Work Text:
“He wants to talk to you.”
Starscream looked up. He’d been hoping to avoid this conversation entirely, perhaps go the rest of his functioning here in the Decepticon cause without having a reason to speak to the mech who used to be Megatron. A goal that was admirable, perhaps, because of how unlikely it was to come to fruition.
He sighed, feeling his turbines begin to make the nervous hitching he’d tried so hard to get rid of. “Where is he?”
Shockwave looked at him with a trace of sympathy, it seemed. “He hasn’t had a moment away from everyone else since he got back. They all want a glimpse at his new body.”
“It’s not really new, is it? It’s just his body. Galvatron isn’t Megatron.” Starscream spoke bitterly enough, but he knew Shockwave would hardly pick up on the undertones, in the throes of science as he was.
Shockwave nodded. “It’s fascinating. I wish I could look into what happened to aid his reformatting in that way-- not only complete frame overhaul and remodel, but total personality change! There’s almost nothing of Megatron left. I wonder--”
“Shockwave,” Starscream interrupted, and closed his mouth just as soon as he’d opened it. What right did he have to feel badly about Galvatron? If becoming this new version of himself had saved his lord’s life, did Starscream even deserve to mourn?
“I am sorry,” Shockwave said, after a moment. “I realize you are not taking this well.”
Starscream laughed. “I’ve been fine.”
“That’s not true. Your emotional fluctuations are irrational.”
“Please stay out of my EM field,” Starscream said gently. “I just don’t want to see him. Galvatron. You don’t understand, I know, but I’m afraid of how it’ll hurt.”
“I do fail to understand why.” Shockwave tilted his head. “It seems perfectly logical to want to see the mech who you had extensive emotional relations with and had thought dead.”
“Megatron is dead,” Starscream snapped. “That’s not him. It won’t be him. He won’t-- remember me,” he finished, suddenly sadder than he had been when he begun the sentence.
Shockwave’s eye dimmed. “I have seen no evidence to support the idea that he would remember his old life, so I suppose you are correct. But it has to help to see him, at least.”
“He won’t be anything like Megatron,” Starscream said, shaking his head. “I almost envy you, Shockwave.” He stood, shaking his wings a bit to try and quiet his turbines. “It must be nice, not feeling anything.”
“You should go and speak to Hook when you are done,” Shockwave said.
“I’ll be fine. Now, where is he?”
“I believe he was waiting in the training simulator.”
Starscream stopped dead still. The training sim. Images and memories assaulted him, whispered words and gentle touches and Megatron’s face, laser-focused on his simulated enemies and later, on Starscream himself. “No one ever comes in here.” Starscream could hear Megatron’s voice as clearly as if he had spoken in his audial. “I’m leading an army of lazy mecha, Starscream.”
“The perfect place,” Starscream murmured.
“What?” Shockwave inquired.
“Nothing.” It had to be a coincidence. Perhaps Galvatron was just as skilled as his past self at noting when a room was unused enough to function as a private meeting area.
It would make speaking to him twice as hard.
“Thank you, Shockwave,” Starscream said softly, and left.
Outside the door to the training sim, Starscream lingered.
If he pushed the button to open the door, he opened it to a stranger. It wasn’t as if this new mech wore Megatron’s face, but the knowledge that Galvatron’s existence took away Megatron’s, Starscream knew, would be too much for him to handle. He was not entirely sure that he could enter the room and not break.
He opened the door.
“My lord,” he said, pressing his hand to his chest and bowing, mostly so that he wouldn’t have to look at Galvatron so very soon. “You wanted to see me.”
“Starscream,” said Galvatron. Even his voice was different. This was too much for Starscream, he knew, he knew his emotional subsettings weren’t reacting well, why was he putting himself through this--
“Please stand.” Galvatron, merciless in his ignorance, spoke again. “I want to talk to you, Starscream.”
Starscream stood straight.
There he was, nothing of his former self apparent. The silver plating he’d once had was replaced with a blue-purple sheen of paint, and his blocky frame had been reformatted so far as to make him unrecognizable. He wasn’t Megatron. Starscream had known this, but actually speaking to the mech?
“Yes, my lord,” he said quietly.
“Starscream--” the purple mech said again, and there was a strange tone to his voice. Starscream flinched. Did he have to keep saying his name?
“Yes, my lord,” he repeated.
Galvatron was silent a moment, seemingly regarding Starscream impassively. Starscream stood firm against it, counting down the seconds until he could make his getaway.
“This seems the perfect place to meet,” Galvatron said softly. “No one comes in here.”
Starscream stared, his optics flaring with sudden shock.
“I’m leading an army of lazy mecha, Starscream,” Galvatron added, and his mouth curved hesitantly into a hopeful smile. The words coalesced in Starscream’s processor, exploded in sharp tendrils of memory in his spark.
“Megatron,” Starscream said, and his knees weakened.
“No,” Galvatron said ruefully. “I am Galvatron. I’m not your lord anymore, at least-- not who you knew. But I remember, Starscream.” He tilted his head. “I remember you.”
Starscream stood where he was, unable to even speak.
“I can only hope you remember me,” Galvatron murmured.
The silence broke. Starscream couldn’t hold back a sob as he buried his face in his hands, wanting desperately to go to Galvatron but afraid, afraid it was all a cruel joke. What if it it all disappeared as soon as he reached the other side of the training room?
But then he felt hands-- they were hands he remembered, even if the mech attached was virtually a stranger-- cup the side of his helm gently. Galvatron’s voice, familiar now even if it lacked Megatron’s old dissonance, said, “Starscream?” so worriedly that Starscream could not have held back if he had tried. He tore his hands from his face and clung to Galvatron instead, gripping his pauldrons and feeling the warmth of the strange engine that fueled his lord now. Galvatron felt like safety, like familiarity. Starscream, for the first time, was able to reconcile with the change.
“You’re really alive?” he asked, strained. Lifting his head up, he searched Galvatron’s unfamiliar optics. They returned his questioning gaze as reassuringly as Megatron’s once had. “It’s really you?”
“It’s me,” Galvatron said.
The clarification of who he was went unsaid. Starscream cared little anymore. His founding point had returned, and the details could rust into pieces for all he cared.
“I didn’t want to believe you died,” he blurted, feeling his struts tremble at the realization he was addressing the one thing he’d promised himself never to remember. “I was there when it happened, and I s-saw your spark go out, but I didn’t--”
Galvatron gently guided him across the room and helped him to sit. “I know.”
“Cyclonus,” Starscream said. His fingers clenched into themselves, aching in the tightness and the pain. “I could have stopped him.”
“You would have only died alongside me,” Galvatron said, and put a hand on Starscream’s wing, rubbing the tip soothingly. A grounding point he hadn’t forgotten.
“I should have.” There it was, everything Starscream had been holding back. “You were-- damn it. I should have.”
“Should have what?” Galvatron turned Starscream’s face to his with a hand to his chin. “Stopped Cyclonus or died alongside me?”
Starscream didn’t speak for a moment. “When I thought you wouldn’t remember me, I-- I wanted to have died protecting you, instead of living with a reminder that I hadn’t.”
Galvatron’s optics flickered. “Am I a reminder?”
Was he? Starscream had imagined that he would be. Knowing that he was alive and yet not who he once was had been a bitter taste of regret.
“Not now.” Starscream felt a weight lift off him, a surprise. “No, you’re not. You’re who I remember, even if-- well. You understand what I mean.”
Galvatron laughed quickly, a relieved shake of air. “You still care for me, Starscream?”
Starscream, looking at him, let his hands release from their fists. “Yes. I always will.”
A bright, happy look traveled over Galvatron’s features, an achingly familiar look. That had been Megatron’s look, and it did something to Starscream’s spark to see it in Galvatron’s face. Directed at him, because Galvatron knew him.
“I love you,” Galvatron said suddenly, “and I did when I was Megatron, and I will love you if I am turned into another caricature of myself.”
Starscream let out a breath and smiled in spite of himself. Galvatron continued.
“And I will love you if-- if you get resurrected as some sort of horn-crowned purple monstrosity like me, and I’ll love you if you turn into the most two-faced, double-talking backstabber who tries to assassinate me every day and twice on Saturdays--”
“Oh, stop,” Starscream said, laughing.
“I’ll love you. That’s it.” Galvatron held out his hands hesitantly, asking wordlessly for Starscream’s. “I promise.”
Starscream put his hands into Galvatron’s, squeezed them together tightly to stifle the shaking. “I never stopped loving you.”
The words unlocked something inside him, let the pain finally fall free. He’d lost Megatron, but he had Galvatron. He was secure now, and utterly, completely happy.
“Starscream--”
Starscream put a finger of his free hand over Galvatron’s mouth gently. “Enough bluster now, Galvatron.”
He pulled his lord’s head in for a kiss, small, soft, and wavering-- kissed him with the name Galvatron on his lips and a face in front of his eyes that didn’t quite yet match the affection in his spark. But it was a kiss that filled a promise, and a kiss that sealed a deal.
Now, all he had to do was keep his fool lord from dying on him again.