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Welcome! Everything is Fine.

Chapter 21: can’t you hear me howling, outside your door?

Summary:

Con·sum·mate
[kŏn′sə-māt] or [ˈkɒn.sə.mət]

Adjective.
1. Extremely skilled and accomplished.
2. Of the highest degree.
3. Complete in every detail.

Transitive verb.
1. To bring to completion or fruition; conclude.
2. To realize or achieve; fulfill.
3. To complete a relationship’s commitment by means of physical intimacy.

Chapter Text

The hardest part of moving on is waking up. 

Starscream’s processor whirs as he onlines, all the systems that have been running maintenance subroutines screaming into life around him. Fans choke, vents shutter and unshutter with clattering and clacking. 

Above him: the clear bubbled lid of a pod, opening. The rasp of smoke, or fog, as temperatures inside and out suddenly scramble for equilibrium. His optics follow, dumb thoughtless wonder, his mind suspended for just a klik in that liquid headspace between dreaming and waking, where everything is real and none of it can touch you. 

And then a voice he knows now, rising from his memory into the light, murmuring “Starscream?” And he thinks, that’s not his real voice, it’s the deep, fake, silly one they gave him when he put on that suit—

Ultra Magnus. 

Everything comes back at once—the senate, the Revolution, the war, Pharma’s pretty playspace, the transport boarded, his ship overtaken, who is Minimus Ambus?, blasters pointed, firefight, a big dumb Autobot with a reputation that proceeds him—

Autobots—

The force of the realization strikes him hard, a physical pain, and he cries out, leaps from his pod. His guns, real, hot like sizzling iron, transform on instinct. He points, arms akimbo. 

Three Autobots, and he thinks, fuck. Two null rays does not a party make. 

In his defense, everyone else has their blasters out, too. He looks at them, one by one, sizing them up at pace. Thunderclash, fuck, captain of the Vis Vitalis: noble, strong and brave. Rodimus Prime, shit, dedicated leader, field ops specialist, holder of the Matrix, and ready to make sacrifices. And Ultra Magnus fucking shit, duly appointed enforcer of the Tyrest Accords, teacher and friend to him, staring the long way down a fusion canon. His face looks—shocked, ragged, torn. Twisted up. 

“Hello, boys,” Starscream says, because damn if he’s going to stand here staring into that face without doing something. He gives them his most sensual, winning smile. “Don’t all get excited at once. I can only take you one at a time.”

“Starscream,” Ultra Magnus says. His voice is thick and hopeless, and Starscream’s tanks churn. No, he thinks desperately, don’t say it like that, don’t make me think it was real—

“Let’s everybody hold up for a second,” says Rodimus Prime, brows furrowed. His gaze doesn’t leave Starscream’s face. No flitting of optics to check on his second in command, to read the room. He’s all business. “Starscream, you okay? You unhurt?”

“Huh?” Starscream goggles at him. He’s not a practiced goggler, but he really has a go at it. “What are you asking me for? I’m the enemy, you big lug!”

“Easy, man,” Rodimus says calmly, “I already asked these two. You’re the last one out of the pod. Pharma said unhooking might cause disorientation, injury, I think some other stuff. Are you okay? Are you unhurt?”

Show of mercy, Starscream thinks, his goggle transforming easily back into a sneer. Playing hero for the others. Typical. If it was just the two of us in a room he’d be tearing my plating off with his dentae by now. “Yes, yes, alright,” he snaps, “my processor isn’t currently melting out of my eyes, is that what you want to know? Want to give me five to do a full-frame scan? I’m fine.”

“Glad to hear it,” Rodimus says, not sounding particularly glad. “Okay, in that case, you’re under arrest.”

“What, because I’m fine? You’re under arrest!”

“We had you in custody before our ship was boarded by the DJD,” Rodimus says, “since we’re leaving together, we’ll be taking you back in.”

Next to him, Thunderclash startles, glances away from Starscream to shoot his defacto commander a look. “Rodimus,” he says in a stage whisper, “we didn’t talk about this.”

A glimmer of hope. Realization dawning. Starscream’s processor whirls—how to use it, how to use it?

“There wasn’t time,” Rodimus says back, not looking away from his target. “My vessel, my charter, my command. My call.”

Thunderclash stiffens, but does not argue. Military training, Starscream thinks, how typical. Without the war, they would have argued until they were blue in the face. Now? Now they listen to the mech with the stripes.

“And if I refuse to come with you?” Starscream asks, smiling sweetly. 

“That’s your choice,” Rodimus says, “three blasters against two. Maybe you’ll take two of us, but you’re coming down with them.”

“Is that what you think?” Starscream asks. “I count three blasters and I see them trembling. How many of your shots do you think could land?” He glances at Thunderclash. “Could you shoot me, TC?” he asks, lets his voice go soft and dark. “After everything?”

Thunderclash swallows—unbidden, his eyes dart to Rodimus, who is frozen solid, not looking back. “I—would do what is needed,” he says, but his voice is unsure. Softened. And Starscream wears his smile on the inside, and he thinks— knows— that Thunderclash can’t. 

And then he looks at the face he’s been avoiding, tries not to feel his tanks churn.

“Minimus?” he asks. He doesn’t have to try for it. His voice trembles. “Would you?”

“Don’t,” Ultra Magnus says, flinching, “call me that.”

He won’t.

“So really, Rodimus,” Starscream says, and turns his guns in the same direction, “it looks like, count-for-count, it’ll be two against one.”

He doesn’t ask Rodimus the same question he pitched to the big guys, because he’s been paying attention, and he isn’t stupid. This isn’t the Hot Rod-imus he played with in the machine, silly and excited and relaxed about the direction of his life. Maybe Rodimus used to be that mech, a long time ago, before the war. But he hasn’t been that mech in a long time.

Not since someone asked him to pay the ultimate price, and he paid it. Some gentle thing in him has burned, melted, a molten core that hardened into pure diamond. Now, he is unambiguously ready to do what it takes. He won’t let his feelings come into it. He hasn’t since Nyon burned.

Rodimus looks back into his eyes, and they exchange the honest stare of the born bastard—and then he lowers his blaster. “Okay, Star,” he says, calm as anything, “let’s see it, then. Shoot me.”

Starscream doesn’t move.

“Big talk coming from you,” Rodimus goes on. “You want to read my team? Fine. But don’t think for a second I can’t read you too. Prove me wrong. Show me you can do it.”

Starscream doesn’t move. And then, quietly, “You know that I can.”

But he won’t. Damn, Starscream thinks, because it doesn’t matter if Thunderclash and Ultra Magnus won’t shoot him now, it matters if they still wouldn’t shoot him after he shoots Rodimus. And that is a much stupider risk than he can afford.

In the stalemate, there's a faint damp plink against the panels of the labratory floor, as if the awful machine over them is dripping.

“Starscream,” Ultra Magnus interrupts, and Starscream’s tanks go sideways inside him again, “admit to yourself that you are outgunned and– and submit yourself to our custody. As a prisoner of war, you have certain rights and protections that we will abide by. You – you will not be harmed.”

Starscream glances at him and thinks about hundreds on hundreds of hours, lessons and arguments and complicated legalese jargon. Both of them crammed up next to each other, complaining, disagreeing. The sunlight on the hill outside, the wide wide windows, paper on the floor.

“Duty of care,” he mutters, and Ultra Magnus nods.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Rodimus says, in a tone of voice that indicates he is working extremely hard to sound like he’s 100% on board with whatever is being talked about, and he definitely understands it so don’t ask any questions, “the duty of care thing, with prisoners and stuff. You’ll get all that. So put the blasters down.”

Starscream doesn’t move his gaze from Ultra Magnus’ face. After a moment, he moves his arms awkwardly, not quite transforming them back. “How do I know this isn’t a trick?” he asks. “And you’ll shoot me as soon as I’m unarmed?”

“I wouldn’t trick you,” Ultra Magnus says softly. Despite himself, Starscream heaves a put-upon sigh.

“Yes, I know you wouldn’t,” he snaps, and gestures at Rodimus, “I’m talking about him!”

“Oh, nah, um, witnesses,” Rodimus says, and crosses his hands to point at the Autobots on either side of him. “I could get myself in major trouble if I popped a prisoner in front of these guys. But you’ve gotta surrender, otherwise I could make a good case that you were resisting and didn’t give us a choice.”

Starscream looks from one face to the next.

The best thing to do, he decides, is to play nice until their guard goes down. It will, at some point. Escape is elusive and out of reach down here. Objective one is to survive now, to survive the next few minutes. Continued survival will come in the form of a series of choices, stretching out from here to infinity. Start with the choice now, the one in front of you. Survive this moment.

He transforms his guns away, and throws his hands up, palms out. “You got me!” he trills, and laughs. “Obviously I can’t take the three of you. I’ve been outmatched! Take me as your humble prisoner, cuff me now!”

“Oh, surely that won’t be necessary,” Thunderclash says, and transforms his own blaster away in an apparent show of solidarity, “certainly not until we finish enacting the plan, what? After all, we can’t go anywhere until we retrieve Pharma, can we?”

Right, the plan, Starscream thinks, feeling slightly lightheaded. He’d sort of forgotten all about that.

Now that the threat of immediate danger has been averted, Starscream lowers his hands and glances around. The pod he leapt out of is one of many, lit up internally in this otherwise stygian crypt. He can see three more pods with their lids up, radiating greenish light, and another… he counts. Six, with their lids shut. A snug fit; four prisoners, one ringmaster, the ringmaster’s boss, and four cronies. The machine must have been straining its capacity.

Rung, what about Rung? Where would he fit?

The more he looks at the machine, the less he likes it. There’s an almost organic quality to it that makes him nauseous, a wetness of pipes, sprawling out like intestines. It feels like this place ought to be sticky. And then that readout screen, on the central column, glowing green text illuminating the room in a sickly cast…

“Pharma, right,” he says, breaking away and shaking his head, “he’ll be in one of those six. Let’s spread out and find him.”

“No need,” says an unfamiliar voice behind him.

Starscream is not proud of the noise he makes when he whirls around, blasters transforming back into position, but it’s generally lost in the cloud of other noises and blasters snapping into place. His back is to the Autobots now, and he thinks shit, but they’re aiming past his head at the same target.

“Hands where we can see them,” Ultra Magnus snaps at the single Decepticon stopped at the bottom of the ramp into the chamber. The con raises his hands casually, with an expression of… boredom? Contempt? “Identify yourself.”

Starscream recognizes him. Well, kind of. He’s the littler guy, the one with all the spines. He was in the simulation, too, the first time they all came down to play pretend at being auditors. 

He doesn’t recognize him from the old DJD lineup, to be honest. He rarely pays attention to them anyways, and they’re always changing members out, and he can’t stand the code name bullshit. There’s no point in trying to memorize their little clubhouse membership; he’s busy with big bot stuff. 

“Codename: Vos,” says, apparently, Vos. “In fact, I’m an Autobot intelligence agent, and you four are making me burn my cover, which I don’t appreciate.”

“Autobot under cover, classic,” Starscream repeats, “I’ve had a go at that one myself in a tight spot! It usually doesn’t work, but it does confuse them long enough to open up other–”

“I would not have revealed myself if one of your number could not vouch personally for me,” Vos interrupts, which, rude. “My name is Dominus Ambus. I am Minimus Ambus’ brother.”

“What?”

This comes from Ultra Magnus, and—Starscream chances a glance back—startled isn’t the right word for it. Jaw-dropping shock, maybe, paints his face. His optics and biolights flare bright blue.

Vos/Dominus shrugs, palms still visible and unarmed. “You can ask me some questions only I would know the answer to, if you would like to confirm my identity,” he says, “however, I believe time is of the essence, and ergo I point instead to my willingness to assist you in your escape, when we are all situated on a vessel that would make your immediate extermination at the first signs of trouble a task bordering on the trivial.”

He pauses, glances at the confused faces, and sighs. “If I was a Decepticon, I would have just killed you,” he translates. “Look at the ceiling. See the turrets? Those can be controlled from the upper deck. If I wanted you dead, it would have been easy.”

They all look up. It's hard to see in this radiant darkness, but those round shapes do have a certain barrel-like quality. And more to the point, Starscream knows that little twat Tarn pretty well, and he never passes up the opportunity for overkill when kill would have done fine. This ship probably does have defences that would be easy enough to activate from here.

“Mags, this guy says you can vouch for him,” Rodimus says, blasters still up. “You know him? Guide me, here.”

The soft sound of a voicebox resetting. “Yes, I know him,” Magnus says, and all around Starscream, he hears blasters powering down, “I’d know that speech pattern anywhere, and… and no Decepticon would be familiar enough to imitate it passably.” Pause. “Or know that it mattered to me.”

Starscream makes a show of lowering his blaster, but he doesn’t power down. The worst thing about Autobots, he thinks, is also the best thing about them, depending on where you’re standing. Vis-a-vis: every one of them is trusting to a fault. This doesn’t seem like a statement worth voicing right now.

“Okay,” Rodimus says, “if Mags says you’re okay, you’re okay with me. If you say you’re with us, then you’re with us. We’re trying to find Pharma and get him out of the machine. He offered financial and navigational assistance to us in exchange for freedom.”

“I understand,” Dominus says, “but there’s no need. I am willing and able to assist you in that way; I know the ship, I know our current location, and I can assist you in a quick and painless extraction. Leave Pharma, and come with me now.”

A pause.

“Your crew is still in the machine with him,” Thunderclash says after a moment, “I rather think we have an obligation to get him out post-haste, before things get rather messier in there than any of us would like.”

“Then let him be a distraction,” Dominus says, and even Starscream, who is great at not giving a shit about other people basically ever, furrows his brow. “He has been torturing you for months on end, in a machine that stretches time like taffy. He’s subjected each of you to years of agony for his personal gain. I am giving you the option to give him a taste of his own, a-ha, medicine.”

Another pause. The mech looks at them expectantly. He holds an arm out and ready to shepherd them away, his bronze panels washed out to a ghostly champagne in this eerie light.

“...Dominus,” Ultra Magnus says, “while I appreciate your offer of assistance, I am honor-bound to release Pharma, as agreed upon in the plea bargain offered to him. He will be released, and face fair trial with a jury of his peers. Surely,” he adds, frowning, “you would not object to that.”

The brothers stare at each other. After a moment, Dominus repeats, quietly, “He has been torturing you.”

“And you have been torturing him,” Magnus replies.

“Yes,” Dominus agrees, “I would not expect mercy from him. I would not expect mercy from any mech I did my work on.”

“But I am not him,” Magnus says, softly, and somehow Starscream’s tanks churn, “I am honor-bound.”

You are, Starscream thinks, feeling it like a slap in the face. You always are. You big, stupid idiot, you’d release any one of these creeps if you'd agreed to do it, you always keep your stupid promises, your stupid plea bargains, you always protect people who don’t deserve it–

“I am also opposed to abandoning Pharma to the hands of the DJD,” Thunderclash says, interrupting Starscream’s little mental spiral, “whatever he did, he’s still an Autobot, and he’s still part of the party! We don’t leave a mech behind in dire straits! Given that the rescue would not be difficult, I see no reason to debate its merit. I say we go now!”

“Anyway, my personal feelings on the guy aside,” Rodimus adds, “the fact of the matter is, he’s not the only Autobot still in there. Rung’s in there, too, and we don’t know how to get him out safe. Pharma does.”

The other two Autobots quickly make ascertaining remarks, in a quietly embarrassed way, a sort of ‘right, yes, Rung,’ and ‘we don’t want to forget about Rung’, and ‘of course, Rung, we owe it to Rung, this is really about him’. Starscream, instead, gives Dominus a penetrating stare.

There's a mech like Minimus Ambus inside that suit, inside those horns and spirals and the blood between the joints. There must be.

“The only reason he did what he did to us,” Starscream snaps, “is because he was under duress. He only tortured us because of you. So get off your fucking high horse and help us look.”

There's a mech like Minimus Ambus inside that suit. Or at least, there's an Ambus, apparently. But he's not like Minimus at all.

And if he sees the way Magnus glances at him, surprised, warm in a way that face never has been before, well. It’s not really any of his business how Ultra Magnus wants to look at him, is it?




Pharma bursts into consciousness, fuel pump pounding, on the slab where he first laid down weeks or years ago, and looks up into the merciless red eyes of Decepticon Commander Starscream.

Thousands of years come flooding back all at once. The riots, the murders, the violence, endless MASH camps. Pharma’s spark goes cold, and he sees in that moment up close the face of death and treachery that has haunted their battle lines for millennia.

 That’s right, he–



Stuffed into the engine compartment of the Good Place train—really stuffed, like, piled up on each other’s laps in places—four not-dead mechs and a Rung try not to make too much noise.

“Hey Rung,” Rodimus says, from where he’s laying on the floor between everyone else’s pedes, “I was thinking, like, how do you feel about spoilers?”

“Are there any other secrets my friends are keeping from me?” Thunderclash asks, a little waspishly, as Starscream wriggles to get more comfortable sitting on Ultra Magnus’s thigh.

“Er,” says Ultra Magnus. “I suppose I should tell you… this frame is not, in the most technical sense, actually my own frame…”

“Look, it isn’t our fault that we’re trapped in an alien mind prison,” Starscream says. “You can’t blame us for hiding the whole Secretly Not Belonging thing from you, since we were never actually in a real Good Place to begin with.”

“I mean the fact that Hot Rod can talk,” Thunderclash says. “And isn’t named Hot Rod. And isn’t Camien. And also, yes, you were hiding the whole ‘secretly not belonging thing’ from me, Starscream, and I am a bit miffed!”

The compartment door creaks open, and they all shut up. Pharma steps inside, pulls the door closed behind him, and says in a low voice: “Keep it down, will you? I’m stressed enough I’m shedding paint flakes, and your whispering is not helping matters.”

“Sorry if you dropped a truck load of slag on us at the last minute and we’re having some trouble processing it,” says, surprisingly, Rodimus from the floor.

“You’ve all done this fifty odd times before,” Pharma says impatiently. “And every single time, Thunderclash is upset about being lied to, Rodimus is ticked off about being called a bad person, Ultra Magnus is crippled with guilt about being Minimus Ambus, and Starscream is horny about Minimus, which I do not understand by the way, and would like to keep my ignorance of.”

Ultra Magnus and Starscream simultaneously jerk around to stare at each other, then flush horribly at the exact same time.

“Rung,” Pharma says, “take the train to the Medium Place, and when our guests are inside the house, have everyone with you exit the program. Primus willing, we'll have time.”

There is a little chime, and the train begins to move.




–Got them out, as promised. And they got him out, too.

“Is that your blaster,” Starscream drawls down at him, and Pharma becomes aware that he’s pointing a weapon up at a face he never wanted to see this close, “or are you just happy to see me?”

Pharma’s intake is dry. He opens his mouth and then shuts it once–twice–

“Rung,” he says, and sits up.

Apparently, the idiots have been looking in the pods for Rung’s body, as though they had any idea how to get him without help. Pharma barks a few orders—directions, really, for them to look in—and they spread out, hunting for orange parts.

Pharma wants to find him too. Needs to find him. Isn’t sure what will be left to find.

The twisting cords of the machine seem... thicker. More multitudinous. They find the first arm sticking out from under a coil of it like the limb of a forgotten doll, wrist limp and fingers dangling. He's in there pretty deep.

Slowly, they reassemble him, pieces clicking together bit by bit, after extraction. Before long, his little body is laid out on what had been Pharma's slab, still as brightly colored as he was the day he–

The day he–

All over the wall–

“Hey man, it’s alright,” Rodimus Prime says, his hand descending onto Pharma’s pauldrons, and he almost leaps into the air, “he’s not dead, or the machine wouldn’t have run. You said so yourself.”

Pharma stares up into that formidable, honest face. “Did I say that?” he asks, distantly. “Oh… I must have. You wouldn’t have come up with that yourself.”

It must have been some mad hope. He isn’t sure he really believes it.

He points to the central control panel. “His processor is still powering the machine,” he adds, “it’ll be in there. When we unhook him… I don’t know if the machine will still run, if the pods will stay closed. We should…” he glances at the DJD, stretched out on their slabs. “...Prepare for a firefight,” he finishes eventually.

“Okay,” Rodimus says, and nods seriously. “I know this is a wild offside, but is there any way you’ve got… sedatives, of any kind, rattling around in your subspace? Something we could buy another hour with?”

Pharma blinks. He hadn’t thought of that.




Ultra Magnus observes the procedures with… interest, of course, but a conflicted interest. He has done his part in the proceedings, found pieces and handed them over to those with medical training, observed the body coming together with the satisfaction of a puzzle put in place. But his mind is… elsewhere.

As the machine shuts down and Pharma harvests the processor from its place, he takes a few steps back. There’s nothing more he can do now. A sidelong glance tells him that Starscream and “Vos” have had the same idea, and are removing themselves from the premises.

Starscream…

No, he tells himself, and moves away.

“Dominus,” he says quietly, as Thunderclash and Rodimus help lift Rung’s torso slightly to give Pharma a better angle, “why didn’t you tell anyone? Rewind has been looking for you. I’ve been– I’ve– I’ve assumed you were dead, all this time.”

“As it should be,” Dominus replies, his eyes not leaving the little medical drama in motion. “And I’ve been assuming you were dead, too, Minimus, so we might as well call that even and strike it from the record.”

“That’s not the same thing,” Magnus says sharply, “I am doing my job. Serving the war effort.”

“So am I.”

They’re quiet for a few moments. In front of them, the processor is reconnected, and the three Autobots peer down at Rung’s little frame, not moving. There’s a few beats, and then…

Online. Rung’s biolights flare and his intake heaves, static stripping from his voicebox in pain. Magnus gasps in relief. Next to the little bot, Pharma wails and throws his arms around him.

“Step back, step back,” Thunderclash insists, to no avail, “give him some space, we have to do a scan and make sure–”

“It’s okay, he’s okay,” Rodimus is saying, taking Rung’s little hand. “Rung, can you hear me? Hey, I’m here, it’s okay– I’m right here–”

The cracked lenses fitz, as if they're trying to focus. Rodimus's jaw visibly tightens. Ultra Magnus wants to look away. Dozens of iterations of the bright smile, the cheerful promptness, reduced down to dull dented metal and cracked glass. It's hard to watch. 

After a terrible moment, the thin fingers give an exhausted squeeze.

"Pharma?" the fizzling voice asks, tones fading in and out. "What's going on? Where— We were in the lab-"

Rodimus slumps with relief. They all do. As Pharma hauls the bot forward and buries him against his chest, Magnus finally lets himself look away.

"I know, I know," Pharma sobs. "I know, I'm fixing it, I'm going to fix it."

Magnus feels a kind of tightness in his chest. The little bot is online, but he’s in bad shape. His arms and legs don’t seem to be responding correctly, jerking akimbo, and his head is dented in badly. His optics are flickering, the glass not all in one piece. If the nearest spaceport isn’t close, there’s still a chance he won’t make it.

In fact, in the cold light of the ship, and… well, with Dominus on board instead of Vos… the whole plan seems impossible.

“Dominus,” he says, “we were going to escape by overpowering you and commandeering this ship, but…”

He trails off. It’s not going to work, he realizes, body going cold as he watches his fearless leader celebrate Rung’s revival, leaning in to kiss his cheek. Cradling him. None of it is going to work. They can't execute enemy bots under stasis—even if it was ethically acceptable, how would they accomplish it without triggering their victims? No warrior would be caught in the field without vital-sign failsafes. It’ll come down to a firefight, to taking the DJD in, to–

“Take the escape pods,” Dominus says, “next floor down. Six vessels, each seats two. There should be plenty of room for the six of you.”

“Escape pods?” Magnus glances at his brother. “I didn’t know there were escape pods. Pharma said there weren’t any.”

“Ah, well, that’s because Pharma’s on a short leash,” Dominus tells him. His posture settles seamlessly into parade rest. “There’s a lot about this vessel Tarn’s been keeping from him. I don’t even think it’s Cybertronian in nature. No, there’s six pods. I’ve inspected them recently. They’re in good condition, they’ll steer fine.”

“Six pods,” Magnus repeats. And then, “it’s going to get hot in here soon, Dominus. We could extract you now. There’s room for you. We could leave them here and get you out.”

“That’s kind,” Dominus says, “but I can’t go now. I’ve got too much work to do. Besides,” he adds, and throws Magnus a heroic smile, “someone’s got to feed them false tracks when they wake up. I’ll buy you some time; you get them out of here.”

The risk goes unspoken; with double agents, there's always a risk. With only the smallest seed of doubt, only the vaguest prickle of intuition, a double agent can be damned to a long and dreadful death without hope of extraction. The information must always be good, but never good enough. The story must always be credible. The lie must always be complete.

In his spark—in his tanks—Ultra Magnus knows why there was no note left for Rewind, or for him. Wishing otherwise is irrelevant. For them, Dominus Ambus is already dead.

Magnus nods, and reaches out to shake his hand. Dominus takes it.

“Thank you,” he says. “Goodbye, brother.”




In the end, Starscream is the one who breaks up the party. He pulls Pharma aside to let him know it’s time to shift gears.

“Apparently, the escape pods are on the lower floors,” he says.

Pharma’s brow furrows. “And here I thought you were listening,” he sneers, “I told you in the machine, there are no escape pods.”

“I’ve got it on good authority,” Starscream replies, and jerks a thumb towards– yes, Vos and Magnus, turned towards each other, talking quietly. “Your buddy Vos is some kind of deep cover crazy. Turns out, he’s with us. Well,” he adds after a moment of consideration, “he’s with you.”

“With me?” Pharma asks.

“An Autobot,” Starscream clarifies. “I guess he and Minimus… know each other.”

He stops short of ‘brother’, out of some kind of… preservation instinct, maybe. It would be best if he seeded some malcontent between the Autobots, he knows, but he’s halted by the way Pharma glances at Vos. One moment of shock, crushed quickly under an expression he has never seen on someone other than himself: an expression of hatred, total, seething, and absolute.

It could be very bad news for Minimus Ambus to be particularly close to someone who elicits a look like that from a mech as mad as Pharma is, Starscream thinks. And– and he doesn’t want–

“He left me in there,” Pharma says, and Starscream grabs him by the arm and squeezes hard.

“He’s getting all of us out of this slagheap ship, so save whatever revenge fantasy you have parading around that head of yours for after we survive our escape!” he snaps. “You’ve got a single-minded determination to get even, Pharma, and let’s be clear, I’m seriously admiring it at this moment in time! I don’t say this often about other people’s small-minded pettiness, but goals, Pharma, goals. But revenge is always the second objective!”

Pharma’s head snaps back to scowl at Starscream, and he struggles out of his grip. Starscream lets him go. “Let me make this perfectly clear to you, Decepticon,” he snaps, “we have nothing in common, Starscream, nothing! Don’t you dare lecture me. And don’t you dare admire me!”

Starscream examines his talons and pretends to yawn. “Uh- huh,” he says, “good show, Pharma, I hope that felt very sensual, very righteous. Now get your stupid friends rounded up, we need to get out of here.”

“They are not,” Pharma spits, “my friends.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Starscream says, “they’re the closest thing you’ve got. Just be grateful they aren’t your enemies.”

“What, like you?”

“Yes,” Starscream says, and smiles, and relishes the way Pharma recoils, “like me.”




The pod bay is serviceable, empty, and magnitudes less creepy than anywhere else on this ship they've been thus far, so Rodimus is fully willing to pause here and hash it out rather than any of the rooms or halls they've passed through before. The light has a sterile, blueish quality, and the escape pods open up no problem when you poke the only button on the walls beside them. Down below there's a single ejection slot; they'll have to go one at a time.

“Huh, so they each seat two,” Rodimus says, examining the interior. “Hey, Team Rodimus, huddle up.”

The assembled crowd (read: himself (natch), the big TC, the bigger UM, Sweet Rung (currently in TC’s arms on account of him being not so good at walking when they first tried to prop him up, head on his shoulder, groaning a little bit, hang in there man), Scary Pharma, and literally the air commander and second in command of the entire Decepticon force, Starscream, who he is finally (after MANY years of denial) forced to admit is lowkey kind of hot) look at him, and then look to each other. Everyone steps forward to huddle up.

Rodimus throws his palms up. “Woah, woah,” he says, “I just said Team Rodimus.”

Another confused look. Pharma raises his hand.

“I thought we were Team Starscream,” he says. “I mean, I’m happy for a rebrand, of course–”

“I’m not!” Starscream snaps. “We all agreed that it’s Team Starscream, and now you want to change it just because of some petty scrap we’ve been having for a couple of millions of years. It’s honestly disgraceful. It’s enough to make a grown mech cry. Look in my optics, Rodimus. I might be crying right now.”

“You’re not crying, you’re fine,” Rodimus snaps. “Hey, are y’all stupid? I’m asking for my charter, AKA the mechs I rode in with, for a little tent-on-tent, okay? That’s Thunderclash, that’s Ultra Magnus, and we can also bring Rung because he’s not doing so hot and I don’t want him set down. And you two,” he adds, jabbing a finger at Scary Pharma and Hot Starscream, “can stay the fuck out of it until said tent-on-tent is complete. Got it?”

There’s a pause. Then Ultra Magnus raises a hand. “I believe you mean ‘tete-a-tete’,” he says. “It’s alright, pronunciation can be–”

“Yes, yes, okay, now just huddle up,” Rodimus snaps, and waves his bots in. Outside the huddle, he’s vaguely aware of Starscream peevishly strutting around and trying to sound totally disinterested, in a ‘I’m definitely not eavesdropping because you bore me so much, also speak up please’ kind of way.

“Okay, six pods, three of us,” Rodimus says, once the circle is complete. Without major consideration, he reaches forward and takes one of Rung’s hands and squeezes it reassuringly. Rung moans a little in reply. “We need to keep all of them close. I say the three of us split up. That way, we can each take one of them with us.”

The guys nod seriously at him. “I have some rudimentary medical training,” Thunderclash says, “and believe I could keep Rung stable during a voyage until we can rendezvous at a medical outpost. Requesting permission to go with him, sir.”

Rodimus hesitates, glancing down at Rung’s little body. The idea of separating from him—only moments after putting him back together—feels intensely wrong, like a failure to step up. But the fact is, he’s in bad shape, and despite a life of hard-knocks in Nyon and then the army, Rodimus really doesn’t know a lot about keeping a frame in one piece.

“Good idea,” he says instead, “thanks for volunteering. Take Rung, and share your coordinates with us over the facilities comms; they should be able to reach us that way, no matter where we end up.” He glances up at Ultra Magnus. “Which leaves us with the crazies.”

Ultra Magnus glances over his shoulder, presumably at the crazies. He leans in harder. “I volunteer to take Pharma,” he says. Rodimus shakes his head.

“I’ll take Pharma,” he replies, “you take Starscream.”

Ultra Magnus gives him a look that—on a smaller face—could be described as ‘panicked’. “Sir–” he starts, but Rodimus cuts him off.

“Look, there’s no good idea version of anyone getting in a pod with Starscream,” he says, “normally, as the leader, I’d volunteer to take the most difficult prisoner, no questions asked. But you, uh…”

There’s no delicate way to say this, and Rodimus isn’t a very delicate person to begin with. He glances at Thunderclash, searching for some kind of assist.

“Ah,” Thunderclash says, between them, “I will… begin preparations to take Rung. I’ll leave you to it. Captain.” He snaps a salute and buggers off.

Rodimus turns back to Mags, who is stiff, like he’s trying to figure out a way to protest in a militarily appropriate fashion. “You’ll be the safest of any of us in an enclosed space with him,” Rodimus says to Ultra Magnus, crossing his arms over his chest. “You two… you got close in there. And you saw how he was in negotiations with me. If I rode with him, he’d try and kill me as soon as look at me.”

“Yes,” Mags says stiffly, “but– but it goes both ways. If he tries something on me, I don’t know if I can–”

“I trust you with anything, Mags,” Rodimus interrupts. “I know you can handle him if it gets hot. And… I don’t think he can follow through anything he tries, if he’s trying it on you.”




They watch the first few pods go off without a hitch. Beyond Pharma trying to argue that he has the most medical training, he really should be the one to go with Rung—which goes about as well as can be expected, but honestly, Starscream just can’t blame a mech for trying—there’s no hitch. The mechanics all seem to be in good condition; both pods have functioning comms.

Rung looked okay. Thunderclash really did seem to have a handle on him. When Rodimus leaned in to kiss his hand, Starscream had the sense to look away like he was investigating the control panels in the room. It’s important to pretend to be interested in something else, at a time like that, and to file the information away for later.

Magnus has been watching him. Starscream watched Rodimus and Pharma go, both of them eying each other suspiciously, Rodimus with his blaster ready and Pharma with his disabled. Pharma as pilot, Rodimus as co. But Magnus wasn’t watching them, he was watching–

Yes, Starscream thinks, he’ll have to trust me. We’ll go together.

His fuel pump pounds rhythmically inside him. He clenches his talons to stop his hands from shaking.

“So when we arrive,” Starscream says almost conversationally, as they begin lowering the third pod, “what’s going to happen to me? You’ll slap me in chains and I’ll be banished to some dungeon?”

“I suspect the Decepticon High Command will be interested in getting you back,” Magnus says stiffly. “Presumably, your return will be negotiated against several Autobot prisoners held by the Decepticons. You will not be harmed,” he adds quickly, “as that would not be beneficial to the exchange process.”

“Sure, I’ll believe it when I see it,” Starscream says sourly. “Decepticons come back bent out of shape all the time. Other inmates, things like that.”

“I will not allow that to happen,” Magnus says, “I will ensure your fair treatment as a prisoner of war.”

The mechanism that lowers the pod into the bay below is loud and monotonous. They watch it descend in their own silence. And Starscream thinks, it’s time for the play. Now.

“What if I don’t want to go back?” he asks. “What if I want to defect?”

Magnus turns to look at him in surprise. “What?” he says, stupidly.

“Oh, don’t make me say it again,” Starscream says, sighing heavily. “I think that machine really messed me up, Mins. They put me in with four Autobots and shook me up like a can of fizzy! I mean, I can’t really go back to the ‘cons like this. I'd look weak. Like a soft touch. Like a collaborateur.” He shrugs. “I bet if you vouched for me, they’d take me in.”

Magnus’ optics move minutely—they’re searching my face, Starscream thinks. He thinks he can tell when I’m lying to him, because he knew some silly young version of me who hadn’t mastered the craft. He thinks he’ll be able to tell.

“I would vouch for you,” he says, “however, given your position within the Decepticon Command, I suspect major Autobot leaders would call for you to go on trial anyway.”

“Right,” Starscream says. The pod stops, hanging over the closed bay door below, and the cockpit opens. “But you know all the best legal council, you would—I mean, you could help me find some good representation, if I needed it, couldn’t you?”

Magnus swallows and looks away, slightly bashfully. “I would offer that assistance to anyone who requested it,” he says quickly. “We’ll have time to discuss this on the journey out. You first.”

He motions with a hand, but not a blaster. Starscream, who has had time to observe the shape of the cockpits twice now, gets in first.

Now, he thinks, his whole body thrumming, slightly hot and fizzy as Magnus begins to climb aboard. Now that they’re both onboard, Magnus will be between him and his only chance of escape; that’s why he had to board first. Magnus will close the door in a second, and it won’t open again.

Now, he’ll do it now. He has to do it now. He—he can’t go back like this. There’s only two of us now, he thinks, there’s only two of us, and we’re alone. And he– he trusts me. He trusts me. He trusts–

“The thing is,” Starscream says softly, and as Magnus turns to look at him, places the barrel of his null gun against his helm, “I really can’t go back like this.”

Ultra Magnus doesn’t move. His gaze flickers down to the gun, almost disinterestedly, and then back to Starscream’s face.

“Put that away,” he says softly, “it’s over.”

“Stop acting tough,” Starscream snarls, “your friends are gone now, Magnus, and I’m the one in control! No more Rodimus Prime calling the shots. I say what goes! I’m going to get out of this pod, and you’re going to close the door behind me, sweet and innocent, and I’ll shoot you off to your coordinates just like promised. Let’s play nice, now! Wouldn’t want to feel this barrel get too hot, would you?”

Ultra Magnus waits for Starscream to finish talking, slightly out of breath. And then he says, “no.”

“No?” Starscream snaps.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he says softly. “You won’t shoot me. You can’t.”

For a moment, Starscream freezes—and then he laughs. “Oh,” he says, “I see what this is! You think you know everything. You think—that I was telling the truth, that I really care about you! That the machine really affected me at all. Well, it didn’t, Magnus! I’m the best in the business, Magnus, I’m playing you like a fiddle.”

“You’re not,” Magnus says, and Starscream strikes him across the face.

As the bot reels back, Starscream grabs the ridge of his chassis, pulls himself up until his back is to the windscreen, crammed tight in a tight space, legs tangled as he settles himself on Magnus’ lap, gun pressed to the bottom of his face. Now, he thinks desperately, I’ll do it now–

It’s so hot, both their engines whirring, condensation beading all over their bodies as they try to flush the heat–

“You don’t know the real me,” Starscream snarls, low and close. “What you saw? That was me before I lost everything. Before the war. A fraction of who I am now. You don’t know me, you don’t know anything about me!”

“I know you,” Magnus says, simply.

Starscream opens his mouth to say something, and nothing comes out. His arm trembles between them.

Now, he screams at himself, do it now, take the shot now, take the fucking shot–

Ultra Magnus places one hand on the back of Starscream’s helm, and uses the other to push his arm gently aside. It stays there, limp between their bodies, as he pulls him in and kisses him.

It’s

Everything

And then Starscream is scrambling at him, clinging to him, kissing him back hard and messy, talons tearing little lines down his helm and his chest and not even caring–

He can feel Magnus’ big hands on his wings, on his waist, on his legs, he grinds his body against it and hears the big guy gasp, lights flaring all over, head back as Starscream leans down to bite the cables in his neck–

“You would protect me,” he murmurs, between kisses, drowning in the sound of Magnus gasping for him, “I know you would, I know you would–”

“Yes, Star–”

“You could do it, you could,” he says, leans up to kiss those lips, like he could mute the sound if he tried, “you could do anything, you have the influence–”

“I would– I would do– mmh– whatever it took,” Magnus pants, hands grasping desperately and inexpertly at him. “I would do anything for you, I would do anything–”

“I know,” Starscream murmurs against his mouth, “that’s why I’m sorry.” 

And he rolls off Magnus’ lap towards the open cockpit door, dives free, and slams it shut behind him.

The nice thing about an escape pod, Starscream thinks, as Magnus slams his hands on the inside of the window, is that once they close, they don’t open again until they’ve landed safely. The other nice thing about an escape pod is that, while they can be controlled from the inside, in case of a conscious escapee, they can also be launched from outside, in the case of an injured, incompetent, or otherwise incapable victim.

He looks up at Magnus, optics wide, upset, confused, and shakes his head. “I told you,” he says, knowing the glass is too thick, knowing Magnus won’t hear him, “I can’t go back like that.”

And then, because no one can hear him and the truth is hot and wet in his mouth, optics burning, he breathes out “I love you.” 

And he hits the button on the control panel, and sends him away.









Epilogue.

 

By the time Rodimus makes it down the hall that the little medi-drone led him to, Thunderclash is already there. He’s sitting in a chair that is too small for his oversized specs, tapping the heel of his pede nervously against the hard floor, making a ‘clat-clat-clat’ noise that rings around the room. He stands up when he sees Rodimus coming.

“Oh, Rodimus,” he says, “I didn’t expect to see you so soon! That is, I thought you’d get caught up in the briefings.”

Rodimus waves a hand. “I put Magnus on it and squirreled off,” he says. “Honestly, it’s not that important that I’m there, it’s just got to be someone from high command. And he needs something to keep him busy, after… he needs something to keep him busy.”

“Of course, yes,” Thunderclash says, optics dimming. “Poor old stoic. We ought to go by his hab sometime soon with… I don’t know, something to buck his spirits. Engex, or something.”

Rodimus wrinkles his nose. “I dunno about engex,” he says, “I don’t think Mags was ever a big drinker.”

“I think he will be, tonight,” Thunderclash says.

Rodimus considers this. “Okay, yeah,” he says, “we’ll go. I’ve got to have something in my cabinets that isn’t totally artificial color. We’ll make a night of it.” He sighs. “A deeply depressing night.”

Thunderclash shrugs. “He’d try nobly to do the same for us,” he points out. “He– I mean–he wouldn’t be any good at it, but he’d take our hands and… and pat the back of them, and say ‘there, there’ in a regular fashion.”

Rodimus laughs, a little. It’s not a big laugh, because it wasn’t particularly funny. But then, nothing feels funny, right now. Maybe he’s just got to laugh at something.

He glances at the door to the little room. Thunderclash follows his gaze.

“You can go in, if you’d like,” he says, and Rodimus startles a little, like the commander forgot he was there. “I poked my head in an hour ago and said a few words to him. I… they say he’s doing alright, now. He’ll be under the anesthesia for… oh, a few days, maybe.”

“Sounds about right,” says Rodimus, who doesn’t really know one way or another what would be right. “I’ll… go in and talk to him in a bit. I, uh, I don’t have anything to bring him. Crystals, or candy, or… whatever.”

“Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t care about that,” Thunderclash says.

He’s probably right—Rung probably wouldn’t. Rodimus grinds his denta, puts his hand on the door handle.

He’s ready to go in. He’s ready to—to see it. To be there for him. To hold his… his little hand, and talk to him, and…

“Thunderclash,” he says, turning suddenly, “look, for… look, for everything in the machine, and… all the shit I said to you in there… the way we… I mean… look, I’m sorry, okay? For all of it.”

Thunderclash blinks at him. Then, all of a sudden, his shoulders heave, and a laugh comes burbling out. “Sorry?” he asks. “What on earth have you got to be sorry for?”

Rodimus blinks. He was expecting a sniff, and a heartfelt ‘well let us simply let bygones be bygones’ or something like that, firm and distant. He wasn’t really expecting, um. Well, he wasn’t–

“For… being an asshole?” He tries. “For being– mate, I was genuinely being such an asshole in there.”

“Oh, but you were young,” Thunderclash says with a dismissive wave of the hand which only slightly makes Rodimus want to smack him and tell him to be serious, “we all were! The machine made us… yes, young and inexperienced and silly, in our own ways. I should apologize to you for having been so supercilious and sensitive all the time! Goodness knows, I was moaning and crying an awful lot in there.”

Some young, dumb part of Rodimus’ processor is rising from the depths to say something about how that would have been fine if you’d been moaning and crying for me, ba-ching, but Rodimus gives it a cowing look and a firm hand, and it sinks back down. He’s all grown up. He doesn’t have to go for the most obvious joke.

Not every time, anyway.

Instead, he scratches the back of one leg with the other, feeling slightly awkward. “Nah, you were pretty okay,” he says. “And I think… maybe, I would’ve been okay, too, if I’d had different company. But somehow, you guys got me all sensitive and nasty. Being around good people has that affect on me. Better that we never met at that age.”

Thunderclash is fixing him with an expression he doesn’t recognize, and Rodimus looks away awkwardly. His hand is still on the handle into Rung’s room.

He’s… he’s ready, now, he could be ready now. He could go in, now.

“Has?”

“Still does, I guess. But I’m better at keeping the nasty on the inside.” Rodimus shrugs. He can’t move his hand on the handle. “Thunderclash?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think we…” he glances back up, and is hit with Thunderclash’s open, honest, concerned stare. “I mean… Rung. You think we did right by him?”

Thunderclash frowns, and Rodimus looks away again.

“I mean, I wanted to do right by him,” he says, explaining himself. Trying to explain himself. “I wanted to… make him feel important. Treat him like he was important. But I… I mean, I think he had to say yes to everything. What if I didn’t…”

He trails off, staring into space, jaw working.

“Ah,” Thunderclash says. “For what it’s worth, Rodimus, when I was in the pod with him… he kept asking about you.”

“Uh?” asks Rodimus, stupidly. He blinks.

“He wanted to make sure you were alright,” Thunderclash goes on. “He was honestly a bit hysterical, I had to keep telling him you were fine, and… er, I couldn’t tell him you were with Pharma, he became very distressed by the idea, so I had to, er, well unfortunately I had to lie to him, a little bit, just to keep his vitals steady.” He wrings his hands. “He, um. I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Rodimus. I think he… cares for you, very much.”

“Oh,” Rodimus says. He resets his voicebox. “Okay. Um. Thank you.”

He looks at the handle again. Just turn it. Just turn it, and you can see him again, and you’ll know that he’s alright–

“Thunders,” he says, “when he’s up, and running again, uh… I mean… look, I’m going to take him out for a drink, if he wants it, my treat. But I–you–do you want to come?”




“Obviously, I can’t volunteer to be your legal representative, given that I am otherwise involved in the case,” Ultra Magnus says, flipping through his datapad. “However, I have ascertained the whereabouts of your Delphi records, including statements made by your colleagues following your disappearance. And it sounds like Rung is going to make a full recovery, which means the worst charge has been downgraded from ‘murder’ to ‘attempted manslaughter’, which are a significant number of degrees apart.” He makes a note. “Add to that your verifiable claim of acting under duress, and… with a good team, I think your sentence could be very tolerably short indeed. Maybe even replaced with work service.”

Pharma sighs, scratching his helm and leaning back. He’s sprawled out a little in his cell, which is… comfortable enough, Ultra Magnus put in some good words to make sure it would be so. “Why are you here?” he asks, lazily, like the answer doesn’t really interest him. “I mean, you were here yesterday, and you were here the day before. Surely, you’re getting tired of it.”

“I intend to stop by your cell once a day to ensure you are being treated with the care and respect that all prisoners are entitled to,” Ultra Magnus says. “To be blunt, you are on trial for torturing Autobots. You are on an Autobot ship. I do not think it is impossible that someone would attempt to mistreat you, if there was no enforced accountability.”

“And you’re my enforcer,” Pharma says. “How typical.”

“I will send the evidence I have collected to your assigned legal counsel,” Ultra Magnus goes on, ignoring him. “I assume you are hiring good legal counsel?”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Because you told me you had quite a lot of money saved up,” Ultra Magnus says, coolly, “that you did not, in fact, spend on purchasing a large ship for the six of us to escape upon. If you have not arranged for counsel–”

“Oh, how charming,” Pharma says, “I haven’t. I’ll just take whatever defender is assigned to me. I don’t really think I’ve got much of a case either way, do you?”

“You’ve got quite a good case, in the hands of a competent team,” Ultra Magnus says, "as I have been explaining. Frankly, Pharma, I don’t want to see you locked up indefinitely. None of us do.”

“None of you except Starscream, you mean,” Pharma says dryly, and smirks when Ultra Magnus stiffens in his chair. “He hasn’t been by to see me, not like the rest of you. Unless… you were so sparkless as to lock up your own beloved…?”

His optics glimmer, and he fixes Ultra Magnus with a coy smile that makes his tanks churn in fury.

“Starscream did not return with us,” Ultra Magnus says, ignoring the latter half of Pharma’s ridiculous little comment and definitely ignoring the way his smile spreads. “He… parted ways, during our launch.”

“Oh, but he was supposed to ride with you,” Pharma says, faux-concern radiating off of him, “I thought he was riding with you, because you had such a good handle on him?”

“The situation changed,” Ultra Magnus says. “He chose to ride alone.”

“He is a slippery little thing, isn’t he?” Pharma says, and goes back to peering at his talons thoughtlessly. “Now you know how I felt, just trying to pin him down all those months. Years. It… it felt like years…”

He pauses, as though about to fall into a reverie; then bounces back as though nothing had happened.

“I’m sorry for the surprise you must have had, what with him running out on you like that,” he says. “I can’t say I would be surprised, though, if I’d been there. He always was the type to do a runner on you. Gets out when the going’s about to get bad, doesn’t he? Fifty-some attempts, and he always abandoned you, when it got hard.”

Ultra Magnus does not rise to the bait. He sits, quietly, thumbing through pages on his datapad, and does not think about Starscream.

He’s getting good at not thinking about Starscream. Every night, it gets easier. Easy to stop falling asleep while imagining what his fans would sound like, if they were in Magnus’ berth with him, whirring quietly, wings twitching as he recharges. It is desperately, thoughtlessly easy not to wake up, fans heaving, from a dream where Starscream is cross-examining him in an empty courtroom, driving him hard, and then grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him down onto the floor and–

It’s been a few weeks of not thinking about Starscream, all day and all night, and a few weeks since Rodimus and Thunderclash came by his habsuite and made him disengage his FIM chip and told him that he’s a slag, Mags, they’re all slags, all beautiful fliers do is break your heart and take your money, and that was an enjoyable experience that he definitely didn’t cry about later.

He definitely doesn’t think things like, I would have let him take my money if he had asked for it, I would have given him everything, I would have–

It’s especially easy not to remember what he felt like, in his arms, when he–

“I am sorry, Magnus, for saddling you with him,” Pharma says, and Ultra Magnus glances up in surprise because for a moment, it almost sounded like Pharma meant something he said. “You’ve got such a black and white way of thinking. One of the others, well. They might have had some way to figure out how they really felt. But you… it was always going to be the hardest on you. That’s why I did it.” He smiles, humorlessly. “And look at me, now! I’m finally sorry for it.”

“Thank you,” Ultra Magnus says. “From you, Pharma, that means a lot.”

“Of course, I’m sorry for a lot of things,” Pharma goes on, slumping back on his berth, “mostly, I’m sorry I got caught in the first place.”

Ultra Magnus does not ask if he means ‘caught by the DJD’ or ‘caught by you’. Knowing Pharma, he probably means both.

“I’m sorry you got caught, too,” he says instead, and stands, brushing a nanogram of rubble off of his otherwise perfectly clean struts. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check in, Pharma. I suggest you take my advice vis your legal representative, and upon request I can share a few candidates who I believe to be up to snuff for the case.”

“Golly, thanks,” Pharma says, in a tone that implies he is being sardonic, or perhaps sarcastic. “I love getting advice from you, Magsy! Just like I love ignoring it.”

“Thank you,” Ultra Magnus says. “If you enjoy ignoring my advice, maybe you would prefer to hear it from someone else.”

He walks to the end of the hall, and is just about to open the door to leave when it opens in front of him.

“Magnus,” Ratchet says, “I just got the coordinates you sent, I got here as fast as I could. Where–”

Ultra Magnus jerks his thumb. “End of the hall,” he says. “Talk some sense into him, please.”

“Thanks, I’ll try,” Ratchet says, and brushes past without another word.

He lingers in the doorway, one hand on the side of the frame. He doesn’t turn around when he hears Pharma yelp and leap to his feet, and he doesn’t turn around when he hears Ratchet very clearly call him an idiot.

Magnus transforms for the drive back up. In his rearview, he sees Pharma’s hands jut out through the bars of his cell. He sees Ratchet’s hands (poor, high-mileage, malfunctioning hands) lace with them, trembling.

“What is wrong with you?” Ratchet is saying, “I’m—yes, I’ve been briefed. Why didn’t you… call for help? Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did, I tried, you don’t understand how hard I tried! No one responded to me. No one cared about me! You never responded to me!”

“I never got anything from you!” Malfunctioning hands squeeze and shake in the mirror. “If you didn’t… if you couldn’t get through, you could have… run, why didn’t you just run? Everyone would have understood, if you had just… run away!”

Ultra Magnus steps out. It’s not a conversation he’s meant to be privy to—one of those ‘spats’ he’s heard so much about—and anyway, he has no interest in it.

‘Why didn’t you just run?’ Ratchet’s voice echoes in his head, and Ultra Magnus does not think about the closing door of the escape pod, and Starscream on the other side, shaking his head from the other side of the window.

‘Everyone would have understood, if you had just run away.’




It’s getting worse, now.

Starscream hasn’t… talked about it, with anyone. None of it is anyone’s fucking business, anyway, and the people who matter know better than to ask. The people who don’t matter know better than to ask, too, though that’s more of a general “pissing Starscream off usually leads to getting your face smashed in, stay out of his way” kind of knowledge.

He’d taken the fourth escape pod on his own, just as far as the nearest satellite around a planet, then dumped it to make a comm tower out of the scrap. One message was all it took; two days later, Thundercracker and Skywarp dropped in, hauled him up, forced fuel down his intake, and brought him back onboard.

Everything was supposed to go back to the way it had been. He’d done the right thing, hadn’t he? He’d– he’d won. He’d squirreled out of it, sent the Autobots off and laughed the whole time, watched their pods shoot off into space and laughed, laughed, laughed at their tails. Metaphorically. He hadn’t, you know, actually laughed; that would have been genuinely insane.

He’d let them…

No. He’d survived. That’s what it’s all about, surviving. No, he hadn’t bested the indefatigable Ultra Magnus in one-on-one combat, that would be absurd! He’d outwitted him. No, he hadn’t brought Megatron a single Autobot head on a platter, but he hadn’t gone there on a mission. All things considered, he’d done well, played to his strengths.

Megatron had agreed with him. Which was… odd. But obviously it was good! 

And then…

And then he’d been in a firefight, a few days later, and he’d armed his cannons and aimed them at an Autobot transport, and he–

He–

The thing is, they don’t exactly label their ships with a headcount of their crew on the side in big bold letters. They don’t exactly– there’s not, exactly, any way to know– that is, if there’s someone who you, maybe, for political reasons, don’t want dead, it’s important to be careful with what ship you’re–

He couldn’t shoot. Engine in his sights, perfect position, diving and dipping and the rest of his seekers giving him cover, and he choked.

He made up some bullshit, on debrief, about his guns jamming. And the high command had given him an array of dirty looks, except for Megatron, who gave him a pummeling instead. Thundercracker and Skywarp didn’t say shit, just helped him pop his dents back out, clean his vents back out. It happens. Things jam, especially in a cheap seeker frame.

They were sympathetic, the first time. But then it happened again.

Skywarp covers for him, that time. Sees him freeze up on the field and drops into position himself. He takes the shot that Starscream can’t, and–

And Starscream almost screams when he watches the transport go down, almost chases after it, thinks (for the first time in so long, the first time in longer than he can remember) that it looks like Skyfire, disappearing into the snow.

The third time they catch him (it doesn’t matter how many times there are between), Skywarp grabs him by the arm and drags him back to their habsuite. Thundercracker’s already there, worrying himself away to almost nothing in the corner, arms crossed firmly across his cockpit.

“Fucking get it together, Star,” Skywarp tells him, shoving him down into a chair, “I don’t know what happened to you out there, but you need to process it!”

“We can help you,” Thundercracker offers, “we can… come up with solutions, we can… be here for you. Is it mods? Do you need mods?”

“It’s not fucking mods,” Skywarp snaps, “he’s going soft!”

Starscream shoves Skywarp’s hand off of him irritably. “You two are so fucking annoying,” he sighs, “you know that you’re annoying, right?”

“You’re annoying!” Skywarp shrieks, and throws an empty oil can at his head. “You’re going to get us killed out there, and you’re doing your little ‘I don’t need help from anybody, oowoo!’ song and dance! Well, I’m sick of it!”

“Star,” Thundercracker says, and reaches out for Skywarp’s shoulder, pulling him back, “we’re just… we’ve been worried, okay, but we didn’t say anything because when we do you usually explode. But this is going to get somebody killed. It’s going to get you killed.” He glances at Skywarp, who glances back and softens a little. “Whatever the DJD did… you’re not recharging right. You’re not fueling enough. You’re not–”

“No! I’m not,” Starscream snaps, and gets to his pedes. His optics flare, plating ruffling in an instinctive threat display. His trine does not react correctly, i.e. cowering back and begging for mercy, potentially with bowing and scraping and crying out for forgiveness, all of which would be appreciated. Instead, they give each other A Look, which makes him significantly angrier. “I can’t– I can’t get it out of my fucking head! And it’s not–it’s not going away. And a patch isn’t going to fix it!”

“Star?” Thundercracker says, softly.

“It’s– that fucking Autobot, he did this to me,” Starscream says, rubbing at his face with a hand.

“Autobot?”

“He– ripped me open and tore everything out,” Starscream goes on, ignoring Thundercracker’s increasingly worried face, “I’m not- dreaming right. I try to, I take my actions like any other mech, and I– I just see–” he bites down on one of his talons hard, shutters his optics.

“Starscream,” Skywarp says, his tone cold and warning.

“I see faces,” Starscream murmurs. “I keep seeing faces– so many faces–”

Skywarp grabs him by the shoulders, turns him around, forces him back down into his chair. Slaps him, hard, across the face.

“Hey!” Starscream yelps. “I’ll bend you like a tin can for that–”

“You need to get it together,” Skywarp snarls, “because if Megatron finds out you’re wigging out, it’s over!” He flexes his fingers. “I’m going to take that little punk Tarn and make it so his insides are on the outsides, believe you me. But you’re bigger than he is! Tougher than he is! Better than he is!”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Thundercracker mutters, shaking his helm.

“I don’t give a shit what he did to you, Star, so don’t you go telling me about it,” Skywarp goes on, “because whatever it was, I’ve seen you get over worse. You put this in a box, you understand? You put it in a box and you put it the fuck away, and you don’t let it come out on the field.” He stands there, fists clenched, vents heaving. “Because if you don’t, Megatron is going to put you down like a dog. And I have worked too hard to keep you alive until now. Get. It. Together.”

And then he turns on his heel and storms out. Starscream, once the master of the last word, watches him go in silence.

Across the room, Thundercracker sighs. “Well, there he goes,” he says, and does not ask if Starscream is alright, because Starscream hates it when he does. “I say we give him an hour and then go after him, see if he’s more sensible when he’s calmed down.”

“Sensible,” Starscream mutters, and sits back in his chair. “That something he ever used to be?”

“Not really, but he plays it on TV,” Thundercracker says, with a shrug. “Hey, uh…”

He trails off. He does that, sometimes, with these little aborted conversations that he realizes he doesn’t want to start. Normally, Starscream gives him an out, starts something new, but he doesn’t feel like playing that game today.

“What?” he snaps instead, and adds a glare. For spice.

“I was going to ask you… something stupid, I guess,” Thundercracker says. “Stupid for both of us.”

“Oh,” Starscream says, and pricks his mind and lets the curiosity drain away. “Never mind, then.” He gets up, brushes himself off, and crosses their habsuite, turning his back to his trinemate.

Thundercracker wants to leave. Has wanted to leave, for a while. They all know it, but they don’t talk about it. Probably, Starscream thinks, sorting through their stock to see if there’s anything actually worth drinking in here, he was going to say something mildly seditious, and then remembered Soundwave’s optics and audials at the last minute.

Starscream thinks of the old days, before the not-so-glorious revolution. He wonders if Thundercracker is holding onto any pamphlets, anything it would be stupid to get caught with. He was always… so stupidly willing to think about things first. To ponder. Sometimes, Starscream glances over at him during meetings with High Command, watches him sizing up Shockwave, face carefully blank, and worries that the big dumb oaf is going to get himself caught.

But nothing’s ever happened. Not with Starscream and Skywarp at his back. They keep the heat off of him. They always have.

“Was it a cortical psychic patch?” Thundercracker asks. Starscream shakes his head, kicks the door shut.

“No,” he mutters. “Look, I know what you’re going to ask, it wasn’t mnemosurgery, either. Wasn’t shadow play. They just fucking outmaneuvered me.”

Thundercracker considers him. “I haven’t seen you like this before,” he admits. “When you first came back… we were just happy to get you back in our berth. You were gone for months.” He reaches into the cooling cube, nervously hunting for something at the back. “But you weren’t right. I noticed right away, except you hate it when we mention that kind of thing.”

“Yeah, because it’s cringe, and you’re overinvested,” Starscream sneers. “Who goes around worrying about other people like that? Especially worrying about me , the great and powerful Starscream. When I’m fine!”

Thundercracker doesn’t say anything for a second, just eyes him warily. “You know you’re not fine,” he says after a moment.

Starscream waves a hand in the air dismissively. “Of course I’m not,” he admits, “but that doesn’t matter. It’s just the truth; it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Doesn’t it?” Thundercracker asks.

“Stop that,” Starscream snaps. “What do you want, anyway? Skywarp wanted a chance to rough me up a little, and you want… what, the yelling at a brick wall experience? Complete with biolights? Okay, you got me, you both got me! I’m losing my edge! You want me to say it again?” He throws a mouthful of engex back. It burns hard. “But this is all I’ve got. What am I supposed to do, run? Where would I go? If I defect, who would take me? The Autobots?”

He laughs hollowly, because laughing hollowly is one of those slightly eerie things you can do that always makes a point. It almost screams, look at me, watch me suffer, which is great when you want pity but you don’t want to cry real tears for it. It’s a great shortcut. It even works when his intake isn’t full of acid.

Thundercracker blinks up at him, slowly, sadly. “What do you want to do?” he asks. “Do you want to run?”

Starscream sits down in a rush and puts his head in his hands. Suddenly, he feels very tired, and very old; very different from the young bot he spent so much time playing.

The weight of his memory is heavy on his back, a great stone he’s trying to drag out of the ocean. His age, his life, his… actions. All the people he’s killed. All the people he’s had killed, ordered killed.

He remembers the lotus program quite well; he remembers all of it. It was a month ago. It was yesterday. He remembers– he remembers every cycle. He’d only been burdened with one at a time while he was living them, but upon exiting the program, they all came upon him at once, like a thunderstorm, like nausea, like grasping hands pulling him apart.

Remembers the feeling of a small body under his hands.

Remembers the look of shock, the look of disappointment, of disgust, on Minimus’ face. Upon finding out that Starscream had killed two, count them, two pigs in some shithole bar, in a fight they’d started. Just two. Just two had been enough.

“I’m too big,” Starscream mutters. “If I run, it’s not like I could just disappear… we’re not just seekers in the Shades anymore. I can’t slip through the cracks.”

“Gosh, the Shades,” Thundercracker says, “I haven’t thought about the Shades in years. How did we ever make it?”

“We were mean,” Starscream says, and shrugs. “We were tough.”

“We still are,” Thundercracker says, “even me, in my own way– don’t laugh! I can be very mean.”

“Sure, you’re giving me a real showing right now.”

Thundercracker kicks him in the shin, which makes him yelp, but is, you know, deserved. He decides to curse and take it like a champ.

“Come on, don’t be a little bitch,” Thundercracker says. “You don’t have to be honest with Skywarp, and you don’t have to be honest with yourself, but take one second to be honest with me. What do you want, Star?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Starscream says.

“Really?” Thundercracker says. “I think it’s the only thing that matters.”

Starscream risks a glance at him, and feels young and vulnerable all over again. “You can’t help me get it,” he says.

“You could let me try,” Thundercracker replies.

Maybe that’s good enough.




On the night it ends, Ultra Magnus enters his habsuite and turns on the lights to reveal Starscream. Starscream, sitting at his table, drinking his engex.

“Put your hands where I can see them,” he says, and aims his blaster. Starscream looks up at him, over the rim of his cube, and raises an unimpressed brow.

“Hello to you too,” he says, and sets the cube down. “Why don’t you put that silly thing away and get some handcuffs, like a good little Autobot? Can’t you see I’m here to turn myself in?”

“What is this about?” Magnus snaps, not lowering his blasters for a second. This is… an occupied ship, he reminds himself, he is perfectly capable of comming for backup. Rodimus could be by his side in under a minute. He is in control, here.

He does not comm. He does not move.

Starscream slumps back in his chair, showing off his palms like a prisoner and stretching languorously, showing off his struts and vents too in the process. He’s older than he was in the simulation, visibly older. More mature, better fitted, more expensively made up. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asks, in that smug way that makes Magnus’ tanks feel like they’ve been removed and are getting steamrollered by an indifferent worker drone, “I’m defecting, just like I told you I would! The Autobots will put me on trial, just like you told me they would, and you’ll of course suggest legal representation, like you said you–”

Magnus grabs the table and throws it against the wall, vents blasting, the cube on top shattering as it makes contact. Starscream startles back, but does not leap from his chair, frozen in place by the speed of his advancement. “Stop,” Magnus snarls, blaster pointed straight down at his cockpit, “toying with me.”

The smile has slipped off Starscream’s face as he looks up into Magnus’, but it hasn’t been replaced by anything. He’s still slumped back, and up close, Magnus can see his wings splayed asymmetrically, his arms bent at the elbows. His legs have uncrossed; they (Magnus will kill kill kill himself for noticing) splay, slightly, a relaxed position inviting a partner in.

“Fine,” he says, voice lower. “I’m here as a volunteer—no, that’s not right. I’m an example. For Pharma’s plea bargain.”

“Pharma?”

“I’ve heard you’ve been handling his case,” Starscream says. His optics flicker, a little. Low charge. “And I… I’m an example of what his work could do in Autobot hands.”

“An example?”

He flashes a smile. It struggles to stay on his face. “Full Decepticon reprogramming,” he says, “no shadowplay required.”

Magnus stares down at him. He wants to say I don’t understand, he wants to say explain your terms, but Starscream’s smile is already melting away again and his optics dart away like frightened fish under his gaze. “The fact is,” he says, slightly breathless, and lets out a sigh, “I’m… I’m not doing well, Magnus. I… I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I–I can’t…” 

He stops, takes another shaky breath.

“I’ve been in the field a few times, the last few months,” he says. “And– and I feel… sick, like when you’re still conscious when a ship hits FTL and you can feel yourself stretching out into an eternity, and when I– I try to track a target, when I have them in my sights, I c-I can’t, I’m not, I can’t–”

Magnus touches his cheek gently and Starscream gasps like he’s been plunged into ice. His whole body flinches—his optics shutter.

“That’s enough,” Magnus says, softly. “I… understand. And I believe you,” he adds, “even though I know I shouldn’t.”

He draws his hand away and lowers his weapon. What good is it, anyway? He wonders. They’re locked in a dance, the two of them. He couldn’t unload his blaster if he tried.

He turns and walks back across the room, shutting the habsuite door and enveloping them in real privacy. Already, he’s thinking about the table—stupid, macho, pointless show of strength, and for what? He’s made a terrible mess, and Starscream wasn’t even frightened by it; just his own way of waving a null gun around.

Slowly, he walks towards it, to pick it back up. Starscream hasn’t moved from his chair.

“Why would you come here, to me?” Ultra Magnus says at last, righting the table and adjusting the angles so that the lines will be squared with the lines of the room for efficient space usage. “I have not worked to make myself easy to find, and we parted under… difficult circumstances.”

Out of his field of vision, he hears Starscream make a small noise, a little exhale. It’s shaky. He’s either exhausted or terrified, Magnus thinks, and instantly feels like a heel. He just wanted—he just wanted Starscream to stop laughing at him, he didn’t mean to frighten him–

“I’m done for, no matter what happens,” Starscream says, the words pouring out of him too quickly, “I can’t stay with the Decepticons if I– if I can't show strength, it’s the only thing we respect. Megatron will sniff it out eventually—already, he suspects my weakness, my failure—when he discovers I’ve gone soft he’ll have no more use for me. They’ll use a spear, sharpened on both sides, for my head.”

Magnus doesn’t know what that means, exactly, but Starscream relishes the phrase with a kind of excited disgust. A final punishment, then, some last indignity. Humiliation in death.

“I thought for a while I couldn’t possibly defect,” Starscream says, lounging back in his chair as Magnus wipes down the top of the table, “there were too many of my own among our numbers, too many I couldn’t turn against, couldn’t kill. But… if the Autobots take me, Thundercracker will come, too,” he says. “Skywarp never would, he’s too stubborn and strong and stupid, but he gave us a ship and called us traitors and told us to go before anyone caught us. It’s his kind of…”

“Love?” Magnus guesses, and Starscream laughs, high and shrill and cracking. Like no one else’s.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” he says, “his pride, maybe. He has to take care of us. Has to be the Big Dog. Anyway,” he continues, “you aren’t as hard to find as you think. I asked Thundercracker, and he found your location in about three days. Easy work.”

“I didn’t ask how you came to me,” Magnus says, “I asked why.”

Starscream looks him up and down, and Magnus looks back at him. “You don’t know?” he asks, incredulously.

“I would like to hear it from you,” Magnus responds. “Then, I will make a decision regarding the kind of help I am able to offer, if any.”

Starscream has a stiff, odd look on his face: wide-eyed, lips tight like something inside is trying to leap out. “I wanted you to look at me again,” he says after a moment, and the words come out in a rush, like they’re pushing other denials out of the way. “I wanted—you idiot, you know this!” He leaps to his feet. “I wanted to be the thing you looked at! Me! And I thought—I thought, if I came here like this–”

He stops, staring up at Magnus, before turning and stumbling a few steps away.

“I didn’t think you would still be wearing that stupid thing,” he snaps, back turned to Magnus. “I thought you would… step out of it, in your private quarters. I thought I would—before you turned me in—I thought I would get to see you.” He glances over his shoulder. “The real you.”

Minimus, Magnus thinks, and feels a surge of anger.

“That is not the ‘real me’,” he says coldly, “and you are badly mistaken if you think I spend any time wishing to return to that—that weak, pathetic body! This is what I am now, this is what the cause requires me to be, and this is what I excel in being!”

“It hurts you,” Starscream says quietly.

“Good,” Magnus snaps. “It is a sacrifice I make for the cause! It is a perfection I am offered at a cost, and the pain is a reminder! You think, just because we spent some time together in there, that you understand why I do this. But what you learned about me was learned without context! It is irrelevant!”

“You know that’s not true,” Starscream says.

“It is true,” Magnus snarls. “You were right about one thing, Starscream; we have an incomplete picture of each other. You were right when you said that I didn’t know you.”

“No, I wasn’t!” Starscream snaps back, whirling to face him. “You had me dead to rights, Minimus, admit it! I couldn’t shoot! I still can’t! I couldn’t even run away, look at me! I’m like a fed dog, I just come crawling back to howl at your door!”

“Don’t call me that,” Magnus shouts, and grabs him by the shoulders. He pushes, and they slam together into the wall. “You don’t know anything about me! You know some… young, foolish, naive version of myself, someone I haven’t been in millions of years! You know him. Not me.”

“I know you,” Starscream says simply.

“No,” Magnus says, vents heaving hard.

“You want it to be me and you don’t know how,” Starscream murmurs, “it’s never been complicated for you before, and I came into your life and made it complicated. And I–want to go on, making it complicated. You’re angry because you’re confused, and I’m never going to make it easier for you. You’re jealous of yourself.”

Magnus says nothing. Starscream’s optics are low, his expression unafraid, his wings pressed back against the wall. Slowly, he raises a hand and touches Magnus’ face, talons slowly drawing down his cheek.

“Minimus?” Starscream almost whispers. “Aren’t you angry Magnus kissed me first?”

This time, Starscream takes control, and Magnus lets him, and everything shifts under his feet as they press together, desperate, out of time, out of sense, out of place. Right here, right now, Minimus thinks wildly. He could open me up and take everything and I would give it away, I wouldn’t think twice, I would let him take and take and take–

And what would he give me in return? What do I want? Just for him to stay here, touching me, kissing me, standing by my side? Always? Forever? Could I make him give me forever, in return?

They pull apart, only by a fraction, pressed together, heaving. Everything, Minimus thinks wildly, I want everything. 

“What do we do now?” Minimus asks, into the space between their lips. “How do we go on?”

“Together, I think,” Starscream says.

The future stretches out before them, an endless chasm of fear and possibility and hope. Thrumming like feet marching to the same drum, like the frequency of two stars reaching out to touch each other with their light for the first time.

 

FIN.