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“You have such a… cute laugh,” Ratchet says, fiddling with the end of the cortical psychic patch. “What a lovely memory that was, Screamer. But that’s not what I’m in here to see.”
Starscream lets his helm drop back down onto the table with a heavy thud. “I– know what you want to see, and– you’re not getting it.”
“Hmm.” Ratchet drops the long cord back on the table of tools, and turns to face him. “I can just… keep extracting all the memories you have of your beloved leader.”
“You c-c-can’t tak-k-k-e those away.” His vocalizer fights him. He powers through it, determined.
Ratchet’s chuckle is terrifying to hear. “Shockwave never knew what to do with his patch. Never knew the… potential behind it.” He pats Starscream’s helm, claws scraping faintly at the derma. “I can do whatever I want.”
“Then why don’t you just get the information?” Starscream says. He tries to make it a defiant shout, but the words choke off into hisses as his vocalizer shorts out again.
Ratchet smiles.
“I want you to tell me yourself.”
“No.”
“Then it’s back into the brain pan we go,” the doctor says, and Starscream’s world dissolves into hot light.
It’s another memory of Megatron and him. He rebels against this, against letting Ratchet see this. He almost wants Ratchet to pull the information from his head, so he could rest assured that it hadn’t been his fault. There’s no way he could defend against a cortical psychic patch, he knows, and if Ratchet had just taken the things he needed then– then it wouldn’t have been Starscream’s fault.
But the way this is going– losing everything he cares about, piece by piece– he can’t take. He can’t.
“Starscream!” Megatron says, his face lighting up delightedly, and Starscream– other Starscream, the one in the memory– laughs– and, and–
Starscream wants to keep looking, knowing that Ratchet will take this away. But he also knows that Ratchet is watching, and that makes the memory an agony.
When it’s over, and the patch is being pulled from his head in an explosion of painful sparks, he can’t remember what Ratchet went in there to see.
“I can keep doin’ this,” Ratchet says as the scent of burning wires reaches Starscream’s olfactory sensors– the patch was never meant to be used this much, he knows, it’s shorting his circuits. “Do you still remember your lord? Or was that a very, very important memory?”
Starscream chokes on the words that won’t come out. He’s suddenly terrified of the next time Ratchet would remove a memory. What if he forgets how he swore allegiance to Megatron? What if he forgets how Megatron swore allegiance to him?
“Tell me what I want to know, now.”
Miserable, Starscream shakes his helm and sets his dentae.
“Then it’s back,” Ratchet purrs, “into the brain pan.”
But before the smoking end of the patch touches Starscream’s neck components, the ground beneath them shakes with the force of a sudden explosion. Ratchet drops the cord, looks up, and snarls.
“Prime!” he bellows. “I’m trying to work!”
But Starscream recognizes the explosion, the slight scent of burned energon that came from having to painstakingly weld together the pathways and funnels for the bombs. Decepticon bombs. He sits up, or tries to.
“No, no,” Ratchet says, almost– angry, he hasn’t been angry since the interrogation started– and shoves his head back down. “Prime’s just not being quiet enough in squashing your little friends who want to save you. Actually, you know what? Let’s take away another memory of one… particular… friend.”
Wait. No, no– not when he was so close!
Explosions rock the base harder. Footfalls slam down on hard floor.
Starscream struggles right up until the patch clicks into the back of his helm.
He’s floating. The connection didn’t complete.
That could mean only two things– either he died, or someone interrupted Ratchet in the middle of erasing his memories. And the only one who would stop Ratchet from getting inside his head–
Megatron.
He’s here.
But–
Ratchet had taken something away. Who knew what it was. What if– what if it was a memory that he needed in order to feel the same about Megatron?
What if, when he wakes up, he can’t remember his lord at all?
He can feel himself being pulled back from the empty space, and he knows he must go to the light if he wants to escape. But he’s terrified. He doesn’t want to wake up and look at the face of a stranger.
If he could have cried, he would have. But as it is, all he can do is let himself be pulled further and further out of the blackness of memory.
He hopes he’ll remember once he wakes up.