Yellow Ribbon - Chapter 5 of 11
Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4
Starscream - Broken
Starscream ached. Every strut and cable, every inch of his plating from the base of his thrusters to the tip of his angular wings, throbbed with the same relentless beat as his spark. It wasn’t that he felt particularly ill, or in any way incapacitated. If anything, this unfocused and nagging discomfort was worse than a short, sharp blast from Megatron’s fusion cannon. At least if he could point to that as the origin of his pain, he could have counted on the relief of Hook’s repairs, albeit accompanied by the medic’s inevitable snide commentary.
Instead he’d been aching and groaning for a full two Earth days - since not long after their pointless skirmish with the Autobots, in fact. His only relief in that time had been a certain grim satisfaction on discovering Skywarp and Thundercracker felt as bad as he did. After all, if past history was anything to go by, he’d almost certainly caught this circuit disruption, whatever it was, from one of his idiot trinemates. It was only fair they suffer too.
Unfortunately, his vindictive schadenfreude had not outlasted his patience. Skywarp became a clingy wretch when he fell ill, even with as mild a dose of whatever this was as Starscream suspected he had. Given the impossibility of keeping the teleporter out of his trineleader’s quarters, and the fact that Thundercracker quietly but firmly refused to be separated from the pair of them, Starscream’s room had rapidly reverted to its sometime-function as a trinenest. For a few hours, when Starscream had felt at his worst, that had actually been something of a comfort, although he’d rather tear out his vocalisor than admit it out loud. Then Skywarp’s over-warm plating became an irritation, Thundercracker’s snores began to grate on his nerves, and Starscream had found himself driven first from his berth and then from his own quarters in search of a little peace and quiet.
He’d yet to find it. True, the corridors of the Nemesis were quieter than usual, devoid of the usual tussles that came of keeping a dozen large mechs, half of them natural fliers, cooped up in an underwater base. Even so, Starscream found it uncomfortably loud, wincing at the clang of his thrusters against the dull purple decking, and painfully aware that they’d fallen into the same thunderous rhythm as his pulsing processor ache.
The humans called this feeling ‘grotty’ - a sentiment Starscream, feeling every speck of this world’s organic muck on his sleek wings, and lamenting the damp grime that seemed attracted to his frame, could sympathise with. They also called it ‘feeling under the weather’ though, and that made no sense whatsoever. Starscream would give a lot to escape from the crushing weight of water above him, to feel the sunlight and rain on his frame, and the wind rushing past his wings. Being ‘under the weather’ would actually do him and his wingmates some good. That fact alone, not to mention the woeful state of the rest of the Nemesis’s crew, was reason enough for Megatron to forbid it.
Starscream was already in a bad mood when he signalled for admittance to the Constructicon’s bay. He was in a truly foul one when he gave up on his attempts to secure entry, warned off by something between a growl and a moan in Scrapper’s voice, and stalked towards the command deck instead.
As bad as he felt, that wasn’t the worst of it. The nagging feeling that he knew something about this virus, and that if he could only talk to Hook he’d figure out what that was, troubled him more than any physical malady. He racked his mind, trying to articulate a problem he couldn’t quite grasp. The scientist in him snarled, impatient and infuriated by the lethargic state of his processor.
He turned that fury outwards as he strode onto the command deck, unimpressed to find two of the Reflector gestalt slumped asleep in front of the monitors, and that pest of a cassetticon Rumble curled up in Megatron’s throne, of all places.
Cursing, wincing as the knife-edge shriek of his own voice cut through him, Starscream wrenched at the back of the heavy chair, tilting it enough to dump the over-bold cassette to the deck before dropping it again with a resounding clang of metal on metal. He’d charged his null-rays without thinking about it, directing his left arm-weapon into Rumble’s dazed face.
“If you valued your plating, you’d be grovelling right now, cassette! You have the temerity, the sheer nerve to sit in the throne of our leader? If Megatron were here you’d be lucky to escape with your spark, worm. And I don’t see Soundwave here to plead for you, if even he would tolerate such an insult to the Decepticon army as the sight of you taking a seat only great mechs, mighty warriors, have any right to claim as their own!”
Rumble blinked at him in blank incomprehension, squinting as if even the dimmed lights permitted on the Nemesis were still too bright. Scowling, Starscream killed the charge sequence on his null rays and rebooted it for the effect alone, satisfied when the eerie, rising whine seemed to get through to Rumble and bring a look of near panic to his face.
“I… I’m sorry, Starscream…”
“Lord Starscream.” If Megatron had been present, Starscream wouldn’t have pushed the title, recognising the difference between assertiveness and folly. As it was, with only three pitiful groundlings in the room, they would treat the Air Commander of the Decepticon Army, High Lord of the Vos and Leader of the Elite Trine, with the respect he deserved.
Rumble and his brother Frenzy would usually contest the title, and Starscream almost looked forward to the defiance, for the sake of the swift retribution that would follow. Today, Rumble merely echoed Starscream’s correction in a dull mutter, dim optics dilating and contracting as if they refused to find the correct focus.
“Where is Soundwave, anyway?” Starscream turned away, past his fill of the obviously defective cassette. He looked towards the main monitor, intending to question the Reflector units, only to find them still slouched in an untidy heap, nearer unconscious than merely asleep. Taking a half step forward he stumbled, startled to meet an unexpected impediment, and then more so to find Rumble had somehow dozed off where he sat in front of the Seeker. The cassette’s plating was rather alarmingly warm against his pede, and Starscream frowned.
Venting a frustrated sigh, he took a moment to check the cassette’s energon level and look over his intakes for blockages before placing him under the control deck’s main ventilation fan. Rumble might be a groundpounder, and a disgustingly dependent cassette at that, but Starscream hadn’t made it to second in command of the Decepticon forces without recognising a useful warrior, and the pointlessness of wasting such a resource, when he saw it.
Or by tolerating a situation such as this. First the Constructicons holed up in their bay, then the three petty groundlings leaving the command deck effectively unmanned. No sign yet of Megatron, or Soundwave. Both were presumably nursing their own aching heads, too weak to leave their own quarters… or even just Megatron’s. Starscream had a vague memory of instructing Soundwave to escort their mighty leader back to his room. It was quite possible the Communications Officer had made it no further than that.
For a moment, Starscream toyed with the deliciously sweet idea of finding one of Mixmaster’s more volatile explosives and tossing it into that room, ridding himself of two thorns in his side at once. There would be no joy in that victory though, no pride, not even a shadow of the tattered shreds of honour Starscream still wrapped around him. And, if he were honest, no real benefit either. Starscream was always quick to point out his leader’s failings. He would have no hesitation in stepping into the breach if Megatron were to fall, and every part of him craved the respect he deserved, not only from his own kind but from every Decepticon on Earth, Cybertron and beyond. But the simple truth was that here, now, facing the Prime and his Autobot elite with a mere handful of warriors, and as much as Starscream hated the fact, Megatron was needed.
No, Starscream mused as he settled himself in the throne so recently vacated by Rumble. Let Megatron live, for now, on Starscream’s sufferance. If for no other reason than that misery loves company, and if Starscream had to tolerate aching limbs and a throbbing processor that wanted to escape his helm, then Megatron should not be spared his own ailments. He only hoped Megatron was suffering as badly as the rest of the groundpounders. A thought skittered at the edge of his consciousness, telling him there was something significant there. The glorious mental picture of Megatron curled into a ball of aching misery drove it away. It might teach him a little respect - and to appreciate the inherent superiority of the Seeker frame. It was painfully apparent that an ailment that downed even the strongest grounder had barely given the Vosian contingent a few sniffles.
Basking in his smug self-satisfaction, conveniently overlooking the stream of mental complaints that he’d been logging over the last day, Starscream sat back in the throne and considered the mess his crew - and right now it was his crew - was in. Drumming the servos of his left hand on the throne’s thick armrests, Starscream activated his com.
“Skywarp, Thundercracker, get your afts up to control deck now. You’re taking the monitor shift.”
“But, Screamer…”
“We’re ill, Starscream.”
“Not that ill,” Starscream corrected ruthlessly. He stretched a bit to give Reflector an unnecessary but deeply satisfying kick. “Unless you want me to believe you’re no better than the groundpounder pestlings lying at my feet.”
Thundercracker paused, as if he was genuinely considering it, but the stoic Seeker’s pride wouldn’t tolerate such an insult even if he had to rise from his deathbed to prove it wrong.
“We’ll be there in a breem.”
Starscream nodded in satisfaction, letting the slight delay slide. He could do that for his trine, particularly when he was denying them the greater pleasure. He shifted com frequencies.
“Dirge, Ramjet, Thrust - I don’t care if your wings are peeling and your thrusters are about to melt. I want you out on patrol in two hundred astroseconds. Report to Thundercracker.”
This time he cut off the com without waiting for the flyers’ protests. His Seekers might be ailing, and cursing his name right now, but they were well enough to hold the Nemesis together. They’d thank him when Lord Megatron was forced to grate out a ‘thank you’ from between gritted denta. And he wouldn’t even be able to accuse Starscream of overstepping his authority. After all, he was only doing his duty as second in command…
Still smiling smugly, Starscream paused to chase up the glimmer of uncertainty that followed that thought. Something about being second, about Megatron and this virus that affected grounders so much worse than his own kind. Shifting in his seat, Starscream vented a sharp sigh, twisting a little to rub at his left shoulder thruster. It still ached from a chance Autobot shot at the minor battle two days before. They’d barely finished assessing the damage from that fiasco before Megatron started swaying on the command deck. It wasn’t as if Starscream could even remember what the point had been. Why did Megatron feel they needed to test out the Autobots’ readiness anyway? The Decepticons were just lucky the Autobots’ Primus-damned tactician hadn’t been on the field…
Starscream’s thrusters choked into life with a strangled scream. He suppressed the shock reaction with an effort, drawing in a sharp vent that tasted of burnt energon and ionised air. Recovered memories flickered in front of his optics. The virus - engineered from the start to affect groundlings with maximum effect. Its long design process, so intimately driven by Starscream’s hatred for its target that even the temporary, partial effects the Seekers were feeling had blocked it from his memory. He clenched his fists. Their own weapon turned back against them, either mutated enough to bypass Decepticon data security as it had meagre Autobots firewalls or… or deliberately recoded to that effect.
Starscream was on his feet before he’d processed the thought. Crouching down, he grabbed the nearest Reflector unit by the shoulders, shaking the smaller mech.
“The prisoners! Where are the prisoners? Are they still secure? Wake up, damn you!”
The mech - Spyglass, or was it Viewfinder? - blinked dim optics at Starscream, threatening to go offline again any second.
“Wh…what prisoners?”
Starscream gave him a harder shake, his only reward a hacking cough as the gestalt mech tried to clear choked vents that might not even be his own. Certainly the second unit slumped over the monitor desk looked as if he were overheating just as badly. Disgusted, Starscream dropped the smaller Decepticon, ignoring the tinkle of glass that spoke of future repair work for Hook.
He stalked past a startled Thundercracker in the doorway, Skywarp yelping and hurrying to get out of his way as he shot his trinemates a fierce glare. Cursing, Starscream headed down, into the dark and dank depths of the Nemesis. He charged his null-ray as he went, wishing, not for the first time, for the reassuring solidity and destructive power of Megatron in his hand. They’d come so far, so close. He’d be damned to the Pit if he let that go to waste now.
There was only one prisoner in the cell-block. Jazz’s visor was dark, his systems stuttering and skipping in his recharge, their intermittent whir scarcely audible.
Starscream stared at the saboteur, non-plussed. In truth, until he saw the black and white mech, Starscream had virtually forgotten about his existence. The flare of memory that returned to him on the command deck had entirely focussed on the Autobots’ second in command, his loathing for the Praxian overriding all other considerations. This mech was of no consequence by comparison.
Right now, all the classified material Jazz might be privy too, all his unique skills and insight into Autobot tactics were less relevant than the fact that he was here. Starscream’s first impulse on seeing Jazz alone had been to live up to his name, crying out in impotent fury. But if there was one thing Starscream knew without a doubt about his cursed Autobot counterpart, it was that Prowl would never willingly have left another Autobot alone and injured in that cell. And if the condition of the Autobots’ third was any indication, their second could hardly have left under his own strength in any case. He hadn’t gone. He’d been taken.
“Soundwave.” Starscream grated the name out between clenched teeth. Megatron had entrusted the opening stages of the Autobots’ interrogation to the telepath. As much as Starscream protested that decision, alone and in the privacy of his own processor he could admit to a certain sense of relief. He’d known all along that sooner or later he’d have to face his opposite mech-to-mech, but let Soundwave break him first.
The Decepticon third in command matched his Autobot counterpart for ruthless practicality, without the weak morals to suppress it. He could keep the captives alive indefinitely, more than half starved, whimpering in pain, but never succumbing to the call of their oh-so-precious Matrix. Whether it took weeks, months or years to bring Prowl to his knees, Starscream could wait. Their virus had ensured they’d have the time. The same virus now loose in the Nemesis, bringing the Decepticons themselves close to kneeling.
Soundwave, Starscream was sure, had no more resistance than any of his fellow pathetic ground-dwellers. He was no doubt curled up somewhere, either a tight ball of agony, or sleeping off the aches and pains. Rumble’s poor and untended state on the command deck attested to that. But when had Soundwave been overtaken, and what had he done with Prowl first?
Starscream vaguely recalled a disturbance as they returned from their chastening Autobot encounter - an escape attempt, albeit one doomed to failure from the start. The captives had already been skirting the edge of starvation, Soundwave tuning their rations to the bare minimum needed to keep them active and aware of their surroundings. Their failed attempt to flee while most of the Decepticons were absent had almost been impressive by some standards, and deeply pathetic by others - they’d actually broken out of their cells and made it across a deck and a half before collapsing in a heap, left where they fell until the Constructicons on monitor duty could be bothered to round them up.
So… an attempted escape, and a gleam behind Soundwave’s deep red visor as he promised Megatron he’d make sure the Autobots ‘understood the consequences’ of such folly. Starscream hadn’t seen the mech again until almost eighteen hours later when, already shaky himself but careful not to show it, he’d laughed in an ailing Megatron’s face for his weakness and casually summoned Soundwave to deal with him.
Starscream straightened, a vicious smile tightening his face for a moment as he stared down at the inert form of Jazz. From the looks of it, the Autobot saboteur had not refuelled since well before the skirmish. That was lax of Soundwave, running close to the risk of deactivating the mech permanently. He’d not have allowed that to happen had he not been distracted, even in the hours before he was so rudely interrupted.
Starscream strode along the corridor, around a corner and followed the curve of the ship’s hull to the interrogation chamber set against it. He opened the door. His lips curled, torn between a disgusted grimace and a smile of the deepest satisfaction.
Distracted by an interrogation session… one left unfinished for far too long.
Prowl looked surprisingly intact for a mech subject to Soundwave’s slender mercies for a full orn. His paintwork was scratched and pitted, coated in the grime that pervaded these lower decks of the Nemesis. His helm carried several large dents, the chevron mount broken and empty, and after the abortive escape it came as no surprise to see that Soundwave had taken steps to limit his captive’s mobility, cutting key cables in both ankle joints.
Despite that, most of the damage appeared cosmetic… until Starscream found his gaze drawn inevitably and inexorably to the sensory appendages that were both a mirror and a mockery of his own elegant wings.
Prowl was pinned by his door-wings. Long bolts had been driven cruelly through the sensitive panels and deep into the wall behind. His pedes touched the ground, barely, forcing the always-upright, always-proper mech to strain, taking as much weight as he could on his toe plates. Balanced like that, the position would have been excruciatingly painful but bearable. Perhaps that was all Soundwave intended when he’d left Prowl here, intending to return in a few breems, a few Earth hours even. If so, the torment had turned into a more profound torture when illness and amnesia swept the telepath in their path. Starscream had no idea how long Prowl had held out. He was willing to bet it had been longer than Soundwave had expected. It hadn’t been long enough.
At some point in the last two days, all Prowl’s remaining strength hadn’t been sufficient and the bolt holes were jagged and torn, elongated where they’d felt the full force of his weight when his legs gave way. The long tears crossing nearly a third of the upswept panels were only the most obvious of the damage. Acid scars surrounded them, some deep enough that cables and sensor nodes were exposed to the damp air, their insulators bubbled and warped. The tips of the door-wings themselves, usually tapering to a fine point that mirrored Prowl’s missing chevron, had been battered and bent, the edges of each panel curled over and twisted where heavy fingers had left their mark.
Even with Prowl deeply unconscious, his door-wings twitched, unable to suppress the agony of the signals from so many damaged sensors. With his vents virtually silent and his optics dull, that slight movement was the only indication Prowl’s Decepticon counterpart had that a spark still burned in that battered frame.
Starscream took in the sight in a kind of breathless wonder, cringing inside. His wings, several times the size of Prowl’s, throbbed in sympathy and he hated himself for every moment of it.
No one knew how long it had been since the first Praxians had left the great airborne edifice that was Vos to found their own city-state. Every surviving Praxian, every last Vosian Seeker, knew precisely how long it had been since Praxus fell, dragging both kindred into a Pit from which they’d likely never recover.
“You had to do it.” The words scratched their way from Starscream’s throat unbidden. He hovered in the doorway of the interrogation room, his gaze fixed on Prowl’s darkened optics. “You had to be so slagging good. Megatron took your everything and it wasn’t enough for you to survive. You had to be the best. You had to do what you believed in, and you had to be so slagging good at it.”
It didn’t even occur to Starscream that he could be describing himself. He shifted from foot to foot in the doorway, not knowing what kept him outside the room.
“You had to work your way up until you stood by Prime’s side, forcing me to face you in every battle, to see your Primus-damned face every time I stepped outside this ship. Forcing me to remember. Why couldn’t you just die, Prowl, like so many other pathetic groundlings? Why couldn’t you let me forget?”
Prowl’s inert form mocked him with its silence and he strode into the room before thinking about it, reaching out to grasp the smaller mech’s shoulders. With a single wrench, Starscream pulled Prowl off the wall, the rents in his door-wings tearing wider and longer as he did so.
Prowl screamed, the agonised sound torn from deep within him, and Starscream found himself screaming too, a shaft of pain sweeping across his own wings. Whether it was some effect of the air currents in the room across their complex array of sensors or just the echo of agony from long ago, even Starscream couldn’t be sure.
The Autobot’s optics flickered dimly, dulled by pain and exhaustion, his energy levels as low as his fellow captive’s. It was doubtful they could see anything worth a flick of Starscream’s wingtips, even in the brief moments they were active. Prowl writhed in Starscream’s grip, inarticulate sounds of pain wrung from his vocalisor. Starscream shook him, watching his helm loll, searching for any sign of rationality.
“Can you hear me? Are you still in there? Or have I done it at last - rid myself of the chain Primus dropped around my neck?”
There was no response, or nothing coherent. Starscream slapped the mech, hard, and then went further, digging his fingertips into the edges of the much-abused door-wings, dragging them through the soft plating, all but shredding it. The Nemesis was infected, Prowl and Jazz forgotten by all but the Seeker trines. If the Autobots weren’t already massing for an assault, they would be soon, Starscream’s efforts to rally his Seekers notwithstanding. The time for playing, the time for delaying and lying to himself and trying to wait this out had passed. If Starscream was going to end this, he had to end it right now, and he’d be damned if he let Prowl slip away without at least knowing why.
Prowl’s cry was weaker this time, his strength all but gone. Energon oozed from the fresh wounds, pumping a little harder as the Autobot drew in his first audible vent since Starscream arrived, his engine trying to rev up. His optics flickered again and this time stayed lit.
“Can you hear me, Prowl?” Looking into his captive’s dim optics from a distance of a mere few feet, the Decepticon Air Commander was suddenly painfully aware of their closeness and the strange intimacy of the moment. He rejected it, physically as well as mentally, thrusting Prowl away, still held by his door-wings, before dropping the mech against the wall. Prowl landed awkwardly, propped half against it, supporting none of his own weight but watching Starscream with a pain-flooded gaze.
“We…” The word was barely a word at all. Starscream had to lean down, stilling his whining thrusters, to hear it. “… Could have been... friends… once.”
Of all possible things for Prowl to say at that moment it was both the best and the worst.
With that simple acknowledgement of all that lay between them, Prowl was telling him he understood, and as much as Starscream craved that understanding, he wanted to wrench it from Prowl’s soul, to win it by his own strength, not be granted it as some sort of gift, some sort of cruel mercy.
Once they could have been friends. Once two cities, each beautiful beyond compare, graced Cybertron with their presence. The mechs of both had been beautiful too, confident and graceful, revelling in their bright and precise colours. For a hundred thousand vorns, maybe more, the gleaming towers of Praxus and the flying city of Vos had been more friends than rivals. Winged Vosian Seekers had looked down on the atrophied sensor panels of their distant cousins with good-natured pity, accepting them in a way they never had other grounders, as almost worthy to walk beneath Vos’s sky. Cultured, elegant Praxians had shaken their heads with amused exasperation, pointing to the beauties of the world around them and pitying their kin the sky-craving that overrode all else.
When Cybertron had been rent by civil war, there wasn’t one mech in a hundred who’d have predicted the twin cities would find themselves torn apart like any other family.
“He used you.” Starscream spat the words, pacing the confines of the interrogation room. “Megatron. That bastard Megatron used you, used me, used us all.”
For the Seekers, Megatron’s promises of power, of glory and the freedom of not just one sky but many, of them all in fact, had been potent lures. Praxus, with its pedes planted deeper in the metal plates of their home world and the fears of its neighbours, had tried to stay clear entirely, but the logic Praxians valued so highly steadily became inescapable. More and more Praxians had taken Autobot colours. Prowl had just been one of many, as Starscream had simply been the highest ranked of so many Seekers. Nonetheless, the pair of them had risen to their mirrored ranks, become a potent symbol of all that had gone wrong in the Primus-forsaken war. Autobot facing Decepticon, Praxian versus Vosian, gazing at one another across battlefield after battlefield.
“Were we mad? Did we think he wouldn’t notice?” The emphasis turned his voice into a screech, as if mere pitch could make the question any more painful. Had they even noticed themselves? With so many targets in those early years, did the Seekers even notice themselves veering away from their ground-based kindred when another target presented itself? With so much of the battle ground-locked, and Seeker-kind soaring with effortless grace, was it any wonder that deadly Praxian rifles felled legion after legion of grounder Decepticons while the rare sight of a Seeker falling from the sky could bring an entire battle to a halt?
Starscream swore, looking down at the mech he’d cursed and blamed across the millennia.
“You were the strategist, Prowl. How could you not see what he’d do? How did you miss it?”
He knew why he’d missed it himself. Enamoured of the cause, of the power, of the mech himself, he hadn’t yet seen Megatron for what he was. He’d take that failure to the Matrix, or the Pit, whichever would take him. He intended to make sure Prowl did the same.
“Slag it, Prowl! We were still thinking one mech at a time, each making a choice. Megatron took those choices away. He used Praxus.”
Denying the Autobots a powerful city-state had been part of the equation for certain. Cowing his enemy had been another, although the grim fate of Praxus recruited more to the Autobot cause than a dozen of Prime’s empty speeches. Neither of those had been Megatron’s primary goal and Prowl had to know that as well as Starscream himself. Starscream would see that Prowl died knowing it.
“He used Praxus to break us: you and me, the Praxians you had left, the Seekers at my wing.”
Starscream remembered the day, burned too deep into his memory core to ever be deleted. The orders to take Praxus down to its foundations. The last argument with Megatron that he’d ever actually expected to win. The realisation that he wouldn’t. Winnowing the ranks. Loyalty demanded. Examples made; not just trines but whole flights burning where they stood. Megatron had a dozen armies at his command, but it was the Vosian Seeker wings that bombed Praxus into rubble. Starscream had flown with them, cried with them.
“He used Praxus to break us.”
When Vos fell out of the sky less than half a vorn later, sabotaged on Megatron’s order, the Seekers had no tears left to shed and nowhere left to go.
“So why didn’t you see it coming, Prowl? Why didn’t you warn me? Why couldn’t we have done something… anything?”
Strident demand still echoing around the small chamber, Starscream spun to face his counterpart, his mirror image, the mech with whom he’d always wanted to share his guilt, and yet had somehow known he never would.
Sometime during Starscream’s impromptu interrogation, Prowl had passed out, a shadow of grief and pain on his usually implacable face.
“He broke us,” Starscream whispered again, but his spark throbbed with a pain and grief all of his own. For all that his nemesis lay before him, body torn and spark slowly fading, he knew that there was only one broken mech in this room.
It wasn’t Prowl.
The anguish faded from Starscream’s expression, replaced by the implacable coldness that had entered his soul hundreds of vorns before. He’d stopped believing in right and wrong, fairness and mercy, and even pride and nobility, the night he’d hovered far over a ruined city, watching Autobot teams pick hopelessly through the rubble. All that mattered now was strength and power, keeping the Seekers he had left alive, and gaining revenge while he could - all the while knowing the one mech truly culpable was the one he’d never dare touch.
The ruin of metal and energon in front of him wasn’t a Praxian. The ruins of Praxus lay far, far away, the ruins of Vos accompanying them into eternity. The mech in front of him was an Autobot officer, and nothing was more important now than ensuring he was not rescued.
Exorcising the one ghost of his past he’d never been able to escape… that was merely a bonus.
There was no emotion visible on his faceplates as he raised his null ray, aiming it without hesitation at dull chest-plates and the straining systems beyond.
“Wait for me in the Pit, Prowl.”
The sound of weapons fire echoed through the Nemesis, fading into a still, shocked silence.
Starscream - Broken
Starscream ached. Every strut and cable, every inch of his plating from the base of his thrusters to the tip of his angular wings, throbbed with the same relentless beat as his spark. It wasn’t that he felt particularly ill, or in any way incapacitated. If anything, this unfocused and nagging discomfort was worse than a short, sharp blast from Megatron’s fusion cannon. At least if he could point to that as the origin of his pain, he could have counted on the relief of Hook’s repairs, albeit accompanied by the medic’s inevitable snide commentary.
Instead he’d been aching and groaning for a full two Earth days - since not long after their pointless skirmish with the Autobots, in fact. His only relief in that time had been a certain grim satisfaction on discovering Skywarp and Thundercracker felt as bad as he did. After all, if past history was anything to go by, he’d almost certainly caught this circuit disruption, whatever it was, from one of his idiot trinemates. It was only fair they suffer too.
Unfortunately, his vindictive schadenfreude had not outlasted his patience. Skywarp became a clingy wretch when he fell ill, even with as mild a dose of whatever this was as Starscream suspected he had. Given the impossibility of keeping the teleporter out of his trineleader’s quarters, and the fact that Thundercracker quietly but firmly refused to be separated from the pair of them, Starscream’s room had rapidly reverted to its sometime-function as a trinenest. For a few hours, when Starscream had felt at his worst, that had actually been something of a comfort, although he’d rather tear out his vocalisor than admit it out loud. Then Skywarp’s over-warm plating became an irritation, Thundercracker’s snores began to grate on his nerves, and Starscream had found himself driven first from his berth and then from his own quarters in search of a little peace and quiet.
He’d yet to find it. True, the corridors of the Nemesis were quieter than usual, devoid of the usual tussles that came of keeping a dozen large mechs, half of them natural fliers, cooped up in an underwater base. Even so, Starscream found it uncomfortably loud, wincing at the clang of his thrusters against the dull purple decking, and painfully aware that they’d fallen into the same thunderous rhythm as his pulsing processor ache.
The humans called this feeling ‘grotty’ - a sentiment Starscream, feeling every speck of this world’s organic muck on his sleek wings, and lamenting the damp grime that seemed attracted to his frame, could sympathise with. They also called it ‘feeling under the weather’ though, and that made no sense whatsoever. Starscream would give a lot to escape from the crushing weight of water above him, to feel the sunlight and rain on his frame, and the wind rushing past his wings. Being ‘under the weather’ would actually do him and his wingmates some good. That fact alone, not to mention the woeful state of the rest of the Nemesis’s crew, was reason enough for Megatron to forbid it.
Starscream was already in a bad mood when he signalled for admittance to the Constructicon’s bay. He was in a truly foul one when he gave up on his attempts to secure entry, warned off by something between a growl and a moan in Scrapper’s voice, and stalked towards the command deck instead.
As bad as he felt, that wasn’t the worst of it. The nagging feeling that he knew something about this virus, and that if he could only talk to Hook he’d figure out what that was, troubled him more than any physical malady. He racked his mind, trying to articulate a problem he couldn’t quite grasp. The scientist in him snarled, impatient and infuriated by the lethargic state of his processor.
He turned that fury outwards as he strode onto the command deck, unimpressed to find two of the Reflector gestalt slumped asleep in front of the monitors, and that pest of a cassetticon Rumble curled up in Megatron’s throne, of all places.
Cursing, wincing as the knife-edge shriek of his own voice cut through him, Starscream wrenched at the back of the heavy chair, tilting it enough to dump the over-bold cassette to the deck before dropping it again with a resounding clang of metal on metal. He’d charged his null-rays without thinking about it, directing his left arm-weapon into Rumble’s dazed face.
“If you valued your plating, you’d be grovelling right now, cassette! You have the temerity, the sheer nerve to sit in the throne of our leader? If Megatron were here you’d be lucky to escape with your spark, worm. And I don’t see Soundwave here to plead for you, if even he would tolerate such an insult to the Decepticon army as the sight of you taking a seat only great mechs, mighty warriors, have any right to claim as their own!”
Rumble blinked at him in blank incomprehension, squinting as if even the dimmed lights permitted on the Nemesis were still too bright. Scowling, Starscream killed the charge sequence on his null rays and rebooted it for the effect alone, satisfied when the eerie, rising whine seemed to get through to Rumble and bring a look of near panic to his face.
“I… I’m sorry, Starscream…”
“Lord Starscream.” If Megatron had been present, Starscream wouldn’t have pushed the title, recognising the difference between assertiveness and folly. As it was, with only three pitiful groundlings in the room, they would treat the Air Commander of the Decepticon Army, High Lord of the Vos and Leader of the Elite Trine, with the respect he deserved.
Rumble and his brother Frenzy would usually contest the title, and Starscream almost looked forward to the defiance, for the sake of the swift retribution that would follow. Today, Rumble merely echoed Starscream’s correction in a dull mutter, dim optics dilating and contracting as if they refused to find the correct focus.
“Where is Soundwave, anyway?” Starscream turned away, past his fill of the obviously defective cassette. He looked towards the main monitor, intending to question the Reflector units, only to find them still slouched in an untidy heap, nearer unconscious than merely asleep. Taking a half step forward he stumbled, startled to meet an unexpected impediment, and then more so to find Rumble had somehow dozed off where he sat in front of the Seeker. The cassette’s plating was rather alarmingly warm against his pede, and Starscream frowned.
Venting a frustrated sigh, he took a moment to check the cassette’s energon level and look over his intakes for blockages before placing him under the control deck’s main ventilation fan. Rumble might be a groundpounder, and a disgustingly dependent cassette at that, but Starscream hadn’t made it to second in command of the Decepticon forces without recognising a useful warrior, and the pointlessness of wasting such a resource, when he saw it.
Or by tolerating a situation such as this. First the Constructicons holed up in their bay, then the three petty groundlings leaving the command deck effectively unmanned. No sign yet of Megatron, or Soundwave. Both were presumably nursing their own aching heads, too weak to leave their own quarters… or even just Megatron’s. Starscream had a vague memory of instructing Soundwave to escort their mighty leader back to his room. It was quite possible the Communications Officer had made it no further than that.
For a moment, Starscream toyed with the deliciously sweet idea of finding one of Mixmaster’s more volatile explosives and tossing it into that room, ridding himself of two thorns in his side at once. There would be no joy in that victory though, no pride, not even a shadow of the tattered shreds of honour Starscream still wrapped around him. And, if he were honest, no real benefit either. Starscream was always quick to point out his leader’s failings. He would have no hesitation in stepping into the breach if Megatron were to fall, and every part of him craved the respect he deserved, not only from his own kind but from every Decepticon on Earth, Cybertron and beyond. But the simple truth was that here, now, facing the Prime and his Autobot elite with a mere handful of warriors, and as much as Starscream hated the fact, Megatron was needed.
No, Starscream mused as he settled himself in the throne so recently vacated by Rumble. Let Megatron live, for now, on Starscream’s sufferance. If for no other reason than that misery loves company, and if Starscream had to tolerate aching limbs and a throbbing processor that wanted to escape his helm, then Megatron should not be spared his own ailments. He only hoped Megatron was suffering as badly as the rest of the groundpounders. A thought skittered at the edge of his consciousness, telling him there was something significant there. The glorious mental picture of Megatron curled into a ball of aching misery drove it away. It might teach him a little respect - and to appreciate the inherent superiority of the Seeker frame. It was painfully apparent that an ailment that downed even the strongest grounder had barely given the Vosian contingent a few sniffles.
Basking in his smug self-satisfaction, conveniently overlooking the stream of mental complaints that he’d been logging over the last day, Starscream sat back in the throne and considered the mess his crew - and right now it was his crew - was in. Drumming the servos of his left hand on the throne’s thick armrests, Starscream activated his com.
“Skywarp, Thundercracker, get your afts up to control deck now. You’re taking the monitor shift.”
“But, Screamer…”
“We’re ill, Starscream.”
“Not that ill,” Starscream corrected ruthlessly. He stretched a bit to give Reflector an unnecessary but deeply satisfying kick. “Unless you want me to believe you’re no better than the groundpounder pestlings lying at my feet.”
Thundercracker paused, as if he was genuinely considering it, but the stoic Seeker’s pride wouldn’t tolerate such an insult even if he had to rise from his deathbed to prove it wrong.
“We’ll be there in a breem.”
Starscream nodded in satisfaction, letting the slight delay slide. He could do that for his trine, particularly when he was denying them the greater pleasure. He shifted com frequencies.
“Dirge, Ramjet, Thrust - I don’t care if your wings are peeling and your thrusters are about to melt. I want you out on patrol in two hundred astroseconds. Report to Thundercracker.”
This time he cut off the com without waiting for the flyers’ protests. His Seekers might be ailing, and cursing his name right now, but they were well enough to hold the Nemesis together. They’d thank him when Lord Megatron was forced to grate out a ‘thank you’ from between gritted denta. And he wouldn’t even be able to accuse Starscream of overstepping his authority. After all, he was only doing his duty as second in command…
Still smiling smugly, Starscream paused to chase up the glimmer of uncertainty that followed that thought. Something about being second, about Megatron and this virus that affected grounders so much worse than his own kind. Shifting in his seat, Starscream vented a sharp sigh, twisting a little to rub at his left shoulder thruster. It still ached from a chance Autobot shot at the minor battle two days before. They’d barely finished assessing the damage from that fiasco before Megatron started swaying on the command deck. It wasn’t as if Starscream could even remember what the point had been. Why did Megatron feel they needed to test out the Autobots’ readiness anyway? The Decepticons were just lucky the Autobots’ Primus-damned tactician hadn’t been on the field…
Starscream’s thrusters choked into life with a strangled scream. He suppressed the shock reaction with an effort, drawing in a sharp vent that tasted of burnt energon and ionised air. Recovered memories flickered in front of his optics. The virus - engineered from the start to affect groundlings with maximum effect. Its long design process, so intimately driven by Starscream’s hatred for its target that even the temporary, partial effects the Seekers were feeling had blocked it from his memory. He clenched his fists. Their own weapon turned back against them, either mutated enough to bypass Decepticon data security as it had meagre Autobots firewalls or… or deliberately recoded to that effect.
Starscream was on his feet before he’d processed the thought. Crouching down, he grabbed the nearest Reflector unit by the shoulders, shaking the smaller mech.
“The prisoners! Where are the prisoners? Are they still secure? Wake up, damn you!”
The mech - Spyglass, or was it Viewfinder? - blinked dim optics at Starscream, threatening to go offline again any second.
“Wh…what prisoners?”
Starscream gave him a harder shake, his only reward a hacking cough as the gestalt mech tried to clear choked vents that might not even be his own. Certainly the second unit slumped over the monitor desk looked as if he were overheating just as badly. Disgusted, Starscream dropped the smaller Decepticon, ignoring the tinkle of glass that spoke of future repair work for Hook.
He stalked past a startled Thundercracker in the doorway, Skywarp yelping and hurrying to get out of his way as he shot his trinemates a fierce glare. Cursing, Starscream headed down, into the dark and dank depths of the Nemesis. He charged his null-ray as he went, wishing, not for the first time, for the reassuring solidity and destructive power of Megatron in his hand. They’d come so far, so close. He’d be damned to the Pit if he let that go to waste now.
There was only one prisoner in the cell-block. Jazz’s visor was dark, his systems stuttering and skipping in his recharge, their intermittent whir scarcely audible.
Starscream stared at the saboteur, non-plussed. In truth, until he saw the black and white mech, Starscream had virtually forgotten about his existence. The flare of memory that returned to him on the command deck had entirely focussed on the Autobots’ second in command, his loathing for the Praxian overriding all other considerations. This mech was of no consequence by comparison.
Right now, all the classified material Jazz might be privy too, all his unique skills and insight into Autobot tactics were less relevant than the fact that he was here. Starscream’s first impulse on seeing Jazz alone had been to live up to his name, crying out in impotent fury. But if there was one thing Starscream knew without a doubt about his cursed Autobot counterpart, it was that Prowl would never willingly have left another Autobot alone and injured in that cell. And if the condition of the Autobots’ third was any indication, their second could hardly have left under his own strength in any case. He hadn’t gone. He’d been taken.
“Soundwave.” Starscream grated the name out between clenched teeth. Megatron had entrusted the opening stages of the Autobots’ interrogation to the telepath. As much as Starscream protested that decision, alone and in the privacy of his own processor he could admit to a certain sense of relief. He’d known all along that sooner or later he’d have to face his opposite mech-to-mech, but let Soundwave break him first.
The Decepticon third in command matched his Autobot counterpart for ruthless practicality, without the weak morals to suppress it. He could keep the captives alive indefinitely, more than half starved, whimpering in pain, but never succumbing to the call of their oh-so-precious Matrix. Whether it took weeks, months or years to bring Prowl to his knees, Starscream could wait. Their virus had ensured they’d have the time. The same virus now loose in the Nemesis, bringing the Decepticons themselves close to kneeling.
Soundwave, Starscream was sure, had no more resistance than any of his fellow pathetic ground-dwellers. He was no doubt curled up somewhere, either a tight ball of agony, or sleeping off the aches and pains. Rumble’s poor and untended state on the command deck attested to that. But when had Soundwave been overtaken, and what had he done with Prowl first?
Starscream vaguely recalled a disturbance as they returned from their chastening Autobot encounter - an escape attempt, albeit one doomed to failure from the start. The captives had already been skirting the edge of starvation, Soundwave tuning their rations to the bare minimum needed to keep them active and aware of their surroundings. Their failed attempt to flee while most of the Decepticons were absent had almost been impressive by some standards, and deeply pathetic by others - they’d actually broken out of their cells and made it across a deck and a half before collapsing in a heap, left where they fell until the Constructicons on monitor duty could be bothered to round them up.
So… an attempted escape, and a gleam behind Soundwave’s deep red visor as he promised Megatron he’d make sure the Autobots ‘understood the consequences’ of such folly. Starscream hadn’t seen the mech again until almost eighteen hours later when, already shaky himself but careful not to show it, he’d laughed in an ailing Megatron’s face for his weakness and casually summoned Soundwave to deal with him.
Starscream straightened, a vicious smile tightening his face for a moment as he stared down at the inert form of Jazz. From the looks of it, the Autobot saboteur had not refuelled since well before the skirmish. That was lax of Soundwave, running close to the risk of deactivating the mech permanently. He’d not have allowed that to happen had he not been distracted, even in the hours before he was so rudely interrupted.
Starscream strode along the corridor, around a corner and followed the curve of the ship’s hull to the interrogation chamber set against it. He opened the door. His lips curled, torn between a disgusted grimace and a smile of the deepest satisfaction.
Distracted by an interrogation session… one left unfinished for far too long.
Prowl looked surprisingly intact for a mech subject to Soundwave’s slender mercies for a full orn. His paintwork was scratched and pitted, coated in the grime that pervaded these lower decks of the Nemesis. His helm carried several large dents, the chevron mount broken and empty, and after the abortive escape it came as no surprise to see that Soundwave had taken steps to limit his captive’s mobility, cutting key cables in both ankle joints.
Despite that, most of the damage appeared cosmetic… until Starscream found his gaze drawn inevitably and inexorably to the sensory appendages that were both a mirror and a mockery of his own elegant wings.
Prowl was pinned by his door-wings. Long bolts had been driven cruelly through the sensitive panels and deep into the wall behind. His pedes touched the ground, barely, forcing the always-upright, always-proper mech to strain, taking as much weight as he could on his toe plates. Balanced like that, the position would have been excruciatingly painful but bearable. Perhaps that was all Soundwave intended when he’d left Prowl here, intending to return in a few breems, a few Earth hours even. If so, the torment had turned into a more profound torture when illness and amnesia swept the telepath in their path. Starscream had no idea how long Prowl had held out. He was willing to bet it had been longer than Soundwave had expected. It hadn’t been long enough.
At some point in the last two days, all Prowl’s remaining strength hadn’t been sufficient and the bolt holes were jagged and torn, elongated where they’d felt the full force of his weight when his legs gave way. The long tears crossing nearly a third of the upswept panels were only the most obvious of the damage. Acid scars surrounded them, some deep enough that cables and sensor nodes were exposed to the damp air, their insulators bubbled and warped. The tips of the door-wings themselves, usually tapering to a fine point that mirrored Prowl’s missing chevron, had been battered and bent, the edges of each panel curled over and twisted where heavy fingers had left their mark.
Even with Prowl deeply unconscious, his door-wings twitched, unable to suppress the agony of the signals from so many damaged sensors. With his vents virtually silent and his optics dull, that slight movement was the only indication Prowl’s Decepticon counterpart had that a spark still burned in that battered frame.
Starscream took in the sight in a kind of breathless wonder, cringing inside. His wings, several times the size of Prowl’s, throbbed in sympathy and he hated himself for every moment of it.
No one knew how long it had been since the first Praxians had left the great airborne edifice that was Vos to found their own city-state. Every surviving Praxian, every last Vosian Seeker, knew precisely how long it had been since Praxus fell, dragging both kindred into a Pit from which they’d likely never recover.
“You had to do it.” The words scratched their way from Starscream’s throat unbidden. He hovered in the doorway of the interrogation room, his gaze fixed on Prowl’s darkened optics. “You had to be so slagging good. Megatron took your everything and it wasn’t enough for you to survive. You had to be the best. You had to do what you believed in, and you had to be so slagging good at it.”
It didn’t even occur to Starscream that he could be describing himself. He shifted from foot to foot in the doorway, not knowing what kept him outside the room.
“You had to work your way up until you stood by Prime’s side, forcing me to face you in every battle, to see your Primus-damned face every time I stepped outside this ship. Forcing me to remember. Why couldn’t you just die, Prowl, like so many other pathetic groundlings? Why couldn’t you let me forget?”
Prowl’s inert form mocked him with its silence and he strode into the room before thinking about it, reaching out to grasp the smaller mech’s shoulders. With a single wrench, Starscream pulled Prowl off the wall, the rents in his door-wings tearing wider and longer as he did so.
Prowl screamed, the agonised sound torn from deep within him, and Starscream found himself screaming too, a shaft of pain sweeping across his own wings. Whether it was some effect of the air currents in the room across their complex array of sensors or just the echo of agony from long ago, even Starscream couldn’t be sure.
The Autobot’s optics flickered dimly, dulled by pain and exhaustion, his energy levels as low as his fellow captive’s. It was doubtful they could see anything worth a flick of Starscream’s wingtips, even in the brief moments they were active. Prowl writhed in Starscream’s grip, inarticulate sounds of pain wrung from his vocalisor. Starscream shook him, watching his helm loll, searching for any sign of rationality.
“Can you hear me? Are you still in there? Or have I done it at last - rid myself of the chain Primus dropped around my neck?”
There was no response, or nothing coherent. Starscream slapped the mech, hard, and then went further, digging his fingertips into the edges of the much-abused door-wings, dragging them through the soft plating, all but shredding it. The Nemesis was infected, Prowl and Jazz forgotten by all but the Seeker trines. If the Autobots weren’t already massing for an assault, they would be soon, Starscream’s efforts to rally his Seekers notwithstanding. The time for playing, the time for delaying and lying to himself and trying to wait this out had passed. If Starscream was going to end this, he had to end it right now, and he’d be damned if he let Prowl slip away without at least knowing why.
Prowl’s cry was weaker this time, his strength all but gone. Energon oozed from the fresh wounds, pumping a little harder as the Autobot drew in his first audible vent since Starscream arrived, his engine trying to rev up. His optics flickered again and this time stayed lit.
“Can you hear me, Prowl?” Looking into his captive’s dim optics from a distance of a mere few feet, the Decepticon Air Commander was suddenly painfully aware of their closeness and the strange intimacy of the moment. He rejected it, physically as well as mentally, thrusting Prowl away, still held by his door-wings, before dropping the mech against the wall. Prowl landed awkwardly, propped half against it, supporting none of his own weight but watching Starscream with a pain-flooded gaze.
“We…” The word was barely a word at all. Starscream had to lean down, stilling his whining thrusters, to hear it. “… Could have been... friends… once.”
Of all possible things for Prowl to say at that moment it was both the best and the worst.
With that simple acknowledgement of all that lay between them, Prowl was telling him he understood, and as much as Starscream craved that understanding, he wanted to wrench it from Prowl’s soul, to win it by his own strength, not be granted it as some sort of gift, some sort of cruel mercy.
Once they could have been friends. Once two cities, each beautiful beyond compare, graced Cybertron with their presence. The mechs of both had been beautiful too, confident and graceful, revelling in their bright and precise colours. For a hundred thousand vorns, maybe more, the gleaming towers of Praxus and the flying city of Vos had been more friends than rivals. Winged Vosian Seekers had looked down on the atrophied sensor panels of their distant cousins with good-natured pity, accepting them in a way they never had other grounders, as almost worthy to walk beneath Vos’s sky. Cultured, elegant Praxians had shaken their heads with amused exasperation, pointing to the beauties of the world around them and pitying their kin the sky-craving that overrode all else.
When Cybertron had been rent by civil war, there wasn’t one mech in a hundred who’d have predicted the twin cities would find themselves torn apart like any other family.
“He used you.” Starscream spat the words, pacing the confines of the interrogation room. “Megatron. That bastard Megatron used you, used me, used us all.”
For the Seekers, Megatron’s promises of power, of glory and the freedom of not just one sky but many, of them all in fact, had been potent lures. Praxus, with its pedes planted deeper in the metal plates of their home world and the fears of its neighbours, had tried to stay clear entirely, but the logic Praxians valued so highly steadily became inescapable. More and more Praxians had taken Autobot colours. Prowl had just been one of many, as Starscream had simply been the highest ranked of so many Seekers. Nonetheless, the pair of them had risen to their mirrored ranks, become a potent symbol of all that had gone wrong in the Primus-forsaken war. Autobot facing Decepticon, Praxian versus Vosian, gazing at one another across battlefield after battlefield.
“Were we mad? Did we think he wouldn’t notice?” The emphasis turned his voice into a screech, as if mere pitch could make the question any more painful. Had they even noticed themselves? With so many targets in those early years, did the Seekers even notice themselves veering away from their ground-based kindred when another target presented itself? With so much of the battle ground-locked, and Seeker-kind soaring with effortless grace, was it any wonder that deadly Praxian rifles felled legion after legion of grounder Decepticons while the rare sight of a Seeker falling from the sky could bring an entire battle to a halt?
Starscream swore, looking down at the mech he’d cursed and blamed across the millennia.
“You were the strategist, Prowl. How could you not see what he’d do? How did you miss it?”
He knew why he’d missed it himself. Enamoured of the cause, of the power, of the mech himself, he hadn’t yet seen Megatron for what he was. He’d take that failure to the Matrix, or the Pit, whichever would take him. He intended to make sure Prowl did the same.
“Slag it, Prowl! We were still thinking one mech at a time, each making a choice. Megatron took those choices away. He used Praxus.”
Denying the Autobots a powerful city-state had been part of the equation for certain. Cowing his enemy had been another, although the grim fate of Praxus recruited more to the Autobot cause than a dozen of Prime’s empty speeches. Neither of those had been Megatron’s primary goal and Prowl had to know that as well as Starscream himself. Starscream would see that Prowl died knowing it.
“He used Praxus to break us: you and me, the Praxians you had left, the Seekers at my wing.”
Starscream remembered the day, burned too deep into his memory core to ever be deleted. The orders to take Praxus down to its foundations. The last argument with Megatron that he’d ever actually expected to win. The realisation that he wouldn’t. Winnowing the ranks. Loyalty demanded. Examples made; not just trines but whole flights burning where they stood. Megatron had a dozen armies at his command, but it was the Vosian Seeker wings that bombed Praxus into rubble. Starscream had flown with them, cried with them.
“He used Praxus to break us.”
When Vos fell out of the sky less than half a vorn later, sabotaged on Megatron’s order, the Seekers had no tears left to shed and nowhere left to go.
“So why didn’t you see it coming, Prowl? Why didn’t you warn me? Why couldn’t we have done something… anything?”
Strident demand still echoing around the small chamber, Starscream spun to face his counterpart, his mirror image, the mech with whom he’d always wanted to share his guilt, and yet had somehow known he never would.
Sometime during Starscream’s impromptu interrogation, Prowl had passed out, a shadow of grief and pain on his usually implacable face.
“He broke us,” Starscream whispered again, but his spark throbbed with a pain and grief all of his own. For all that his nemesis lay before him, body torn and spark slowly fading, he knew that there was only one broken mech in this room.
It wasn’t Prowl.
The anguish faded from Starscream’s expression, replaced by the implacable coldness that had entered his soul hundreds of vorns before. He’d stopped believing in right and wrong, fairness and mercy, and even pride and nobility, the night he’d hovered far over a ruined city, watching Autobot teams pick hopelessly through the rubble. All that mattered now was strength and power, keeping the Seekers he had left alive, and gaining revenge while he could - all the while knowing the one mech truly culpable was the one he’d never dare touch.
The ruin of metal and energon in front of him wasn’t a Praxian. The ruins of Praxus lay far, far away, the ruins of Vos accompanying them into eternity. The mech in front of him was an Autobot officer, and nothing was more important now than ensuring he was not rescued.
Exorcising the one ghost of his past he’d never been able to escape… that was merely a bonus.
There was no emotion visible on his faceplates as he raised his null ray, aiming it without hesitation at dull chest-plates and the straining systems beyond.
“Wait for me in the Pit, Prowl.”
The sound of weapons fire echoed through the Nemesis, fading into a still, shocked silence.