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Starscream had always been a temperamental, unpredictable, hysterical psycho, so Skywarp didn't really notice anything weird about his behaviour until that one day Starscream had them land mid-patrol so he could transform and purge up a bunch of half-processed energon in the bed of some squishy's truck.
"Nice!" Skywarp laughed.
Thundercracker aimed a reproachful kick at his shins but Skywarp darted aside, knowing from experience it'd be coming.
"Starscream?" Thundercracker called, shooting Skywarp a withering glare, taking a cautious step to lay a servo on Starscream's shoulder.
"Don't." Starscream gasped, helm bowed and shoulders hunched. "Touch me."
Thundercracker retreated. Starscream puked again.
After a while, Skywarp craned his neck to take a look, frowning at the quantity.
"Hey!" He wrinkled his nose. "Where're you getting those extra energon rations?!"
It sucked filling in for Starscream. Skywarp definitely didn't get paid enough for it.
"You don't get paid at all." Thundercracker muttered.
"Exactly!" Skywarp said forcefully, tossing down the data-pad full of overly complicated flight manoeuvres he was expected to run with the Coneheads that cycle. "Why do I have to do it?"
"Because you're first wingman." Thundercracker glared, picking the data-pad back up and shoving it into Skywarp's chest. "You made a big enough fuss about getting the position."
"Yeah, cause I wanted the rank." Skywarp sneered at the data-pad. "Not the workload. It's the third time this stellar cycle he's out. He's gotta be up to something."
Thundercracker didn't argue. Though it wasn't unusual for Starscream to miss duty shifts and patrols, it was normally due to injury recovery - from battle damage or infighting- not the mysterious and vague 'illnesses' he had been suffering from lately. He probably was up to something.
"I bet his firewall’s down," Skywarp mused. "That's why he keeps getting sick. We should send him malware."
"Why? So you can do more of his work?" Thundercracker nodded to the data-pad.
Skywarp scowled petulantly.
Skywarp got slagged off enough at reading all the gibberish reports Soundwave was sending to his comm instead of Starscream's that he decided to do some investigating of his own.
"Right! Where is he then?" Skywarp demanded, teleporting directly into the med-bay and interrupting a complicated looking procedure involving Onslaught and Blast Off, who appeared to be stuck together.
They stared up at him from the repair bench. Skywarp stared down.
"Wait," He murmured after the lengthiest pause."That's not how you combine..."
"For frags sake..." Onslaught growled.
"Get out!" Blast Off shouted, mortified, likely because something that belonged to Onslaught was lodged deeply up his tail pipe.
"Where's who, Skywarp?" Hook asked tiredly, standing over his patients, his servos -gloved and lubed up- held aloft.
"Starscream," Skywarp looked around in annoyance, but the only other mecha present were the two half-combined Combaticons.
"What's he done to himself now?" Hook growled, taking off the gloves one wet slap at a time. "He knows I don't have the parts to keep welding him back together-"
"He's been sick." Skywarp glared.
Hook's optics sharpened with interest. "I haven't seen him."
"Uh, excuse me?" Onslaught called, still tangled up in Blast Off. "Shouldn't you pay more attention to your actual patients that need help now, than an attention seeking liar?"
Skywarp took offence, "Hey, he's not a-"
He stopped. Hook, Blast Off and Onslaught were giving him disbelieving looks.
He scowled, "Yeah, well… you still shouldn't say it. That's my trine you're mouthing off about."
"Our sympathies." Onslaught grumbled, optics rolling towards the ceiling.
"Save your sympathies for Blast Off’s butt!" Skywarp snapped with all the maturity of toddler, and warped out of there before anyone could come up with a retort.
"You sick?" Skywarp demanded, coming up behind Starscream as they watched a quant, scenic Belgium village burn to ashes in a violent inferno from their vantage point in the hills overlooking it.
Starscream, who had set the fire (as a distraction maybe, hopefully) turned at the neck to glare at him. "No."
Skywarp's wings drooped as they relaxed.
Yes, of course he wasn't. He hadn't been to Hook for repair work. Hadn't been to Soundwave to clear out any glitched code. Sure he'd purged a couple times on that patrol but maybe it was just something he fuelled on. Maybe all his absences were just him playing hooky.
Except he was slower. A lot slower. Skywarp had noticed it on the flight over. Where normally it was a challenge to keep pace, Skywarp kept finding himself having to pull back to keep Starscream ahead in their trine formation.
And he wasn't as daring. Half the fun of flying on this planet was cruising low and buzzing buildings, dodging missiles and getting into stupid games of chicken with human-piloted jets. Not flying at an altitude so high there was nothing to toy with but the clouds.
"Sure." Said Skywarp, because he didn't fancy provoking Pyromanic Starscream today.
He left him to watch smoke from the buildings rise into the sky as sirens approached in the distance.
Skywarp wasn't as stupid as everyone always made him out to be, so he was already halfway to figuring out what the Pit was going on with Screamer when Thundercracker beat him to it.
"I think he's sparked." Thundercracker breathed, whisper quiet, in Skywarp's audial down some deserted corridor.
Skywarp, who thought Thundercracker had dragged him down here and pressed up real close to him to finally make his move, blinked at Thundercracker's face as he drew back.
"...Who's sparked?"
Thundercracker's jaw ticked. "Starscream."
Skywarp's processor began performing what felt like some fairly advanced mental gymnastics. Thundercracker waited with quiet patience for him to piece everything together.
"Nuh. Nuh-uh. No way." Skywarp finally decided, shaking his helm.
Thundercracker sighed loudly.
"For one simple reason, TC," Skywarp held up a finger. "I know for a fact you gotta get laid to get sparked."
"Well he obviously did."
"If someone around here clanged Screamer, we'd have found the corpse by now."
Thundercracker turned to start walking away. Skywarp grabbed his wing to stop him.
"I'm serious! We'd know. Someone actually gets laid around here, they'd be bragging about it for months. And if it was Screamer? No one could keep that quiet."
"I would have." Thundercracker said sternly.
Skywarp's optics nearly popped out of his helm. "Was it you?!"
Thundercracker looked horrified. "No! Primus."
Skywarp relaxed. Good. Thank Primus. Nothing worse than being a third-wing.
"What makes you so sure then?"
"Just little things," Thundercracker looked down, optics dim, his mouth tight.
Skywarp squinted questioningly, but Thundercracker didn't elaborate.
"Maybe you're right," Thundercracker said after a while, lifting his helm and offering Skywarp a half-hearted smile. "It's probably nothing."
"Yeah," Skywarp matched his smile, hoping his came across more reassuring than awkward and apprehensive like Thundercracker's was. "It's nothing."
Thundercracker was still worried. Skywarp could tell because he forgot to yell at him for trying to fill his cockpit with salt water to make an aquarium out of it, and Thundercracker's favourite pastime was yelling at him, so it was kind of obvious.
With neither trine-mate acting like themselves, Skywarp was beginning to get pretty fed up with it. It was time he try find some definitive proof about what was really going on.
Starscream took his fuel in private. Always had. Too good to sit in the Mess with everyone else. Too stuck up, too prissy, too high-fragging-caste- is what everyone always liked to say. (No one ever said it about Megatron though, who also always fuelled in private).
"That's different." Ramjet argued once when Skywarp pointed it out. "Megatron knows mechs are gunning for him. Doesn't want anyone messing with his fuel."
Skywarp thought about Starscream's unenviable popularity among his own faction, and how his reasoning might align pretty closely to Megatron's.
But it meant Skywarp had to break into Starscream's quarters if he wanted to see what kinda fuel he was consuming. Being a teleporter meant it was pretty easy to dodge all the booby traps Starscream set up to keep mecha from touching his stuff though, and with a flash and a crack, Skywarp was in Starscream's horrifyingly messy room.
The berth was unmade, data-pads were stacked in wobbly towers against the bulkhead, there was a mountain of filthy polishing rags piled up on the desk, and half-a-dozen old cubes were on the table by the berth.
Skywarp picked one up and lifted it to his olfactory. The dregs at the bottom were a dull pastel blue, discoloured and drained of charge. Skywarp sniffed it.
Low grade.
...Maybe it was something else, Skywarp thought, his palms feeling itchy all of a sudden. Maybe this just explained how slow and cranky Starscream had gotten. Low grade sucked. No one drank it by choice. So maybe he really was sick, and this was gonna help him get better?
Disturbed, Skywarp set the cube back on the table a little heavy handed. The table wobbled and something long and narrow rolled out from behind the other cubes. Skywarp plucked it up. He didn't recognise it. It was tapered towards the exposed tip, which seemed to be some sort of testing strip. There was a narrow screen at the other end, which showed only a plus sign.
Sensing this was a clue, Skywarp hid it in his subspace.
Thundercracker held the suspect item Skywarp had stolen between his servos, staring down at it blankly.
"What does it mean?" Skywarp asked.
"Means I was right." Thundercracker finally looked up, and his expression was marred with worry. "Starscream is, you know..." He dropped his voice to a whisper, even though they were alone in a cubicle, in the empty wash-racks. "Sparked."
Skywarp shook his helm. "I don't understand."
"He's going to have a sparkling, Warp.”
"I know what sparked means!" Skywarp raised his voice. It echoed back loudly in the tiled room. He winced, lowering his voice again, "I meant, I don't get it. What's Screamer gonna do with a sparkling? We don't have day-care here! Soundwave hasn’t budgeted for it."
Thundercracker was now looking even more worried, "We have to do something. If Megatron finds out..."
Skywarp suddenly felt cold, like someone had dumped an entire vat of liquid nitrogen straight into his fuel tank. He hadn't even thought about what Megatron might do. Mecha got slagged around here just for sneaking extra rations, what would he do if he found out Starscream had done something as selfish as create an entire extra mouth to fuel. One that couldn’t even throw a punch! At least, Skywarp didn’t think new-sparks were any good in a fight…
Frantic, he wracked his processor for ideas. "What if- what if you grab Starscream and hold him down and I hit him really, really hard in the-"
"No." Thundercracker snapped, voice low and furious. "No. By the Primes, Skywarp, no-"
"Megatron's gonna find out!" Skywarp argued.
"I know."
"He'll slag him." Skywarp said firmly. "Them. Both of them. That what you want?"
Thundercracker didn't say anything.
"...I don't want to be Air Commander," Skywarp said into the silence. "Too much fragging paper-work."
"Is that all you care about?" Thundercracker asked tiredly.
"Finding a new trine-mate would be a pain in the aft." Skywarp added.
Thundercracker raised his helm enough to glare. "I'm still not letting you perform a 'Kaonite-extinguishing'. Hook might be able to do it."
"If anyone gets to punch Starscream, it should be-"
"A legitimate extinguishing." Thundercracker interrupted impatiently.
"And if he blabs?"
"Then you'll have someone to punch." Thundercracker promised, just as they heard the door to the wash-racks open.
They fell silent, unmoving, staring at each other in their cubicle as outside two sets of pedes shuffled in. Whoever it was they were breathing heavily and bumping into each other a lot.
A cubicle door opened then slammed shut. Skywarp raised his brows at Thundercracker. Thundercracker scowled back, lifting a finger to his mouth.
Something thunked against the tiles. There was a gasp, a moan, then a low chuckle.
Grin splitting his face, Skywarp tried to crane his neck to see over the cubicle wall. Thundercracker scrambled to shove him back down.
"Someone's fragging in there-!" Skywarp mouthed.
"Go!" Thundercracker mouthed back, optics blazing with anger as he pointed to the door. "Get out. Now. Now!"
"You're a real wet blanket, you know," Skywarp complained later, when they were both safely out in the corridor. "I wanted to see who it was."
"You'll find out soon enough." Thundercracker huffed. "No one can keep it quiet for long, remember?"
Well, someone could.
No one was bragging the next cycle about getting laid in the showers, and no one had come forward about Screamer either. Skywarp was beginning to wonder if kissing and telling wasn't actually a universal rule and was just his bad luck. Every mech he'd ever clanged had spilled the details to any creep who'd listen, boasting about him with the most unflattering analogies they could think of. No wonder Thundercracker always hated the mecha he clanged. Turned out they were all egotistical gasbags.
Starscream was a pretty private mech though, so maybe he'd threatened whoever it was into keeping their mouth shut. Which was good, because the more Skywarp thought about it, the more he was realising he'd probably punch the teeth out of anyone that talked about one of his trine that way.
Bragging aside, he might knock the teeth out of whoever knocked up Screamer anyway. It was the principle of it, that was all.
"He can take care of himself." Thundercracker reminded him during a night patrol. It was just the two of them. Starscream was 'sick' again. "He wouldn't appreciate being thought of like this. Like he needs protecting."
"I didn't say slag about protecting anyone." Skywarp said hotly. "What I said was I'd fragging pulverise whatever deadbeat sparked him up during war time. It’s inconvenient."
Thundercracker's sigh was so loud and dramatic, Skywarp heard it over the howling wind.
"Like you wouldn't do it too."
"I wouldn't. It's not my business." Thundercracker said loftily.
"So if tomorrow you found out some bolts-for-brains loser like Motormaster sparked up Screamer, you wouldn't care and you'd just let him keep walking around with his legs and teeth and everything like there was nothing wrong."
Thundercracker's expression didn't change from neutral indifference, but when he spoke his voice had changed. "...That's different."
"Name someone you'd rather it was then? Someone you wouldn’t wanna beat the living slag out of."
Thundercracker didn't offer up any designations. Skywarp felt pretty vindicated.
Skywarp had been down in the basement level -cleaning out old pipes as punishment after imitating Soundwave in front of Soundwave- and so missed all the excitement of Wildrider calling Starscream a 'pathetic bitch' and Thundercracker punching him in the back of the head so hard his optic popped out.
"What did Starscream say?" Skywarp asked, grimacing at Thundercracker's scuffed, dented knuckles.
"He didn't say anything." Thundercracker murmured.
Skywarp nodded. "...What did Soundwave say?"
"Maintenance work. Basement level." Thundercracker offered him a meek smile. “Two weeks.”
Skywarp's returning smile was blinding. "At least I'll have company."
"What if he keeps it?" Thundercracker leaned over during monitor duty, voice low and optics on Soundwave.
"He can't keep it." Skywarp reminded him. "What's he gonna do with it? I mean, where's it supposed to go?"
"I'm serious." Thundercracker murmured solemnly. "We should talk to him about it."
"We don't talk." Skywarp said. Talking wasn't something this trine wasted time doing and talking to Starscream, specifically, tended to be counterproductive. Just look at Megatron. He tries 'talking' to Starscream and all it ever gets him are assassination attempts.
"We get him a real medic." Skywarp offered instead. "Get them to take care of it. If that’s what Screamer wants.”
Thundercracker's optics fell to his monitor screen, dim and vacant.
Finding a real medic wasn't easy. The Decepticons didn't have any for starters, unless you counted Hook, and no one with half a processor counted Hook. The Autobots had two but they weren't likely to let Skywarp borrow one anytime soon, which meant he was left with only one option; kidnapping.
"No luck?" Thundercracker had been waiting for Skywarp to return from atop the tower that led into their underwater base. The sun was setting and the orange glow across his armour made him look warm and comforting, despite the unbearably smug smirk he was wearing.
"What'd you think?" Skywarp snapped, landing heavily next to him and gesturing to the deep gouges lacing his chassis where the medic had attacked him with a circular saw. "Look at me! I thought medics took an oath? What happened to that 'do no harm' slag?"
"Did you think he'd come quietly?" Thundercracker asked, sympathy starting to mingle with his amusement.
"I didn't think he'd tornado kick me in the face and start swinging medical equipment." Skywarp grumbled, walking past him. "I need to see Hook."
"Oh, so now he counts?"
Skywarp shoved Thundercracker so hard he stumbled off the end of the tower and fell into the ocean.
"You don't need to stand that close." Starscream informed Skywarp, standing with his servos clasped behind his back as they watched the Combaticons grapple and brawl with the Autobots below.
Skywarp, who knew they weren't hovering high enough above the fight to be protected from stray blaster shots, allowed himself to float ever further into Starscream's personal space. Starscream's EM field grew prickly with irritation. "Close? I'm miles away."
"You're breathing on my wings." Starscream growled.
"Then move." Skywarp provoked, hoping Starscream would hover a little more to the left, then left some more, and keep going until they were covered by the taller buildings.
"You move." Starscream's tone dropped dangerously when Skywarp's cockpit bumped his wing.
"You've the one with the problem."
Starscream's null-rays began to glow. "You're going to have a much more physical problem in a minute if you don't-"
A blaster fired below, this time the 'phew' of the bolt growing louder as it soared up towards them. Skywarp grabbed Starscream's shoulder, about to throw himself in front of it, when a blur of black and blue came blasting in from the right to intersect.
Thundercracker took the blaster bolt in the wing with a jolt and a grunt.
"TC!" Skywarp cried, reaching for him.
In his distraction Starscream broke free of his grip.
"Auto-scum!" He roared, shoving Thundercracker aside and blasting himself into the fight below, null-rays extended. "You dare fire at me-!?"
Skywarp wrapped an arm around Thundercracker's waist to stop him listing too far with his damaged wing. Together they stared down at the scattering Autobot forces as Starscream unleashed a manic spray of shots, uncaring if it hit friend or foe.
"We said we weren't going to let him engage." Thundercracker breathed raggedly, clutching at the hole in his wing. "He's ...delicate."
Below, Starscream swooped down and landed with gymnastic-like grace on Ironhide’s head, smashing his face into the ground, then grinding down with his heel.
"Yeah. Delicate." Skywarp nodded, oddly fond.
Thundercracker caught him trying to shove energon treats under Starscream's door.
"Is this a prank?" He asked, disturbed, looking at the gelatinous mess of treats smushed into the decking outside the door.
"He won't let me in," Skywarp explained, kneeling beside the carnage. His fingers were sticky and wet. "I couldn't get an extra cube but Swindle swapped me these for my warp drive."
"You gave away your warp drive?" Thundercracker stared in horror. "For treats?"
"No." Skywarp looked at him like he was stupid. "I gave him an Atari I stole from some kid. Just told him it was my warp drive." He frowned at the gooey smears on the floor. "Not that it matters."
"Starscream doesn't strike me as the sort to enjoy treats."
"I thought …cause of the cravings," Skywarp shrugged, standing up.
"You not gonna clean that up?" Thundercracker pointed.
Skywarp snorted, "It's Screamer's door. He can do it."
Starscream’s steps were tentative and measured when they entered Megatron’s war briefing as a trine. There was a look of concentration on his face, like he was having to put effort into every step. He was walking like a billion-year old cripple.
Just as they reached their seats, Skywarp rushed around him and yanked his chair further out for him, hoping to help Starscream’s descent into it. Starscream, too focused on his own discomfort, didn’t register the movement of the furniture and lowered himself into nothing but thin air.
Thundercracker emitted a shrieking sound more commonly associated with five year old girls and Skywarp stood, stupidly, holding the chair as Starscream fell with a gasp, heading for the hard decking with no one to catch his big, dumb, sparked aft-
Two huge black servos caught Starscream under the arms, saving him from an embarrassing, if not painful, fall.
“Skywarp!” Megatron barked, hoisting his stunned looking Second upright again. “I’ve warned you about your pranks.”
“Uhh,” said Skywarp, looking between Starscream clutching a servo to his chest and Megatron’s furious face.
Megatron yanked the chair out his grip, took Starscream by the shoulder and pushed him down into it (rather more gently than the harsh shove Skywarp would have expected from him).
“And you,” Megatron growled, glaring at Starscream. “Ought to pay better attention to your surroundings.”
He moved on, leaving Skywarp to sit between two equally furious trine-mates, Starscream vibrating with rage and Thundercracker looking like he wanted to punch him.
Skywarp shrugged helplessly, “It was an accident!”
Starscream and Thundercracker scoffed in unison, identical in their disgust. They were never so alike than when they were ganging up on him. Jerks.
“I have had it with your targeted harassment!” Starscream cornered them after the war briefing (which had only served to further infuriate Starscream, with Megatron shooting him pointed looks every five seconds like his mere presence in the briefing had been a misdemeanour, and ending it all with a spiteful announcement that Skywarp would be inexplicably leading the seekers into the next raid instead of their Air Commander).
“Hey, I don’t know what’s going on, I didn’t ask for any promotion!” Skywarp argued.
Starscream rolled his optics. “Not the raid, you imbecile! Everything else. Both of you!”
Thundercracker, who had been impersonating a piece of wall art -something their base sorely lacked in Skywarp’s opinion- blinked in surprise. “Me?”
Starscream rounded on him. “Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I’ve forgotten about you flying in front of that blaster bolt? Do you think I didn’t hear about your brawl with Wildrider? Do you think I didn’t notice the slagging mess you two left outside my quarters the other night?”
“The mess was just Skywarp!” Thundercracker pointed.
“Both of you,” Starscream stopped him, quiet and angry, “are part of some ridiculous campaign to paint me as weak and defenceless and it won’t work. You want my position? You want Air Commander? You’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead-“
“Primus, Starscream,” Thundercracker interrupted angrily. “No one wants your rank. We’re just looking out for you, that’s what trine-“
“Grow up. That’s not what trine is for. We’re not spark-siblings. We’re not family. We’re a war unit. You mean nothing to me more than any other pair of grunts,” Starscream spat. “You’re insignificant and I could replace you both in less than a cycle.”
Skywarp was starting to lose patience. He kind of wished Starscream had fallen on his aft in front of everyone during the briefing now. He opened his mouth to start cursing Starscream out because he was all weak and defenceless and couldn’t even walk properly now, let alone fly, when thankfully Thundercracker spoke across him.
“We know you’re sparked.” He said bluntly, expression neutral.
Starscream’s own fury evaporated. There was a five second pause where a hundred emotions crossed his face, before he managed to match Thundercracker’s neutral one. “No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” Skywarp said snidely.
“No.” Starscream crossed his arms over his chest tightly, almost like he was hiding himself. “I’m not.”
Thundercracker probably would have stood around arguing with Starscream and listening to him lie for like, half an hour. Skywarp decided to take a more direct approach by yanking out the little testing device he’d stolen from Starscream’s quarters and shoving it in his face.
“Oh yeah?!” He cried victoriously, thrusting it under Starscream’s olfactory. “Well what’s th-?“
Starscream ripped it from his hand, facial derma inflamed with colour. “Give me that!”
“We’re trying to help you.” Thundercracker explained, as Starscream squeezed the test and glowered down at it, his wings low and close to his back. “We know you’re keeping it quiet, but you can trust us.”
“Cause we’re your trine, dickhead,” Skywarp glared. “So sorry for pulling out a chair for your big, fat aft. Last time I be a gentlemech.”
“Do you have a plan?” Thundercracker asked, looking down on Starscream with sympathy -and Skywarp wondered why he had never noticed how much taller than Starscream they both were. Something about his loud arrogance always made him seem… bigger than them. But he wasn’t. “A plan for what to do about it? We can come up with something together. Whatever you want to do, we’ll help.”
Instead of answering, Starscream lifted his helm to shoot them both a withering glare, before turning on his heel and walking away.
Thundercracker sighed in defeat, but Skywarp wanted to get one last point in.
“Hey!” He shouted after him. “You tell the dead-beat sire he better be ready for me to pull up and teleport my foot through his face!”
Starscream, predictably, didn’t turn around.
In the days afterward, Starscream disappeared from his quarters and the base overall. Skywarp and Thundercracker checked the med-bay, both during the day shift and sneaking in at night, to look for him. Hook and Scrapper had been sent on some obscure mission off base and weren’t around to interrogate, but the remaining Constructions still claimed to have no record of Starscream visiting. Even when Skywarp slammed Bonecrusher up against a bulkhead and threatened to ram a speculum up his olfactory.
Soundwave wasn’t concerned when they mentioned his disappearance, but Soundwave didn’t like Starscream so he was probably secretly ecstatic that the wicked witch of Decepticon High Command had finally run off and died in a cave somewhere, or something.
And they weren’t suicidal, so Megatron was left entirely unbothered. For now.
Skywarp had taken to trespassing in Starscream’s deserted quarters to look for clues, evidence as to where he might have gone or if he’d been sneaking back. Ordinarily a few days MIA wouldn’t be a cause for concern for any Decepticon, let alone someone as skilled and self-sufficient as Starscream. But, well, Starscream was sparked, and it was probably going to emerge soon.
The room was as filthy and undisturbed as ever, and held no answers, so Skywarp would instead lie facedown on Starscream’s unmade berth and breathe in the over-fragranced scent of his polish on the sheet, ignoring the ever-tightening knot in his chest that he refused to put a name to.
“What if we raise the alarm?” He asked Thundercracker.
“He might have a plan.” Thundercracker shook his helm. “And sending out some huge search party screws it up for him.”
“You don’t really think he’s out there going into an emergence in some hole in the ground do you?” Skywarp cringed.
Thundercracker didn’t deny that was a possibility, but he said, hope in his voice, “He might have made it to Cybertron.”
It made sense that a carrier would want to spark their creation on their home planet over an alien world, but Skywarp had already thought of that, and been checking the data-logs on the space-bridge every cycle. It hadn’t been used in weeks.
But he didn’t want to worry Thundercracker more, so he just shrugged.
It was nearing a week when Megatron finally summoned them to the throne room.
Skywarp’s palms were itching again, and Thundercracker’s wings were performing that annoying nervous twitch of his.
They must have found Starscream, was all Skywarp could think. Found him half-dead or worse out in the organic filth above the surface. Probably damaged and weak because he’d been all alone and hadn’t known what he was doing and wouldn’t let his trine help because he was a stubborn idiot, and maybe the sparkling was dead and if it wasn’t they’d probably just left it behind to starve when they found him because it was a liability and Starscream hadn’t had the sense to hide it even though he and Thundercracker would have helped him figure something out and-
“Enter.” Soundwave’s low voice intoned, outside the door to the throne room where he had been waiting for them.
Skywarp swallowed around the lump in his throat and trailed inside after Thundercracker when the doors swept open. Then smacked into the back of him when he immediately stopped.
“Hey, what-?”
Skywarp looked around Thundercracker’s stiff, immobile frame to where Megatron was sat on his throne.
Sat looking incredibly smug, with a servo-sized ball of white and red armour tucked into the crook of his arm. The armour stirred. Because it was alive. Because it was a sparkling.
Megatron lifted his free servo and beckoned them in. Skywarp gave Thundercracker a big shove forwards when he appeared too stunned to move on his own. They shuffled closer, unable to tear their optics away.
“Um…” Skywarp guessed it would probably be safer to feign complete ignorance. “What’s that?”
Megatron turned his helm to consider the new-spark. “My daughter.”
“Your daughter?” Thundercracker all but choked.
“Starscream has assured me of your discretion.” Megatron continued, lifting his gaze to theirs. It was hard and stern. The arm cradling the sparkling was gentle, but the one laid across arm rest was tense and poised, like he expected some threat to jump out at his daughter even here, in the security of his throne room, and was ready for it. “And of your loyalty to him. I trust this loyalty will extend to his offspring.”
Skywarp’s processor had only just reconnected to his mouth after the ‘my daughter’ reveal, so he chose that moment to blurt out. “You fragged Starscream?!”
Megatron glared. Ordinarily this was when he would start throttling someone for speaking out of turn. Skywarp just wondered how the heck he was supposed to avenge Starscream’s honour now? Megatron wasn’t going to be as easy to beat up as most other random Decepticons.
“An unplanned, but welcome mishap.” Megatron said fiercely.
“What was the mishap, the knocking him up or the fragging him?” Skywarp continued, because he just didn’t know when to shut up, apparently.
“Where’s Starscream?” Thundercracker asked quickly, before Megatron could figure out how to get up and slag Skywarp without disturbing his recharging sparkling.
“He has spent this last week in recovery, in my quarters.” Megatron explained, clearly annoyed at being questioned by subordinates. “He is being attended to by those better qualified than you, and insists I remind you to leave him alone.”
“I don’t think we were doing a bad job looking after him,” Skywarp muttered, feeling resentful.
“You are only being made aware of my daughter’s existence at Starscream’s request.” Megatron said harshly. “Any advertisement of her presence will be met with extreme prejudice. Only when she is older will she be introduced in a wider cohort of loyal Decepticons. At that time her safety will be your priority.”
“Oh.” Said Thundercracker, looking at the sparkling with bright optics Skywarp could tell were filled with a myriad of emotions. He knew more than anything that Thundercracker wanted to hold her. But it wasn’t likely Megatron would let him.
“Well,” Skywarp began. “I did tell Starscream we weren’t gonna be his babysitters, but I guess since she’s your sparkling too-“
“It would be your honour.” Megatron finished for him, threateningly.
“Yeah, our honour. Definitely.” Skywarp nodded quickly. Even though he didn’t like sparklings. Or like Starscream really.
“Dismissed.”
Skywarp had to take Thundercracker by the arms to turn him around and get him walking out the door. He tripped three times not looking where he was going, too busy staring over his shoulder at the sparkling he clearly would already die for.
“Great.” Skywarp said when the door was securely shut behind them and Megatron definitely wouldn’t be able to hear. “Now we’ve gotta worry about two of them.”
Soundwave, who Skywarp had forgotten was guarding the door, reached out to smack him around the back of the head.