Note: This chapter was updated 1/5/10, mostly as part of the effort to fix this story's overall narrative voice to make it consistently third-person throughout. There may be minor changes from the original, as well, but nothing plot-significant.
5: Persistence of Vision
Starscream awoke, as was usual of late, fighting the urge to scream. It wasn't a scream of pain or of terror, however. Rather, it was the kind of scream that one generally let loose when one was teetering on the edge of a blinding, all-consuming overload.
He'd been dreaming of her. Again. They were heated, fevered dreams, achingly real. They left his body and his mind feeling utterly deprived, gnawingly unsatisfied, his systems running very hot…and there was nothing that he could do about it. He could only lay there, order the computer to lower the temperature dramatically in his quarters, and then wait, panting and shivering feverishly, hoping that it would all subside.
Either that, or he could find someone upon whom to release the tension to which he found himself awakening, whether they wanted him to or not. But he hadn't resorted to that.
Yet.
Starscream sat up on his berth, knowing from experience that the rest of his recharge cycle would elude him, that there was no point in trying to settle down again. Blearily consulting his chronometer, he noted that it had been a mere forty-five minutes since he'd shut down. Sighing, weary in both mind and body, Starscream drew his knees into his chest, folded his forearms on top of them, and then rested his forehead on top of his arms. He stayed in that position for more than a few minutes, working at calming himself. It was more difficult to do so than it had been the previous night, just as it had been more difficult to do so the previous night than it had been the night before that.
It was getting worse. He was getting worse. Quickly. Sounds and sensations from the dream lingered still, even though he was fully awake. He could feel her against him, her teeth gnawing on him, her fingers digging into exquisitely sensitive spots that were tingling at him even now. He could hear her still, too, sighing and snarling and whispering wanton, passionate words directly, so it seemed, into his mind.
"Stop!" Starscream murmured quietly but desperately, shifting position slightly so that he could massage frantic circles into the sides of his head, as if he could somehow drill into it and physically remove whatever it was that was plaguing him. "Stop, stop, stop…" he repeated over and over again, mantra-like, for long minutes as he worked at calming himself.
Slowly, much more slowly than he would have liked, Starscream's mind quieted, his body returning, for now, to its normal state. "Normal," of course, being a relative term; normality had ceased to exist for him the moment that Ratchet had called regarding Swoop, and he was beginning to believe that it would forever elude him now, as if he was existing in some permanently altered state.
Starscream had indulged in extensive research since returning from his encounter with Swoop. He hadn't had the time to do so beforehand, especially because after Ratchet's call he'd quickly lost touch with most of his sanity, drowned as it quickly became in the overwhelming instinctive desire for Swoop. The problem was that he wasn't entirely certain that his sanity had returned intact. Or at all. It should have, so his research told him. He now thoroughly understood even the minutest details of what was known of the nature and purpose of royal imprinting, and he knew that it should have lasted at most a day or two after he had fulfilled his obligation to Swoop. He should no longer be feeling a need to think of her, should no longer be reliving the things that they had done with and to each other, and he definitely shouldn't be feeling a subconscious desire for her that, now, was insidiously starting to bleed over into a conscious desire for her, all against his will.
It was unacceptable. He wanted it to stop. But since what he was experiencing was not normal – at least, nothing like it had ever been recorded, so far as his research went – he had no idea how to make it stop. Nor could he talk to anyone about it. Doing so would require imparting to that other individual information that they couldn't know. He would be gravely endangering not only them but also himself, should he reveal it to anyone. The only individuals that he could conceivably talk to about the situation were Megatron and Soundwave. Neither option appealed in the slightest. So, Starscream was trapped. Well and truly trapped, like a bird in a cage.
A desperate and increasingly insane part of him felt a need to put in an illicit call to Ratchet, to somehow contrive to meet face-to-face with the Autobots' medic. He could actually talk to him about the situation, at least, whereas he couldn't talk to any Decepticon. And maybe Ratchet might have access to information and knowledge databases to which he wasn't privy or that he wasn't even aware existed. Yes, it was a very tempting notion to have a nice, long chat with that particular Autobot. But he hadn't resorted to that.
Yet.
For the moment, all Starscream could do was to attempt to distract himself. He'd tried many means of doing so, but the only thing that had worked so far had been to bait Megatron into an argument that had devolved into some fairly severe physical violence. Starscream hadn't intended this as an attempt to distract himself; it was just that his "condition" had greatly shortened his fuse and significantly reduced the amount of patience he had for his "illustrious" leader. So it was through sheer serendipity that Starscream had learned that pain temporarily eclipsed and then completely silenced for a blessedly long time the thoughts, sensations, and visions that were pounding more and more often through his mind, slowly eating away at what was left of his sanity. The pain and its resulting quiet had been a welcome relief…and it had given him an idea. Now, if he couldn't quiet himself in any other way, he had an experiment all planned out. It was one that didn't involve Megatron but that would, hopefully, achieve an equally satisfying result.
Starscream had decided that a quiet mind, however briefly it remained quiet, was well worth whatever pain he had to inflict upon himself.
Since he had managed to calm himself this time, Starscream didn't have to resort to such lengths. Yet. He was still keyed-up, though. Although exhausted, the result of almost two weeks without a proper recharge cycle, a strange energy crackled through him anyway, leaving him feeling restless. So, as had become his habit, Starscream hauled himself off of his berth and went for a walk.
It was the middle of the stretch of time that the Decepticons has arbitrarily deemed the night cycle, even though it was actually the middle of the afternoon, local time. Few Decepticons were about; those who were awake were either at their duty stations or likely up to clandestine nocturnal activities of various sorts that kept them from clogging the corridors. Still, Starscream passed a few comrades here and there, many of them the same ones that he often passed now on these restless, dead-of-night peregrinations. They no longer seemed surprised to see him prowling the corridors in a somewhat aimless manner. They dipped their heads in respectful acknowledgement, a gesture that he off-handedly acknowledged in return when it occurred to him that he should do so, and then they averted their gazes, going on about their business.
As usual, after about an hour of aimless wandering, trying without much success to calm himself, Starscream found himself on the bridge. Soundwave, the watch commander, seemed thoroughly unsurprised to see him when he planted himself next to his chair in front of the viewscreen; showing up for watch many hours too early had become a recurring trend for Starscream. Soundwave merely turned his head to look up at him as he gazed dully at the viewscreen which, as usual, showed a benign view of the depths of the ocean outside, illuminated only by the light that Headquarters itself generated.
Starscream wasn't seeing the image on the viewscreen, though. Other things were flashing through his mind, his walk obviously not having purged everything even temporarily from his processors. There were images of Swoop, of the expressions on her face when they had been together. There were echoes of the enticing, erotic sounds that she'd made. There were memories of the feel of her small, overheated body firmly pinned beneath his own, and of her fingers scratching and scraping demandingly at him, and of the heights of ecstasy to which they'd repeatedly, almost effortlessly, driven each other.
Starscream had begun to suspect that Swoop was far more devious than he had given her credit for. She was a medic, after all, and perhaps she had done something to him while they'd been together, intimately connected, something that he hadn't noticed because he'd been too otherwise-occupied for his own good. Perhaps she had engineered whatever-it-was such that he'd slowly go insane, if exhaustion and energy deprivation didn't do him in first, thus effectively removing him from the ranks of the Decepticons. It would be an irony indeed if Starscream had refrained from killing Swoop quickly and mercifully only to have her destroy him in this slow and torturous manner.
As it was, Starscream couldn't rest for more than two hours at a stretch. He regarded his recharge berth with growing revulsion more than anything because the dreams were so much more real and solid and deeply disturbing than the maddening phantom echoes of them that plagued his waking hours. And more and more often the mere thought of taking in energon made him want to purge. He avoided it, ignoring now the advisories and warnings that were trickling ever more demandingly into his processors.
Already, Starscream was becoming increasingly distracted and inattentive during his waking hours, no matter how hard he fought to hold himself together. It was a combination of the waking dreams and the exhaustion wrought by a lack of recharge and energon. It was, perhaps, a good thing that Megatron was currently between grand schemes; Starscream had no desire to face down Autobots in his distracted condition. On the other hand, the fact that Megatron was mostly idle at the moment meant that he had liberty to notice that his second-in-command wasn't quite right. He hadn't confronted Starscream directly about it, yet, but Starscream did notice the calculatingly speculative looks that Megatron was leveling at him far more regularly than he liked. Starscream knew that it was only a matter of time before he'd be in his face.
"Conscience," Soundwave suddenly droned from out of nowhere, hauling Starscream out of his thoughts. It was a welcome distraction, actually. Still, Starscream knew that he had to be very careful around Soundwave. At the moment, his mind was relatively quiet, under control. Should that change, he would need to remove himself from Soundwave's vicinity post-haste. There was no need to add more fuel to Megatron's fire, fuel that Soundwave would be only too happy to provide. Now, Starscream regarded Soundwave curiously.
"What?" he asked of the spy.
"Your conscience troubles you," Soundwave answered evenly. His lack of vocal inflection made it difficult to tell whether he was asking a question or simply making an observation. Starscream chose to interpret his words as the latter.
Soundwave was the only other Decepticon besides Megatron who knew about Swoop, having been on the bridge when Ratchet had called. Others had been there, too, but Megatron had calmly turned around and destroyed them all as soon as Ratchet's call had ended, so as to halt the possible spread of rumors. That left Soundwave and Starscream. So Starscream knew now that Soundwave was referring to Swoop and to what he was supposed to have done to her.
"I assure you that my conscience is quite clear, Soundwave," Starscream answered tiredly but firmly. "I did my duty, and I did it gladly."
Which was true; it just wasn't the duty that Megatron had assigned to him. He had instead fulfilled a different duty, perhaps a higher one, even though his motives were selfish. And, indeed, even though he was experiencing some fairly severe weirdness at the moment, Starscream still knew that he'd made the right decision. He did not and would not regret the decision even if the consequences of it ultimately destroyed him.
Soundwave, meanwhile, made a small, noncommittal noise that Starscream wasn't quite sure how to interpret. In fact, he wasn't sure why Soundwave was speaking to him at all about this subject. Was he sympathizing? Or merely digging for information, hoping to catch him off guard, hoping that he'd blab something personal or incriminating that Soundwave could then give to Megatron like a gift? If that was the case, Starscream was determined that Soundwave was out of luck. He didn't trust Soundwave half as far as a squishy could throw him. Even if he was half-insane at the moment, Starscream's guard would never be down around Soundwave.
"It is…surprising," Soundwave was uttering, meanwhile.
"Oh yes," Starscream answered acidly. "It's an utter shock to the system when Starscream actually does what he's told, isn't it?" Even though he hadn't done what he was told. But Soundwave didn't need to know that.
Soundwave just looked at the Seeker levelly.
"Indeed," he intoned.
Starscream snorted in response.
"Damned if I do, damned if I don't," he said resignedly. It was the story of his life.
"Indeed," Soundwave repeated, and Starscream could have sworn that there was a note of amusement in his otherwise fathomless voice.
"Shut up," Starscream growled.
And then he stomped off to one of the other stations on the bridge, all of which were unoccupied at this time of the night watch. His own watch didn't start for another three hours yet and, for lack of anything better to do, he decided to use those hours to dig further through ancient records and databases. Again. He knew that it was likely a fruitless endeavor, that there wasn't any information in the databases that he had not already read a hundred times. But he had hope that the activity would keep the hallucinations at bay.
For a little while, at least.
Ahhhh, the things I put poor Starscream through… Can't leave the poor guy alone, apparently…
For interested readers, regarding the title of the chapter: "Persistence of vision" is, so it's hypothesized, what allows you to have uninterrupted vision even during the time that passes while you blink your eyes. Essentially, your retina fills in the "hole" for you. So there's your trivia for the day. ;)
Review replies! :D
Starfire201: Yeah, well, Mirage is described canonically as "noble," so…I just bumped him up a bit, I guess. There's another royal running around, too. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out who he is, if you think about it and know your G1 cartoon details, but he doesn't have much effect on this story. If I write the others that are in my head, though, he most definitely will have a huge effect… Anyway, while this is an AU story, I imagine it running very closely parallel to the canon universe, so I'm trying to keep canon elements in here, to the extent possible, to keep readers "grounded." And hey, a Dinobot sibling is what Mirage gets for me not liking him very much. *laughs* Hope he likes the taste of humble pie! But he should be thankful that I'm not overly fond of him because I'm really brutal to the ones I do like a lot, like Starscream! HAH! And yeah, Starscream's little secret will come out eventually, as secrets have a habit of doing, but not quite yet…
Jenn: I'm glad the POV-switching didn't bother you. I guess I'm a bit of a purist/extremist on the subject; in my mind, it should be all one way or the other, not a mash of the two. But at least I've kept the switches segregated into chapters, so it's not as bad as it could be, I suppose. I'm glad that you're liking the pair as well (I've grown kind of fond of them, myself, God help me. *headdesk*), and I hope you'll stick with the story.
Next time: Mirage ponders. And Swoop…Well, let's not give things away, eh?
