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Title: Mechanical Butterflies
Warning: Beware the purple prose!
Rating: G
Continuity: G1
Characters: Starscream
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): "End of Days."
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In the two days since flying from the peace negotiations and coming to hide where Vos had been, you've realized some things about yourself. Many of these things rattle you, being that you thought they were the solid basis of who you thought you were.
Probably the most basic fear you now have is of lies. It's the truth that no longer hurts you.
You have been called a coward, and it's true. You are a coward not to confront Megatron. This is truth, with little attempt to hide it. You flee him because you fear him, and for all the strategic withdrawals and tactics you spout when under pressure, you are afraid because legitimate threat exists. That your enemies call you a coward holds only a touch of sting. You have admitted your cowardice to yourself, and the bluster is only a mask you don for dignity's sake in front of others.
That truth is one that can no longer hurt you. It's the fictions you fear. Truth is only a problem if there is a lie in the way. Stripping away the lie reveals painful things, and you have open wounds under the light shield of every lie you've constructed. This is coming back around to haunt you now. You walk through the ghost city Vos has become, and naked truths shine through the tattered lies.
And it hurts. It hurts in a way you'd thought you could no longer be hurt. Not after — well. Isn't that just another lie you've told yourself?
You are angry with Skyfire, and it is this fiction you're afraid of. Underneath that camouflage is the truth, and to study that fiction closely will reveal it. He came back from the dead, and you have been fighting his truths ever since. Because if you are not angry, then what are you?
You are not angry with him. You are afraid of him, and everything he represents. You'd contested that you were more content as a warrior, but standing beside a personal, resurrected symbol of the past, you had wondered, Content, or trapped?
Burgeoning questions had pinned you on that glacier, splayed you out like a mechanical butterfly helpless under his gentle questions, and you had almost been glad when he'd turned to the Autobots. You didn't have to listen to a traitor. The questions were inconsequential, said in a voice too feeble to be heard above the guns and glory. War was enough distance, enough room to turn and fight with denial what you stubbornly wouldn't listen to. You'd consciously remembered every bit of pride and gloating pleasure the Decepticons had brought you, and tried so very hard not to see the cage for the gilding.
You didn't have to face everything he'd brought to life just by living. Not back then, at least. That just made it hit all the harder when you did.
Now the war is ending, treaty wrangled in a bureaucratic fistfight, and your lies are fracturing like cheap paint over rust. For what have you been fighting if not belief? Where is the power promised you, the glory of a conquering Empire? There is nothing waiting for you at the peace table but a slow tearing of facts revealed as fiction.
You are afraid of what will be revealed as untrue, and, perhaps, more afraid of what's actually real. The fighting is coming to an end, and what does that leave you?
Survival, you think, your shattered pride and piecemeal mind fraying at the edges with unbearable stress. It comes down to fight or flee. You cannot fight and win; it would be like confronting Megatron, and you are a coward. So it's surprisingly easy to decide when the time closes in, when accepted truth trembled on the verge of rejection and you feel the fear surge as if your emotions were a human adrenal system.
Flee.
