Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ramjet is doing simple reconnaissance around the area of the last fight - seeing if there’s anything he can pick up and bring back to base to shore up their failing supplies - when he spots the little bit of red plating next to a piece of rubble. It’s just an area meant for collecting electricity from the movement of the river, not a big raid by any means, but there’s always something useful in the mess and bits of broken off Autobot are as useful as anything else. He swoops down, peds landing in the soft dirt, and reaches for what he assumes is an arm or a leg.

The arm beeps at him.

Ramjet startles, flinching away before reaching down again. “... what the frag?”

What he’d assumed to be a bit of plating pokes its - its helm out of the rubble. It has tiny little horns and big, round blue optics, and a tiny, blunted little nose. Round cheeks. It looks -

Like a sparkling.

There’s no special coding in seekers that makes them love sparklings. No protective instinct that wouldn’t be found in some degree in any other frame type. Nothing special about them to convince them to love the lumpy little idiots.

Nothing but million of years of culture telling any seeker sparked in Vos that sparklings are precious gems meant to be kept safe.

He swoops down and pulls the little thing from beneath the rubble, gasping. He’s smaller than the sparklings Ramjet remembers taking care of in the Aeries before the city had fallen, fitting in just the palm of his hand. He’s got a round little chest and short little arms and legs, which kick in the air with all strength. He rolls over in Ramjet’s hands, crying out as he wobbles on his peds and falls when he tries to stand.

A minibot. A little red minibot, way out here in the cold and among the organics, of all things, too delicate and young to be allowed out of the nest. Ramjet can’t say he’s more than two or three vorns old, even if he’d be a tiny two vorn old of a seeker. “Hey, hey,” he whispers. “You’re tiny as a little thing.” Obvious, but it’s been a long time since he’s talked to a sparkling. The ones from outside the city like nonsense, don’t they? They did in all those movies that were popular in Vos before the war.

He can’t leave the little thing out here to be found by the Autobots or, worse, the organics. He’s so tiny! Ramjet would probably get his wings ripped off for even thinking about leaving something so small where anyone could take him.

The sparkling lurches forwards and sinks tiny denta into Ramjet’s thumb.

... Yeah, the little monster’s going to fit right in.

—

Ramjet hides him in his cockpit. No one checks a seeker’s cockpit, especially not a Conehead’s cockpit, and the little thing fits well enough strapped to the human-sized chair he has in there now. Not a proper place for a sparkling to ride in, but they hadn’t gotten to keep their sparkling carriers in the army anyways, so it’s better than having to ride in the munitions hold. The sparkling sort of bounces around in there when Ramjet’s taking off, but he’s a tough little thing. Scrapes up the inside of his cockpit something nasty, but sparklings always do, and Ramjet’s not to gentle about shaking him loose anyways.

Lucky for him, the kid’s as quiet as he is mean.

Ramjet manages to get through the control tower and back to the aerial quarters without anyone noticing his extra cargo. The jets are kept separate from the ground pounders, the two units bunking down on opposite sides of the ship, and for good reason - the damn ground pounders can’t keep to their own business. And maybe the aerial unit likes to spill out over everywhere when they have the chance, but then, they’re worth the extra space.

He lets the bit tumble into his hands as soon as he’s clear of the hallway, the little thing all rolled up in a ball and prepared to keep rolling. Ramjet croons. The sparkling uncurls and chirps angrily at him, plating all fluffed out like he’s trying to intimidate the jet.

The first hint of sound attracts the rest of the unit, of course.

Ramjet scoops the bitty up, tucking him close to his shoulder. Blunt little fingers, so different from the razor sharp claw tips of Vos-sparked bitlet, scrabble against his cheek. He coos at the little thing’s show of strength.

“So, dirt-packer, who is this?”

Ignoring Starscream’s snipe is easy - no one really listens when he opens his mouth anymore anyways. Ramjet croons, pulling the bit away and presenting him, hands cupped, to his Winglord. The minibot flops over his curled fingers. “I found him on a battlefield.”

The gathered seekers gasp on queue. “The Autobots left him there?”

“Look at him! He’s so tiny. You know that the groundpounders discard their young -“

“And obviously we can’t let such inept afts have him back. Of course.”

Well. They listen to Starscream some of the time.

“Of course. He can bunk with my trine!”

“Now wait just a nano -“

Chapter Text

Starscream can’t say he’s particularly fond of sparklings. He did his rounds in the creche like every other sub-adult in his aerie, and he found it for the most part insipid and boring. Newspark Seekers don’t do much but fuel, cry for more fuel, sleep, and test out their systems in the most obnoxious way possible. Younglings think that they’re adults, refuse to listen to directions, and in general make nuisances of themselves.

Oh, but toddlers? Those little creatures of potential and chaos wrapped in a package too precious to punish? Oh, Starscream could do much with that.

The little foundling is somewhere between a new spark and a proper toddler, Starscream determines once he’s had Thundercracker wipe the worst of the dirt off the thing. Skywarp has been tasked with keeping the rest of the airforce out of the communal ‘racks, and Starscream certainly isn’t going to risk his polish doing something so simple. The bitty hadn’t acted used to the quick shower he’d gotten - he’d cried when the water ran over his head, a little yelping noise that grated on everyone’s audials - but had delighted in being rubbed down with a soft cloth and some of Skywarp’s reserve polish. The other seeker didn’t use it, anyways.

Clean, it’s easier to tell that’s he’s clearly of minibot stock. He has a large helm in comparison to the size of his chassis, and large, square feet that kick wildly when Thundercracker tries to polish them. Little giggles rolled out of him in a tumble of noise, until they turned into angry shrieks and desperate grabs for the cloth. Thundercracker lets him have it, and the bitty immediately tosses it aside. Starscream notes his ability to clutch the cloth, the way he curls it around his arm before tossing it aside, round cheeks puffed out. His legs when he kicks them are straight, the kneecaps properly formed and pronounced, toe plate curling upwards. For all his minuscule size, he has all the trappings of a sparkling capable of walking uprights.

It would only be a matter of intelligence, then.

Starscream plucks up the still-screaming sparkling from his trinemate’s arms. Walking practice can happen in the hangars over a cube of fuel. The easiest way to get a screaming sparkling to stop screaming is to fuel them, after all, and who knows when the bitty last ate? It’s likely to do the seeker thing and start fueling on the mech around him, if they don’t get him fed up and stupid with it.

He hefts him up by his armpits and watches his little legs kick pinwheels in the air. His chubby hands claw uselessly at Starscream’s wrists, spit bubbles forming and drooling down his chin as he makes little screaming noises.

Talking tends to come before walking, in Starscream’s experience - or, at least, some effort to form words. He dials back his assumption of the bit’s age.

He bounces him as they make their way to the airforce’s hangar. It’s one of two on the Victory, with the other more suited to the wider ranges of altmodes more rarely presented in the army. At this time of day, with no particular training or missions planned, it’s being used as a rec room and fueling area. There’s a scattering of seekers about, including the Coneheads. They’re pretending to be lost in their separate little lives, but Starscream can see immediately how their wings flick to attention when he walks in. It wouldn’t be for him; none of them bother showing him that much deference anymore.

The sparkling babbles at all of the new mechs, momentarily distracted from his bid for freedom.

Every seeker in the room croons almost on cue - Starscream immediately blames his airforce’s lack of small things to obsess over. He, after all, does not follow suit.

Skywarp vops into view a moment off cue. He has three cubes in hand, one for each of his trine, and a spare to dribble out a share for the bit. Vosnian tradition is that the bit fuels first.

They’re not in Vos, and Starscream has never been patient for his fuel. He snatches the cube from Skywarp’s hand, downing the energon in two quick gulps. The gritty, acidic texture of the fuel, no doubt a result of their taking the energon from a coal refinery. It burns the back of his throat as it goes down.

He considers passing off the last dregs of it to the bit, just to see how he’ll react. After a moment he shakes his helm; there would be no point. The reaction is predictable. He’d cry, and probably purge, and all that Starscream will be left with is a mess.

“Everyone has better be ready to open a line,” he croons to his airforce. He’s never seen them so obedient before, as limbs clatter in a scattered rainbow. “The fuel’s not suitable for bits.”

There’s a momentary clatter, a shuffling of wings, and a puffing of plating, as experience warriors try not to be the first mech to say that they’re too chicken-shit to open a line.

Ramjet pops up, wings flared and optics overbright. He’s visibly trembling, the tips of his wings making little whirls of dust motes drift through the hangar, caught by the fluorescents. “I will! I’ve got a full ration in me already -”

“Hey! I was going to volunteer!” Ionstorm screeches, on his peds and arms waving, utterly appalled that someone might get in before he does, despite his complete lack of intention to donate just seconds ago.

It’s the breaking of a dam; suddenly Starscream is surrounded by eager seekers with thrust-out wrists, ready to be drained dry for the bitlet currently kicking his little peds at them with menacing intent.

“Well then,” Starscream croons, tucking the wriggling frame between his elbow and his cockpit. He doesn’t even have to look at him to do it. “Let’s see who’s going first.”

As much as Starscream would have enjoyed taking his pint of energon from each of the useless idiots in his airforce, the sparkling is startlingly small and only needs a few swallows from the corner of the cube before he’s done.

Starscream still had it filled to the brim, of course. Just in case.

The sparkling has a rounded little belly by the end of his meal, blue optics dimming as he slips into recharge. Starscream has two full trines hanging off of his wings as he does, watching the wriggly thing squirm himself into unconsciousness. There’s a bubble of energon on his bottom lip. Starscream wipes it away with his thumb, rubbing the wetness into the vent on the side of his helm. The sparkling turns his face into his palm, rubbing his nub of a nose into the seam beneath his fingers. Seekers croon over his shoulder at the sight.

Part of him wants to jostle the little thing awake. Sparklings are utterly boring when they recharge, after all.

He imagines the thing squawking, or worse, screaming, and shudders.

He’s quite dramatic enough for the both of them.

Starscream checks his chronometer. It’s nearing the end of the beta shift. He’s expected.

While technically excused from regular shift times - a perk of Command, that his own schedule is determined by his whims - there are expectations of his availability in concern to completing his datawork and attending terribly boring and, ultimately, rather useless command meetings.

It’s not like Megatron takes any of his suggestions to spark, after all.

He hefts the bit up by his armpits. “You all know where I’m supposed to be right now. Who wants to take it for the night?”

There’s a flurry of movement, the scrape of wings against wings, and the inevitable snarl of Seekers discontent with actually having to touch each other before the bitty is plucked from his hands. He closes them a moment too late, claws digging into his own plating.

Ramjet beams at the bitty, rubbing his nose against the little thing’s nubby one. “You’re gonna love the trine quarters -”

The sparkling lashes out with his little claws, opening a gash across Ramjet's jaw. The rest of the flock titters. 

Starscream turns on his heel and leaves. He has an appointment to keep.

--

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Soundwave sighs.

Ravage keeps tapping her tail against the chair leg. She’s sitting under Megatron’s chair, chin on her paws, optics dimmed. They’ve been waiting in the command’s meeting room for nearly an hour now.

“The Seekers are up to something,” she says, then yawns, fangs gleaming pink-on-white in the low light of the command conference room. She looks savage. “One of the pointy-headed idiots brought something in and it’s been distracting them all afternoon.”

“Seekers: always up to something.” Soundwave makes sure his visor is pointedly looking in the direction of the intelligence pad he’s supposed to be studying. He shouldn’t indulge her. She’ll start hunting the Seekers like birds again if he doesn’t make a point of thinking that they’re boring.

“They’re up to something new,” she insists.

“Seekers: find amusement in many things.”

She yawns, her glossa lolling out of her mouth. “It’s a small thing. And it’s alive. You should make sure they didn’t kidnap another of Megatron’s organic playthings for their own amusement again.”

He sighs. “Last organic incident: started by Rumble and Frenzy.”

“And the Seekers can’t be part of the next one?”

He stares harder at the datapad. The words blur together.

“You’re ignoring me because you don’t want to spend your off time stalking the airforce,” she says. Her voice is a low purr, sonorous. He knows she’s trying to pull him in, make him do exactly what she wants him to.

He should have picked a less astute being for his cassette.

He drops the datapad on the table. “Ravage -”

They both go still as the sliding door to the conference room is slammed open.

Starscream is standing there, backlit by the hall lights. His red optics are edging towards pink. There are red paint transfers on his hands.

There aren’t any bite marks on his wings.

And Megatron does not come walking in behind him, strutting like an overproud Orien Rooster.

::Seekers: are up to something.::

He sighs.

Along the cassetticon link, Ravage cackles.

He never does win. He should have joined the Autobots...

Chapter Text

The meeting is a hurried thing. Megatron and Starscream barely look at each other; while this would usually be something that Soundwave is grateful for, he’d already been suspicious of the seeker before they’d started. The quiet hasn’t assuaged any of his concerns.

Quite the opposite, actually; he now feels more concern than he did before the meeting. (He’s always concerned about the Seekers; he has on average 5.00% of his cognitive function dedicated to what the Seekers, specifically, are getting up to at any one point in time). Both leaders exit the meeting room without the requisite sniping - either literal or figurative - nothing more than a passing growl of engines and a swipe of Starscream’s claws when Megatron steps too close to him. The scratches it leaves on his leader’s dull finish aren’t even deep enough to draw energon.

Highly unusual.

Most command meetings end with one or another of the pair being bullied into the nearby supply close. It leaves Soundwave with a precious few hours where he doesn’t have sparklingsit his leaders. They’re usually reliable, at least in this one sense.

Unfortunately, he’d come to rely too heavily on their own internal schedules. He has reports due and no time or inclination to put them off; his evening has been taken up by a meeting with Shockwave, to discuss recent scientific discoveries and their merits in Earth-based combat. He couldn’t put that off for whatever ridiculous thing his leaders were currently embroiling themselves in.

::Laserbeak, Buzzsaw,:: He deploys both of his symbiotes with only a moment’s hesitation. Unlike the twins his older two fliers can be trusted to complete their mission with little dramatics, but their unfortunate tendency towards side projects on the Nemesis was enough to make him hesitate. They could rarely be trusted to their own devices for very long if not in active battle.

Still, Ravage would be needed to keep an optic on the Seekers, and Ratbat was - well, Ratbat.

They unfurl and perch on the table, clacking beaks at eachother, shuffling their narrow feet on the ledge. Buzzsaw makes a snipe at her brother’s shoulder when he shuffles too close and he jumps back, wings flared, ready to return it with his own sharp-beaked bite. Soundwave drops a hand between their shuffling forms. “Both of you: will desist.” He intones gravely. “Buzzsaw and Lazerbeak: have a new mission.”

It takes a moment for them to sort themselves and come to attention. Soudnwave waits with poor patience, knowing that every wasted minute is a minute he will be spending filling out forms and going over reports instead of recharging. “What’s the job, Boss?” Lazerbeak clacks his beak excitedly. “We get to go spy on the Combaticons again?”

“No. Combaticons: currently a non-issue.”

“But what about Swindle -“

“Combaticons: a non-issue.” Soundwave presses his mind against the cassette’s, bearing down on his quick-silver thoughts until they still, suffocated under the bulk of his own processes and data. “Buzzsaw: will follow Megatron. Lazerbeak: will follow Starscream. Current suspicion: they are hiding something from me.”

Buzzsaw gasps as if shocked that someone would attempt to hide - or succeed in hiding - something from Soundwave. “Like a secret plan for world domination?”

Soundwave can taste her sarcasm, thick as sodium, and sighs. “No. Buzzsaw: will cease being ridiculous. Megatron: may be hiding an injury. Has done so before.”

“But that’s not fun,” she whines. Her voice warbles softly as her talons curl into the table.

“This mission: is not meant to be fun. Is meant to be informative.”

Lazerbeak laughs. “I’m gonna have fun. I’ve got Screamer.”

“Lazerbeak: will not act on what he sees. Will only report back to me.”

“I know the drill, Boss.”

Soundwave recalls, morose, the blackmailing attempts his cassette had tried and failed to put into place only the month before. As it turns out, the Insecticons did not care for either birds or blackmailers. “Lazerbeak: will follow protocol.” He waits until the cassette send an affirmative across their bond. “Lazerbeak and Buzzsaw: dismissed. Keep Soundwave updated.”

“Will do.”

“‘Course!”

He watches as they both rise off the table, making a short circuit of the small meeting room before slipping into the ventilation shafts just above the doorway. He exchanges a look with Ravage; she only shrugs and grooms her paw with her rough, alien glossa. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t raise them. They’re your problems.

Soundwave swallows a sigh - Deception commanders don’t sigh - and gathers up both his and his commanding officer’s data pads. “Reports: require writing. Ravage: will join us?”

She hefts herself to her paws, her smile utterly leonine. “I’ll be doing something, certainly. But no, I won’t be joining you just yet.”

“Ravage: will join us after evening fuel?”

She cocks her helm, tail lashing out behind her in slow, graceful sweeps. “Perhaps. Don’t wait up.”

“Of course. Ravage: stay out of trouble.”

“Oh, of course.”

—

The issue, Megatron found himself thinking as he stepped into the wreckage of what used to be his quarters, shoulder smarting from Starscream’s glancing blow and spark in his mouth from how long the abbreviated meeting had taken, is that he hadn’t anticipated the destruction two confused younglings could make in just an hour’s time.

He knows Starscream. He should have anticipated that the twins could be just as bad.

Some part of him had expected them to be the sparkling he had known in the Pits millennia ago. They had been feral and undersized, then, all claws and teeth and rage bundled inside starvation-thinned plating, but he remembers how easily it was to win their favor with a package of energon-wafers.

He supposes time had dulled the memory. Or perhaps he was not the mech he was in the Pits, and they had no reason to trust him as they had then, and if any memory of who had been remains they could not make the connection to the mech he had become. Either way, it has left him with the issue of two terrified, feral sparkling in his rooms, and -

Well, what terrified, feral sparkling do when locked in a room for more than five minutes alone.

One of them had torn apart his blanket - his only blanket, and the best one on the ship, barring whatever nonsense Starscream had in his quarters - and the other had somehow gotten into his meager collection of waxes and war paints, and done quite a number on them. Going by the wrappers left licked-clean on the floor they’d both done a job of clearing out his fuel reserves.

They’re both curled up under the berth now, tucked into the far corner like petropuppies napping. In the dim light of his room he can’t tell whose limbs belong to whose frames.

He’d kneeled in paint to check on them; when he stands it runs in rivulets and pools, dark magenta, in the seam beneath his knee. Why had I kept you? He wonders, optics sweeping over his ruined quarters. It would take the rest of the night to fix.

He really should clean it properly.

Instead, feeling every one of his vorns suddenly weighing down on his shoulders, he does his most cursory sweep of the room. He collects spent fuel canisters for his cannon from corners of the rooms, digs out knifes slipped into places too accessible to eager fingers for comfort, and places out of reach anything that might lead to little mouths ingesting poison, mostly cleaning solutions he rarely every touches.

Most of the debri is dumped into the washrack’s bin, door closing behind him. He’ll deal with it the morning.

He slumps onto the berth. It’s wider than standard, one of his few rank-privileges, and while it used to be covered in lump pillows and a threadbare if well loved blanket, it’s now all but bare. They had apparently taken great delight in pulling the stuffing out of his pillows; there are mounds of it gathered in the corners of the room.

A millenia ago this had all felt so much simpler. They had been sparklings, wild, untamed, fighting in the dirt with the dogs for scraps of fuel. The first time he’d seen them they had been scavenging an old mech’s frame with their teeth. He had been young. He’d been confident in his own lack of desire for people in his life, let alone the page boy that the managers insisted on.

Given his pick, he’d chosen them. It was supposed to be nothing more than a message to anyone who knew these things - he could not be pushed around or forced into such choices.

First it would have been the page. Then it would have been visitors, then selling himself for a coin and a better slot in the arena.

It had been better, choosing a pair of mechlings who would never escape the pit over someone liable to betray him.

And then they had been dropped at his door, and he’d found use for them. Somehow.

Looking at the smudged red and yellow paintings on his walls, listening to their vents softly whistle in the underwater dark of his his room, he wonders how.