Just a little plotless bit of fluff. (I think Footloose just wanted to show off her knowledge of human language, maybe. Jazz has a lot to answer for.) Again, set some time in "Future Tense", while Skywarp's off on his unofficial jaunt through time, but closer to the time he went missing, so the wee sparks are still little.
Who'd Ever Have Kids?
"…so I said, mechs? Barf. No way, Jose."
Thundercracker swallowed an inappropriate snicker. "Footloose," he scolded, with a fond smile. "You can't say that. What about your brother?"
She didn't even miss a beat. "Definitely not boinking him." She elaborated with some feigned retching noises.
"You know that wasn't what I meant, Scraplet." He flicked her on one winglet and made her dance squeakily out of reach. "We'll ban you from going to Earth if you keep coming back talking like that."
She curled her lip, indignant. "What's wrong with the way I talk?"
"Would you like a list?" He grinned at her outraged expression. "Go on, skedaddle. Go harass Auntie Sepp or something; she said she had some free time and didn't mind helping you study this orn."
Footloose pursed her lips and gave him a suspicious look, puffing out her diminutive chassis and folding her arms, before deciding that perhaps it was a good idea after all, and disappeared off into one of the rooms at the rear of the property.
Thundercracker turned to his wingmate; Starscream had been trying to read, but now sat with his head propped on one hand, wearing his best long-suffering martyr's expression.
"Primus. Why do we ever let them go back to Earth?" the scarlet jet despaired, dramatically.
"Because they want to go?" Thundercracker shrugged, amiably. "Because we needed a break, and Jazz was happy to spark-sit for a while, and you know they both love him. And because it helped take their minds off losing-…" He swallowed the words and hastily replaced them; "…things."
Starscream made a disgruntled noise and wiped his face with one hand. "Every time they go, they come back a little more human. And if you try and tell me that doesn't bother you? I won't believe you."
"But it doesn't bother me? They're still sparklings. They'll either grow out of it, or it's who they were always meant to be." The blue jet found a small, fond smile from somewhere. "Besides. They're no worse than Skywarp ever was."
The other mech's dark face crimped in something halfway between a sneer and wince, as though unsure if he should be disgusted or horrified. "What you mean is, in spite of our effort to the contrary, we're still turning her into her sire."
Thundercracker laughed more genuinely at that. "We're letting her – and her brother – turn into whoever they want to be," he corrected. "Not what war needs them to be." He laced his fingers over his canopy and rocked his chair a little so his thrusters could reach the low table in front. "Haven't you ever wondered how we'd have turned out if it hadn't been for the 'Cons?"
"I greatly doubt we'd have been any less neurotic."
"By 'we' you mean you, right?" Thundercracker didn't have to look over to feel the weight of a thousand suns glaring at him. "I mean, you and Skyfire-…"
"Don't you even think about it." Starscream waved a finger.
"I'm trying not to, it's giving me the surges!"
Starscream pursed his lips, but by the cant of his dark brows Thundercracker sensed it was actually more likely to hide a smile. Primus above, an actual smile for a change.
"I was actually going to say," Thundercracker picked up, "the pair of you may have still been out there, adventuring across the final frontier, making discoveries to flaunt before all those who said a Seeker wouldn't have the brains for it."
"Would that have been before or after the senate accused me of murdering him?"
"Neither, because you'd have had the pair of us to come help you look for him-" Thundercracker swallowed the rest of the sentence, but both of them heard it anyway. Because that would have turned out well, wouldn't it. Look what a good job we've made of looking for Warp so far, huh.
Starscream sighed, and put his journal to one side. "Maybe it's me. Maybe I just attract bad luck." He pushed against the chair back and reclined it so he could stare at the vast glass ceiling. "Would you object if I went to try and kill Megatron again?"
Thundercracker gave him an arch look. "No, because I'd be coming with you."
"Nuh-uh." A blue finger waggled in a naughty-naughty kind of way. "You need to stay here and look after the little Skywarps. They actually behave for you."
"Right, so which one do I have to coach to be the little Starscream when you get yourself killed and leave me completely on my own?" He leaned forwards a little and snagged his flask of energon, and glared meaningfully at his wingmate over the top. "You're not going anywhere without me, mister."
Crimson optics slanted his way and gave him a dirty look, but didn't qualify it with a comment.
Thundercracker had successfully gone dormant with his feet up and Starscream had found his place in his journal again when a small body forced its way past the wafer and curled up in his lap.
"Footloose." The scarlet mech vented stale exhaust in a tired sigh. "Can you not see I'm trying to read."
"You're not going anywhere, are you." It was a statement of fact, not a question.
"I-… no? Why would you think that?"
"I heard you talking to Dack, you said you were gonna go after Megatron." Footloose tightened the way she was jammed into him. "I don't want you to go away as well."
"Footloose…" He rested his hand on her winglets. "You know I was a Decepticon. You know what that means, because you and Seem looked it up when we told you not to, and it scared you both for weeks." He felt her shift uncomfortably, but she didn't try and get up. "I'm unreliable, I lie, I betray people. Revenge is what I was programmed for."
"No it isn't. I know you did bad things. But it was only because of the war, and you're good now." She wouldn't remove her face from where she'd pressed it to his chassis, and he could feel her humming, a supportive harmonic so quiet it was barely audible. "You're not a bad mech. And I don't want you to go."
He didn't really have a response for that. Instead, he kept his hand against her shoulders and listened to her hum until she went silent and he felt her field soften, offline.
If only the rest of the world could be so forgiving.