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Earth was a lot of things, most of them falling staunchly into the negative category if you asked Starscream. A detestable planet with even more detestable weather, ever-changing and unpredictable. Those infernal meteorological processes were what had led him to his current predicament. At that present moment, he was stuck in a cave… somewhere. Well, he couldn’t be sure of his exact coordinates with all of the interference coming from outside. The cave had been the closest form of shelter that Starscream could reach before the rising storm overtook everything in a violent blur of white. To say that it was less than ideal would be the understatement of the millenia, but it would serve.
His initial assignment had been to scout a stray energon signal that had popped up on the Decepticons’ radar in the middle of the arctic. Leave it to Megatron to send him to that accursed frozen wasteland as some twisted form of punishment—a misguided attempt at putting him back into his place after he had tried to undermine his authority again. Starscream accepted the assigned task, because it wasn’t worth the risk to argue, but he wouldn’t soon forget the indignation swelling through his spark at being assigned to such a menial job.
Starscream sighed and reset his commlink again, trying to send a message relaying his current state over the Decepticon distress line. Not that it would do him much good with the snow and cold from the outside interfering with his GPS system… He couldn’t give them coordinates for a ground bridge or recovery team even if his distress signal went through properly. It was simply an insurance plan, really, so that he would have proof that he attempted to request assistance just in case Megatron accused him of breaking protocol later.
All that came from the commline was an obnoxiously loud buzz of static that sent him scrambling to turn it off again. With a huff, Starscream slid down the cave wall to a sitting position. If he couldn’t get through to the Decepticons, he would just have to wait out the storm. From what he knew of Earth’s weather patterns—which admittedly wasn’t much at all—storms such as these usually cleared up within a day at the most.
An advisory warning popped up in Starscream’s processor. A low temperature warning, not cold enough to be dangerous yet, but cold enough to be annoying. He swatted the warning away, shaking his helm and drawing his body in closer. His self-heating systems had kicked on already, but it did little to ease the discomfort of the biting cold.
Being stuck in a freezing, damp cave alone for hours with nothing to preoccupy himself with would have been bad enough on its own, but… he wasn’t entirely alone. The ever-so slight movement of red and white from the corner of his optic reminded him of that irritating fact.
It had to be some sort of cosmic practical joke the universe was playing on him. It wasn’t possible outside of some higher being’s twisted sense of humor that he would get stuck here with the last mech he wanted to be stuck with for hours in the arctic of all places too.
Skyfire must have had the same idea as Starscream, desperate to find any sort of shelter to avoid being swept away by a polar windstorm again. He had arrived shortly after Starscream had and they hadn’t had any time to argue about finding a different hiding spot before the howling winds outside drowned out their petty disagreement. Apparently, his commlink wasn’t faring any better with breaking through the snow and they both knew how dangerous it would be to attempt to fly in that. Graciously, Skyfire had regulated himself to staying cramped up in his own corner in the cave. There was an unspoken agreement that Skyfire would stay on his side and that neither of them were going to speak. An agreement which Starscream was more than thankful for.
There were many things that they could talk about, so many stray thoughts to give voice too, but Starscream wasn’t interested in entertaining any reconciliation attempts. Skyfire had made it abundantly clear where he stood, and it wasn’t on Starscream’s side anymore.
Much to his annoyance, Starscream couldn’t even ignore Skyfire’s presence and pretend that he wasn’t there which was the worst part of it all. Skyfire was shivering, making his frame rattle violently. Starscream only rolled his optics at that. How was it that Skyfire was so much bigger than he was with more expansive heating systems, but he was the one shaking from the cold?
Starscream shifted slowly, not wanting to draw any unwanted attention to himself. He brought his chin down to rest on his joints as he stared out at the mouth of the cave.
“Must you be so loud?” Starscream practically hissed, being the first one to break the mutually agreed upon silence. “What if I wanted to recharge until the storm passes and your insufferable racket was keeping me awake?”
Skyfire brought his gaze up to meet Starscream’s glare, keeping his optics fixed on him for just a moment too long. “Right, sorry. I can’t really help it. It’s freezing.”
Starscream grumbled something, though he couldn’t bring himself to disagree with the sentiment. “Awful planet… with it’s rotten weather! We would never have gotten stuck like this back on Cybertron.”
That comment stuck out in Skyfire’s processor as strange. He pondered it for a moment, turning the thought over a few times. “Do you… miss Cybertron?”
It hadn’t occurred to him that Starscream might have missed the way things used to be too. Of course, he made his displeasure with Earth’s inhabitants crystal clear, but… He seemed so completely moved on from what life had been before the war had broken out. It was as if the Starscream that he knew millions of years ago—the one that recharged next to him on so many nights—had died in the ice and had been replaced with someone else entirely. But maybe he had been wrong to assume that.
“I thought you were happier down here as a soldier…” Skyfire added when the only response his query received was a dismissive turn of his helm, “than you were up there as a scientist.” With me.
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Starscream finally responded, an unmistakable bitterness in his tone, “You’ve been gone forever. Things have changed.” His wings twitched, yearning to transform and soar above the clouds once again—to go anywhere but here.
The statement—a thinly veiled accusation of betrayal—hung motionless and vacant in the air. The ensuing silence was an almost painful competition to see which one of them would break first.
“I never wanted to leave you behind. I may have only been semi-conscious while I was trapped in the ice, but… I still thought of you often during that time. Weaving in between Iacon’s skyscrapers, the hours we spent at the academy studying together, all of those wonderful expeditions to uncharted planets outside of our solar system… Those were my most vivid memories. You were my clearest memory during my icy imprisonment.”
There was a deathly stillness in the cave. Skyfire only stared at Starscream, searching for an indication of a reaction, or hell, anything really. He used to be able to read Starscream like the back of his hand, but now… all he was getting was a wall of resistance. No matter how hard he tried to push against the barrier between them and fill the space left by millions of years, it just wouldn’t give.
“Oh? Is that why you abandoned me at the first chance you got when you woke up? Is that how ‘important’ I was to you?”
There were so many things Skyfire wanted to say, crowding in his processor in an endless cacophony of noise wailing for the chance to be voiced. There was an urge, an inexplicable pull, to bridge the gap between them—a mere few feet that seemed to stretch on for miles in his head. It took everything in him to stay sitting, secluded to his assigned corner and not reach out and pull Starscream close until he understood the depth of the care burning in his spark.
“Star-”
Starscream bent forward, scooping up several small pebbles from the cave floor and launching one of them at Skyfire. The pebble bounced off of his plating with a quiet thud, not thrown with enough force to be painful or even annoying really. “No, answer the question. Was it really so bad working for the Decepticons with me really so bad? One day, I would have led the Decepticons—not Megatron—and you were going to be my second-in-command. It could have been great!”
“I… could not allow myself to bring harm to this planet nor the inhabitants of it.” Skyfire had to hold up an arm to block another pebble aimed at his face. “I am sorry for any grief I have caused you, Starscream, but… I could never bring myself to agree with your methods. I, too, miss our home planet. I’d give my own spark if it meant reviving Cybertron… but there are better ways to do it. If we just worked with the humans-”
“I don’t believe it. You’re choosing the humans over me?” Starscream’s voice rose with the accusation, shaking with poorly concealed rage, “The humans that you knew for, what? A few hours? Over your best friend and partner for millenia? Frag you, I’d rather take my chances with the storm outside!”
In an instant, Starscream was on his feet again, stomping towards the mouth of the cave. What he didn’t expect was Skyfire to grab his wrist and pull him back inside, nearly making him fall backwards into Skyfire’s arms.
Starscream flinched, stiffening and then relaxing again so quickly that anyone who wasn’t watching carefully wouldn’t have even noticed. That was another thing that wouldn’t leave Skyfire’s mind. There was an ever present tension in his frame that never really left, like he was on constant high alert. The way that his wings were raised, poised to transform and flee at any given moment, the way that his eyes darted around every few seconds as if he was always worried where the next sniper fire would come from.
“Let go!” Starscream yelled, his voice nearly drowned out by the wind whistling through the hollow space, “Let go, or I’ll blast your hand off!”
Skyfire’s grip loosened just a bit, realizing that his hand had left a small indent in his wrist alloys, but he didn’t let go. “If you try flying away now, you could be swept away and lost for years like I was.” The look in Skyfire’s optics was so earnest that it made him feel sick.
As much as he hated to admit it, Skyfire was right. Flying in a storm was extremely dangerous. All flight-capable Decepticons were outfitted with trackers in case of a crash, but sending a recovery team into such poor weather conditions would cost resources that he didn’t know if they could afford to expend.
Starscream let out another haughty huff, but settled for sitting back down next to Skyfire. Satisfied that Starscream wouldn’t try to fly away again, Skyfire let go of his wrist, letting his arm fall at his side once again.
“I took the punishment for your betrayal, you know?” In the sour silence that followed, neither of them moved. “Megatron was furious with me after you humiliated him in battle and left with the Autobots.”
An awful feeling swelled in Skyfire’s spark. What that feeling was, he wasn’t exactly sure, but it felt like his spark might just burst or give out in that moment. An ugly, swirling mass of protectiveness and anger directed at the one responsible. It burned so hot that he could barely even feel Starscream at his side.
“Oh, Starscream… Why do you stay with the Decepticons if Megatron mistreats you so?”
Starscream bristled at the sickeningly sympathetic tone of Skyfire’s voice and the look of pure pity in his optics, then bristled even more at the implication that he was somehow a victim. It boiled his energon reservoirs.
“Don’t you dare-”
“I mean it!” His optics shone with such a mad conviction that it gave Starscream a moment’s pause.
“Don’t say it like I’m some sort of passive victim in all this!” Starscream spat, “Like I’m powerless! I can fight back. I do fight back!”
“But that doesn’t change the fact that he hurt you.”
He has no right to sound that heartbroken. What would he know? He’s been gone forever.
“Don’t give him so much credit. He tries to. If he were any good at it, we wouldn’t be here right now, would we?”
Skyfire shuttered his optics, letting out a long vent before settling back further against the wall. At least that was something that hadn’t changed. Once Starscream was set on something, convincing him otherwise was like telling water to stop flowing.
“Maybe that is the case…” Skyfire relented. He didn’t believe what he was saying—not for a second. The constant vigilance, the flinches, the hair-trigger twitchiness… that didn’t come from nowhere. “But, still… Why stay there?”
The laugh that emanated from Starscream was so bitter and hollow that Skyfire wasn’t sure if he would have rather heard crying instead. “Do you really think that the Autobots would take to me so kindly as they did you? Unlike you, I’m not so soft-sparked… They wouldn’t accept me so readily. So where would that leave me? Striking out on my own? To abandon both factions and have both of them try to kill me? Or stay with that son of a glitch Megatron where I know he’ll never actually finish me off? I think the answer is obvious.”
A strange feeling that maybe things would have always ended up this way with the both of them on opposite sides arose in Skyfire. Even if he had never ended up trapped in the ice, maybe they would have been destined to end up in this stalemate out of not knowing what else they could do. Was it truly possible to not have a choice?
Skyfire wasn’t entirely convinced of that. The traces of the mech Skyfire once knew were still in there somewhere.
“Even if we’re on opposing sides, I just want you to know that I don’t hate you at all.”
Starscream rolled his optics at that, but… a second later there was a soft shifting of weight as he leaned against Skyfire’s shoulder.
Skyfire blinked at him. “Star?”
“I’m tired of hearing your shaking without you doing anything about it. You’ll be warmer like this. Unless you tell me to back off, I’m staying, alright?”
Skyfire smiled, tentatively reaching out an arm to draw Starscream closer, making sure to not pinch his wings as he did. Surprisingly, Starscream allowed the closeness.
It was impossible for things to go back to the way they had been before the war. Neither of them were laboring under the misconception that that could happen… No, it wasn’t exactly the same, but it was a step in the right direction. And for Skyfire, that was good enough for now.