Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The food here fucking sucked. 

If anyone bothered to ask Starscream what he thought about life in captivity, not that anyone did , that would be his most damning complaint.

The food they saw fit to present to him was a suffering he hadn’t imagined possible in even his most dark and desperate hysteria in the early days.

This didn’t have to be true, that’s what was so maddening about it. 

The grounders would stroll in with all sorts of foods, flavors he’d never encountered before, colors and textures innumerable on display right before his disbelieving optics.

Even other seekers received feed that appeared almost identical to the bountiful energon-laden fruits and nuts that once rained down from the lush branches of their jungle home planet. 

Long ago, there had been a time Starscream thought the world was made of sweet fruit. It was an ever present fact of life, as ubiquitous as the earth beneath him and the stars above.

There was a time he hadn’t known what hunger really was. 

Now he chewed his way through medicinal pellets.

Starscream scowled down at the bowl, a sturdy metal material because the grounders learned their lesson the first time. His pellets were hardtack gravel, dry enough to suck the moisture from his intake valves. 

Not dry enough to cough , mind. The one time he’d gagged and choked with perhaps a touch more theater than necessary, he’d been subjected to a full solar cycle of tedious testing and fussing from the grounders.

For creatures so determined to keep him functional, Starscream thought them shockingly cruel for how low they’d brought his quality of life.

He ground the bitter chalk of his pellets against his denta. It was no better than shriveled tree bark, and he would know.

He swallowed because starving in protest also led to unwelcome consequences and he’d sworn to that accursed tube he’d murder it with prejudice if it ever returned.

The swoosh noise of one of the grounder doors stole Starscream’s attention from his pitiful meal.

Outside the huge expanse of the netted aviary, the grounder facilities lay in wait, hemming in the aviary on all sides with impossibly tall walls. Most rooms were paneled with glass so Starscream could observe them rushing from space to space busying themselves with their individual tasks. 

From what he could gather, the aviary sat in the middle of a two-pronged operation.

The back section was for the intake and care of seekers, gathering any unwanted strays and ensuring they were in optimal health before being shuttled to the front section, where seekers were available for purchase. 

The holding facility back section was all steel crates, gleaming medical equipment, and hushed tones. It clearly wasn’t meant to keep seekers a moment longer than it had to, the sterile efficiency of it all was physically repelling

The storefront section was the much more visually interesting of the two, with bright and colorful items lining store racks, toys and accessories and the like for new and returning owners.

Excited grounders were taken for a ride there, beaming with pride, their pretty new pet boxed and waiting at the front as they purchased anything the sales assistant pointed at. 

Starscream couldn’t hear them from the aviary, but he still found it amusing just how many hides and chews found their way into a shopping basket before the sales assistant was finished with them. 

Seekers were greedy by nature, none of it would go overlooked by their pet, but Starscream knew seekers could go with far, far less.

It was the storefront door that had opened, letting a nervous-looking grounder and an assistant into the central aviary room. The assistant was scrutinizing an identity chip while the grounder waited impatiently, shifting his weight from ped to ped.

This ritual meant the grounder would be allowed inside the aviary, in direct contact with all eligible seekers to ensure he had the highest possible chance of procuring one.

All military grounders did this, though Starscream only had theories as to why.

It had something to do with a seeker’s ability to purify energon, this he was sure of. Seekers were only purchased if they showed a willingness to do so and more powerful purification abilities were highly prized.

Grounders were unable to purify toxins from their systems, further evidence of their status as a lower life form, whereas it was an expected social custom between bonded seekers.

The ability was something one did naturally with a trine member, a soothing and healing practice, no different from grooming.

It had been vital for survival thousands of years ago, before their planet had iced over and life still flourished between jadeite trees. Seekers hadn’t been at the top of the food chain, much preferring the mineral nuts and energon fruit to the pursuit of small creatures scuttling below.

Their predators were swift and powerful as a hurricane gale, their maws poured forth venom that bubbled and hissed as it fell to the jungle floor. The seeker ability to purge poison from their systems had been the advantage they needed to compete with their predators. 

As the generations passed, the venom became more toxic. In response, the purification became stronger. A fight between potencies erupted over millions of years, an arms race with no winner in sight until it hadn’t mattered any longer.

Now seekers were domesticated pets, kept alive only by the grace of grounders who first sought them for their pretty colors and intelligence and now desperately hoarded them for their purification abilities.

It had transformed from self-defense into a medical treatment for another species entirely.

”Everything checks out, second lieutenant Cliffjumper. You said you’re shipping out a month from now?” The assistant asked, returning the identification chip to the grounder.

The grounder, Cliffjumper, bobbed his helm, all but bouncing in place as the assistant went to unlock the entrance to the aviary. 

Security was impressively robust, Starscream had to admit.

The entrance was a double door system, the first of which was a steel slab thicker than three seekers wing-tip to wing-tip, and the only way to unlock it was with a servo scan from an assistant.

That first door then led to a very small antechamber where a grounder would have to wait for the first door to be locked in place behind them. 

Once the second door unlocked, the grounder would have full access to the aviary, a massive jungle play set covered by thick, tightly interwoven netting and domed in transparent titanium. 

The aviary was their home planet reimagined in chrome. Sleek metal perches densely decorated the space in a wide variety of heights.

Hides and cover were metal sheets carefully crafted to resemble wide fanning leaves and old nesting nooks. There was plenty of space for avoiding the grounder walking beneath them, but also plenty of opportunity to land nearby and get a good look at him. 

There were no toys and no food bowls besides Starscream’s own. When the rest of the seekers were fed, it was with troughs of feed that were wheeled in and out promptly at meal times.

The limited access was to dissuade jealous resource guarding, he supposed. 

“Yep, I’ll be joining the front lines with Ironhide’s unit too so there won’t be any exceptions. If I don’t have a seeker by then, they’ll pass me up.”

The seekers in the aviary fluttered and glided excitedly with the commotion, their wings glinted off the overhead lights, a kaleidoscope of dizzying colors. Rich ruby reds, cobalt blues, streaks of mustard yellow and sumptuous purple.

The seekers here were well-cared for, their plating bright enough to rival precious gemstones.

“Okay, remember the rules. No raised voices, flashing lights, or fast movements. Seekers are sensitive and easily startled, let them come to you.” The assistant recited these rules the exact same way every time, word for word.

“Injuring or attempting to injure a seeker will result in a permanent ban from all seeker facilities and a complaint to your superior. Forcing or attempting to force a seeker to come with you will result in a permanent restriction from entering the aviary directly. You get all that?”

The grounder had been bobbing his helm the entire time. “Affirmative. There won’t be any problems, I’ve been around seekers before.”

And just like that, the grounder was allowed into the aviary, a couple treats crammed into his servo to serve as a bribe.

”New!” Starscream heard the seekers crow overhead, “A new grounder! He’s shiny!”

He leapt into the air himself, flying to a higher perch to observe the grounder. This was only the third one he’d seen enter the aviary while he was inside it, caretakers aside.

He wanted to get a peek at what counted for high quality material around here.

Cliffjumper was a handsome crimson mech with a pair of horns on his helm and a sunny disposition. His armor was freshly waxed, no visible scars or dents, and his design was stout and powerful.

While he wasn’t striking, the seekers admiring themselves in the reflection of his pauldrons made sense.

“There you go, you’re all so pretty!” He cooed in a sweet, soft voice, breaking off pieces of the treat to scatter for seekers to snatch up and dart away with. How precious.

”How could I pick when you’re all so cute ?” 

And of course, the other seekers ate it up, shyly showing off their wings, swooping in closer and closer so the grounder could squeal over how adorable they were.

”I’m the cutest! Look at my pattern!”

”I’m the prettiest, no one else can dive as well as me- watch!”

“You call that a dive? Look at this roll! Feed me treats!”

Not a speck of pride in a single one of them, Starscream sneered and turned away from the pathetic display. 

That grounder was outnumbered and outmatched. If those seekers retained even a sliver of the survival skills their species had once possessed, they could’ve easily swarmed and stolen all his treats rather than resort to appeasement. 

What a tragic decline a species could take. They had been born and bred accepting their food from the servos of caretakers, independence hadn’t even crossed their processors.

Thunk!

Starscream was knocked from his thoughts by a hard object smacking him in the helm, rattling his processors to a blinking halt. 

”Oops! Sorry!”

Another seeker, large with silver highlights, landed on a nearby perch to stare anxiously at him.

”I dropped my treat through the net! Can you give it back?”

Sure enough, when Starscream lowered his gaze to the floor below, there lay a speck of a treat chunk. The clumsy oaf had fumbled it right above him, sending it through the netting and into his brittle frame.

The back of his helm throbbed. Any larger and it could’ve scraped his paint, not that the seeker cared.

Would he have even apologized if it weren’t for the netting separating Starscream from the other seekers? Starscream doubted it, they had been ignoring him just fine for cycles now.

Starscream flashed a grin. “Sure thing, meet me at the bottom.”

Then he hopped off the perch and glided smoothly to the floor in neat little spirals. He landed harder than he meant to, the shock lancing through his knee joints.

Still, he hid the stumble and plucked the chunk off the shiny steel flooring as the other seeker approached from the opposite side.

”You’re a better flyer than I thought you’d be,” he remarked, “I wasn’t even sure you could.”

And then, without a drop of trepidation, he smiled at Starscream and stuck his servo past the netting, “Thanks!”

What a tragic decline a species could take. If Starscream were capable of pity, maybe he’d feel it now.

Starscream beamed back at the tame seeker and stuck his own servos out, holding out the chunk but not stepping closer.

He waited.

The seeker, optics locked on his treat, wasn’t paying him any attention.

He pressed himself against the netting, arms straining and straining. When that didn’t work, he angled his body against the hole in the netting to cram his shoulder through as well.

He was so close, Starscream watched the digits of his servos brush the side of the treat, crumbs clinging to the smooth surface.

The seeker leaned onto the toes of his peds, closer, closer, then-

The silver seeker was larger than Starscream, taller and bulkier and in much better health. He hadn’t suspected for even a moment that Starscream was strong enough to yank him through the netting.

Not all the way over, unfortunately. The cables were nigh indestructible, making the netting impossible to breach.

But through deeply humiliating trial and error, he’d come to know there was a precise angle and effort that awarded a seeker with the rare status of being trapped in the net.

The shriek the silver seeker let out was deeply satisfying. 

Seekers scattered, panicked by the cry of alarm. Their hundreds of jet roars came close to drowning out his shrill screams as they rocketed onto the highest perches.

“Help! Help! I’m trapped!” The silver seeker wailed, thrashing against the netting.

His helm, wing, and shoulder were wedged on one side, and the rest of his body was on the other, the sharp edges of his armor caught perfectly on the cables.

There was no way he was getting out on his own.

”He’s going to eat me! Help!”

Starscream reeled the treat back in and took a giant chomp out of it, glowing with satisfaction. 

The rich nutty minerals washed away the bitter aftertaste of his pellet feed like a spring shower, almost too much after so long without any true flavoring. It all but sizzled on his glossa, like swallowing a hot coal.

The energon treat was divine,

Starscream’s claws flexed possessively around his catch as he carefully savored every bite.

“Thief! Predator! Help me, plea -”

“Aw poor baby, did you get stuck?”

The booming voice of a grounder silenced the silver seeker. Heavy, thudding steps crossed the sleek metal floor as Starscream craned his helm up past the netting to meet gazes with Cliffjumper.

His optics were as pretty as the rest of him. A clear blue, like a morning sky. He looked at Starscream, glancing at the treat chunk in his grasp.

Starscream shoved the rest of it into his mouth and growled, his wings stiffening behind him. 

The grounder’s optics darted from his face, to his sticky digits, to the silver seeker hanging miserably from the net, then back to Starscream.

He looked unhappy. Starscream’s growl got louder, rattling against his chassis.

The grounder didn’t engage with him, however. Instead he dropped into a squat next to the netted partition and cooed down at the silver seeker. 

“Shh shh shh, you’re alright. Did that mean seeker bully you? Poor little guy, you’re scared half to death.”

His digits quickly found where Starscream had caught the seeker against the cabling and went about wedging him free, slow and achingly gentle. The seeker’s wings were frost, melting away at the first rough touch for the careful way he handled them.

It was like the seeker was already precious.

“I bet he was just jealous, who wouldn’t be with how pretty all that silver is, hm?” Cliffjumper continued.

Starscream watched, lapping the crumbs from his servos. He was completely forgotten as the seeker meekly allowed the grounder to manipulate his body however he pleased, giant yellow optics staring up at Cliffjumper with enough awe to fill the aviary. 

Starscream finished his treat and found he had nothing else to do. He stood and watched, time crawling by.

The crimson grounder had capitalized immediately on the affinity between he and the oaf of a seeker he’d rescued.

Intelligence clearly wasn’t a factor in the silver seeker’s desirability, not with his pretty paint and manners.

The grounder cuddled and cooed his prize and the seeker demurely nibbled treat chunks right out of his servo. The curdling display was a familiar one by now.

Eventually, the taste of the treat ebbed. The savory coating in his mouth wore away, his plating was clean if dingy, and there would be no other treats coming to his corner of the aviary. Starscream sneered away from the bitter return of his medicinal feed. 

The seeker was carefully lowered into a carrier box with a full energon treat all to himself in there, of course he’d gone willingly, even whistling a little song along the way. The other seekers grumbled their jealousy from the chrome canopy overhead. 

When the grounder left the aviary, it was with his helm held high, overjoyed with his purchase.

They made a good pair, guileless and shiny, already tentatively bonded. 

Starscream returned to his bowl, resolutely ignoring the rest of the purchasing process to finish his meal. He was tired, he always felt tired now.

With the excitement of the day gone in a flash, perhaps it would be best to nap in a hide until the caretakers closed shop and took him to the back again. 

In the early days all he could do was sleep, his brief moments of consciousness were loud and violent, lashing out at the grounders prodding him with their whirring devices until he sank under again. Then it would start anew however many breems later.

While he was better than that now, the naps remained frequent. 

With his bowl empty and his taste sensors crying out for mercy, Starscream hopped up a short perch to tuck himself away in the replica nest he liked best.

It was small, almost too small to fit his wingspan. The welded plate walls surrounded him on all sides, pressing him firmly in place. 

There wasn’t any room left for other seekers to nest in beside him, so it wasn’t strange that he was alone.

Cloistered in the dark, cossetted by metal that warmed quickly under his chassis, he was far and away from the chattering of the seekers zipping and gliding outside the hide. He felt something unclench in his chest just a touch.

Just enough for him to shutter his optics off, curl until his face was pressed against the metal nest wall and drift off.

Chapter Text

“Predator!”

 “Danger! Escape!”

Hiss!

“Predator!”

Starscream lurched back to wakefulness with a gasp, his pump hammering away.

Predator , he could sense it, it was close. It was preying on the flock as they slept. It would rip into his nest in mere micro-klicks and he needed to be ready. 

“Go away! Danger!”

The cacophony of growls and hisses from the other seekers kicked his weapons systems into high gear. Searing aggression licked through his internal workings like a flame.

Starscream launched himself out of his nest, rockets roaring, claws and fangs bared to engage with the predator head-on.

It was so close, practically on top of them. The venom was battery acid on his glossa, frisson prickled through every plate. 

The glare of the overhead lights seared through his optics, blinding him as his systems struggled to adapt to the abrupt shift from total darkness while booting all his weapons online simultaneously.

He shuttered them rapidly, hissing and spitting into the air in front of his nest, wings arced high.

“Every time, huh?”

One of the sales assistants was standing in front of the aviary, a grounder the likes of which Starscream had never seen before loomed beside him.

“You received new stock.” The grounder’s voice was gravel and rock, the scrape of metal between denta. 

Just his vocalizer was enough to send a new barrage of hissing, spitting seekers spiraling at the very top of the netting.

The entire flock’s rage and disgust was a physical thing, Starscream’s pump was working overtime, targeting system on high alert.

“Some of these seekers are new,” the assistant sighed, “they’re still only seekers in the end.”

The assistant stepped forward and unlocked the first door, this predator was going to invade the aviary.

“Danger!” The seekers wailed, pressed so tightly together on the highest perches that their combined wingspans cast a wide and dappled shadow across the aviary floor.

Their bright colors reflected off the shiny steel beneath, resurrecting their long-lost jungle in bursts and flickers when Starscream shuttered his optics. “Go away!”

Starscream growled long and low from his partition. There was something seriously wrong with the grounder. 

Grounders weren’t from the same planet as seekers, they were from an entirely different ecosystem that had nothing to do with their particular array of offensive and defensive abilities.

Therefore, it should be impossible what Starscream and every other seeker in the facility sensed. 

The grounder was radiating venom like it had saturated him down to his spark. 

Poisoned seekers and grounders suffered from the same thing, the venom coursing through their energon tubing corroded them from the inside out.

They smelled weak and injured, reeking of infection. They felt like dying things against their energy fields, the degree was the only variable. 

Once the corrosion reached a high enough saturation, the creature died regardless of species.

This grounder, confidently striding through the antechamber and into the aviary proper, didn’t smell infected. He wasn’t even close enough for Starscream’s olfactory sensor to pick up on his health to such detail.

But venom poured off of him the way celestial gas did collapsing stars. The way only the most powerful apex predators did millennia ago. 

He was expelling it like he was a source rather than a receptacle, and it was terrifying.

Starscream leapt to a middling rung of his nest perch, close to the partition but out of reach. With the deafening racket the others made, he went unnoticed by the grounder and so drank him in with narrowed optics.

He was a hulking, ugly creature. The gunmetal grey of his plating absorbed light rather than reflected it.

Tall, even by grounder standards, with broad shoulders that dropped to inelegant forearms nearly as massive.

Starscream took in the weapon hanging from one arm, his only adornment. A blaster made of scuffed pig iron heavy enough to level half the facility. 

Starscream flexed his claws anxiously, this predator was powerful even without the venom.

The grounder’s face was twisted into a scowl, the harsh lines casting his grimace in shadows.

His optics didn’t glow brightly, but they didn’t need to under the heavy set of his furrowed optical ridge. The garnet glint was a dagger in the dark. 

The grounder prowled across the aviary floor.

“The general is back again?”

Whispers drew Starscream’s attention. Flicking his gaze away from the predator for a moment, he realized his arrival had drawn more than the seekers into a frenzy.

Two idling shoppers and another assistant were watching, murmuring amongst themselves from the door leading to the aviary. Their optics followed the grey grounder’s slow steps like watchful buzzards.

“He must know by now his solar cycles are numbered. Chasing scared seekers around is just going to make it harder for the next mech to get one, it’s selfish.”

“Have some pity, he must be scared of dying. That’s why he keeps coming back.”

“Hmph, figures all that fearless leader Lord Megatron crap was a front. All I’m saying is that he should’ve laid low if he couldn’t handle the consequences of starting the entire damn thing.”

“...just wish he’d go away and stop making it everyone else’s problem.”

“Shut up, he’ll hear you!”

Starscream looked back to the grounder- Megatron? Interest trickled through the anger and fear in his system, a tributary branching away from the stream. 

The grounder was completely ignoring the others, Starscream wasn’t even sure he could hear their gossip. He roamed the aviary like he was patrolling a perimeter, observing the seekers overhead but not focusing on them.

He slinked between perches and nests, not yet turning Starscream’s way.

It was a short fierce battle with his instincts to creep closer, opening all his sensors up to the creature even as self-preservation circuitry blared in his helm to flee or fight, to guard either way. Starscream wanted to know more.

The grounder was sick under all that toxic miasma, the infection was a subtle sweetness when Starscream concentrated. He couldn’t tell how bad it was, but it appeared terminal given the comments from the other grounders.

Starscream leaned in closer, the interest broadening as his thoughts raced.

If he was dying of the venom but felt like he was constructed around a fountain of it, that meant it wasn’t his to hold. Something was done to him, something Starscream had never seen before. Like he’d consumed the energon pump of a predator and kept it at the core of himself. 

Could he somehow be carrying a power source? 

If so, he was an idiot, it was killing him. That wasn’t Starscream’s problem, though. What mattered was that he was interesting, powerful - a lord - and perhaps held a key to venom grounders were too stupid to understand.

Megatron was drifting closer, the net partition had finally caught his notice. Was he curious to see what else lay beyond it? Could Starscream glean more if the grounder approached him properly?

He didn’t make a noise, dropping another level closer to the floor below. His wings itched to take him far away, tense as though strung together by wire.

It was that small movement that Megatron caught, his garnet optics flashing to follow his descent. Starscream felt the razor scrape of his gaze and froze. They both stared at each other.

Starscream was the only seeker left near the bottom of the aviary. The rest were deadly silent at the top now that the predator had locked on to their weakest member, probably content with the tradeoff and reluctant to risk drawing that attention back.

It’s not like he had been popular in the handful of solar cycles he’d spent outside of the back facility.

Megatron was still moving, not directly towards him, meandering around the partition. He seemed to be considering the entire expanse of it rather than just the seeker stock-still overhead.

He didn’t coo at him or shush Starscream’s nerves, there was a hint of arrogance in that.

Megatron didn’t seem concerned at all about earning his good graces.

“Ah,” The assistant piped up, Starscream had forgotten she was even there, “sorry, sir. Pay that one no mind, he’s probably just stuck.”

Megatron slowed to a halt. He didn’t look at the assistant, instead watching Starscream finish landing just out of reach.

If the net weren’t there, Megatron could’ve brushed a wing if he jumped for it. 

If he did so, Starscream would finish what the poison had started and solve everyone’s problems.

Interesting though he might be, Megatron would have to behave himself if he wanted anything more than an oddly close seeker encounter before his slow and painful demise.

“What is the meaning of the partition? It wasn’t here before.” Megatron asked, the rasp of a dull blade.

Even if he were healthy, Starscream wondered if he would’ve repelled seekers anyways. What a fearsome grounder, as gracelessly threatening as his blaster.

“It’s just something we pull out when seekers aren’t healthy enough to keep up with the others. He was rescued in poor condition. In the wild if you can believe it! We still haven’t decided if he was dumped or somehow survived on his own this long, but he’s only out of recovery to stretch his wings and get some socializing in.”

Megatron tilted his helm consideringly.

“In the wild? I was under the impression their planet is uninhabitable now.”

Good, he was minding his manners, staying still at his place before the partition. Starscream risked a glance below, to the next lowest perch. It was at optic-level with Megatron and well within his reach, any other seeker here would’ve fainted at the notion of daring so close.

“It is! That’s the perplexing part. The report came in that he was found in a decomposing jadeite tree. It must’ve kept him from freezing to death after whichever heartless mech abandoned him there.”

Starscream scoffed. The assistant spoke as though he was a mindless heat-seeking missile that had gotten lucky in his wanderings, as though it hadn’t been his home he was found in. 

That arctic tundra had once been the heart of the jungle, trees packed in so densely it was a flight hazard for the larger seekers to glide between them.

It had lasted the longest out of everything and everyone when the ice age consumed all in its path and Starscream had predicted that perfectly .

He’d burrowed deep inside the central-most tree, a massive pillar older than the stars themselves. He squirmed and scratched desperately to wedge himself foot by foot beneath the emerald surface.

It had taken years of burrowing, the paralyzing chill pursuing him the entire time.

The frost was a gaping maw, swallowing all life and leaving behind only blinding white. It took everything from him and greedily hunted for more.

Once Starscream reached the core, he didn’t come back out. He knew there was nothing left but death. 

Seekers were sturdier than all this protocol and institutional pampering implied, they could live on almost nothing at all if they had to. If blizzards larger than the western hemisphere were right outside their nest, they too could find the endurance necessary to live on parasites and the rot of their own tomb. 

When the grounders finally came for him, he had been the only living creature not stolen by the ice or the trappers left.

It wasn’t a random happy occurrence, but a test of will and intelligence that Starscream had won .

Pride pumped through his tubing, the surge cleared away his trepidation like old cobwebs. Starscream leapt into the air and cut his engines.

He allowed the rush of his descent to push against his wings and guide his dive away from the safety of his partition space.

He wasn’t going to cower from this predator like any old pet.  

He landed on the lowest perch like a dare. It was pressed right against the netting, level with the heavily armored shoulders of the grounder. The textured metal felt hot underneath his servos and he swung neatly up onto his peds upon the length of the perch, tall and helm held high.

He stared Megatron down contemptuously, there was no grounder in existence that could’ve survived what he had. They couldn’t even wrap their tiny processors over the possibility any creature could prevail for so long on a dying planet. 

He was their superior.

He held out a servo, leaving it outstretched in front of the grounder’s ugly face in a command clearer than words could ever be. Megatron would never again meet a seeker as impressive as he was and he should pay forth his gratitude.

The grounder observed him, he’d been watching him this entire time. His scowl all but chiseled in place, the rage thick enough to obscure any gaps in his impassivity.

He made no move toward feeding Starscream, he didn’t even look away from Starscream’s face to take in his demanding servo. His attention was heating like a slow-building charge. 

They were close enough now that Starscream could see the focal lenses of Megatron’s optics spiraling in on him, a rifle’s steadiness there.

Starscream didn’t know what would happen when that rifle went off, the thrill and audacity of it sizzled across his processors. He wasn’t going to be cowed, however. Grounders fell over themselves to please their seeker pet candidates and this one would be no different.

“Give,” he said, sharp and clear. Grounders couldn’t understand seekers, the language far too complex for their underpowered circuits. Clicks, whistles, chirps, it sailed past them completely unobserved.

Some could take a decent stab at guessing if seekers kept to basic commands. Repetition helped.

Starscream himself had trained a few of the scientist grounders to heed his bite warning and now his wings were only handled as a last resort.

This would be his first lesson for this interesting grounder with infection pouring from every seam, perhaps the most important word he would ever be taught.

“Give.”

“Oh wow, he’s saying hello!” The assistant gasped, “I wonder if you resemble his old owner!”

The intensity rioted up several degrees in the space between them, static crackled through his audio receptors faintly enough that it could just be random feedback.

Then, Megatron blinked, the treats Starscream knew were in his fist revealed themselves. Victory was his, uncontested by the hundreds of seekers disguising themselves as roof shingles far above. 

Megatron fed a treat through the netting like he was picking a lock, slow and ponderous. Starscream held no such trepidation. He dug his claws into the treat and took the biggest bite he could out of it, nirvana on his glossa.

“Sir, you should probably save those treats for an available seeker. I’m not even sure that one is allowed trea-”

“What is the likelihood for total recovery?” Megatron asked, cutting the assistant off.

He didn’t let go of the treat, holding it between the netting while Starscream gnawed on one end. He grumbled his unhappiness with the proximity to his meal, but ultimately the priority was eating the entire thing as quickly as possible.

“Full recovery is expected. Rest assured, this facility only houses and sells seekers with uncompromised purification abilities! Every licensed establishment very clearly marks seekers that require specialty care.”

“Hmm,” The rumble traveled from Megatron’s vocalizer, down his arm, and into Starscream’s denta. He broke away to work on the chunk he prised from the bar.

“He looks half-dead.”

Without hesitation, he finished swallowing his treat, turned back to the grounder, and then bit down on Megatron’s servo as hard as he could.

His fangs couldn’t get far through armor thicker than the expanse of his jaws, but the needle points lancing through all the delicate wiring of articulated servos didn’t need to.

“Frag!” Megatron shouted, yanking his servo back through the netting with such force that Starscream bounced right off the cables, catapulting across the aviary segment with a shriek.

“Are you alright? Did he do any damage?”

Starscream caught himself on the other side of the aviary, helm spinning. He wasn’t injured, but he had pinwheeled through so many full rotations that his equilibrium was still catching up with the rest of him.

In that time, the assistant had practically teleported to Megatron’s side, fussing over the injury. 

“Yikes, now that’s a bite!”

Megatron ripped the servo out of the assistant’s grasp, blue energon trickling down his wrist. Starscream smirked.

Poor little grounder had a bite taken out of him by a half-dead seeker, he bet that shook the arrogant snot down to his rotten core.

Starscream licked the energon from his lips, bitter, not processed for fuel tanks. The tang of poison numbed the surface of his mouth as he swallowed it down. 

“Please remember that any attempt to injure a seeker will result in immediate expulsion. They don’t really mean it,” the assistant said, a tremble in her vocal processor, “You know how seekers are, they’re easily startled so we need to be patient when they bite!”

“I don’t know that,” Megatron growled.

 The assistant shuttered her optics, confused.

“What?”

Another sales assistant and two caretakers arrived in the next moment, splitting up between the two parties with a militant air. They must have seen the bite and worried Megatron had attacked him.

All the grounders, even the stern new arrivals, gave Megatron a wide berth that spoke of a collective fear. 

Was he known for his violence? Starscream peeked over at the grounder curiously.

Megatron wasn’t looking at him any longer, regarding the two assistants with a ferocious glower. His servo hung forgotten, dripping energon on the shiny metal floor.

“Is everything alright here?” The sales assistant asked, while at the same time, the two caretakers hunched over him from the other side of the netted dome. Their optics spiraled and spiraled, inspecting him for damage.

“No dents, scuffs, abrasions…” They muttered between each other, like he was a brittle old relic that had fallen over.

A mid-range scanner in their possession beeped obnoxiously, they studied the readings together as though it held the answer to the universe.

“No internal systems deterioration. He didn’t ingest any dark energon, thank Primus-”

He ignored them and launched himself back to Megatron’s side, clinging to the netting itself like a particularly stubborn vine.

The first sales assistant hopped away with a yelp that sent a predatory thrill through Starscream, he bared his fangs at her.

“A seeker has never tried to bite me before,” Megatron told the second assistant gravely, who straightened as though that were less humiliating than shrinking back in fear.

“Be that as it may, sir, this facility is not obligated to reimburse you for injuries sustained within the aviary,” they said. “You are welcome to leave at any time and return when we have new stock that may be more receptive to you-”

“I want that one,” Megatron said.

The entire room stalled.

“To…punish?” A caretaker asked. The other caretaker began edging closer, as though to throw between the two. They really were afraid of him, it was a delight to behold.

Megatron rolled his optics and Starscream’s delight deepened. He had chosen very well, he thought. If he was right, he knew what the grounder would say next.

“This is the only seeker I’ve come across with a bold enough temperament to willingly make contact with me. I’m not going to torment it, it will be my pet.” Starscream preened.

Bold, a sufficient way to put it. He was leagues bolder than any tame little thing in this aviary, that could only snap and run away lest they receive a single scratch. 

That wasn’t to say he was in complete agreement with this grounder’s assessment of the situation. Starscream had chosen him , not the other way around.

Megatron could be of great use to him, a pet in his own right, albeit one Starscream fully intended to give over the bulk of care responsibilities. 

At this point, the small crowd that generated with the mere presence of Megatron in the aviary had doubled and a supervisor finally dashed over. Her mouth was drawn tight, and her shoulders were rounded, like she was entering an arena.

“What’s happening over here?” She snapped to the sales assistants, one of which actually saluted.

“Ah, Chromia. I will be taking this seeker home with me and require an assistant to finalize,” Megatron told her, lightyears away from the request it should have been.

Her lip curled a fraction of an inch, but the irritation faded when she took in Starscream plastered beside Megatron’s helm against the net.

“The wild one? You do realize he hasn’t been cleared for sale. We can’t even give his purification abilities a proper grade, he’s too weak right now to be useful if you deploy.”

Starscream hissed at her. 

Chromia nodded and waved a servo as though he had given sound advice.

“Yes, and that, too. He isn’t remotely rehabilitated and may actually be undomesticated. You can’t seriously want him, just come back in a few weeks, you could find your seeker then.”

Megatron gave a laugh, low and bitter. “Or I’ll be offline, time is not something I possess in abundance. This seeker is the first to not shrink away like I’m a vat of boiling acid, I want him.”

Starscream considered that. The analogy wasn’t far off. His very presence felt like the final moments between a predator’s jaws, the rush of toxins through a puncture site, death standing in their aviary.

These other seekers would have no experience with that kind of danger, they didn’t know how to think under pressure.

Starscream…was different.

Chromia softened just a touch, there must be some truth to Megatron’s claims of poor health. 

For a single moment, Starscream wondered if he was making a bad decision.

It was impulsive, he didn’t have enough information to know what he was getting himself into. What if this grounder perished or went mad? What would become of Starscream then?

“I don’t know if he’s enough to save you. You’re free to return for a second seeker, I’ll petition the board for the allowance.”

One of the caretakers spluttered. “You’re just going to give him the seeker? A Decepticon? The Decepticon? But he’s sick! He needs proper care!”

Chromia leveled the caretaker with a baleful stare, the white and blue snowscape of her armor gave off a real chill. 

“I’m not giving him anything. The policy is clear.”

She then turned to Megatron, an expectation in her silence. The expectation caught on quickly, a wave of excitement crashing over the dozen grounders milling in the back.

As one, they all held their breath and stared wordlessly out towards the drama unfolding at the center of the facility.

Megatron turned to Starscream and slowly held out a servo, laying it against the netting. The rough armor of his palm, blue energon stains crusting across the surface, brushed against his grasp on the partition. Starscream flexed his claws indecisively.

Was he checking to see if Starscream would attack him again? Worst still, was he testing to see if, in the three klicks since they had last interacted, Starscream had transformed into a sweet sensitive creature that would nuzzle into his servo?

Starscream leaned forward, the heated attention of the entire facility beating down on his back, and bit Megatron again.

The caretakers both leapt forward, servos up and hovering, waiting for Megatron to react, maybe, before they ripped them apart. But neither made a sound. Megatron hadn’t even flinched.

This time, Starscream didn’t draw blood. This wasn’t a punishment, he could be fair with his new pet. A reminder only, Starscream wasn’t soft or cute. He would be properly respected before he went anywhere with the grounder.

He lightly clenched his jaw, pressing his fangs against armor, and then released.

They looked at each other, Starscream and Megatron. He wasn’t sure if they understood one another, but those dark garnet optics were fathomless as a starless night.

He was taking something away from this, Starscream supposed he’d only find out later what it was.

He was bold, he could handle uncertainty. He didn’t need delicate promises from strange giants, not when he had the cunning and drive to take charge of his own fate. Starscream knew this was a gamble, but he trusted he could spin this into success. 

Chromia wordlessly took down the partition and Megatron offered him another treat. He accepted it, even when Megatron held onto it again.

“Sir…You should really drop crumbs for seekers to eat, they can be quite food aggressive when you stay close like that,” one of the assistants whispered to Megatron.

Starscream’s grumbling growl rose to agree with him, but the hold on the bar only tightened.

“It’s important he understands who is giving him food.” Is all Megatron said in response. No one else argued with him, all falling to the wayside as Starscream filled up on treats. 

He regretted finishing his pellet meal earlier, in fact. His tanks were starting to groan against the rich fuel he was introducing to it without reprieve, the weight sinking like a stone in his chassis.

He forged on, his tank would just have to endure.

Eventually, a carrier box was placed on the floor and Megatron was instructed to back away so that he was unable to pressure the seeker inside or shut it too swiftly behind him. 

Proximity was meaningless, however, not with the way Megatron stared at him. It wasn’t desperation, Starscream didn’t know what it was. A shadow heavier than it should be, atmosphere thicker than what his intake readings were telling him, it was near unnatural. 

Starscream shivered against that charged energy thrumming back up, the rifle loaded again. Had it ever been disarmed?

He hopped into the box, the immediate cut off from every optic in a damn mile a welcome relief. 

He situated himself in a corner, kicking his legs out in the narrow expanse.

His pump was beating hard despite himself, anxiety peaking as he took the dive from one unknown world to another. He trusted himself, no matter what happened he would be fine. He had done more on even less information, he was bold.

Starscream took in a breath and held it in his intakes as the box was carefully raised off the ground and shut closed.

Starscream made his choice.

You are going to make me powerful, he thought. A command and not a prayer. It would be by his own design, everything else only needed to follow his lead.

The world outside burst back into full volume, the spell broken.

“You’re seriously going to let him take the seeker?”

“Can it, the seeker chose him. Set up the till while I gather the paperwork.”

“Did you see that? A seeker actually went with him!”

“What’s wrong with it? It must be malfunctioning, right?”

“It looked sick, I don’t think they’re meant to be all brown and faded like that. Do you think it was forced or something?”

“Nah, I think it’s just ugly. It bit him first, it can’t be sick.”

“Ha! Ugly and mean, maybe Megatron finally found a seeker that suits him.”

“I’m telling my conjux about this, I can’t believe he’s taking one home.”

The muffled quality of the gossiping grounders was lost when the top opened again and Megatron peeked inside.

They were in the storefront now, the glass letting in natural sunlight Starscream hadn’t seen since his arrival. It bathed the storefront in warm, soft oranges and reds.

He imagined it felt warm to stretch out in, warmer even than the little heat lamp they gave him for a while when he had a hard time managing his thermals.

The sunlight even softened Megatron’s permanent scowl, he looked a little less dangerous staring into the box the way the other grounders couldn’t resist doing either. It was like they were newly surprised a seeker was in there, each glance a shock all over again.

“Get me everything I need, make sure it’s premium,” Megatron growled to someone out of sight, his face stayed centered above the box.

It was Chromia who spoke next, sounding terse but controlled. “We need to discuss his special care concerns as well, I’m only letting you purchase him because I expect your care to be on par with this facility’s.”

Megatron considered that. One of his servos was slowly creeping into the box like a hunter wary of startling its prey. Starscream regarded it curiously. 

“Send the care instructions to myself and my second in command, Soundwave. Is there anything I need to know right away?”

“I’m sending them now. The main concern is getting his tank used to good food. He has severe malnutrition and needs to avoid too many rich meals and treats for the time being. You were allowed treats for the adoption process but limit them now. You’ll be receiving his supplements and feed.”

The servo crept closer, digits trailing the edge teasingly. It danced closer and then further away, Starscream tensed instinctively each time it drew that much closer to him.

“Besides that, manage your expectations. He will be sleeping for long periods of time, energy will be in quick bursts and fizzle out fast. I’m not even sure he is capable of purification right now, it could take time to shore up his health.”

When the foolish servo drifted too close, Starscream pounced, digging his claws and denta into the servo to play-kill it. A growl bubbled up his intake pipe, pleased and aggressive. The servo obligingly went limp.

“Hmm,” Megatron mused, “I suspect my expectations aren’t far from the mark.”

“I’m serious. Don’t leave him alone with other seekers either, cage them separately. They could react poorly and yours will lose. Badly. Seekers are fragile, yours is even more fragile than most.”

Though the servo was attached to a grounder and radiated poison that curdled the very air, Starscream could forgive it as a spoil of war.

Curling around his kill, he kicked the sputtering ghost of his purification filters online and shuttered his optics shut.

It wouldn’t do for his grounder to actually die just yet, after all.

His filters wheezed to full power at an excruciatingly slow rate, and the task was nigh insurmountable even at peak strength. He didn’t expect to do much.

Still, it was nice with the servo warmed a little more, tiny micro-tensions smoothing out as he chased away an ache Megatron had held onto for so long he forgot his servo didn’t used to hurt so badly.

He flexed it, stilling only when Starscream bit him again in admonishment. Killed things didn’t move and ruin his concentration.

“I understand.”

The servo in Starscream’s grasp swiped a digit over his helm, too light to be a caress. It felt proprietary and he didn’t approve.

Starscream huffed but was too tired to actually pitch a fit. His filters were a battery drain like no other, he could feel sleep cloying around the edges of his thoughts.

“Hmph, anyway let’s finish this up. Sign here, here, and here. And what are you going to call him?”

Call him? A silly thing to ask. He was Starscream, he didn’t need another designation. That would be next, he decided muzzily, he’d train the grounder to mimic his designation call.

It might be nice, it had been so, so long since he’d heard someone call for him. 

He was barely awake now, the voices muddy and senseless booming overhead. His filters were failing, the infection only beat back from the very tips of Megatron’s digits. 

They felt warmer, nice against his chassis as he dozed.

“Seeker.”

“...His designation is going to be seeker?”

“What else would I call him? Are we finished here?”

“Decepticons, I swear to Primus. Yes , we’re finished. Swipe your chip here and you’ll be set. Everything’s already been sent to the shuttle outside per your second’s instructions.”

A beep, a creak of joints, the box swayed gently to and fro. It was a bit like napping through a tropical storm, Starscream didn’t like it. His tank reminded him of his misuse, but sleep was an effective escape. 

He was already mostly dreaming, his hold slipping as Megatron removed his servo from the box and shut it in one smooth motion. His filters were powered off, it would take time to convince them to reboot.

“Thank you for your business,” Chromia called, sounding anything but grateful. A door shut, a door opened, and they were some place quiet and chilled.

“Lord Megatron?”

“Drive.”

Soundwave directed the shuttle into traffic without another word, visor set directly ahead as Megatron got comfortable in the back. 

He looked down at the carrier box where his new seeker slept, a little unmoored by all that had transpired. 

He had a seeker now, it was difficult to think past it. 

Megatron had lost hope ages ago, he’d only kept returning to seeker stores because his other course of action was to lay down and offline, reduced to a cautionary tale. It was untenable.

Between missions, his time was a haze of meetings and visiting seeker facilities for his ritualistic death sentence. Each time it was the same, a dependable show for onlookers.

He would wander an aviary, his rank pushing past facility staff misgivings, where seekers slip between his digits like bubbles in a stream. It was theater, a roaming example of the dangers of meddling with dark energon to frighten away civilians.

Still somehow, he had a seeker now. An ill one perhaps, but that was a wealth of possibilities where there had been none before. It was everything, entirely priceless.

There would be more to Megatron’s plan yet, victory was back on the table.

He stroked the box’s smooth planes, so unbelievably small for what had just changed in the fabric of the universe. Megatron had hope again, he would carry through with what he had started.

”You are going to make me powerful,” he said. There was no other option, Megatron only needed the faintest of cracks to know he could shatter through walls. All he needed was a single sign he could conquer this trial to surge headlong back into the fray.

And Primus had sent him the antidote instead.

No one else’s will mattered but his own now.

Carefully, he set the box down on one of the seats. He nestled it firmly beside the massive bag of medicinal kibble the facility had insisted his new seeker subside on, it crunched like sand and looked about as appetizing.

The smell of it in the close confines of the shuttle was enough to make his olfactory circuitry burn and die, but it must be delicious to seekers with how much of it they expected his to consume every solar cycle. 

He’d go over the care instructions carefully at a later date to find out how much longer the feed was necessary. He wasn’t looking forward to breaking such a food-driven seeker away from their regular kibble.

In the meantime, however, he thought of the future that had just sprung to life right before his optics. 

There was work to be done.