This is an interesting story and I'm not entirely sure where it came from. Anyway... a bit of Skyfire/Starscream-inferring drabble. It's not overly slashy, but if slash icks you, uh... just don't read it to be safe. nn;

-/"There's no chance for us. It's all decided for us. This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us... Who wants to live forever? Who wants to live forever? Who dares to love forever, oh, when love must die?"--Queen - Who Wants to Live Forever?/-

--Modern Day Prometheus--

The stillness of the afternoon air was almost stifling... even on this strange world, being outdoors could be just as confining as being indoors, hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the ocean in a tiny metal box that could crush in at a moment's notice.

Starscream hated it.

He was made to soar... wings stretched to the sky, paint gleaming in the afternoon sun, a speck in the sky to the insolent fleshlings far below. He was a creature of habit, and when he could not be flying to sate his almost obsessive needs, he was preening or ranting to keep himself from losing his mind in that accursed ocean prison. He was by no means unintelligent... with a mind like his, one would think he could have found other ways to occupy his time.

And yet, the Nemesis did not provide for that. Around his fellows, he felt crushed, confined. He could not find intellectual stimulation with them.

He'd only ever found that once in his life... that same one that had stared in shocked disbelief at him as his ruby optics flicked online in a cold, sterile medical facility... the one that had not backed away in terror as he rose from the dead.

He sighed as he landed on a mountaintop, standing straight and letting the wind whip about his glistening wings. He shut off his optics and let the wind move him, standing, listening, waiting...

And he remembered.

He remembered the shot that should have pierced his spark. He remembered falling, and the darkness... Skyfire screaming his name.

He remembered the cold that engulfed him, the light that stayed just out of his reach... it mocked him. Why could he not reach it, when he knew he must be dead?

He recalled the pain... and he recalled waking. He heard the screams again of the medtechs as they scrambled away from him. His chestplate was torn open. His fluid pump, damaged as it was, had begun working again.

His chronometer told him it was three days from his crash.

He should have been dead.

Only Skyfire stood still, watching him with paled sapphire optics. He seemed almost afraid to touch him... him, his partner, his best friend, his lover, his mate.

Why had he been afraid?

Because. Starscream frowned against the wind. Because he should have died.

Steeling himself, the Seeker shut off all thought... all feeling. He stepped forward. He did not let his antigravs catch him... did not allow his thrusters to save him.

For the hundredth of thousands of times he had tried... he could not help but try again. He could not die.

Even when the darkness claimed him.

When he awoke again, it was to someone gently cradling him in an arm considerably larger than his own. He was damaged... not enough to have brought on the desired effect, or so he thought.

So that was it. Whoever this was, they had repaired him. He had died. Again. And again, like a phoenix from its ashes, he had risen.

"I always hated," came the voice of the mech above him, "when you experimented with life and death."

Starscream could not help but smile.

"Skyfire." Oh, wretched irony. "You speak of the past when you... you left. You were the one who betrayed me in the end, old friend."

The Autobot narrowed his optics, but only slightly, leaning the wounded Seeker gently against the mountainside. "You're hardly making any sense, Starscream, but I can forgive you for that. You always were a little foggy-headed after dying."

The air commander made an annoyed noise deep in his throat, but at first, he said nothing. He let Skyfire did as he would, at last pressing a container of energon to his lips, which he accepted almost greedily. Once he had finished it, Skyfire sat back on his heels to observe him in relative silence. Starscream stared right back, long and hard, the strength and fierceness returning to his ruby gaze. "...well? Aren't you going to call in your precious Autobots to apprehend me?"

It was Skyfire who made the annoyed noise this time, and he gave a wry smirk towards the Seeker. "No. Why on Cybertron's moons would I do that, you foolish creature? I didn't put your wings on straight just to have them blasted off again at the end of Cliffjumper's temper."

"They don't know you're out here, then."

"I'm on patrol in the regions past radar circulation. If I'm a bit late, they'll only assume I took some time to rest. You're being paranoid..." This time, a slow, remorseful smile crept onto the enormous flier's face. "You always were."

Starscream frowned and drew back as much as he could. There was that look... the one Skyfire had given him that day that he had left.

After aeons of putting him back together every time he had been blasted apart... after thousands of hundreds of millions of nights and days of helping him understand. After all the time spent, countless millenia of helping Starscream come to grips with immortality itself.

He had betrayed him over a pair of pathetic humans. Flesh creatures.

The mech he had entrusted his undying spark to had betrayed him. The mech that owned a spark that could not die had been betrayed by the one it kept close, even after such a heinous betrayal. A spark that would never let go of the relentless bond it held.

And here that very mech was, repairing him as he once had so long ago... talking him down from that terrifying high he experienced every time death's icy fingers gripped at his ageless spark. For the first time, then, since Skyfire's betrayal...

He felt at peace. "...So... how did you find me?"

"I heard you fall." The response was exceedingly simple, and Starscream should have expected it. "I heard the familiar crash of a falling flier and came to investigate. I found you in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the mountain... anyone else would've left you or dismantled you. But..."

Starscream interrupted. "You knew the truth." His voice was a low whisper. "You knew I was not truly dead."

Skyfire nodded slowly. "I've seen you enough times, Starscream, ripped to pieces, your fuel pump still... no air passing through your intakes and optics black as pitch. And every time, I have watched as by some miracle of Primus himself, your fuel pump begins to beat, slow and steady... your laser core begins to glow anew... and again you rise. You always came back." You always came back to me. He wanted to amend that. But he knew better. Starscream was not the same flier he had bonded with a millenia ago. "I had to find you before someone else did."

"Find me?" Skyfire almost cursed when Starscream questioned him, sounding almost coy. That was Starscream's way of saying he knew the game he was playing at. "You're being far too sentimental, Skyfire... it's making me ill."

A frown twitched onto Skyfire's lips and he sat back on his heels again. "For someone who has a lot of time to think about mistakes he could make, you certainly don't think about your words."

The air commander snorted, tilting his head to the side. "Of course I don't. I live in the present, Skyfire. The fact that I am immortal simply tells me one thing: I have forever to make and correct mistakes."

"Not with those who once held you close at night, Starscream." The words startled both of them and the two fliers stared at each other in surprise for some time before Skyfire sat back, making a show of clearing static from his vocalizer. "I'm not immortal like you. Nor is anyone you have played with. Your Elites that you torment, and the way you constantly aggravate Megatron... and he wonders, each time, why he never kills you... and he always concludes that you simply must be too stupid to die. But he does not know you like I do, Starscream. One day, Starscream, he will learn... he will understand... and like Prometheus of legend, it shall be youchained to the accursed rock."

Both fell silent then, regarding one another. Starscream was frowning deeply, although the words had struck deep. That had been one of his habits early on. With a lack of anything else to keep his mind stimulated, he had delved into some human lore... mostly out of some sick curiousity more than a want to learn it. The Greeks had been pleasantly vicious when it came to some of their legends. "...and like Prometheus of legend, someone will free me from the chains."

Skyfire tensed. "Not if I am long dead by then, old friend."

Again, the fliers fell into silence, and Skyfire reached forward to complete the repairs. Starscream's optics followed his every move. Once upon a time, he would have found comfort in this. This was what he lacked at the Nemesis... intellectual stimulation. A wit to match his own. Megatron was all ambition. Thundercracker? Like a spooked foal. And Skywarp... hardly intelligent enough to know where to teleport, let alone how.

He... did he miss this?

At long last, Skyfire leaned back, touch lingering far longer than it should on his canopy. "There... you should be able to make it safely back to the Nemesis now. Just... don't go plummetting from any mountaintops again unless you know I'm near."

"I will keep that in mind." He couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "...go on. Get out of here before one of my own comes... I'm certain those fool Elites of mine must be searching for me by now."

Skyfire frowned, staring for a long moment, leaning in just slightly before at last he drew back. He couldn't bring himself to it.

Not anymore.

Standing, the huge jet lowered his head in a respectful nod towards he who could not be extinguished, and without even a word of goodbye, he took off into the setting sun.

A modern day Prometheus. If that was what Starscream truly was, someday he, the greatest of the Decepticons, would have to rely on the mortal Hercules to free him from an eternal prison.

Would that Hercules be Skyfire?

He doubted that sincerely.

Frowning, he took to the sky, wings glowing brilliantly against the setting sun, a figure of white watching him from a distance as he soared towards the shore.

Immortality was not without its price... distancing those you once loved. But Skyfire knew he should have been ready for this someday.

Forever did not belong to those that did not have it.

But as he flew back in the direction of the Ark, he did not know Starscream's thoughts.

After all, one who shared a piece of his undying spark...

...could possibly share a bit of that immortality as well...

--End--