I wrote this at midnight. As one does.
All he'd wanted was to escape. The pain, the ridicule, the fear. All of it. Life with the Autobots probably wouldn't have been much better, but what else could they do to him? Lock him up? Torture him for information? He would have gladly offered anything they wanted, and he was already living in a cage. Exchanging one set of bars for another would hardly have made a difference.
As it turned out, it didn't matter. He was driven away before ever making it to the safety of their base. What did it say about him that he thought of it as such? That he was so hurt, so afraid, that the base of his enemies looked like safety? What did it say about his own side?
He didn't go back to the Decepticons. He couldn't. Better to live alone than to stay anywhere that made him live every day in fear for his life. He could handle it. He was fast and smart, and he could fly. He could make it alone, he knew it.
But everything went wrong. Everything he relied on, his mind, his body, everything, it failed him again and again. His alliances ended in betrayal, his requests for aid left him begging for repairs, to not be left to die, and his wings…
He lost his wings.
He lost the sky.
He couldn't do it. Every victory came at a cost. Every defeat was crushing. Sometimes they looked like the same thing. Winning, surviving, seemed so pointless when others were so quick to judge him for it. All living things wanted to keep living, didn't they? Why was it so wrong for him to want the same? Why couldn't anyone see how hard he was trying?
He just wanted to live. Why couldn't they understand that?
He should have known this day would come eventually.
He told himself it was simple practicality. The Decepticons had all the advantages, the resources, the firepower. Returning to them - to Megatron - was his best chance of survival, and of being on the winning side when the war finally ended. There was nothing for him among the Autobots.
They didn't want him anyway. No one did. Maybe even Megatron wouldn't want him back, but he had no other options.
If Megatron decided to kill him, he hoped it would wait until after Cybertron's revival. He wanted to see his home alive again. It was the only thing he wanted anymore. Well. He still wanted to live, but no one seemed to think he deserved that.
Maybe he didn't deserve anything. Megatron took him back, and his wings were returned to him. But the Omega Lock was destroyed. Cybertron was left a ruin.
And it all started again. The pain. The fear. But it was different now, because now he knew what was out there. He knew what others thought of him, how deeply they hated him. And he knew there was nothing he could ever do to change that.
Cage though it was, there was safety with the Decepticons. Fuel, shelter. Repairs when he needed them. And he had a life here, one he slipped back into easily. Soon it was like he had never left.
But if anyone had bothered to look, to pay attention just this one time, they would have seen the last dying embers of hope in a defeated spark go out for good.
I'm not bitter about the way Starscream's story turned out at all...