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The sky was filled with the endless spectre of the Planet Eater, the darkness of His shadow challenged only by the inferno that burned at the centre of His gargantuan, gapping, ravenous maw. Chunks of the Earth, the site of their final stand against this vengeful entropy, started to break away and float upwards, to be consumed and annihilated by the immense, infernal orifice. Most of the planet’s atmosphere had already been stripped away, so that the end of the world unfolded in silence. Time seemed to slow down, and there was almost a strange calm to everything, as the quiet, apocalyptic spectacle occurred. There was no sense of doom, just its certainty.
Windblade, Starscream and Bumblebee stood on a piece of firmament that had yet to peel away, watching the dark, jagged, miles-wide fragments of land silently ascend towards the tunnel of light at the centre of the sky. Starscream’s incredible tenacity, Windblade’s intrepid determination, Bumblebee’s shining optimism – all were rendered mute in the face of the inevitability of the end. They had no clever or even desperate schemes left to challenge their shared fate, all they had left were the few moments remaining to them before they too were consumed by the light.
There was barely any future left, so their minds turned to thoughts of their pasts; the things that they did, they things they were going to do, the things they should have done. They each thought of the better worlds they had wanted and fought to build. Now the only world they had left was disintegrating before their optics. They thought of all that they’d wanted to prove, but the time for that was up. They thought of the many, many mistakes they’d each made, and how it was too late to atone for them. Their minds ran through all the things they had told themselves to justify all they had done in the name of the greater good, in the name of survival, in the name of ambition. Millennia of enduring and inflicting pain and anguish for the sake of a better future that was never going to exist. None of it mattered now.
They’d tried, they’d really tried, but they were imperfect creatures, thrown into an imperfect universe, so what chance did they ever really have? Their existence was a shameful mistake that would soon be rectified with their return to the fire. Bumblebee thought of the absurdity of how he had seemingly been given a second chance to live, only for his resurrection to herald the death of everything. He could only conclude that, if there was any logic to the universe, it was the sick narrative logic of a pitch-black comedy. Windblade remembered the exhilarating rush of bliss she’d felt when she’d been elected leader of Cybertron, and how in that moment, all her sweetest dreams of better future had seemed within her grasp. Now, as she watched everything come to an end, she finally understood that it foolish to dream in a world as fickle and as cruel as this. Starscream stared into the infernal funnel of light that waited above them, and felt that his final reckoning for every sin he’d ever committed was upon him at last, and this time there would be no escaping the fate he deserved.
There had been so many joyful experiences that the future had seemed to promise not long ago. Desires they’d thought they would finally be able to pursue, now that they were at last released from the restrictions of Functionism, war, abusers, and religious hegemony. Freedom, the likes of which they’d never before known in their ancient lives, had been theirs to enjoy, for a precious sliver of time. There were people they’d wanted to become, potential they’d wanted to realise. There were relationships they had wanted to explore and deepen. Now none of that could ever come to pass.
But maybe in the end, when they returned to the fire, they would be together at last. All would be as one in the light of the All Spark. Perhaps that was how they always should have been, and their existence as separate beings was an aberration that was simply being corrected. So much of what they’d suffered had ultimately come down to conflict between different people, so the removal of that differentiation could mean an end to their suffering at last. It would mean an end to the hate, abuse, killing, and loneliness. The loneliness had been particularly painful for the three of them, especially in the last few years. Bumblebee had been isolated as leader of Cybertron, and then almost completely cut off in death. Windblade had suffered in isolation and exile from her home world. Starscream…Starscream had felt alone almost his entire life.
And yet, he didn’t feel alone now. Here at the end of it all, he stood with Bumblebee and Windblade, the two bots who had offered him compassion, companionship, help and understanding, and he realised that he wasn’t afraid. Since he’d been broken out of prison, and Bumblebee had returned to life, he’d exchanged petty words with each of them, and kept them both at a distance, and all of that seemed insane now. As everything broke apart, never to reform, and his life was put into perspective as it came to its end, any slights or hurt pride between them felt so meaningless. In the vast swarths of painful and empty misery that made up his extensive existence, they had been some of the few beacons of meaning and joy. Nothing mattered now, nothing but them.
He reached out and took each of them by the hand, savouring their touch while he still could. He had feared and denied and deflected his feelings for years, but now there was no point to any of that nonsense – he loved them, and in their last moments he wanted them to know it. Bumblebee felt Starscream’s hand close around his, and realised that this was the first time they had touched since his death. In his time he had spent as an intangible ghost, he had desperately craved the touch of another bot, but the more time he had spent with Starscream, and the closer they’d grown, the more he’d come to wish that the touch was Starscream’s. Now here, in his final moments, that wish had been granted. Windblade intertwined her fingers with Starscream’s, her messy and ambivalent feelings for him resolving into a simple desire to share the end with someone who had a place in her spark, as strange as that place may be.
Bumblebee reached out to take Windblade’s remaining hand in his. While they’d only had a mutual relationship for a couple of days, he had known her for a lot longer, and in the time he had watched her from Starscream’s side, he had come to love her for her compassion, resolve and conviction. When he had returned to life, one of the first things he had wanted to do was develop a proper relationship with her, but now the only time they had left together was the next few moments, and he wanted to make what he could of it. Windblade gladly took his hand; she had known Bee for a very short time, but he had already come to feel like someone she could rely on and confide in, and now he was one of the only two people left in what precious moments remained of her life.
Their attentions turned from the impending extinction that awaited them in the sky, and they spent the end of their lives focused on each other. They didn’t say anything, at this point nothing needed to be said, and the way they held each other’s hands and looked into each other’s optics communicated everything that mattered. When Starscream had been crushed under the weight of his sins, failures, and pain, Windblade and Bumblebee had helped him rise above it. When Windblade had faced the consequences of her reckless determination to forge a better future, Starscream had been the one to save her. When Bumblebee had been lost and alone in darkness, Starscream had been his light. Now, in their darkest moment, the three of them were there for each other. Ultimately, their lives had been mostly suffering, and their many struggles had proven in vain, but in the end, they knew that the bonds they had forged had meant something.
The ground beneath them started to rumble and then shatter, as they were raised up above what remained of the Earth. They held onto each other tighter as they ascended towards the light, continuing to gaze at one another, rather than look towards their fate. When the glow of the inferno became too blinding for them to see, they just focused on the feeling of their hands holding onto each other too tightly to ever let go. Soon letting go became a literal impossibility, as the heat from the inferno fused the metal of their hands in place.
Maybe they were about to be united as one, or maybe all that awaited was oblivion. Either way, here in this moment as they entered the light, they were together.