Chapter Text
“That’s a seeker, Orion”, Elita said, sounding resigned. “We can’t take in a seeker.”
“No one else would take him, Elita”, Orion insisted.
“Couldn’t Ratchet have taken him?”, the femme asked, crossing her arms.
Orion shook his helm. “He’s too busy to take care of a sparkling full-time.”
“What about Jazz then?”
Orion ex-vented. “I’m not going to pawn him off on someone else”, he said, pulling the small bundle closer to his chassis like someone would come out and try to take the tiny seekerling from him.
Elita frowned at him. “He. Is. A. Seeker”, she stressed. “He’s going to be dangerous once he grows up.”
“I’m not going to raise him”, Orion reassured, optics briefly flicking down to the small sparkling. He couldn’t see how such a tiny thing could ever be considered dangerous. “I will just take care of him until I can take him back to Vos so he can be with other seekers.”
Elita ran a servo over her face with a tired ex-vent. “Okay, fine”, she acquiesced. “But you’re going to be the one taking care of him. I want nothing to do with him.”
Orion’s optics brightened as he nodded. “I expected nothing less. Thank you, Elita”, he said with a soft smile.
Elita huffed with a roll of her eyes before reaching up to pull her courted into a chaste kiss. “You will have to make it up to me.”
“I will”, he promised. He would stop by the bakery tomorrow and get Elita her favourite energon treat.
The little seeker let out a soft chirp, making Orion smile down at him.
“Sorry, I can’t get you anything”, he said quietly, rubbing a soft cheek with his digit. “Doctor’s orders.”
The seeker chirped again as if in protest and Orion couldn’t help leaning down to nuzzle the tiny thing.
‘Yeah, definitely the least dangerous thing I have ever seen’, he thought fondly.
“Have you thought of a designation?”, Jazz asked as he looked at the sparkling that was gazing back at him from his makeshift crib. After he heard that Orion was taking care of a sparkling he just had to see it for himself. He hadn’t expected a seeker though.
Orion looked up from his datapad. “A designation?”
“For the sparkling, of course”, Jazz said, pointing at the seekerling before laughing as the sparkling tried to grab his digit. “You can’t keep calling him just a sparkling all the time.”
“It’s not my place to give him a designation”, Orion said with a small frown.
Jazz shrugged. “It’s not like it can’t be changed”, he said as he let the seeker take hold of his digit, the sparkling immediately trying to chew on it with his barely-there denta. “It would just make it easier to address him.”
Orion hummed. ‘A designation, huh?’
After he acquired the sparkling, he had borrowed a datapad talking about seekers and Vosian culture from the archives a while ago. He had been reading it to make sure he wasn’t imparting any habits that would be seen as uncouth once the tiny thing was sent back to Vos but he remembered the datapad having some sort of list of Vosian designations. Unsubspacing it, he turned it on, looking for the list of designations.
There were a lot more than he thought. Of course, there would be a lot of them but it would take ages to go through everything and much longer to choose something fitting. Of course, it could be changed later but who knew how long it would take until Orion saved enough for a trip to Vos? What if the sparkling got used to his designation and it was a bad one? He didn’t want that.
“Seeing anything good?”, Jazz asked as he leaned over to take a look past his shoulder.
“There's so many”, Orion ex-vented, feeling overwhelmed, before his optics found the crib and he saw the blanket that the seekerlet had with him, covered in stars. Seekers often had names related to the sky and space, right?
“Maybe, something to do with ‘Star’”, Orion mused as he started scrolling down to the section that started with “Star”.
Jazz grinned before turning to the sparkling and tickling him on the belly. “Are you a little Star?”
The sparkling answered by letting out an audial-piercing screech and kicking at the offending digits.
Jazz grimaced as he pulled his servo back. “Or maybe just call him Screamer?”, he suggested.
Orion huffed before focusing back on the datapad. Just “Star” was an archaic name. The kind that your great-great-grandcreator would’ve had so that was out of the question.
Starlight seemed cute- “One that lights up the night sky.”
Starflight could be good also- “One who rearranged the stars in their flightpath.”
Starshine was also nice- “The brightest in the sky.”
But none of them quite fit right.
“Hey, how about that?”, Jazz said, pointing at a designation on the list. “It's fitting.”
Starscream.
“One who could make even the stars notice them”, Orion read before looking at the little seeker.
“He is a little attention seeker”, Jazz joked before lifting the sparkling up. “Aren't you? You would scream loud enough for everyone to notice you, wouldn't you?”
Orion chuckled before turning to the datapad. Jazz took it literally but Orion understood the deeper meaning behind it: one destined for greatness.
He hoped that to come true for the sparkling that had had such a rough start to his life. The little thing deserved so much better.
“Starscream, it is”, Orion agreed.
Jazz’s optics brightened before he let out a chuckle. “It's perfect!”, he said before turning to the sparkling- now Starscream- and giving a little wave. “Nice to meet you, Starscream.”
Starscream only let out a soft chirp in reply, pink optics wide and curious.
Orion had promised that he would take care of Starscream, and for three whole orns that had been the case, only leaving him in Ratchet’s care during work. However, Ratchet was traveling to Rodion and spending a deca-cycle there so Orion couldn’t rely on him during that time. Jazz’s work schedule overlapped with his so he couldn’t hand Starscream to him either but taking him to work secretly or leaving him home alone wasn’t an option either.
So he had no choice but to ask for Elita’s help since her work gave her more flexibility. She was very reluctant at first, barely having spent any time with the sparkling, but seeing how desperate Orion looked, she hesitantly agreed.
Orion showed and told her what to do before leaving with a promise to make it up to her.
So that’s how Elita ended up alone in their apartment with a seeker sparkling. She tried to mostly ignore Starscream. He only needed to be fed every few joors and the other time she could pretend he wasn’t there. However, he wasn’t all that happy to be ignored and made it known very loudly.
“Okay, okay!”, Elita yelled as she entered the berthroom. “What do you want!?”
Starscream immediately quieted down and looked curiously at the femme that he had barely interacted with.
Elita huffed and threw her servos up in the air in frustration before turning to leave, only for the sparkling to let out a loud shriek again.
He fell silent once again when Elita’s attention returned to him.
“I’m starting to see why you’re called seekers”, she muttered, slightly resentfully. “Such attention seekers.”
Starscream only let out a soft chirp and a whistle in answer.
Elita leaned against the wall next to the crib. “I could get rid of you so easily”, she said softly. “Make it look like a break-in or an accident. I doubt the authorities would investigate it much once they learned you were a seeker.”
Starscream chirped happily in response, just liking the attention and not understanding that he was just threatened.
Elita had to admit that despite being a seeker, the sparkling was kind of cute. “I’ve never really liked or wanted sparklings”, she admitted. “I’ve never told Orion. When I realized he wanted a family eventually, I was far too deeply in love with him to tell him.”
There was another curious whistle that made just the smallest of smiles rise onto Elita’s face.
“But maybe if you’re horrible enough he won’t want another afterwards”, Elita mused before letting out an ex-vent as she carefully reached out to touch a soft, young cheek. “Though, I have a feeling this will only make him wish for a sparkling of his own even more. Especially once you are returned to Vos.”
Starscream wrapped a clumsy servo around one of the femme’s digits before trying to bite it but his small sparkling denta barely made a scratch on the adult armor.
“Already trying to dismember someone”, Elita huffed with amusement at the sparkling’s efforts. “I can already tell you will grow up to be a fearsome and ferocious seeker. I just hope that’s not going to end up hurting Orion in the end.”
The small seekerlet just let out a content coo in answer.
“That better be a promise not to do that”, Elita warned.
There was another chirp.
Elita huffed before leaning down to poke the sparkling on the forehelm, Starscream letting out a surprised squeal in response. “Be sure to keep that”, she said before cocking her helm. “Maybe I can tolerate you for a little while. At least until we can send you back to Vos to be with your own kind.”