Title: Two lies and a truth
Rating: T
Continuity: G1
Summary: Two times Thundercracker thought Starscream cared and the one time he knew he never did.
Lie #1
He was falling.
He barely even registered the pain of gunfire blowing through his wings as he fell, only the rushing of the wind in his audios and the sky growing farther and farther away. Thundercracker heard Skywarp calling his name, but he was too far away to reach him in time, and the ground was only seconds from smashing into him at full force and he fully expected the impact to break him into pieces when he hit.
Only he didn't.
He jerked to a stop mid-air, nearly yanking his arms from the grip that held him. He looked up blearily at Starscream's sneering face.
"You're pathetic."
"Shove it Starscream." he didn't want to deal with his wingmate's attitude at the moment, "Why'd you even save me if it's so much trouble to you anyways?"
"Because it would be too much trouble to find a new trine member and would be a waste of time" Skywarp had reached them by then, and Starscream thrust Thundercracker towards him.
"Take him, I've got better things to deal with" he flew off and Skywarp stuck his tongue out at him.
"Leave it be Warp" Skywarp scoffed.
"Yeah, just Screamer being Screamer, though he saved your clumsy aft, so I guess won't teleport him out to sea while he's recharging tonight"
Thundercracker shook his head, though years later, after a countless number of overthrows, backstabs, and selfish ambitions that continued to pile up into a never-ending stack, he thought about that moment and how Starscream's attitude towards his trine hadn't ever changed much, and he thought that maybe, just maybe, he and Skywarp were the exceptions to his quest for power.
He told himself this and through treachery, through cruelty, through an insatiable lust for power, he believed it.
Lie #2
Skywarp was an idiot.
Thundercracker had lost count of the times he'd said this to himself, but Primus Skywarp was special and for the nth time he repeated it. What ever possessed the purple seeker to prank the Constructicons while they were working on Megatron's latest weapon escaped his mind, and what ever limits he thought his friend had were displayed in the grey sludge dripping all over the walls of the medical bay, the remains of the whatever disaster gun their great leader had wanted.
"He'll kill you Skywarp. The Constructicons will kill you. I might kill you." Skywarp could only smile back sheepishly.
"Hey he doesn't know it was me"
"He'll find out!"
"I got the thing from Swindle, and he said it would melt along with the gun. There's no way they'll find out"
"You trust Swindle?"
"Err… good point"
The rational part of Thundercracker's mind told him that neither strangling Skywarp nor handing him over to Megatron on a silver platter would solve anything, but being a good best friend was the most stressful thing in his life at the moment. So stressful, he didn't notice the door to their shared quarters open behind them.
"Idiots. The both of you." Starscream had his arms crossed and never lost his superior gaze.
"Skywarp, any remnant of the hope that you had an intact processor in that brain of your has vanished with this latest stunt, and Thundercracker if you weren't such an Autobot you'd have turned him over hours ago"
"What do you want Starscream?"
"Nothing, I'm just here to let you know I've taken care of your mess. Once again" Thundercracker's optics narrowed.
"And what's in it for you?" Starscream shrugged.
"Let's just say that both of you owe me in the future. And take this as a lesson not to be complete morons next time"
Thundercracker had dreaded Starscream's favour in the next few weeks, fully expecting to be roped into some overly meticulous plot to usurp Megatron's throne—again—but time passed and the second never asked. That was troubling in and of itself, and he told Skywarp over energon in the common room. The other seeker hadn't made anything of it and just calmly continued to sip from his cube.
"Maybe Starscream isn't such a hardaft, after all"
Thundercracker didn't say anything, and the subject was thrown out the window the moment the aforementioned mech entered into the room, collected his energon, and sat down beside them.
"Did I miss anything?" Starscream said, suspicious of the silence.
The blue seeker looked at his energon, thinking back to all the times the three of them had shared together, how Starscream came through in his own condescending way each time, and replied.
"No."
The Truth
Starscream finally came to collect, and as he was thrown into the black abyss of space he remembered that Starscream never forgot a favour. He saw Skywarp tumbling out of Astrotrain after him, spied Starscream's triumphant smile and then he knew.
The masquerade was broken and Thundercracker finally knew.