Chapter Text
“Diamond: an extremely hard, highly refractive crystalline form of carbon that is usually colorless and is used as a gemstone and in abrasives, cutting tools, and other applications.”
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All it takes is a few tweaks, a few changes, to set him on a different path.
It’s just a few words she utters, but it’s enough. Airachnid grins sickly sweet at him as she hangs from the ceiling of the Harbinger while he struggles in her webs, and when he demands the meaning of this foolishness, she says, “How do you know Megatron didn’t put me up to it?” She’s just poking fun, but then Autobots show up and there really isn’t time to explain it was just a taunt. Well, mostly a taunt. More than a little part of her wanted to just gut him then and there.
It’s just one different decision. After Airachnid abandons Starscream at the Harbinger and he barely escapes the Autobots with his life, Megatron sends a squad to search for him there. They aren’t careful about it, ransacking the place as they look for clues. When Starscream finally makes his way back to the crashed ship, the wreckage and chaos only confirm Airachnid’s words and his worst fears: that the Decepticons are truly trying to assassinate him now. What an unfortunate miscommunication. The seeker, once toying with the idea of making some sort of offering to regain Megatron’s favor, makes a fervent vow to never return.
It’s just one different turn. Things might still have continued along their usual path, if not for one lucky find: a massive yet hidden Energon deposit surrounded by signal-blocking mountains so tall that not even Soundwave could find it. Starscream is ecstatic. No need to make a deal with MECH just for a morsel of fuel. No need to risk injury to himself or put himself at the mercy of others.
A Starscream that is not hungry is a Starscream that is not desperate, and a Starscream that lives in what amounts to a basin is a Starscream that doesn’t get to access the internet (and subsequently, news of a massive cyberformed tower sitting on top of Jasper, Nevada) very often. So, through a series of events of which he is mostly unaware, the salvation of his homeworld goes on without him. Starscream misses the greatest miracle of his lifetime, the restoration of Cybertron itself, because he’s sitting nice and cozy in an abandoned ship he found within the mountains with tall stacks of Energon and an abundance of free time.
What makes it worse is he misses it all by just a micron. If he had ventured out for a flight just a few days earlier he might have run into Predaking, who would have dragged him back kicking and screaming into the new Darkmount per Megatron’s orders. As it is, no one is dragged anywhere. The seeker gets sidetracked by the discovery of downloadable human audiobooks (no internet needed) for a few weeks and doesn't leave his base until everything has blown over and everyone has left Earth for Cybertron. It is only when he is in range of human radio signals again and he can visit the Harbinger to access the internet that he learns of what has occurred. Or rather, the version of events he’s reconstructed with only half the information.
To him, it seems as though Megatron managed to construct a massive tower out of nowhere. The reason? Who knows. How did he even find the time to build something that huge? There is some business about a destroyed town and military base. Whatever happened after is a mystery, but it seems the Autobots were able to retaliate and destroy the tower if the ruins left behind are anything to go by. After that, it’s like everyone vanished. All Autobot and Decepticon frequencies drop off the face of the Earth, and Starscream starts to paint a vague and largely inaccurate picture.
The ex-Decepticon is absolutely certain that everyone has gone into hiding again. With Megatron’s decision to build a stupid, massive tower for no reason, their cover has been blown! The humans won’t ignore them now, so the only reasonable explanation is that everyone has ducked into their bases and decided to lay low until their presence is forgotten by the human populace. Not hard for a long-lived species such as theirs, if you have enough Energon. Starscream pities the fools who are not as lucky as he, with his basin full of enough fuel to last him centuries.
If he had gone looking, Starscream would have found even the mines abandoned, and might have pieced together the truth. But he does not go looking, because he has all the Energon he could ever need or want, he has a nice catalogue of abandoned ships to scavenge that he memorized before he left the Nemesis, and he would rather avoid Soundwave’s detection at all costs. Oh, and he’s convinced Megatron has him listed as “kill on sight.” That’s some pretty strong motivation to never venture into those mines again. Oh, and how is it that he never encounters Airachnid again? Oh, that two-wheeler must have finally finished her off, he reasons. Various other conundrums he solves similarly, with just enough reasoning to make it Not His Problem.
It’s an amusing turn of events. A half-serious joke, a poorly timed and poorly conducted search party, one lucky find in a remote location, and about ten audiobooks are all responsible for Starscream simply missing the exodus of his people from this world. Perhaps it is sad that a once important second-in-command of an entire army was left behind like a piece of unwanted scrap. Perhaps it is fortunate, exactly what Starscream needed to extricate himself from the cycle of ruin and violence and betrayal found in the Decepticon ranks.
So here Starscream is: the last Cybertronian on Earth, stranded, forgotten, and all alone. He doesn’t know it, and won’t know it for a long time.
What’s a few years of hiding to a being that lives for millions? What could possibly happen in such a short amount of time?