Author's Notes: Thanks so much to Sneer, Gajeel-rocks, Luxie14, WolfZeroPrime, and Meep for reading and reviewing chapter two!

I read a fic a while back where the vertical crest/horn/whatever on Starscream's forehelm is a symbol of his royal status. I thought that was a good idea and decided to use it, however I forgot what story I read it in. If you are the author who first presented that concept and you want credit for it, let me know and I'll happily do so.

Clipped Wings
By Annie-chan
Chapter Three: Can't Move

Starscream came online with difficulty. He had a horrible processor-ache, and his entire chassis felt sore and stiff. His joints were reluctant to move, and when his helm lolled to one side, he immediately regretted it. Pain flared up in his neck articulators, like he had overstretched a hydraulic, and a throbbing ache persisted even when he returned his helm to its previous position. Great…

He was lying on a hard surface, which according to his internal gyroscope was tipped up from the horizontal by about forty-five degrees, his heels resting on small platforms to keep him from sliding off. It seemed to be a medical berth, if he had to hazard a guess. It made sense, as he was in pain, and so had apparently been injured in some way recently.

He kept his optics offline. Knock Out and Breakdown usually kept the medbay lights dim, so as not to irritate their patients, but he thought that even that might be too much at the moment. Whatever happened to him had really hit him hard.

Honestly, if felt like Knock Out had given him a beatdown with his shock staff. His circuitry felt fried, as if the indigo racecar had jammed the business end of his weapon right into Starscream's central circuit breaker. And did he smell burned wiring? What, did he have some kind of run-in with this planet's electrical infrastructure? How humiliating, if that was indeed the case. What on Earth or Cybertron would cause him to make such an amateur mistake?

His brow ridges arched down, his optics shuttering tighter, as his helm began to hurt even more. Apparently, just thinking was painful right now. Slag it.

He brought his servo up to his faceplates…or he tried to, at any rate.

Starscream felt a shock run through him as his arm refused to move. He tried his other arm, and it wouldn't move, either. Neither did his legs. He almost panicked, thinking the worst, until he realized that he was not actually paralyzed, but tied down.

Not that that wasn't something to panic about on its own.

Optics flared online, but his vision was blurry, unfocused. Even so, he recognized that he was not in the medbay on the Nemesis. Looking down at himself, he could see the blue-white shine of stasis cuffs around each of his wrists and ankles.

Abruptly, he remembered what had happened to knock him unconscious in the first place. He had been contacted by Optimus Prime and had stupidly responded, coming faceplate-to-faceplate with the enemy commander. They had argued, Starscream's emotions almost getting the better of him, and just as the seeker began to transform to leave Optimus in his dust, pain had exploded throughout his sensornet. He didn't know what Optimus had done, but it had hurt. A lot.

The next thing he knew, he was coming online strapped to a hard berth, hurting all over from whatever it was Optimus had done to capture him. He assumed he was in a medbay, but that thought gave him little comfort.

There was nowhere Optimus would have brought him, he figured, other than the Autobot base, the location of which had so far eluded the Decepticons' ability to discover. He could be anywhere on Earth right now. And if this was a medbay in the Autobot base, then Ratchet was sure to be somewhere nearby.

Scrap!

He tried to lie still, but couldn't quite quell the tremor that rattled through his frame. He was afraid. No, scratch that; he was terrified. The last time he had been captured by the Autobots, he had been plunged into indescribable torment. His city had been destroyed, his people murdered, and his control over his own chassis had been stolen from him. His spirit had been nearly broken by the time he had been discovered and taken away from the nightmare, to say nothing of his abused frame. It was a miracle, he knew, that his saviors had managed to pull him back from the brink of utter ruin.

His vents cycled shakily as he tried to keep them to their normal rhythm. The last thing he needed right now was to hyperventilate and pass out again. It didn't seem anything had been done to him—yet—and he really didn't want to be unconscious when Ratchet finally showed up. Being tinkered with while out cold scared him more than being tortured while awake, to be honest. He wouldn't be the only one to online and find himself the (un)lucky recipient of one of Ratchet's surprise modifications. He'd like his parts to stay right where they were, thanks very much.

Not that being online offered him much protection, tied down as he was.

[Finally you wake up. I was beginning to wonder when you'd come around. Kinda been hoping you wouldn't, though.]

Starscream froze as a rapid string of beeps and tones reached his audials from a short distance away. He reset his optics several times, trying to clear away the blurriness. He knew who was in the medbay with him, and he'd much rather be able to see what the other mech was doing, or at least his approximate location.

"Bumblebee," he greeted with a crooked smile. "Or did I hear you're calling yourself Goldbug now? Can't quite remember. I don't pay much attention to ground-pounders like you." He spat the insult with feigned distaste. He actually did not feel any malice toward non-flying Cybertronians. Knock Out and Breakdown had ground-based altmodes, as did about half the Vehicons on the Nemesis. However, he knew that most Autobots had somehow gotten into their processors that seekers and other flyers had an arrogantly dim view of non-flyers. Bumblebee, or whatever he was answering to nowadays, would expect a lofty attitude, and Starscream was in too much pain right now to want to try correcting him.

He also knew that Bumblebee had come from one of the lower castes, and despised mechs of high station indiscriminately. Starscream, a member of Vosnian royalty, drew his ire just for existing.

And there was one other reason the black-and-orange spy hated him…

Bumblebee gave a low staccato tone, indicating his displeasure in the insult. [You've got some bearings, seeker. You realize you're stuck on that berth, right? I could hurt you in so many ways and you couldn't stop me.]

"You wouldn't dare," Starscream rasped, trying and only partly succeeding in hiding how much it hurt to talk. It seemed even his vocalizer was damaged. "I'm your Prime's prisoner. No one touches me without his permission, and I have a real hard time believing he'd ever let a slag-eater like you put your filthy servos on me." He clearly remembered Optimus's possessiveness when it came to him. Though the memories made him want to purge his fuel tank, he couldn't help reminding Bumblebee of just how contemptible the spy was in the Prime's optics.

Starscream was usually quite considerate of other's feelings, but right now frag it all pretty much summed up his state of processor. Being captured by the one mech he truly hated, and waking up not only in pain but shackled to a medical berth was not Starscream's idea of a good solar cycle. Irritated was quite the understatement in describing his temper right now.

Bumblebee made a noise that could only be described as a hiss, and suddenly his servo was clamped around the royal horn on Starscream's forehelm, yanking the seeker's helm back painfully and exposing his throat.

[There's nothing I would like better than to dismantle you alive,] the carformer snarled. (It really was amazing the range of moods he could express with just clicks and beeps.) [With Megatron watching. That Pit-spawn will pay for what he did to me. He took away my voice, and by Primus and Unicron both I will take you away from him someday.]

Ah, there it was, the last—and biggest—reason Bumblebee hated Starscream and Megatron. During the Battle of Tyger Pax, Bumblebee had managed to get the drop on Starscream, and had his blasters pressed against the seeker's chestplates, ready to fire, when Megatron intervened. Acting on pure impulse, Megatron had lunged at Bumblebee, knocking him off of Starscream and sending them both crashing down a steep slope. Megatron's servo had gotten tangled in Bumblebee's neck cables, crushing and partly dislodging the spy's vocalizer as they tumbled down into a shallow ravine. He had left Bumblebee unconscious, climbing back up to Starscream to rejoin the battle, and they had both forgotten the incident in the chaos of war.

That is, until Starscream encountered Bumblebee again, sometime after the exodus from Cybertron. The young Autobot had survived, but his vocalizer had not, and he bore a murderous grudge against Megatron for maiming him, and against Starscream for being the reason Megatron attacked him. He didn't care that it was an accident, and that he himself had instigated the confrontation.

Starscream was just about to bite out a reply when another voice, this one speaking in standard Cybertronian, reached his audials. That voice made him freeze, his vents hitching in fear.

"Now, Bumblebee, I won't have you upsetting our guest. Let go of him this instant."

Ratchet. The Autobots' chief medic had finally made his appearance.

Bumblebee gave a low growl, and Starscream got the impression that he was gritting his dentals behind the plate covering his intake. Slowly, as if forcing himself to, he let go of Starscream's horn, stepping back from the berth. He moved stiffly, as if just itching to disobey the order and attack the bound seeker.

"You shouldn't even be in here," Ratchet continued, stepping into Starscream's field of vision. "Get back to your patrol, and hope I don't tell Prime of your delinquency." His tone was mild, yet was underlined with a steely authority. He didn't like uninvited guests in his medbay. Starscream had found himself at Ratchet's mercy many times during his captivity, and knew the medic had a disturbing habit of subjecting mechs who crossed him with extraneous and sadistic "upgrades," usually leaving his victim functional but permanently injured. More than once Starscream had emptied his tanks in horror listening to some poor mech's agonized screams as he himself waited for repairs. He thanked Primus that Optimus had never given Ratchet authorization to play with him.

[I hope Prime makes you suffer,] Bumblebee snipped at Starscream, then turned and beat a hasty retreat out of the medbay.

Starscream shuttered his optics tightly, listening to the spy's pedefalls as they faded away. Oh, he will, he thought bleakly, servos clenching into fists at his sides. He was a prisoner of the Autobots again, and the hopelessness of his situation was starting to fully dawn on him. He trembled visibly, an urge to scream and cry the unfairness of it all rising in his vents.

A shadow fell over him, and he cycled a gasp, his optics flying wide as he remembered exactly where he was. He stared up into glowing red optics, a cold dread settling in his ember.

"Hello again, Starscream," Ratchet said, a deceptively pleasant smile on his faceplates. "It's been such a long time, hasn't it?"

To be continued…