Miko purses her lips sulkily. “I know, but still--I was always cool with it. I'm totally able to throw down with those ‘Cons. Anytime, anywhere!”

You tip your head in her direction. “I don’t doubt that for a bit. I heard you threatened Megatron when he came into the base a while back, and I quote--”

You point a finger out and squint. “‘Mine is the face you’ll never forget.’” 

She sits up, emboldened by your reminder. “I wasn’t scared of Megatron. I’m not scared of going into space.”

Her hands fly up as she gets more agitated. “I could’ve gone to Cybertron, I would’ve totally rocked it! I mean, who gets to say they went to an alien planet and saved Optimus Prime? Me! I could’ve!”

She settles back in her chair with a slump, pressing a hand to her chest. “I could’ve. If they’d only given me a chance, and Optimus just picked someone else...” 

She suddenly gets quiet as her lower lip gives the briefest tremor. You straighten up, but the gesture is quickly noticed by Miko, who swiftly turns her head away towards the window. Still, you can see her heartbroken reflection in the faint mirror of the glass pane. 

You know that the bots will never admit it, but their preference for their charges is palpable and not a well-kept secret. While it may be a safety thing to have a guardian especially protective towards their assigned human, you can’t imagine it not getting a little awkward to broach the subject of having an imbalance in how the Autobots handle their assigned kids. 

Optimus seldom takes on the role of a guardian due to his workload.

To hear him have a child he favored for such an important task is simultaneously an infuriatingly irresponsible choice and an uncomfortable notion to engage with as you struggle to understand where this sudden camaraderie with Jack specifically came from. 

“I’ve known Optimus for years,” you start. “But know-knowing him is still a long-way’s away from me and I won’t lie, it sucks to not understand him completely and have to grapple with not ever knowing why he does what he does.” 

You look over at the back of Miko’s head. “I’m not sure why Optimus made his decision, or why he didn’t just give it to one of the bots entirely, but I don’t think it has anything to do with how competent you are as a person, Miko.”

She tightens her arms around herself.

You frown. “For what it’s worth, I think you would’ve held your own well. Bulkhead thinks so, too.” 

“I know he does,” Miko glumly responds, though you catch a peek of her face tilting slightly towards you. “He’s my best friend.”

“Yeah, but if there’s anyone on the team who can match that Wrecker spirit, it’s you, Miko.” You smile. “All that’s left is a gigantic suit of armor, and you’re basically on par with them. An Eva perhaps, but maybe something a little less horrific.”

Miko tilts her head. “I think there’s a Cybertronian relic that’s a mech suit of armor--”

“Bah! You don’t need it.” You nudge her with your elbow, catching the barest flicker of a simper on Miko. “I’m serious, you can throw down with the best of them, kiddo. You got it in you, more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

You simmer down as you mull over the previous mention of Ratchet, coming to an impasse.

“Ratchet’s got his issues,” you say slowly, slowly traversing this new territory of conversation. “He’s old and impatient, and he’s got an asshole voice and he says dumb shit without thinking it through-”

Ratchet has never been, and most likely is still not particularly amiable mech towards humans in principle. Civil, yes. Working towards peaceful cohabitation with humanity, of course. But unlike maybe Arcee or Bulkhead, who have neutral opinions on Earth’s dominant species, you know Ratchet can be blatantly hostile.

He was short when you first met him, and that was seven years ago. Circumstances had been difficult then, but Ratchet is nothing if not an easily irritable mech.

Which makes it all the more confusing to your ailing heart when he has his moments of soft clarity.

You shake your head. “He doesn’t hate you or think less of you. He worries about you kids all the time and cares about you guys equally. And if he denies anything as such, don’t listen to him.”

“I never listen to him,” Miko dismisses, a wry, vindictive smirk on her face. 

It quickly pulls into a cynical expression. “Probably why Ratchet and Arcee don’t like hanging out with me as much.”

You jump slightly at the direct bluntness of Miko’s turn in direction. She shuffles further into herself, hugging her elbows.

“Why do you say that?” You ask, feeling your hold on the conversation slipping as Miko looks away from you again.

“Because it’s true.”

And to your dismay, you don’t have anything to dispel it with, because you don’t know. 

Have Arcee and Ratchet really not made an effort to reach out to Miko? 

You’re sure you’ve seen Bumblebee play with the kids in passing, Bulkhead too. Ratchet’s often busy at typing away at monitors or recalibrating his Synth-En formula… but you have seen him interact with Raf on occasion, amicably too. A lab partner who can match Ratchet in intellect and inventiveness. And Arcee has Jack, though she does show interest in Raf, being that he’s the youngest and most in need of care. And then Optimus and Jack…

An uncomfortable silence stretches for a matter of moments, Miko seemingly growing aware of it as she turns to face the road again. 

She swipes at her nose. “Eh, I got Bulkhead, anyway.”


“We’re best band buddies for life!” Miko exclaims, throwing up double Rock-On signs. 

While it’s sweet that she’s trying to reassure you, the defense is too spirited to be unaffected, and there’s something hurt in her eyes that reflects back at you as you catch the glimmer of dew from tears on her eyelashes. 

“I don’t need anyone else,” Miko finishes, sounding sure of herself, but you’re unconvinced. 

Still, you nod, though you feel yourself bite your tongue, only for it to slip between your teeth and speak.

“You can hang with me.” You clamp your mouth shut a split second after as Miko’s head whirls around to you, double pink-dyed ponytails whip behind her.

You suck in a breath. “I know… I know i’m not Bulkhead, or a giant alien robot by any capacity, but I’m a mechanic with a lot of old cars who wouldn’t mind if you wanted to take one for a spin and do donuts, or just do a candy and soda run like we’re doing now, as long as I have someone to babysit the screaming big baby in my backyard.”

Miko gives a puff of laughter.

You chuckle with a shrug. “At any rate, I know what it's like to feel a little out of the loop with the bots. I love ‘em, but they’re terrible at their people skills sometimes. Even Optimus.”


You pause before a bone-tired look crosses your face. “Especially Optimus.”


Miko stays silent for a moment.

“...Where do you go?” She asked. You hum in confusion and prompt her to continue.


“When we’re there. At base.” She gestures out the window. “Do you come back to your house out here?”

You pause, feeling guilt prickle at you. “I spent a lot of my time at the base, actually. But I’m usually out and about when you kids are at school, and I sleep for a while until the evening.”

“Why aren’t you up when we’re around then?” Miko prods, but it doesn’t sound hostile. “I think this is the first time I’ve had a full conversation with you.”

“I didn’t want to displace you kids,” you respond, rubbing at your neck briefly. “And… I didn’t really know how to handle other people being in the base… I’m not the best at dealing with people.”

Miko sits up slightly. “Is that why you live out in the desert?” 

“Kind of,” you say, sucking at your teeth while you take a second to think. “I wasn’t necessarily happy with where my life was going, and there was so much that was messing with my ability to be a functioning human being.”

You stop the car at a red light, watching the lights blink on the stoplight. “It wasn’t until I moved out here and cut everything loose that I was able to just be and not have to worry about that anymore.”

The light turns green, and you press forward. “It’s not that I hate being around people, or don’t like people. But the peace of being alone and free of expectation just allowed me to be. Then, I just never went back.”

You look back at Miko, who’s studying you with big, curious eyes. “Now, I’m out here to help them keep Starscream out of the base and stashed away until Optimus finds another way to contain him. It’s an odd job, and Starscream can be… a handful, but that’s that.”

Miko scrunches her face, like she’d bit into a lemon. “But Starscream is Megatron’s groupie psycho, lap-dog.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure, Miko,” you say promptly, leaving a silence to hang between the two of you. 

The speed at which you respond leaves you disoriented as your tongue catches up to your mind and you trip yourself up with your words. 

Miko seems like she wants to push, but thinks better of it. “What’s he been like then? Starscream on parole?”

You pull your lips into a flat, deadpan line. “Charming.” You drag a tired hand over your face. “Like I said, he’s a pain in the ass, but he’s not tried anything… currently.”

That gets a wicked smile out of the Miko. “He’ll make a pretty good guard dog if anyone tries to steal your sweet rides.”

You guffaw. “God, I wish! He’d probably just let them take whatever they want to fu--mess with me, but they might crap their pants when they see him.”

You both laugh at the mental image of Starscream idly existing while burglars have their entire minds shattered.

You and Miko finally pull into the local mart, finding a parking spot near the entrance and quickly securing it with a smooth turn into the slot. You turn the car off and unbuckle your seat belt, but before you feel a tap on your shoulder interrupting you. 

“What’s up?” You ask, turning to Miko.

“You should come to base again sometime and actually hang out this time,” she says with an inviting smile. “You know, with Raf, Jack, and me!”

You wince. “Oh, I dunno… I feel like me coming in, well, that’s just asking for trouble with how everything is right now.” You look up in thought. “Starscream will need a babysitter if I do go, and he won’t like that.”

Miko frowns, brow furrowing in concern. “You’re sitting here, telling me not to listen to Ratchet when he’s being a fragging glitch-head—” 

“C’mon, don’t call him that,” you cut in with a frown.

She bumps your shoulder with her fist. “Follow your own advice, then! Why should you listen to him?”

You open your mouth to respond, only to find yourself dried out of any good response for yourself. 

“Optimus is worried about you,” Miko adds when you say nothing, perking up as your eyes go a little wide. “He’s been wanting to come see you, but boss-bot’s been too busy, and he’s been antsy not being able to send Bulkhead out. It’s really messing with the vibe.”

She grins at you. “I think he’d stop being such a worrywart if you came over to see him.”

You scoff, though your cheeks heat up. “Optimus ain’t a worry-wart, he’s just… deeply pensive.”

Miko lifts a single, curved brow.


Damn you, Optimus.

You tap your car handle anxiously, sucking in your lower lip, utterly cornered. Surrender is the only possible choice.

“Fine,” you say, pushing open the door to not see Miko’s victorious fist pump behind you. “But only to see Optimus and then I scram.”

“Works for me, but I think Bumblebee misses you too,” she says, slamming her car door behind her as she bounds over to your side. “And so does Arcee.”


You highly doubt that. 

You pull out a shopping cart to ignore the spiraling swirl of dread forming in your skull, orienting it to the sliding doors as you feel Miko tap you on the shoulder again. “Hmm?”

“Can I see him up close?” She asks, mischief and excitement bringing a worrisome sparkle to her Cheshire grin. 

You quirk a brow.

“Who?”

Her smile widens. “Starscream~”

“HA-!” you hack, throwing your head back in mirth. “No.”

“C’mon! I’ve never gotten a picture of Starscream before!”

“He ain’t a pet snake to take pictures with and pass around.”


“Just one!”


“No.”


Miko clasps her hands together. “C’mon, pleeeeaaaase?”


“No.”


“But my Decepticon photo gallery’s gonna be incomplete!” 

“And that’s just how it’s gonna have to be, I'm afraid. And ex-nay, on the alien-talk-ay. We’re going into a grocery store.”


She leaves it, though she smiles back at you. You feel whatever ball that'd been wound tightly in your chest for the past week unravel slightly at that as you both head inside.