Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Despite what some people (Knock Out, Soundwave, Airachnid, Breakdown, Lord Megatron, apparently a few of the Autobots as well) might believe, Starscream is perfectly capable of making good decisions. See, whenever he makes a decision he is convinced that it’s the best one (or the only possible one), but then the universe conspires against him and makes everything backfire rather spectacularly, which makes people judge his life choices.

These last few days have been like that. Go with Lord Megatron to the mine, alone? As soon as he’d realized where they were going he’d known that it would end badly, but it wasn’t like he’d really had a choice in the matter. Returning for Lord Megatron after managing to escape the mine, instead of leaving him to die and flying to another continent? Look, Starscream still believes that Lord Megatron would have survived somehow and it would have been hell for him, no matter where he went; Soundwave would have found him and one day Starscream would have woken up to find Lord Megatron outside his hiding spot, ready to kill him or bring him back to the Nemesis. Stopping to talk to Bulkhead and Monster Human #2 instead of just leaving them there as he continued his search for Lord Megatron? Okay, that one had been sheer naivety; the Autobots get into worse situations than the ones Lord Megatron has found himself in and somehow they always survive (except for Cliffjumper).

If that day at the mine hadn’t been bad enough, Lord Megatron then made Starscream work with Airachnid, which was just insulting. Lord Megatron had gloated about how obvious Starscream had been in his scheming, but for some reason he’d had no trouble trusting her? Please, all she’s missing is a neon sign announcing that she has her own agenda. What was Lord Megatron expecting Starscream to do on that little trip to the Harbinger? Learn how to be a better traitor?

To be fair to himself, he did try to improve his treachery, it wasn’t his fault the Autobots didn’t trust him. Well, so maybe, technically speaking, it was his fault, since he has spent a few million years being a Decepticon, trying to kill the Autobots (and even succeeding sometimes) and attempting to take Lord Megatron’s place… Fine, he’s lucky the Autobots have this ridiculous moral code that stopped Arcee from outright killing him.

Thinking about it, he has been really, really lucky, because somehow he has survived everything. A torture session with Lord Megatron? Countless battles against the Autobots? Accidentally telling Arcee that he was the one that killed Cliffjumper? Not many bots have been that fortunate, but it’s time to stop taking things for granted.

He sits down and looks around. He’s not entirely sure where he is, he’d been more focused on getting as far away from Arcee and Bumblebee as possible than on seeing where he was going; he’d just walked and trusted his inner compass to keep him from accidentally coming back to them. There are only rock walls around him. Rock walls everywhere. Considering that his wings are still bound, this might prove useful.

Starscream stands up and starts bashing his bonds against a rock wall. When his wings are finally free he moves them up and down, backwards and forwards, simply enjoying the movements. Then he starts pacing. His instincts are telling him to fly away as far as possible, while his ambition is telling him that he is now a free agent, that he can do anything and secure power through his own means, so he should try to finds allies and resources.

After millions of years of seeing his ambitions get mocked by the universe, he’s going to give himself an extra moment to decide what to do. Or maybe two extra moments. Actually? Make that a whole day. Yes. He’s not deciding anything life-altering until he has spent at least a day thinking about it.

He has to be realistic, his current fuel level won’t keep him going for more than a couple of days, no matter how careful he is, and Megatron won’t be happy to know he’s running around, free to share Decepticon secrets to the highest bidder, which means he also needs a safe place to stay.

Think, Starscream, he tells himself, moving his wings again, just because he can. What’s the last place they’d expect you to go?

Megatron probably thinks he’s with the Autobots, or that he’s on his way to Mexico. The Autobots probably think he flew back to Megatron, or maybe that he’s on his way to Canada. Basically, everyone expects him to be anywhere but exactly where he is right now. He thinks about the Harbinger, with its washracks, rooms and computers, and how it has become another worthless place to both factions now that the weapon in it has been found.

The more he thinks about the Harbinger, the more he likes it. There might even be some leftover energon in it.

This might be a life-altering decision, so he’s going to find a place to hide in for the next twenty-three and a half hours and then go to the Harbinger.

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The idea of settling in the Harbinger doesn’t stop sounding good after a full day of thinking about it, so that’s where Starscream goes. As expected, the ship is empty and all that remains of both Autobots and Decepticons are the signs of battle. It’s a perfect place.

He takes his time exploring the ship. He finds a lab containing five protoforms, which he decides will be useful if he’s ever in need of spare parts - he guesses he could actually do more with everything that’s in the lab, but he can’t remember the last time he did anything remotely scientific, considering that Shockwave and then Knock Out were around for that. He also finds a computer, a room with a berth, washracks, and even a groundbridge, so if it weren’t for the fact that there isn’t a single drop of energon to be found, he’d be set for the near future.

Fine. He’ll break into his energon reserves. Through the years, just in case, he’d set aside a small amount of fuel every week. Usually it was just a gulp, sometimes slightly more, and once a year he dared steal an entire cube, but doing that for a while tends to leave you with enough to survive for a month or two if you ever needed it. He’d hidden those reserves in various spots around the world, telling himself that even if what he was doing became obvious, the amount would be so small that no one would care; he’d hoped that, if he ever needed the reserves, the fact that he was keeping them in many different places might stop others from noticing when he went for one of them. See? He is capable of having good ideas; it’s a pity that no one can ever know about that one.

He brings up the coordinates of his energon reserves and starts planning the best order in which to get them. If he wants to keep Soundwave off his trail, he needs to make it look like he’s going far away, so he should start collecting his reserves from closest to farthest. He has two cubes hidden in the US, but he’s not touching them for now, both because he might need them if he’s ever left without access to the groundbridge and because Soundwave might know about them. Besides, leaving them untouched should give the impression of a hasty retreat from the country.

Starscream enters the coordinates for the next nearest reserve of energon into the groundbridge, sets a timer for it to reactivate to bring him back to the Harbinger, and leaves for Grenada.

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Turns out the Caribbean is nice when you’re not visiting it with the mindset of “everything on Earth is terrible, also I must hide this quickly and return before they notice my absence”. Sure, it’s still full of humans and other various types of organic life, but Grenada is wonderfully Cybertronian-free, which is a big plus.

Starscream flies around, making sure to spend enough time in the air that he’ll be in at least a couple pictures, then goes to retrieve his energon just as the groundbridge appears. Perfect timing. See? He can be effective.

He’s feeling so good about himself that it actually pains him a bit to have to leave the open skies and the sea for the rocky location of the Harbinger.

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With the cubes from Grenada, Starscream’s fuel reserves are still low, but enough for him to survive while he looks for more. He’s not sure where to start, but if there’s one thing he knows about humans, it’s that they’re very good at finding important things and absolutely failing to notice how important they are; they might even post them online and make fun of them, or refer to them as ‘ancient objects from unknown cultures’. Some humans are clever enough to realize they’ve stumbled upon something relevant, but then they make theories about them that are so spectacularly wrong that Starscream has been tempted to hunt them down on several occasions.

Well, letting them live might finally prove useful, because he’s going to need the help of every single one of those humans if he wants to avoid starving.

He’s about to turn on the computer to start searching for “blue fuel” when it occurs to him that Soundwave might notice if the Harbinger suddenly started showing signs of activity. He’d felt confident using the groundbridge because if that kind of energy could be traced, they would have found the Autobots already, but communications and information networks are Soundwave’s specialty, and Starscream’s not willing to risk his safe place so soon.

He starts looking around the ship, makes an inventory of everything that’s available and sits down to work on establishing a secure connection to the internet. He loses track of time as he works, even loses some self-consciousness, because at some point he catches himself humming. He guesses it can’t be helped; he hasn’t really worked on a project in years. Knock Out had once asked him what he’d done back in Cybertron, before the war, and Starscream had replied that he’d tried to do science. Knock Out had laughed and implied that science had been too difficult for him, when what Starscream had meant was ‘I’m a flightframe, we usually didn’t get the privilege or the resources to do actual science’.

Starscream pauses his work. Thinking of Knock Out had reminded Starscream of the fact that Breakdown still owes him for trying to save him from the humans.

He’d been intending to call up that favor when he eventually tried to bring down Megatron, but not starving sounds like a better idea right now.

Starscream finishes establishing the secure connection and turns on the computer. Calling up the only favor that someone owes him definitely counts as a potentially life-altering decision, so it’ll have to wait. Until then, he’s going to see if the humans have stumbled upon any energon.

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The problem with the internet is how distracting it is. Starscream had fully intended to find all those “conspiracy theorist” websites and forums and go through them in search of clues, but somehow he had ended up clicking link after link and, after five hours online, he had been told that if he was in an anime he would be a tsundere (he’d had to look that up), discovered that humans were almost grotesquely fascinated with their own reproductive process and watched about twenty cat videos (he will never admit it out loud, but cats are okay). Then, when he managed to find one of those forums, he ended up making an account and reading some of the posts on the Off-Topic forums, which of course took him to more websites and bits of useless data. And finally, because apparently he hadn’t been ridiculous enough, he replied to someone’s question on the forum.

cupcake93: so my boyfriend has been kind of distant and i’m worried he doesn’t love me anymore what should I do?

SSeeker: Tell him he is an idiot and that you are angry and tired of him.

goldenTrinket: dude thats fucked up and kinda abusive????? wtf is wrong with u!! EDIT: shit sorry for using ‘dude’ i dont know ur gender. still wtf

There are more replies after that, but Starscream doesn’t bother with them, his eyes are glued to the word ‘abusive’. He knows the word, of course. He knows what it means. He doesn’t know why someone thinks he should be called out over it.

On a whim, he opens another tab on his browser and looks up the word. After the definition, he gets links. Pages and pages of links. He clicks on the first one and reads everything. He goes to the next website. And the next one. He spends hours learning what humans mean when they talk about abuse and what he gets from his research is that humans wouldn’t approve of life on the Nemesis. He gets that, maybe, it’s a good thing he left.

Unease starts crawling under his plating as he reads that, apparently, being called useless and pathetic on a regular basis isn’t healthy and that if your boss/superior beats you, you have the right to denounce them. He’s not very happy to find out that, apparently, you also can’t get rid of your subordinates just because you feel like proving your superiority.

Starscream turns off the computer and decides to go to recharge, but he can’t stop thinking about the fact that, apparently, there are better ways to exist, ways that don’t include being afraid for your life on a daily basis. The unease has settled beneath his plating, a thin film that makes him feel like he doesn’t fit in his own frame, like he needs to be smaller in order to hide from the judgment that this new concept has brought along with it. He should have killed Megatron ages ago. He should have been stronger, faster, more cunning. He should have left sooner.

He gives up on recharge after an hour.

He’s not really thinking about what to do when he goes outside, but as soon as he sees the sky he remembers the one place where there’s no need to think. He transforms and takes off, spends his time flying around the area drawing shapes in the air, focusing only on making them perfect and not on the fact that he hasn’t been able to fly just for the pleasure of flying since the war began. He pushes to the back of his mind the voice that tells him that Soundwave might find him and tell Lord Megatron, who might show up on the Harbinger and drag Starscream back to the Nemesis.

Starscream doesn’t think, he just flies until he’s tired and then goes back to recharge.

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He decides to call Breakdown. Now that he has managed to leave the Decepticons, all the websites say that he should never return to the ‘harmful environment’, so Starscream figures that calling in the favor is a good way to cut ties with the Nemesis.

He calls Breakdown’s personal frequency and waits for him to answer.

“Who is this?” Breakdown says.

“Breakdown, hello,” Starscream says with his nicest sounding voice. “How have you been?”

There’s a pause before, “Starscream?” with so much disbelief that it has him wondering if the Decepticons thought him dead.

“Yes, it’s me. It’s good to know you remember me, Breakdown.” He pauses for effect. He can’t help it. “Now, since we’re talking about memories, I was wondering if you remember what I told you back when I went to save your sorry aft from those humans?” Starscream makes his tone deceptively nonchalant and waits.

“Yes,” replies Breakdown after a moment.

“Good, because I’m calling in that little debt you owe me.” He’s sure that Breakdown can hear his smile and he doesn’t care, it’s been ages since he was last in charge of a situation.

“What do you want?” Breakdown asks with poorly contained anger.

Starscream leans against a wall and stretches the silence, enjoying how obviously uncomfortable he’s making Breakdown. He can guess what Breakdown is expecting, some request for him to assassinate Lord Megatron or to try to get the Vehicons on Starscream’s side. Tempting possibilities, yes, alas, both ideas count as life-altering decisions and he’s sure that if he hangs up now he won’t get Breakdown to answer his call in twenty-four hours.

He’s about to speak when a new voice cuts in.

“Screamer! Hello! It’s been a while, how have you been?”

Starscream’s good humor evaporates. His face twists into a grimace as he says, “Knock Out.”

“The one and only. It’s so nice of you to call! I was sure you would never let us hear from you again, what with getting caught by the Autobots and then being seen leaving the continent.” Starscream hates that he can almost hear the smug smile that Knock Out must have.

“I was talking to Breakdown.”

“Ah, yes, I noticed that my assistant was a bit distracted, so I made him pass the call to my personal comms channel. I was sure it would be just some Vehicon, how was I supposed to know it would be you?”

“Get the call back to him.”

“Oh no, Screamer, now that you’ve called we should catch up. Tell me, are you in Europe already or did you go to Africa instead?”

“Knock Out…” Starscream warns.

“Starscream,” the tone is final, all traces of mockery gone. “What do you want?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“I’ve decided it is. It’s my assistant you’re trying to get into trouble. I don’t have another one and if you get him killed or imprisoned I’ll have to train a Vehicon.” Almost lightly, he adds, “I’m not in the mood to try to do that.”

Starscream can picture Knock Out in this moment, leaning against one of the tables in the medibay, smirking and examining his fingers or some detail of his finish.

“You’re not going to let Breakdown talk to me again, are you?” Starscream grits out.

“No. Now say what you want or I’m hanging up.”

Starscream gives himself exactly one second to curse Breakdown, Knock Out and himself, and says, “I want energon.”

There’s a barely noticeable pause. “Why would you want that?”

“You’re a medic, you should know.”

“Ah, so I’m guessing you’re finally noticing how difficult it is to find energon in this dirtball of a planet. Is this helping you understand what a good job Breakdown and I did through all these years?” If Starscream ever sees him again he’ll make sure to drag a nail over Knock Out’s hood. Maybe that will keep him from ever using that annoying tone of superiority and disdain on Starscream again.

“Knock Out-”

“We went looking for deposits and you always complained that it wasn’t enough. It’s nice to know you have finally learned to value our efforts.”

“Oh, please-”

“It’d be nice to hear you say it, you know?” Knock Out casually continues like Starscream never spoke, nothing betraying any of the glee he must be feeling at having a chance to have Starscream at his (inexistent) mercy. “Something like, ‘Thank you, Knock Out and Breakdown, for how much you helped the Decepticons.’” At least he didn’t bother trying to imitate Starscream’s voice.

“Yes, yes, you did a great job,” Starscream grits out. “Now bring me some energon.”

“Why should we do that? You’re not a Decepticon anymore. What if Lord Megatron catches us helping you? My paintwork has been scratched enough times for one lifetime. Oh, wait, the paint scratching was your idea of punishment. Lord Megatron might decide to remove a limb instead.”

Starscream considers his options. He’s not too proud to beg, considering this might be a life or death situation. On the other hand, he still has his reserves left, which he can use while he searches for energon on his own. He doesn’t have to keep doing this.

“Goodbye, Knock Out,” Starscream says.

“Wait, Screamer,” Knock Out says before he closes comms. “Out of curiosity, where are you right now?”

Starscream scoffs. “Why should I tell you?”

“Because I might change my mind later and bring you some energon?”

“Or you might offer me to Lord Megatron the next time he’s angry at you.”

Knock Out sighs in fake exhaustion, probably with the sole purpose of annoying Starscream. “You can always leave before he arrives. I’ll be nice enough to warn you he’s on his way, I give you my word.”

“Because that’s worth so much,” Starscream deadpans.

“I’m sure I can get Soundwave to locate you if I tell him you called.”

Starscream’s hands curl into fists. “Fine,” he snaps, and gives Knock Out his coordinates. He ends the call without waiting for an answer.

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So, while the idea of being on the Harbinger had been excellent, Starscream had forgotten to consider how boring it would be. You don’t know how much you need some random Vehicons to boss around or an annoying medic to bicker with until you are completely alone in (half of) a spaceship.

If anybody ever asks (which is unlikely), he’ll explain that loneliness is what brought him back to the internet.

Fine, he wouldn’t admit it was loneliness. He’ll have to invent a reason, just in case anybody ever asks.

He discovers that many people have replied to the comment he’d left on that forum and that no one is happy with what he still thinks of as very good advice. He considers writing a quick apology, but decides that it’s faster and easier to make a new account and pretend he’s someone new.

It takes him a while to decide on a new username. Looking back, ‘SSeeker’ might have been too obvious. He needs something subtler, so it can’t be ‘ByeCliffjumper’ or something that references anything even remotely linked to him. He settles for SunCat after deciding that no one could possibly associate him to those words.

He browses the forum, analyzing how humans introduced themselves into these communities and designing the personality he would adopt for his online interactions. He creates a fake human life, gives it a name, an age and interests and, finally, he starts replying to people, making sure to check online that what he is saying won’t be labeled as wrong before posting.

He quickly becomes popular with the sub-groups that want to find alien life on Earth, enough that they invite him to a group chat. They say his ‘theories’ regarding mechanical alien life are fascinating (he makes sure to make them inaccurate enough that they won’t catch Soundwave’s attention) and recommend him some books on the subject. Then they recommend him some TV shows and movies that are immediately declared unimportant when he says he hasn’t seen “Star Wars”.

Starscream spends the next day watching those “Star Wars” they told him about. Seeing Darth Vader kill the Emperor is highly satisfying, so much so that he doesn’t even mind it when the Rebels win.

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A routine is key to maintaining a certain degree of normalcy. Starscream’s goes like this: wake up, refuel, look for clues of energon deposits online for five to eight hours, socialize online for two to five hours (which means “replying to some forum posts and try to come up with the most outlandish conspiracy theories possible, which for some reason are taken seriously by the humans”), watch TV for six hours (he figures he can cut down on this time and use it to follow on energon clues if he needs to, or to go get another one of his reserves), recharge and start again.

He’s sitting on the floor, halfway through the first season of “Gilmore Girls”, hoping that the Paris girl gets to kill the insufferable Rory and become the protagonist, when he hears steps behind him.

Starscream forces himself to remain relaxed so as not to tip off the intruder that he has noticed them and leans slightly forward, making it look like he’s invested in the show, and readies himself to jump as soon as the intruder gets too close. It’s probably Lord Megatron, here to drag him back to the Nemesis, which means his chances of escaping are slim to none, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try (to be precise, he’ll probably be killed if he doesn’t try, so he must).

He shouldn’t have told Knock Out where he was, he should have taken his chances and let Soundwave try to find him, he should-

“You’ve hit a new low, Screamer,” Knock Out says, and Starscream goes from mentally cursing himself to mentally cursing Knock Out.

Starscream turns around to give Knock Out the most hateful look he can, but it changes into one of confusion when he sees that Knock Out is carrying four energon cubes. He gets hungry just looking at them.

“My face is up here,” Knock Out says. Starscream looks up and narrows his eyes at him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Bringing you energon, like you asked. I thought it was obvious.”

Starscream just narrows his eyes further and waits.

Knock Out gives him the fakest innocent smile that Starscream has ever seen, and that’s counting his own early attempts to master the skill in front of a mirror, millions of years ago.

The problem with the situation is that Knock Out clearly has nothing to lose, unlike Starscream, who has to swallow his ego to say, “You want something. What is it?” He doesn’t change his expression.

“I figured I could drop by for a chat.”

“A chat,” Starscream repeats skeptically.

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“Life on the Nemesis. I thought you might want to know how your old friends are doing.” The corner or Knock Out’s mouth twitches at that, like he can hear Starscream thinking ‘What friends?’

“You’re not telling me anything useful, are you?”

“Depends on what you consider ‘useful’. For example, did you know that Airachnid is still around, despite Lord Megatron being furious at her for letting the Autobots capture you?”

Starscream narrows his eyes. “Am I supposed to be surprised? Lord Megatron keeps everyone around. He keeps you around, and you were ready to let him die when I asked you to.”

“We can say the same about how long you got to stay too.” Starscream just raises an eyebrow. “Fine, then, something more interesting.” Knock Out pretends to think for a moment. “Let’s see… did you know that Breakdown is apparently interested in Airachnid? He said he’s… intrigued by her.” To Knock Out’s credit, he almost manages to make it sound like he doesn’t care, that he’s just sharing some ridiculous thing that has happened, but the mockery in the word ‘intrigued’ is dripping with anger.

No, not anger. Something greener.

Starscream bursts out laughing.

“You’re jealous! You’re jealous of Airachnid!” he says as he laughs. “Is that why you came here? To vent?” Knock Out’s non-amused face only makes him laugh harder.

“If you’re going to be like that, I’ll leave. And I’m taking the energon.”

That gives Starscream enough motivation to try to control himself. It still takes him a minute to stop the occasional shaking from his repressed laughter.

“Ah, Knock Out, it’s so good to see you!” he says with exaggerated cheeriness as he stands up. He doesn’t look at Knock Out as he turns off the TV, because he knows that he’ll start laughing again if he does. “Welcome to the Harbinger. Please hand me those cubes and tell me all those news you wanted to share.”

“Har har, Starscream,” Knock Out deadpans, but he doesn’t withhold the fuel.

Starscream puts the energon behind himself and gestures for Knock Out to continue.

“There isn’t anything else to say.”

“You came all the way here to complain because Breakdown finds Airachnid ‘intriguing’.” He does air quotes for that; he’d learned the gesture through a TV show and had liked how useful it was. He particularly likes the way Knock Out’s eyes narrow when he does it. “So there must be something else to be said.”

Knock Out crosses his arms. Starscream raises an eyebrow.

“Fine,” Knock Out snaps. “Airachnid? Seriously? How can anybody have such bad taste?”

Starscream could point out that Knock Out is no one to talk, but he doesn’t want Knock Out getting angry and trying to take back the energon. Besides, he agrees that being interested in Airachnid is a terrible idea.

“So how did you find out?”

“One of the Vehicons told me. He heard it from another Vehicon who heard it from Breakdown himself.” Knock Out looks like he drank some bad fuel as he says that.

“And a Vehicon is a reliable source of information?” Starscream asks disbelievingly.

“CM-499 has been trying to get on my good side for ages. He’s hoping it means I’ll make a bigger effort to save him in case he’s ever in danger.”

“Will you?” Starscream asks instead of voicing his doubts that telling someone that his partner is interested in somebody else is the right way of earning said someone’s favor. He guesses that bots that were mass-produced and meant to be cannon fodder might not have much to speak of where it comes to their brain modules.

“It’ll depend on my resources.” Knock Out shrugs. “The point is, he’s reliable.”

“And now you’re jealous.”

Knock Out looks to the side and makes a vague movement with his head.

“What I don’t understand is why you’re here,” Starscream says, eyes narrowing. Is this a trap? Is Lord Megatron outside, waiting for him to lower his guard before bursting in?

“I need to vent and the Vehicons are loyal to Breakdown,” Knock Out says simply, gesturing with a hand.

“So you figured you’d come here?” Starscream doesn’t quite manage to keep the disbelief out of the question.

“I brought you energon, you can’t complain.”

“Yes I can.” Starscream grimaces as he says, “You want me to deal with your relationship troubles.”

Knock Out’s expression sours. “They’re not relationship troubles.”

Starscream scoffs. “Now you’re going to try to pretend you’re not jealous?”

“They’re not relationship troubles, Screamer.”

“Can you stop with the ‘Screamer’ thing?” Starscream doesn’t screech those words. He’s very careful to keep his tone even. “I hate it.”

“Good for you, Screamer.”

Starscream is ready to argue when something else that Knock Out just said gives him pause.

“Wait. When you say that they’re not ‘relationship troubles’… you’re being literal, aren’t you?” Starscream can’t help the mocking smile that appears on his face. “That’s it, isn’t it? There’s no relationship, you and Breakdown aren’t together.”

Knock Out’s murderous look is enough of an answer.

“You know, I always thought you were,” Starscream continues, mock-pensive, trying to school his expression back into something less amused.

“We aren’t.”

“So… you’re angry because your assistant, who you have only a strictly platonic relationship with, is interested - sorry, ‘intrigued’,” air quotes again, because he can, “by somebody else?”

“When you put it like that it sounds bad.” Knock Out uncrosses his arms and gestures at his frame. “Look at me! I’ve been flirting with him for ages and nothing. He should consider himself lucky, but instead he’s looking at Airachnid.”

Starscream considers his options. He could try to kick Knock Out off the ship, he has talked enough. He really likes that idea, but the internet told him that he should try to forge positive relationships with the people around him, and it’s very likely that the only bot that will be around him for the next year will be Knock Out, so Starscream should probably make a bit of an effort. Besides, there are so many things wrong with what Knock Out just said that he doesn’t like the idea of not telling him so.

“Knock Out, you flirt with everyone,” he says flatly. “You’ve flirted with me. I’ve seen you flirting with some Vehicons. You’ve flirted with Lord Megatron. You can’t expect Breakdown to know that you were serious when it came to flirting with him.”

Knock Out opens his mouth, raises a hand and then closes his mouth and leaves his hand awkwardly suspended in a half-formed gesture. Then he closes it into a fist and says, “I hate that you have a point.”

“Just go and tell him that you want to take him to berth. Just-” He grimaces. “Don’t tell me how it goes for you; I don’t care.”

For a moment, Knock Out only looks at Starscream, maybe considering his words. Then he turns around and starts walking away, nothing in him showing whether or not Starscream’s efforts to forge a positive relationship had helped him in any way.

“Thanks for the chat, Screamer. Take care.”

“You too.” Starscream doesn’t actually care whether or not Knock Out falls into a ditch and dies, but it’s what he’s supposed to say, right? “Thanks for the energon.” That part of the sentence, however, Starscream means fully.

Once alone, Starscream inspects the ship, making sure that nobody else is there. He looks outside, still expecting to find Lord Megatron waiting, but sees only rocks.

After the inspection is over, Starscream sits down and tries to relax, but now that there’s nothing to distract him, he starts shaking. He reminds himself that he’s safe. He’s still safe. Knock Out hasn’t betrayed him yet.

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TOPIC: Internal Screaming

BrawlingDamsel [3 months ago]: This is a very useful thing I saw in another forum I’m in, and I thought we could give it a shot here. You know how sometimes something happens and you really don’t want to think about it, but you can’t seem to be able to distract yourself? Well, if you ever need that, you can write on this board (you can write anything, a keyboard smash is fine!) and if someone on the forum is willing to, they DM you and talk to you until you feel calmer. That’s it, just a buddy to distract you, no need to discuss what happened. The only important thing is that you delete your post as soon as someone starts talking to you, or if you no longer need to be distracted. That’d be it. Let’s support each other!

SunCat [today]: AAAAAAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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>goldenTrinket : so did u watch SW?? (im here cuz of the message on the ‘internal screaming’ board, so u can delete that post)

Starscream looks at the message on his screen. He looks at the time. It hasn’t been a minute since he wrote on the ‘Internal Screaming’ board and he was about to delete what he’d written because that had been a moment of weakness. Now he has to delete it anyway because some human took pity on him. He curls his hands into fists and glares at the screen.

He deletes his message and replies to goldenTrinket.

>SunCat: I no longer need this.

After sending it he remembers he’s supposed to be “nice” in this forum.

>SunCat: Thank you.

>goldenTrinket: np. but still curious: did u watch it???

>SunCat: Yes.

>goldenTrinket: cool. what did u think?

He shouldn’t reply. He should say he has something else to do and leave. Instead, he gives his opinion on it, how fake the extraterrestrial lifeforms on it were and how some of the weapons made no sense. He has to edit his opinion before sending it, because there’s information on it that no human should be aware of and that he’s not sure he could justify as being product of his imagination.

goldenTrinket replies to that and they keep discussing the movies. He logs out once his hands stop shaking, then falls into an uneasy recharge.

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The next day is… eventful, to say the least. It starts with someone on the forum linking to a picture of what is obviously Bumblebee, but which is quickly replaced by a dancing cat. Soon, everyone who got to see it is talking about it, asking if anybody got to save it before it was deleted, and trying to decide who is to blame for that.

Starscream’s reply of “A brat with a computer who is covering up the alien’s tracks” was considered a poor joke, so he keeps himself out of the discussion, although he’s entertained enough by it to follow it.

He expects Bumblebee’s minute in the limelight to be the highlight of his day, but then the ground starts shaking and he hears what’s unmistakably the wind howling outside. There’s no other way to describe it, it sounds like something’s dying out there. Starscream still has enough of his self-preservation instincts left to know that going out to see what’s happening is a terrible idea, so he brings up a local news station and discovers that the end of the world has arrived, or at least that enough of a climatic disaster has started that it’s obvious that it can’t be natural.

If he had anything to bet, he’d put it on “It’s Lord Megatron’s fault”. He tries to call Knock Out, but he never answers, leaving Starscream to wait as the earthquakes continue and the wind does its best effort to push the Harbinger out of its current location.

Eventually, everything calms down.

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>goldenTrinket: r u alive?

>SunCat : Yes.

>goldenTrinket: r u okay? physically i mean

>SunCat: Yes.

>SunCat: And you?

>goldenTrinket: scared shitless but whole

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He hails Knock Out’s private frequency again.

“It’s nice to know you survived that,” Knock Out says by way of greeting, with only a hint of irony.

“I could say the same to you,” Starscream replies. “What did Lord Megatron do?”

“I don’t know yet. We collected some dark energon, then he put Airachnid in charge and left.”

“He left Airachnid in charge?” Starscream screeches. Seriously? Airachnid? ‘Past Traitor’ Airachnid? ‘Obviously an Eventual Traitor’ Airachnid?

“Don’t be mad, Screamer, she’s not in charge anymore.” There’s a smile in Knock Out’s tone Then he sends a video file. Starscream is reluctant to accept it, worrying it might be a virus or a tracking program, but Knock Out adds, “Soundwave had to take over,” giving Starscream a good idea of what he’s about to see.

Soundwave effortlessly defeating Airachnid quickly beats Darth Vader killing the Emperor on the list of the most satisfying things Starscream has ever seen.

“That was nice,” Starscream says, not even trying to hide his delight.

“It was better in person,” Knock Out replies. He also doesn’t bother pretending he isn’t happy about what happened.

“Now Lord Megatron will have to get rid of her,” Starscream says, matter-of-factly.

Knock Out scoffs.

“Oh, please; Lord Megatron likes his traitors, as you already know.” Despite the obvious jab, the ease with which Knock Out says that, the lack of malice (like he’s simply teasing instead of mocking), keeps Starscream from retorting with a jab of his own. “Now we truly have no chance of getting rid of her. But at least we got to see that.”

“Hm,” Starscream says, dubious. He knows what Knock Out means, but the difference between Starscream’s treachery and Airachnid’s was that he had never been so obvious and open about it. Yes, he had taken his chances when he had seen them, but he never would have dared to be so direct in front of Soundwave. That was just asking for a beatdown. “Yes, at least we got to see that.”

“I have to go, Screamer, Lord Megatron will probably be back soon. Take care, remember to refuel regularly and don’t forget that you’re due for a check-up in a month,” Knock Out says, his tone back to the detached mocking Starscream’s used to, and hangs up.

“Har har, Knock Out,” Starscream deadpans to the empty ship.

He goes outside to check for damages. The Harbinger is looking dirtier than before, but it’s still intact. No cracks on the ground, no fallen boulders, no signs of the area being unstable.

Good.

When he goes back inside he replays the video of Soundwave beating Airachnid. As he looks at it, he thinks about his conversation with Knock Out and concludes that looking for energon might not be such a smart idea when he could just take it from the Nemesis. It’d save him a lot of time.

He locates the ship and sets off.

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If he ever again thinks that trying to steal energon from the Nemesis is a good idea, he will have to remember this day.

Sure, things had been going relatively well until he’d found Fragging. Optimus. Prime. Then he’d been shot and Knock Out hadn’t answered his calls, so he’d had to call the fragging Autobots, who, instead of being grateful that he was telling them about the location of their ‘beloved’ leader, had the gall to already know what he was telling them and trying to leave him to die in the woods. And they say they have morals! It was a good thing he had more information to barter with.

So in the end, instead of energon he’d gotten wounds and Autobots. At least he’s alive. Right. What had he said? No more making potentially life-altering decisions unless 24 hours have passed since he came up with the idea. Going to the Nemesis for energon definitely counted as a life-altering decision.

Never again.

He calls Knock Out.

“You could have warned me that Optimus Prime was on board!” Starscream says as soon as Knock Out picks up.

“Excuse you, that wasn’t Optimus Prime, that was Orion Pax, Lord Megatron’s amnesiac friend.” If Starscream could, he’d punch the condescension out of Knock Out’s voice. “How could you think that a stunt like that was a good idea? I thought you wanted to survive, Screamer. That was extremely stupid. That was so stupid I think you broke a record.”

“Yes, yes,” Starscream dismisses. “You could have warned me. I need you to keep me up to date with what happens on the Nemesis.”

“I don’t care what you need; I don’t owe you anything, Screamer.”

“Then I’ll just ask Breakdown,” Starscream threatens.

“Good luck with that. If you contact him, I’m telling Lord Megatron where you are. Besides, he has already changed his personal frequency.”

Starscream thinks about that for a moment, the obvious protectiveness despite the indifferent tone.

“It wasn’t just taking him to berth, was it?” he says suspiciously. “There are actual feelings there,” he adds, more certain.

The pause before Knock Out speaks again is almost nonexistent, but it’s there.

“I really don’t want to have to train a Vehicon, Starscream.” What’s also there is a hint of anxiousness – less than a hint, really, since it’s more intuited than detected –, buried under what sounds almost like a warning, hidden behind nonchalance. If Starscream hadn’t spent a good portion of his life exploiting other bots’ weaknesses, it would have gone unnoticed.

He considers pushing. He could do it, easily, Knock Out has made himself vulnerable. Starscream could make a threat and leave before Lord Megatron arrived, leave Knock Out wondering when Starscream would return and attack, let him feel a fraction of the anxiousness Starscream has been feeling since he left. Except that that’s the sort of petty scheming that took place far too regularly on the Nemesis, and the Harbinger is supposed to be different. He’s supposed to be creating a safe place for himself.

Besides, it’s too soon to use this knowledge, better leave it for when he truly needs it.

“Yes, a Vehicon would probably make a terrible assistant,” Starscream says. “Well, I’d appreciate it if you let me know the next time something important happened on the Nemesis.”

“I’ll think about it.”

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The next day, Knock Out appears carrying four energon cubes again. He catches Starscream finishing the first season of “Gilmore Girls”, but at least this time he has the decency of not commenting.

“Since you went through all that trouble for it, I figured I’d reward your attempt with this,” Knock Out says, pointing at the energon with his chin.

Starscream makes to take it, but Knock Out twists his body and steps away.

“Now, Starscream, what do we say when someone does something nice for us?” he says, mocking.

Starscream glares. Knock Out smiles smugly.

“Thank you,” Starscream mumbles.

He’s sure he can hear Knock Out laughing on his way out.

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>SunCat: The prequels are an offense to Darth Vader’s memory.

>goldenTrinket: oh gosh. u watched the prequels. whyd u do that to urself

>goldenTrinket: quick go rewatch empire to purify ur soul

>goldenTrinket: or maybe something new??????? i still dont understand HOW youve spent ur life without seeing so many things

>goldenTrinket: have u seen the godfather??

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So… maybe Starscream neglects his routine for a few days in favor of catching up on all these movies that humans keep mentioning. In his defense, he needs to know about these things to convincingly pass as a human on the forums.

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The first thing he thinks when he sees Knock Out in the Harbinger again is that he needs to install a warning system, because one of these days the visitor will be Lord Megatron or Arcee and he’ll be dead. His second thought is that it’s really rude of Knock Out to show up without any energon this time. His third thought - and, objectively speaking, the first important one - is that Knock Out looks terrible.

It’s not the obvious kind of “terrible” – it’s not scratched paint, mud or flat tires – it’s deeper, a wrongness that unsettles Starscream: his shoulders slightly down, a hard expression, hollow eyes. His steps are still confident, but there’s no flair to his movements, they’re just necessary motions instead of a display of grace and dramatics.

Starscream swallows the question at the tip of his tongue (“What’s wrong?”) and instead says, “Something happened.”

Knock Out crosses his arms over his chest and looks at a spot by Starscream’s feet. He stays silent, his mouth slightly open like the words have frozen on their way out, and he looks… lost. Small. Fragile.

Starscream doesn’t know what to do with this. On the Nemesis he would have turned it to his advantage, he would have found out what reduced Knock Out to this estate and used it to force him into his debt. Here? He’s not going back to the Nemesis, he doesn’t need Knock Out to owe him anything and there is so much wrongness in Knock Out that Starscream’s not sure if doing anything right now is safe – for all he knows, saying the wrong thing might start a fight. Starscream really doesn’t want to fight anyone in the near future.

Finally, Knock Out looks up, stares at the wall in front of him.

“You were right.” There’s no emotion in his voice. He’s only stating a fact. Starscream never imagined Knock Out would ever say those words to him.

“About what?”

“Lord Megatron wanting to get rid of Airachnid.”

“Did he kill her?” Starscream asks hopefully.

“No. He sent Dreadwing and Breakdown to do the job.” A pause. “She escaped. Dreadwing returned. We haven’t found Breakdown yet.”

Knock Out looks at Starscream.

“You found him the last time. When MECH had him. Can you find him again?” His voice is almost firm, almost detached, almost normal, except it breaks on ‘find’ and the pleading spills out, stains the following words even though he manages to control his tone.

“That time we knew exactly what had happened to him and where he was,” Starscream says slowly, trying not to panic, because this is a kind of vulnerability he’s not comfortable with. He has seen the many ways bots can break, sometimes he has done the breaking himself, but it’s always something that happens to people he despises. Despite how annoying Knock Out might be, Starscream doesn’t despise him.

“I can give you his last known location.”

“Why don’t you go find him?” Starscream says, gesturing towards the door. He needs Knock Out to leave now, before his own feelings go from discomfort to something like pity or, even worse, sympathy.

“Because it would make things obvious.” Knock Out makes an exasperated gesture. “I can’t just- just drop everything and go down and drive around looking for Breakdown; Soundwave would notice and then Lord Megatron would know.”

There might not be a single person on the Nemesis who doesn’t know, or at least suspect, but even Starscream can tell that this isn’t the right time to point that out.

“If you’re worried about obviousness, why are you here?”

“Because you don’t count. You’re out of the Decepticons, you’re your own one-bot faction. It doesn’t matter what you do; even if they notice, they won’t think it has anything to do with me.” Knock Out tries to sound collected, but his speech still speeds up the more he speaks, until his urgency and fear are clear on the last few words.

“What about Breakdown’s signal? Can’t you track it?”

“I can’t. It went out.”

“Knock Out…” Starscream doesn’t need to finish the sentence. He only gives Knock Out a meaningful look.

“There was no body,” Knock Out says firmly. “Dreadwing told us. You know how he is about honor and duty, he wouldn’t have lied.”

“His signal is out, Knock Out. Maybe Airachnid took the body-”

“For what? Decoration?” Knock Out lets out a humorless laugh.

“You know what she’s like. You’ve heard the stories.” Airachnid is a creepy fragger that should have been killed long ago.

“There’s no proof that he’s dead. Just- go out and find him.”

“You’re in denial, Knock Out,” Starscream points out.

“I’m asking you to help me, Starscream.” The pleading spills out again, but this time Knock Out doesn’t bother patching the crack, he just lets it cover every word. “I’ll be in your debt for the rest of my life if that’s what you want. I’ll bring you energon every week. I’ll help you overthrow Megatron or take over Cybertron or- whatever you want.”

It’s tempting. It’s so tempting that Starscream considers it, but there’s something about Knock Out’s obvious despair that makes him feel almost sick about it, which in turns makes him feel disgusted for taking that into account.

“Get out of here, Knock Out. I’m not risking my safety over your dead assistant.”

Starscream’s words have a strange effect: Knock Out blinks once, makes his expression neutral and stands straighter, yet he seems to be crumbling. It lasts a second; then he’s giving Starscream a tight smile and turning on his heel.

“Thanks for nothing, Screamer. Maybe I’ll tell Lord Megatron about you,” he says as he walks away.

Starscream forces himself to stay still as he watches Knock Out leave. A part of him wants to immediately open a groundbridge and flee, another part is telling him that he should call for Knock Out to return, even though he has no idea what he’d tell him, just in case he can, somehow, make some of the wrongness go away.

As soon as he stops hearing Knock Out’s steps, Starscream grabs all his energon supplies and opens a groundbridge to the other side of the country.

Chapter Text

One thing they never tell you about hiding is how incredibly boring it is. Yes, you might be scared out of your mind when you do it, but after an hour or two the fear dilutes and you’re left looking at your hands and pondering the risks of going out.

It’s been three hours since Starscream left the Harbinger and he’s desperate to return, because he’s sure that the boredom is going to kill him. He brings up the Harbinger’s security feed and watches the footage starting from the moment he left, but there are no signs of activity. He pushes the feed to a corner of his processor, sets an alarm in case movement is detected, and starts working on burying the energon he brought.

All of that occupies a small amount of time. The sun’s still up and he has nothing to do. If this was a normal day on the Harbinger he would be watching a movie, or messaging someone from the forum, maybe he would have even considered calling Knock Out to catch up–

Right. Knock Out is the reason he’s here, bored out of his mind. Has he already followed through on his threat to tell Lord Megatron about Starscream? Although, to be fair, it had been less of a threat and more like the promise of one.

What could Knock Out get from ratting out Starscream? Revenge, yes, but the risks are too high; Lord Megatron might punish him just for keeping the secret, and Knock Out would be left without the only real advantage he has over Starscream (the energon doesn’t count, Starscream could find it on his own, he’s sure of it). On the other hand, not telling on him would be a display of weakness that would give Starscream the advantage.

He starts pacing, going through the security footage again. Either Knock Out hasn’t said anything yet, or Lord Megatron hadn’t cared – if this ends up being the case, Starscream will almost feel bad for Knock Out.

On the fifth hour, Starscream receives a message from Knock Out. Just a set of coordinates.

He’s already out of the Harbinger. He might as well look for Breakdown anyway.

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Remotely operated groundbridges are, by far, the best part of the Harbinger. He just went from being bored out of his mind on the East Coast to being appalled by Dreadwing’s and Breakdown’s lack of tactical thinking on the Western part of the same country, all in less than three minutes.

Because it is appalling. He looks around and double checks the coordinates, just to ensure that he’s in the right place, because, a forest? They tried to kill Airachnid, who has extra legs, is extremely agile and can climb trees without problem, in a forest? Airachnid, who can use her lower body as a drill, was brought to be executed in a place with soft ground? What were they thinking? They should have poisoned her energon rations. They should have made Knock Out inject something in her during her next check-up. They should have groundbridged her to the Arctic.

They should have put Soundwave in charge of the execution.

A part of Starscream feels that if Breakdown is dead, he had it coming just for being part of such a stupid plan. Another part of himself is telling him that, while Breakdown deserved whatever he got, Knock Out looked terrible and Starscream never wants to be made so uncomfortable by someone’s unhappiness again, so he needs Knock Out to go back to his smug, vain self as soon as possible. A third part of himself is busy worrying over the fact that he’d been affected by Knock Out’s unhappiness; since when does he care what happens to anyone but himself? He hadn’t cared when Thundercracker and Skywarp died and now he’s worrying about Knock Out being sad?

If Starscream thinks about it, it makes perfect sense for him to be concerned over Knock Out, the mech that had brought him energon in two separate occasions and seemed willing to continue doing so. It makes sense for Starscream to be concerned over the well-being of his main source of fuel, considering it might potentially affect Starscream’s own well-being, a.k.a., the only thing that matters. Yes. That’s it. Starscream isn’t concerned over Knock Out, he’s concerned over his energon supply.

A quick inspection of the area reveals absolutely nothing but some webs and some energon-stained dirt, the usual leftovers from a fight against Airachnid. Frankly, Starscream hadn’t really expected to find Breakdown’s corpse, but he’d hoped that there would be a clue of some sort somewhere - whoever took Breakdown made sure to cover their tracks.

That gives him pause. If Breakdown had been okay, he would have returned to the Nemesis (he would have returned to Knock Out – no matter what Knock Out had said regarding their relationship status, Starscream had noticed ages ago that those two were fond of each other). If Airachnid had taken him, she wouldn’t have bothered covering her tracks; she would have just drilled and left her pursuers behind. The only ones who would go through the effort of taking Breakdown and not leaving a trace are humans, and there’s only one group of humans who would take a dead Cybertronian and not post pictures of the discovery online.

Starscream doesn’t like where his train of thought is going. Thankfully, a groundbridge interrupts him.

He raises his arms and trains his missiles on the new arrival, a Vehicon that quickly raises his hands and shakes them.

“I’m unarmed! Please don’t shoot me!”

Starscream looks past the Vehicon, but nobody else seems to be coming.

“What are you doing here?” Starscream asks.

“I’m just looking for someone, Commander Starscream,” the Vehicon says, voice trembling. Starscream had missed being called that. “Please don’t kill me.”

Starscream narrows his eyes and looks past the Vehicon again. There’s another Vehicon standing on the groundbridge now, his gun pointing at Starscream. Considering the Vehicons’ generally poor marksmanship, Starscream isn’t particularly worried, but if he kills anyone he might attract Lord Megatron’s attention, so he lowers his arms and gestures with his head for the second Vehicon to step forward.

The first Vehicon tentatively lowers his hands.

“Thank you for not shooting me, sir,” he says, still shaky.

“There was no point.” Starscream looks at the second Vehicon. “And you, why are you here?”

“Same reason as him. We’re looking for someone.”

“Who?” Starscream asks. He can’t let the Vehicons know that he’s aware of what’s happening on the Nemesis.

“Breakdown. He went missing yesterday during a mission with Commander Dreadwing and Airachnid. We fear the worst.”

“You fear the worst?” Starscream raises an eyebrow.

“He was- he is a good leader,” Vehicon #1 says, while the second one nods solemnly.

“Are you here out of your own initiative or is Lord Megatron expecting results?” Starscream glances at the groundbridge. It’s empty.

“Lord Megatron doesn’t know we’re here.”

“Soundwave probably does. It’s only a matter of time before Lord Megatron knows as well.” The Vehicons tense and look back at the groundbridge. “So much loyalty,” Starscream sneers. “Do you think Breakdown would have done the same for you?”

“It’s not really about that, sir,” Vehicon #1 says. “It’s just… something we felt we had to do.” He shrugs.

Starscream makes a non-committing sound and looks around.

“You’re free to search the area. I don’t think you’ll find him, but I guess you won’t lose anything but time by trying.”

“Thank you, sir,” the Vehicons say in unison and quickly split up to search.

Starscream sits down and watches them work, just in case they stumble upon anything he missed (unlikely). The Vehicons are meticulous, they inspect every inch of the ground, check behind trees and then climb them, re-inspect their respective areas and then they go search in the same area that their partner just looked over. Eventually, they give up.

“That… was a waste of time,” says Vehicon #2.

“We couldn’t know unless we tried,” replies Vehicon #1, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Fair enough. But it’s still wasted time,” Vehicon #2 says, crossing his arms as well.

Starscream resets his vocalizer to catch their attention.

“Perhaps you should argue after you’ve returned to the Nemesis? You’re here without permission, aren’t you?” Starscream pauses for effect and relishes the Vehicons’ unease, how they can’t help but glance at the groundbridge. “Soundwave might decide to do something about that if you don’t hurry back.”

“Right. We should do that,” Vehicon #2 says.

“Thank you for the advice, Commander Starscream,” Vehicon #1 adds.

“It’s not advice, it’s common sense.” Starscream stands up. “I’m beginning to realize it’s a rare trait among Decepticons, so I’ll say this plainly: don’t mention to anyone that you saw me today, because if you do, I will know, and then I will find you and make you wish I’d shot you today. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Vehicon #1 says, while Vehicon #2 just tilts his head and gives off some very unimpressed vibes.

“Good. Now get out of my sight,” Starscream says, gesturing towards the groundbridge.

Once alone, he checks the area again. Just in case.

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He doesn’t inform Knock Out of the results of his search, since doing so would show that the threat had worked and Starscream won’t give Knock Out the satisfaction of knowing himself at an advantage. This means he can’t return to the Harbinger and he has to continue being bored in the middle of nowhere, the Harbinger’s security feed running in a corner of his processor.

Eventually he concludes that he can probably connect himself to the internet to download some movies or TV shows without being noticed; humans are big fans of internet piracy, one more system downloading information isn’t anything remarkable.

He spends the rest of the day watching the second season of “Gilmore Girls”. The Rory girl continues being insufferable, Paris is a shining beacon of potential in the sea of scrap that is humanity, and the new teenage love interest annoys Starscream to no end, but less than the previous one did.

The next day is dedicated to finishing season 2 and watching season 3.

On the third day, after finishing the third season and reviewing the Harbinger’s security footage for the umpteenth time to once again confirm that absolutely no one has been on the ship since he left, Starscream concludes that no one’s coming for him and that he can probably go home.

Thank Primus. He only has four seasons left of the show and he doesn’t want to finish it so soon. He needs his routine back.

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The first thing he does once back is to check the surroundings of the Harbinger for traps. Then he checks every room for signs of intruders. Finally, he checks his DMs on the forum. There’s one from goldenTrinket recommending him some music. He puts it on the ship’s speakers and looks over everything again, expecting Lord Megatron to appear from behind some machinery to attack him and taunt him for thinking he could hide. But no, the ship is empty, Knock Out had stayed silent and he’s still safe.

He can’t stop pacing anyway.

He walks in front of the lab for a third time and distractedly looks inside, at the five protoforms. He steps closer to examine them. Maybe there is some way to turn them into his protectors? He could clone himself, force them to watch for Lord Megatron’s imminent arrival, make them fight him while Starscream himself escapes through a groundbridge. He considers the control panel, toying with the idea, and has to force himself to leave the lab. Life-altering decisions take 24 hours and, taking into account that this would create five more of himself, well… maybe he should give it some extra time. As much as he likes himself, he wouldn’t be his first pick for a team.

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TOPIC: Internal Screaming – New reply at 00:40 by goldenTrinket

Starscream stares at the screen. He looks at the time. 01:03. He clicks on the thread.

goldenTrinket [today]: AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz

He keeps staring at the screen. He logs out of the forum and starts pacing. There’s a sinking feeling in his tanks that he should DM her – he owes her for talking to him the only time he’d written on that thread.

There’s also the fact that he thinks he might be a little bit, just slightly, concerned. Not too much, just the normal level of concern that you feel for someone who messages you frequently to share animal videos and recommend movies, TV shows and music, and hasn’t tried to get any personal information in the process. It’s an almost nonexistent level of concern, yes, but that’s already too much.

He shouldn’t DM her, what if that makes him keep caring? On the other hand, he doesn’t like being in debt to anyone, especially to a human.

He logs in again. She hasn’t deleted her reply on the thread yet.

>SunCat: I’m bored. Entertain me. (This is because of the message on the ‘Internal Screaming’ board.)

>goldenTrinket: i feel like ur always bored. i always have to b telling u what to watch (thank u)

>SunCat: Not always. And that’s only because I’d never had so much free time before. (You’re welcome.)

>goldenTrinket: dont u have any hobbys??

>SunCat: Plotting world domination.

>goldenTrinket: cool. mine’s plotting elaborate jewel heists lol

>SunCat: Really?

>goldenTrinket: no jk

>goldenTrinket: (or am i??????)

>goldenTrinket: what about u? r u really “plotting world domination”?

>SunCat: Yes and no. I don’t want Earth, I want another planet.

>goldenTrinket: whats wrong w/ earth??

>SunCat: Humans.

>goldenTrinket: wow thats deep

>goldenTrinket: so whats ur plan?? steal a rocket find an empty planet and settle there??

>SunCat: I haven’t really thought of that part. I was hoping somebody else would conquer it and then I could just get rid of them and take their place.

>goldenTrinket: dude thatplan is so wrong… like… u know that people would object right???? u cant go and murder the leader because his/her/their followers would rebel against u

>SunCat: I’m still working on it.

>goldenTrinket: u do that

>goldenTrinket: can i move to ur planet when u have it?

>SunCat: If you can find a way to survive in it, I might let you.

>goldenTrinket: cool. i’ll just steal a spacesuit from nasa. want me to steal one for u??

>SunCat: I’m fine, but thank you for the offer.

>goldenTrinket: ur welcome. can u get that planet soon? i wanna move there now

>SunCat: I’m trying; I’ll let you know how it goes.

>goldenTrinket: thx

>goldenTrinket: hey who else is gonna be in ur planet??? u dont have to answer

Starscream’s fingers pause over the keyboard. He doesn’t think there’s anyone he would like to have on Cybertron with him. Maybe Skyfire? Ah, but Starscream has no idea where he is, or even if he’s still alive. Pit, by what he remembers, he wasn’t even going by ‘Skyfire’ anymore.

Hm. Well, considering he’d brought him energon twice, he figures he can let Knock Out stay on Cybertron.

>SunCat: Maybe a doctor. It’d be useful to have one.

>goldenTrinket: thats it??

>SunCat: Yes, that’s it.

>goldenTrinket: can i bring some peple? i promise theyr nice

>SunCat: I’m not yet sure I will let you live in my planet and you’re already trying to bring more people to it?

>goldenTrinket: planets r big! u wont even have to see them

>SunCat: I’ll think about it.

>goldenTrinket: thx

Starscream crosses his arms and taps his fingers. He re-reads the conversation.

Maybe he should call Knock Out and find out if some of the wrongness has gone away. There’s no shame in admitting that he’s concerned over the wellbeing of their energon supplier; any rational bot would be.

But what will he do if Knock Out is just as he was days ago? What do you do with broken pieces you can’t use nor discard?

Perhaps he’ll be better off if he never talks to Knock Out again.

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As Starscream looks at his dwindling energon reserves, he congratulates himself on not having tried to clone himself. How was he going to feed five more mechs? He knows he should go out to look for more energon, but he’s reluctant to go for his next buried reserve. He also knows he should be trying to use the internet to find more deposits instead of wasting his time with cat videos and TV shows (he was tragically unsuccessful in his attempts to make the remaining four seasons of “Gilmore Girls” last - he finished them in a week and, worst of all, Rory survived), but he doesn’t feel like it. The highlight of his day is when someone replies to him on the forum, or when he gets a message from goldenTrinket.

A part of his processor insists that he should be doing something. It’s not more specific than that, it only says he should do something with all the time in his hands, and after a whole day of having that thought running around his head, he decides to dismantle the protoforms. He still thinks they’d be a good source of spare parts, but if he’s ever in an emergency he might not have the time to extract said spare parts from the protoforms, so he should just get them now.

He puts some music on the speakers and sets to work.

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>SunCat: I’ve decided you can live on my planet.

>goldenTrinket: awesome. gonna go steal that spacesuit now

>goldenTrinket: did u listen to the music i told u?

>SunCat: I did. It was terrible.

>goldenTrinket: how dare u

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Since he still needs to keep the illusion that he’s far away from the US, Starscream decides to make a trip to the Faroe Islands to recover another one of his hidden energon cubes.

He liked Grenada better, but the Faroe Islands still rank higher than the Nemesis by virtue of also being Cybertronian-free.

He almost crashes into Knock Out when he flies back to the Harbinger – he’s waiting at the other side of the groundbridge, arms crossed and four energon cubes piled next to him. Starscream barely manages to slow down, transform back to root mode and stumble to a stop in front of him.

“Not your best landing, Screamer, but I’ll be nice and give you a three out of ten,” Knock Out says in mock sympathy, head slightly tilted back so he can make it seem like he’s looking down at Starscream.

“You?!” Starscream says and finds that he can’t think of anything to add that will be safe, because all the sentences that come to his mind are about the horrible discomfort he’d felt regarding Knock Out’s obvious grief. He’s not yet ready to think about that for more than a second. He’ll never be.

“Now, now, that’s no way to treat a visitor,” Knock Out says, raising a hand and waving his finger.

Starscream steps back and eyes him suspiciously. He looks far too normal for Starscream’s taste; he seems calm, the aura of smugness he gives off is the same as always, and there even seems to be a spark in his eyes.

“Why are you here?”

“I heard that you went looking for my assistant after that little chat we had the other day, so I brought you a reward for your efforts.” Knock Out gestures towards the energon cubes with a flourish. That movement seems normal too, yet there’s something that makes Starscream nervous.

“The Vehicons told you,” Starscream says to distract himself.

“Who else?”

“I’m killing them the next time I see them.”

Knock Out scoffs. “Can you tell the Vehicons apart from each other?”

“I’ll find them somehow.” Or maybe he can kill every Vehicon he finds until somebody gives up the right ones.

“Listen, Screamer, as fun as I think it would be to watch you try to identify the exact Vehicons you’re supposed to murder, I must point out that you can’t kill them.”

“Why not? It’s not like there’s a shortage of Vehicons.”

“Sure, but if you murder them for telling me they saw you, people will know that we’ve been talking,” Knock Out says condescendingly.

“No one has to know that that’s the reason I killed them,” Starscream says, imitating Knock Out’s tone.

“What, you’ll make everyone think you were in the mood to kill two specific Vehicons?” Knock Out raises an eyebrow.

“Do you have a better suggestion?” Starscream challenges, crossing his arms.

“Yes, just don’t kill them. Especially Celestina, he’s a great source of information.”

“Who?”

“Celestina, the Vehicon. He used to go by CM-499.” Starscream looks at him blankly. “I know I’ve told you about him, Screamer, you should pay attention when I talk.”

Starscream’s hands twitch with the urge to punch out Knock Out’s condescending tone. If there’s one thing he truly misses about being Lord Megatron’s second-in-command, it’s that Knock Out couldn’t talk to him like this.

“When did that Vehicon earn a name?” Starscream asks instead of trying to fight Knock Out. The internet said that you had to stop the cycle of violence at some point.

“He didn’t. He took it on his own,” Knock Out says, shrugging.

“Are you going to make me ask you about everything you say to get the whole story or are you going to tell me what’s happened on the Nemesis?” Starscream says very, very slowly, trying not to show the full extent of his exasperation.

“Fine.”

Knock Out rolls his eyes and starts telling him about how an Insecticon army had attacked the Nemesis, intent on killing Lord Megatron, and how they’d suddenly just stopped fighting and had pledged their allegiance to him. That, apparently, they’d been under Airachnid’s control, but that their freedom meant she was no longer active (she might be dead or unconscious, or she might have simply changed her mind about killing Lord Megatron, they couldn’t know for sure). That the Vehicons had realized that Insecticons had names while they didn’t, which they hadn’t liked at all, so they’d decided to get their own.

Starscream subtly watches Knock Out as he talks, looking for any sign of the wrongness.  He speaks at a slightly higher speed than usual, almost unnoticeable, and sometimes the way he moves his hands is too sharp, like there’s an undercurrent of energy that he can’t control. He seems almost normal, except when he says Airachnid’s name, because hate drips from the word and makes his eyes light up with the emotion, and suddenly Starscream recognizes that spark he’d seen before in Knock Out’s eyes as rage.

“But… ‘Celestina’ is not a Cybertronian name,” Starscream says after Knock Out has finished recounting the latest events, reaching for what seems to be the only safe part of the story. “Where did he get that?”

“I don’t know. But all of them are taking human names.” Knock Out makes a face and adds, “And wearing nametags.”

“Nametags,” Starscream flatly repeats.

“Yes, nametags.” Knock ex-vents heavily. “Guess who had to solder them to each Vehicon?”

“Sounds like you’ve been busy.”

“More than ever. Between the nametags and the fact that not a day goes by without a Vehicon and an Insecticon fighting, I’ve barely had a moment to think. I haven’t recharged properly in ages,” he whines.

Knock Out glances at Starscream and blinks, and suddenly he goes from careful detachment to extreme attention, eyes narrowing as he leans forwards to study Starscream’s frame.

Starscream takes a step back and glances downwards, trying to figure out what Knock Out’s looking at.

“Screamer,” Knock Out starts, making a vague gesture in Starscream’s direction, “when was the last time you took a shower?”

Starscream takes another step back.

“What does it matter?”

“This ship has washracks right there,” Knock Out says, pointing at a wall behind which there definitely aren’t any washracks. “There’s no excuse for you to look so…” He pauses; Starscream doesn’t know if it’s for effect or because he’s struggling to find the right word. “Filthy,” Knock Out finally says, looking disgusted. Without changing his expression, he continues, “Unpolished. Grimy. Unkempt. Disastrous. Calami-”

Starscream raises his hands. “Okay, I get it! Do you have a point or do you just enjoy insulting me?”

“Yes.” Starscream gives him his best murderous look. “Washracks. Now.”

“I don’t think so,” Starscream says, crossing his arms.

“Doctor’s orders. You look terrible.” His lip curls in displeasure. “Right now you are an offense to decency and good taste.”

Starscream is about to complain. He’s ready to stand his ground and fight Knock Out if he has to, but he stops himself when he raises a hand to make a gesture and notices that it does, in fact, look terrible; there’s dirt on his fingers and grime in his joints. He looks down and sees his feet caked in mud. His finish looks dull and there are scratches and dents from that last battle against the Autobots. He can’t remember the last time he bothered cleaning himself up.

“I hate that you’re right,” he mutters, crossing his arms again, hiding his hands.

Knock Out smirks and gestures at the same wall he’d pointed at before. “Please go shower, for my eyes’ sake.”

“That’s the lab you’re pointing at,” Starscream notes.

“You get my point,” Knock Out says, waving his hand dismissively. “Now go.”

“While you’re still here?”

“I’m not leaving until I’m sure you look decent again.” Knock Out crosses his arms as well.

“You just don’t want to go back to deal with the Vehicons and the Insecticons,” Starscream accuses.

“Can you blame me?”

“I guess not. But don’t touch anything,” Starscream says, letting his arms drop, and starts walking away.

“No invitation for me to join you?” Knock Out says in a flirty tone.

Starscream can’t help the look of disgust that crosses his face. He looks back at Knock Out to let him see it.

“Too familiar?” Knock Out says, cringing. He’s actually cringing. This speaks of a level of self-awareness that Starscream had never believed him capable of.

“Too familiar,” Starscream says, nodding and still making a face.

Knock Out runs a hand over his face and sighs.

“I’ve been trying to tone it down since the first time I was here.” He crosses his arms again, looks at the floor. “I guess I’m still learning.”

Starscream turns to face Knock Out fully. If he wanted to, he could bring the conversation to the last time Knock Out had been there. They’re on the brink of falling into a serious conversation, all he has to do is take the last step, but he doesn’t want to. He never wants to deal with that, he has enough with his own problems.

They stretch the silence; when the moment for a serious talk has passed and there’s only awkwardness left, Knock Out looks up and says, “I thought you were taking a shower, Screamer.”

“Yes, yes, I’m going,” Starscream says, resuming his walk to the washracks.

Once there, he takes his time scrubbing himself down, then he works on the dents. There isn’t anything he can do about the scratches, but at least now he doesn’t look like he crashed into a mountain. He spends over two hours fixing his appearance, half out of a need to be meticulous and half out of hope that Knock Out will be gone if he takes long enough.

What he finds once out of the washracks is Knock Out watching an episode of “Glee”.

Knock Out turns to look at him, alerted by his footsteps.

“Screamer, do I need to stage an intervention?” he says, pointing at the singing humans.

Starscream walks closer to get a better look at the screen. Then he pushes Knock Out aside and checks the file name.

“Considering that this is episode three and that you’re halfway through it, I don’t think you have the right to judge me,” he says, turning to look at Knock Out, who shrugs.

“I was curious about whether or not I’d feel less murderous after the first episode.”

“And then you wanted to know if you’d feel less murderous on the third one?” Starscream deadpans.

Knock Out pushes Starscream aside and keeps watching the show. Starscream pushes him again and, after a while, they both settle in front of the screen to finish watching the episode.

At some point, Starscream catches Knock Out humming.

“What? It’s a catchy song,” Knock Out says at Starscream’s judging face.

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>SunCat: “Glee” makes me feel murderous.

>goldenTrinket: chanel that into ur world domination plans

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TOPIC: MANHATTAN!!! NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

BrawlingDamsel [3 minutes ago]: Guys, I’m in Manhattan right now and I took this picture of the sky because it was looking pretty and don’t you think that looks like a spaceship? Guys, I’m not ready to make contact

Starscream looks at the picture. No matter how he looks at it, that’s the Nemesis.

SunCat [now]: Get out of there immediately.

He’s not sure why he writes that, but he does. It might be because BrawlingDamsel is also one of those people Starscream doesn’t despise, if only by virtue of being a member of the forum and, therefore, somewhat responsible for keeping Starscream from dying of boredom.

Shortly after, the Harbinger’s computers pick up on Decepticon teams being dispatched to four different places. This practically screams ‘relics’.

He prepares the groundbridge. This definitely counts as a life-altering decision, but the relics won’t be there in 24 hours. Here’s hoping the universe doesn’t find some way to make him regret this decision.

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He doesn’t make it a hundred meters out of the groundbridge when he gets shot out of the sky by Dreadwing and some Vehicons. Thank you, universe.

Well, it could have been worse: if Knock Out hadn’t mentioned that Dreadwing was around, Starscream would have thought that it was Skyquake, brought back to life through mysterious (and probably messed-up) ways, which might have led to some awkwardness. After his latest encounter with Arcee, the last thing Starscream wants is for another bot who doesn’t like him to find out he was somewhat involved in the death of a loved one.

He tries to talk his way out of the situation, but he ends up cuffed and shoved along for the relic search. Then Optimus Prime shows up, because clearly Starscream’s day hasn’t been bad enough.

If there’s one advantage to being a prisoner, though, it’s that you get to see how your former team does in the fight and, frankly? The Vehicons could do with some target practice. Optimus Prime is huge and, somehow, none of them manages to hit him, not even when two of them get closer, which in turn only gets them killed. Amazing. He’s starting to see why they’d failed to win against six bots despite their superior resources.

Optimus Prime and Dreadwing fight each other, fall off a cliff and, for a few seconds, there’s only a very awkward silence.

One the Vehicons resets his vocalizer. “Commander Starscream, what are you doing here?” he asks, without lowering the gun he’s pointing at Starscream’s head.

Starscream turns to look at the Vehicon, eyes narrowing, trying to remember why the voice sounds familiar. Then he looks down and sees a small piece of metal with the word ‘Celestina’ on it, soldered to the Vehicon’s chest.

“You’re one of the Vehicons that went looking for Breakdown,” Starscream says.

The Vehicon – Celestina – stands straighter and nods.

“Yes, that’s me. Thank you for remembering me, sir,” he says.

Starscream shrugs. He can’t tell the truth.

“I was there too,” the other Vehicon says coldly. Starscream turns to look at his nametag: Silja.

“Yes, I remember you as well,” Starscream lies. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing at the nametag.

“Our names. We’ve been told we’re difficult to tell apart,” Celestina says.

Understatement of the century.

“When did you earn names?” Starscream asks for the sake of appearances. Knock Out will have to thank him for making sure that no one can find out that they’ve been talking to each other.

“We haven’t,” Silja says, adjusting the position of his gun so it’s pointing at the side of Starscream’s head instead of at some point next to it. “We just took them.”

“You just took identities?”

“You’re talking too much,” Silja huffs. “We should keep searching for the relic.”

“Well, we can do that,” Starscream says in his friendliest tone, which sadly still sounds too much like smug condescension for his taste, “but I think it’ll be in everyone’s best interest if you let me go now.”

“Are you threatening us?” Silja says, letting his gun’s muzzle rest against Starscream’s temple. He shrinks in his spot and raises his arms in front of his face.

“It’s not a threat! I’m bound!” Starscream says. He shakes his wrists to bring attention to the cuffs. “I was being practical!”

“Practical!?”

“Listen to me.” Starscream lowers his arms and tries to regain his composure, but the gun that’s still pressed against his head makes his voice come out slightly trembling. “If Optimus Prime survived that fight, he’ll go looking for the relic, he’ll find us and he’ll kill you. Both of you.” For added effect, he points towards the dead Vehicons lying a few meters away from them. “While I’ll probably be spared because I still know enough Decepticon secrets to be worth something.”

“What if Dreadwing wins?”

Starscream raises an eyebrow. “Please remind me how long we’ve spent trying to kill Prime and how successful we’ve been at it.”

The Vehicons look at each other and Celestina lowers his gun.

“How do we know you won’t try to kill us as soon as we unbind you?” he asks.

“I didn’t kill you in the forest, why would I do it now?”

“He’s got a point,” Celestina says, tilting his head and turning towards Silja.

“Yes, but…” Silja presses the gun harder against Starscream’s head, forcing him to take a step to the side in order to remain upright. “You’ve never respected us. You’re an enemy to the Deception cause. You’re as bad as the other superiors.”

“Maybe,” Starscream says, finally managing to control his voice, “but I’m no longer your superior. I’m neutral now and I’m trying to solve this situation in a way that ends with all of us alive.”

Silja keeps the gun up for a moment, then, cursing, he lowers it and reaches for Starscream’s restraints.

“You should probably throw yourselves to the ground and pretend I overpowered you,” Starscream says before transforming and flying away.

For the first time in years, things go smoothly for him. He finds the relic encased in ice in a human military base, where some humans pathetically try to stop him with their primitive, inferior weapons. While they waste their time trying to hurt him, he chips away at the ice until it’s small enough to carry, then flies away again. Once he’s far enough, he finishes taking the relic out of the ice and is rewarded with the Apex Armor.

Thank you, universe.

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To be honest, Starscream’s curious about what might have been at the other three places where teams were dispatched, so he calls Knock Out.

“I’ll call you later,” Knock Out grits out, and hangs up immediately, leaving Starscream to stare at the wall in stunned indignation.

To distract himself, he checks the forum. The pictures that BrawlingDamsel had posted are gone, to everyone’s surprise. BrawlingDamsel says that the pictures are gone from his computer as well, and the thread has devolved into an argument between those who think the pictures are genuine and those who think that BrawlingDamsel was trying to fool everyone.

>goldenTrinket: what do u think about the pictures????

>goldenTrinket: i mean u gotta believe theyr real rihg????? u told him to leav manhatatan immediately

Starscream squints at the messages, wondering how goldenTrinket’s spelling could have become even more atrocious than usual.

>goldenTrinket: damsel’s a super hoest guy u gota belive him is he says he saw soemthing

>SunCat: Are you trying to defend your friend’s reputation to me?

>goldenTrinket: that sounds so nobel. but yeh???

>SunCat: I believe him. That looked real to me. In fact, I think I have seen something similar before, but I don’t have any proof.

>goldenTrinket: was it deleted like damsel’s??????

>SunCat: No, I simply didn’t take any pictures.

>goldenTrinket: oh. booooooooooooooooooooooo

>goldenTrinket: thx for believing him

Starscream crosses his arms and looks at the message. This human has thanked him for a variety of meaningless things and he keeps wondering why. He hasn’t done anything; he has simply told her what she wanted to hear in order to keep his ‘nice’ personality, and even what he has said isn’t worthy of thanks – they are just words on a screen, she can’t even tell if he means anything he has written.

>SunCat: You’re welcome.

Well, for all he knows, she doesn’t mean anything she writes either, so he shouldn’t think about it.

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He doesn’t hear from Knock Out that day, but the mech in question strolls into the Harbinger the next afternoon like he owns the place – an attitude probably warranted by the four energon cubes he’s carrying. Starscream can’t kick him out for having been extremely rude less than 24 hours ago.

He’s also carrying what looks like a first aid kit.

“What’s that for?” Starscream asks, frowning at the small box.

Knock tsks. “We need to work on your manners, Screamer. Why not start with ‘Hello, Knock Out, it’s so kind of you to come here to visit me’?”

“Because ‘kindness’ is not a word I can associate with you?” Starscream replies, his suspicious gaze moving from the box to Knock Out.

“You wound me, Screamer,” Knock Out says, leaving the cubes and the kit on the ground. Then he puts his hands on his chest and dramatically repeats, “You wound me,” which only makes Starscream snort.

“Fine,” he says, amused. “Hello, Knock Out. So nice of you to drop by.”

Knock Out shakes his head and picks up the first aid kit.

“I heard Dreadwing report that he and some Vehicons shot you down yesterday. I thought you might need some medical attention,” he says nonchalantly.

“Really?”

“I was already bringing energon, there was no reason not to see to any wounds you might have.” He says it easily, like being there isn’t an effort and a risk. Starscream doesn’t trust that tone.

“I’m touched, Knock Out, that sounds almost kind of you,” Starscream says, mock-touched.

“Well, it’s also as thanks for not killing Celestina. He’s my best ally among the Vehicons.”

Now that makes more sense.

Starscream raises an eyebrow. “Your best ally or the only one?”

“Does it matter?”

Starscream shrugs and goes to get the energon, but Knock Out stops him with a hand to his shoulder and forces him to stay still as he looks him over for damage.

“You seem fine,” Knock Out says, letting him go.

Starscream doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing.

“I can take care of myself, doctor.”

“Could have fooled me.” Some of Knock Out’s good humor seems to vanish. He puts a hand on his hip and says, “What were you doing in the Antarctic yesterday?”

“I felt like going on a potentially deadly excursion,” Starscream deadpans. “What do you think I was doing? I was relic-hunting, just like everybody else!”

“Did you think that through?” Knock Out asks, still serious, not falling into the loud argument Starscream wants to start.

“What are you implying?”

“I’m saying that you shouldn’t have gone.” Knock Out speaks slowly, carefully, like he wants to make sure that every word makes it through Starscream’s helm into his processor. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the fact that you were there proves that, somehow, you have access to Decepticon intel, which means that either someone on the Nemesis is in contact with you, or that you have a computer that’s connected to the Nemesis.”

Realization feels like the entire planet collapsing on him.

Starscream takes a step back and tries not to shake. He had practically signaled his location to Soundwave; soon Lord Megatron will be here and he’ll see the energon, review the security feed, and know that Knock Out has been here, and both of them will be dead and it will be Starscream’s fault.

He thinks he’s going to be sick, but suddenly there are hands steadying him and Knock Out telling him to look at him.

“Get it together, Starscream,” Knock Out says, and the contrast between the harshness of the order and the almost soft way in which Knock Out says it, like he’s making a suggestion to a good friend about something irrelevant, is almost enough to make Starscream laugh. “Come on, look at me, I’m going to talk and I want you to focus on my voice. Don’t think about anything else. Nod if you understood that.”

Starscream is shaking, so he’s not sure if his nod is noticeable, but Knock Out starts talking. He talks about paint brands, which ones are better, which ones can be easily stolen, which ones he hates. He talks until Starscream has stopped shaking, then he lets go of Starscream’s arms and keeps talking as Starscream busies himself with self-reproach for the moment of weakness, he keeps talking when Starscream steps away and grabs the energon cubes, and, still talking, he follows Starscream when he goes to put the energon in storage.

“You should go,” Starscream says, not looking at Knock Out, bracing himself for a jab, for a comment about his patheticness, for the inevitable mocking of his inability to deal with the consequences of his stupid decisions.

“So soon?” Knock Out asks, with a hint of amusement that has Starscream readying a hand to hit him. “I’d been hoping we could watch the next episode of that show from the other day.”

That makes Starscream look at Knock Out, who is smiling like he hadn’t just suggested putting themselves through forty-five minutes of- forty-five minutes of- Starscream is unable to come up with a good comparison, but the point is, it’s a bad idea.

“Why?”

“I want to see what happens next.”

Starscream narrows his eyes, bracing himself for the punchline, but after waiting for a few seconds Knock Out shrugs and goes to the computer.

Later, as Knock Out hums along to the songs, Starscream takes the opportunity to watch him. Now that he has shown weakness around Knock Out, he needs something to level the field, but Knock Out is still looking angry but relatively normal, much like the last time he’d been there, which doesn’t give Starscream anything to work with and brings back that awkward feeling of concern that he doesn’t want to deal with.

Knock Out leaves after the episode ends without alluding to Starscream’s freak out. Starscream hates that he’s somewhat thankful for that, especially considering that he probably overreacted. Yes, he had been extremely foolish in going for the relic, but now that he has the Apex Armor, Lord Megatron can’t hurt him again. Besides, he probably isn’t a priority; they might forget about him if he lays low for a while.

Just in case, he recharges in the armor that night.

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Lying low means that Starscream’s internet time starts occupying even more of his day. Of course, since the universe hates him, he finds a picture of what seems to be red energon at a construction site.

He can’t pretend he isn’t tempted to get it, but he reminds himself that he’s supposed to be hiding, that he still has enough energon to last him for a couple of months and that it seems like Knock Out will keep bringing him fuel, so risking himself for some red energon is unwisely greedy.

The more he thinks about it, the best it seems to stay in the Harbinger and stare longingly at the red energon in the picture.

He feels both like a responsible, mature mech and extremely frustrated.

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>goldenTrinket: can i give u a nickname?

>SunCat: What.

Starscream shifts his weight from one foot to the other as he waits for the reply, the word ‘Screamer’ running through his head, even though the human couldn’t possibly know about that.

>goldenTrinket: i feel weird calling u ‘suncat’. can i call u sunny?

He can’t come up with any sort of mocking meaning associated to the word when he thinks about it. He looks it up online and all he gets are references to the sun and some songs. It seems to be a good word, no matter how he looks at it, which only puts him on edge. What is this human thinking? Is this part of some plan? Or, worse, is she being genuine?

He considers telling her ‘no’, but, again, a normal human wouldn’t object to something like that. Or he could say he simply doesn’t like nicknames, but that may lead to her asking why and that might prolong the conversation. Accepting the name seems like the safest option.

>SunCat: I don’t see why not.

>goldenTrinket: thx sunny!!!! <3

Starscream has seen many strange things in the last few millions of years, but, somehow, that last message is the strangest one.

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.

It probably means something that Starscream no longer thinks anything of seeing Knock Out come to the Harbinger uninvited. It also probably means something that the first thing Starscream notices when Knock Out walks in isn’t that he’s carrying eight energon cubes instead of the usual four, but that he’s wrong again. It definitely means something that Starscream can identify the awkwardness he feels at that as concern.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon,” Starscream says, instead of asking what’s wrong. Knock Out has already seen him scared; Starscream’s not giving him more power by letting him see that he might care.

“Well, you once complained that I wasn’t keeping you up to date on the latest developments aboard the Nemesis, so I thought I’d come here and tell you before you decided to call to ask about what’s been happening.” Knock Out walks past Starscream and heads towards where the energon is kept, sets the cubes he’s carrying with the others and steps back to give the reserves an approving look. “How many months do you think you can go on with this?”

“At least two.”

“I thought so as well,” Knock Out says quietly, nodding. He turns on his heel and walks past Starscream again, back to the computer room. He starts going through the “Glee” video files. “Wow, we have a lot of episodes left. Pity.”

“You want to keep watching that?”

“It’s entertaining.” Knock Out taps his fingers against the side of the keyboard, turns around and looks at Starscream. “So, first the old news, since I didn’t share them the last time I was here.”

He gives Starscream what sounds like a very abridged version of what happened when the Nemesis was seen over Manhattan. Apparently, Knock Out had tried to recover a relic and failed (Starscream has to bite his tongue to keep from commenting on that), Soundwave had fought Ratchet and Wheeljack and had succeeded (unsurprising), and an Insecticon had fought Bulkhead and failed to recover the relic, although for a while they’d thought he’d managed to kill that Autobot.

“I wonder, Screamer, how you’d have felt if your greatest accomplishment had been matched by an Insecticon?” Knock Out says, smirking.

“My greatest accomplishment?” It takes Starscream a moment to figure out what Knock Out’s talking about. “Ah, Cliffjumper.” He shrugs. “I would have had to go and kill another Autobot. Or maybe a Decepticon. Now that I’m my own one-bot faction I don’t have to limit myself.” There’s a flash of hurt on Knock Out’s face at those words, which makes Starscream remember that they’d been used by Knock Out when he’d practically begged Starscream to search for Breakdown.

Starscream looks away and resets his vocalizer.

“You said those were the old news, so I assume there are some new ones you want to share?”

Somehow, that makes things worse. Knock Out’s expression changes into one of absolute revulsion, and that rage and hate that Starscream keeps forgetting about are suddenly the only thing he can see, a fire burning behind Knock Out’s eyes that is at odds with the cold and detached tone he uses when he starts speaking, to the point that the ice in each word almost makes Starscream shiver.

Knock Out tells Starscream about a human in Breakdown’s body calling himself CYLAS, a failed plan involving a satellite, and how Lord Megatron had oh so graciously allowed Knock Out to dissect the abomination after it had proven itself useless.

The story makes Starscream want to purge his tanks.

“What did you do with the thing?”

Slowly, Knock Out’s mouth curves into what is, technically, a smile, but it’s just as cold as everything he had just said, just as empty, and full of a kind of malice that Starscream hadn’t seen in Knock Out before.

“I killed it,” he says, sounding pleased and, for the first time in his life, Starscream is afraid of Knock Out. “I took my time, though. Made it beg for death.” Knock Out’s eyes dim for a moment, giving Starscream the awful certainty that he’s rewatching the scene. Then he continues in an almost cheerful tone, “Well, it’s not dead yet, but it will be soon. For a while I considered keeping it alive for experiments, but I wasn’t in the mood.” He shrugs and smiles, breaking the freezing spell that had fallen upon the room when he’d started talking about CYLAS. “And those, Screamer, are the latest news. Any questions?”

Starscream has at least a dozen, but he doesn’t know where to start, so he goes for the one that seems more urgent.

“What are you going to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… when Breakdown disappeared, you came here to ask me to help you.” Knock Out doesn’t react at that. “And now you know what happened to him. Why are you here? Do you want me to kill the rest of MECH?” Starscream narrows his eyes. “Are you going to blackmail me into helping you get revenge?”

“Screamer, please,” Knock Out says flippantly, making a dismissive gesture. “Coming here that day was a moment of weakness and stupidity. No, this has been a purely social call; I’m not going to ask anything of you.” Starscream narrows his eyes further. “Why so untrusting? CYLAS killed everyone in MECH and it will be dead soon. Airachnid seems to be dead, if the fact that Lord Megatron has an Insecticon army now counts as proof. There’s no one left to kill. There’s nothing left to do.”

The fear in Starscream shifts, from being afraid of Knock Out to being afraid for him, because the hate is still there, but where will it go now? Maybe that’s the reason he’d seemed so cold; without Airachnid and MECH, the hate had turned inwards and burned everything there, leaving only that spark in Knock Out’s eyes, just enough to keep him alive.

“If that’s all, I’ll be going now,” Knock Out says, taking a step towards the exit.

“Wait,” Starscream says, because he hadn’t done anything about the wrongness the previous time and now it looks worse. He still hates that he’s somewhat concerned over Knock Out, but he also knows that the internet had insisted on the need to form positive relationships with others and, well… Maybe feeling concern for others is part of this horrible, horrible process he got himself into the moment he looked up the definition of ‘abusive’.

Now, if only he had any idea of what to say.

“Yes?” Knock Out says, bemused by the silence.

“Don’t you want to stay and watch an episode of ‘Glee’?” Maybe he should have stayed quiet.

“I’d love to, but I can’t. In ten minutes they’re going to notice that I’m gone.” For a moment, Knock Out’s nonchalant smile seems to soften. “Thanks for the offer, though.” Knock Out takes another step towards the exit. “It’s been good to see you, Starscream,” he says as he turns around, waving, and walks away.

Starscream waits until he can’t hear his footsteps and follows him out, watches Knock Out transform and drive away. Then Starscream goes back inside and sits down to work in the lab. He doesn’t play any music as he sets up an alarm system.

No more surprise visitors at the Harbinger.

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Work doesn’t distract him enough and, once it’s done, there’s nothing to keep Starscream’s mind from going back to CYLAS. Breakdown wasn’t Starscream’s favorite bot, but he also wasn’t someone he despised; he was just a soldier in Lord Megatron’s war. Poor mech, he thinks, and realizes that it applies to far too many people: to Breakdown, to Knock Out, to himself, to everyone aboard the Nemesis except perhaps Soundwave.

He’s glad that all the humans who did that are dead, but he hates that there’s no guarantee that there aren’t other humans doing the same disgusting thing. It could be him the next time. For all he knows, the people on the forum know about him and are lulling him into a false sense of security before attacking him. Or maybe they don’t know about him and that’s the reason they’re nice to him, because they think he is like them.

>SunCat: What would you do if an alien started talking to you?

>goldenTrinket: discover religion and pray for humanity

>SunCat: What?

>goldenTrinket: if an aliens talkig to me it means that somehow they made their way to earth which means they are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more technologically advanced than us and they might be hostile. and im?????? not the best example of humanity?????????? they’ll see me and go ‘shit we gotta blow up this planet for the unverses sake’. so all thatd b left would b for me to pray they change ther mind

Well, if goldenTrinket herself recognizes she is not worth saving, then it doesn’t matter whether or not the people on the forum know about him or not, Starscream should just be trying to figure out ways to wipe out humanity.

Except she hasn’t answered his question.

>SunCat: But what would you do if the alien was simply talking to you? Not threatening you, not attacking you; just talking to you.

>goldenTrinket: like a friendly alien??

>SunCat: If that’s how you want to see it.

>goldenTrinket: i guess id ask them how they got here and if theyr okay? idk id just try to talk to them

>SunCat: No trying to dissect it? No killing it?

>goldenTrinket: dude no!!!!!!! aliens!!!! ive been wanting to see an alien my whole life!!!!! and this ones friendly?????? im gonna talk to them and be their friend and ask them about their science and books and movies and all that. ill b the first human to watch an alien movie and listen to alien music and hear an alien fairy tale!!

>goldenTrinket: what about u sunny??? whatd u do if a n alien started talking to u??????

He laughs at that. He’d already forgotten about the nickname.

>SunCat: I don’t know. It would depend on how nice they were to me.

>goldenTrinket: ok thats fair. but if they wer nice would u invite them to live in ur planet???

He catches himself before he smiles at that.

>SunCat: I don’t see why not.

>goldenTrinket: awesome! ur planets gonna b the best one: itll have an alien!

>SunCat: I’m sure I can get at least two.

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He’s woken up in the middle of the night by his new alarm system. In a second he’s up, wearing the Apex Armor, ready to fight his way to the control panels to open a groundbridge, but what he finds once he steps into the computer room is Laserbeak waiting and nothing else.

His hands shake, but he forces himself to inspect the ship. He goes through the entire place, doesn’t forget a single room, but there’s no one else, only Laserbeak, who hasn’t moved from his spot by the computer.

Starscream should have known that his stunt in the Antarctic would have consequences. He hadn’t expected this.

“Is Lord Megatron coming?” he asks Laserbeak.

Of course, there’s no reply.

“Is anybody coming?”

Silence, again.

He slowly approaches Laserbeak and tries to grab him, but he flies out of Starscream’s reach and settles in a higher place.

Starscream glares. Laserbeak doesn’t move.

Starscream knows that he’d have better chances of winning if he took off the armor, but he also knows that his chances of survival in the long run are better if he keeps it on, so that’s what he does.

There’s also no point in opening a groundbridge, they’d find him anyway. He hates to admit it, but his peaceful days are over. Now it’s time to wait for Lord Megatron’s arrival and hope he’ll spare his life.

He forces himself to remain calm at that thought. Lord Megatron isn’t here. This might only be Soundwave keeping an eye on him, maybe Lord Megatron doesn’t want him back yet. Maybe he can escape when Laserbeak leaves – Soundwave will call him back at some point, right?

He has to stay calm; Laserbeak can’t see him afraid.

Starscream falls into an uneasy recharge in the computer room, still wearing the Apex Armor.

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.

.

.

When morning comes, Laserbeak is still there. Starscream gets some energon for himself and sets a small amount for Laserbeak, just in case it helps predispose the bot in his favor (unlikely, but it’s worth a shot).

Eventually, Starscream sees that Laserbeak doesn’t seem like he’s about to do anything, so he decides to resume some of his normal routine. He won’t check the forum with Laserbeak around, but he can still watch some shows and movies.

He starts watching “Smallville”. He doesn’t think Knock Out would appreciate it if he kept watching “Glee” on his own.

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.

On the third day since Laserbeak’s arrival, when Starscream is starting to wonder if something’s broken in the other bot and if maybe he can take off the armor, the alarm rings again and Laserbeak finally moves, flying towards the entrance.

He returns just a few seconds later following a small group of Vehicons.

Starscream prepares himself to fight, but all the Vehicons raise their hands and stop walking while they’re still half a room away from Starscream.

“Don’t shoot, please!” says the Vehicon in front of the group. Starscream knows that voice.

“Celestina?”

“Yes!” Celestina visibly perks up at the recognition. “We are terribly sorry for the intrusion,” one of the Vehicons snorts, but Celestina continues like he hasn’t noticed, “but we needed to ask you something. Can we come closer?”

“Why are there so many of you?”

“We were worried you might shoot me on sight if I came alone,” Celestina says apologetically.

That was a fair assumption. Still…

“So you brought what looks like a small army.”

“There’s only six of us, it’s not much,” Celestina points out, his tone making it clear that he thinks Starscream is overreacting.

Starscream raises an eyebrow. He misses being respected.

“You can come closer. The others can stay right where you are.” He pauses and adds, “Is Silja there? He can come closer too if he wants to.”

“They,” Silja’s voice says from somewhere within the group.

“What?”

“I use the pronoun ‘they’ now, not ‘he’.”

“Ah. Okay.” Someone on the forum had talked to him about pronouns. He can do this right. “You can come closer too, Silja.” Both Vehicons approach him. He doesn’t take off the armor. “Why are you here?”

“As I said, we wanted to ask you something,” Celestina says, conciliatory.

Despite their not having visible eyes, it’s clear to Starscream that Silja’s watching him warily.

“Yes, I got that,” Starscream says. “What did you want to ask about?”

“Have you seen Doctor Knock Out these last few days?”

Starscream looks at Laserbeak, who’s back at his place by the computer, then at the Vehicons waiting by the entrance.

“Why should I know anything about him?” He hopes his tone sounds innocent. “I left the Decepticons weeks ago. In fact, how did you find me?”

Silja and Celestina look at each other. Celestina resets his vocalizer, but it’s Silja who speaks, “Everybody knows that Doctor Knock Out has been bringing you energon. We’ve even helped him, lately.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since we ran into you while looking for Breakdown. He told us.”

Starscream remembers Knock Out telling him not to kill Celestina because it’d give away that they’d been in contact. That lying jerk, Starscream will run a nail all over his hood the next time he sees him.

Wait.

“Why do you want to know if I’ve seen him?”

“You haven’t?” asks Celestina. “We know he came here three days ago.”

“Yes, but that was three days ago. Why do you ask?”

Celestina and Silja look at each other. It’s Silja who softly says, “Doctor Knock Out hasn’t been seen since then.”

Starscream’s eyes widen.

“What?” He hates how small his voice comes out.

“You didn’t know?”

“Of course I didn’t- Knock Out showed up whenever he pleased and we didn’t keep in touch, how could I know that he hasn’t been seen in three days?”

“We thought you were friends,” Celestina says.

Starscream gapes.

“Friends?”

“Well, yes. We thought that was the reason he kept coming here.”

“No, he just came here because…” Starscream furrows his brow. “Actually, I don’t know. I think he wanted me to owe him a favor,” he says, without really thinking about it.

He distantly notices Laserbeak flying around the room a couple of times before leaving. He notices the other Vehicons coming closer. He notices that there’s a new piece of metal soldered below Silja’s nametag, with pronouns written on it, and that Celestina has a similar one.

None of that matters.

“I’m guessing that you’re here because you can’t track his signal,” Starscream says slowly, feeling like he did back when Knock Out was looking for Breakdown.

Silja nods.

“But he’s a medic so… if someone could have masked their signal, it’s him,” Celestina says, the hope in his voice so obvious that it makes Starscream recoil.

“Didn’t you learn from when you went looking for Breakdown?”

“This is different.”

Starscream wants to laugh.

“Is it?”

“His signal went out two miles from here. We found scraped paint against a rock wall and some glass shards. We thought he might have come here if he’d been injured,” Celestina says quietly.

He lowers his head. Silja crosses their arms over their chest and turns their head to the side, as if hiding themselves from Starscream’s eyes.

“Why are you here? You don’t owe him anything,” Starscream says bitterly.

“We know that. But we’re trying to be better,” Silja says. “It’s not just taking names; it’s building a better community. And a community needs a doctor.”

Starscream snorts.

“Did Knock Out know that?”

“Yes, we told him so,” Celestina says. “We even gave him a copy of our Declaration of Identity.”

“Your what?”

“Our Declaration- wait, let me show you.” Celestina turns towards the other Vehicons, who have been slowly getting closer. “Flame, do you have a copy of the Declaration of Identity?”

“No, but I think Rick does?” Flame says, pointing at another Vehicon.

“Here,” the other Vehicon, presumably Rick, says, taking out a datapad.

“Thank you,” Celestina says, grabbing the datapad and handing it over to Starscream, who just looks at it. “It’s our Declaration of Identity. It explains what we’re doing and why.”

Starscream takes the datapad and examines it, then waves it in front of himself as he asks, “You wrote an entire text announcing your intention to take names?”

“Yes, we did,” snaps Silja. “There’s no need to be so surprised.”

“It’s not about you, it’s about– Hasn’t Lord Megatron said anything?”

“Lord Megatron doesn’t care,” one of the other Vehicons says. All the others nod.

“What Elise said, yeah,” Silja says, gesturing at the Vehicon – Elise.

“You can keep that one, I have a spare,” Rick says.

“The updated edition should be ready in a week, in case you want to read that one instead,” the last Vehicon says.

Starscream looks at them. He looks down at the tags. Stevie. Her.

“Thanks for the offer, Stevie, but I think I’ll read this one.”

Stevie shrugs.

Starscream skims through the text. There’s a ‘Thank you’ section at the end: “To Breakdown for treating us with respect and to Doctor Knock Out for soldering our nametags and calling us by our names.”

Who puts a ‘Thank you’ section in a manifesto? Vehicons, apparently.

“Does Knock Out know that you mention him here?”

“We showed the draft to him. He was flattered,” Flame says.

Of course he was.

Starscream nods and keeps looking at the text.

“I haven’t seen him since that day,” he says, not taking his eyes from the datapad.

All the Vehicons seem to deflate.

“Are you sure?” Silja asks.

“Of course I’m sure!”

“What they mean,” Celestina says, “is that… you aren’t lying to protect him or because Laserbeak was around before, right?”

“You can check the security footage if you want,” Starscream says, pointing towards the computer.

Elise and Stevie go to the computer and start reviewing the videos. Starscream keeps browsing the datapad.

“Nothing,” Stevie says after a while.

Silja lowers their head and Celestina puts an arm around their shoulders.

“It was worth a shot,” he says quietly. “Thank you for not shooting us,” Celestina says at a normal volume. “If you know anything, please inform us.”

“Of course,” Starscream says, unsure of whether or not he’s lying.

The Vehicons leave and Starscream finally takes off the armor. He looks for Knock Out’s signal using the Harbinger’s computer, but nothing comes up.

He hails Knock Out’s personal frequency, but there’s no connection.

“You can’t be dead, you hear me?” he tells the dead line. “You can’t be dead because that would ruin your finish and you’d hate that.”

There’s no answer.

Chapter Text

The Harbinger’s scanner has been fruitlessly searching for Knock Out’s signal for over an hour, yet Starscream can’t bring himself to turn it off. He knows that it’s unlikely for one half of a crashed spaceship to do a better job of locating a missing bot than the Nemesis, the fully operational Decepticon flagship, but the idea of not doing anything makes him uncomfortable in a way he’s not willing to examine. Another thing that he’s not willing to examine is the fact that he hates that Knock Out might be dead, but he hates it for the wrong reasons.

As the minutes pass, Starscream’s discomfort grows from a feeling to a physical sensation, like something’s crawling under his plating, forcing him to walk around the room to distract himself, his hands held firmly behind his back.

It’s realizing that he’s physically stopping himself from actual hand wringing that pushes him into doing something. He can sum up his last few weeks, starting from the moment he left the Decepticons, as a nearly desperate attempt to be fine; if Knock Out possibly being dead has affected him, the only thing left to do is to take a more active role in trying to figure out what happened to him. Since apparently everyone on the Nemesis already knows where Starscream is, there’s no point in worrying what might happen if he goes out.

So he does, the Apex Armor in its reduced mode stuck to his chest.

He heads off in the direction he saw Knock Out going three days ago and starts looking for the scraped paint the Vehicons had mentioned. It takes him a while, and he spends that time cursing himself for not asking for the coordinates of the spot where Knock Out disappeared, but eventually he notices a dash of red on a rock wall and heads for it. He’s careful of every step he takes, in case there’s a clue, although he doesn’t doubt that Celestina and Silja did just as meticulous a job here as they did when they inspected the area of Breakdown’s disappearance; if they didn’t find something, chances are that he won’t either (not that he’ll ever admit that out loud).

He inspects the area anyway. There are dark spots on the ground where it looks like a shot might have hit, but nothing else. That’s enough for Starscream; if there’s one group that might shoot Knock Out, it’s the Autobots. Fine, some Decepticons too, but no enough to cause permanent harm – they still need their medic.

He wants to scream. He wants to go back in time to that day in the Antarctic so he can stay behind to kill Optimus Prime. He wants to go back to the day he decided not to go for the red energon; if he had it now he could use it to kill all the Autobots. He wants to be wrong and for Knock Out to be fine.

He forces himself to relax, clear his mind and re-inspect the area. That reveals a stain on the ground that might be dried energon, but which might also be his mind playing tricks on him to make him believe he has found something. This, in turn, allows him to admit that he has no proof of the Autobots killing Knock Out. After all, if his brain’s willing to give him a false energon stain, it might be willing to make him jump to wrong conclusions so he can feel he has achieved something in his search.

There is a way to find out whether or not the Autobots killed Knock Out, but he doesn’t like it at all: he has to contact the Autobots.

To say that he hates the idea would be an understatement; the last time he’d talked to the Autobots was absolutely unpleasant, and he’s not willing to repeat the experience. There’s also the fact that Arcee hates his tanks and might try to kill him again.

Well, at least this time he has the Apex Armor. Plus, he’s currently a neutral party, which means that killing him would only make the Autobots look bad. Last, the truth is that Soundwave already knows where he’s hiding, which means it’s only a matter of time before Lord Megatron comes calling to drag him back to the Nemesis; Starscream might as well use however long he has left as a free agent doing something to get rid of the discomfort that fills him when he thinks about Knock Out.

Drumming his fingers against the reduced Apex Armor, he starts pacing.

He hates this, all of it. He hates that he might be worried about Knock Out, he hates that he will probably have to talk to the Autobots about this, and he hates that talking to your enemies is a life-altering decision, which means he’ll have to endure at least 24 hours more of the discomfort before he can do anything about it.

Starscream flies back to the Harbinger, puts on an episode of “Smallville”, and doesn’t remove the Apex Armor from his chest.

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TOPIC: INTERNAL SCREAMING

SunCat [today]: .

The discomfort hasn’t left, if anything, it only has increased, to the point that he feels out of balance, confused, only half in touch with the world. It’s only stubbornness that has kept him from contacting Team Prime. He has sixteen hours left of waiting and he’s not breaking the rule again, so he needs a distraction.

>goldenTrinket: sunnyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. ive come to ur rescue

>goldenTrinket: from the ‘internal screaming’ board

Starscream looks at the time. It took her less than a minute.

>SunCat: Are you always online?

>goldenTrinket: not always i have to sleep and eat sometimes lol

He frowns at that. He has spent long enough on Earth to know that humans are supposed to go outside sometimes.

>SunCat: What about school?

>goldenTrinket: homeschoooled

>goldenTrinket: hows ur day been???????

He raises an eyebrow; that subject change had the subtlety of a gladiator fight. Then he rereads the question and raises the other eyebrow.

>goldenTrinket: shit sorry u wer on ‘internal screaming’ for a reason

>goldenTrinket: wow. i messed up. sorry

>goldenTrinket: m relly sorry sunny

She should be. He guesses he shouldn’t say that, though, since the internet had said something about not perpetuating aggressive behaviors.

>SunCat: Apology accepted.

>goldenTrinket: thnk u. sory agan

There it is, the worse-than-usual spelling again. Starscream rolls his eyes.

>SunCat: As I said, apology accepted.

>goldenTrinket: ok. ok thx

>goldenTrinket: hav u ever read comic book??????

Starscream frowns at the message and scrolls up to read the conversation from the beginning. He doesn’t think it might look strange to an outsider, but the whole thing reads stiff and awkward to him and he doesn’t like it. goldenTrinket is weird and probably an enemy, but never before had he felt lost while talking to her.

>SunCat: No, never.

>goldenTrinket: i knew u’d say that! wnna read som???? i have recs!!

>goldenTrinket: gimme a mmoment

Five minutes later, she sends a link to download an impressive amount of files.

>SunCat: What kind of stories are they?

>goldenTrinket: abit of evrything

>goldenTrinket: superheros are the most popular so theres a few there. put som creaotr owned sutff in there too.

>goldenTrinket: and european things!!!!!!

>goldenTrinket: europeans make ALOT of comics its greta!!!!!

>goldenTrinket: if i cant move t ur planet im moving to euorpe

He scrolls down the titles, but nothing catches his eye. Probably because he isn’t really interested in reading anything.

>SunCat: Which one should I start with?

>goldenTrinket to SunCat: theyr all good. trust me

Considering that goldenTrinket’s ‘recs’ had led him to “Gilmore Girls” and “Glee”, he’s not really sure he trusts her taste when it comes to comic books.

>SunCat: What kind of name is “Blue Beetle”?

>goldenTrinket: dont question it just read

>goldenTrinket: and tell me what u think!!!!

The first issue is underwhelming. It’s just some human boy running around naked and confused in the desert, with flashbacks in which he walks around dressed and confused in the city with his friends. Starscream is certain that those are his friends, since they’re drawn as being close and talking to each other without any suspicion or ill-intent, but he still doesn’t trust them.

>SunCat: Frankly? Nothing seems to be happening.

>goldenTrinket: u gotta keep reading!!!!!!

>SunCat: Later. I should log out now.

>goldenTrinket: ur feeling better?

Ah, right. The ‘Internal screaming’ board. Humans might be pointless, but even he has to admit that he feels slightly less uncomfortable after some minutes of meaningless chatter.

>SunCat: Yes, thank you.

>goldenTrinket: its nothing sunny <3

>goldenTrinket: hey before u leave

>goldenTrinket: next time u need to talk u can just message me

>goldenTrinket: if im online of course. but im always online

>goldenTrinket: really u can just talk to me to distract u

>SunCat: You mean that I can message you directly instead of writing on ‘Internal screaming’?

>goldenTrinket: yeah!!! we’r friends u dont need to write there if im here

Starscream draws back when he sees the word ‘friends’, like it’s a physical threat. He re-reads the message. He blinks and then shuts off his eyes for a second. The word ‘friends’ is still on the screen when he looks again.

What is this human thinking, calling him a friend? On what does she base that assumption? He wonders how she has managed to stay alive for so long, if she goes and gives her friendship so easily. Does she have any idea of what friendship entails? It means trust, companionship, and complicity. It involves liking the other person. It involves knowing enough about the other person to like them. It means you talked to someone for longer than a few weeks.

It might be a trick. The last stage in a plan to capture him. Maybe the humans on the forum are trying to lull him into a false sense of security, make him believe he has an ally so he’ll lower his guard before they attack. It would explain why she’s always online, why she starts conversations with him, why she continues talking to him.

This is confusing and he hates it; it throws him off balance again and he forgets the person he’s supposed to be on the forum.

>SunCat: Are you telling me that after weeks of talking about movies, TV shows and conspiracy theories, you see me as a friend?

A minute passes without reply, then another one. Starscream checks his internet connection, but it’s working perfectly. Maybe something had happened to her? goldenTrinket always replied immediately, and she let him know if she’d be away from her computer.

Another minute passes before he gets a new message.

>goldenTrinket: yes suncat. im sorry if i gave u another idea, but i only see u as a friend

>goldenTrinket: we’r just friends

“Just friends!” he repeats, disbelieving. Like friendship is nothing, like it’s the sort of thing that can be brushed aside easily, like it didn’t have the power to break you.

‘Just friends’, like the whole war didn’t currently revolve around a broken friendship.

He shouldn’t have joined the forum. He shouldn’t have talked to goldenTrinket. He shouldn’t have replied when she wrote to him. He should get things straight and never talk to her again, because this can’t continue.

>SunCat: You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know my name, you don’t know what I look like, you don’t even know if I’ve told you my true age. For all you know, I could be an alien that’s preparing to take over the world. For all I know, you want to kill me.

There. It’s enough. If she was being genuine, now she knows how naïve she’s been. If it was all part of a plan, now they know how naïve he isn’t.

She replies. He hadn’t expected her to do so.

>goldenTrinket: so,………….. ur problem isnt that i called u  friend????????

So besides not knowing how to spell, she lacks basic reading comprehension skills.

>goldenTrinket : or mor liek u probkem’s that u think we habent talked enough to b friend???????

>SunCat: I’d say we’re acquaintances at best.

>goldenTrinket: ok. wow

>goldenTrinket: ok I gjess i dropped the f word on u too soon haha

>goldenTrinket: ok bad joke

>goldenTrinket: sorry

>goldenTrinket: ok I think im gojnna go now

>goldenTrinket: u take cae ok??

>goldenTrinket: bye sunny <3

>goldenTrinket: shit sorry bout that. it ws suppoed to just be ‘bye sunny’

>goldenTrinket: bye sunny

For the first time since Starscream joined the forum, goldenTrinket disappears from the list of online users. He doesn’t like it, he’d grown used to her always being there; in a way, he’d assumed she’d always be there. He also doesn’t like knowing that he’s the reason she’s offline. He absolutely hates that he feels guilty about his behavior towards a human.

Starscream crosses his arms and re-reads the conversation. He’d told himself that he would set things straight and then never talk to her again, and the first part of that plan has clearly been accomplished. Time for the second part.

He logs out of the forum. If he feels anything like regret at that, it’s only because he doesn’t know how he’ll fill his hours from now on. If the discomfort is even greater than before he logged into the forum, well… he doesn’t have to admit that, not even to himself.

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 […] and Commander Starscream asked us, “Do you think Breakdown would have done the same for you?” and that got me thinking. I can’t remember exactly what I replied, I think it was something about how we felt this was something we had to do, but I got the impression that Commander Starscream didn’t think much of my answer.

As we searched the area, I couldn’t stop thinking about Commander Starscream’s question. Would Breakdown have looked for us if we’d disappeared? And when we were back on the Nemesis I felt certain that the answer was ‘No’. Why, if were loyal to him? Because we knew who he was, but he didn’t know who we were. He respected us, he treated us right, but he didn’t know us. We barely know ourselves. Who are we, besides serial numbers? When we die, who notices? We don’t have identities; we are faceless soldiers in this war.

When I came back, I looked at my partner and told him, “I need a name.”

He understood, because we have been fortunate enough to have spent years working together. If I died, he would notice. If he died, I would notice. But that’s it. If both of us died, nobody else would remember who we were. And that can’t be.

There are hundreds of us on this planet, and we have spent years ignoring each other, trapped in our own worlds, trapped in the small circles we’ve formed so as not to be alone.

To form a bond, you need to know the other bot. Connections begin with small gestures of trust, like telling someone your name. Everything that matters is built on moments, on details.

I don’t think Commander Starscream imagines the impression his seemingly insignificant question left in me, but I am telling you all of this to make my point. It was a small question, but it brought a revelation. With this revelation, all of us can make something better.

Starscream sets down the datapad and starts pacing. There’s much to think about regarding the Declaration of Identity, starting with how it needs someone to proofread it. Between that and the fact that the partner mentioned in the text is very obviously Silja, who changed pronouns, it makes sense that they’re preparing a new edition.

The second thing to think about is that this Vehicon movement is clearly more serious than Starscream had initially believed. Judging by what he’s read and what he’s gotten from skimming the rest of the text, names are just the beginning. The next step is organization and protection among themselves. There’s no mention of what comes next, but to Starscream it seems obvious that the Vehicons could very well end up rebelling against Lord Megatron.

There comes the third point. If there was an uprising, what would happen to the war? Would the Vehicons continue fighting or would they find someplace to settle down? Would they join Optimus Prime? Would they turn against everyone who they felt had ever done them wrong? If the latter ends up being the case, Starscream’s only protection from certain death will be the fact that the Vehicons have terrible marksmanship. If they became a neutral faction, though, Starscream might get something from that.

But here comes the fourth and, in Starscream’s opinion, most important part of the text: it places him at the beginning of the movement. His words were what gave Celestina the idea of doing more with his life, of becoming someone. It shows that he’d been aware of what was happening with the Decepticons at the moment (because why else would he have been at the spot of Breakdown’s disappearance?) and gives him an important, if involuntary, role in the development of the movement. If Lord Megatron decides to end this, Silja and Celestina will be the first to go, but he’ll probably go after Starscream afterwards, simply because he’d never waste such a good excuse to teach Starscream a lesson.

This is bad. All of this is very, very bad.

He grabs the datapad and keeps reading. The rest of the text does nothing to assuage his fears, and he finds himself absently touching the button that activates the Apex Armor. However, at some point he finds the beginnings of a plan taking shape in his head. It’s not really a set of steps as much as the vague impression of something that could eventually become a good idea, but it’s there. It’s been a while since he last planned something, and he can’t deny that it’s the closest he has felt to normal since Lord Megatron came back. With the promise of a plan at the back of his head, Starscream’s almost genuinely fine.

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If anything, the 24 hours of waiting only strengthened Starscream’s faith in his, objectively speaking, potentially suicidal idea of contacting the Autobots, if only because he thinks he has more to gain than to lose if he goes through with it. The 24 hours of waiting also gave him time to come up with a better message than “Did you kill Knock Out?”, although he’s not sure if “I have information to trade, come meet me as soon as you get this” is an improvement.

Now that Soundwave knows where he is, hiding his current location is more trouble than it’s worth, so the only precautions he takes when he sends the message are doing it outside the Harbinger, because he doesn’t want the Autobots inside the ship, and keeping the reduced form of the Apex Armor on his chest.

After the message is sent, he sits on the ground to wait, makes himself comfortable and lets the sun’s warmth kill some of the fear that has been slowly freezing him from the inside since the moment Laserbeak appeared. It’s hard to stay terrified for your life when the open sky is there, promising you a thousand directions of escape.

A corner of his processor tells him that Knock Out would throw a fit if he knew that Starscream’s sitting on the ground, in direct contact with dirt, dust, and Primus-knows what else. Starscream tries to ignore the thought, because all it does is heighten that discomfort that he’s purposely not dealing with, but in trying to escape it his mind just runs in circles, always coming back to it. The only thing that effectively breaks that line of thought is remembering his last conversation with goldenTrinket, but that just brings another kind of discomfort with it and traps him in a new loop.

Just as he’s about to stand up and go flying to distract himself, a groundbridge opens in front of him and Arcee, Bumblebee and Bulkhead step out of it. Worrying about whether or not Arcee will kill him is bound to keep his mind away from emotions he doesn’t want to deal with.

The Autobots come out of the groundbridge clearly ready for a fight, their stances are defensive and Arcee has her weapons out, but all of them stop as soon as they see Starscream, the bafflement on their faces making him laugh. He doesn’t doubt that he paints a funny picture, leaning back on his elbows, legs crossed and head tilted up to better receive the sunlight on his face.

To their credit, they recover quickly and point their weapons at him.

“What do you want, Starscream?” Arcee says, not bothering to sound friendly. Say what you want about the Decepticons, but at least no one could say that they weren’t polite when facing their enemies.

It takes Starscream a few moments to stop laughing, and the only reason it doesn’t take him a full minute is that it’s hard to laugh when there are guns trained on you.

“Hello to you too, Arcee,” Starscream says. He doesn’t move from where he is, lest the Autobots think he wants to fight. “As I said in my message, I have information to trade.”

“Is this going to be like the last time you tried to trade information?” Bulkhead says, taking a step forwards.

Starscream rolls his eyes.

“You mean that time you refused me the medical help I obviously needed because you already knew what I was going to tell you?” Bulkhead looks slightly uncomfortable at that. “It definitely won’t go like that time. As you can see, I’m uninjured,” Starscream says, gesturing towards his frame with his chin. “Do you think you could move a bit to the side? You’re blocking the sun.”

That makes Arcee look ready to shoot him. Starscream very consciously doesn’t bring a hand to the Apex Armor.

“You’re planning something,” she says. Behind her, Bumblebee is looking around, probably scanning the area for traps or an ambush.

Starscream sits up. “I’m not planning anything; I only want some information that shouldn’t even hurt your faction.” All three Autobots shoot him a look of disbelief. “As a show of good faith, I’ll go first,” he continues nonchalantly, but he’s watching the others attentively when he says, “The Decepticons don’t have a medic anymore.”

Their reactions tell him everything he needed to know: Bumblebee frowns in confusion, Arcee looks taken aback, and Bulkhead’s eyes slowly widen and his mouth opens slightly as he seems to understand the implications of Starscream’s statement. Whatever happened to Knock Out, it’s almost certain that Prime’s team wasn’t involved and it causes a mixture of feelings in him, between something he begrudgingly recognizes as fear because he’s out of clues about whatever happened to Knock Out, and something he begrudgingly recognizes as hope, because there’s no proof that Knock Out’s dead.

“That’s it?” Arcee says warily. “What do you want in exchange for… that?”

“You act like I haven’t just given you something priceless.” Starscream stands up and pretends not to notice that the others shift into defensive positions again. “I wanted to know if you’d killed him, but since it’s obvious that you didn’t, you can have the information for free.”

“Seriously? That’s all? You called us here to ask if we’d killed Knock Out?”

“You were the primary suspects. In fact, I’m amazed you’ve never made more of an effort to kill him,” Starscream says, letting a hint of reproaching condescension seep into his words.

“Amazed?!” Arcee repeats, looking offended.

“He’s a medic.” Starscream hopes his tone makes it clear how very unimpressed he is with the Autobots’ tactical thinking. “If there’s one person you want to get rid of while fighting a war, besides the opposing leader, of course, that’s the medic. If there’s no doctor, who takes care of the injured?”

Arcee straightens her back and looks down at Starscream, her mouth twisted in disdain. “That’s a dirty tactic.”

Starscream raises an eyebrow and gives her his best judging and disbelieving look. This from a member of the faction that was going to leave him injured in the middle of nowhere after he called asking for medical help?

“Who needs morals when there’s a war to be won?”

Arcee glares, rage and disgust evident in her features.

“Knock Out’s dead?” Bulkhead asks, interrupting the stare off.

Starscream briefly considers the pros and cons of giving more information, but then he remembers he has absolutely nothing to lose and a slight chance of messing with Lord Megatron.

“I think so. He’s missing,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Since when?”

“Four days ago.”

Starscream hasn’t managed to stay alive for so long without knowing how to read people and draw conclusions. As soon as the words leave his mouth, Bulkhead moves back an inch and his expression becomes haunted. The other two Autobots keep looking confused, and then they look slightly worried by Bulkhead’s reaction. Starscream makes a guess and decides to gamble.

“You saw that thing, didn’t you?” he asks Bulkhead, lowering his voice and leaning forward, like he’s sharing a secret. Bulkhead doesn’t answer, just narrows his eyes and sets his jaw. “CYLAS.”

Arcee and Bumblebee are giving both of them questioning looks, and Bumblebee says something that, by the tone, is probably a question.

“What are you talking about?” Arcee says.

Starscream turns to look at her and smiles humorlessly.

“Breakdown’s dead and some humans took his corpse. They combined him with a human.”

The horror and revulsion on Arcee’s face almost make Starscream feel some sympathy for her, if only because his own reaction had been similar. She turns to look at Bulkhead.

“Is that why you didn’t want to talk about your fight against Breakdown?”

Bulkhead nods without looking at her, his eyes glued on some spot on the ground.

“Do you think they did the same to Knock Out?” Arcee asks Starscream.

“They’re all dead, so I doubt it,” Starscream says. The obvious relief on Arcee’s face and which she quickly hides makes Starscream want to hit her. What’s so wrong about admitting that they deserved to die? What’s so wrong about being happy that your enemies are dead? What’s so wrong about admitting that the species you’re protecting is disgusting? “That’s what these humans you so desperately try to protect are capable of!” he says, taking a step back and gesturing towards the open space around them.

Bumblebee lets out a stream of angry sounding noises.

“They’re not all like that,” Arcee grits out.

Starscream scoffs and doesn’t say anything. He won’t risk getting her angry, she might take any excuse to kill him. He doesn’t want to die like this.

“What happened to CYLAS?” Bulkhead asks.

“I think it’s dead.”

“You think?”

“I was told that it would be dead soon, but I don’t have confirmation,” Starscream says simply.

Bulkhead frowns and asks, “How do you know all this?”

Starscream pauses to consider whether or not to tell the truth. It’s one thing to put himself in trouble and an entirely different one to tell on Knock Out. Ugh, morals. When had he started developing them?

But Knock Out might be dead and, at this point, Starscream isn’t really sure what exactly he’s doing, so he explains: “Knock Out told me before he disappeared.”

Bulkhead nods slowly.

There’s nothing else to gain from this conversation and Starscream has given too much, so it’s time to end things. He takes a step back, turns around and starts walking towards the Harbinger. He’s gambling again, betting that the Autobots’ principles will keep them from shooting him in the back or coming back later to kill him as he recharges; he’s also gambling on the fact that this peaceful conversation, added to the fact that he has (mostly) stayed out of the Autobots’ way for weeks, might make them less hostile towards him in any future encounters. He keeps a hand on the reduced Apex Armor as he walks.

“What are you doing?” Arcee asks.

“I’m leaving, Arcee. I thought it was obvious,” he says without stopping, looking over his shoulder. “I gave you the information and you told me what I wanted to know. I have no reason to keep talking to any of you.”

He forces himself to look ahead again and not to look back as he walks away and enters the ship. Once he’s inside and safe from prying eyes he activates the Apex Armor and sits on the floor, his back against a wall and his eyes closed, and allows himself to feel the fear he’d ignored through the entire conversation. If he’d been talking to Lord Megatron, he would have been killed immediately, or beaten up and dragged back to the Nemesis.

Well, there’s at least one good thing that came out of this whole situation: now that absolutely everyone knows where he is, he no longer needs to stay grounded. He can go out and fly whenever he feels like it, which is a privilege he hadn’t had even when he’d been the Decepticons’ second-in-command.

Anchoring himself to the thought of blue skies, he manages to calm down. Then he turns on the computer and keeps watching “Smallville”. The day has been exhausting enough for him to try to do more than drown himself in fiction for the rest of it.

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The problem with knowing that the Autobots didn’t kill Knock Out is that Starscream’s completely out of ideas about what might have happened to him. The problem with deciding never to talk to goldenTrinket again is that he can’t log into the forum to get some more TV show and movie recommendations. The problem with both of those things is that he has no way to pass the time and too many hours every day to simply think about Knock Out, goldenTrinket, and the possibility of Lord Megatron coming to the Harbinger.

When the alarm finally blares, though, the visitors he gets are some Vehicons.

“You again?” he says, watching the group enter. There are four of them today, and Starscream is concerned by the fact that he recognizes Celestina and Silja without reading their nametags.

“Hello to you too, Commander Starscream,” Silja says, crossing their arms.

“Hello, Silja. Hello, Celestina,” Starscream says, rolling his eyes at Silja. “Hello to the other two.”

“It’s ‘Stevie’. We’ve met,” Stevie says, pointing at herself.

“We’ve met once, and you were the ones who admitted you’re difficult to tell apart.”

“Fair,” Stevie says, moving her head in a vague gesture that Starscream assumes is supposed to emphasize her agreement.

“Have we met?” Starscream asks the last Vehicon.

“Not recently. I’m Blutter. My pronoun is ‘she’.”

“Okay. Blutter.” Ugh, more people to remember. “Why are all of you here today?”

“Rick wants his copy of the Declaration of Identity back.”

“You came all the way here for that?” There isn’t a single universe where Starscream could believe that.

The Vehicons look at each other and then shrug. It’s unnerving to watch all of them make the same gesture at the same time.

“Why are you really here?”

“It bothered me that you had the old copy, so I wanted you to have a new one,” Celestina says, taking out a new datapad. “This one isn’t entirely proof-read, but it has all the right pronouns.”

Starscream narrows his eyes at the group. It makes sense for Celestina to want to bring a non-misgendering version of the manifesto, yet Starscream still thinks there’s something behind the Vehicons’ intentions.

He decides to push those suspicions to the back of his mind for the moment.

“Any news regarding Knock Out?” he asks nonchalantly.

“None,” Silja says, arms still crossed. “We were hoping you’d know something.”

“Why would I?”

“No reason, that’s why we were only hoping you’d know something instead of expecting you to know something.”

He considers what to do for the split second it takes for the promise of a plan that’s at the back of his mind to start directing his actions.

“The Autobots didn’t kill him. That’s all I know,” Starscream says, putting out a hand to take the datapad with the new version of the Declaration.

“How do you know that?” Celestina asks, handing him the manifesto.

“I talked to them.”

“And they didn’t kill you?” Blutter asks, amazed.

“They don’t shoot much when they don’t think you’re trying to kill them.”

Celestina is oddly still after hearing those words, like he’s trying not to let any emotion show through his body language, which in turn only makes it obvious that he’s thinking about something that matters to him. Starscream watches Celestina with interest and pretends not to notice the way Silja is observing him in turn, like they’re evaluating whether or not Starscream’s a threat to the other Vehicons. Once or twice Starscream had wondered how someone like Celestina had managed to survive for so long, but now it seems obvious that Silja is responsible for that.

“Any news regarding the Autobots?” Starscream asks.

“Why should we tell you?” Silja says.

“Because now they also know where I’m living and I’d like to know what my chances are if they come to fight me.”

Celestina and Silja exchange looks. Celestina shrugs and Silja finally lets their arms drop.

“Optimus Prime got himself a saber yesterday. Lord Megatron wasn’t pleased,” they say.

“I think I heard him cursing that Knock Out wasn’t around,” Celestina adds. “Agnodice said something about an arm?”

“Ah, yes. That.” Silja sounds unnerved. They turn to look at Celestina before continuing, “Lord Megatron stole the arm of some Prime's body and wanted to replace one of his own with it, but, since we don’t have a medic and all of Knock Out’s files and textbooks are gone, he couldn’t.”

“Wait,” Starscream says, frowning. “What do you mean that his files are gone? Did he take them with him?”

“No, they were destroyed,” Celestina says, sounding confused. “You didn’t know? He didn’t tell you when he came to see you?”

“I thought I’d already explained that he didn’t tell me anything when he came here.”

“Oh… so you don’t know what happened when he left?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Celestina shuffles his feet. “Well, what happened was that he killed CYLAS in a very… dramatic way.”

“He made him explode,” Stevie says flatly.

“We don’t know that!” Celestina says, turning quickly towards Stevie. “We just know that, well, there was an explosion in the medibay, and that it originated on the spot where CYLAS was tied to a slab.” He turns back towards Starscream. “It might have been an accident.”

Blutter snorts. “That doesn’t explain why all the files on his computer had been deleted and why there were almost no datapads in the area. We only found three when we inspected the medibay and they were burnt and melted.”

“That sounds like Knock Out was running away,” Starscream says carefully.

“Yes,” Silja says.

“He was running away… and something happened to him.” Starscream doesn’t change his tone.

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Did you tell Lord Megatron about the destroyed files?” he asks.

“We told him that they had been unfortunately lost in the explosion, but we didn’t tell him that it had probably been on purpose.” Silja invents and ex-vents heavily. “We were worried about what Lord Megatron might do to the doctor if he knew.”

Starscream takes a moment to compose himself and make sense of everything he has just understood. So much scheming from Vehicons is unsettling.

“The other day, when you came here telling me how you couldn’t track Knock Out’s signal… you were lying to protect him. You knew he’d probably made his signal untraceable. You were lying because you thought I knew what he’d done and because Laserbeak was around.” There’s no reply, just some nods. “So… Lord Megatron believes his medic is an idiot that accidentally blew up CYLAS and then went missing.”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” Starscream starts drumming his fingers against the reduced Apex Armor, thinking about the whole situation. “Yes, I’m sure Lord Megatron isn’t happy,” he finally says.

“That’s an understatement.”

Starscream looks at the computer, at the spot where Laserbeak had been perched for days. If Knock Out had ran away in such an explosive fashion, it made sense that they’d monitor the places where he was likely to go to. This is a line of thought to be pursued once alone, so he gets the older copy of the Declaration of Identity, the alleged reason for the Vehicons’ presence in the Harbinger, and asks, “Is there anything else you want?”

If the Vehicons are confused by the sudden topic change, their facelessness keeps it from showing.

“Did you read it?” Celestina eagerly asks, taking the datapad.

“I did, yes.”

“What did you think?”

“It needs proofreading,” Starscream says, judging.

“Told you,” Stevie mutters.

Starscream tries to soften his expression, makes himself look intrigued. “But it’s a… an interesting read. Do you mean what you wrote?”

“In what way?” Celestina says, tilting his head to the side to show his confusion.

“All those things about creating a better community for Vehicons, getting respect for yourselves and getting all the other Cybertronians to recognize your identities.” He puts just enough doubt into his words to ensure a reaction.

“Of course I mean it!” Celestina sounds offended. At his side, Silja has leaned forward, their posture tense.

“I was just making sure,” Starscream says, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “Decepticons aren’t known for their teamwork.”

“That’s why we have to make an effort and learn. We can be better.”

Celestina’s idealism is almost painful. Starscream gives him a pitiful look and then shifts his attention to Silja.

“What do you think?” he asks them.

“We can be better,” Silja says, with a certainty that intrigues Starscream. “But we also need to be organized and careful. Lord Megatron doesn’t care now, but if we get his attention, it could be bad for us.”

Starscream nods. At least one of the Vehicons is capable of sensible thinking. He can work with that.

“Good luck, then.”

“Thank you!” Celestina says, taking a step towards the exit.

Teamwork. As much as Starscream hates it, it seems like it’s an important thing. He can’t deny that the Autobots are big on it and that, somehow, they have managed to survive and not lose the war despite being outnumbered and outpowered. He can’t deny that, if the Vehicons managed to organize themselves, they could be a force to be reckoned with, especially if they learned how to shoot. He can’t deny that he’s completely alone right now.

“If I had any more questions about this, how can I contact you?”

Again, Celestina goes still. There’s a pause before he gives Starscream his personal comm frequency.

After the Vehicons have gone, Starscream looks at the series of numbers and goes over the recent conversation. He thinks he did well.

His thoughts return to Knock Out. He remembers how he’d said that CYLAS would be dead “soon” and how everyone on the Nemesis would soon notice he was gone. At the moment, Starscream had chalked that up to Knock Out having left at a bad time and not being able to spend too long outside without someone noticing, and he’d assumed that the references to CYLAS’ eventual death just meant Knock Out was planning to return to kill it, or that he’d hurt it so badly that it wouldn’t survive. Now he sees that Knock Out had caused that explosion on purpose. The files being erased and the datapads being destroyed reinforce the theory that he was leaving the Decepticons, but why not go quietly, like Starscream? And what attacked Knock Out after he left the Harbinger?

He starts pacing and drumming his fingers against the reduced Apex Armor.

Neither the Vehicons nor Starscream had found any clues about where he could have been taken to. For all they know, he could have escaped, but he was too injured to seek help, or too afraid of being caught by the Decepticons and brought back to the Nemesis.

He’s alive, Starscream decides. When the Vehicons had mentioned Knock Out’s signal going out, he’d assumed the worst, but with the new information, he’s convinced that Knock Out disabled it on his own, which only leaves the question of what happened to him. Knock Out is clever and a great fan of self-preservation; if there’s a bot in the world that could have gotten out of a difficult situation, it’s him. He must be alive.

Starscream knows that there’s nothing to base that belief on other than hope and the fact that the discomfort he feels when he thinks about Knock Out is concern, so he needs to think that Knock Out’s fine in order to keep going with his own life. He hates that he’s worried about Knock Out instead of being worried about how he no longer has an energon supplier. He hates that, just a few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have cared about Knock Out’s disappearance. Is this what neutrality does to people? Make them worry about others? What an awful way to live.

He sighs and tries to contact Knock Out again. The line remains dead, so he sends a message with the coordinates of his energon reserves in the US. Then he sends another message: “Laserbeak came looking for you.”

For a moment, he considers logging into the forum and seeing if he has any unread messages from goldenTrinket, but he quickly dismisses the idea. He’d said he wouldn’t talk to her again and he’ll stick to that decision. It’s better for both of them.

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There’s a human saying Starscream likes (despite his reluctance to approve of anything of human origin) that goes, “Speak of the devil and he doth appear.”

Just a few hours after sending his message to Knock Out, Starscream’s woken up by the intruder alarm. He activates the Apex Armor and steps into the hallway to find Laserbeak flying around, clearly inspecting everything.

“He’s not here,” Starscream tells Laserbeak. Of course, that produces no reaction, but Starscream felt he should say it anyway, if only because it was better to speak than to anxiously wait for Laserbeak to do something.

Laserbeak continues his inspection of the Harbinger, so Starscream follows him, even though he knows there isn’t much he can do if Laserbeak decides to stop being an observer and actually cause some sort of damage, considering that Starscream won’t take off the armor. Just like the previous time, eventually Laserbeak flies to the computer room and perches on the computer screen. Is he watching Starscream or just making time as he waits for the signal to go back to Soundwave?

Like the previous time, Starscream sets a small amount of energon for Laserbeak.

Unlike the previous time, Starscream doesn’t sit down to watch the other bot; he turns on the computer, opens the “Smallville” folder and starts the last episode he watched.

He keeps his eyes glued to the already familiar episode, but the rest of his awareness is focused on Laserbeak, while the entirety of his thoughts is turned towards evaluating the situation.

It’s clear that Laserbeak’s last visit was the result of Knock Out’s disappearance, so there’s no reason to believe that he has a different reason this time; if Lord Megatron wanted Starscream back, he would have sent someone with limbs.

Something must have caught Soundwave’s attention, maybe that message Starscream sent made him think he was in contact with Knock Out. The second possibility is that this has nothing to do with Knock Out and it’s about the Vehicons.

It’d be naïve to believe that Soundwave doesn’t know about the Vehicon movement, the only question is how seriously he’s taking the situation. The fact that a group of Vehicons had visited Starscream twice, and that Starscream is named in their manifesto, might give the idea that he is more important to the movement than he really is, so maybe Laserbeak had been sent to spy on Starscream, make sure that he isn’t trying to turn the Vehicons against Lord Megatron. He can’t deny that that’s a tempting idea, but he would need to have something to offer to the Vehicons so they’d follow him, and all he has are five spare t-cogs and other assorted body parts.

Of course, Laserbeak just showing up on the Harbinger is outright clumsy spying, something hard to believe that Soundwave would allow, so Starscream’s more inclined to believe that Laserbeak’s there to see if Knock Out had arrived and not to look for signs of a rebellion.

This is the sort of situation he’d lie about to goldenTrinket. She was always sending messages asking him about his day, and he’d make up stories to make it seem like he was an actual human with a job. When Knock Out visited he told her that “a colleague had come over”. If he had to tell her about Laserbeak’s visit he’d probably have said that a bird had gotten into his house during the night and he hadn’t known how to kick it out, so he’d spent the night waiting for it to leave on its own and hoping it wouldn’t ruin the furniture.

It’s been days since he last logged into the forum, and there’s a part of him that misses it. They were ridiculous, had crazy ideas with no basis on reality, their theories made no sense and they were all probably out to kill him, but unlike the last group of people who wanted him dead, at least they were entertaining.

Perhaps logging out permanently to avoid goldenTrinket was an overreaction. He could simply not talk to her, and not reply when she wrote to him. He wonders how many messages from her have accumulated during these days. She always sent at least two every day, ranging from music recommendations to questions about his day, but every now and then it was simply a “Good morning”.

He looks at the time: 23:47. Laserbeak shows no signs of being ready to leave, so Starscream resigns himself to spending the night watching TV shows. He won’t risk going into the forum while Laserbeak is around.

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Around 5 a.m., Starscream’s finally left alone. Laserbeak didn’t touch the energon that he’d left for him, so Starscream drinks it instead, sitting on the floor, free hand tapping a nervous rhythm on the reduced Apex Armor, eyes glued to the entrance in case Laserbeak returns or somebody else arrives. He knows the intruder alarm would let him know someone was there and who it was before they got close enough to be seen, but he can’t bring himself to look somewhere else, because the hours he spent pretending to be interested in what was going on in the show (pretending he wasn’t afraid, pretending he wasn’t coming up with a hundred escape plans in case something happened) wrecked his nerves and he’s not strong enough to move from the computer room.

When was the last time he’d been awake and idle at this hour? He has gotten up early for missions and he has gone to recharge late because of plans or reports, but all those times he’d been doing something, he’d had a task to focus on; he can’t remember the last time he’d had nothing to do but think about the uncertainty of his future.

He doesn’t want to think about the uncertainty of his future.

Looking around himself, Starscream is hit with the horrible knowledge that something has to change. Yes, the Harbinger is comfortable, but it’s not meant for a bot to live alone in it for an indeterminate amount of time. His main source of fuel is charity, but now the bot that was feeding him is gone. The war’s still going on, and when it ends, Starscream will either be imprisoned or killed, and he has nowhere to escape to. He’s in an unstable and unsustainable situation. He’s alone.

It occurs to him that Knock Out would also throw a fit if he found out that Starscream was sitting on the floor of the Harbinger; he’d probably say something about how it could damage his finish, or something about posture. He’d have something to say about it, definitely, because Knock Out always had something to say about everything, even when he was keeping his mouth shut.

Something has to change, right? He can start with standing up and, well, why stop there? He can change something else.

Starscream goes to the lab and takes off the reduced Apex Armor, giving himself more room to maneuver around his Decepticon badge. Then he finds the right tools and removes the brand. It’s a clumsy job, he scratches his plating and it’s obvious that something had been there, but it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that the badge is gone.

It’s something. He did something. He said he’d never go back to the Nemesis, and what better way to prove it than this?

As a way to relax before going back to recharge, he decides to read some more of the comics goldenTrinket had recommended. On the second issue, the human continues being very confused, but afterwards he starts understanding things better. Starscream doesn’t really like him, but he has to respect his resilience and cleverness.

He files away some details of the story, puts them next to the promise of a plan that keeps trying to take shape in his head. Starscream doesn’t know what he’s planning for, but he wants to be ready for when it happens.

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A good part of the day is spent recharging, recovering the night’s lost hours, and he barely has time to regain consciousness completely when the computer is beeping and alerting him of Decepticon activity.

More relics?, Starscream thinks, watching the screen. He’s not a fool to believe he has any chances of getting anything, especially now that both factions know where he’s hiding, but he doesn’t see any harm in taking a look and finding out what they’re fighting over this time; if anything, it’ll give him an idea of the sort of weapons his enemies have. Things can’t get any worse, so he heads out and finds himself in a forest. What does the universe have with sending him to forests? Why can’t he find himself at a nice beach every now and then? But no, it’s always either forests or deserts or Antarctica.

Right, he’s being too negative. The internet had said that that wasn’t healthy. Fine. One positive thing about forests? There are plenty of places to hide, so that’s what he does, getting a privileged position to watch Dreadwing lose against Bulkhead and some Autobot that Starscream can’t remember seeing before. Great, more Autobots, as if five of them hadn’t been enough trouble.

It is highly satisfying to watch Dreadwing lose a fight, although he suspects that Lord Megatron doesn’t treat Dreadwing the same way he treated Starscream when he failed.

Then come the big news: there are four keys out there, and getting all of them means that Cybertron can be restored. Starscream hears the Autobots talk about this and has to bring a hand to his mouth to stop himself from accidentally letting out a sound of surprise.

Starscream returns to the Harbinger in a hurry and starts pacing, thinking about what he has just learned. Cybertron, restored. He could leave this dirtball of a planet behind. He could go home. The promise of a plan that had been at the back of his mind for days starts taking shape.

He could become the new leader of Cybertron.

Oh, he likes that idea. He’ll become the new leader of Cybertron and he’ll show everyone how capable he is. No one will ever humiliate or hurt him again, and if someone dares to try, he’ll just have them imprisoned and killed. No one will be able to touch him. It’s an excellent idea.

It’s also, objectively speaking, impossible with his current resources. He lacks an army, fuel, allies, weapons, and an actual plan. All he has is some energon cubes, a groundbridge, an armor, five t-cogs and other spare parts, the determination to never again follow anybody’s will but his own, and a couple of good ideas stolen from human fiction.

Well, put like that, he actually has more resources than he initially thought. He hums in thought, looking around himself.

What are the greatest threats to his chances of succeeding? The Autobots and Decepticon high command - getting control of Cybertron is a big thing and enough of a promise to get the Vehicons on his side, especially if he also promises to help them with their whole identity thing. Ah, and the Insecticons. But the greatest threat to anything is definitely Soundwave; nothing escapes the mech.

Starscream goes to the computer and brings up the Harbinger’s security feed. Then, slowly, methodically, he goes through the entire ship and rips out every camera, except for the one at the entrance, the one connected to the intruder alarm.

Then he calls Celestina.

“Hello?” is the tentative answer.

“Hello, Celestina, how have you been?” Starscream says amiably. He thinks he sounded pretty well, very friendly, not at all like he’s planning something.

“Very well, Commander Starscream, thank you for asking.” Celestina replies, sounding wary. Starscream is almost offended. “How about you?”

“Excellent, thank you for asking. How’s Silja?”

“Fine?”

“Ah, good!” He tries to sound like he’s genuinely glad for them. “And the others? Elise, Blutter, Rick, Stevie, Flame…”

“Everyone’s fine, thank you for your concern, Commander Starscream.” There’s a pause. Celestina resets his vocalizer and asks, still sounding uncertain, “I don’t want to seem rude, but is there a particular reason you’re calling me, sir?”

Starscream smiles. What can he say? It’s nice to see his potential future allies display some sense. “I wanted to ask you for news about the relic hunt. I noticed that some troops moved today.”

“Oh! That… Um… well...”

“Don’t worry, I won’t ask for details, I just want a general idea of what’s going on, for self-preservation purposes.”

“Well… yesterday Lord Megatron fought some Autobots and Optimus Prime almost beat him.” There’s a pause in which Starscream can almost hear Celestina deciding what to tell him. “Lord Megatron wasn’t happy, he kept complaining about the arm.”

“The one he wanted to replace with the corpse’s?” Starscream makes a face, wondering how exactly things aboard the Nemesis had managed to get weirder in his absence. He’d honestly thought that nothing could top dark energon zombies, yet the moment he’s out, Lord Megatron resorts to grave robbing.

“Probably? Well, after that, Commander Dreadwing went to get a relic and came back with it. And today he went for a relic but failed. That’s it.”

Perfect.

“What did the relic look like?”

“Uh… flat. And copper-ish. We don’t know what it is.”

“Hm.” Yes, that sounds like another key. He’d heard the Autobots mention they had two and the Decepticons have the third one; that leaves one unaccounted for. “Thanks for telling me, Celestina. So, let’s talk about something nicer. How’s the identity movement going?”

“Really well!” Celestina’s obvious joy at the new topic is painful. He needs to work on hiding his emotions. “Turns out Agnodice knows how to solder things, so now she’s taking care of our tags.”

“All you’ve done so far is to establish identities?”

A second passes before Celestina says, “Establishing identities is the biggest part of this, Commander Starscream. I said so in the Declaration. Without them, we’re nothing.”

“I know,” Starscream says, mentally berating himself for the misstep. He can’t afford to seem like he doesn’t care about the Vehicon initiative. “I understand that, what I mean is…” He tries to put everything into a good speech, but concludes that improvising and sounding unsure might make him sound more sympathetic. “What I mean is that in the Declaration you wrote about all the things you wanted to accomplish, and I was wondering if you’d managed to lay the groundwork for the next steps.”

“Oh. Not yet, no. But we have time! The war isn’t going anywhere.” Celestina laughs at his poor attempt at humor. Starscream almost feels sick by the idea of the war going on for so long. His hand goes to the reduced Apex Armor.

“I hope you succeed,” Starscream says, and finds that he means it. He likes the idea of Lord Megatron finding that half his troops are no longer willing to blindly throw themselves to their deaths.

“Thank you, Commander Starscream!”

“Thank you again for the information, Celestina,” Starscream says sincerely. “Send Silja my regards.”

“I will, Commander Starscream. Um… have a nice day!”

“Thank you, Celestina. You too.”

Starscream hangs up and stares at the wall. Well, that was an odd conversation. It was polite, kind of friendly and almost mundane. It reminded him of what talking to goldenTrinket had been like.

He finally gives in and logs into the forum. There are no unread messages. He refreshes the page. No unread messages. He looks at the list of online users and finds her username there. Indignation starts growing inside him. Was she ignoring him? Was she daring to ignore him? After weeks of pestering him and talking to him and generally being there all the time, now she was too good to talk to him?

He’d been so sure that she would be messaging him again soon. He’d been so sure that there would be a message from her apologizing for daring to call him a friend, or confessing what it was that she wanted from him, why she’d been talking to him for so long. He’d been expecting a message in which she reworked her strategy, a new attempt to make him lower his defenses. He’d been expecting something to reply to. There’s nothing.

He logs out of the forum again and sends a message to the Autobots. “You’re due for a check-up in a month,” Knock Out had told him some time ago, and Starscream had ignored him, but with everything that has happened, he thinks it’s about time he saw Ratchet. He doesn’t bother coming up with an excuse or a promise of information, he just asks for a check-up and hopes their weird morals or good old wariness will make them come to see how he’s doing.

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In the morning, there still aren’t any messages for him in the forum.

As he refuels, he starts looking online for pictures of cars that could be Knock Out, to no avail, which doesn’t mean anything, because the US is a big country and there are plenty of places for Knock Out to hide in. Knock Out is fine. He has to be fine.

The morning is spent cataloguing the spare parts he’d gotten from the protoforms and hiding most of them around the world. He resists the urge to go back to Grenada and only chooses countries where he hasn’t hidden anything else.

In the afternoon, he gets a visit from the Autobots just as he’s starting the season finale of “Smallville”.

Ratchet, Bulkhead, Wheeljack and, for some reason, Monster Human #2 walk into the Harbinger, looking ready for a fight. Starscream just raises an eyebrow at that and presses the ‘Pause’ button.

“All this security just for a check-up?”

“Is it really just a check up?” Wheeljack asks, taking a step forward. Ratchet looks like he wants a break.

Starscream rolls his eyes.

“That’s what I said, wasn’t it? I’ve always been very honest in my messages. When I promised information, I gave it. When I wanted medical attention, I asked for it. Today I wanted a check-up and had nothing to offer, so I didn’t offer anything.” He pretends to think for a second. “I’m surprised you came, actually.”

“Optimus said it wouldn’t be right if we didn’t come to help a fellow Cybertronian who might be in danger,” Bulkhead says.

“I did say it was just a check-up.”

“Is that code for something? A secret operation? An ambush? Trading sensitive information? Because we’re not giving you anything,” Monster Human #2 says, her eyes narrowing, her expression hilarious in its attempt to be somewhat threatening.

Well, at least he thinks Monster Human #2 is a ‘her’, but the people on the forum had been insistent on how you should never assume.

“You’re a girl, right?” he asks her, completely ignoring her question.

Everyone looks baffled.

“Yes!” she says indignantly.

“Human genders confuse me,” Starscream says, shrugging. “And no, ‘check-up’ isn’t code for anything,” he adds condescendingly. “I’m due for a check-up and my regular doctor went missing and might be dead, so I called the only other one that’s on this planet.”

Bulkhead looks uncomfortable at the allusion to Knock Out. Good. Starscream might need the Autobots in the future, but he’s not going to make anything easy for them; if he can be petty and obtain the same results he would if he wasn’t, he will always pick pettiness.

“So, Starscream, what you’re telling me is that this is a purely medical visit,” Ratchet says, giving Starscream a skeptic look.

“Again, yes.”

“What if we just leave?”

“That would be very rude of you, but unsurprising. After all, you were willing to leave me wounded in the woods that one time. Did you know that human doctors have an oath that says they’ll help the sick?” He’d learned that while commenting on “Gilmore Girls” with goldenTrinket; he’d been talking about his admiration for Paris and goldenTrinket had wondered how she’d deal with the medical oaths. “I never thought I’d say this, but it seems that there’s one thing at which humans are superior.”

Ratchet’s eye twitches. A medic’s pride, such an easy thing to turn to your favor.

The check-up goes without a hitch until the point in which Ratchet asks Starscream to remove the reduced Apex Armor to inspect that area. Starscream’s hands curl protectively over the relic.

“There’s nothing to see there,” he says, trying to keep his tone controlled. “It’s a small area and it’s clean. There’s no need for you to look there.”

“I agree with him, Doc. The only ugly thing we’ll see if he takes that off is the Decepticon badge,” Wheeljack says.

Well, isn’t this a very nice opening to remind them of his neutrality?

“No, you wouldn’t. My badge used to go here,” he says, pointing at the scratches that mark the badge’s previous location. “And as you can see, I took it off.”

The others stare at him in shock.

“Why are you making those faces?” Starscream asks, exaggeratedly furrowing his brows. “I left the Decepticons, why should I be wearing the badge?”

“You really left, then?” Monster Human #2 says, her face so twisted by her confused frown that she makes him think of knots.

“No, I’m living in a broken down spaceship and asking my lifelong enemies to fix me because I think being a hermit will mystically give Lord Megatron the advantage in the war,” he deadpans.

“So you’re saying that this isn’t a trick? A scheme? Part of a plan?” Ratchet says before Monster Human #2 can open her mouth to argue.

Starscream huffs. “Of course it’s part of a plan. It’s part of my plan to survive. I thought that was obvious.”

Wheeljack and Bulkhead exchange doubtful looks. Ratchet watches Starscream, studying him. Monster Human #2 looks ready for a fight.

Time for the most important part of this encounter.

“Are you done with the check-up? I was watching TV before you arrived and I’d like to continue,” he says, moving away from them, his hand on the Apex Armor in case they decide to try something.

“Yes, we’re done,” Ratchet says, but doesn’t move, clearly still trying to understand everything.

“Do you want something?” Starscream asks flippantly, crossing his arms in front of his chest and waiting.

“No. Just… what is this, Starscream?” Ratchet says, gesturing towards the room they’re in.

“My hiding spot. I know it’s not much, but you make do with what you have,” he says, mock-humble.

He hums in thought as the others keep watching him.

“Since you’re here and you’ve been so kind,” he thinks his tone might have been too sarcastic there, but he doesn’t think Bulkhead and Wheeljack have the necessary mental abilities to understand a subtler tone, “do you think you could bring me some writing supplies?”

This is the third time the others give him a baffled look. Starscream loves it. It’s a pity he removed the cameras, he would have liked to see this again.

“Writing. Supplies,” Bulkhead says.

“You mean… paper and pens?” Monster Human #2 says. “Why would you want that?”

“Artistic arson, of course,” Starscream deadpans. “To write!” he says, raising his hands in a calculated gesture of exasperation.

“Can’t you use the computer?”

“I want to try calligraphy.”

“You can’t be serious,” Ratchet cuts in before Monster Human #2 gets to retort.

“I’m very serious and very bored,” Starscream says. “Human tools are tiny; mastering them should give me hours of work and entertainment.”

“You want human sized tools,” Ratchet says flatly.

“Yes.”

Ratchet drags a hand over his face and looks extremely tired of everything and everyone.

“We might discuss this with Optimus and the others.”

“Thank you, Ratchet.” Starscream smiles, no warmth in the curve of his mouth. “That’s so nice of you.”

Ratchet narrows his eyes at Starscream and turns around. The other Autobots do the same. Monster Human #2 starts walking backwards, never taking her eyes from him, squinting to make it clear that she’s watching him.

It’s only after they’ve left through their own groundbridge that Starscream takes his hand off the Apex Armor.

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That night, Starscream gathers his courage, ignores his pride, and writes to goldenTrinket, who still hasn’t messaged him.

>SunCat: I finished that “Blue Beetle” comic you recommended. It was entertaining.

Should he send more messages? He remembers that odd feeling of guilt he’d had when he’d seen her log out of the forum after their last conversation, but what’s he supposed to say? He’s not going to apologize for calling her out on her naïve assumptions of friendship. He just wants things to go back to how they used to be, with her recommending movies and TV shows and asking him about his day, then giving him unsolicited information about her own day, acting like talking to him was a good way to pass the time. Talking to her had been a good way to pass the time.

He wonders if she has written on ‘Internal Screaming’ these days.

Oh.

This isn’t good. This can’t be good. He has enough with worrying about Knock Out, now it turns out he’s worried about a human? This is bad. This is terrible. This is such a bad turn of events.

He cares about a human and he cares about Knock Out. He has gone from caring only about himself to worrying about two people, one of whom might be dead and another one that will definitely be dead in seventy years or less.

It’d almost be better to have Lord Megatron show up now to drag him back to the Nemesis or to kill him; at least that’s something Starscream knows how to deal with. This? What the Pit does this mean? What’s he supposed to do with this?

Thinking about Lord Megatron brings a new wave of fear and Starscream has to clutch his hands to keep them from shaking. Lord Megatron most definitely knows he’s here, why hasn’t he shown up yet? What will happen if he shows up before Starscream has finished putting his plan in motion? What will happen if Lord Megatron wins?

That last one is easy: he’ll find Knock Out and do something terrible to him for daring to leave the Decepticons, and then he’ll kill all humans, goldenTrinket included.

This might be the first time in Starscream’s life he has been afraid for somebody else’s life.

This isn’t good. This isn’t even ‘fine’.

In an attempt to distract himself, he looks online for pictures of cars that might be Knock Out, just in case there’s something, just to give himself the illusion of safety, but nothing appears.

He’s alone, he’s afraid, and he’s worried.

Starscream hates this.

He checks the forum. goldenTrinket hasn’t replied, even though she’s online.

She logs out at 3 a.m. without sending him a single message.