Two
Skywarp woke up trembling, wings clattering heavily on the berth where he lay curled up. The echoes of his screams were still reverberating within the confines of his helm. The cold touch of the dark air on his wings, the hot tracks of tears on his faceplates, the fiery burning of the fireball, consuming his frame and thoughts… they were oh-so-real. Fraggingly, frighteningly, ominously real, leaving a sharp ache in his spark and a heavy throb in his processor. The black Seeker vented heavily and climbed carefully over the two bodies he was snuggled to, not wanting to wake them up.
His spark was still spinning like a tornado and he shook with the remembered misery, the flightless fall into the darkness… he shook his helm viciously, wishing that the motion could dislodge the stuck memory bits from the recharge flux. He sneaked away from the berth quietly in the darkness of the room, pawing the counters for the half cube of high-grade he was sure he'd left somewhere… ahhh. There it was. Skywarp wasted no time tossing it back, the burn of the vicious brew scouring his intake and making his optics secrete a drop of cleanser. It still tasted awful. Sides should work on this recipe a lot more.
But it did help. The strong buzz overcame the memories of his own screams and faded the fireball that kept blossoming in his meta into the background. Not fully though and the black Seeker quietly left the room and picked up the remote that was left on the small table. Some noise would be welcome, indeed necessary to dispel the last of the lingering pictures. Cuing the audio part of the program into his comm so it wouldn't wake up anyone else, he put the TV on, turning to watch the big screen on the wall.
As he turned, he caught his own reflection on the glassteel of the balcony door and the news station blared its noise into his audials… the sounds of an explosion on some moon-base or other, an accident blossoming into a fireball, inconsequential, uninteresting… but it made him tremble once more as he stared at the balcony door's mirror-bright surface. It was the first, he thought wildly, the first time the dream pictured exactly this door he was currently staring at.
"Fragging, rust-eaten, Primus-bedamned glitching processor!"
The Seeker roared at him own reflection with a suddenly flaring anger, not caring any more whom he'd wake up with it. He hurled the remote into the glassteel door, followed by the empty cube. The sturdy contraption – and his mirror image on it - hardly even trembled at the impact but at least the cube shattered into satisfying shards that fell twinkling onto the floor.
Skywarp followed the cube and his servos shoved the door outwards with an angry, nearly hurting impact, flinging the door outwards fast on its hinges. He was thoroughly fed up with his own overactive and obnoxious imagination. Yes, so there was a balcony here, yes, it was dark outside – obviously, what else the dark cycle would be like? – and so what if they were far above the city in one of the rebuilt towers, the apartments here intentionally given to the various air frames who were particular about the clear view.
The frigid air on the balcony made him shiver and cooled his anger too. Slagging dream. Lurching towards the railing Skywarp felt his wings tremble and droop in the remembered hopeless angst. He fought a loosing battle with the pictures, the high-grade's buzz just distorting them but unable to fully dispel. No, no, NO, NOOO! He wasn't grounded, for frag's sake! His turbines growled in an angry agreement, underlining the attempt to convince his own glitched processor.
His wings twitched as Skywarp desperately tried to replace the memories of the fall with the memories of his last true flight. He was… he was flying over the Polyhexian Plains just last orn, following a trail of migrating Pyro crystals, because Perceptor insisted that they grew on energon-rich ground only and the groundpounders lost the trail on the broken surface. It was fairly boring but since the acid rains stayed away and the electric storms avoided him as well, Skywarp happily took the boring flight over a more eventful one.
Calming down slightly, the black Seeker released the balcony railing, grimacing at the dents he put there and the strained cables in his wrist joints. His wings flared up a little too, like shaking off the enforced rigidity of the dream's flightless state. Puffing out a hot vent, Skywarp turned to go back to the apartment, wondering already how it was possible that he didn't wake up anyone with that shout. Thundercracker would have…
That was when the pain struck.
Bending forward, the black Seeker fell onto his knees, arms curling over his cockpit and keened loudly into the uninterested darkness. No, he truly wasn't grounded, wasn't a slave or starved or even the last flier like the dreams insisted… but the wound on his spark was all too real. Usually the dampener that Wheeljack and Ratchet invented made him able to forget it – but not this orn, not after the dream weakening the walls he built around it, not the inadvertent remembrance to Thundercracker tearing it open afresh.
Grey frames flashed up in his processor and he cried out suddenly, plating torn and splattered with energon, small frames and big ones, Autobots looking down on them sadly as he held and shook TC's cold servo to wake up, to come back, to snap at him again; looked over to Starscream to hear the screech in frustrated anger and scold him and please make it all right again…
They never came back. The medic when he arrived could only confirm their deactivation and sedate the black Seeker, who by that time was fully mad with pain so it took three Autobots to restrain him and keep from harming himself. The length of time afterward was a blur to Skywarp; mostly offline or screaming in pain and anger, trying to claw anyone to ribbons who came close to him and wasn't them.
His next lucid memory was Ratchet shaking his shoulders as he sat on the berth, completely clueless as to why or how he got to be there. There was a painful throb in his spark that became his constant companion, even after bonding with the twins. It never went away fully, even as he rebuilt his life again slowly, painfully with the help of others, piecing together the broken parts until he could go on orn by orn.
Sometimes, like since the nightmares started, he wondered if it was worth the effort. Times like these, he missed them so much that no amount of comforting and love could overcome it. Why those wounds stung time and time again, he didn't know. Skywarp's processor painted him the picture of their tombs, the slabs of metal that used to be two Seekers. He never went there, it was the Autobot way of a funeral, not his… but he knew the place from the twins. The glyphs honoured them… as much as the grounder Autobots could honour the lords of the skies.
Cold comfort, that.
But remembering them still calmed Skywarp somewhat. He stood up again, wiping away the tears with an angry swipe of his servo. The darkness was cold and he shuddered slightly before turning back towards the apartment door. Casting a last glance of the twinkling skyline, Skywarp noticed the red frame in the door. How long had he been standing there?
"Sky…" – Sideswipe's voice was hesitant, the bond cautiously swirling with worry and care – "… are you all right?"
"I… no, not really." – he fought with the tears wanting to burst again.
The red twin walked over to him and embraced Skywarp in strong, protecting arms, the servos lightly petting the still trembling wings.
"It's okay… shhh… it's okay to remember them."
Skywarp hated to be weak and needing the compassion – but he did need it and he wasn't a Decepticon warrior any more having to show a strong front all the time. He was broken and welded together, the pain breaking through the cracks still and he'd take the comfort wherever he could.
"It… hurts…"
"I know…" – he really did. The bond left little to imagination and Skywarp felt the understanding rolling back from him.
"Make it go away…!"
"I would… if I could, Sky."
Skywarp whimpered but the sound never left his vocalizer. Something went missing again, something important, something hurting him… but for the love of Primus he didn't know what it was or why it was important. Why did he feel the loss all the time? Why hasn't the wound healed? Why did everything feel so unreal, so dreamlike? Why, why, why…? Skywarp struggled with the questions. He wasn't the one with all the answers… that used to be Star and TC not him.
But they weren't there any more. Only the questions and the strange doubts. A sharp pang cut into his processor, causing him to lift trembling servos and hold his heavy helm in them. The world suddenly, strangely trembled around the edges and shattered before reassembling itself. Skywarp shook his helm viciously but the pain didn't go away, nor did the hallucinations.
"Oww…! Frag!" – he yelped, pushing away Sideswipe and stumbling across the empty floor in search of… he didn't know what. Nor why.
The light coming in slants from inside the apartment wavered, painting queer glyphs onto the floor. The straights lines of the railing bent, the sharp contours of the doorway blurred, becoming a tunnel leading into ominous darkness. Skywarp's processor-ache became pounding. Then suddenly the metallic floor jumped up, towards him and he only had time for a short Slag! before his helm impacted on it. He felt the pain peaking before exploding inside his helm…
…and then nothing.
Still not the end...