Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Ark

Optimus sat at the head of the table in the command room as the officers' meeting kept crawling by. He probably should have been paying more attention, but nobody else around the table seemed to be paying all that much attention to Red Alert. His security director had been on edge the past few hours since the Autobots had foiled the Decepticons’ latest energon raid attempt earlier that morning. The Autobots had stopped Megatron and the Seekers he had brought quickly, way quicker and more straightforward than usual in Optimus’ opinion. When they had arrived, Megatron had been boasting to him how the 'raid would give them enough energon to turn the tide of the war in the Decepticons’ favor'. It had then taken all of another handful of minutes before the Decepticons had retreated from the power station. Optimus had watched the look of disappointment and rage Megatron had on his face as the Warlord was forced to flee.

Optimus was pulled out of his thoughts when he almost face-planted into the table; having nearly fallen into recharge. Quickly recovering, Optimus looked around the table to see how the rest of his officers were fairing against Red Alert’s continuing ramble.

Ironhide looked like he was seconds away from falling into recharge as well, optics dim. Ratchet looked annoyed to be in the meeting still, most definitely wanting to go hide in the medbay again with Drift and the other medics. Wheeljack was sketching plans for some new machine on a datapad. Optimus hoped this machine wouldn’t explode like Wheeljack’s last few (It probably would). Blaster had turned off his optics at some point, either in recharge or listening to Earth music. Jazz wasn't even facing Red Alert, looking at the large Earth plant in the back corner of the room and humming. Even Prowl, the usually attentive and note-taking mech of the meetings, seemed to just be watching the shelf of datapads in the corner behind Red Alert.

Red Alert finally wrapped up his report (one hour after the meeting was scheduled to finish, a new low). Optimus was finally going to dismiss the meeting when a distress code popped up on the screen.

“Prowl, I thought I said for everyone to stay on base after earlier. Why is someone even on patrol in the Arctic?” Optimus could hear the tiredness overcoming his voice. “Everyone is on base, Prime. The signal isn’t any Autobot on base. Could it be a new arrival?”

“Eh, I know who it is.” Wheeljack stood up from his seat, looking down at his datapad. “It’s Starscream, he sent me a message. He’s leaving tha Decepticons and is asking for Autobot help.”

Optimus had heard from Spec Ops about how badly Decepticon High Command had been running as of late. Jazz had reported how poorly Megatron especially had been running things; wasting energon on failed schemes, not listening to his officers, and attacking his Second-In-Command more times than should have been needed. Megatron had apparently also escalated from his usual punching and wing grabbing to mutilating parts of Starscream’s frame and ripping the Seeker’s wings off. And this wasn’t happening every once and a while. This was happening on a near daily occurrence, sometimes even multiple times a day.

“Can we really trust that this ain’t just some kind of ploy to get inside the Ark and attack us?” Ironhide had seemed to have gotten out of his near recharge state and now looked ready to go to fight Starscream.

“And,” Wheeljack added quickly before Ironhide rushed off to go fight. “Starscream also found a mech in the ice that needs help.”

“Did he specify this bot’s faction? Cause I swear to Primus if we’re bringing in two Decepti-creeps I’m gunna rip their helms off myself!” Ironhide was charging up his arm cannons and B-lining his way to the door of the command room. Wheeljack quickly jumped the table to block the door.

“Now calm down Ironhide! It ain’t anotha Decepticon, and it ain’t even another Autobot. This bot’s been frozen in tha ice since before tha war went full swing. Trust me, he was a real good bot.”

Everyone paused to process what Wheeljack said. Frozen since before the war? Optimus was trying to figure out how somebot could still be functioning after that long when Prowl spoke up. “Wheeljack, do you know this second bot?”

“Tha bot’s designation was Skyfire. He went to the Iacon Science Academy with Perceptor, Starscream, and me. He was a shuttle frame, had a real hard time fitting in. Percy and Star started talking to him and brought him inta our little group. Skyfire and Ol’ Star went on a research trip to study unmapped organic planets, their last trip was here ta Earth. Some blizzard blew through and Skyfire got lost to the ice. Star came back alone and was accused of murdering tha mech he was going to bond with. Me and Percy tried to help but-”

“Wait wait wait Wheeljack…, yah say that backstabbin’ Screamer was gunna bond this mech?” Jazz seemed to be taken back at the idea just saying it, having seen how Starscream behaved around others during his numerous Spec Ops missions inside the Nemesis.

“And did you say this mech’s been in the ice since before the war? I’ll be lucky if half his systems haven’t been corrupted at this point!” Ratchet didn’t even seem to care about the Decepticon in this situation, only thinking about the work he and his medics were likely to have to do.

“Optimus, there is no way we’re gonna let a Decepticon and his buddy waltz on around our base! There would be so many security protocols and updates I would need to do if they come here!” Red Alert’s sensory horns were beginning to light up, signaling that Red was on the verge of a panic attack.

“Red Alert, if Starscream wants to leave the Decepticons and wants our help, it’s our responsibility to help. Everyone possesses the capacity for change.”

Optimus speaking up seemed to calm down mostly everyone in the meeting room. Red was starting to calm back down when Optimus finally noticed Prowl. His tactical commander was sitting zoned out and tensed, using his battle-computer to calculate on what should be done and the risks and advantages of them trusting Starscream. Optimus was hoping Prowl’s battle-computer would come up with enough positives of helping Starscream and this Skyfire mech that they would be able to act. After a few minutes of everyone in the room sitting around and discussing opinions, Prowl finally untensed and looked around the room.

“Whatcha lil’ computer say, Prowler? Should we believe Screamer?” Jazz was carefully trying to bring his conjunx back to his senses after having used his battle-computer, rubbing small circles on Prowl’s shoulders.

“I calculated a 62% chance that Starscream truly wants to switch sides to join the Autobots based on our present information. Bringing in Starscream and Skyfire would also provide the Autobots with numerous advantages over the Decepticons if we handle this smoothly.”

“That’s good to hear, Prowl. We will leave at once to meet Starscream and Skyfire to bring them back. Wheeljack, I would also like for you to join us. Starscream and Skyfire were your friends and Starscream seems to still trust you enough that he would message you privately. We’ll also be needing a ground bridge opened for us in a few minutes, Blaster. Meeting dismissed.” Before he left the room, Optimus stopped Red Alert to talk. “I know you don’t like this situation, but Starscream deserves the right to try and become an Autobot. I’d like for you to make sure no Autobots see Starscream when we bring him on board. We don't need the Autobots getting any ideas until I address everyone.”

Mostly everyone had left the command room by the time Optimus had let Red Alert go. Ratchet was the only one left in the room, trying to communicate with Drift and First Aid on what they needed to prep in the medbay for their new arrivals. Optimus wanted to talk to his old friend, but decided against it. Ratchet had enough to deal with already, so he probably didn’t need to add Optimus’ concern. Optimus left the room with Prowl and Wheeljack in toe, walking from the upper levels of the Ark down to the ground bridge room. On their way down, the three bots passed multiple bots on nightshift watch. Cliffjumper was the last one that was scheduled to be on watch, so after passing him the rest of the walk down was silent.

When they were nearly at the ground bridge room, Prowl broke the silence to Optimus’ relief. “Wheeljack, why did you even still have Starscream’s comm. frequency?” Wheeljack only shrugged “Eh, just never got around to it. I’m usually too busy with projects to take a look through my contacts.”

It was then silent again for the last while until they reached the ground bridge control room. Blaster was waiting at the door for them, filing behind them once they entered the room to walk over to the controls.

“Once we get through, I’d like for you to close the bridge so that we may speak to Starscream and check over Skyfire. I will ping you once we are ready to return. Ratchet will be down soon with First Aid and Drift to be on standby in case Skyfire needs medical attention.”

With a salute to Optimus, Blaster opened the ground bridge. The room was immediately washed with vibrant hues of green, purple, and white light. Optimus was the first to step through, followed by Prowl and then Wheeljack. On the other side, the chill of the Arctic air shook through Optimus’ plating. The light of the moon was gleaming off the ice and snow, and Optimus could make out the shapes of Starscream and a larger frame laying in the snow. Starscream was looking at the three Autobots with a face full of ease. Optimus was really hoping that Starscream was truly ready for change as he made his way over.

Chapter Text

Starscream watched as the three Autobots made their way over to Skyfire and him. Wheeljack being there eased the anxiety Starscream had over his meeting with the Autobots. Optimus would most likely be fine to speak with, but speaking with Prowl genuinely scared Starscream. It was better that Prowl was alone and that Jazz wasn’t there as well. Amongst the Decepticons, tales of the feats Jazz and Prowl each had over the millions of years of war scared many. And when they worked together, they were only deadlier. Many bets had taken place over the years on Earth on whether Jazz and Prowl had bonded to improve their efficiency together or not. This had Soundwave sending his three cassettes on many spy missions trying to find out.

Soundwave had been the only bot on the Nemesis that Starscream truly liked, and Soundwave seemed to enjoy his company as well. Being the infamous all-seeing communications bot meant Soundwave spent most of his time being avoided like he was a walking rust plague. Soundwave had ignored Starscream’s attempts at friendship at first, and Ravage had even attacked him once, but they all came around after a while. Laserbeak and Buzzsaw would join Starscream on flights sometimes and Ravage would cozy up with him from time to time when Soundwave was busy. Soundwave would even sometimes join Starscream to chat and have energon. Starscream found it a miracle that someone as reserved as Soundwave actually liked to spend time with Starscream or his brothers.

Speaking of his brothers…
Starscream hadn’t told them that he was leaving the Decepticons.

Thundercracker would probably be fine joining the Autobots, he was the calmest and most level-headed of the three of them. Skywarp though, Starscream didn’t know. On one servo, Skywarp was chaotic in nature and sometimes an even bigger drama queen than Starscream himself, so Primus knew how he would act around Autobots. But, on the other servo, both Starscream and Thundercracker had noticed how Skywarp would disappear from their quarters sometimes during lulls between battles. Thundercracker always said how Skywarp was just trying to hook up with some Decepticon elsewhere on the ship. Starscream believed that there was a hookup or two with another Decepticon, no doubt about that. But Starscream had found out that Skywarp was going offship to meet this bot, and the Decepticons only had a couple others that could travel to land easily without ground bridges. Which led Starscream to believe Skywarp was meeting with an Autobot somewhere secluded.

Years ago, Starscream would have freaked out; screeching about fraternizing with the enemy and would have beaten Skywarp to a pile of scrap before Megatron got his servos on what was left. But ever since he had started doubting his place in the ranks, Starscream had kept quiet and let Skywarp continue doing whatever he was doing.

Optimus was the first to arrive at his side, kneeling down to be closer to optic level. Wheeljack went around to see Skyfire, putting the larger bot in medical stasis to fix some of his systems. Prowl just stood a few feet back and glared at Starscream.

“Starscream.” Optimus curtly greeted him as he got down on his knee. “Do you truly wish to join the Autobots?”

“Yes, I’m tired of fearing for my life at the hands of Megatron.” Starscream turned his helm so he could look Optimus straight in the optics. “I’m tired of living with the regret of what I’ve done. I want to do better.” Starscream turned to glance at Skyfire, who was currently having a frame diagnosis ran by Wheeljack, before looking back at Optimus. “I want to help.”

After a few moments of silence, Optimus nodded and stood up from his side to walk over to Prowl, most likely to discuss what to do. Starscream wanted to talk to Wheeljack and see his old friend. He knew that Wheeljack probably wouldn’t want to talk to him much with all he had done to Wheeljack and his friends, but it was worth a try. Shifting himself in the snow, Starscream scooted a few feet so that he was across from a working Wheeljack.

“Wheeljack, can we talk?” Being met only by silence, Starscream hesitantly let his field slowly expand till it reached Wheeljack, trying to feel anything. A sharp sting hit him when Wheeljack’s agitated field suddenly expanded before drawing back in again. “I understand that you don’t want to talk to me, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for everything I’ve done to you and Percy. I should have listened to you two back then.” Still being met by silence, Starscream decided to cut his losses and got up to leave. Wheeljack’s hand on his shoulder stopped him before he left.

“Star, it’s gunna take me more than one day to get over millions of years of pain and war. But if you truly want my forgiveness, come down to the lab when ya get a chance. Percy is far more likely to forgive you easily, and we could use an extra pair…” Starscream tapped on Skyfire’s chassis so Wheeljack remembered the larger mech he was working on was also a scientist, “...two extra pairs of servos in the lab. I guess it’ll be like back at the Academy.”

“How is Percy? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen him since we woke up here on Earth.” Starscream probably shouldn’t be asking too many questions to a mech who had just said he hadn’t forgiven him yet, but he was just curious. Perceptor used to be his friend too.

“Eh, Percy mostly stays and works in tha lab. He trains with a sniper sometimes, but that basically encompasses the combat he’s comfortable doing. We also conjuxed a while back, shortly after you razed the Academy.”

“That’s good to hear about you two, I always thought you worked well with him.” Starscream’s smile faltered when he looked down at Skyfire. Would Sky still love him the way he had before the accident? Starscream didn’t think so, he had done so many terrible things since then that he was sure that Sky would be disgusted with him and shut him out. Then he would be lost and alone again.

“Star, if this is about you and Sky, at least wait until he’s awake before gettin’ all down and pouty. The negativity in your field is giving me a processor ache.” Starscream withdrew his field to his frame again and tried to clear his helm of the negative thoughts.

He would have continued talking with Wheeljack, but Optimus returned with Prowl in toe right before a ground bridge opened a few feet away. Ratchet came out with two other medics, one of which looked vaguely familiar to Starscream. Ratchet came stomping over to him while he tried to recall the mech and ushered him through the ground bridge. They were already halfway down a hall before Starscream even realized what was happening. “C’mon Star, I need to patch your leg up before you bleed everywhere. You also need to tell me about this mech you’ve got us bringing in.” Starscream had forgotten about the wound that had reopened on his leg, but looking down he saw the decently sized trail of energon he left with each step.

The halls of the Ark were quiet. Starscream figured that some security protocol was happening to make sure no Autobots saw him around the halls. From descriptions of some of the Autobots Soundwave’s cassettes had given him, he figured the one called Red Alert was having a spark-attack watching a Decepticon walk the halls. The only thing that would give Starscream a spark-attack right now was those Lambo twins popping up and attacking. Starscream knew that the twins were wildcards, even by Autobot standards. The number of times the two had taken out Seekers with their ‘jet-judo’ had engrained itself in Starscream’s helm. Running into those two before Optimus announced his defection to them would result in Ratchet having to repair more than a leg wound.

After a surprisingly long walk down the orange corridors, the door to the medbay opened at Ratchet’s presence. Neither of the Lambo twins were in a med-berth, so there was that. The few medics that were in the room stopped and stared at him before whispering to themselves. It was only a matter of time before gossip of his arrival spread like wildfire across the ship. Many of the mechs on the Ark would soon be bashing down the doors to the medbay to gladly get their servos around his intake, Starscream just knew it.

“Oh, calm your circuits, I have the medbay on lockdown and these medics have better things to do then gossip with everyone. You only need to worry about those in the Command staff trying to get to you. So basically, don’t be an aft or I’m calling Ironhide down here. He’ll be more than happy to help me strangle you.”

Starscream was…more confused than scared now to say the least. Ratchet had to be omniscient after that, Starscream had no doubt about it.

Ratchet took Starscream to a private room near the back before he began refixing his leg wound. The wound stung as the weld was put in place and his leg was slightly numb after when he stood up. “Now don’t do anything strenuous on this leg for at least three days. I don’t like doing my work twice. You’re dismissed.” Starscream was about to leave when he remembered what Ratchet had said on the walk down.

“You still need some information about Skyfire, don’t you?” Ratchet only nodded, so Starscream sat back down “Do you need a full rundown on his frametype, or have you treated shuttles before?” Ratchet opened his mouth to respond, but the door to the room opened and Optimus and Prowl walked in. “I hope Starscream didn’t say much about Skyfire. Prowl and I would like to know more about him so we could know what duties to give him.” Optimus stood off to the side of Ratchet and Prowl just stood against the wall with a datapad out.

“Skyfire was a scientist back with me before the war. He was a gentle giant and very pacifist; never really resorted to violence and rarely raised his voice. We were biologists, studying Cyberton’s environments and wildlife. The Academy eventually started sending us on research missions to far off organic planets. Earth was going to be our last stop on our journey, and you all know by now it didn’t end well.” Starscream could see Prowl jotting down notes on his datapad about Skyfire. “Optimus, I wanted to ask if it would be possible for Skyfire and I to be able to work in the lab with Wheeljack and Perceptor.” Prowl looked up with a frown on his face. “Why should we trust you? How can we be sure you’re not just going to send the Decepticons after us?”

Starscream had been waiting for someone to start questioning him again on why they should just trust him and let him join them. With a sigh, he reached into his subspace and pulled out a datapad to hand off to Prowl. “What’s this?”

“All the information I have from the Nemesis' databanks. Battle plans, Command meeting transcripts, weapon schematics, and more. I’ve been slowly gathering this over the past few months for when I finally decided to leave. And I’m not asking for you to trust me with a weapon and to fight for you right away. I just simply want you to trust me enough to let me become a better person.” Prowl was in awe of the amount of information stored on the datapad; probably not having heard a single word Starscream has said.

Optimus, thankfully, had listened. “Thank you for this information Starscream, I can’t imagine the amount of effort it took to gather all this under Soundwave’s watch. I’m hoping we can manage to get something arranged that can be to your and Skyfire’s liking in terms of work. In the meantime, A room has been cleared that will be able to accommodate you and Skyfire. Do we need to clear a room for your trine mates as well?”

Starscream remembered that he still had yet to check in on his brothers. The only reason they had not joined him was because Megatron believed they needed to patrol after the disaster that was the energon raid. “My trinemates are on their way here. Thank you for helping us” Lying to Optimus before truly knowing if his brothers would be a risk was not very smart. Starscream had to sort this out quickly.

“That’s all I needed from you, Starscream. Optimus will get someone to show you to the room you’ll be staying in. I’m going to make sure everything is going well with repairing Skyfire’s systems. If all is good, Skyfire should be able to join you shortly.” Ratchet didn’t even face Starscream as he spoke, only waving for him to leave the room.

Starscream was glad Skyfire was nearly back to his fully functioning self, but the looming fear of talking to Sky about his past still lingered. He hoped Skyfire would still hold some level of love for him, but he wasn’t very optimistic that he would.

Prowl motioned for him to follow, ready to take him to his new room. Both walked down the silent orange halls again, whatever security protocol they had going still in place. Arriving at a room far from everything else, Prowl put a code in and the large doors opened. The room had clearly been a storage room of some kind, everything having been quickly removed and two berths placed on either side of the room.

“I’m going to leave you here to relax here while I go sort through this pad. Comm. me if you need anything for the room.”

With that, Starscream was left on his own until Skyfire arrived. Talking to Thundercracker now to inform him of everything would probably be a good idea, so Starscream opened up a comm. channel with him.

::Thundercracker, where are you and Skywarp currently?::

Starscream was only met with silence.

::Thundercracker? Are you there?::

::Yeah, Star, I’m here. Soundwave was telling Skywarp and me about you going to the Autobots. We’re leaving the Nemesis now. Are me and Skywarp meeting you in the Arctic or at the Ark?::

::Of course Soundwave would tell you two first. I’m sorry for not … ::

Wait a moment
Soundwave had found out he had left to join the Autobots, and had told Thundercracker and Skywarp to leave and join him? Starscream knew that Soundwave considered him a friend, but had always thought that Soundwave’s loyalty to Megatron and the Decepticons would outweigh said friendship.

::Soundwave told you I left for the Autobots… and let you both go?::

::Yeah. I’ll tell you all about it when we arrive at the Ark. I hope you told them not to shoot us::

The line was cut right then before Starscream could ask anything else. He hoped Soundwave wasn’t trying to orchestrate some sort of long game with him and his brothers. If Soundwave was actually helping him leave the Decepticons, Starscream would have to thank him.

That is, if Soundwave didn’t immediately try killing him the next time they met.

Left to wait, Starscream resorted to pacing the room and looking at his personal datapad. It was around two hours until the door opened and the large frame of Skyfire stepped into the room. Well, time to talk and hope for the best.

Chapter Text

Skyfire had only been dismissed from the medbay a few moments ago and was already being led down the bright orange halls of this place. He was glad to be out of there with his systems all fixed. Apparently he became uncomfortable easily when sitting in a room for hours on end not being allowed to move, no thanks to learning about his situation the past couple million years. Now he had a new trauma to deal with on top of his social anxiety.

Wheeljack and the medics had worked on him for multiple hours on end trying to fix everything. Skyfire had around a hundred and one thousand questions he wanted to ask about what he missed, but there was some kind of uneasiness that hung in the air around Wheeljack and the head medic. Skyfire was confident that this air of unease was due to Starscream and himself, so he just stayed quiet for the duration of his stay.

The moment the head medic had told him he was good to leave, Skyfire was already out the doors. He didn’t want to be in there any longer feeling as uncomfortable as he was, he just wanted his Star. He was in such a rush he almost stepped on a Praxian enforcer that was waiting outside the doors for him.

“Hello Skyfire. I am Prowl, Second-In-Command here aboard the Ark. I will lead you to your new quarters.”

The Praxian turned heel and started down the hall before Skyfire even processed what happened. He hurriedly made his way back up, which only took two steps for a large frame like him to catch up to the smaller bot. Skyfire thought about asking the Praxian some of the questions he had, but his anxiety still was too high. Too much was happening and Skyfire still didn’t even know if they were still on the primitive planet or somewhere else. Was the Ark a city or a ship? Were they on the apparently destroyed Cybertron? Thinking was just making everything worse. After a few vent cycles to calm himself, Skyfire finally decided to ask something else.

“Is Starscream close to my quarters? I need to talk to him.” The Praxian glanced up at him and kept quiet. After a moment of silence, the Praxian sighed.

“We have Starscream in the same quarters as you after we learned of your pasts together.” There was another hesitant pause before he continued. “I’ll tell you this now so you know, but many bots on the Ark are going to have it out for you, with Starscream’s history against us. Starscream has proved he wants to change, but some of our High Command still do not trust him fully. I’m hoping you can help him change their minds. For you and everyone else's sake.”

All that gave Skyfire was more questions and a boost in his anxiety.

After another couple minutes of awkward silence, the Praxian stopped at a large set of doors. The room was fairly far from everywhere else that Skyfire had seen on the walk. If this was for protection or all they had that would fit him, he was unsure and didn’t want to know.

“Here are the quarters you’ll be sharing with Starscream. Wheeljack and Perceptor will stop by later to talk with you two while I inform the crew of your arrivals. I’ll be available for the next hour if you have any questions.” Just as he had first talked to him, the Praxian turned heel and went down the hall. This left Skyfire by himself outside the door.

He wanted to go inside and see his Star, but his new wave of anxiety had him frozen outside. Skyfire’s thoughts kept pulling him back to the short talk he had with Star in the Arctic and what the Praxian had said. What had Starscream done? Star had at least said he regretted whatever he did, so that helped a little. At least that's what Skyfire hopes. He wanted answers, and hopefully Star would explain.

Opening the door and stepping in, Skyfire saw Star pacing the length of the room before stopping in the middle once the door behind Sky closed. Star only stood there a moment before he took a hesitant step towards him, reaching out. But it was only a single step, hesitating back and drawing his arm away again. Star’s wings were hung low and he was also trembling, clearly not in a good headspace. Skyfire wanted to go over and comfort Star, but the trembling only got worse with each step Skyfire took.

“Star, please, it's okay. I’m here.” Skyfire was finally able to get to Star, getting on his knees to pull him into a hug. Star squirmed a little at first, but he got comfortable and hugged him back tightly. It was then that Star burst into tears in his arms.

“It’s okay, Star. I’m here. I’m not going to leave you again.” Skyfire’s reassurances only seemed to cause heavier crying from Star.

“I-I know you’ll leave me! When I tell you what I did, I-I know you’ll want to leave!”

Skyfire pulled out of the hug so he could look Star in the optics again. “Then tell me. Tell me so I can know and show you that I’ll stay. Please Star.” That managed to calm down Star enough to compose himself and let Skyfire sit on one of the berths. Star climbed up the berth and into Skyfire’s lap, content on being held.

Skyfire rubbed Star’s wings to ground the seeker back into reality fully. Skyfire wanted to know everything, but he didn’t want to rush Star and make him upset again. He would wait until Star was ready. So he sat there for some time, rubbing Star’s wings and humming until Star started talking.

“When I lost you that day, I searched for days on end trying to find you. I only went back trying to get help from the Academy, I needed to find you. All the Academy did was accuse me of murder and kicked me out. Everyone I knew started to shut me out while I was already suffering. I was losing myself when I found a group of rebellious mechs that called themselves Decepticons. They were calling for change to the functionalist systems of Cybertron and helped the lower classes have a voice. Their leader, Megatronus, said he saw the potential I had in helping and that he would help me get back at the Academy. I didn’t know any better at the time and joined them. Tensions between them and the Senate quickly rose until Sentinel Prime and the Senate were all killed in a bombing. Street fights soon turned to skirmishes that blew up into an all-out war. And I chose the wrong side.”

Starscream went quiet and Skyfire didn’t know if he should say anything, not wanting to say something that would give Star any wrong ideas. He only continued to rub at Star’s wings, waiting for him to talk again.

“Megatron, as he had started going by then, became blinded by rage during all of this. The mech that had been by his side calling for change became the new Prime and formed the Autobots to protect Cybertron against the Decepticons. I should have left, I knew that everything was wrong, but I had power. I was the Second-In-Command of an army and the fighting gave me a rush that I liked. So I stayed. So many died at the hands of the Decepticons. So many died at my hands. My hands, Sky.”

Skyfire could feel Star beginning to shake in his arms again. He turned Star around in his lap so he could look at him in the optics. He wanted Star to hear this before he broke down again.

“Star, you may have done those things in the past, but you’re changing to make up for everything. And I’m not going to stop loving you because of what you’ve done while I was frozen.”

And with that Star hugged him tightly again and started crying.

It pained Skyfire to see his Star broken like this because he had gotten lost. But he was here now, and he would stand by Star to help him improve.

The next few minutes consisted of Star crying into his plating and Skyfire trying to soothe Starscream. The crying tapered off and Skyfire had thought Star had gone into recharge with how quiet it had become. He was starting to go into recharge when Star spoke again.

“There are only a few things that have kept me going for this long, finding you was the most important thing to me for so long. I’m glad I left when I did, knowing now this is what was waiting for me. I don’t think I would have survived another beating from Megatron if I had waited any longer to leave.”

Now Sky was wide awake again with too many questions. What had Megatron been doing to his Star? Skyfire may have had a pacifist approach to dealing with others before he was frozen, but Megatron had all but guaranteed a brutal death if Skyfire got his servos on him. He wanted to know what Megatron had done, but found Star had fallen into recharge in his lap.

Skyfire will let go of questioning what Megatron had done… for now, Star had already explained so much of his trauma to him. Right now, Skyfire will let himself fall into recharge with his Star.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Jazz waited until he was sure that both bots in the room below had fully gone into recharge before crawling his way back through the vents. He had been sitting in the vent above the room ever since Starscream had arrived. He wanted to make sure Starscream didn’t try anything funny left on his own. Waiting there for two hours watching Starscream pace the room had not been as fun of a time as he had hoped. And when the other new bot, Skyfire, arrived, Starscream cried and trauma dumped on the larger mech. And as much as he hated to admit it, Starscream did sound like he regretted what he did over the past couple million years as a Decepticon.

Or… Starscream was very good at acting. Jazz would prefer the former to be true.

Poppin out of the ceiling vent a ways down the hall, Jazz fell in front of a very startled Wheeljack and Perceptor.

“PRIMUS! Why do you always do that? You nearly gave a spark-attack.” Wheeljack had nearly fallen over himself, standing there with his servos on his knees. Perceptor just stood there laughing at his conjunx.

“Sorry mech, I was watchin’ over Ol’ Screamer talk with his shuttle lover. If ya were going to talk with them, I’d reschedule. They’re both out like lights.”

Perceptor’s mood seemed to dip, a frown forming on his face and his field going sour. “Ah, I understand. I had been hoping to talk with them both, Skyfire especially. It’s been so long since he was lost.”

“There’s always tomorrow, Percy. I’m gunna go listen ta Prowler telling the rest of the bots tha news. I don’t wanna miss their reactions and the impending fallout. Catch ya two later.”

Waving the two off, Jazz put a pep in his step to reach the rec room in time for the meeting to start. Only the Command officers and the medical team knew of Starscream and Skyfire so far. All that everyone else knew was that parts of the Ark by the med bay had been closed off. As much as he shouldn’t, Jazz was really hoping for some of the Autobots to lose it hearing that the notorious Starscream was switching to the Autobots. Too bad Smokescreen didn’t know beforehand, there would have been some interesting bets he would have made.

Entering the rec room, Jazz saw that Prowl was just walking up to the front of the room. Jazz went and joined Optimus at the front of the room as Prowl started speaking.

“As many of you may have noticed, parts of the Ark have been closed off for the past few hours. Earlier today during an officer’s meeting, we received a distress signal from the Arctic. A Decepticon had reached out to us, asking for Autobot help for himself and another bot. In return for our help, we were given classified intel from the Decepticon’s database aboard the Nemesis. The def-”

Prowl was stopped as the room erupted into conversations. Some wanted to know who the Decepticon was, others wanted to know how Optimus could trust a Decepticon. Prowl let the Autobots talk amongst themselves for a few minutes before clearing his throat to regain everyone’s attention. Jazz caught the glance Prowl sent to Optimus, probably asking if he should tell everyone that it was Starscream. Optimus only sighed and then nodded, knowing the chaos about to erupt. Jazz could sense Prowl’s anxiety coming through their bond, so he pushed reassurance back through.

“As I was trying to say, the defecting Decepticon is… Starscream. His trine members will also be defecting to us as well.”

Prowl quickly left the stage and went out of the room while the Autobots stood in silence. As much as Jazz wanted to stay to watch what was about to happen, he’d rather go be with Prowl. Leaving the room Jazz heard the quiet finally break and the chaos start, hearing angry shouts from Cliffjumper and metal clashing from some altercation starting.

Getting to his and Prowl’s quarters, Jazz entered and found Prowl laying face down on the berth. Jazz took a seat next to his conjunx and started massaging the joints to Prowl’s doorwings.

“All in all Prowler, I’d say tha meeting went better than I thought. They didn’t lose it until after we left. I don’t know why you’re worried.”

Prowl flipped over to look at Jazz’s visor. “I’m worried about the upcoming days. Tensions are going to be high between everyone with three ex-Decepticons and a factionless bot walking around. I still don’t know if we should even trust Starscream, even with the intel he gave us. Then on top of everything, we need to worry about how hard Megatron is going to strike us next when he realizes he lost his Second-In-Command and Air Commander to us.”

“I think it’ll be fine, Prowler. I listened in on Screamer talkin’ with that Skyfire bot, he sounded truly remorseful and like he wanted ta change. Have a little faith, Starscream ain’t even tha first Decepticon ta change sides to the Autobots durin’ the war.”

Prowl only snickered. “Of course you listened to them. Shows how much faith you have.”

Jazz gave Prowl a small push. “C’mon Prowler! I was curious!”

Now Prowl was fully laughing, something he rarely did outside their quarters. “Jazz, you’re too curious for your own good.”

“Prowler, my curiosity is what got me to know you and what got us together. Give meh some credit.”

“I suppose you’re right. Still, I fear for what kind of retaliation Megatron has in store for us.”

Chapter Text

Starscream slowly woke up from what he would consider one of the most relaxing recharges he had had in ages. It was the first time in who knows how long where he hadn’t feared he would be offlined in his recharge by Megatron. How had he managed to do that?

The shifting white legs under his helm made him realize that he was sleeping in Skyfire’s lap.
Starscream felt embarrassed, he had basically trauma dumped on Skyfire that previous night and then had passed out on him. Starscream felt like he should move off of the larger mech. Yet, part of him yearned to just stay where he was, to just stay in his lover’s lap.

Were they still lovers?
Doubt gnawed at his spark yet again.

‘ I’m too damaged. Skyfire doesn’t deserve a broken mech. ’

It felt like a game of tug-of-war was happening in his head. He wanted to believe that Skyfire still loved him, even after Starscream had talked with him the night before. But another voice in his head told him that Skyfire was just playing nice until he could find a way out.

Skyfire’s shifting kept growing under him until the white mech was awake and looking down at him, smiling brightly. Starscream had to look away from Skyfire, he still didn’t think he deserved a smile like that.

“Good morning, Star.”

“Morning. I’m sorry for dumping all of that on you last night, Skyfire.”

Looking back up, all Starscream saw was concerned optics looking down on him.

“Star, I hate to ask, but what did you mean by you didn’t think you would survive another beating?”

Starscream felt his systems stall. He didn’t even remember saying anything about his “troubles” with Megatron. And he knew that he definitely did not want Skyfire to know about how broken he constantly had been. Starscream didn’t want pity, but the look of sincere concern Skyfire had was eating at him.

A ping at the door grabbed his attention before he had to answer. ' Thank Primus for the distraction '. Starscream crawled out of Skyfire’s lap to go answer, expecting Prowl to be checking in on him and Skyfire. What he did not expect was Wheeljack and Perceptor standing outside.

“Starscream, is now a good time for us to come by?”

Wheeljack was the same as he had been the night before in the Arctic, friendly but distant. Perceptor, meanwhile, was basically vibrating in the hall besides Wheeljack. It didn’t take a lot of processing power on Starscream’s end to realize Perceptor was giddy to be back together with Skyfire and him. Perceptor had always been close with Skyfire, Wheeljack, and him at the Academy, being too socially awkward to make any other friends.

“Yes, I think it would do Skyfire some good to see you two.” Starscream felt a smile creeping onto his face seeing Perceptor perking up more than he already was.

Before Starscream had even moved completely out of the way to let them in, Perceptor had barged his way in and had made it across the room to jump at Skyfire and pull into a hug. In all of another few seconds, Perceptor pounced on Starscream and pulled him into a hug as well.

“I’m so glad you’re both here! It’s been too long since the four of us have been together.”

Starscream couldn’t help but smile. Seeing someone actually happy for him to be changing sides made him just a little less miserable. “It’s good to see you too, Perceptor. And congratulations to you and Wheeljack; he told me about you two last night.”

Skyfire had approached the three of them at some point while Perceptor was hugging him. “What happened? Have you two conjuxed?!”

“Yes! Wheeljack here has been my love for a long while. We conjuxed shortly after Star-” Perceptor froze and glanced over at him quickly “-after Star lost you, yeah. Would you two like to join us for energon? We can continue talking in the rec room.” Skyfire definitely noticed how Perceptor had changed topics, looking worryingly at him again. Starscream knew Perceptor had almost talked about the destruction of the Iacon Science Academy, the destruction Starscream had been responsible for. Any happiness Starscream had gotten from Perceptor was quickly squashed by guilt.

“That would be nice. Thank you Perceptor.” Starscream forced his best smile at the red microscope bot.

Leaving the room, Perceptor and Wheeljack were in front of him talking to each other while Skyfire was behind him. Starscream could feel Skyfire’s worrying gaze on his back the entire trip to the rec room. Starscream would have been worrying about talking to Skyfire again if he was not already worrying about what would happen when they got to the rec room. He hoped everyone had been told of his arrival and defection, he didn’t want to get attacked the moment someone saw him.

“Wheeljack, the Autobots do know I’ve defected, right? I really don’t feel like getting shot this early.”

Wheeljack only vaguely turned his way on the walk. “Eh’, they know ‘bout you, but I doubt it will stop anyone”. Starscream almost missed the “I know it wouldn’t stop me” Wheeljack quietly added at the end if Perceptor had not smacked Wheeljack across the helm for saying it.

Perceptor glanced back at him with a happier look than Wheeljack had. “I think you’ll be fine Star. You’ll probably only get a few dirty looks and some comments this early, it’s morning shift. No one should be here.”

Everyone was in the rec room.

Frag

The moment he stepped inside the room, all conversations stopped and all optics were on him. Starscream closely followed Perceptor to the back of the room to the only table that could fit Skyfire. They probably could have all fit in the corner booth, but Prowl was sitting there with Jazz and two other Praxians.

Wheeljack went to grab everyone energon thankfully, leaving Perceptor at the table. Dealing with Wheeljack in the mood he seemed to only be in around him on top of everyone else in the room glaring and whispering would not have been comfortable. He couldn’t do anything without the possibility of being attacked, so all he could do was sit still and pretend that everything was fine.

While they were waiting, Starscream spotted the Autobot’s yellow scout looking over at him and smiling from across the room.

“Perceptor, who’s the yellow minibot smiling at me over there? It’s kind of weird.”

“Oh, that’s just Bumblebee. He’s really friendly but nervous around new bots. Just wave and you’ll likely have a new friend.”

Hesitantly, Starscream waved to Bumblebee; it didn’t hurt to have more friends. It seemed to work as Bumblebee became very excited and wildly waved back.

It was a few minutes until Starscream noticed Wheeljack was in a heated argument with the Lambo twins near the energon dispenser. He couldn’t make out what was being said, but the red twin kept poking Wheeljack in the chassis and waving his arm vaguely in Starscream’s direction. Jazz climbed out of his booth and made his way over and broke up the bots before any physical fight broke out. Wheeljack was in a very poor mood when he reached the table.

“We’re going to the lab to have energon.” There was no room for any comment as Wheeljack stormed off away from the table towards the door.

Starscream and Skyfire followed as Perceptor tried to calm his conjunx down. Wheeljack was just grumbling to all the questions he was asked the entire way to the lab. He seemed to ease when they entered the lab. The lab was magnificent, especially compared to the lab Starscream had been forced to use back on the Nemesis.

“This is just like back at the Academy.”

Wheeljack, thankfully, graced Starscream with a response that didn’t seem to have an undertone of annoyance. “Yep, my pride and joy. Me and Percy have been hard at work here makin’ it nice and creating new gadgets for the Autobots.”

Perceptor just smirked. “Jackie, you make most of the gadgets, and 70% of them explode in under an hour.”

“I never said anything about them working. Let me show you two around, I heard from Prowl that you asked to work here with us Starscream.”

Wheeljack first showed the lab’s stock room, which was filled with numerous elements and chemicals to use that Starscream had not seen since the fall of Cybertron. Starscream was glad that he had studied to be both a biologist and chemist back at the Academy; chemistry had always been his strong suit. While he had enjoyed biology, that had been more of a side study so he could spend time with Skyfire.

The next thing shown was the side labs connected to the main room for personal experiments. Getting a lab for himself was much better than the Decepticon’s singular lab in the bottom of the ship. With all the odd experiments the Constructicons, Insecticons, and any other oddbot did; there would be little materials of room left for Starscream to do anything of use with.

He could have worked with Shockwave, but his science was less of studying chemical reactions like Starscream and more the dissecting of live bots, Decepticon or Autobot. The cold and logical bot had given many Decepticons the creeps and was always kept at arm's length from the main army’s operations, despite holding a position on the Command Staff. Megatron had oddly (but thankfully) left Shockwave on Cybertron to rule and watch Cybertron before the main army had left and crashed on Earth. With the couple million years that had passed stuck in sleep and another couple years awake on Earth, Starscream was sure Shockwave had run out of energon and offlined.

Wheeljack finished his tour of the lab by showing them the archive room. The archive was chock-full of datapads of info from Wheeljack and Perceptor’s past (and mostly failed) experiments.

“We’ve had a good share of experiments that we couldn’t finish. If ya two like, you could look through for any experiments that peak your interest and try to work on them. It might be betta’ for other bots to take cracks at them instead of me and Percy continually failin’.” Wheeljack started towards the door out of the archive. “I’ve got a project I need to finish before the end of the night. Skyfire, you can come get me if you have..” Wheeljack stopped to turn around and glare at Starscream, “...problems in the lab.”

The connotation seemed to upset Skyfire enough to where he was making his way out the archive to speak his mind to Wheeljack. Perceptor stopped him at the door before anything got out of hand. “Skyfire, leave it be for now, please. Jackie’s just having a hard time adjusting to Star being with us now, it’s going to take him time.”
“It doesn’t matter, no one should be treated this way. Star has made his peace and wants to change, and everyone is still treating him like he’s ready to do harm. I may not know the full picture of what evils everyone has done in this war, but I’m going to assume that Star is far from the worst.” Skyfire was getting angry, which was never a good sign. And judging from Percpetor starting to lose his cool, it was only going to get worse.

“You’re right Sky, you don’t know the full picture of the war. Everyone’s done a thing or two they’ve come to regret, but Starscream here takes the cake! He’s caused the deaths of millions! He helped the Decepticons destroy Praxus! He destroyed the Academy! He’s only second to Megatron in the amount of atrocities someone could commit during this war! So don’t tell me he doesn’t deserve this, because no matter what he does from now on, he will always deserve it!”
Perceptor’s anger did make it worse, Skyfire now in the smaller bot’s face like he was moments away from tearing him apart.

“SKYFIRE! PERCEPTOR! ENOUGH!” Starscream had to yell at the top of his vocalizer to get the two to stop. “I don’t need you two ripping each other apart! I know what I did! I regret what I did! And I know that nobody is going to care for that! No one will care for me otherwise; they will only ever see me as a monster! So Skyfire, for the love of Primus, stop holding me up as the person I was before! Because no matter how much you or I may want it, that bot is dead!”

Starscream didn’t care about the hurt in Skyfire’s eyes as he stormed out of the room. He didn’t care about the look Perceptor or Wheeljack gave him as he left. He didn’t care about any of it, he just had to get away and be by himself. Storming his way to his room, Starscream entered and locked the door. He grabbed his datapad and chucked it against the wall, watching it shatter before he faced the rest of the room so he could trash the place.

Or, he tried to trash the place. He wanted to destroy everything there was. He wanted to wreck the berths and punch holes into the walls. But he couldn’t find it in himself to act out. Any anger he had was replaced by overwhelming loneliness and pain.

The Autobots would never accept him for trying to change. His friends would always hate him for the blood on his hands. And he had just pushed the last bot that possibly cared for him away. Sinking into himself in the corner, Starscream eyed the shattered remains of his datapad.

' It would be better if I was just dead. ' 

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Wheeljack didn’t even know what was happening at first with how fast everything had happened. One moment he had left Perceptor in the archive with Starscream and Skyfire, the next Starscream was storming out of the lab. He knew it partially his fault with how he was acting towards Starscream

Who was he kidding, he had heard the argument as it was happening, it was almost entirely his fault.

Skyfire was near tears and Perceptor looked like he was ready to blow a circuit when they finally exited the archive.

“What happened?”

Perceptor glared at him before walking away to his side lab across the room. Skyfire just sat against the wall. It was quiet for a few minutes while Wheeljack thought about how to fix everything. Wheeljack knew he needed to fix this, if not for himself then for Perceptor and Skyfire. He needed to give Starscream a chance, as much as he didn’t want to, and that meant apologizing.

“C’mon you two, we need to go apologize.”

Perceptor only glared at him again, before sighing. “I suppose, I kind of exploded on him a little. I should at least say sorry.”

It was a quiet walk back to Starscream and Skyfire’s room. Perceptor had calmed down, but Wheeljack could still feel his conjux’s anger simmering through their bond. Skyfire seemed composed but Wheeljack could tell he was still hurt from Starscream’s final comment. When they arrived the door to the room was locked, not even Skyfire’s code worked. Wheeljack’s override code (one of Wheeljack’s favorite perks of being a Commanding officer) finally worked and the door opened to the dark room. Wheeljack slowly made his way to the shape of Starscream in the corner.

“Star? Can we talk?” Starscream didn’t respond or even move. Wheeljack would have thought he was in recharge if not for the slight trembling of wings. “Starscream, I want to apologize for how I was treatin’ ya. I was being an aft, not giving you a chance.”

Starscream finally moved and raised his face from his legs. His face was covered in dry coolant from crying. “Nobody cares..”

“What do you mean nobody cares?”

Starscream looked in his direction but seemed to be out of it, like he was looking through him. “Nobody cares about me. I’m just a broken mech. I should have just been killed. None of the bots here would care.”

Perceptor came over to his side and tried to comfort Starscream “No Star, we do care. We’re sorry if it seemed we didn’t.”

Starscream seemed to be pulling himself back to the present, actually looking between Perceptor and him. “Thanks guys.” Starscream’s gaze lingered on Skyfire, who was still at the door. “Sky, I’m sorry for pushing you away. I’m just scared you wouldn’t love me anymore.”

Wheeljack and Perceptor had to move out of the way when Skyfire came over to Starscream’s side and pulled him into an embrace. “I’ll always love you Star, I don’t think you could change that.”

Wheeljack let them be for a few minutes before Skyfire dragged him and Perceptor into the hug. He would have struggled if Skyfire’s arm wasn’t holding him down. It felt right too, he guessed.

“Alright, we’re all friends again. Let’s get back to the lab, I want to see you two work.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was nice doing work without the tensions. Starscream knew it would take time for everything to be 100% again, but the atmosphere between everyone was clearer than it had been earlier that day. Him and Skyfire had picked out a datapad about a test for a shield generator from the archive. Perceptor was watching them and discussing about what had gone wrong when they had tried before. Wheeljack was working on repairing some device at the table over.

Without warning or reason, the thing Wheeljack was working on combusted into flames with a cloud of smoke. Wheeljack only started laughing while fetching a fire extinguisher. The laughter spread to Perceptor and then to Skyfire and him.

Everything was right in Starscream’s eyes. It was just like being back at the Iacon Science Academy. Once his brother’s arrived, everything would feel complete again.

Chapter Text

It felt both too early and too late to be getting up.

It was only day three aboard the Ark and the Autobots had already put Starscream into the shift roster. Working in the lab with Percy, Wheeljack, and Skyfire was not a problem, especially after they cleared the air the day before. The problem was that he was scheduled from 8am to 1pm in the human’s local time. He had compared schedules with Skyfire to find Skyfire worked almost double the hours he did. He had worked longer than when he had just started with the Decepticons. As much as he didn’t like it, he didn’t want to complain to anyone about it, especially with how many still viewed him as a Decepticon. He would go with it for now for the sake of not wanting to be attacked.

When he finally decided to wake up, Starscream had to wiggle his way out of Skyfire’s embrace. Starscream’s meltdown had helped clear some of the air in their relationship, but another talk about how it would work was definitely needed. Starscream at least didn’t have the fear that Skyfire would leave him any more (small progress to fixing his extremely broken mental state). Finally out of the tangle of large white limbs, Starscream stretched his arms and wings and started on his way to the rec room.

If he had planned this right, there would be barely anyone inside this early and Starscream would be able to get energon with little to no attention. Reaching the room, Starscream was proven right, seeing only about five or six mechs scattered around. Making his way to the dispenser, he still got a glance or two, but it was relatively silent.

“Heya Starscream!”

The unexpected greeting startled Starscream so much that he dropped the energon glass he was about to fill. Thankfully it didn’t shatter when it hit the ground. Picking it up, Starscream looked up to see who had startled him so badly, then had to look back down and saw Bumblebee with a smile on his face.

“Sorry Starscream. Didn’t mean to scare ya like that.” Bumblebee was chuckling through what he was saying. If that was from being amused at scaring him or nervous of talking to him, Starscream was not sure.

“It’s alright, Bumblebee. I just wasn’t expecting anyone to want to talk to me.”

Bumblebee slightly frowned at that. “Hey, you just got here after everything. Most bots here aren’t going to want to try getting to know you till they can trust you.”

“I’m going to guess that you’re not like most bots here. You’re the only one brave enough to come talk to me outside of my friends.”

Bumblebee only frowned, and Starscream couldn’t help but smirk.

“Well Starscream, I can’t say that you’re not right. Like I said, most bots are afraid of you right now. But if they, let’s say, see you being friendly with me, they might try to tolerate you.”

“Are you trying to proposition me with friendship for you to help me be liked?”

“Hey, I’m in Spec Ops. I like to get something in return whenever I help someone, makes it more fun.”
“Of course Jazz would have you in Spec Ops, you look like a sparkling. No one would suspect you of anything. Tell you what, you let me call you Yellow and we have a deal.”

“If you let me call you Screamer, then I’ll agree.” The smug smirk on the minibot’s face made Starscream to crunch the energon glass.

“It’s a deal, Yellow.”

“Good doing business with you then, Screamer.”

Bumblebee gave Starscream one least smug look before crossing back through the tables to sit with the grumpy red minibot (Starscream should have really paid attention to Soundwave’s intel on the Autobot foot soldiers). Filling his cube and another for Skyfire, Starscream made his way to the lab. Wheeljack and Perceptor were already working on their own projects and Skyfire was setting up research on how to create a shield generator.

“Morning Star, you were gone when I woke up.”

“Sorry, Sky. I did get us energon though.”

Starscream got to work looking through the research material as he drank his energon. Skyfire looked through his datapads as well, but did keep glancing at Starscream from time to time. Not wanting to draw attention from Wheeljack or Perceptor, Starscream opened a comm. channel.

::Sky, I know you want to talk, I want to talk too. But we should wait till we’re back at the room.::

Skyfire only frowned and nodded. It didn’t sit right with Starscream, seeing Skyfire like that.

::Love you, dork.::

After Skyfire quietly choked on his energon, he started smiling again.

Looking through the research for another few hours, Starscream and Skyfire started to discuss how they would even go about testing a shield for something as large as the Ark. Perceptor came over to help with it. It was nearing the end of Starscream’s shift when Wheeljack came over and interrupted their discussions.

“Hey, Star, Prowl wants you down at tha Ark entrance.”

“Did he say why he needs me?”

“Nah, just said it was important. He’s sending Jazz to guide ya down.”

While Starscream didn’t like the idea of being left with Jazz, it was infinitely better than the Lambo twins escorting him. After Skyfire had helped him clean up his half of the research on the table, Starscream went to the door expecting Jazz to be waiting. But no one was there.

“Wheeljack, I thought you said Jazz was coming to get me? No one’s here.”

Wheeljack put down his tools and came to stand at the door with Starscream. “Eh, Jazz is like those Earth squirrels, strange and eccentric. I would guess he got distracted somewhere else.”

The ceiling vent outside the door suddenly fell open and the white and black blur of Jazz came crashing to the floor. The sudden appearance only startled Starscream slightly, the same could not be said for Wheeljack. Wheeljack had jumped backwards and crashed into the door frame, falling down to the ground similarly to Jazz.

“Jazz! I swear to Primus, you do that to me one more time and I’m having Ratchet reformat you inta a Earth toaster!” Wheeljack was yelling as he attempted to get off the floor and get Jazz. Jazz was faster though, grabbing Starscream’s arm and tugging him down the hall away from Wheeljack’s grasp.

“Sorry ‘bout that Screamer, had ta make a good entrance ta scare ‘Jackie. Nobody calls me squirrely.” Jazz finally let go of his arm and let him walk on his own.

“What happened to your nullrays Screamer?”

Starscream had completely forgotten about his removed weapons, having not had the need to use them since he got Skyfire. He had also forgotten that he had crushed them and left them in the Arctic. “I.. uh, broke them. Didn’t want you Autobots thinking I was dangerous when you got me from the Arctic. I just wanted a little of your trust.”

Jazz just walked ahead and stopped to turn around in front of him.

“Screamer, ah don’t know if that was a wise choice. We’re all still at war, but ah appreciate ya tryin’. Here.”

Jazz went into his subspace and pulled out a small knife and pushed it towards Starscream. “I also don’t know if this is wise, but I’m gonna give ya this because I want ta trust ya. Use it only if ya need ta.”

Starscream slowly grabbed the offered knife and tucked it in his own subspace. “Thank you Jazz.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t make me regret it. Now let’s get a move on, don’t want ta make Prowler upset with us bein’ late.”

It was mostly silent the rest of the trip besides Jazz greeting everyone they passed. It allowed him to learn some of the names of the Autobots he would be living with at least. When they reached the entrance, Prowl and ironhide were standing at the open tunnel door.

“Greetings Starscream. Thank you for getting here on decent time. They were getting antsy waiting.” Prowl spoke as stiffly as he had the other night.

“Who-” Starscream felt two figures jump on his back and wings before he could finish asking Prowl. He fell to the ground under the weight of the two figures before he was flipped over. He was halfway to reaching into his subspace for the knife before he saw it was Thundercracker and Skywarp on him.

“When-when did you two get here? Why didn’t you comm. me or use the bond to tell me you were here!” As happy as he was for his brothers to be here, he was still mad that they hadn’t notified him.

“Surprise?” Skywarp scampered off to the side of the hall and Thundercracker slid off to let Starscream stand up. “Sorry Star, TC wanted to tell you, but I told him not to. I thought it would be fun to surprise you when we got here.”

Thundercracker snickered and shoved Skywarp’s shoulder. “We would have been here yesterday if Warp here hadn’t kept disappearing on me for hours on end, and he’s too embarrassed to tell where he went.”

Ironhide was watching them with his blaster still out and Jazz and saddled over to be by Prowl’s side.

“Prowl, can I take my trine mates somewhere private to talk?”

Starscream could see the way Prowl’s door wings shot up minutely, and he couldn’t blame him. Leaving three ex-Decepticons, two of which had outlier abilities, alone in a room together would only cause a processor-ache and unneeded stress.

“You have ten minutes, and Ironhide is going to be outside the door. Don’t try anything.”

Prowl took them to the room that had been cleared for Thundercracker and Skywarp. Ironhide peered in the room one more time before he let the door close to the room. Thundercracker was watching Skywarp walk around the room.

“So..” Starscream might as well start the conversation “What happened with you two and Soundwave? You said he told you about me and let you leave. That does not seem like our dearly devoted Third-In-Command.”

“Well, after we finished our patrol, we returned to the Ark as normal. On our way to our room, Sounders hailed us to the bridge. It was just him in there, Megatron was off destroying equipment in the lower levels or doing some other slag. When we couldn’t get a hold of you, we thought Sounders was going to tell us Megatron beat you all different ways again.” Skywarp didn’t show it, but Starscream could feel the fear Skywarp had felt through his field.

Thundercracker took over with talking, “We were scared for you. And when Soundwave told us about you defecting from the Decepticons, I started fearing that we were going to be punished, or worse. So imagine how surprised we were when he told us he was giving us a few hours before he notified Megatron and told us to be careful.”

It was still hard to comprehend that Soundwave actually had done that for him and his brothers. Soundwave was fiercely loyal to the cause and would have reported suspicions of desertion immediately. But he had let three high profile Decepticons go, why? Had his friendship with Soundwave really been strong enough for this to slide by?

“Star, why didn’t you tell us anything?” Skywarp was speaking again. He sounded pained that he and Thundercracker had seemingly been left in the dark. And they had, all because of Starscream’s fears.

“I just didn’t know how you guys would take it. Defecting isn’t something we could just go back on, and you two seemed to like it back there more than me. I was scared you guys wouldn’t follow me. I just ran and left you two behind. I’m sorry.” Starscream could feel tears forming in his eyes. He had failed at being a good brother again.

“Hey hey, Star.” Thundercracker grabbed Starscream’s shoulders to grab his attention, “It’s alright Star. I get it, the Decepticons never exactly treated you all that well. Me and Warpy didn’t like how you were being treated, but we didn’t ever try helping you. I knew we should have left a long time ago, but I was scared of what would happen to us. You at least got the bearings to go and actually leave, so good for you. Just know that we’ll support whatever you do.”

Thundercracker got up and hugged him, and Skywarp joined. It was nice, being all together again.

“So, how’s it being an Autobot? Any friends yet?” Skywap asked as he exited the embrace.

“It’s good here, Warp. Slowly getting better, most bots still aren’t used to me being here, Primus forbid how it’ll be with all three of us together now. Got a friend with the small yellow scout Bumblebee, I can tell he’s as energetic as you are. I’m patching things over with Wheeljack and Percpetor after everything. And I’m working in the lab with them and Skyfire, so I’m getting back into my area or expertise.”

“You actually found Skyfire?!” Skywarp jumped up off the berth he was sitting on. With how they had tirelessly helped Starscream search for the past three years with no luck, it was no surprise the reaction.

“Yes, I actually found him. He’s the same as he was back at the Academy all those millions of years ago. It’s nice being with him again. We need to talk a lot still, but we’re patching it back together again.”

“Well I’m glad for you Star, you two were always good together. I can’t wait to see him again.”

Prowl came knocking shortly to take his brother’s into questioning. Thankfully he was taking them one at a time, so Thundercracker left first.

“Warp, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“What do you want to know? If it’s about how I feel about all this, all I can say is that I’ll try to be civil with the Autobots.”

“No, that's not it. Have you been seeing an Autobot the past few months? I’m not mad or anything, just curious.” Starscream didn’t know how this was going to go, but he hoped Skywarp would cooperate and at least attempt answering.

“Uhhhhhhhh…” Skywarp’s face went blue from blush and he tried, but failed, to pull his field of embarrassment and fear close to his frame. “No?”

At least it was sort of an answer. Starscream half expected Skywarp would teleport away.

“Warp, it’s alright. I noticed a few months ago you were going off ship to meet someone. I could care less who you’re fragging, as long as you’re happy.”

Skywarp didn’t seem to want to budge. So when the door opened for Prowl to question Skywarp, it was no surprise his brother went zooming out of the room. Thundercracker was certainly confused at Skywarp’s antics.

“What’s his problem?” Starscream thought it was better to just say nothing to Thundercracker about it and shrugged.

Since his shift was over and Thundercracker was free for the rest of the day, Starscream decided to take his brother to the rec room for energon. There would be a lot of optics on them, but they would be fine if they sat with Wheeljack or Bumblebee away from the middle. When they got there, Wheeljack and crew weren’t anywhere to be seen, probably still working. Starscream did notice Bumblebee waving them over.

“Thundercracker, this is my friend Bumblebee. Be careful not to crush him, he’s quite small.” Starscream couldn't help the snide remark at Bumblebee.

Starscream let Thundercracker and Bumblebee chat between themselves for a few minutes. It would be good for his brothers to make friends and start earning trust. And their talking blocked out the continued looks and murmurs they were getting from around the rec room. It only lasted a few minutes however, when the grumpy red minibot came over with a vicious look on his faceplates.

“Bumblebee, why are there two dirty ‘Cons sitting at our table, and why in pit are you talking with them?!”

“Cliffjumper, calm down, they’re my friends.”

Bumblebee’s attempts to calm down Cliffjumper seemed to only anger the minibot more. “Friends! You know we can’t trust them! They’re only acting so they can stab us in the back!” Bumblebee had to get out of his seat to go over and try to stop Cliffjumper from doing anything. If this wasn’t a que to leave then Starscream didn’t know what was. Starscream quickly grabbed Thundercracker’s hand and got up to leave.

“Nice seeing you again Yellow! We’ll leave so you can calm down little Red here.”

As they walked towards the door, Starscream heard Cliffjumper yell something at him before something hit the back of his helm hard and his vision went black.

. . . . .

When he woke again, Starscream felt his helm pounding in pain. His vision was slightly blurry, but he could tell he was in the medbay. His brothers, Wheeljack, and Skyfire were surrounding the berth on both sides of him.

“Ratchet! He’s up again!” Wheeljack was waving the medic over like Starscream was bleeding out.

“What happened?” It took a few resets to his vocalizer to even talk.

“Well, Cliffjumper threw a table at the back of your helm, knocked you right out. How he managed that I’m not sure, but he’s in the brig now. You’ve been out for a couple hours and most likely concussed, so you’ll be here for the night and be on light duty for a couple of days.” Ratchet turned to the crowd of bots around his berth. “As for you all, give him some room. Visiting hours are over anyhow, so you can all see yourselves out.”

When nobody was making a move to leave, Ratchet reached for his wrench of doom and Wheeljack promptly made haste to get everyone out.

“Make yourself comfortable and call a medic if you need anything, I’m going to attempt a peaceful recharge.”

Ratchet left and it was eerily quiet. He could see the other medics working on cleaning across the room before they all started leaving. After an hour, Starscream could only tell that one other medic was still around besides Ratchet. Starscream still couldn’t tell why the mech looked familiar, but the white mech clearly knew him with how he kept staring at him. After some time, the mech came over to his berth and Starscream got a better look at him. The white mech had some red accents across his frame with red painted points above and under his eyes. The small swords on each hip seemed to draw attention from the larger sword on the mech’s back. And the mech’s field screamed a sense of calmness and serenity as it washed over him.

“Who are you? You look familiar but I can’t tell why.” The white mech seemed to freeze when Starscream spoke.

“I’m Drift, but you might remember me as Deadlock.”

That explained it. Deadlock had been such a vicious killing machine back in the early days of war on Cybertron. He had slaughtered multitudes of Autobot soldiers in and off the battle. And a few Decepticon foot soldiers. He had managed to pique Megatron’s frustration with his constant killing of Decepticons to the point that he was placed on the DJD’s list. He shortly thereafter went missing and was presumed dead. But there he was, alive and an Autobot.

“Deadlock. How did you manage to get here? You were presumed dead!” Starscream tried to raise his voice, but that just caused a ringing sensation in his helm.

“After I was placed on the DJD’s list, I deserted and fled off Cybertron to an unknown planet. Meet a mech named Wing and a group called the Circle of Light. They taught me a sense of peace that I would have never have been able to achieve with the Decepticons. Took a while after training, but I joined the Autobots and fought with them for a time before we left Cybertron and crashed here.”

“How…how did you get the Autobots to trust you?” Starscream was starting to feel drowsy from how soothing Drift’s field was.

“Most didn’t know I was Deadlock for a long time. Once the news did break, most bots saw how I had moved past my ways as a Decepticon and how they had come to trust me. Ratty helped me too, sticking up for me against the few who disliked me. It took a while longer before, but they too came like me.”

“I’m sorry, did you refer to Ratchet as Ratty?” The nickname was throwing Starscream for a loop. The big grump of the Autobots with anger issues to match some Decepticons, and he had the nickname Ratty.

“Oh! Ratty is just something I’ve been calling him since we started courting. He’s really nice under his grumpy facade.” Drift was explaining the nickname with a smile that was slightly weird to see on the mech that used to be Deadlock. And courting Ratchet was… an interesting choice.

“Well, I’ve got to get going Star. Don’t let these mechs get to you, they will eventually see that you’re good enough to give their trust.” With a bow, Drift left the medbay.

It gave Starscream some hope in earning the trust of the Autobots. If Deadlock had managed, so could he.

Chapter Text

The week after being released from medbay went about the same. Starscream would wake up with Skyfire, go work a light shift in the lab, talk with his brothers and Bumblebee, go back to his room, sleep, repeat. It was incredibly dull, but it worked well enough. He had been avoiding going near the rec room ever since Cliffjumper had been released from the brig. Skyfire or Bumblebee had been kindly bringing him energon in the meantime.

Since he couldn’t go to the rec room, Starscream and his small group had been meeting for energon in a meeting room near the lab. Bumblebee, Skywarp, Thundercracker, and Skyfire were usually also there with him if they weren’t on duty. Wheeljack and Perceptor had come once during the week to join the group. Everyone seemed to get along well enough, especially with his brothers there too. Starscream had feared Wheeljack would have been aft to his brothers like he had with him, but he kept his cool. Bumblebee seemed to have made friends with his brothers quickly, and Starscream couldn’t tell if his brothers had gotten the same friendship proposition as him or not. Skyfire had quickly gotten reacquainted with Skywarp and Thundercracker after only having ever met once at the Science Academy.

Starscream and Skyfire had somehow managed to push back talking about their relationship again. They clearly loved each other, but it was also clear that neither knew what they each wanted out of a true relationship. Starscream wanted to be able to keep moving forward with Skyfire, so it would be best to just get it over with. Starscream decided that he would sit down that night to finally talk.

There was a ping at the door of the room. Everyone was there except for Wheeljack and Percy, but they had said they would be working. When Starscream got to the door and opened it he found no one in the hall.

“What do you want Jazz?” Starscream was really hoping Jazz would stop doing his little ding-dong ditch thing.

After a pregnant pause with no response, Starscream smacked the ceiling vent on his right. As expected, the vent fell open and the black and white saboteur tumbled out with the same grace he had had outside the lab before. Starscream couldn’t help but snicker as Jazz struggled to stand back up after his fall.

“How’d ya know I was in there, Screamer?

“I lived on the Nemesis with Soundwave and his three critters going through the vents constantly. Hearing small creatures in the vents is becoming easier for me, especially now that I know what to listen to for you.”

“Watch who you’re callin’ a small creature Screamer.”

“Well, if you keep pulling that kind of stunt everytime you come to get me, I’ll take Wheeljack up on the offer to have Ratchet reformat a certain small creature.”

The growl that came through Jazz’s denta proved that the point was being made.

“So while you get that through your processor, I’ll ask again. What do you want?” Starscream made sure to speak in a condescending tone and lean over the smaller bot. He knew that he was technically out of line, but his habits of speaking down on others was hard to stop.

“Ah came here cuz OP and Prowler want to ask you some more questions. So ah get to come here to your little tea party and take you up.” Jazz quickly changed his mood to appear happy again when the door to the room opened.

“Are you needed elsewhere, Star?” Skyfire was poking his head out of the room

“Sorry Sky, Screamer here needs to talk to Optimus again. He’ll be a while, I’ll bring him to you when we’re done.”

Skyfire just sighed and walked back into the room. Starscream didn’t have to look back at Jazz to see the face the saboteur was making. “We might as well get going. Lead the way.”

Jazz led him up to the higher deck of the Ark and into the command staff meeting room. Prowl and Optimus were both already sitting at the table. Jazz went around the table and sat down next to Prowl

“Greetings Starscream. We just want to ask you a few questions and talk. This hopefully won’t take too long.” It was only his third time speaking with Prowl, but Starscream had already gotten used to the monotone way the Praxian spoke the same as he had with Soundwave.
“How has your first week been on the Ark, Starscream?” Optimus started the questioning.

“Besides the little red one, Cliffjumper, throwing a table at me, I’ve been fine. Most of your Autobots still clearly don’t like me. Bumblebee is the only one who’s actually been friendly with me.”

“I’m sorry about Cliffjumper’s behavior. He was told to not approach you if he had problems with our decision. How has it been with Wheeljack and Perceptor?”

“It’s good in the lab, we’ve cleared the tension and have been getting along well together.”

“When you gave us the Decepticon intel, you said you had been collecting it for months. How long had you been considering leaving the Decepticons before?”

That… was a little hard to pin down. He had always disliked the way Megatron led the Decepticons. His attempts to take command of the Decepticons from Megatron for himself had been a joke on both sides of the war for years. Starscream didn’t want any of the glory or fame of being Decepticon leader like everyone always assumed; he just believed that anyone would be a better leader than Megatron. When the beatings and assaults started, Starscream just had to push himself to try and get through each day until he could overtake Megatron. But that day never came, and Megatron forced them to leave Cybertron to follow fleeing Autobots. They had been on the brink of conquering the planet, but Megatron had decided chasing after Optimus Prime was more important.

Waking on Earth had started the thoughts of wanting to leave the Decepticons. The Decepticons and Autobots were fighting the other significantly less than they were on Cybertron, but Megatron was beating him more and more.

“About two years ago I’d say. It was sometime around when I was near death from Megatron for the third time that I realized it wasn’t going to work.”

The three Autobots just stared at him, Optimus looking the most disturbed.

“I’m sorry that you had to go through that Starscream, Megatron should have never done those things to you.”

“If it wasn’t me, it probably would have been some other bot or one of my brothers. I’ve probably kept over half of the Decepticon army safe from being beaten.” Starscream didn’t like thinking about it, but he had definitely stepped in to take the blame for other bots so they would not be beaten. Most times Megatron would still beat him even when he knew someone else was to blame.

“I don’t know if you’ll be able to answer, but do you think that any other Decepticons might want to leave the Decepticons for the Autobots?” Prowl spoke up.
Starscream couldn’t help himself from chuckling from the question. There were bots who wanted to leave the Decepticons, yes. But of those who wanted to, Starscream knew none would actually get the courage to do so. Most of the Decepticon army only followed out of fear.

“Is there something wrong, Starscream?” Optimus

“No. I mean… It's just that most of the Decepticon army probably has wanted to leave for over a millennium but are too scared of Megatron’s inevitable retaliation. The only bots I can think of actually jumping ship to the Autobots are Knockout and Breakdown. Knockout’s always only looked out for himself and Breakdown would follow him wherever Knockout went.”

Prowl was jotting notes down so fast onto his datapad that Starscream half expected the stylus to break from overuse. “And how about Soundwave? He did let your trine mates leave even after he knew you defected to us.”

“I’m still not really sure what happened, but I don’t think Soundwave would ever leave the Decepticons, He’s still fiercely loyal to Megatron. As much as I would like to think otherwise, I don’t see it happening.” The reality was more disappointing when Starscream actually said it out loud. Soundwave had been the only friend he had actually made from the Decepticons, and he hated to admit it, but he actually was starting to miss talking with the cassette bot.

“Can I ask something?” Prowl gave him a small nod while writing. “When I was in the medbay last week, Drift talked to me. Is he the only other former Decepticon you Autobots still have, or are there others?”

Jazz, who had not said or done anything since the meeting started, seemed to shrink in his seat and dimmed his visor like Starscream had said something to offend him. Prowl put the datapad down and started trying to comfort the saboteur.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“Nah mech, you’re good.” Jazz still sounded down, but was warming back with Prowl comforting him.

So they are together. Some Decepticons would be losing a lot of credits if they found out.

“Is there anything else needed to be said, Prowl?” Optimus seemed to want to leave, having asked all of the questions they wanted.

“Yeah, hold on OP. I wanna ask Screamer one more thing quick.” Jazz brushed Prowl’s hand off his shoulder and leaned over the table towards Starscream. “While you were still with the ‘cons, did Megatron or anyone else suspect that we had a inside informant in the ranks?”

“Not to my knowledge?” Starscream couldn’t even be sure, Megatron liked to deal with suspected traitors on his own and not inform anyone. There could also be no way that someone would be able to give intel for long without being detected by Soundwave. “I never suspected anyone, and Soundwave never caught anyone taking intel.”

“That’s good ta hear. I’m done with questions OP. We good ta wrap this up, Prowler?”

“I suppose so, thank you for your time Starscream.” Prowl stood up.

Starscream still had something on his processor that he had been sitting on. “Jazz, can I talk to you privately for a moment?”

Jazz watched for Optimus and Prowl to leave the room before sitting back down. “What can I do for ya, Screamer?”

“I need your help with something, but only if this stays between us.” Jazz seemed hesitant in the nod he gave. “Can you help me figure out which Autobot Skywarp has been seeing for the past while? He was sneaking off to meet someone back when we were still Decepticons and he’s afraid to tell me anything.”

“Ya know, that would usually be considered fraternizing with an enemy and could lead ta serious consequences…”

Starscream was starting to regret even asking.

“... But since you’re with us now, and ya came ta me about it, I’ll look into it for you. And I won’t say anything to OP unless I have ta. But are ya sure ya want me ta do this? I mean, digging into your brother’s private life.”

Starscream knew that it wasn’t good looking for this kind of information, but he just wanted to make sure his brother was safe with whoever it was. “Yes. Thank you for doing this for me.”

With another nod and mocking salute from Jazz, Starscream left the meeting room and made his way back down towards his quarters. It would still be about an hour before Skyfire got off duty from the lab, so Starscream would just have to sit and wait so they could talk.

Opening the door and stepping in, Starscream saw Skyfire already in the room sitting on his berth. Starscream crossed the room to sit next to Skyfire and leaned into the larger mechs plating. It was just silence for minutes, each of them too incompetent to start the conversation. Starscream decided to start it just for the sake of getting it going.

“Sky, did you know that after our original expedition to Earth, I was going to ask to bond with you so that we could become conjuxes?” Starscream could feel Skyfire’s plating stiffen before he got swung by the shoulders to be facing Skyfire.
“What?... Really?” Starscream could tell Skyfire was on the verge of tears.

“Yes Sky, I loved you. I still love you, I’ve just changed.” That was the only barrier Starscream felt was holding himself back from being able to fully recommit to a relationship. “This war’s broken me. I’ve done things I can’t take back. And I’m scared that I’ll ruin anything we try to do. But I want to rebuild what we once had… if you even want me.”

“Of course I still want you! I don’t care how much you’ve changed, you’re still the bot I once worked with in the Academy. I’ve already said how I wouldn’t stop loving you because of what you’d done while I was frozen. Some war isn’t going to change how I feel towards you.”

“So… you do want to rebuild?”

Skyfire only pulled him into a deep kiss that he immediately melted into. “Does that make it clear, Star?”

“I think I need another to get my answer.” Starscream pulled Skyfire into another kiss. “Yes, it’s clear Sky.”

Starscream climbed into Skyfire’s lap to be closer, happier than ever.

“Last week, what did you mean by you didn’t think you would survive another beating from Megatron? You avoided the question last time I asked.”

He should have remembered Skyfire wanted to know about that. Wheeljack had saved him the last time, but it wasn’t likely that he would be saved again.

“Remember how I said Megatron became blinded by rage as the war went on? I didn’t think he was cut out for leading us anymore, so I tried to undermine and overthrow him. When I failed, he would punish me… badly. That’s what I meant, this war has broken me mentally and physically.”

Skyfire pulled Starscream into another hug. “Well you’re here with me now. We’re safe here.”

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Walking back to his and Jazz’s quarters, Prowl was thinking over the meeting. He felt that they did not ask enough questions and had mostly wasted the meeting getting information that they already had known. And Jazz had most definitely given out about the Autobot insider in the Decepticons too soon. As much as Jazz and Optimus seemed to trust the seeker, Prowl didn’t.

Entering his quarters, Prowl went over to his terminal to do more of his work. Jazz had complained enough about him overworking himself in his office that he had decided just to install a terminal in their room. He had been getting significantly less work done with Jazz pestering him, but it made Jazz happy.

Prowl quickly lost track of time, not even noticing that three hours had gone by until he felt Jazz’s arms wrap around him.

“Heya Prowler. Why don’t ya take a break and spend some time with me.”

As much as Jazz tried to hide behind his mask of happiness, Prowl had been his conjunx for too long to be fooled by it. He could tell when Jazz felt down.

“Jazz, you know your acting can’t fool me anymore. Do you want to talk about it?”

Prowl could feel Jazz’s arms loosen and sag. “I don’t know what ya talking about Prowler.”

“You’ve become terrible at lying to me, you know?” One perk of being larger than Jazz was that Prowl could easily grab and carry the mech. Setting Jazz down on their berth, Prowl sat down next to him. “C’mon Jazz, talk to me.”

“It’s what Screamer asked ‘bout, on if there were other former Decepticons. Ya know how I feel about that.”

“Jazz, there’s no reason to feel bad about that. It was so long ago, and you’ve been here with us twice as long.” Prowl raised his hands to Jazz’s visor. “May I?”

Hesitantly, Jazz switched off the magnets for his visor. Prowl removed the visor and set it down on the night table so he could look at his conjunx’s optics. Prowl watched the cloudy red optics search his own blue optics. Prowl knew how badly Jazz hated his optics, being too damaged to replace the red optics with blue without the chance of going permanently blind. The visor, which helped improve his vision, gave Jazz the added benefit of hiding his eyes from everyone.

“There’s nothing wrong with your optics, Jazz.” Prowl tried to put emotion into his usually emotionless voice. Jazz had always been able to read into his monotone voice to find the emotion that the other Autobots missed, but he wanted to sound genuine. Jazz was able to pick up on the attempt, genuinely smiling and not forcing one. “Love you, Jazz.”

“Love ya too Prowler.”

Chapter Text

The Nemesis

The walls of the security hub buzzed with noise around Soundwave’s desk. He was trying to enjoy these last few minutes of peace and silence before he had to go find Megatron and inform him about the Seekers. It had been six hours since Thundercracker and Skywarp had departed to find Starscream and make it to the Autobots. Megatron would by now already know something had happened, and would already be in an extremely displeased mood when Soundwave came and confirmed the news. He really hoped his leader would react lightly to the confirmation. Best case scenario, Megatron would simmer in his anger until he calmed down and became reasonable to talk to again.

Why was he lying to himself, the reasonable mech that once was his friend was long gone. The real best case scenario would be that Megatron snapped and lightly beat Soundwave in blind rage. Worst case… wasn’t something he truly wanted to use processor power to imagine.

It was sad to think about how Megatronus, the gladiator Soundwave had befriended in the pits of Kaon and had followed for vorns, had been lost somewhere along the way since Cybertron. The mech that he now followed paled in comparison, only caring about bloodshed and revenge and not fixing the Functionalist system.

Soundwave finally got the nerve to stand from his desk and find Megatron. Pulling his field in all the way to his frame, Soundwave could feel tremors of uneasiness going through his plating. He had to pull himself together, he couldn’t appear to be not put together. Soundwave had created his stoic and off-putting persona over the vorns to avoid any and all unneeded social interaction. Cycling his vents a few times, Soundwave felt the reassurances radiating from his numerous bonds ease some of his tension. Finally feeling at as much peace as he could, Soundwave finally left the security room.

All the mechs in the halls were either giving him looks or moving out of his way. While he didn’t show it, he found the antics of everyone dodging him like he was a walking rust plague highly amusing. Most of the foot soldiers would simply just try and get by with as little plate contact as they could. The trine of conehead Seekers had simply stopped to hug the wall until they could slip behind.

The masses of mechs slowed to a crawl until Soundwave was walking the halls all by himself. Reaching the main bridge, Soundwave only found an empty throne sitting in the dark. So Megatron was brooding in his own quarters. With a sigh, Soundwave turned to make his way to Megatron’s berthroom. The rooms for command staff were farther from the bridge than the rooms for the foot soldiers, but they at least offered more privacy (and were more spacious to hold his three children). Soundwave thought of stopping at his room to check on his kids first, but decided against it, Megatron was waiting. Soundwave hoped he wouldn’t be too beat up from Megatron to not see his kids after.

Once we arrived at the door of Megatron’s room, Soundwave just stood outside and hesitantly sent a ping to request entry. There was no answer after a minute, so Soundwave pinged again. As time went by and he still did not get an answer, Soundwave decided to leave and try again when Megatron was in a better mood. The door behind him suddenly opened. Stepping inside the dark room, Soundwave could only see the glowing red lights of Megatron’s eyes looking at him.

“Lord Megatron.”

“Spare me the greetings, Soundwave. Tell me that you’ve found those Seekers.” Soundwave could feel the red eyes looking up and down his frame in anger.

“Soundwave: could not locate Elite Trine. Skywarp and Thundercracker: seen leaving Nemesis several hours ago after patrol. Conclusion: left to find Starscream.” Soundwave, even with the heavy effect of his modulated voice, could hear the nervousness of his words.

Soundwave heard the cracking of an energon glass being crushed from where Megatron was sitting in the dark.

“How long ago did you find this out?” The anger in Megatron’s voice seemed to disappear into a whisper.

“Soundwave: came to you just after…” The loud crush of shattering glass and the proceeding crash to the floor made Soundwave jump.

“DO NOT LIE TO ME SOUNDWAVE!” Megatron’s red eyes glowed brighter with rage as they watched him. Megatron had gotten up from his spot in the dark and was towering over Soundwave.

“Soundwave: f-found out one hour ago. Megatron: preoccupied at the time with other matters.”

Megatron only set his hand on Soundwave’s shoulder guard and sighed. “Soundwave…”

‘ Maybe he wasn’t as mad as he seemed? ’

Pain started to come from the shoulder Megatron had put his hand on, being gripped slightly too hard.

“Lord Megatron?”

With a sharp movement, Megatron ripped the metal off of his shoulder. Energon was leaking from the wound onto the floor. Soundwave’s bonds quickly opened up, full of worry and fear for him. Soundwave could only reassure them that everything was fine; only so that his kids didn’t try to intervene and get hurt in the process.

“You knew and didn’t bring this to my attention! Are you trying to undermine me!? Are you helping them!?” Megatron was screaming into his visor.

“N-No Megatron! Soundwave: would never try to undermine Megatron!”

Megatron kicked Soundwave to the ground and put a ped over the glass of his cassette dock. Even though the glass was reinforced to protect his kids when they were in his dock, the weight of Megatron’s ped shattered the window and rained shards of glass into the docking chamber.

“Why should I believe you! You had one job to watch and make sure Starscream didn’t try anything, and you failed! Why have I even kept you around if you’re this USELESS!?”

Megatron’s ped was still crushing the plating around his cassette dock, causing the plating to bend inwards and press down on his spark chamber. Even without warning popping up in his hud, Soundwave could feel pain from his spark spinning too fast along with something else.

“Consider this your one and only warning, Soundwave. Do not test my faith in you again, I would hate to see the talents of you and your pets wasted.”

Megatron lifted his ped off of his chassis and immediately stepped on his arm. Soundwave had been able to keep quiet through the entire beating, but the sound of the strut in his arm snapping and the flash of pain that followed drew a pained gasp from him.

“Oh, and enjoy your promotion to Second-In Command, Soundwave. Make sure to do better than Starscream.”

With that remark, Megatron left Sounwave in the room alone, bleeding and in pain. Soundwave tried to push himself up off the ground and out of the puddle of his own energon, but putting too much pressure on his broken arm only led to him crying out in pain and dropping face first back to the ground. Rolling over and using his good arm to prop himself up, Soundwave finally got back to his feet.

Slowly and painfully, Soundwave made his way out the door and down the hall. He had to get to the medbay and get repaired without his kids seeing him in the state he was in. Them seeing him how he was would only worry them, especially Laserbeak and Buzzsaw. Ravage was old enough to know everything was fine, but Laserbeak and Buzzsaw were still young and got scared for his safety easily.

After he passed his room, Soundwave pushed reassurance through his bonds again that he was not hurt. The three bonds from his kids filled with ease, Ravage’s bond also pulsing an underlying worry. Soundwave’s last bond was not convinced though, only pulsing dread and worry for his safety. They would definitely need to talk at some point soon so Soundwave could reassure he was still fine working near Megatron. Right now though, Soundwave could only try and reassure the bond with his lover once again.

Walking to the medbay, Soundwave had to walk past most of the foot soldiers again. Instead of them walking past him in fear like they had before, they all just gave him the same look they had always given Starscream.

The look of pity for being Megatron’s punching bag.

Soundwave just dismissed the looks so he could get to the medbay. When he made it, the lights inside were off and the door was locked. Knockout and Breakdown had arrived back from their trip shortly before Thundercracker and Skywarp had left and had been scheduled for the rest of the night in medbay. So, Soundwave had a choice, he could either spend the time locating Knockout and Breakdown and force them to get back on-duty, or he could give in and seek out the grossly under qualified Hook to be repaired.

. . . . .

It had taken only a few minutes of reviewing camera footage to find them, but Soundwave had located the medics he was looking for, finding himself standing outside of Knockout’s quarters. He had already pinged for entry three times but had been ignored each time. Growing tired of being ignored and dripping energon from his wounds, Soundwave had given in to pounding on the door.

Soundwave could hear mumbling from inside and the stomps of peds coming to the door.

“Will you stop banging on the door, Herr Kommandant! How fragged up could you even be this late into the…”

Knockout’s ranting stopped once he opened the door and got an eyeful of the state Soundwave was in.

“PRIMUS! Soundwave, what in the pit happened to you!? Breakdown, follow us to the medbay!”

The two medics quickly (and thankfully quietly) got Soundwave to the medbay and started fixing him. As obnoxious as Knockout was with making sure his paint job didn’t get scratched, he at least always got the job done. Both medics were working seamlessly, Breakdown just handing the tools and parts Knockout needed without being verbally asked or told.

“How did all of this even happen? I’ve seen Commander Starscream in here enough to know Megatron did this. But why you and not his favorite stress-toy?” Knockout asked as he was finishing soldering his armstrut back together.

“Starscream: has left Decepticons. Soundwave: failed to report in timely manner.”

“Wait! You mean to say that Starscream actually did leave? With how long he’s been saying that, I never particularly assumed that he would actually go through with it.”

After another hour or so of repairs, Soundwave looked as close to perfect as someone with little vain could be without Knockout starting to beg Soundwave to let him touch up his paint and buff him out. Soundwave had to give in after the fifth request; much to his own annoyance.

While Knockout was out getting the color nanites for Soundwave, Soundwave felt the pain in his spark come back. There weren’t any warnings or notifications appearing, and that was frightening enough to actually raise concern and make him ask for a check.

“Knockout: scan Soundwave’s spark? Unknown pain present.”

With a huff, Knockout set down the paint nanites and grabbed a spark reader off of a counter and started scanning. There was a moment where Knockout paused in the scan and his eyes widened in some kind of shock. Soundwave watched as Knockout cleared whatever results he had gotten and scanned again, seemingly getting the same result. By that point Breakdown had joined Knockout and looked at the results with the same shocked face.

“Knockout: will tell Soundwave what is wrong.”

Knockout broke out of his stare at the screen with a smirk on his face “Congratulations Commander.”

Knockout turned the scanner around to show Soundwave. On the screen was a capture of Soundwave’s spark. Surrounding his spark were two smaller orbs of light.

Two newsparks.
He was sparked with twins.

“By the looks of it, you’re three months into the process.” Breakdown was now looking at him. “So who’s the sire?”

Soundwave felt frozen. How could this have even happened? The time frame made sense to him. It had been three months since he had last gone out with his love. But still, that didn’t mean that this should have happened. Soundwave had all of the necessary contraception systems in place still, right?

Looking through, Soundwave saw how almost every single system that he was using to ensure he didn’t get sparked had expired hundreds of thousands of years ago. Even his baffle, which was just a simple device in his chassis that lasted five hundred years, had stopped working over a couple thousand years ago while he was in stasis.

Soundwave was usually on top of these kinds of things! How could he have put this off and let this happen? Would his lover even want these sparklings while they were still at war? Would Megatron allow it?

“Hello? Commander Soundwave, you good there?” Breakdown pulled Soundwave back to the present.

“Soundwave: fine. Knockout and Breakdown: will tell no one of this.”

“C’mon Soundwave, You sure ol’ Megs shouldn’t be privy to this?” Knockout was giving him the smug grin of his again.

“Knockout: tells Megatron about newsparks, Soundwave will tell Megatron of Knockout and Breakdown’s conjunx bond.”

That got Knockout to drop the grin off his face fast. “Wha… How do you even know that!?”

“Knockout and Breakdown: terrible at sneaking around.”

“Fine! Nobody needs to know anything! Happy!?” Knockout threw his arms up exasperated.

Happy enough, Soundwave got up and left the medbay. He could hear Knockout yelling down the hall about not touching up Soundwave’s paint, but that hardly mattered. Soundwave was more concerned about getting to his kids. They were still most definitely worried about him after his “talk” with Megatron.

Speaking of Megatron, Soundwave looked at the camera feeds and saw Megatron currently sitting on his throne in the main bridge. Not wanting a repeat performance of their earlier encounter, Soundwave took a longer route back to his room. The soldiers were still giving him the looks of pity, and as much as he wanted to ignore them, it was getting to his head. His stoic persona that had given him the space he had wanted for millions of years had been shattered in a matter of hours.

After the detour, Soundwave finally got to his quarters. Stepping in, Soundwave found the lights off and his creations seemingly in recharge sprawled across his berth. Taking off his visor and mask, Soundwave took a look at himself in the small mirror he had. The yellow of his optics bathed the area around himself in a warm light. The scar across his face always seemed larger whenever he looked at his true face. Most of the paint on his chassis and arms was still missing, only showing the bare color of his frame.

Opening his chassis and spark chamber open, Soundwave looked into his spark in the mirror. The bright azure of his spark outshone the lights of his optics, spreading across most of the room. Soundwave could see the wisps of light that were the bonds with his kids and lover surrounding his spark.

And outside of those bonds, Soundwave could see the two balls of light slowly encircling his own spark. The newsparks were real. A smile spread across his face, something he rarely saw on his own face with his mask off.

Soundwave looked down at his open chest and whispered with his real voice. “I’ll make sure to protect you two… no matter what.”

Soundwave checked to make sure his kids were still in recharge before closing his spark chamber and chassis. Opening his comm. system, Soundwave sent a message to his lover.

::We need to talk when possible.::

----------------------------------------------------------------

Eleven Days Later

It had been hard keeping the news that he was sparked from his kids, but he was somehow managing. His kids had not asked anything about what had happened the night he talked with Megatron, so they probably didn’t even know he had had to go to the medbay. Soundwave was pretty sure Ravage knew, most likely having watched his medbay visit the night he found out from the vents. Soundwave wanted to ask his oldest, but was scared that she may not know and that he would reveal it by accident.

Soundwave had gone back to Knockout early in the morning and gotten his paint touched up, more so to Knockout’s joy than his own. He had also gotten the newsparks checked again to find out more about them. It turned out that the newsparks weren’t going to be cassette bots, but instead full mechs. It also turned out that Soundwave was lacking in several minerals that the newsparks were needing. Knockout had given him a list of items to put in his energon rations so that newsparks could grow.

But that was a small problem. Ever since the failed energon raid eleven days ago when Starscream had left, no more raids had been conducted to gain energon. And with how low they had already been beforehand, extreme rationing was in effect. Even though he was in High Command and was given the right to get energon first, especially now that he needed to be taking more for his newsparks, Soundwave felt guilty taking from the rest of the Decepticons.

Megatron was contributing to the energon shortage with the number of bots he had been beating up and throwing around. Without Starscream to bat around, Megatron had been finding alternatives to release his anger. Numerous foot soldiers had been found bleeding out and near deactivation throughout the ship, mostly around the main bridge. The medbay had been getting increasingly more full with each day that passed. On multiple occasions, Soundwave had seen one or more of the Reflector triplets missing limbs inside the medbay.

Megatron had also been failing to do any of his duties as leader of the faction, mostly hiding in his room in anger or sitting on his throne in anger. All of the duties that Megatron had been skipping were falling on Soundwave along with his own duties as the new Second-In-Command. Most nights Soundwave found himself overworked and crashing with fatigue. After a week of doing all the work, Soundwave had started looking for bots to be willing to help him.

First Soundwave had looked through the Seeker divisions to pick a new Air Commander. There weren’t many choices to begin with, the air forces had taken massive blows in numbers in the final days of the war back on Cybertron. Soundwave had just chosen Dirge for the position. Out of the three conehead Seekers, Dirge had the best record of making it through fights and was able to lead the other Seekers when Starscream was indisposed.

Next Soundwave had looked for someone to do the work of Second-In-Command. Soundwave had not been liking the work that being Second had come with, enjoying the work of being Third more. He had already been taking precautions to spend the least amount of time possible around Megatron as possible, so Megatron would hopefully not find out. Out of all the lists he would make of bots, Barricade was constantly on top. It helped that Barricade had been part of the Praxian Enforcer system before joining the Decepticons and was used to office work. It had been a surprisingly easy and quick conversation to get Barricade to agree once Soundwave had made it clear it wasn’t a trick.

Barricade had been quick to complete the backlog of work that had been accumulating and then some, mostly in part to his battle-computer. Barricade had also gone through the Decepticon’s data archives and found out that someone had been extracting data. All Soundwave could say was that he would look into it.

Barricade working also gave Soundwave the chance to finalize a time and place for meeting with his lover.

Late at night when he knew Barricade had gone into recharge, Soundwave went to the archives and extracted some of the data. It caused some pain in himself to be doing this to his faction after being with it for so long, but the Decepticons had long ago fallen from their original goals. Helping the Autobots would hopefully lead to a swift end of the war that would allow Soundwave to be with his family in safety.

Gathering his kids into his docking station, Soundwave snuck to the ground bridge control room and opened a portal to the coordinates he had been given.

Stepping through, Soundwave found himself in the empty parking lot of Redwood National Park. He had arrived early to scope out the surroundings to make sure it was safe. Finding everything in order, Soundwave waited beside the large trees for his lover.

After ten or so minutes, Soundwave could hear the sound of a vehicle approaching. Dipping behind the trees, Soundwave watched as a white decalled Porsche pulled into the lot. Soundwave stepped out of the trees as the Porsche stopped and the passenger door opened. Soundwave leaned over and grabbed the red boombox that was on the seat.

“Heya Sounders! Good ta see ya again.” Jazz said as he transformed.

The boombox in Soundwave’s arms jumped into the air and transformed. Once Blaster landed, he opened up his cassette dock and let his four cassettes out. Once they were out, Soundwave did the same and let his three out. As the seven cassettes ran into the forest to play, Soundwave took off his visor and mask and leaned his forehead against Blaster’s.

“I’ve missed you.”

Soundwave could feel Blaster’s end of their bond filled with love.

“I’ve missed you too, Sounders.”

“Alright, I'll leave ya two lovebirds to it. Comm. me when you’re done.”

Jazz turned to transform and leave, but Soundwave stopped him.

“Wait, I want to show you guys something”

As Jazz came back to stand next to Blaster, Soundwave felt his nervousness go back up again. Hesitantly, Soundwave opened his chassis and spark chamber up. Jazz was instantly taken aback, which was reasonable. Mechs didn’t usually tend to just go around showing their sparks off to others outside of those they were bonded to.

“OH! Sounders, why are ya showing me ya..” Jazz stopped talking as he spotted the two newsparks around Soundwave’s own spark. His expression instantly changed into shock and excitement. “You’re sparked! With twins no less! Congratulations ya two!”

Blaster was just still staring at the newsparks. It was starting to worry Soundwave. Maybe he didn’t want this?

“Blaster, sweetspark, say something please.” Soundwave came to his love and put a hand to Blaster’s face. Blaster finally looked up and kissed him.

“I’m going to be a sire, Sounders! A sire! When did you find out about them!?”

“I found out eleven days ago while in medbay. The newsparks are three months along in process.”

“That was when we last met up.” Blaster was grinning at the realization.

“Of course ya two fragged while ya had me watch the kiddos.” Jazz was chuckling.

“Wait, does that mean you’ll come with us back to the Ark? It won’t be safe for the sparklings with the Decepticons when they emerge.”

That was a big choice to make, and Soundwave wasn’t sure he was ready to make it yet.

On one hand, Soundwave would be able to actually be with Blaster and his other kids other than sneaking out all of the time. He would have access to better energon to drink and would be in a safe space. The Megatron and Decepticon cause of now was unrecognizable to what Soundwave had joined all those millions of years ago. And he had been giving the Autobots intel since both armies were on Cybertron, so it would be easy to cut ties and join the Autobots,

But, on the other hand, Soundwave felt he had to stay with the Decepticons, for now at least. There were still bots in the Decepticons that would need protection from the raging warlord that once was the Megatron they all followed. Soundwave knew he would definitely need to be gone before he started showing signs of being sparked, so that gave him time to at least try and convince a few to leave with him.

“I can’t join you yet, there are bots in the Decepticons that need to be protected from Megatron. I need to try and save some of them from him. I’ll be with you as soon as I know it is unsafe to stay.”

Blaster looked sad, so Soundwave gave him another kiss on the helm.

“Jazz, how is Starscream and his brothers fairing with the Autobots? I haven’t gotten around to having Ravage check.”

“Well mech, they’re going as good as ya can expect with being defecting cons. Screamer is workin’ with Wheeljack and Perceptor in the lab and he’s got his shuttle lover from the ice by his side most of the time. Thundercracker and Skywarp are just there, they haven’t really done anything since they got there. Little Bee has maken it his goal ta make the other like the three, so at least they got that goin’ for them.”

Jazz seemed like he was done before jumping up remembering something.

“Have ya noticed Skywarp doing anything suspicious while he was with ya Decepticons? Screamer believes Skywarp is seeing a Autobot romantically and wants me to investigate. I agreed since I’ve been helping ya two for a long time.”

Soundwave could only shrug unsurely, Skywarp had always seemed to have a screw loose but had never done anything to garner his attention. Starscream had never said anything to him either.

“Well I guess I got something to use my free time on.”

The three of them chatted for a while longer and Soundwave gave Jazz the intel he had taken that night. Soundwave and Blaster’s kids soon came back from playing in the woods. Soundwave decided that now would be a good time to break the news to the kids of the newsparks, showing the seven the lights around his spark. All of them were excited to be getting new siblings, even though they wouldn’t be cassettes like them. As suspected, Ravage had known about the newsparks since the night Soundwave found out.

. . . . .

It was around midnight when Blaster had decided to take his collection of kids back to the Ark.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be with you soon, our family will be together.”

“You better keep your word Sounders, I don’t want to lose this. Love you, be safe please.” Blaster gave him one last kiss before transforming back into a boombox.

“Love you too, Blaster.”

Soundwave placed Blaster down on Jazz’s car seat and watched as the Porsche drove out of the parking lot. Once all three of his kids were in his docking station, Soundwave opened a ground bridge back to the Nemesis.

Stepping back onto the Nemesis, Soundwave came face to face with Barricade standing at the door to the room. It was at that moment that Soundwave realized that he never put his visor and mask on, showing his bare face to Barricade. The two of them just stood there staring at each other for minutes.

Soundwave was expecting Barricade to shoot him or call him a traitor to the cause or anything. Instead, Barricade just nodded towards him and walked off down the hall. After standing by himself in confusion, Soundwave let out the vent he had been holding, and cleared the ground bridge computer of his travel. Putting his visor and mask back on, Soundwave went back to his room, hoping he could leave the Decepticons soon to be with his love.

Chapter Text

The Ark

Starscream was just sitting on his berth in the dark. To his side, Skyfire was still in recharge. Starscream had tried to go back into recharge, but he just couldn’t.

It had been two weeks since he had gotten to the Ark. It had also been two weeks since he was last allowed to go out and fly, and Starscream was starting to feel like he was going stir-crazy. Flight-frame Cybertronians needed to fly often to stretch their wings and keep their frames in peak condition. If kept out of the air, the sensors in their wings would start acting up and could cause increasing frame discomfort the longer no flying happened. Starscream was already accustomed to the pains from the numerous times Megatron had forced him to be grounded.

Starscream couldn’t stop a full-frame shutter going through him from thinking about all the times Megatron had torn his wings off and forced him to continue his work, withholding his wings for months at a time. The first few times he went without wings for months had felt like he was being tortured by Tarn and the DJD. Thankfully they had been left behind back on Cybertron with Shockwave. Now if he was ever caught by the Decepticons, he wouldn’t have to fear Shockwave’s dissections or the DJD’s brutal torture.

All that would be in store for him would be a swift and brutal beating from Megatron.

But Starscream was safe and far from Megatron’s grasp. Some mornings when he woke up with a start he had to remind himself that he was safe with the Autobots. That he was safe with Skyfire and his brothers.

Starscream wanted to ask someone from the High Command if he, his brothers, and Skyfire could go for a flight to stretch their wings, but he didn’t know if it would be wise. Starscream already felt like the Autobots had given him far more leeway with his position with them. All he had been given was a few interrogations and meetings with High Command. No time in the brig, no protective watch to make sure he wasn’t deceiving them. He had just been left free to walk around the Ark on his own. Maybe it was Optimus Prime’s view on how everyone deserved a second chance that he’d been given so much freedom, or maybe his punishment was still to come.

Whatever was in store for him and his brothers, Starscream didn’t want to push it and ask to be let out flying. He would be able to be happy and survive without flying for a little longer.

He was happy…Right?

He had Skyfire. he loved Skyfire. But that only seemed to bring him a little happiness, as sad as it sounded in his head. Even all of the freedom Optimus and the Autobots had given him, he still rarely felt happy here.

With the Decepticons, he had at least felt some semblance of happiness when he wasn’t on the receiving end of Megatron’s wrath. He had felt like he belonged. But with the Autobots, he felt like an outsider.

He just wanted to be liked again, not seen as the monster he had been. He had been trying to be a better person. Be more kind, be more friendly. But most of the Autobots didn’t care to try and see the change he was attempting. He only had Skyfire, his brothers, and his three friends that seemed to see his change.

“Star?”

Starscream saw the groggy and half-awake face of Skyfire looking at him.

“I’m good Sky. Just going back to recharge.”

Skyfire just mumbled something else and went back into recharge. Starscream’s chronometer showed they still had a few hours before they had to get to the lab.

Starscream just pushed his thoughts and the aches of his frame to the back of his processor and cuddled back into Skyfire’s embrace, trying to feel the semblance of happiness he wanted.

. . . . .

It was a little later in the afternoon when Bumblebee had come bursting through the vent in the lab. Skyfire had dropped the glass flask he had been holding and Wheeljack had dropped the chemicals he had onto one of his projects. The proceeding toxic fume forced all of them into the hall and a very angry Red Alert giving Wheeljack an earful.

“Why can’t you seem to understand that I want you to keep the explosions and chemical hazards to a minimum, Wheeljack! Do you even know how many times I’ve had to replace the cameras in this lab? You’re lucky I haven’t informed Prowl about this!”

Starscream had to say, despite how small Red Alert was compared to Wheeljack, the timid security director was clearly a force to be reckoned with when upset.

“And you!” Red Alert had turned his wrath onto Bumblebee. “How many times have I told you Spec Ops bots from crawling through the vents!? You and Jazz are constantly setting off all of my sensors in there! I’ve had to crawl in there to reset them multiple times this week! Do you know how…”

Starscream stopped paying attention to the bot’s enraged ramblings when the sparks had started coming from his light sensory horns. Starscream was fearful that the bot was about to combust for a second, but guessed this was a common occurance from the bored looks on Wheeljack and Bumblebee’s faces.

After a few more minutes of Red Alert’s ramblings, a large red Autobot came down the hall behind the bot and picked him up with ease.

“Inferno! Put me down! I’m not done here yet!” Red Alert was flailing around in the bot’s clutch.

“Sorry about the disturbance Wheeljack. I’ll take him and go calm him down.”

Starscream heard Red Alert’s protests die down as he was carried farther away by Inferno.

“Hopefully Inferno can get his conjunx to calm down, Red was startin’ ta give me a helmache. Now with him outta the way…” Wheeljack turned to face Bumblebee to give the minibot his second outburst, “Why did you pop out of a vent in my lab!?”

Bumblebee just gave him a look of disinterest at the raging Wheeljack. “I came to tell Screamer and Skyfire that Optimus has allowed Spike and the other humans to come back to the Ark. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

Starscream remembered the organics the Autobots liked to protect and bring into nearly every battle. Spike was the only one that he could remember, all in part of the… unfortunate name. Besides him, there was Spike’s sire, the femme, and the one with wheels. There was one other organic he remembered hearing about that the Autobots had up in one of the country’s many cities.

It would be an interesting meeting when he actually went and met the organics. Starscream could already tell the Autobots had not taken the time to actually tell the humans of the three ex-Decepticons. Starscream could see the reactions ranging from terrified to friendly. And with how he had heard the Autobot army had reacted when Prowl broke the news, he wasn’t expecting a warm welcome.

Starscream glanced at Skyfire to see a face full of both confusion and intrigue. Then Starscream remembered, Skyfire had not seen or heard of anything outside of the Ark yet since his awakening. When they had first come to the planet all those millions of years ago, it had been a cold and frozen wasteland everywhere they could see with low-level organics. All the beauty and evolved organic life had not sprouted until sometime after the accident. He could already imagine how the organics would feel seeing him and them immediately being studied by Skyfire.

Without warning, Bumblebee grabbed his servo and started pulling him away from the labs towards the Ark’s entrance.

“Come on!” Bumblebee said excitedly.

He turned and saw Skyfire quickly catching up in only a few strides. Starscream could see the entrance down the hall after they rounded one last corner. Optimus and a green Autobot standing at the entrance talking to the four organics.

“Yellow, you Autobots did happen to break the news of my and the other’s presence to the humans, right?”

Starscream watched as Bumblebee’s face changed to horror as they reached the group. The femme seemed startled when she looked up and saw him. The other three just stared at him like nothing was wrong.

Starscream didn’t know why, but the stare he was getting from Spike was unnerving him. It was like the small human was trying to both search him to see if he was lying and trying to burn a hole through his spark.

Without breaking the stare, Spike spoke to the green Autobot. “Hound, why is it that Starscream is in the Ark?”

“It’s because… uh, Starscream was tired of the Decepticons. Wanted to change.” Hound seemed to be stumbling over himself as he spoke.

“And who’s the other new guy in the back watching us?” The femme had backed up to stand behind Spike and was pointing back towards Skyfire.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Skyfire, I’ve been frozen in the ice for the past six million years. Before the war, I was a biologist. I’ve never seen organisms as evolved as you. It’s very fascinating.” Skyfire was peering down on the humans with a whimsical look on his face.

Hound snapped his attention back up to Skyfire. “You’re a biologist too? Have you seen the greenhouse yet?”

“I haven’t been permitted to leave the Ark since I got here. Neither has Star or his brothers.”

Optimus seemed surprised when Skyfire said that. Starscream had always said that they were only a trine and not related just because it distanced them and made it less likely they would be used as leverage against him. He had let very few actually know the true depth of their bond, and no one had ever seemed to figure it out even though they all looked almost identical. Starscream guessed it didn’t matter much anymore.

“I see. Well, I don’t see any harm in letting you all out to stretch your wings and socialize. Hound, make sure they don’t go out of territory. Take Bumblebee and Cliffjumper with you too.” Optimus walked off back down the hall.

Starscream felt like smacking his helm against the wall. Optimus was finally letting him outside, and was ruining it by sending Cliffjumper out with them.

“Don’t worry Screamer, me and Hound here will keep Cliff off your guy’s backs.” Bumblebee gave him a pat on the leg and guided him to the entrance and outside into the desert. “You see that mountain range out there? That’s the border of our territory, it’s about six miles out. There’s similar mountains and plateaus around us. Stay in there and you’ll be good. When you’re ready to land, I’ll signal you.”

When Skywarp and Thundercracker arrived and got told about the flying border, The three seekers and shuttle all took off into the air. The feeling of air on Starscream’s wings felt amazing. He could feel all of the aches and pains in the base of his wings and back disappear.

Shooting off straight up into the air, Starscream kept climbing higher and higher in altitude until stalling his engines to feel the free fall. Kicking his thrusters back on in his fall, Starscream saw Skywarp and Thundercracker doing a circle-flow with each other.

::You two mind if I join?::

Getting an affirmative ping from Skywarp, Starscream shot into the gap between his brothers and started to turn at the same rate as the other two. As they spiraled downward, their turns became more and more narrow until they were only meters from each other. Approaching the ground, Starscream and his brother broke out of the formation and flew out separate ways.

Looking around the space, Starscream could not spot Skyfire anywhere. Skyfire was pretty hard to miss with his bulky shuttle frame.

::Thunder, do you have visual on Skyfire?::

Before any answer came back over comm, Starscream saw Skyfire shoot past him sideways and start climbing up into the air. Skyfire was able to go much higher than Starscream since he was built for deep-space travel. If Skyfire truly wanted to, he could fly right out of Earth’s orbit.

::Liking the show, Sky?::

::What do you think, Star? I love it.::

Starscream went to fly next to Skyfire and did a loop around the perimeter of the territory Bumblebee had given them. After a second loop, Starscream watched Skyfire break off from him to go land at the greenhouse. Looking at his chronometer, Starscream saw how it had been nearly an hour since the four of them had started flying around. While his energon levels were still optimal to continue flying, Starscream decided to land and be with Skyfire.

::Leaving me and Thunder already, Star?:: Skywarp appeared out of the air with his usual *vop!* to Starscream’s side.

::Yeah, going to go down with the others.::

Once Skywarp went *vop!* again and disappeared, Starscream circled back to where the others were at the greenhouse. Transforming back to root mode, Starscream landed and walked over to the group. Spike’s sire and wheels were sitting outside on the hill overlooking the greenhouse with Bumblebee and Cliffjumper. Starscream saw Hound, Spike, and the femme showing Skyfire around inside the greenhouse.

“Why aren’t you in there with Skyfire the others, Screamer?” Bumblebee leaned forward so he could see Starscream from where he was sitting.

“Biology has always been more Skyfire’s interest. And Skyfire seems to be enjoying himself in there just fine.” Starscream caught Skyfire’s gaze from inside the greenhouse and gave a small wave. Skyfire gave him a large wave back with a smile on his face. Starscream couldn’t help but blush.

“How long have you two been together?” Starscream looked down and saw Spike’s sire talking to him.

“What did you say, human?” Starscream tried to keep his voice from edging into a growl. He was still slightly disgusted by the squishy organics.

“My name’s Sparkplug. I was asking how long you and Skyfire had been together. You have that same fond look in your eyes whenever you see him.”

“We were together a very long time ago, before the war. We would always go explore distant planets together. Skyfire was my world back then, and he is again now.”

There was a few minutes of silence where they all sat in somewhat peace. Bumblebee was trying to make small talk with Cliffjumper, but Cliffjumper was just staring daggers at Starscream. Sparkplug was laying back and seemed to be enjoying the cool breeze going through.

“Hey Starscream, I’m Chip Chase. Sorry for asking, but what happened to you and Skyfire back on Cybertron? I’ve never seen or heard of him before?”

Before he could respond, Cliffjumper jumped in. “You never heard of him before ‘cause Starscream tried to kill him like the ‘Con he is! He only freed the big oaf when he couldn’t frag his way out of another fight with Megatron. Now he’s come crawling to us and is probably planning to stab us in the back! He should’ve been offline the second he contacted us, It would be better for everyone. ”

As much as Starscream wanted to strangle the red pipsqueak, he couldn't. It had been Starscream’s suggestion to visit Earth all the time ago. It had been Starscream’s suggestion to stay and collect data when the snow storm was starting. And Starscream had only gone and found Skyfire after getting sick of getting out of fights with Megatron. And now it was probably only a matter of time until he did something that betrayed Skyfire and the Autobot’s trust.

Cliffjumper was right.

“Cliff! What is wrong with you! Why can’t you be civil for once and not accuse everyone of trying to betray us?” Bumblebee went and grabbed Cliffjumper by one of his horns. “Sorry about this guys. I’ll take Cliff back to the Ark and deal with him.”

“Just wait Bee, soon enough he’ll have Autobot energon on his hands!”

As fun as it was watching a second mech get dragged away acting like a sparkling that day, Starscream was still focused on what Cliffjumper said. His processor was wrapping itself up that he didn’t notice Sparkplug banging on his foot for a moment.

“Hey kid, take it easy, Don’t focus on what Cliffjumper has to say. I had my best friend once tell me how the girl I was dating wouldn’t be worth it back in the day. I didn’t listen to him and stayed with the girl. Got thirty years of marriage and a wonderful son out of it.”

“Almost everyone seems to be against me, and as much as I don’t want it to affect how me and Sky are doing, it is. I just don’t know what to do.”

“My suggestion, go out and have a date. Do something nice and meaningful.” Sparkplug chuckled to himself. “Never thought I’d be giving a robot dating advice.”

As he started thinking of places he could take Sky out on a date, Starscream felt his face heating into a blush again. This is how he’d make himself happy.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Skyfire was amazed at the sheer size of the greenhouse Hound and the organic humans had brought him to. The amount of different types of flora present was fascinating. Skyfire made sure to note the names and take pictures of each plant as Hound showed them to him.

There was so much that had changed since he and Star had first arrived on this planet. Plant life had been limited and he had only identified a few different species before he and Star had to move on to collect what they came for. There had been very few species of fauna they found. But six million years of evolution had led to a multitude of new species and walking, talking organics (Skyfire hoped he would be able to examine these organic humans).

The boy, Spike as he had been told, was talking about how he had met the Autobots. Skyfire was too engrossed in the plants to hear the first part of his story.

“...And then Optimus freed us from the debris and told me and my dad about your war. We’ve been helping the Autobots for the past couple of years now, and Hound here has been my best friend since.”

“Yeah, you should have seen Bumblebee back then trying to steal the spot for himself. That bot already has too many friends.” Hound was laughing to himself and almost knocked Spike off of the spot on his shoulder.

“So, Skyfire was it? How do you know a Decepticon like Starscream?” Carly was talking to him from his spot on Hound's other shoulder.

“Oh, I’ve known Star for a long time. We were research partners back before the Autobot-Decepticon war started. We had also both been attending the Iacon Science Academy at the same time.” Skyfire was barely paying attention to the humans as he spoke to them, taking notes on the Camassia quamash Hound had just shown him.

Looking through the glass walls of the greenhouse, Skyfire could see Starscream waving at him. Skyfire had been surprised that Star had actually come down from the air, having not been the biggest fan of the plants and organic creatures of the planet when they had first come. Skyfire eagerly waved back, hoping Star would come in so he could show him all of the plants.

“Are you two in a relationship, or are you just an admirer?”

“I-uh.. what!?” Skyfire almost walked into one of the hanging pots.

“Are you in, like, an actual relationship , or are you just an admirer? My friend Mirage has been set on admiring Cliffjumper for the past few centuries now. It’s too bad Cliff has his helm up his own aft all the time to notice or care.” Hound had let the humans off onto the table to face Skyfire.

“We are in- we were in… Yes, we’re in a relationship.” Primus, he was stumbling over his words too much.

“Do you know all of the things he’s done during the war?” Hound had changed his tone to be more serious.

Skyfire felt like smacking Hound for asking that. Skyfire had been enjoying his time with the mech, but Hound just had to ruin it.

“Yes, I know. And no, I do not care about it. He has done things he wishes to make up for, as have all of you most definitely. And if you’re going to say how Star doesn’t deserve to be here like Cliffjumper has, I’ll be heading back to the Ark.”

Skyfire started to make his way back to the entrance of the greenhouse when Hound went around the other table and stood in his way.

“Wait wait wait! I wasn’t going to say that. It’s good he’s not keeping things from you. Have you done anything special for him?”

Skyfire was about to deck the mech for trying to stop him when he took in what Hound said. While they had just officially started their new relationship a few days ago, he and Star had been together for years before the accident. And from what he could remember, he had never given Star anything special.

“No, I have not.” Skyfire looked towards the floor.

“Oh, I know!” Carly ran across the table and pulled a few red flowers from one of the human-sized pots. “Here, these are red carnations. They symbolize love and affection. You could give these to Starscream.”

“Thank you.” Skyfire delicately took the carnations from Carly’s small hand.

“And if you want, I can ask Prowl or Drift for crystal plant seeds for you to grow.”

“Thank you Hound, that would be nice.” Skyfire had gone from wanting to deck Hound to wanting to hug him.

. . . . .

After some more time looking at and taking notes on plants, the sun was setting behind the mountain the Ark was embedded in. Hound had offered to send info to Skyfire’s datapad on more of Earth’s plant and wildlife and promised to get him crystal seeds too. When they walked out of the greenhouse, Skyfire saw that Starscream was still sitting on the hill talking to Sparkplug and Chip.

“There you all are! Are you two ready to head back to the city?”

Spike and Carly gave small nods as Hound set them and transformed into a green Jeep. Once the four humans had gotten into Hound’s alt mode, they said their goodbyes and drove across the desert landscape. It was just him and Star now walking back to the Ark entrance.

“How was your time with Sparkplug and Chip?”

“Good. Those organics are better than I had thought. How was your time with Hound and the other two? You looked like you were enjoying the flowers.”

“It was wonderful. There are so many new and different types of fauna and flora than when we first came here. Hound’s going to send me books and information to my datapad on more types.” Skyfire realized he was starting to ramble when he saw Star looking at him. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay Sky, you’re a biologist. It’s what you like.” Star had gotten closer and was practically leaning on his frame with a smile. “And, I like hearing you talk.”

Skyfire felt himself blushing again.

“OH! I got these for you.” Reaching into his subspace, Skyfire pulled out the carnations and handed them to Star. “They’re red carnations. Carly says they symbolize love.”

“Thank you, Sky.” Starscream was blushing now too.

“Anything for you, Star.” Skyfire gave Starscream a small kiss on his face as they entered back into the Ark.

Chapter Text

Once Skyfire had gotten the crystal seeds after a few days, he made sure to thank Hound and Drift for getting them for him. Drift had also given him a guide in how to properly treat and grow the crystals. While he didn’t know if Starscream liked crystals, Skyfire believed that it would make a nice gift. Hound had even given him a nice pot to plant the seeds in and Prowl had sent some nutrients to put in the soil to help the crystals grow better. The only problem he would have was that since he wanted to surprise Star with the crystals, Skyfire had to grow the crystals away from their quarters.

Inside his personal lab had been immediately out of the question. Even though it was for his designated space for personal experiments and separated from the rest of the lab, Wheeljack had been on a particularly explosive streak the past handful of days working on some kind of weapon. With how fragile crystals were while starting to grow, Skyfire just couldn’t see the risk in using his lab.

Skyfire had first asked Bumblebee about keeping the crystal in his quarters for safekeeping and to grow, to which Bee had accepted. But one look around the minibot’s quarters from the door had made him change his mind. Besides not even being able to fit in the room, most of the floor was covered in junk and human toys. The walls and shelves were similarly cluttered, leaving little to no space for the pot of crystal seeds to grow.

That mess that was Bumblebee’s room wasn’t fully what made Skyfire change his mind. No, what fully made Skyfire want to keep the crystal somewhere else was when he spotted the recharging mass that was Cliffjumper on the berth opposite the room from Bumblebee’s.

“OH! That’s right, Cliffy is my roommate. Optimus was nice enough to let us stay together, with us being sparkbrothers and all.”

Skyfire let out a choked vent “He’s your brother!?”

“Yeah, total opposites on the personality spectrum as Optimus likes to say. Somehow bots don’t seem to realize until we tell them, even though we look identical. It’s kinda like Screamer and his brothers.”

“Is he always the way he is with Star around the other Autobots?” Skyfire tried to lower his voice to not wake Cliffjumper.

“I’m only like that to bots I know are going to stab us in the back.” Cliffjumper’s voice cut through the room before Bumblebee could answer.

“Have you been awake this entire time Cliffy?”

“I’m always awake when you bring other bots over. And you call me ‘Cliffy’ one more time I’m going to saw your horns off.”

Skyfire saw Bumblebee signaling him to lean over to get on his level. Once down, Bumblebee whispered into his audio receptors.

“Cliffy is just an aft to anyone that functions. Takes him time to warm up to others.”

A pillow went flying across the room and hit Bumblebee in the head.

“Care to repeat that to my face, Bee?” Cliffjumper was up on his berth with another pillow in his hand.

“Oh! Look at the time, I have a Spec Ops meeting to get to! Have fun you two!” Bumblebee quickly squirmed his way around Skyfire and sped off down the hall.

There was a long pause as Cliffjumper just stared at him with that scowl on his face. Skyfire wanted to ask Cliffjumper why he couldn’t try to see Starscream as an Autobot, why he couldn’t bother seeing that Starscream was becoming a better person. Skyfire just wanted to know what Cliffjumper was expecting Starscream to do before he wasn’t seen as a threat.

“Come on, spit out whatever you want to say, shuttle. I do want to actually recharge.”

“Why is it that you treat Starscream like scrap? You are not like that to Skywarp or Thundercracker, so why Starscream?” Skyfire wasn’t sure if his voice came out like he was annoyed or angry. Skyfire didn’t care which way it went. He was angry and annoyed by how Cliffjumper had been treating Starscream.

Cliffjumper’s face rose in surprise for a second from the straightforwardness of Skyfire’s question before his face fell in a snarl.

“Those other two Seekers are the least of my worries. Thundercracker is tolerable and Skywarp is just an idiot, they aren’t threats to me. But Starscream is! Everybody else may be too ignorant to see it, but I can see Starscream is going to betray us all! He needs to be gotten rid of before he brings the Cons here to kill us!”

‘ I swear I’m going to stomp this bot if-no no.. stay calm. ’

Skyfire took a few vents in-and-out to regain his calmness. He was against harming anyone unless for his own protection, and that violence still made him feel bad. But with how Star was seeming to be being treated by everyone just made Skyfire want to beat them all up. Star didn’t deserve any of this, and Skyfire would try his hardest to make the others treat him better without physically harming them.

That didn’t mean he couldn’t be verbal. Especially with Cliffjumper.

“If all you see is Star getting ready to betray you, your optics are malfunctioning. Star is an Autobot now, like you. He lives with you here on the Ark. So it should be obvious to everyone that Star is done being a Decepticon.”

Cliffjumper had gotten off his berth and had made his way to the door Skyfire was ducking through to get in his face. “He’s no Autobot now and he never will be! And how can you even be all lovey-dovey with a psychopath freak like Starscream!?”

“Get it through that thick helm of yours that Star is an Autobot.”

Cliffjumper was small, but he still was high enough to jab his servo in Skyfire’s face. “He doesn’t have the Autobot brand, he’s not an Autobot! And if keeps it up, he won’t be receiving one!”

Skyfire was getting close to just squashing Cliffjumper with the palm of his servo, but refrained. The doorframe wasn’t as lucky, bending and creaking under his grip.

“I try to be pacifist and not harm anyone, but if you ever harm Star, I won’t hesitate to do something to you.” Skyfire was hoping his warning would get the other to back down, but it just seemed to fuel his aggression.

“Oh! Now you’re threatening me! I see how it is! You’re just another Con Starscream brought along! I will watch everything you and your Con buddies do here on the Ark! One wrong move and I’ll make sure you’re all dealt with.”

Skyfire was getting tired of just arguing in circles with Cliffjumper. He had come here in hope of a peaceful place to let his crystal grow, but keeping it with this pit-spawn would not be beneficial to the crystal’s growth and Skyfire’s own sanity.

Shifting out the door, Skyfire stood back up and started making his way down the hall, hoping his time with Cliffjumper would be over with. Sadly for him, Cliffjumper came out into the hall with him to continue the arguing.

“Don’t think you can run and be a coward like Starscream! I can and will see every shady thing you lot do here!”

Skyfire paused in the hall and didn’t bother turning around to face the minibot again.

“If you could truly see everything, you would have seen how your Autobot Mirage has been infatuated with you. If you couldn’t see this admiration for you for what Hound said has been centuries, you won’t be seeing me and Star doing anything.”

Skyfire finally turned around to glance at Cliffjumper. The look on the minbot’s face was something Skyfire didn’t ever want to forget about.

“I believe we’re done here. Have a good day, Cliffy.” With that, Skyfire started back down the hall, leaving Cliffjumper with a gaping look on his face.

Skyfire knew he needed to find someone else he could leave his crystal with, but first he needed to calm himself down again after his time with Cliffjumper. Finding that Starscream was still in the lab, Skyfire went to his quarters to do some quick breathing exercises.

. . . . .

Quick turned out to be almost two hours of trying to calm down. Skyfire knew he shouldn’t have engaged in any form of socialization with Cliffjumper, with how it seemed anyone talking to the minibot would most likely end in an argument.

Skyfire felt that he should probably apologize to Bumblebee about how he talked with Cliffjumper. He didn’t feel any remorse for how he spoke to Cliffjumper, the bot definitely deserved it. He just felt that he needed to apologize since Cliffjumper was Bee’s sparkbrother. But since they were brother’s, Skyfire felt that Bumblebee would somehow be the one apologizing to him about his brother’s behavior. Skyfire just felt that he should wait till he found Bumblebee to see if he needed to apologize or not.

Stepping out of his quarters, Skyfire made sure Star wasn’t approaching their room before making his way down the hall with the crystal planter in hand.

Next on his list of keepers for the crystal was Thundercracker and Skywarp. While they were Star’s brothers, Skyfire knew Star rarely visited their quarters. While he didn’t personally know the two Seekers that much before his accident, he had come to know each much better and enjoy their company through the time he’s spent with them.

As he reached the door to their quarters and was about to knock, Skyfire heard a noise from inside. Leaning closer to the door, Skyfire heard the noise again… and then again. The noise started to pick up and Starfire heard what was definitely a moan from Skywarp. And then it clicked in Skyfire’s processor.

Skywarp was interfacing with someone.

And Skyfire was just standing there… listening.

Skyfire immediately booked it down the hall embarrassed, not wanting to be a creep and hear anymore of what Skywarp and his partner were doing. Skyfire was going so fast to get away from the room that he almost trampled Thundercracker.

“PRIMUS Sky! Are you good? Do I need to get Starscream?” Thundercracker was still hugging the wall to avoid Skyfire’s larger frame.

“NO! I mean - I’m good! Yeah, I’m good Thunder. No need to get Star. Bye!” Skyfire quickly left Thundercracker, trying to keep his field pressed as close to his frame as possible. Once he couldn’t see Thundercracker anymore, Skyfire made sure to go at a slower pace than he’d been going before to not trample anyone else.

Skyfire wasn’t even sure where he was going, just wandering the Ark’s halls to get away from Skywarp’s room. After some time, Skyfire finally stopped walking and found himself a hall down from the medbay. With Bumblebee’s room out of the question and not particularly wanting to go back to ask Skywarp and Thundercracker, asking Drift to watch the crystals was the next best option.

Entering the medbay, Skyfire looked around to see who was there. There were a few unknown medics scattered throughout tending to bots. Skyfire didn’t see Ratchet or Drift anywhere, but he did spot First Aid, the only other medic he knew the name of, tending to Sideswipe off in the corner of the room.

After a quick chat, First Aid said Drift and Ratchet were off duty for the day. Sideswipe somehow ended up leaving the medbay with him (without being cleared to leave by First Aid) and led him to Ratchet and Drift’s room.

“Why do you need Drift to house the crystal? Can’t you take care of it in your room?” Sideswipe was walking with a limp and had small dents all over his frame from what he said was a ‘small prank gone wrong’.

“I want to give it as a surprise to Starscream.” Skyfire looked down to see Sideswipe making a face. “Please don’t make a deal out of Star being here like Cliffjumper has.”

“No It’s not that. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never liked Starscream since I joined the Autobots back on Cybertron as a youngling, but we have each caused enough damage to each other when we were on opposite sides that I can forgive him a little. I can’t say the same for Sunny, but I will try my best to not cause him any problems. That is IF I can prank him a few times first.”

While Skyfire was happy that Sideswipe was willing to not be a bother to Star, the notion that Star needed to be pranked to earn that made him anxious. He didn’t need Star getting hurt by a prank going wrong like Sideswipe had.

“These pranks won’t hurt him, right?”

“Of course not! I just want to do some good, old fashioned pranks. Prowl’s already breathing down my neck, so I can’t do anything too big anyway. You have my word.”

“Alright then, you can prank him.” Skyfire was still hesitant to agree, but if would make it so one less person would be after his Star.

Once they reached their destination, Skyfire watched Sideswipe just walk into Ratchet and Drift’s quarters like he owned the place instead of knocking or pinging the door. When he didn’t hear any angry Ratchet, Skyfire got down and peeked through the door frame.

The main room of Ratchet and Drift’s quarters seemed very large and spacious, probably a perk of Ratchet being the head medic. Skyfire spotted a large shelf in the wall full of crystal plants of varying sizes and colors. Sideswipe had already gone to lay sideways on a small armchair in front of a holoscreen.

“Do you need something, Skyfire? Or are you just here to peer through my door? It is supposed to be me and Drift’s day off.” Skyfire isn’t sure how Ratchet managed to get in front of his face, especially when he was crouched halfway through the door.

“I just needed to ask Drift if he could grow this crystal for me. I want to surprise Star with it and can’t have it in our quarters.”

Ratchet went across the room and started banging on one of the doors. After a minute, Drift came stumbling out of the room and made his way over to Skyfire to take the crystal and planter pot. While Drift was talking and setting up his crystal on the shelf, Skyfire kept getting distracted watching Ratchet try to get Sideswipe to sit in the armchair the right way or leave.

When Drift had finished setting up the crystal, Skyfire left with a ‘thanks’ and let Ratchet and Drift deal with whatever Sideswipe was doing.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Over the next three weeks, Skyfire made sure to check in with Drift on his crystal’s growth. His crystal had grown into multiple clusters and gained a warm orange and red color. On multiple of his visits to Ratchet and Drift’s quarters, Skyfire would find either Sideswipe or Sunstreaker lounging around on Ratchet’s couches (Skyfire still wasn’t sure if the twins lived there or just kept breaking in, he never seemed to be able to talk to them).

Sideswipe had kept his word and pranked Starscream, only once so far from what he could tell. Only a few days after he had talked with Sideswipe, Starscream had returned to their quarters bright green and covered in glitter. Skyfire had enjoyed watching Star raging and blowing his ruined paint job out of proportion. That had been the only time he had actually known a prank had happened, with how little he had been Star lately.

Whenever Star wasn’t scheduled to work in the lab or other duty, Skyfire only ever seemed to see him in the morning in recharge. He would spot Star from time to time talking with Optimus or Jazz in a hall, but Star would say the conversations were about nothing when he asked. Skyfire didn’t want to overthink what was surely nothing more than was necessary, but whatever was happening was starting to worry him. His anxiety problems seemed to progressively get worse over each week he saw Star less. And no matter how hard he tried to not think it, he always was having the same thoughts.

‘ Is Starscream having second doubts about a relationship? Is this my fault? ’

It had to be his fault that Starscream was pulling away from him so suddenly, it’s all he could tell himself. They had just started a true relationship again, yet he had seemingly already ruined it.

After his shift in working in the lab for the day, Skyfire went to pick up his crystal from Drift in the medbay. Skyfire tried his best to not seem like he was about to emotionally fall apart and get the encounter over as soon as possible. Though, Drift seemed to still see through his act.

“What has you so anxious, Skyfire? You can talk to me about it if you want.”

Drift looked genuinely concerned for him, but Skyfire just couldn’t find it in himself to want to talk about. Grabbing the potted crystal from the counter, Skyfire thanked Drift again and left quickly. He heard Drift calling for him, but Skyfire just kept going down the halls. Skyfire just wanted to get to his quarters and do more of his breathing exercises to try and calm down from his high anxiety levels.

Turning the corner that led to his room and seeing Optimus Prime and Starscream standing in front of the room made his spark feel like it was going to explode. Skyfire quickly shoved the crystal into his subspace before the two bots turned and saw him.

“There you are, Skyfire. Starscream was starting to get irritated when we couldn’t find you anywhere. Please, follow us.”

Skyfire quickly fell in behind Optimus and Star and followed them through the halls. His high anxiety only made him feel like purging his tanks, but Star being there was helping him calm down slightly. The grin the Seeker had on his face was somehow both alleviating yet worrying. Star definitely had something planned.

“Is there any particular reason you were looking for me, Star?”
“Well I would like for us to arrive before everything starts.” While Starscream’s voice sounded annoyed, Skyfire could hear the amusement in his voice at whatever he had planned.

“Before what starts?”

“You’ll see...” Starscream’s cheeky grin seemed to grow.

Optimus and Starscream had ended up leading him to the ground bridge room. Starscream and Optimus talked again on the other end of the room before Optimus activated the ground bridge.
The vibrant hues of green, purple, and white light filled the room as Star came back to his side and grabbed his hand.

“Come on, Sky.” Starscream was tugging on his hand trying to drag him.

Letting Star drag him through the portal, Skyfire found himself in a snowy forest. It was night time wherever they were, with a light flurry of snow coming down around them. The nature felt serene.

“Sky, come on! We’re still not there yet.” Starscream tugged on his hand again.

Following again, Skyfire was taken through the forest. It took a few minutes of winding through the trees before they slowed as they reached the end of the forest. On the other side of the forest was a snowy grass valley overlooking the surrounding land. There was a large tarp on the edge of the hill Starscream was guiding him towards. Starscream let go of his hand before sitting down on the tarp and reaching into his subspace, pulling out energon cubes and a remote. The remote turned on lights that had been strung throughout the trees surrounding their spot.

“What is all this, Star?” Starscream was just smiling at the dumbfounded look he had.

“Sparkplug gave me the idea. Said I should do something nice for you, like a date. Once I found out what was happening tonight, I had to go and get permission to do something with you.” Starscream’s smile faltered slightly. “Prowl and Ironhide were pains in the aft to convince to let me do this. I’ve been following all of their rules for over a month, yet they still don’t trust me enough to go outside without another Autobot. Surprisingly enough, that paranoid Red Alert was the one to convince them to let do this. Said I’ve ‘seem sane enough to know to not try anything funny.’”

“Is this why I’ve barely seen you the past few weeks?” Skyfire was still stunned by everything to ask exactly what they were waiting for to happen.

“Sorry about that. I just wanted to find the perfect spot for this. Took me a few nights of flying around to find this spot. Optimus and Yellow were kind enough to help me get supplies and put the lights up.”

The entire time Star was seemingly avoiding him, he had been setting all of this up for him. Yet, Skyfire had let his anxiety get the better of him. Skyfire could feel his anxiety rising again for thinking anything had been wrong between them in the first place, but squashed it quickly. He didn’t want to ruin this all over his anxiety.

“Skyfire, are you okay?” Starscream’s concern broke him from his thoughts.

“It’s just my anxiety. I’m okay.” Skyfire felt Starscream’s field expand around him, filled with comfort and love.

Skyfire could feel Starscream’s smaller frame lean into his side. Grabbing two of the energon cubes, Skyfire handed one to Starscream and refueled, waiting for whatever Star had brought him out here for.

It was nearly an hour later into the night when Skyfire was falling into recharge that Star started shaking him.

“Get up already, you big bot! Look at the sky or you’re going to miss it!”

Looking up, Skyfire saw the night sky filled with bright colors. Waving streams of green, purple, and red light seemed to stretch across the entire sky above the forest.

“What is that?” Skyfire couldn’t take his eyes off whatever was happening.

“It’s the aurora borealis. The humans call it the Northern Lights. This is a pretty common occurrence here on the planet.”

“It’s beautiful, Star.”

“In the three years I’ve been stuck here on this mudball planet, I never thought it would have such wonderful things. I’m glad I was able to experience this with you.”

Star’s smile turned sad.

“If we ever manage to end this war and make it back to Cybertron, I hope I can take you back to Vos. These Northern Lights remind me much of the eclipses in Vos back in its prime. Me and my brothers would always fly to the top of the tallest tower and watch the eclipse and the lights in the sky. After Vos’ fall, we all promised each other that we would make it through the war to watch the eclipse in a rebuilt city.”

Skyfire wished he could have been there for Star when Vos fell. Back when they were in the Academy, Star had always talked about the beauty of Vos and how he missed it. Vos had been the only city-state on the planet that truly respected flight-frame mechs, unlike the more functionalist parts of Cybertron. From what Skyfire had learned, Vos had been destroyed by Iacon, seemingly by the order of Sentinel Prime. The fall of Vos had been one of the last straws before the war broke out.

“Star, we will all get through this war, I’m sure of it. You and your brothers have gone through so much that I don’t know about, but you’re all still here. We’ll all be able to see the eclipse.”

Starscream still had that sad smile on his face when he turned to look at him again.

“You think so?”

Skyfire gave a kiss to the top of Starscream’s helm. “I’m sure, Star.”

. . . . .

Skyfire just watched the Northern Lights with Star for the next hour before the lights dissipated back into the night sky. Star had fallen into recharge at some point, slumped over Skyfire’s legs. Skyfire knew they would need to call for a ground bridge back soon before their energon lines started freezing. Reaching into his subspace, Skyfire pulled the potted crystal out and started to gently shake Starscream awake.

“Wha-? Aw… the lights are over.” Starscream stood up with a stretch, wings slightly moving up and down, before looking back at Skyfire. “Do you want me to comm. back for them to open a bridge?”

Skyfire watched as the Seeker’s gaze traveled to his side and caught a glimpse of the red crystal.

“What do you have there, Sky?”

“I may have gotten you a little something.” Skyfire handed the crystal over to Starscream, giggling at the Seeker’s expression. “Do you like it, Star?”

“Of course I love it, it's from you. You really need to stop giving me so many gifts, I need to get you something.” Starscream had a fake pout as he was crossing his arms.

Skyfire got up and scooped Star into his arms for an embrace. Starscream gave a squawk of surprise when he first grabbed him, but eased and hugged back.

“Okay big guy, put me down so I can comm. for a bridge. I doubt you want to fly back across the country to the Ark.”

After a quick call to the Ark, a ground bridge opened up ahead of them near the forest. Giving Starscream another kiss, Skyfire walked through the portal and back into the Ark.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

After the two bots had walked through their ground bridge, a small green and purple camera sitting in the distance transformed.

::Reflector to Nemesis, requesting ground bridge.::

Chapter Text

Cliffjumper was starting to get impatient.

Primus, everyone was getting impatient waiting for the Decepticons to make some kind of move. It had been over a month and a half since there had been Decepticon activity. Bee and the rest of his Spec Ops team had yet to go and attempt to find out what was happening on the Nemesis. That left an Ark full of very battle-hungry mechs with too much leisure time on their servos. Most were able to get along with their extra free time, but Cliffjumper just found himself hoping.

An energon raid. The testing of some weapon of mass destruction. An attack on the Ark even. He just wanted the Decepticons to do something!

But as annoyed as he was not being able to have a firefight to look forward to, Cliffjumper was always ready to protect the Ark from Starscream. The seeker may have been acting all goody two-shoes and passive with the Autobots, but Cliffjumper knew the seeker was planning something against them. He had to be. There was no possible way a bot in such a high rank in the Decepticons, the Second-In-Command no less, would just switch sides in the middle of the war.

Cliffjumper was sure the entire thing was nothing more than a Decepticon trick. Starscream was just acting like he left the Decepticons and was playing docile while really gathering intel on all of them. And when they least expected it, Starscream was going to bring Megatron and the rest of the Decepticons into the Ark and offline them all. If Skyfire was also a Decepticon in on this trick or was just too naive in his trust of Starscream was still up in the air.

Ever since their conversation the other day, it had become harder for him to get a read on the Shuttle, especially when he was around Starscream. From the comments Skyfire made to him and the glares always directed at him, Cliffjumper wanted to assume Skyfire was just another Decepticon. But even he had to admit Skyfire didn’t seem like the sort to be a Decepticon, despite the intimidating size. Skyfire was too gentle. That didn’t mean Skyfire wasn’t capable of violence (the dents in his door frame and the threats were enough evidence for Cliffjumper).

But Skyfire’s allegiance wasn’t the pressing matter he had on his processor.

No, he couldn’t stop thinking about what Skyfire had said.

‘If you could truly see everything, you would have seen how your Autobot Mirage has been infatuated with you. If you couldn’t see this admiration for you for what Hound said has been centuries, you won’t be seeing me and Star doing anything.’

Every time Cliffjumper tried to make himself doubt what Skyfire said, he would always remember something that stood out in his memories.

Small presents that were left at his room on the Iacon base before they left Cybertron stood out the most. Bottles of higher-end polish, crystal flowers, and energon goodies would always show up at random times, always without a note from who sent it. Back then, Cliffjumper never bothered to look into who got him the stuff. But now it seemed obvious to who could have obtained such expensive gifts during a war.

Then there were the ways Mirage interacted with him. Cliffjumper had never made an effort of interacting with Mirage more than he needed to, mostly only seeing the Towers mech when sitting with Bee and Spec Ops in the rec room. When they were there, Mirage would always give him glances that clearly held more than a passive feeling.

The truth seemed obvious to him, but he just wanted to ignore it by any means necessary. Games with the other minibots and firing at the training range were seeming to help keep his mind off the topic.

Today's range visit didn’t seem to be helping.

“Come on Cliffy, you’re a better shot than this! What’s up?” Bee was nudging at his arm he held his rifle in. Out of all the shots Cliffjumper had been firing, only a single shot had hit the target.

Cliffjumper only gave his sparkbrother a side eye. “Just thinkin’.”

“Whatcha thinking about then, Cliffy?” Bee had the grin that he knew he was being annoying, and he was.

“It's nothing, Bee, don’t push for anything. And will you stop calling me that stupid nickname.” Cliffjumper was trying to get his processor back to focusing on the targets.

After another near dozen shots (and misses), Bee started to nudge him again repeatedly.

“Cliffy, just tell me what’s up and I’ll stop annoying you.” Bee had a teasing tone, but it was just frustrating to Cliffjumper.

“Fine! I found out Mirage has feelings for me, and I don't know what to do!” Cliffjumper had broken his rifle on the ground and still felt like destroying something else.

“Oh.” Bee didn’t look surprised.

“Yeah, Oh.” Cliffjumper just went and sat down against the wall and rested his helm in his servos.

After some time he felt Bee’s head rest on his shoulder. “Do you have feelings for Mirage?”

“Ughhh…I don’t know, I’ve never thought of him like that. I barely ever even talk with him! What could a stuck-up Towers mech like Mirage even see any potential in a bot like me? I’m insufferable to others!”

“Maybe he can see how you can be, you know, compassionate to others.” Bee’s smile and reassurances just felt… odd.

“You knew about Mirage’s feelings, didn’t you?”

“Maybe… maybe not. But I think he would be nice for you, you know? I think you should think it over, maybe even talk with Mirage. He’s not as bad as you think he is.” Bee stood up and stretched a servo out. “Want to go for a drive?”

Grabbing Bee’s servo, Cliffjumper followed his brother out of the shooting range and through the halls in the direction of the Ark’s main door. A few human years of living on the Ark made it easy for him and Bee to remember all of the shortcuts through the massive ship to avoid Red Alert cameras. Knowledge of the Ark’s layout also helped when Cliffjumper and Bee had to get around Optimus when he got overwhelmingly protective over them.

As they passed by one of the meeting rooms between the rec room and the Ark entrance, the door to the room opened. Walking out of the room laughing was Starscream.

Cliffjumper would have probably punched Starscream in the face if Bee hadn’t dragged him down the hall.

“This is also what I meant by how some bots aren’t as bad as you think. You think Mirage is too stuck-up from being a Noble before the war to be likeable and you think Starscream is always plotting something because he was a Decepticon. Bots can change, Cliffy. Those two have.” Bee sounded hurt having to say that.

Bee finally let go of his arm and turned to walk back down the hall towards the room Starscream was in.

Cliffjumper wanted to follow Bee and talk, but didn’t want to engage with Starscream or any of the other fliers.

Continuing down the hall, Cliffjumper shifted into his alt mode and burned rubber out of the Ark’s entrance and through the desert. Once he hit the main road, Cliffjumper slowed down to the speed limit to not get in trouble. Traveling down the road for a good while, Cliffjumper turned off onto the dirt trail into the forest. At the end of the trail, Cliffjumper made sure no humans were nearby before shifting back into his root mode to start making his way through the trees.

While he usually didn’t like to stop out here, Cliffjumper did like to come out to a small cliffside to be by himself. It helped him calm himself and think.

Approaching his spot on the cliff, Cliffjumper heard the noise of a jet engine approaching overhead. The nearest human military base was a good hundred miles south, so Cliffjumper knew it was a Decepticon flying. Pulling out his blaster, Cliffjumper started slinking through the trees following the direction the jet went.

While he wasn’t as good at tracking as Hound or Trailbreaker, Cliffjumper knew how to follow a trail. Crossing the valley down the mountain and going down a river stream, Cliffjumper found ped prints and uprooted plants. Going further down the river and the trail of destruction, Cliiffjumper was able to spot the Decepticon tearing everything up.

It was Starscream.

Sneaking up behind the Seeker, Cliffjumper put his blaster to the back of Starscream’s helm. “Why are you out here, ‘Con?”

“What are you doing out here, Cliffjumper? You following me now?” Starscream was scowling at him when he turned around.

“Shut it. Answer the question.” Cliffjumper jammed his blaster into the Seeker’s cockpit canopy.

“I’ll have you know that I was approved to fly out here by Jazz. Why don’t you go find him after he returns from whatever Spec Ops mission he sped off to.”

“Likely story, ‘Con. Drop your nullrays before I have to force them off you.”

“If you haven’t noticed minibot, I don’t have my nullrays on my arms. I actually haven’t since I joined you on the Ark. You may not have noticed, with your small size and all.” Starscream now had his signature sneer on his face.

“Dropped the nice guy act finally? Done hiding your true allegiance?”

“Oh Please. I’m still an Autobot, I just don’t have the patience to be all kind and jolly to someone as arrogant as you.”

Looking around in the dirt around them, Cliffjumper spotted a small container sitting next to a tree. “What’s in there?”

Cliffjumper watched Starscream’s face grow scared for a second before it turned back into his usual sneer. “Nothing that concerns you.”

Making sure Starscream couldn’t make any sudden moves, Cliffjumper slowly approached the container. For all he knew, Starscream was getting a bomb to use on the Autobots. Carefully opening the lid, Cliffjumper found small pots of Earth flowers.

“Care to explain, ‘Con?” Looking back, all Cliffjumper got was a sheepish grin.

“They’re a surprise for Skyfire.” Cliffjumper’s mouth must have fallen open, judging by the smug grin Starscream made. “Like I said, it doesn't concern you. And if that’s all, I’ll be taking my leave.” Grabbing his container of flowers, Starscream started walking back down the river stream.

Cliffjumper felt frozen trying to understand what was happening. Starscream had to be doing something. There had to be some malicious intent behind it.

“What’s your plan for Skyfire? Are you just playing with him until you grow tired and offline him?!”

Starscream froze from where he was walking off to. When Starscream set his container of plants down, Cliffjumper was hoping the Seeker would finally fight him. Instead of fighting, Starscream only sat down in the dirt along the river.

“Tell me, why can’t I just live on the Ark with a relative peace of mind? Why can’t I just enjoy the time I now have with Skyfire? Why…why can’t I seem to be better for you Autobots?” When Starscream turned to look at him, he didn’t look angry or make any other bitter face Cliffjumper was expecting. Starscream just looked tired of everything.

Cliffjumper wasn’t sure what was worse; seeing how tired and defeated Starscream seemed about everything, or the slow itching realization he was feeling on how poorly he had been treating this “new” version of Starscream.

“It’s just hard to trust someone like you with how you’ve tricked us in the past.”

Starscream just grew quiet and looked down into the river. The silence was slowly becoming uncomfortable the longer Cliffjumper stood over Starscream. After some time, Cliffjumper put his blaster away and took a seat down along the river. They each just sat in silence and watched the flowing water.

“I was a cold-construct.”

Cliffjumper turned to look at Starscream when their silence was broken. Cliffjumper wanted to ask more, but felt that Starscream had more he wanted to say.

“When I first woke up, I was given the name Ulchtar. All I knew was that I was like all of the other bots in my batch and that we all had a job we were expected to complete. We had to be energon seekers and find the large clusters. Naive as I was, I assumed me and my batch were the same as the rest of Vos and of Cybertron. But over time, I realized that we were different from the rest, we all had yellow optics and they had blue. When I tried to get somewhere new with my life, I was told I couldn’t change from how I was. Yet, I still strived to change. To be better.

“There was this Seeker named Genvo that I became friends with. He had the same ambition as me to get somewhere better. One night, he came to me and two others saying he found the way. He had found a field kit with spare blue optic lenses. When we had all changed our optics, we left the Seeker housing unit and flew into the main sector of Vos. Genvo went his own way while me and the two other Seekers changed our names and stuck together.”

“You changed your name into Starscream, and they became Skywarp and Thundercracker.” Cliffjumper was starting to get the picture. Starscream gave a small smile to the river water.

“Yes. I said that they could go their own way, make their lives, but they wanted to stay with me. Said they considered me their brother. After some time I considered them the same, so we created our trine bond. After a few vorns of studying and getting into the field in Vos, I moved to Iacon and joined the Science Academy. And just when I thought I had gotten past being seen different, I got hit by Iacon’s functionalist views and prejudice of flight frames. It was worse than the views bots had on cold-constructs, but I was able to not let it weigh me down. And you can probably guess how the rest went.”

“Do you know what happened to Genvo?”

“Shortly after the battle in Stanix, I thought about him again and had Soundwave run a search. We couldn’t find any reports on bots matching his frame or designation. So he had either changed his name and frame, or his deactivation was never reported.”

The silence between them returned and made Cliffjumper feel more uncomfortable than he had been at the start of Starscream’s story. Cliffjumper didn’t understand that after how he had acted that Starscream would trust him with a personal secret as large as he had.

“Why… why tell me all of this about yourself after how much of an aft I’ve been to you?”

“Because I want you to trust me to be an Autobot.” Starscream finally looked up at him and chuckled. “You’re actually the first bot outside of my brothers that I’ve actually told about my past. If that doesn’t mean something then I don’t know what would.”

“What about Skyfire? Doesn’t he know?”

Starscream looked back down into the river. “I don’t know how he’d feel about me if he found out. He almost had an anxiety attack a few days ago when I was busy planning a date, I don’t want to think about what would happen if he found out.” Starscream’s wings were hung low on his back; the edges nearly touching the dirt where they were sitting.

“I may have been an aft to you and Skyfire, but I still have noticed that he does care an awful lot for you. Enough to threaten to do something if I kept bothering you, and he doesn’t seem like the type for violence. I don’t think that would make him see you differently.”

“That does sound like Skyfire; a gentle giant until you push him too much. That’s why I like him, so maybe I’m just worrying over nothing.” Starscream’s small smirk turned into a sly smile when he turned to face him. “So Cliffjumper, what about you and Mirage? You two were a hot topic of discussion back on the Nemesis with how many courting presents Mirage was giving you.”

“Did everyone know about this but me?!” Cliffjumper heard his engine roar.

All of the Autobots Cliffjumper was friends with seemed to have already known. All of the Decepticons Cliffjumper fought seemed to have already known. Yet, he had not known. It was as infuriating as it was upsetting to him. No one had ever bothered to tell him or even drop a hint at what the gifts meant. Was it just funnier for everyone to watch him not notice or understand the gifts?

At some point, Cliffjumper felt Starscream’s sharpened digits start tapping rhythmically on his shoulder pauldron. “Red, as amusing as it is watching you nearly blow a gasket, I would suggest that you calm down.” Starscream genuinely looked concerned for him. Starscream waited until he calmed down before talking again. “It would seem that we both have our own problems in terms of relationships. My advice would be to talk with Mirage and sort out whatever you have before he loses interest in trying to court you.”

“Sure, but-”, before Cliffjumper could finish, there was a bright flash and *vop!* in the river water. Cliffjumper reacted as fast as he could to get his blaster out and get to his feet. When he had his blaster trained on the disturbance, Cliffjumper saw Skywarp standing in the water laughing at him while Bumblebee jumped off the purple seeker’s back.

“Cliffy! It’s okay, you can put the blaster down. I didn’t mean to startle you like that.”

Cliffjumper could hear the sound of another jet fast approaching them. He would have readied his blaster again, but he was able to make out the blue and silver coloring of the jet as Thundercracker. After a sharp turn in the air, Thundercracker came down and transformed back into root mode. By the way he was looking at Skywarp and Bee, Thundercracker had probably been against coming out here and bothering them.

“Sorry Star, these two seem to only share the same limited processor when they’re together. I told them we should let you two be, but they insisted.”

“It’s alright. Me and Red here were just making peace with one another.” Starscream seemed to add a small grin when he eyed him.

“That’s great! I was hoping that that was what was happening. Here,” Reaching into his subspace, Bee started pulling out cubes of energon. And judging by the lighter color and the bubbles, they were cubes of high-grade. “I brought some cubes for us to drink.” Once everyone else had a cube, Bee turned to him, “Cliffy, can we chat quick?”

Before he could even say anything, Bee grabbed his arm and walked him down stream until they were out of earshot of the seekers. When Bee spun him around, Cliffjumper nearly lost his footing until Bee grabbed him and forced him up. Bee had a serious gaze pointed directly at him, seemingly into him, before he spoke, “You gonna treat ‘Screamer like an Autobot now?” It wasn’t very often Bee went serious on him, but when he did, it made Cliffjumper uncomfortable.

“For the most part, I think. I still have my reservations about him, but I think our chat helped.”

Cliffjumper felt himself get jerked into a hug from Bee. “That’s great, Cliffy! What did you two talk about that finally set you right?”

“Like I’d tell you.” Cliffjumper made his voice playfully harsh. Cliffjumper could tell Bee understood at least; feeling the amusement in his brother’s field underneath his fake pout.

“That’s fine, I’ll find out one way or another.” “Just so you know, Optimus was worried when you sped off. I’d go see him when we get back if I were you.”

Bee didn’t say anything else as he skipped back to the group, leaving Cliffjumper. It took him another minute before he decided to head back to the other and join in on the drinking. It was odd at first, sitting and drinking with all three of the seekers. Sitting there and talking with Starscream before had made him feel awkward, and he would have thought it would have been even worse with Thundercracker and Skywarp there as well.

But now it felt fine, being around the three. He didn’t fully trust them still, but Cliffjumper was able to at least carry a conversation without it being weird to himself. He hoped that he’d be able to trust them completely with time; but it was good enough for now.

Now he just needed to wait to return to the Ark and hope he can talk with Mirage to sort everything out.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Watching the small gathering from far enough away to not be seen, Reflector was able to get clear photos of the scene before him. After a few dozen photos of the seekers sitting with the Autobots, Reflector split back apart into his three parts. Viewfinder looked at Spectro and Spyglass, matching the grins they each had on their faces.

“We got some good photos here boys. I believe it’s time to present our findings to Lord Megatron.”

Chapter Text

As Third-In-Command and Spec-Ops leader, Jazz was expected to complete a decent amount of reports each day. Even with the war slowed in years since they ended up on Earth, Jazz still had work he would need to get done (not that he would finish it all on time). Starscream and his trine’s defection had helped lessen the reports he had to do for Decepticon activity, but now Jazz had to do reports on the whereabouts and activities of said Seekers and Skyfire at the behest of Red Alert’s paranoia.

Jazz did watch the flight-frames for a time at the beginning of their stay, but didn’t see a reason why he needed to still be keeping tabs on them; none of them did anything that would require them to be watched. All four of them just mostly spent time together in their own small group with Wheeljack, Perceptor, and Bumblebee. Outside of that group, Starscream and Skyfire would usually always be in the lab working or spending time alone together and Thundercracker would usually be sitting somewhere quiet and writing something on one of his datapads. It was still a mystery what Skywarp did in his free time, but Jazz trusted it was harmless.

Saying that the Seeker trine and Skyfire did nothing of importance report after report was tiring to both Jazz writing them and to Prowl reading them over. It was also tiring to Jazz when Prowl forced him to write said reports to “help ease Red Alert’s processor”. No matter how many times Jazz tried to simply avoid writing them, Prowl would eventually somehow get him to almost-willingly finish each.

Jazz was currently locked in Prowl’s office with just the datapad that held his unwritten report. Prowl had also locked himself in to both complete his own work and make sure Jazz actually completed his simple task. Jazz knew it would be in his best interest to just finish the report so he could leave and spend time with the other bots off-shift.

But, it was better to just be with (and annoy) his conjunx without doing any of his own work.

That was why Jazz had decided to sit on top of the backrest of his chair right next to Prowl. Throughout his mostly one-sided rambling with the working mech, Jazz could feel the hard side glances Prowl was sending him. But Jazz could also feel Prowl’s faint sense of interest over their spark bond.

“Prowler, I know ya are interested in what I’m sayin’, so why don’t ya take a break?”

“I have work I need to get done right now, Jazz. I’ll take a break when I’m done with these.” Prowl gestured to the large stack of datapads that sat beside the one he was currently working on, still not fully looking away from his work.

Jazz leaned forward on top of his chair to get right next to Prowl’s helm; chair slightly creaking under him. “Your work ain’t gunna disappear on ya if ya stop. Do I gotta entice ya with somethin’ ta get ya ta take a break?”

That seemed to get Prowl’s attention off of his work; doorwings hiking up quickly on his back plates as he looked at Jazz. After a moment of Prowl staring at him, most likely figuring out he wasn’t joking, Prowl shifted in his chair to be nearer to Jazz.

“You do know we’re both still on shift?” Prowl still sounded monotone, but Jazz could sense all of the ideas Prowl was getting in his helm.

“Sweetspark, ya locked the door and the vent. Ya don’t need to worry about anyone bargin’ in on us.” Jazz gave a small kiss to Prowl’s doorwing; getting a small flutter from them and warmth over his bond.

“Then I guess I should be able to take a small break.” Prowl got out of his chair and came up to Jazz; enveloping him in a pleasant EM field.

When Prowl started leaning into his frame, the chair Jazz had been sitting on decided that it was the perfect time to break, sending Jazz crashing to the floor followed by Prowl. The both of them just layed there for a moment before Jazz started to pepper Prowl’s face with kisses. Jazz only got to do this for a few minutes before he felt Prowl tense above him.

“Jazz. Jazz, stop!” Prowl quickly scrambled off of Jazz and went back to behind his desk.

Jazz was confused on what he could have done wrong to upset Prowl so badly. Tilting his head back from his spot on the floor, Jazz saw what had spooked Prowl so badly. Standing in the unlocked and open door was a small blue and yellow framed mech, visor and mask staring right at Jazz sprawled out on the floor. Blaster’s cassette, Eject.

“Eject! What’s up little guy?” Jazz quickly springed to his peds went over to the cassette. It wasn’t often Jazz saw his friend’s cassette’s outside of watchin’ over when Blaster and Soundwave went out together.

“Blaster needs you.” Eject seemed to pause to think over what he should say before his visor refocused on Jazz, “Immediately.”

Jazz turned and saw Prowl give him a small nod from behind his desk, already back to working like Jazz hadn’t just been seducing him. Hesitantly, Jazz followed the cassette down the halls to Blaster’s habsuite. The entire way down had Jazz worried about what could be wrong with Blaster, trying to figure out what could have worried his friend so badly that the boom-box mech needed him.

Stepping into Blaster’s hab, Jazz saw Blaster sitting on one of his couches staring down at the floor. Blaster’s other three cassettes were scattered around the main foyer of the hab. Eject went from Jazz’s side and joined Rewind in front of a holoscreen in the other part of the room.

“Blaster, ya needed me?” Jazz slowly reached his EM field out to Blaster, trying to find the other’s field. It wasn’t often that Jazz saw his cheery friend in such a state. “Blaster my mech, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Soundwave.” Blaster was still staring down at the floor, field slowly creeping out from his frame. The mix of sadness and anger was strong, even from the small sliver of the field Jazz had felt.

Another smaller field intertwined with Jazz’s. Sitting on one of the nearby tables was Ravage. Jazz knew that when one of Soundwave’s cassettes snuck into the Ark alone, it was serious.

“Rav’? What’s goin’ on with Sounders?”

“The newsparks began building their frames last week, yet Soundwave still believes staying on the Nemesis with little energon is safe.” The black cat cassette hopped off his perch and went over to Blaster’s side to sit by his legs.

“Jazz, Sounders keeps denying my pleas for him to come to the Ark. I’m worried that something is going to happen to him and the sparklings if he doesn’t leave.”

Blaster looked to be on the verge of losing what little composure he seemed to have at the thought he was conjuring up. Jazz watched as all four of Blaster’s cassettes rushed to him and piled up around his frame, Ravage jumping up and taking a spot next to Blaster’s helm. The pile of cassettes seemed to calm the red mech.

“It’s gunna be alright, Blaster. I can go and extract Sounders for ya. Tha two of ya would be able to properly be together and start preparin’ for the bitlets. Would ya like me to go do that?” Jazz extended his field out to Blaster again.

“You’d do that for me?” Blaster asked hopefully.

“Of course! Sounders and ya are my two oldest friends, there ain’t anything I wouldn’t do for ya.” Jazz jumped into the pile of cassettes and gave Blaster as solid of a hug as he could without crushing loose parts of anyone.

“Rav’, I’m gunna go get ready. Meet ya out in tha valley when I’m cleared and ready?” With a nod from the black cat cassette, Jazz hopped off of Blaster and started heading for the door.

“Thank you, Jazz.”

Jazz turned back and gave Blaster one more nod before leaving to prepare.

. . . . .

In his and Prowl’s habsuite, Jazz made his way into the back room and pulled out his box of Spec Ops equipment. With a job that needed him to be prepared for missions constantly, having his supplies in the hab was a must. Prowl might not like how he had so many weapons and explosives just outside their berthroom, Jazz knew his supplies were safe.

Jazz started pulling out the few pieces he needed to blend in with the Decepticons. Color regulating patches to change his frame colors, courtesy of Wheeljack. Extra pieces of kibble to change his silhouette and a Decepticon decal for his chassis. And finally, his brother’s an old yellow visor he had laying around.

With all of the pieces of his disguise ready, Jazz put everything into a smaller bag so he could put everything on outside. He would have just gotten ready in his quarters and left from the Ark, but the last time he had done that, Red Alert had placed the Iacon base on lockdown for two cycles and had a nasty crash. To prevent that from ever happening again, Spec Ops on infiltration missions had to get into disguise off-base.

Next up, Jazz started shifting through his weapons and tools to try and figure out what would be best suited for the mission. As he was going through the box, Jazz had failed to hear the door to the habsuite open and Prowl’s familiar pedsteps go room to room.

“Jazz, there you are. I thought you didn’t have any Spec Ops missions?” Prowl had reached the room Jazz was in and stopped in the door. For how long he had been standing there, Jazz did not know. Jazz acted like he hadn’t been startled by his silent partner as he continued to go through his weapons, now being able to feel Prowl’s gaze on his back.

“I don’t. I need ta go extract out informant from the Nemesis immediately. In his condition, I can’t leave the fragger there any longer.” Laying the last of the box’s contents on the floor, Jazz turned around from his spot to look up at Prowl, noticing the zoned out tense look of his conjunx. “You’re calculating, ain’t ya?”

After another moment, Prowl came back to reality. “I was trying to figure out who your informant was since you thought it necessary to never divulge that information to me or Prime.” Prowl flicked Jazz’s audio horn.

“Hey, I didn’t need ya or Op to pull shots if ya knew. The informant knew the risks.”Jazz started rubbing his horn to try and soothe the sensation Prowl’s flick caused. “What did your lil’ computer spit out?”

“The informant is in some sort of relationship with Blaster, most likely conjunxed. And from my experience working with you,” Jazz saw the faintest of a smirk on Prowl’s face, “the informant is someone who can nearly match your skills in infiltration and data.”

“Any guesses?” Prowl most likely had gotten an answer already, but Jazz liked to see how precise the tac-net could get.

“Soundwave.” Prowl leaned down and said smugly, so sure of his tac-net’s conclusion.

“An’ we got a winner! But you’re still missin’ a part. Whatcha got on what’s wrong with him?”

“That is the only part my tac-net is coming up unconcluded on. Would you like to tell me, or I’m I going to find a surprise sparkling when you two return?” Prowl was clearly making one of his rare jokes, but he eventually noticed Jazz’s silence, “Jazz? That’s not what it is, is it?”

“Eh…they’re still in him, so the Autobots still got a few months before we have sparklings runnin’ around the Ark.” Jazz wanted to turn back and continue getting prepared, but he didn’t need Prowl crashing and collapsing right before he left.

“Sparklings. Plural. Soundwave’s sparked… with more than one sparkling, and Blaster’s the sire.” Prowl was starting to wobble from a data overload. Jazz quickly hopped up and started rubbing the back of Prowl’s servos to ground him again. It took some time and sitting down in the doorway, but Prowl’s systems went back to normal.

“There ya go, sweetspark. All’s good now?” Jazz didn’t want to stop rubbing just in case Prowl started to crash on data again.

“I am functioning properly again, thank you Jazz. Sparklings…” Prowl was still amazed. It had been eons since the Well of Sparks had stopped producing sparks and even longer since a natural emergence had happened.

“Yep. Ya should have seen how happy Blaster was when he learned about them.” Realizing that he had kept Ravage waiting for a while at that point, Jazz quickly picked out a few weapons and gadgets from the floor and stuffed them in his subspace and a few hidden spots on his frame. “As much as I don’t want ta, I gotta go get my aft of a friend. Am I good to leave ya here without ya crashing?”

“As I said Jazz, I am functioning properly. You are free to leave. I will be informing Prime and the rest of high command of your mission so we can prepare.” Prowl stepped aside for Jazz so he could leave. “Be safe, please.”

“I’m always safe, Prowler.” Jazz stopped to give Prowl a kiss.

“If you do manage to return in one piece, I may be willing to continue what you were trying to start in my office.” Prowl returned a kiss with a mischievous look on his face.

Jazz quickly left his hab before he got distracted by Prowl and made his way down the halls mostly uninterrupted. He did run into Starscream on the way, hearing something about wanting to take a flight. Jazz just agreed and continued on towards the Ark’s main door.

Once he made it out, Jazz transformed and started driving to where he was meeting Ravage. Stopping at a small hole in the mountains he was traveling through, Jazz grabbed the pieces of his disguise and started putting everything on.

Using Wheeljack’s color patches, shiny white and black plating turned a dirty brown and orange. Carefully handling the Decepticon decal, Jazz placed it in the middle of his chassis to cover his Autobot insignia. The extra pieces of armour gave him protruding shoulder pads and sharper edges on his gauntlets and shins. And a quick switch of blue and yellow visors, Jazz had become Ricochet Streetshift.

Walking the short distance over to Ravage, Jazz could see the cat poorly trying not to snicker at him. Sometimes Jazz thought about punting Ravage like a ball with how the cat cassette teased him, but knew it wouldn’t go over well with Soundwave or Blaster.

“Just signal Sounders for a ground bridge, Rav’.” Jazz said as he took a place next to Ravage.

After a few moments, the green, purple, and white lights of a ground bridge opened up ahead of them. Following Ravage through, Jazz immediately saw Soundwave standing at the ground bridge controls off to the side. Stalking up towards the mech, Jazz could clearly make out the edges of extra plating Soundwave had on his chassis to hide the bump where the sparklings were making their frames.

“Your quarters. Now. Make sure Laser and Buzz are there.” Jazz gave Soundwave’s visor a small tap before going off in the direction of Soundwave’s room. After a few moments of silence, Jazz heard Soundwave and Ravage’s quiet pedsteps catch up to him.

“Query: Why are you here?”

“I’m here to set ya straight. We’ll talk at your place.” Jazz felt his friend’s red visor stare at him a while longer before Soundwave went back to looking ahead.

The second they stepped into Soundwave’s quarters and the door closed behind them, Jazz gave Soundwave a smack to the helm. Ravage, Laserbeak, and Buzzsaw all just sat and watched from spots around the room, none making a move to stop the deserved attack.

“Ya have two bitlets forming and you’re staying with this disaster of an army! What are ya thinkin’?!”

Soundwave taking off his visor and mask gave Jazz a good look at his friend’s stressed and tired face. “Sounders, are ya even takin’ care of yourself? Ya look like slag.”

“I’m the Third-in-Command of an army run by a incompetent fool with two sparklings draining my energy. What do you think?” Jazz chuckled quickly before stopping himself. He was here to help get his friend to leave.

“Then why haven’t ya left to be on the Ark? We have fuel. We have actual professional medics. We have Blaster. Why are ya still here, Sounders?” That was what was still confusing Jazz. He knew Soundwave always thought ahead.

“I need to help some of the mechs here. They won’t be able to survive under Megatron for much longer if I leave. I’m also the only way you're getting some of your information. I leave, the Autobots all future inside information”

“Sounders, even if ya can’t help some of the ‘Cons now, they’ll probably leave on their own. Watchin’ two of your commandin’ officers defect in such a short span of time will hopefully set some straight. And we can always find a new way ta get information.” Jazz held a servo up to stop Soundwave from saying whatever retort he was about to have. “No, Sounders. You need to take care of yourself and your bitlets over everythin’ else. Blaster’s worried ‘bout ya and I’m worried ‘bout ya. Please, come back to the Ark.”

“...Fine” Soundwave gave a long sigh like leaving to join his conjunx was a challenge he was forced to do.

“That’s a mech.” Jazz turned his attention to the three cassettes, “Get whatever possessions ya want to take with ya back to the Ark. We’ll be leavin’ soon.”

Jazz started to help Soundwave put his datapads and possessions into small boxes to put in their subspace. Ravage had gathered a few of her things The two of them were able to get most of the items into the boxes before a voice came over the speakers calling for all troopers to gather in the main bridge.

“Do ya know what this is for?” Jazz turned back to Soundwave, watching his friend put his visor and mask back in place on his faceplate.

“Negative. Soundwave: has been left out of multiple meetings since trine left.”

“Alright. I want ta leave right after we see what this is about. Rav’, make sure the two birds are ready for my signal.” Jazz left the room hearing the annoyed squawks of Laserbeak and Buzzsaw. Soundwave followed shortly, most likely keeping a small distance between them to not draw attention to them coming together from the command staff hall.

Walking in by himself in silence, Jazz took in how the Nemesis was holding up. He had been here undercover or fighting to always notice how everything got worse each time. The bright purple walls and floor had darkened and began to rust. Loose wires and pipes hanging out from every surface. Puddles of seawater in most halls from leaks in the hull. It was a miracle the ship hadn’t imploded or been completely flooded over the years.

Nearing the main bridge, Jazz felt all of his systems still. Down in a small pool of seawater, Jazz had caught his reflection. No- it looked like him as Streetshift, but it was different. Jazz knew who he was seeing, who he always saw when he became his Streetshift identity.

“Get out of my head Ric’, ya dead.” Jazz muttered to himself as he tried to start walking again, still feeling frozen. When he did finally manage to move again, his walk quickly turned into a brisk run. In his haste to just move, Jazz made it to the main bridge and nearly ran straight into Barricade.

“Streetshift.” Barricade sneered at him before leaving to stand on the side of Megatron’s throne.

Jazz stayed in the back of the room near the door for an easy escape if he needed to. He doubted anything would come from whatever gathering this was, but his Spec Ops instincts still had him ready.

After some time, Jazz watched Megatron enter and sit in his throne, a twisted smile already on his face.

“Decepticons! I have the most wonderful news! As you may know, our dear ex-commander Starscream fled from our ranks last quartex. And with him fled Thundercracker and Skywarp. Since their leave, they have been marked traitors to the Decepticon cause and to be punished as such. It took some time, but we finally know where our Seekers have fled off too.”

Jazz stilled once again as he watched the Reflector triplets walk out, Viewfinder with a datapad in his hands. At the main computer, the pad was connected and pictures started to pop up on the screen. Pictures of Starscream, his trine, and Skyfire to be precise.

Starscream and Skyfire in their berthroom recharging. Starscream and his trine sitting in their meeting room with energon. Starscream walking the halls with Bumblebee. Starscream and Skyfire sitting side-by-side under the Northern Lights.

And then a picture of Starscream, his trine, Bumblebee, and Cliffjumper sitting in the forest with cubes of energon. Jazz was trying to figure out when that picture could even be from as Starscream had not been out for many flights the past while. Then it hit him, the pictures were new. Likely from whatever flight Jazz had let him go on that day.

“It looks like our dear Starscream has made his place with the Autobots clear. As it would happen to be, these photos are brand new. I say we go crash-”

Jazz left the bridge quickly before Megatron could finish his prattling, knowing it wouldn’t be anything good. Jazz quickly opened up a comm. with Prowl as he went away from the bridge.

::Prowler!:: Jazz felt Prowl’s end of the bond jump in shock.

::Jazz, is there a problem?”

::Megatron knows where Starscream and his trine are! Bee and Cliff are with them out in tha forest! Ya need ta go and get them NOW!::

Before Jazz could say anything else to Prowl, he felt something press against the side of his neck cabling. A quick burst of shock spreading through his frame caused his systems to start shutting down. Jazz could barely hear Prowl calling his name over the comm. link before it disconnected and he fell offline on the floor.

. . . . .

Systems slowly onlining, Jazz’s frame felt stiff from whatever had shut him down. Trying to stand up, Jazz felt the stasis cuffs around his wrists and peds restricting his movement. Jazz started to try busting the cuffs on his wrists with some of the techniques he knew. But whatever kind of cuffs these were, they were strong.

It took another few minutes of struggling before Jazz realized that Ricochet’s his visor was missing from his face, leaving him mostly blinded. He should have realized immediately from how everything around him was a blurred mess of shapes and colors.

That was when he heard the sound of the brig door opening and sets of ped steps coming his way. He may have been visually impaired, but his audials still worked. Increasing his audial levels, Jazz could make out at least three different sets of peds approaching. Jazz knew from memory that the louder of the three was Megatron and the quiet set was Soundwave. Who the third set could be was up in the air with how much of a mess the Decepticon command structure was.

Megatron’s heavy steps came up in front of Jazz’s cell and stopped. Jazz hadn’t even bothered to look up at.

“It looks like our prisoner has decided to return to us. How very nice of the Autobots’ little saboteur to come and visit us. Wouldn’t you say?” He could feel the smug attitude coming from Megatron's EM field, most likely paired with a sharp, toothy smile.

Jazz just ignored whatever game Megatron was getting at, having heard similar spies from the war-lord many times before when he had been taken. Jazz kept working on his stasis cuffs.

“What name would you like for us to call you today? Streetshift of Kaon? Jazz of Polyhex? Or… maybe Meister of Stanix?”

Jazz felt everything in himself still. He had gone to great lengths to erase all existence of who he had been before he had joined the Autobots. When he had gotten a significant rank in the Autobots, Jazz had gone through every system Teletraan-I had to strike any mentions of Meister from existence. There was no way Megatron could even remember, right? Meister had basically been a shadow; barely ever acknowledged by Decepticon command or anyone else besides Soundwave.

“Ya must truly be losing it Megsy, I ain’t never gone by Meister.” Playing dumb had to work. For all Jazz knew, Megatron could just be trying to get in his helm.

“Oh, you puny Autobot… did you really think I would ever forget such a ruthless Decepticon? Especially one with such an interesting past such as you. Or have you forgotten it yourself?”

“No. I remember.” Jazz quietly said.

“Oh… so you do remember being a poor, little, weak sparkling living in the streets of Stanix. How about your brother, Ricochet? Surely you remember him too?”

“Stop” Jazz tried to stay quiet, but his plea came out as a whine.

“How about the never-ending problem of getting energon the two of you faced? How did that feel, having the ever-present feeling of an empty fuel tank?”

“STOP!!!” Now it was a full out cry of desperation. Jazz felt pained, knowing what was next.

“How about waking up to the dead frame of Ricochet at your side, starved to death to save you such a small amount of energon? Do you believe that you deserved to live over your brother?”

Jazz couldn’t even reply to Megatron’s cruel question, crying his optics out from the reminder of Ricochet. But he knew what his answer was. He didn’t

“Soundwave, get this weakling to his feet. He will be of use to us to get our disobedient Seekers back.”

Chapter Text

Starscream sat back and nursed his cube of high-grade, watching his brothers making small talk with Cliffjumper and Bumblebee. It felt nice, being able to get Autobots who had despised him to actually give him a chance to be better. He had been able to rekindle his friendships with Wheeljack and Perceptor, and had somehow gotten Sideswipe and Sunstreaker to not bother him as badly as he expected (he probably had Skyfire to thank for that). And now that he had managed to get Cliffjumper to calm down to his presence, life in the Ark would hopefully be significantly better for him and his brothers.

Starscream listened into the discussion Skywarp and Cliffjumper had gotten into. Whatever it had started out as, he couldn’t remember, but it had turned into a heated (and stupid) debate about whether coolant could be warmed and turned into heatant. Starscream had managed to not be dragged into the discussion while Thundercracker had, joining Cliffjumper’s side that it couldn’t be warmed. Bumblebee was the only one who hadn’t picked a side yet.

“Bee! You agree with me, right?” Cliffjumper had gotten up and was shaking Bumblebee. Bee was just sitting there, a light smirk on his face.

“Sorry Cliffy, I’m gonna have to agree with Warpy.” Bee’s smirk didn’t seem to waver over the stupid nicknames.

At Bumblebee’s answer, Cliffjumper threw his hands into the air and stormed back to the spot he had been sitting in and grumbled to himself. “For the love of Primus, you two really do share the same limited processor when you’re together.”

Any hope of the discussion ending there were crushed when Skywarp’s helm turned to him, a mischievous grin on his face. “What about you, ‘Screamer? Do you agree with ‘Cracker and “Cliffy”...” Starscream watched Cliffjumper bristle at the use of the nickname, “...or do you agree with me and Bee here?”

Before he could say anything to keep himself out of their idiodic conversation, a ground bridge opened up downstream from where they were all sitting and got everyone’s attention. Bee and Cliffjumper jumped up from the ground instantly, hands reaching for their blasters at their sides. Starscream and his brothers stayed behind the two minibots, not having their nullrays to help.

After a few tense moments, Starscream watched as Optimus, Prowl, and Ironhide walked through the portal. Bumblebee and Cliffjumper’s frames relaxed as Optimus walked up towards them, while Starscream felt Skywarp and Thundercracker’s frames tense up upon seeing the Prime.

“I’m sorry for interrupting, but we need you to come back with us.” Optimus’ usual gentle tone seemed more stern than Starscream was used to hearing.

Once he had gotten his brothers to their peds, Starscream followed behind everyone through the ground bridge back into the Ark. In the Ark’s ground bridge room, Starscream was able to see the occasional Autobot going by the main door in a rush. What was happening?

“Starscream, you and your trine are free to go on your own. I need to talk with Bumblebee and Cliffjumper.” Optimus still sounded tense as he looked down to the mini-bots. Prowl and Ironhide just stayed still on each side of Optimus.

Instead of asking what was happening or why they couldn’t stay, Starscream gave a hum of acknowledgement and signaled for Skywarp and Thundercracker to follow him. After a moment of hesitation from his brothers, the three of them started making their way towards their hab-rooms.

“What do you think is happening, Star?” Skywarp bumped the side of his chassis to get his attention.

“I don’t know, but I have a very strong feeling that it’s Megatron.”

“You think he’s finally coming after us for defecting?” It was Thundercracker that spoke this time.

“I hope not. It’ll most likely be Megatron rattling off some slag again to Optimus before they fight. That or a hate-facing.” Starscream heard Skywarp’s vents sputter before his brother started cackling madly from the comment. And while Thundercracker was trying to look impassive, Starscream saw the smirk and shakes of suppressed laughter.

After reaching Skywarp and Thundercracker’s quarters, Starscream said his goodbyes and continued on. He had someone he wanted to be with.

Making his way down the last few halls past the occasional Autobot, Starscream got to his hab and slipped inside.

He had been hoping for Skyfire to be in recharge or, at the very least, occupied doing something at his small desk. Instead, Starscream found Skyfire sitting on the end of his recharge slab, slightly shaking. The moment he entered the room, he saw how Skyfire slightly perked up and looked up at him, but otherwise still looked slightly miserable.

“Star.” Skyfire gave him a weak smile.

Starscream immediately went over to Skyfire and pulled the larger bot into a hug. Skyfire instantly melted into the seemingly much needed contact.

“Star, I was worried about you. I was working when Wheeljack told me he was leaving for an emergency Command meeting. I tried to work with Perceptor for a while before I went looking for you so we could do something. But I couldn't find you anywhere and- I’m rambling, sorry.” Skyfire tried to scoot away from Starscream.

Seeing this, Starscream climbed onto the recharge slab and wrapped himself around Skyfire again so he couldn’t escape. “Sky, it’s okay. I’m fine with you rambling. And I’m sorry for not saying I was going out, I should have known better after the last time.”

And he was truly sorry for not saying anything and working Skyfire up. Star knew that Skyfire had his problems with his anxiety back in the days of the Academy, but he couldn’t remember it ever being as bad as it had been recently.

First had been while he was setting up everything for their date under the Northern Lights. Starscream had spent significantly less time with Skyfire and had repeatedly denied anything was wrong. And during that time he was trying to do something special for his lover, he completely missed how Skyfire was having progressively worse anxiety. Up to and including how Skyfire thought he had lost interest in their relationship, and that it was somehow Skyfire’s fault. Finding out the full picture about what happened from Skyfire after coming back to the Ark had slightly soured the night for Starscream.

And now today, what had simply been a trip to get flowers for Skyfire was turning into… whatever was going on. And Skyfire was already feeling his anxiety coming on.

Hoping that Skyfire felt better, Starscream slowly unwrapped himself from the larger frame. When he saw that Skyfire was no longer trying to retreat down the slab from him, he gave a small smile up towards Skyfire. After a moment of what was surely hesitation, Skyfire gave a small smile back.

“There you go, Sky.” Starscream put a hand to Skyfire’s arm and gave a small pat. “You know, when I went out earlier, I did happen to get something for you.” Reaching for his small container, Starscream set it down and took out the few potted plants for Skyfire to see. “Surprise.” he meekly said.

As soon as Skyfire laid his optics on the plants and went silent, Starscream felt extremely out of his element for some reason. When he tried to talk, he found his voice box failing him. After one or two resets, Starscream was going to speak again when he found Skyfire’s gaze resting on him instead of the plants. Starscream felt himself floundering under Skyfire’s gaze.

“I-I wasn’t sure what you would like the best, so I got a few different ones. A-Are they good?”

There was more silence before Starscream felt himself get quickly scooped up in Skyfire’s arms and nuzzled by the larger mech’s faceplate.

“Thank you Star, I love them.” Starscream felt the warmth of Skyfire’s frame comforting.

“Good, I need to catch up to the amount of gifts you’ve been giving me.” Starscream was going to give a kiss to Skyfire when he saw the other giggling. “What’s so funny?”

“You squawked when I grabbed you~” Skyfire’s giggling intensified.

“I DID NOT SQUAWK!” That only had Skyfire laughing louder. Starscream tried to escape Skyfire’s grasp, but felt himself trapped in the larger mech’s arms as they fell down onto the berth. After a few more attempts of escaping, Starscream found himself giving up and starting to snicker along with Skyfire.

“My little squawking Star.” Skyfire’s giggling started to subdue.

“You’re mean sometimes, you know that?” Starscream gave a playful shove to Skyfire’s shoulder.

“Oh, I know.” There was a little grin on Skyfire’s face before he put his helm into the crook of Starscream’s neck cabling.

Starscream felt the arms on his frame loosen, allowing him an escape if he wanted. But he just felt content, staying and laying there in Skyfire’s arms. He let the comforting silence go on for a while longer before saying something.

“You know I would never leave you, right Skyfire?” Starscream simply said.

“I know. My anxiety just gets the better of me sometimes, that’s all.” Skyfire’s face was still in Starscream’s neck, either in comfort or in hiding.

Starscream lifted Skyfire’s helm so he could see his face. Red optics met blue with a reassuring smile. “You could get it looked at by Ratchet maybe. I feel as though it’s gotten worse since I got you back.”

“You think that would help?” Skyfire sounded hopeful.

“Yes. Ratchet may be a cranky medic, but he is still very good nonetheless. I’m sure he’ll help you.”

With a plan made on what they would do, Starscream tried to fall into recharge, feeling Skyfire doing the same at his side.

. . . . .

A ping and knock on their hab door sadly interrupted the peace and forced Starscream to get up. Letting the door slide open, he was greeted by Prowl and Wheeljack standing outside.

“Skyfire. Starscream. I need the both of you to come with us, we have a-” before Prowl could finish speaking, a loud alarm started going off through the Ark. Prowl stood there with a blank look until the alarm ceased. “-problem outside.”

Skyfire quickly got off the berth and joined Star as they followed Prowl and Wheeljack. Starscream thought that they were going to be taken to a meeting room, but they were instead taken to the lab.

Getting to the lab, Skywarp and Thundercracker were already standing inside next to Perceptor. On the main table in the lab was three sets of nullrays. Their nullrays, to be exact.

Starscream was able to tell which one was Skywarp’s and which one was Thundercracker’s through the purple and blue Vosian markings respectively on each. The third set, however, seemed to be his nullrays that he had destroyed back in the Arctic, reconstructed and fixed. Someone had even gone out of their way to repaint them with his red markings. He would have to thank Wheeljack and Perceptor, even though they had probably only done the reconstruction on orders.

“Prowl, what’s going on?” Starscream asked, even though he had an idea of what was happening. Prowl just let out a long exvent, clearly stressed by the situation.

“A few hours ago, Jazz left on a mission to infiltrate the Nemesis and extract our Decepticon informant on his own. While there, Jazz came into knowledge of the Megatron’s newest plan involving you three.” Prowl motioned to Starscream and his brothers before continuing. “Megatron seems to be attempting to capture the three of you for your defection. Jazz was fortunate enough to warn us about it before Megatron could act on whatever plans he had back out in the forest. But now, Megatron and the Decepticons are waiting outside the Ark.”

And there it was. Starscream had known that it was Megatron, yet hearing it from someone else say it outright made it feel worse.

“Did Jazz get out of the Nemesis with the informant at least?” Starscream had to ask, seeing as though Jazz had not made an appearance yet since he came back. And with how he usually saw the two attached at the waist, it was worrying.

“Megatron has him captive.” Prowl said quietly.

While Prowl’s expression didn’t betray anything, Starscream was able to read the tactician's body language like a datapad. All of Prowl’s plating was pressed tight against his frame and his doorwings stood rigid with a barely visible shaking. Prowl also had his servos clenched tight at his sides, any tighter and energon would probably be drawn.

Starscream slowly reached out and put a servo on Prowl’s shoulder and gave an understanding look for the tactician. Prowl seemed surprised, but let out a feeling of gratitude in his rare visible EM field. But that was only for a split moment, with Prowl quickly pressing his field down to his frame and going back to his usual stoic form; rolling Starscream’s servo off his shoulder.

“Since the Decepticons are already here, Optimus and Ironhide have had to go out to the front line. That leaves me and Wheeljack to help get you ready before we head outside.”

With a movement of Prowl’s helm, Wheeljack went and grabbed Thundercracker and Skywarp’s nullrays, attaching each set to their owners. Meanwhile, Prowl grabbed Starscream’s bullrays and gave him a look before attaching the set onto his arms.

It took a moment for the nullrays to fully reintegrate with his frame once they were on, but Prowl was already speaking again.

“Wheeljack, please take Starscream, Skywarp, and Thundercracker out into the hall. I need the room.”

With a quick salute, Wheeljack started for the lab door, Skywarp and Thundercracker following suit. Starscream looked back at Skyfire once before following the rest into the hall, letting the lab door shut behind him. Now that he had to wait for Prowl, Starscream’s process was full of thoughts.

This was real. Starscream had his weapons back. He was going to fight Megatron with the rest of the Autobots. If not for the Decepticons attacking the Ark, would Optimus or Prowl have ever given him and his brother’s the option to fight again, especially with the Autobots?

Standing in the hall with nothing to do, Wheeljack came up to Starscream. “Hopefully ya three haven’t forgotten how to aim.” Wheeljack gave a playful jab at Starscream’s side.

Starscream gave a fake scoff of offense at his friend. “Really Wheeljack, do you really have that little faith in our abilities?” After seeing the flash of amusement in Wheeljack’s helm fins, Starscream looked back at the lab door. “Do you know what Prowl needs to talk to Sky about?”

“Eh, probably just telling him and Percy to stay on the Ark and not get involved in the fight. We have a few Autobots here that don’t fight in tha battles, and Percy only gets called into the scene when it gets bad. Sky will be safe, don’t worry.”

After some more time, the lab doors opened and Prowl strode out and joined the rest of them to walk down the halls.

“Prowl, why do you have us helping? Surely you Autobots would be able to fend off Megatron and the other ‘Cons without us.”Starscream asked as they were walking.

“If I do recall, you did say that I didn’t need to trust you enough to give you a weapon and fight, just to trust you enough to become better. And as much as I might not like it, you have gained most of my trust.” Prowl gave another one of his rare, barely-there smiles before his mouth moved back into a straight line. “Do not make me regret this.”

Starscream didn’t have the power to say anything back, simply nodding.

Arriving at the main doors of the Ark, Starscream walked out into the sunny desert landscape with everyone else following him out. He first noticed the line of Autobots that stretched across rocky cover, Optimus standing out in front of everyone else. Starscream then saw the gathering of Decepticons across the landscape, Megatron standing at the front with Soundwave and Barricade off to his side. And at Megatron’s peds was Jazz, cuffed on his knees and missing his visor.

As Prowl took Starscream and his brothers up to Optimus’ side, Starscream was able to catch the moment Megatron saw him and how his optics brightened. Optimus gave a glance back to his arrival before returning his attention to Megatron

“Starscream, how nice of you to join us! I was talking to Optimus about you!” Megatron had that sinister smile of his on display as he spoke.

Starscream just stood there, glaring at Megatron from across the field. Megatron went on.

“I’ve ruled over you for long enough to understand you, Starscream. You crave to fight and have authority. To be respected. These soft sparked Autobot fools will never be enough for you. Return to me, and you can be my second once again.”

Starscream still made no attempt to move. He knew he wouldn’t get anything out of returning to Megatron’s side except more abuse.

Megatron wasn’t pleased by his lack of movement, raising his fusion cannon to the back of Jazz’s helm. “Return to me, or this pathetic Autobot becomes one with the Allspark.”

Starscream felt multiple optics go to him at once. All of the nearby foot soldiers were staring at him. Bumblebee, Sideswipe, Mirage, and all of the others were waiting for him to do something, anything to help Jazz.

Prowl had a look of desperation and fear for Jazz that Starscream wasn’t used to seeing from the mech. Starscream also saw the fear in each of his brother’s optics for him.

And to be honest, he was scared too. No matter what he could choose to do here, it would be the wrong choice. But he knew what was the better option, the right option. He would just need to figure it out as it went

With a deep exvent, Starscream gave his brothers one last look before he started walking across the field. He heard Thundercracker crying out for him to stop, and he probably would have been chasing after him too, but Prowl and Skywarp were holding him back. Starscream put a block on their trine bond too, not wanting his brothers to feel his distress if worse was to come to happen.

When Starscream got to Optimus’ side, the Prime only gave him a somber look. Starscream wanted to reassure Optimus that this wasn’t his fault, but he noticed Jazz had been uncuffed and was slowly walking towards the Autobots.

Starscream slowly started walking again, getting past Optimus and entering the gap of desert that separated the Autobots and Decepticons. He passed Jazz halfway between the two factions, getting a close look at Jazz’s uncovered face and cloudy red optics.

“This isn’t your fault, Jazz.”

That’s all Starscream could say as it was true. This kind of situation with Megatron was bound to happen at some point. Megatron was always consistent in making everything difficult for him to enjoy. Before it was always his happiness from accomplishments, now it was his somewhat content life he was making.

He was already past Jazz before he could see if the saboteur had any reaction to his comment.

Starscream eventually made it to Megatron’s side, standing where Jazz had been. He couldn’t attempt to look up at Megatron without giving into the urge of giving the warlord a blow to the faceplate. Instead, Starscream just faced forward, staring at the Autobots that were looking back at him. It was a good sign he wasn’t immediately pulverized by a fist or shot.

“Now was that so hard, Starscream? Coming back to my side once again, just where you belong. Now…” Starscream still didn’t make a move to face Megatron as he was talking, or maybe he was just choosing to ignore the warlord altogether. Starscream was paying more attention to thoughts on how he was going to get back to the Autobots and Skyfire. He could wait for a chance to flee the Nemesis with more data, but he would probably be under more security from Soundwave and Megatron himself.

Or, he could play the long game and overthrow Megatron, becoming the new leader of the Decepticons. He could lead whatever Decepticons gave him loyalty from there and make a peace agreement with the Autobots.

But as much as he wanted to commit to this idea of making himself the new leader of the Decepticons, Starscream knew that once he got the power he had been craving for so, so long, he would lose himself in it and not want to give it up. It was one of the many things he had time to ruminate over in his free time along with dealing with his anger issues (the Autobot training room was a blessing to release his pent up rage).

Starscream would have liked to have thought over things for a few more moments without Megatron doing something, but the Warlord seemed to have said something he didn’t pay attention to. Starscream suddenly found himself being suspended off the ground, Megatron’s servo around his neck cables and fusion cannon warming up on the side.

“But of course, having you back means having to deal with your incompetence and foolishness. Why don’t I make a show of disciplining you in front of your supposed Autobot “friends”? Maybe leave a piece of your frame for that large shuttle you’ve given your feelings to.” Megatron spoke with a sadistic glee right into Starscream’s audio receptors.

Before he even thought it through, Starscream reached into his subspace, grabbed the knife Jazz had given him, and quickly swung it down on Megatron’s face. A deep gash formed down the length of the right side of Megatron’s face, going straight through the warlord’s red optic. Starscream fell back down onto the desert ground as Megatron cried out in pain clutching at his bleeding face.

Starscream felt surprised with himself for what he just did, only because Megatron had made a mere reference to Skyfire.

But then he reminded himself that he was still in the range of Megatron’s attack, seeing the energy mace coming straight for him. With a quick flip with his boosters, Starscream jumped over Megatron’s swing and made another attack of his own, sinking the knife into Megatron’s arm plating and sending a kick into his chassis. With another cry, Megatron staggered back and gave Starscream a chance to escape with his boosters.

Even with his boosters, Starscream still wasn’t fast enough, getting his legs grabbed and being thrown to the ground. Jazz’s knife was pulled from his servo and he was pinned down, Megatron’s fusion cannon charging and aiming right down into his chassis where his spark was. And no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t get out from underneath Megatron’s ped.

He was completely stuck and no Autobots were moving to do anything about the situation, standing across the field and about to watch his spark get blown apart. There was nothing to do, and seemingly nothing that would be done to prevent his imminent death.

Starscream thought he would have been scared to die before seeing the war finish, but he felt an odd feeling of ease, accepting what was to come. He had found Skyfire and had changed his ways, and while there were a lot of things he didn’t get to make up for, he had made up for a small amount of the things he’d done through the war. He was sad for not being able to spend any more time with Skyfire, but Skyfire would be protected by the Autobots and his brothers.

Starscream waited for the fusion cannon to go into his spark, but the heat of the cannon disappeared from his cockpit and Megatron’s weight was quickly gone. The Autobots hadn’t done anything, but Starscream could tell the look of surprise on the faces of a few of the foot soldiers.

Looking back up at Megatron, Starscream saw the same look of surprise on the warlord’s face. Then he saw the fresh wound of a blaster bolt that marked Megatron’s side. Seeing the trajectory of where the shot had come from, Starscream looked to his side and saw who had shot, quickly feeling surprised himself. Standing there was Soundwave, a blaster still raised and aimed at Megatron.

Soundwave had just shot Megatron.

Soundwave had just saved him.

Slowly, Starscream climbed back up onto his peds and started walking backwards away from Megatron and the Decepticons. Soundwave slowly started walking around from where he had been at Megatron’s side to next to Starscream, never lowering his blaster. Seeing the look of betrayal on Megatron’s face was something he never wanted to forget.

As he and Soundwave kept moving backwards away from the Decepticons, Starscream felt the warm energy of an opening ground bridge flickering at his back. Unsure of if the ground bridge was of Autobot or Decepticon origin, Starscream gave Soundwave a cautious look on what they were going to do, but Soundwave wasn’t at his side. Behind him, Soundwave was already passing through the portal and being sent to whichever faction had sent it. Hesitating on whether to follow Soundwave through, Starscream finally jumped through once he saw Megatron had gotten back to his senses from Soundwave’s betrayal and had his cannon raised at him. The last moments he heard before fully through the portal was blaster fire from the Autobots, kicking off the battle.

Starscream was thankfully greeted with the orange walls of the Ark on the other side. And Blaster staring straight at Soundwave. He watched as one moment Soundwave and Blaster were standing at opposite ends of the room, the next Blaster nearly knocked Soundwave over jumping into his arms. Blaster quickly separated himself from Soundwave, looking at the blue boombox like he had just broken something, before going back in for a lighter embrace.

“You’re here. You’re actually here, Sounders.” Blaster said into Soundwave’s neck.

A small tremor shook through the room, emanating from the ongoing battle outside. Starscream lost his footing and collided with the wall. From every battle he had fought as a Decepticon here at the Ark, the Autobots nearly always were victorious. But with the anger Megatron most likely had today, it would be a brutal battle for the Autobots. But with him, Thundercracker, and Skywarp with them, the Autobots had something that they hadn't had since they came to Earth: air support.

When he got off the floor, Starscream made a b-line to the door, but stopped once he saw that Blaster had noticed him and Soundwave remembered he had been right behind him. Soundwave also had his battle mask and visor attracted, letting Starscream see his bare face.

“I-uh… want to thank you, Soundwave, for helping me.” Starscream didn’t know what to say really, still feeling awkward that he was intruding on this moment between Soundwave and Blaster. “There’s more I want to talk about, but…” Another strong tremor went through the Ark and nearly knocked him off his peds again. “I really need to go help them.”

Soundwave only raised his hand in a silencing like motion. “Go. We can talk after you help the Autobots kick Megatron’s aft.”

Starscream heard the snicker Blaster let out at the comment as he left the room running. The halls were thankfully empty as he made his way back to the Ark’s entrance. When he finally made the final turn and saw the daylight shining through the open door, Starscream transformed into his alt mode and used his boosters to blast outside.

In the air, Starscream saw the current stage of the battle. The Autobots had been able to push up through the blaster fire to get closer to the Decepticons, but not enough to start driving the Con’s line back. Dirge and his trine were leading the rest of the Seekers on attacks to both the Ark and the Autobots below. Away from the rest of the battle were Skywarp and Thundercracker, engaged in a dog fight with two miscellaneous Decepticon Seekers he had never bothered to learn the designations of. And there in the middle of everything was Optimus and Megatron, going through their usual one-on-one match that always resulted during battles.

It would be better for him to help his brothers first so they could all help take down Dirge and the rest of the Seekers, so he blasted off to intersect. Once he got close, Starscream opened fire on the two Decepticons. His aim was clearly rusty from the lack of battle since he had defected, but he was eventually able to get hits on each Con and catch up to his brothers.

::Skywarp. Thundercracker. Fall into formation behind me.:: Starscream opened the comm. with the two of them and opened the block on their trine bond back up. He was immediately bombarded by concern and worry from the both of them.

::STAR! Are you okay?! We were worried for you!:: Skywarp all but yelled into the comm.

::Yeah! Never do anything like that again!:: Thundercracker responded.

::Yes, I’m fine, thanks for the concern. Now can we fall in formation and go after Dirge and the other Cons, or do you two need to check me over for boo-boos?::

At the two positive (but annoyed) pings, Starscream turned back towards the main fight with Skywarp and Thundercracker on point at his wings. Together, they flew right into the midst of the Decepticon Seekers and opened fire, avoiding any shots that came their way. They were able to take down a full trine and a few lone Seekers before they had the full attention of Dirge, Ramjet, and Thrust.

::Looks like the coneheads actually got somewhat decent since we left, Star.:: Skywarp dodged a close shot from Ramjet.

::I was still Air Commander for eons longer than Dirge was, Warp. I don’t think he or his trine got half of the techniques I taught through those cones on top of their helms.::

Down on the ground, Starscream was able to spot the obnoxious red and yellow paint jobs of Sideswipe and Sunstreaker and got an idea.

::Hold on, I just thought of something that could help us. Don’t get shot down while I’m gone...:: Starscream was already veering away from his brothers, ignoring the squawks they each gave. Primus, is that what he sounded like with Skyfire earlier?

His quick landing got the attention of the two frontlining lambos, but both barely paid him much attention until he got closer.

“You two up for helping with some jet-judo?” Starscream yelled as he let off a few shots with his nullrays at the Decepticons. With two eager grins, Starscream transformed back into his alt mode and let each mech climb onto a wing. “Hold on!”

It was a little difficult to take off with the extra weight, but Starscream still managed to get into the air and reconvene with his brothers. Starscream watched as each Lambo jumped off his wings and flung themselves at the coneheads. In a few solid seconds, both Ramjet and Thrust were heading for the ground in smoke and the twins were jumping at new targets.

::I think those two will have the Seekers dealt with. Skywarp, Thundercracker, continue the air support. I’m going to assist on the ground.::

At the confirmations from each, Starscream left the air once again and landed at the advancing Autobot frontline, finding himself in company of Mirage and a handful of other soldiers. His presence got some more attention than the Lambo twins had given, but most of the soldiers were appropriately more focused on the fight. Starscream slowly made his way around the others up to Mirage’s side.

“Mirage!” Calling the spy’s name got his attention, so Starscream signaled to get down behind some nearby boulders. The spy looked annoyed at being called for, probably because it was Starscream himself rather than anything else. “Once this is done, make sure you talk with Cliff. He finally figured it out.”

“What do you mean he…. Oh!” Mirage seemed to excitedly understand after a moment, grin on his faceplates, before he dove out from behind the boulder to continue firing at the Decepticons.

From where he was, Starscream could tell the battle was clearly starting to die down in an Autobots’ victory. Most of the Decepticons were either tired, injured, or worse. Even Megatron was beginning to lose his personal match with Optimus, getting hit more often than he could land blows of his own. After what looked like a particularly brutal hit to the tanks, Megatron started staggering away from Optimus back towards the rest of the Decepticons.

“DECEPTICONS, RETREAT!” Megatron’s yell echoed across the field before he stepped towards a ground bridge. For a moment, Starscream saw that Megatron was looking directly at him. The murderous gaze Megatron had sent a small chill down his back strut. Megatron was most likely going to have it out for him whenever they crossed paths now. Megatron finally turned his gaze away and went through the ground bridge, letting Starscream calm.

With the call, the Decepticon soldiers and injured Seekers all started moving towards another ground bridge that had opened behind them. Starscream watched all the Seekers that were still in the air withdraw from their attacks and fly off into the horizon in the direction of the Nemesis. Skywarp and Thundercracker came down for a landing next to him once most of the Decepticon Seekers had left the Ark’s air space.

The Autobots cheered for their victory, and Starscream couldn’t help but join in. He had helped protect his new home and friends. A few of the foot soldiers even came over and thanked him and his brothers for the air support. Ratchet and the other medics were coming outside to help move the injured inside to the medbay. Behind everyone was Skyfire, who’s worried face immediately turned into a smile when he locked eyes with Starscream. Starscream started moving through the Autobots towards the side of the mountain so he and Skyfire could have a private moment together.

“Star! Are you okay? Are you injured? Do I need to get Ratchet?” Skyfire was immediately inspecting every inch of Starscream’s frame for any signs of cuts or bleeding.

“I’m fine, Sky. I didn’t fight in this war for two million years to worry about small things like dents. I can always go to Ratchet after everyone else is treated.”

Starscream leaned Skyfire over so he could give him a kiss, but heard the sound of peds moving towards them. Glancing to the side, Starscream saw the noise was coming from a lone Decepticon that had not retreated coming at them. In the Cons’ servo was Jazz’s knife that he had lost earlier to Megatron.

Despite Skyfire’ much larger and heavier frame, Starscream was able to push him out of the way of the attack. He ended up pinned by the attacker against the rocky side of the mountain, the knife inches away from his spark chamber. Starscream saw the look of fear Skyfire had not being brave enough to help off him to the side. After another few moments of panicking, Starscream saw Skyfire disappear, hopefully going to get the help of some Autobots. That left Starscream with the Decepticon trying to kill.

“You’ll die for turning your back on Megatron and the Decepticons!” The soldier snarled through clenched denta. The knife’s tip was starting to press into the glass of Starscream’s cockpit.

“You’re in Autobot territory alone, you fool! You do anything to me and the Autobots will all descend on you, so stop while you still have your life!” Starscream was trying to hold the Cons’ arms back, but he didn’t have enough strength after his fight against the Seekers and Megatron.

In a quick motion, Starscream successfully jerked the Cons’ arms to the side, swinging the knife away from his spark. Starscream was getting ready for his next move when the Decepticon’s head exploded in a burst of energon and bits of processor. The suddenness of the moment took him by surprise, all but making him throw himself back against the mountainside with the greying frame stuck to him. There was a flick of pain, most likely from hitting a sensor in his wings against the jagged rocks, before it disappeared from the adrenaline and shock.

Starscream threw the dead frame off himself and started looking around for what had just saved him. Way off in the distance, Starscream was able to catch the faint reflection of sunlight on a sniper scope at the top of a plateau. It seemed today was just going to be the day he was going to keep being saved right before he was offlined. He just gave a thumbs up in the direction of the sniper, not even sure if they would still be looking through the scope to see it.

Skyfire arrived back with a few other Autobots in tow just as Starscream was wiping some of the energon and bits off himself. Skyfire seemed surprised at the scene, hands over his intake. It was reasonable, this was probably one of the first and more gruesome deaths Skyfire had ever seen.

“Star…” Skyfire started.

“Skyfire. It’s okay, this isn’t my energon. I just need to find Jazz’s knife and then we can go back with everyone.” Starscream said to interrupt Skyfire. He didn’t need the unnecessary worrying.

Starscream kept looking around, but for the life of himself, he could not find it anywhere. It wasn’t in the hands of the dead Con or in the rocks of the mountainside. And it wasn’t anywhere on the ground around him. And why was his helm feeling so light all of a sudden? Looking back at Skyfire, he noticed Skyfire was pointing at the knife. He turned back around to where Skyfire had pointed, but still didn’t see it. Starscream flicked his wings in annoyance before he saw the knife.

There, at the end of a deep gash that went up the length of his wing, was the knife still stuck inside the thin metal plating and sensors. The wound actually seemed to go all the way through the metal and wiring of his wing. Was that a lot of energon coming out of the cut, or was it just him? Staring at the wound, Starscream’s legs felt very light and he could feel the pain building up.

Starscream made a move to grab the knife and pull it out, but he had to bend his arm awkwardly to get a good grip. Some of the other Autobots were coming up to him, but he just swatted them away, he could get it on his own.

After a few attempts, Starscream was able to get a grip on the knife handle and yank it out. All of the pain from the wound immediately crashed over him like a wave, and more energon was seemingly coming from the wound than before. Darkness was intruding into his vision as warning started overflowing his HUD.

Was it a bad idea removing the knife? Probably.

“I think i’s time ya got Rachet, Skye.” Starscream slurred before he promptly fell to the ground in stasis.

Chapter Text

The Nemesis

Knockout stood by, waiting patiently for when the Decepticons currently fighting at the Ark returned through the ground bridge. Hook had gone with everyone to treat whatever injuries he could between everything that would be happening, but Knockout knew the Constructicon could only do so much. While Knockout had had the privilege of being able to complete his medical degree before the war broke out, Hook had only learned minimal skills in the alleys of Cybertron beforehand. Knockout and the few other Decepticon medics had taught Hook better when the war took up, but Hook’s skills had honestly never been anything more than subpar and messy.

If he had any actual power over who worked on his medical staff, Knockout would have never had kept Hook in any position other than possibly getting supplies for the real medics. But Megatron had made orders to keep Hook, likely only because of the gestalt bond the Constructicon had in forming Devastator. Even if he had been successful in getting Hook off his team, it would have made him a hypocrite with how he treated Breakdown.

Knockout had known Breakdown for vorns before the war, having met the mech back during his time as a racer on Velocitron. While Knockout had a sleek and fast frame as Velocitrons were meant to have, Breakdown had been forged bulkier than most; leading Functionalists to look down on him. They had only met by chance at one of the many racer bars on the planet, but quickly formed a friendship that lasted until Knockout went to train to be a doctor and the war started. Knockout didn’t see Breakdown again for a few vorns after that until Breakdown had joined the Decepticons in the middle years of the war on Cybertron, volunteering to form a mech-made gestalt bond produced by Shockwave in Project Menasor.

But of course, someone of even Shockwave’s intelligence and madness could not purposely create a gestalt bond between mechs not forged with one. Multiple of the mechs that volunteered ended up deactivating from the bonds being created and destroying the lab, swiftly causing Project Menasor to be shut down and indefinitely ended. Whatever mechs that had survived, which had included Breakdown, were left with no purpose other than serving the cause as nothing more than a low-level foot soldier.

Something about leaving Breakdown to that kind of fate had made Knockout’s spark feel heavy, causing him to offer Breakdown the position of being his personal assistant in the medbay. Even with Breakdown’s own medical skills being admittedly worse than Hook’s, Knockout kept him around out of pure self-indulgence. It hadn’t taken much longer after that for love to grow between them. And here they were after all these vorns: having been bonded in secret but still being together.

Suddenly, the bridge consoles started to receive a ping from Megatron; a hail for the opening of a ground bridge. As the pinging started to repeat, Knockout watched as Needlenose started hitting the buttons at the control console to open the bridge. The lights of the portal danced throughout the room as the bridge opened as the other medics on ship gathered on standby to get to anyone that needed their help. After a few moments of waiting, a badly damaged Megatron came limping out of the portal by himself, storming past everyone and out of the portal room with a murderous gaze.

Knockout had half a processor to stop the warlord to repair him (the Decepticons couldn’t really function if their leader dropped down grey in the middle of a hall somewhere), but knew better to get in the way when Megatron was in one of his moods. Knockout peered out into the hall and watched as Megatron limped down the hall, dripping splatters of energon every few steps.

While he was peering out into the hall, Knockout missed the rest of the Decepticons starting to arrive through the portal. Barricade was at the front of the group, supporting a badly damaged Dirge. Behind them came more Seekers in poor conditions, dents all over their plating and cracked all over their wings, some missing one or both of their wings entirely. After them were all of the other soldiers, some in worse conditions than others.

Cuts leaking energon, sections of plating and armor covered in blaster bolts, and a few Cons missing servos or peds. It was going to be a long night of repairs.

Knockout managed to spot Breakdown in the crowd of mechs, a few dents and scratches on his heavy plating but nothing really worth getting scared of. But that didn’t stop Knockout from getting somewhat frightened. They both knew that whenever Breakdown was ordered for support in a battle, there was always the chance that he wouldn’t return. Knockout would give anything to not have to worry about that possibility ever happening, to be able to leave and never have to look back, to be able to not have to hide their bond. But he also knew they would never be able to do that, only getting to experience the hidden moments together.

Giving a pulse of affection over their bond, Knockout saw Breakdown catch sight of him and send a pulse back. Watching Breakdown until he left in the crowd of others, Knockout went back to watching the rest of the injured come through the ground bridge.

Suddenly, Hook came hurrying out with two other mechs holding another soldier up by what was left of his peds and arms, multiple deep holes across his chassis. The soldier was crying out in agony as he was carried. “Knockout! I’m going to need your help!”

“Primus! What happened to him!?” Knockout quickly joined the group as they made their way down the halls to the medbay.

“One of Wheeljack’s weapons! Two others weren’t as lucky as Axlelock here.”

Bursting through the doors into the medbay, Knockout and the others had to push their way through a multitude of other injured mechs waiting in the room to get to an open medberth. Knockout opened the port panel on his arm and pulled his cable into Axlelock’s port, giving the command to put the mech into medical stasis. Once he was fully out, Hook and one of the other medics started hooking Axlelock to the necessary machines while Knockout set up an energon drip.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Hook practically hissed at him, giving a withering glare to go with it.

“Trying to keep our patient alive. Do try to actually be helpful and get me tools.” Knockout continued trying to work, feeling annoyance building.

Hook didn’t move from the side of the berth, still giving a glare. “We don’t have enough energon in storage to support a drip for someone in his state.”

“I know, Hook. He still needs it and other things, so go get me tools.” Annoyance was slowly turning to anger. Knockout was trying really hard to stay composed; he knew this was how Hook acted when he needed to actually help during procedures, but Knockout’s patience was already wearing thin thinking of all the work he would need to those that fought.

“He’d be better for spare parts.” Hook muttered, going back to touching the patches already connected to the machines by the other medic that had helped.

“I am the chief medic here, not you! I say what we do here, and we are saving this patient! If you have such a hard time dealing with that, then you can leave!” Knockout slammed his servo down on the tray next to him as he yelled. Many of the other medics and a few of the conscious soldiers looked over to him. Hook just stood there, arms crossed and still holding that gaze like he didn’t care.

Knockout really wanted to use his buzzsaw to cut Hook’s neck cabling, but that would both ruin his paintjob and get Megatron going off on him. He could probably get away with a shock or two with his energon prod.

After a few moments of staring at each other with rage in their optics, Hook caved and stormed off. After a few vent cycles to recenter himself, Knockout turned his attention back to the mech on the medberth.

A few of Axlelock’s energon lines had to be clamped shut and many of his cuts had to be soldered shut. What was left of Axlelock’s one ped and his arm had to be completely dismantled to be prepped for new ones. After all was said and done, the mech looked like he had been a dissection experiment of Shockwave’s, but he was at least stabilized. Making sure all of the medical systems were right, Knockout got startled when a servo grabbed his arm.

“Thank you.” A weak voice said.

Looking down, Knockout saw Axlelock giving a small smile before the mech went into complete medical recharge. Knockout stayed at the bedside for a moment, not sure of why he felt a sense of relief, before moving on and going to his next patient.

. . . . .

Several hours of surgeries and repairs later, Knockout and the last few medics on shift finished working on the last patient they needed to. All of the main medberths were now full of mechs hooked up to machines in medical stasis, with quite a few having needed to be set up to machines back in their own quarters. They had also lost quite a few mechs on the operating table, much to everyone’s efforts to keep them online.

The battle at the Ark had taken a much larger toll than Knockout had first hoped. It didn’t help that they still were critically low on energon reserves.

Dismissing the last few medics, Knockout got to cleaning up the mess that was his medbay. Tools from all of the workstations got methodically placed in the bin of solvent in the secondary room. It was sometimes nice to get help on this, but Knockout could hardly stand half of his staff outside of working emergency situations, so he just cleaned on his own.

Before he could start on keeping up some of the energon stains that had managed to get on the floor, a series of metal-on-metal crashes and engine revs came and went from the hall outside. It clearly wasn’t an Autobot incursion on the Nemesis; there were no alarms going off from a hull breach. Setting down his cleaning supplies, Knockout left the medbay to investigate.

Creeping down the halls, Knockout followed the tire skids that swerved on the ground until he got close to whatever the commotion was. Stopping at the turn in the hall, he peaked around the corner, seeing a red and a brown racer frame soldiers sitting at the end of the skids at a dent in the wall. The brown racer was holding half a cube of what was seemingly high-grade. They both were cackling at something the red one had just said.

“What do you two idiots think you’re doing?” Knockout turned the corner and started walking down the hall towards the two. They clearly saw he was approaching them but didn’t seem to care that he was one of their commanding officers.

“Getting overcharged and racin’. What’s the problem with that?” The red racer said nonchalantly.

“Getting overcharged and racing is going to get you locked in the brig for reckless behavior. That, or you’ll end up in my medbay, and don’t think I’d be all that helpful if you do show up.” Knockout said as he inspected his servos, turning back to the two with a cold look at the end. It was a habit he had unfortunately picked up from Starscream over the vorns together.

“Who cares, the entire factions’ falling apart!” The brown racer lifted his high-grade cube into the air in a cheer.

“Yeah! The entire elite trine defected and now commander Soundwave’s gone! I say we’ve got an Earth’s week before we’re all kissing at the Autobots’ peds for mercy! Megatron can’t lead for slag anymore!” The red racer cheered as well, raising his own high-grade cube and clinking it with his friends.

There was too much going through his processor after that to hear whatever else the two were talking about, but Knockout was able to hear the loud footsteps of someone approaching. Knockout quickly retreated to see what would happen, going back to hiding around the corner of the hall he had been at earlier. The two racers didn’t seem to notice either him leaving or that someone was approaching them from the other hall until Megatron appeared into view and was standing right over them. From the distance he was down the hall, Knockout could see the cuts Megatron had were still leaking small amounts of energon, but it hardly seemed to have had any impact on the warlord so far since he had returned earlier.

“Lord Megatron!” The red and brown racer quickly scrambled to their feet and stood at attention the best they could, trying to not show how scared they were.

“Would you care to repeat that?” Megatron’s voice sounded cold yet oddly inflectionless. From around his corner, Knockout couldn’t tell what face their lord was making, but seemed to be somewhat similar to the murderous gaze he had had when he returned from the Ark earlier.

“W-we were saying how-how….” The red one was speaking, or at least attempting to.

“How what? How I can’t lead the Decepticons?” Megatron leaned further down over the red one.

“No! Nonononono, that’s not how I was… I mean we were saying it! We were saying how we need to have a harsher rule over the Autobots to make sure everyone stays in line with the cause!” The red one got some small amount of confidence and gave an answer.

‘Is that true?” Megatron turned to the brown racer, causing their plating to start shaking.

“Yeah! That’s true, that’s what we were saying, Lord Megatron!” The brown answered

“I see.” Megatron stood back up straight and took a step back, making the two racers visibility relax.

Then out of nowhere, Megatron lifted his fusion cannon and shot the red racer straight in the center of their chassis. Their frame went grey the nano-second the shot hit their chassis, a small explosion happening from the spark being hit with the fusion blast. Knockout fell backwards in horror, watching the smoke billow from the once red racer’s dead optics and intake.

Getting back up, Knockout saw the brown racer break out of his shock and start to scramble, trying to escape a similar fate to that of his friend. The racer dodged the first shot that had been aimed at him and started to dash down the hall towards where Knockout himself was. A second blast hit the racer in the ped, destroying his leg and sending him sliding across the metal floor. The mech cried out in pain as he tried to crawl away.

“PLEASE NO!” The brown racer’s pleas for mercy went unheard by Megatron, who fired his fusion cannon directly into the racer’s helm. Energon splatted on the ground around the blast as the racer’s frame too greyed the moment the shot hit his helm.

Knockout had to finally fully turn his frame around the corner to hide. Sliding down the wall to sit on the ground, Knockout shuttered his optics as tight as he could and started to vent in and out as slowly as he could to try and lessen the horror building in him.

“What’s going on down here?” A yellow and blue seeker, who Knockout hadn’t even heard approach him, walked up to Knockout. The seeker looked at him for a moment before walking around the corner. When the seeker turned the corner, his pedsteps instantly stopped. “WHAT IN THE NAME OF PRIMUS-”

Knockout heard the sound of the fusion cannon firing almost instantly after the seeker spoke. The seeker’s grey body flew back from the impact and collided with the wall in front of him, sending bits of metal and energon splattering at Knockout. The suddenness of the impact made Knockout jump, getting him to finally get up and run away back to the medbay.

As soon as he got into the safety of his medbay, Knockout sent the command to lock the main door and turned on the proximity sensors outside the door. Once he had made sure everything was locked, he found an empty spot against the wall and let himself slowly slide down to the floor and blankly stared across the room, vision unfocused.

Megatron had lost it.

There was no other feasible explanation Knockout could come up with that made sense with what he had unwillingly witnessed unfold in the hall. He knew how most of the Decepticons were some small level of crazy and unhinged; sparing the few normal mechs Knockout knew and the complete psychopaths like Shockwave and the DJD. He also knew how many of the Decepticons used violence against one another in any to all situations instead of just talking things out. They were all ruthless, no doubt about it. But massacring three of your own soldiers, two for criticizing your leading skills and another for just walking in on the aftermath, like Megatron had, was pushing every boundary that differentiated a Decepticon from being“normal” and being “psychopathic”. What would even stop Megatron from going around and executing anyone he deemed was against him, no matter how small of a thing it was they did or even if they hadn’t done anything at all?

He wouldn’t. The seekers wouldn’t. Barricade wouldn’t. Not even Soundwave would likely be able to stop Megatron if that ever happened.

At the mention of the name in his mind, Knockout’s thoughts immediately turned to a question that he’d had since he heard the red racer mention it earlier: the currently unknown fate of Soundwave to him.

Everyone that had been at the battle at the Ark most likely knew what had happened to Soundwave, but nothing had been announced to those that stayed on the Nemesis by Megatron or any other commanding officer that had fought. All Knockout knew was that Soundwave was now “gone”, which could mean a multitude of things. There was the small sliver of hope that Soundwave could have defected to the Autobots, just as Starscream and his trine had, and still be functioning. But after seeing what Megatron had done in the hall, there was the high chance that Soundwave had done something and Megatron had killed him.

Then that would mean that Megatron had also killed the two sparklings Soundwave was carrying. Even if he didn’t know of their existence, it just made Megatron more of an unhinged monster.

From there, his thoughts just kept slipping further and becoming worse at the hypothetical thought of Soundwave being deactivated.

What if Megatron had somehow known of Soundwave’s carrying status, is that why he could be deactivated?

What would happen to him if Megatron found out about his and Breakdown’s conjunx status? To Breakdown?

What if Megatron found out about-

The spiraling thoughts were silenced at the loud beeping in his HUD of the medbay’s proximity sensors going off. Sighing, Knockout got up off the ground and tried to suppress everything from his processor to deal with later (or better, never). He was almost done with cleaning the medbay, so if he finished quickly, he could leave and attempt to have a recharge plagued with nightmares and take the next day off. After a few minutes, there was a hard knock at the medbay doors.

“Locked doors means we’re closed for the night cycle. If you need urgent repairs, go find Hook.” Knockout yelled from the main medical hub. There was a beat of silence before a harder knock on the doors. Going to the doors, Knockout went to the doors and unlocked them to give whatever mech it was a piece of his mind for bothering him after everything he had been through that night.

It was Megatron standing at the doors.

“Repair me.” Megatron didn’t even let him say anything in response, just walking by him and heading into the main hub. Knockout just stayed for a minute, stuck with that lingering fear he was getting used to feeling today.

There was the chance that Megatron was coming to deactivate him for witnessing the massacre in the hall. But there was also the chance that Megatron hadn’t known he had been witness, simply coming to get repairs. That was hopefully all this was, just one big joke by Primus. Still, Knockout knew that in whatever crazed state of mind Megatron was in, any slip-up and Megatron would likely kill him.

Going into self-preservation mode, Knockout went into the other room and over to the table Megatron was at. Taking in the cuts Megatron had to his faceplates and chassis, along with the blaster bolt wound on his side, Knockout went to treat the bolt wound first.

Cleaning the wound with solvent, Knockout noticed how silent Megatron was. A quick glance up showed that the warlord’s sights were thankfully not on him, but glancing around the room at the wounded on the medberths. Once the bolt wound had been cleaned, Knockout got to wrapping the section of plating in the poor-quality bandage material he had left.

“Move your arm for me.” Knockout muttered as he moved on to working on the many cuts and dents Megatron had all over him. Megatron did thankfully move his arm, but laid it on Knockout’s shoulder guard. Knockout stilled for a moment at the contact, but begrudgingly grabbed his soldering gun and got to work.

“Are you loyal to me?” Megatron asked out of the blue in the middle of the repairs. The warlord’s gaze was now clearly on him.

“What kind of question-” There was clear panic laced in the slight static of his voice.

“Are. You. Loyal. To. Me. Knockout?” Megatron’s grasp on his shoulder guard seemed to tighten as he slowly repeated, denting it.

Knockout stopped working on soldering the wound and glanced at Megatron’s fusion cannon, images of himself and Breakdown replacing the mechs being slaughtered in the hall appearing in his mind. “Of course, Lord Megatron.”

“Good” was all the warlord said.

The grip on Knockout’s shoulder vanished, and Megatron went back to sitting still again, looking across the room at the soldiers on the medberths. Spark still hammering in its casing at the likely death he just avoided for himself, Knockout went back to working on treating the wounds.

After getting through fixing most of the cuts, Knockout heard the main medbay doors open and pedsteps approached them.

Barricade entered the room, arms behind his back. Knockout noticed the Praxian was sporting multiple dents he hadn’t had after the fight at the Ark, knowing immediately where they likely came from. “My lord, the Constructicons have located Shockwave’s missing cache of projects in storage, as you asked.”

“Good. I’ll go see what our late scientist has left for us that can take care of our traitors.” Megatron immediately got off the table he was on and left the medbay, repairs incomplete. Knockout didn’t even think about trying to stop him, thanking Primus the warlord had finally left without any major damage being inflicted on him. Barricade was still there, though, standing as still as ever.

“Is there something I can help you with Barricade? Repairs?” Knockout asked.

He didn’t really like Barricade all that much (seemed to be exactly the same as the Autobot’s head tactician from what he’d heard, silent and strict on protocol, only Barricade had a slight sadistic streak.). But after… everything the past hour had been, he felt some sympathy to offer help with repairs.

“No, I’ll be fine. My self repair will suffice.” Barricade said, still holding his arms behind his back as if he was in the presence of Megatron. “I’d go back to your quarters and try to find some semblance of peace for the night. I see things becoming messy for us all soon.” With that ominous message, Barricade left the medbay to presumably join Megatron in the lower storage bays.

Knockout waited a few minutes to make sure no one else was going to arrive at the medbay before shutting the light off and locking up. If the medics on morning shift got mad that not everything had been cleaned up, he wouldn’t care all that much anyway. Once he was sure everything was locked, Knockout left and headed down the halls towards the upper level soldiers’ quarters. Breakdown having an entire set of quarters to himself was one of the many things that helped them keep their relationship secret.

Arriving at Breakdown’s quarters, Knockout quickly put the code in and slipped inside the door. Letting the door slide shut behind himself, Knockout found Breakdown sitting back on the room’s couch in recharge, an old Velocitronian holomovie playing on the screen giving some light to the dark room. The volume was low enough that Knockout could make out each of Breakdown’s vents. Turning his audial levels up, Knockout was also able to hear the smaller, softer invents coming from the adjoining room.

Moving silently, Knockout went and sat down next to Breakdown, laying his head down on the bulkier mech’s arm. The arm under him shifted, but stayed in the same place clearly to not disturb him.

“Hey, Doc.” The static in Breakdown’s voice was laced with the grogginess of near recharge. “You’re back late.”

“Sorry dear, Megatron decided to come get himself repaired right at the end of my shift.” It wasn’t exactly the whole truth, but it was better than telling Breakdown everything that happened.

“Mhmm, you could have called me to help. I would have come down.” Breakdown leaned down and placed his helm on Knockout’s dented shoulder pauldron. He must have immediately noticed something was off, feeling the dented shoulder with his other servo before sitting up, looking completely awake. The holomovie got muted at some point. “Knock, what happened here?”

“Breakdown, I assure you, It’s nothing.” Knockout sat up as well. There wasn’t much more in terms of being able to deny telling what had happened that he would be able to do for much longer.

“Unblock your end of the bond.” Breakdown demanded.

Knockout had forgotten that he had blocked the bond before his medbay shift that morning. If he had kept it open, Breakdown probably would have come to help him get away from Megatron before he witnessed the entire hallway scene. But something worse could have also happened.

“Please Knock, let me see.” Breakdown said more gently this time.

With a sigh, Knockout let the wall blocking his end of their bond fall, letting Breakdown in to see everything. He felt the flutter of Breakdown’s conscience searching through his side of the bond, going through the memories of feelings he had felt throughout the night. Focusing on the Breakdown’s end, Knockout felt horror and pain fill Breakdown’s spark.

“Oh, Knockout… Why didn’t you just leave? What if he had found you?” Breakdown sounded just as pained thinking of the possibilities as Knockout had.

“Would it have mattered if he did or didn’t find me? Megatron still slaughtered three of his own soldiers! And you saw what he did to Soundwave that one night! I still don’t even know what happened to that cassette or his sparklings at the fight today.” Knockout tried to keep his voice down. He really didn’t want this to spiral into an argument between them.

“Soundwave and his sparklings are fine. Soundwave shot Megatron and saved Starscream. He escaped into the Ark through a ground bridge, he’s alive.” Breakdown said.

Relief washed over Knockout, but he still remembered what he was trying to point out. “Well, my point still stands. Megatron’s lost his mind. Even if he did or didn’t see me, there’s always the possibility he snaps and kills everyone.”

Breakdown opened his intake to add a counter-point, but closed it almost immediately and looked down at the floor in silence. There really was no arguing against it like it wasn’t a truth. Knockout the silence between them continue and laid his helm back on Breakdown’s arm.

“So… what are we going to do?” Breakdown asked after some time.

“What do you mean?”

“Are we going to stay here with the Cons while Megatron unravels, or are we going to… ya know?” Breakdown

“No, I don’t know, Breakdown. Don’t be vague.”

“Ya know… leave.” Breakdown shrugged as he said it, like it was something so simple to do.

“Breakdown, you can’t be serious.” Knockout lifted himself off of Breakdown again to give the mech the most unimpressed look he could muster.

“Why not? Starscream and his trine did it, Soundwave did it, so what’s stopping us? The Autobots seem to be treating Starscream’s trine well. You and I both saw the photos Reflector had, they’re living well over there. So again, what’s stopping us?”

“I think you know what’s stopping us.” Knockout didn’t have to say much more. They both knew.

“Still, just think about it.” Breakdown got up from the couch and caressed Knockout’s helm. “Goodnight, Doc.” With a kiss, Breakdown went into one of the other rooms where the berth was.

Knockout just stayed there on the couch. It would be best to go back to his own quarters to avoid them being found out. But it didn’t really matter anymore. Knockout went and joined Breakdown in the berth and kept the idea of leaving in his processor as he let himself go into recharge.