Skywarp, Starscream, and the ties that never did bind.

Skywarp snapped out a harsh laugh. It had almost been long enough to forget the edges of cruelty that sometimes slashed his spark into strange and ugly pieces.

"What are you running from, Screamer? Me? Cracker? Megatron? Your life?"

Starscream hardened his mouth. "Maybe I just woke up one day and found it all too pointless."

Skywarp's laugh was mirthless. "Oh, that's right, this war doesn't involve you. You're not to blame for anything. Frag! I hate it how you just act like you never did anything wrong, not you! Cos everyone has fragged up your life, right? Megatron and Prime and me and TC and probably your slagging creators, and none of it's your fault."

Frag, but he didn't want to have this conversation.

"Alright, fine, whatever. It's all because of me. Everything. The war, the taste of energon, bad weather, cracked circuits, whatever. Now get out."

"What, and let you run? No, no, I want to know why you ran in the first place. Cos as much of a coward as you are, you wouldn't'a picked this kinda exile, not ever. So why?"

Starscream sneered. "Frag you."

"Hah. C'mon. You wanna tell me now, or you wanna tell Megatron? Cos it's better for me if I don't have to drag you back."

Starscream stared straight up into the falling rain, dissolving from straight cold needles to splashes of cloud as it hit his face. "I'm not going back."

"Huh? Oh, you stupid slaghead, of course you're coming back. If nothing else," the gleam of bared teeth in the falling light, "trine. Remember that, slagger?"

Starscream laughed, wiping the rain from his face. No, you're the stupid slagger here, Skywarp, because you never did get it.

"Whatever. I've gone longer without a trine, Skywarp. Gone most of my life without it. You want to free me of it? Really? Then go ahead?"

Skywarp stared at him with huge eyes. "Really? Seriously? You'd just- you're crazy, you know that? Look, Screamer, just tell me this much, cos we're been a trine that long, y'know? Just this one thing. What is it you want? I mean, seriously, what the slag is it? You've spent all this time, just, like- looking for something, something else. Not leadership, or all that slag. Something else completely."

"I want to die, and be reborn as a bird."

"What? Why?"

"So then I'd never have to think of anything except flying. Not yesterdays or tomorrows or loss or what I sort of maybe used to want."

Skywarp stared down at his hands, something lost in his eyes. "I never did get you, you know that? I sort of wanted to, at first, but-" he shrugged. "I guess I thought I did, a bit, but then you say stuff like that, and I just… lose you."

"You never looked for me."

Skywarp felt cold inside, as if he were standing out in the storm and the rain was pouring right down into his spark chamber, numbing the beats of his spark.

He'd never said goodbye. Never really known. Frag it, he'd always been indifferent at best to Starscream. Let the slagger deal with his own insecurities, Skywarp wasn't sticking to it. That was what he'd always thought. Now that his prickly trine mate had left, it felt as if he'd torn out the stars and pulled down the night sky as he'd gone.

Honestly, Skywarp had never wanted a trine, beyond the demands of basic programming. But his spark had insisted, and he'd been helpless. It had been… perhaps not hatred between him and Starscream. That was the best that could have been said for it. Not hatred, but never love. Just the empty kinship between two mechs that had been chained together, and locked in some strange new world. Welcome to your trine. The war's waiting.

Then, Starscream had always been strange, even for a seeker. Sometimes, the mask of vanity and arrogant and rage had slipped away, but that hadn't been any better. Not the calm Starscream, who had looked at Skywarp with eyes that had reflected their broken universe in all its strange, magnificent horror. Sometimes, it seemed as though something had been torn from the Air Commander, so much that the empty space had widened to a terrible void, a black hole burning. A hole that was so dark and so empty that Starscream had lost the ability to see past it.

And when he'd gone-

And when he'd disappeared-

And when he'd ripped open the world-

He'd given a little of that black hole to his trine, a gaping maw where their trine bond used to be.

Skywarp isn't going to die. Not from this. Not here, not now. But sometimes, he thinks that this is Starscream's revenge after all, on all of them. His spark twists, as if he really is standing in the storm, and the rain has become acid.