{Warnings: Suicide ideation}

It wasn't that Thundercracker was a veteran as some younger mechs had mistakenly assumed from his surly demeanor; he had been constructed not long before his trine leader came online for the first time, and his experience was likewise limited. He was simply very good at what he did, and what he did was think too much.

It was a bad habit that he constantly attempted to shake, but after so many vorns it seemed unavoidable. His mind would wander at the most inopportune times, particularly in quiet moments as he lay on his berth before recharge, the only distraction from his own thoughts being the slow, rhythmic vents softly drifting from his black and purple trinemate.

At other times he would attempt to busy himself to occupy his processor; often he would offer himself to tasks his comrades considered too menial and insignificant to bother with. He had tried spending more time with his allies but their presence had only reminded the blue mech that he detested a majority of them, considering them lacking in honor with a surplus of unflattering cruelty. After a while he became increasingly reclusive, mostly spending time with Skywarp, Starscream, and—to his trine's chagrin—Soundwave.

The command center was silent except for the video feeds and occasional commands, but while he was there Thundercracker found it easiest to distract himself. Soundwave seemed ever-present in the dark, lonely room, and the seeker had come to have a sense of solidarity with the quiet mech after it became apparent that they had known about his disloyal thoughts and never intended to do anything about them. "Thundercracker: poses low risk of desertion," they had monotoned; it originally alarmed Thundercracker that the empath could know him just as well as he knew himself, but in the end the near-solitude of the command room suited his needs, and he had eventually grown to like the second-in-command. They would assign him tasks, simple chores and busywork, and Thundercracker hoped they could sense some of the gratitude he felt.

To his discomfort, he had realized one cycle that those were the assignments he enjoyed most, in contrast to the energon raids favored by the rest of his faction. Great, he had thought bitterly, I'm thinking too hard about what I do to not think. It was because of the risk, he told himself; he was a Decepticon warrior made to die in battle for the sake of his cause, but that was what he was afraid of. He didn't allow himself to think about any other reason.

He didn't think about how his species was driving itself to extinction for causes that had long since changed, murdering those who might have been friends in another life only because of the marks they wore. He didn't think about how the Autobots—soft-sparked and tame, the Decepticons had called them—were winning, despite the claims that their kindness would be their downfall. He most certainly didn't think about how the native inhabitants of planet Earth were proving to be as capable as some of his own kind on many occasions, yet they looked at the Decepticons in fear, wide-eyed, as though they felt emotions in the same way Thundercracker feared they did…

He didn't think about those things the day he realized he disliked the fighting. He couldn't.

He thought about his trine.

The trine gave him identity and purpose; they were the reason he joined the Decepticons in the first place, not any semblance of loyalty to the steely leader he had only read about at the time. As long as he was with them, he knew who he was: Thundercracker, Decepticon seeker in the most powerful trine still online. Being with them made him powerful; alone he wasn't particularly special except for his sonic boom, and if it wasn't for the trine he suspected he would be utterly unnoticeable. That's how it was before he met Starscream and Skywarp. He was constantly aware that he had been extremely lucky that either of the two had noticed him, though he could hardly admit that.

His thoughts inevitably shifted back to the one he constantly sought to avoid: he didn't belong.

No, he weakly tried to convince himself, he was an integral part of the trine now and belonged in it as much as the other two. He wasn't ambitious like Starscream or straightforward like Skywarp, but he was the one to balance out the trine. That's what everyone said. He was sensible and—and…

That was the problem, wasn't it? He wasn't anything. Everyone else aboard the Nemesis had something about them that made them an invaluable member of the Decepticons. But him? All he really had was the ability to fly with Starscream and Skywarp without trying to reduce either one to a scrapheap. And unlike his trinemates, he couldn't even enjoy fighting together anymore.

That wasn't to say he wasn't loyal enough; he fought just as well as anyone else, only without the cruel sense of enjoyment from the violence. There were times, though, when he would miss a target he could have hit, times when he might have offlined an enemy for good but flew past. The others could pick off the weaklings, he always claimed. He didn't want to waste ammo.

He had had some bad days, he reasoned. He was loyal.

Thundercracker had never really believed the things he told himself.

Thundercracker had thought about offlining for good plenty of times: in the heat of battle, fearing that the next time he crashed to the distant ground would be the last; in his quarters on the days he couldn't stop thinking, ever aware that Soundwave might discover his disloyal desire for the war to end; as he flew over the ocean and wondered what it would take for him to go into recharge and never online after yet another battle he couldn't celebrate with his peers.

Laying prostrate on the ground and dragging himself partially behind an outcropping of desert rock, offlining was decidedly not what he wanted.

He had been brought smoldering to the ground by the terror twins in battle after the Autobots had arrived at the solar power generators chosen for the day's raid. Normally such injuries would be minor, but the jet hadn't had time to recover since the last battle and was unable to brace for the impact, instead spiraling out of control into another stone outcropping, decimating a large portion of it in the process.

Pulling himself behind the larger outcropping—hopefully out of the Autobots' line of fire—the mech attempted to move his prone body upright and, failing that, settled for rolling onto his back. The leading edge of his wings had been wrecked upon impact and sharp, stinging pain filled his sensor net at the movement. He vented harshly and angled his helm to assess the damage to himself.

The scuffs and shallow scrapes along his body were superficial in comparison to the rest of him. Sparks still flew from one torn wire before flickering out, leaving one servo out of commission. Energon leaked slowly from a nearby tear; not imminently fatal, but he would have to get that patched up sooner rather than later. His cockpit was—not in shambles, at least, but there were areas cracked and missing their protective glass. His systems were low on energon; the raid was out of necessity, after all, and the Decepticons couldn't afford to fuel up completely.

There wasn't anything Thundercracker could do. It took what little energy he had to take cover, and even if the world wasn't dimming as his optics automatically switched to a lower-energy setting he wouldn't be able to patch a leak with one servo. He sent out a distress beacon and commed his trine his location, knowing full well that if they came it would only be after the battle had ended. It would be a long wait.

It wasn't a Decepticon who first picked up the distress signal. In fact, Thundercracker wasn't quite sure whether the Autobot medic had picked up the signal at all or simply stumbled into the hidey-hole the downed flier had found. He had frozen when he had seen the seeker, though, so he supposed it might be the latter.

"I won't shoot," Thundercracker stated plainly, his optics turned to the newcomer. "Probably wouldn't even if I could right now."

"And why should I trust you?" Ratchet shot back acridly. "It wouldn't be the first time I had an ungrateful patient."

"Never said I'd be your patient." If he had been able to, the blue mech would have shrugged. "It's safer in here than out there, though."

The CMO eyed his enemy cautiously before approaching, and grimaced at his wounds. With a vent of frustration—primarily at himself—Ratchet kneeled beside the grounded jet and reached dexterous servos between plating to repair torn wires. He noticed with some worry that, though the leak had been small, energon pooled underneath an inoperative servo; Thundercracker had been here for some time.

"Fuel levels?"

"Ten percent," Thundercracker replied brusquely.

"Ten per-! How much when you left?"

"Forty percent."

Ratchet groaned in exasperation despite the mech in front of him. "Flying under sixty percent is-"

"You think I don't know?" the seeker growled, but the noise had no venom to it. "Not enough energon at base. There's never enough. And Warp needs it more than me."

"A Decepticon caring about another mech?" Ratchet chuckled drily. "What's that you 'Cons are always saying? 'Compassion is the greatest weakness?'"

"Don't lump me in with them," scoffed Thundercracker. "Nothing wrong with giving a scrap about anyone."

The white mech raised an optic ridge in interest. "For a high-ranking Decepticon, you don't, well…"

"I get it," the seeker smirked bitterly. "I don't really fit the Decepticon image."

He stared pointedly at the Autobot's chest, unable to move either servo with his current energy levels.

"What does that mean to you?" Thundercracker asked neutrally. "Your Autobrand."

Ratchet paused, caught off guard by the question. "Family," he replied after a moment. "Loyalty. Equality."

"And my mark?"

The medic vented slowly to delay his response. He didn't doubt his honest opinion would stir up trouble, but the questioning mech was vulnerable and couldn't exactly resort to physical violence in his current state. "Deception. Tyranny." He steeled himself, expecting at least a weak roar of anger.

A low rumble came instead, a sort of ponderous humming produced half by the seeker's engines and half from his vocalizer.

"I guessed as much," the seeker admitted, and Ratchet, erring on the side of optimism, could have sworn he detected some sort of remorse in the voice.

There was a long moment of silence in which Ratchet searched for what to say. Just as he had thought of what to ask, his patient's optics flickered to darkness.

"Thundercracker?" Ratchet said questioningly. The concern in his voice was genuine, and the addressed mech made a low rumbling sound in reply.

"Funny how we're fighting over badges that don't mean anything," Thundercracker muttered lowly. "Back when I joined, mine meant liberation. Star always said yours was peace through stagnation. Too mild. That nothing would change once you took over, 'cause you weren't the ones on the streets. And it didn't, really. Too comfy with your power."

"That changed-" Ratchet began defensively, then hushed himself. It wouldn't do to get a patient worked up, and the moment seemed… intimate, somehow. He had never heard a Decepticon speak in such a soft voice, lamenting the past, and it was much easier to hate all 'Cons when you weren't hearing their backstory.

"Changed when Prime took over," the seeker grunted. "He'd be great if he wasn't always saying change has to be slow. Buncha slag."

"You can't completely upheave a system," the medic reasoned calmly, careful with his words.

"Don't care. Didn't want my friends just finally being off the street." The Decepticon's voice slurred at points, his low energy levels clouding his processor. "Don't want 'em just being acknowledged, want 'em to be as happy as anybody else. No time to wait."

Ratchet was stunned into silence by the inebriated enemy's unabashed honesty. He got the distinct feeling that the things he was hearing were too intimate, not meant for him. He doubted the esteemed warrior would speak so casually to his foe if his processor had been running at higher fuel levels. Not wishing to break the spell that seemed to have settled around the scene, he remained silent.

"Don't want to fight. Hate it," Thundercracker mumbled. "No point anymore but everyone wants to offline everyone else. Just slag Megatron and get it over with."

Ratchet blinked. "You… don't want Megatron to win?"

"He's the worst. Been waiting for Star to scrap him…" The voice dropped slightly, and Ratchet's worry deepened when a barely noticeable keen escaped. "Wouldn't really mind even if Prime did now. Just want Star and Sky to be safe."

The medic waited for him to continue and jumped when static shot from his vocalizer. "Skywarp…" Thundercracker whined, and shifted his helm to his companion. "Warp's coming."

The Autobot nodded, taking that as his cue to leave. But first, he had to at least try…

"It's not too late to switch sides, Thundercracker. I could comm Optimus now and—"

"Not an Autobot," Thundercracker protested. "Never an Autobot."

Ratchet hesitated, nodded, and turned away, only to be surprised by a ping. A comm frequency being sent to him. Accepting the frequency, he instantly received a faint message.

[Thanks.]