Starscream was back in the Vault and, in all honesty, looked like he still belonged there. Pieces hung precariously by wires, the plating mangled beyond recognition - but whole enough for now, a pain dampener attached over his circuitry, and sitting on the repair berth with his legs dangling over the edges as he watched Optimus Prime enter and, to the alarm of Ratchet, close the door behind him.
They were alone again, and Starscream looked as pleased about it as always.
"About time you showed up," the seeker said. Optimus had no time, patience, or energy to deal with Starscream's games.
"Why are you still alive?" He cut right to the spark of the matter, and Starscream's expression tightened for a moment. It relaxed into his usual self-satisfied smirk again.
"Your precious Autobots couldn't figure it out?"
"So you do know," Optimus accused, stepping forward, crowding the damaged seeker. The way Starscream's wings grinded as they tried to twitch and the suddenly wary expression on his face spoke more to Starscream's trauma than it did to his common sense.
"I might," he evaded. "But what does it matter how?" What was left of his hands spread helplessly wide. "I'm alive. What are you going to do with me now, Optimus Prime?"
But Optimus only shook his head. "That depends on how it is you are still functioning."
Starscream's one operating optic glared... but it was obvious after a long stretch of stubborn silence that the Prime was not going to be distracted, and without his usual tools of persuasion at his disposal, Starscream finally relented.
"I'm an anomaly. An anomaly you can't seem to resist, but then, who could?" Starscream purred like a machine on the brink of catastrophe. He leaned forward, dangerously unstable on the edge of the table, his labored systems expelling heated atmosphere over Optimus Prime's windshield. It fogged, obscuring the view within.
"I am alive," Starscream said in an uncharacteristically hushed voice, "because I am incapable of becoming otherwise."
Starscream laughed at the exhausted, unamused stare he received in reply. "It's true," he assured. "I'm an Immortal."
"You're deluded," Optimus said. But he had heard the report from Ratchet on Starscream's decidedly fatal injuries. They had all been certain the mech was dead, so much so that even his most trusted officers had been quicker to denounce him compromised by a processor virus than believe him about Starscream's survival.
He had seen the mech die and rekindle several times. The Matrix had throbbed in time with each small death.
"I've been called worse," Starscream reassured him with a cutting smirk. "But you know it's true. Somewhere," he reached out and almost touched a fingertip to the glass of Optimus Prime's chest but the larger mech reared back in time to avoid it, "in your spark, you can feel it. The Matrix can feel it too."
Optimus jerked as if hit by a pulse ray. "What do you mean?" His voice sounded flat and lifeless even to his own audio receptors. He stumbled back a step as Starscream seemed to somehow advance on him, though the seeker was not capable of moving off the table.
"I mean, Optimus Prime," Starscream purred, ruined engines spinning once before choking and dying again, "that I am immortal, and the Matrix recognizes kin." He grinned, unsmoothed weld lines making his smile sharper than ever. "Why else do you think it hates me?"
"It's incapable of hate." The Prime's response was automatic, but honest. "It's an artifact. It doesn't possess emotions." He would know, with it strapped to his spark. But Starscream only kept smiling.
"True enough, Prime," Starscream agreed. "If it were sentient, or even intelligent, it would know it's incapable of killing me."
"Killing you?" Prime's spark felt light, as if disconnected from his frame, disoriented and floating away...
"You never knew?" Starscream's tone was mocking. He was well aware of Prime's ignorance and rubbing it in his face. "Prime, keeper of the Matrix, the gateway to the Well of Allsparks, and you never even guessed?" He shook his head slowly, careful of the precarious repairs in his neck.
"Don't," Optimus warned. He didn't know why he said it. Some defense mechanism, a survival instinct, futile and obsolete.
"The Matrix thinks it can kill me." As ruthless with words as he was with missiles, Starscream plowed ahead. "Well, it does not precisely think of course, but it has a programming of its own, and has determined that I am an anomaly that must be reabsorbed."
Optimus could say nothing. There was no refutation to be made.
"The results of its efforts," Starscream continued, "surprised even me." He laughed cruelly. "The Matrix, sacred relic, identifier of Primes... and a damn good energy dump."
"I won't let you touch it again," Optimus promised darkly, the shock of this revelation activating protocols that normally only engaged on the battlefield. "I'm going to stop this... aberration."
"What exactly do you think you can do about it, Optimus Prime?"
The Prime growled. "Something. Anything. I'll rip the Matrix out with my own hands, if needed."
"It would rip your spark out along with it," Starscream pointed out with a single finger directed almost flippantly at the Prime's chest. As if he didn't keep glancing, hungrily, at it.
"Do you think I speak lightly?" Optimus asked, all growl and warning. "Don't even think about it, leech."
"I think you're weighty enough as it is," Starscream answered with a not-quite-amused huff. Still, he slid off the berth to stand on legs that had not quite finished cooling from their welds, and he buckled a little. Despite everything, Optimus found himself automatically reaching to assist the seeker upright again.
Starscream's surprised look made him pause, and the inevitable smirk cut across his intentions sharply. He withdrew.
"All this trouble to save one Decepticon?" Starscream prodded, treading carefully… but hard enough to leave cracks in the eggshells of Prime's remaining patience. Cracks through which his words could seep through. "And here I thought that your objective was to eradicate the Decepticon scourge from the universe."
"I never sought to purge the universe of anything but tyranny," Optimus interrupted, but Starscream continued as if he hadn't. He leaned on Prime heavily, legs unable to support his weight in their current state, and despite being a head shorter than the Prime, leaned forward and loomed by sheer force of personality. This time, Optimus held his ground.
"You can hardly call it a tactical advantage," Starscream mused. "Nor a logical one, really." He gave Optimus a roguish grin. "My, my, Optimus Prime. Are you making decisions with your spark instead of your mind? That's hardly up to your usual standard."
Fed up yet again, Optimus clenched his fist. Why? Why, of all mechs, the most infuriating? The most insufferable? "My standards seem to diminish in your presence," he finally spat out – and almost, almost regretted it when Starscream's expression slackened with surprise.
Cautious now, Starscream ventured: "… You believe that I tainted the Matrix."
"No," Optimus answered, running a hand over his covered face. It would do no good to get worked up again. "No, not anymore. At first, yes, but… it was the Matrix that initiated… this."
Starscream was looking at him with an odd sort of expectation that made Optimus wary.
"Then why blame me," Starscream asked in a hiss, "for your failings?"
"Because you diminish me!" Optimus finally barked out, hands clenched at his sides, expression furious. His circuits were burning with fatigue, wires taut with frustration. The helpless stress he'd been under for months was at its peak, and what was left of his brittle control crumbled.
Blue optics blazed above his mask as he glared at the seeker. "I cannot be the leader I ought to, because of you. And while I'm sure that positively delights you," he ground out, "it is something else that you have taken away from me, Starscream. My ideals waver. I would like nothing better than to imprison you in some dark star for the rest of eternity, so that I could have what's left of my patience, my time, my freedom, returned to me."
Starscream was staring at him, expression shocked, but the seeker said nothing in response to that tirade. Optimus turned his face away, suddenly ashamed, but not in the least regretful.
"… It is clear that, according to Megatron, you are no longer a Decepticon."
That seemed to rouse Starscream again. "I don't really care what Megatron thinks," he answered sharply. "I am a Decepticon."
"Be that as it may, " Optimus conceded, "You cannot return to them again." Starscream gave him an arch look.
"And why not?" he asked, arms crossed across the uncovered cockpit whose glass canopy had yet to be created and installed. "I've done it before."
"We don't have the resources - or inclination - to repair you from scrap again."
Starscream was silent for a moment, frowning. "... That's honest enough, I suppose," he muttered, clearly unhappy about it. "But it's not as if I can't simply return and finally usurp Megatron!" His face split -literally - with the force of his ferocious grin. His voice lowered once more into a deadly purr. "With your assistance, I - we - can finally destroy him once and for all, Optimus Prime."
"It's not that simple."
Starscream's wheedling abruptly turned sour. "Everything is always complicated with you!" he snapped. "That's why the Autobots will lose! When you could strike the killing blow, you hesitate, trapped by your short-sighted morals! When you should take what you want, you deny yourself, suffering under the weight of your own sparks and thinking it a blessing!"
Optimus wondered, distantly, if they were still talking about Megatron.
"You're a fool," Starscream snarled. "A compromised idiot. If you're going to bury your head in the sand, you should have left me for dead in the desert!"
"I couldn't do that," Optimus said.
"Of course," Starscream sneered. "Your damned morals forbid it."
"Not that," Optimus said softly - and continued in a stronger voice before Starscream could formulate a response. "I would offer you asylum, but we both know what your answer is."
"The first smart thing you've said," Starscream spat, sufficiently distracted by such an insulting offer. "I don't require your protection."
"Naturally." Optimus looked the mangled frame up and down. "You wouldn't submit to that any more than my officers would agree to letting you free without an interrogation."
Starscream scoffed. "What could they possibly do to persuade me into giving up Decepticon secrets?" He didn't have to gesture at himself to make his point - the damage was an excellent indicator of just how much Starscream had suffered. If being tortured to death and spending a week in a supply closet dying and resurrecting hadn't broken him, nothing the Autobots could do to him would have any effect either. The threat of death obviously would not work with Starscream.
"We would remove the pain inhibitors."
That visibly stalled the seeker. One wide red optic regarded him appraisingly.
"... I see you finally found your bearings," Starscream huffed. "Alright. So what? I've dealt with worse." But Optimus could see the worry in his limited body language and felt it in his energy field.
"There are worse things than physical pain," Optimus reminded him.
"You would never," Starscream spat back.
"I've done a lot of things lately that I would never have suspected myself capable of. For now, the offer stands. You could join us - though I know you will not - and it is against your infamous self-interest to return to the Decepticons at present. Every other option requires varying degrees of compromise on your part... if you are willing and able to accept that. So, I am asking you: what do you want to do?"
Starscream sat silently for a long time. (Perhaps it seemed shorter to him, Optimus thought, given his nature.) Then, just as the Prime was about to begin speaking again, Starscream smiled.
"I will remain here," he said, "as a prisoner. The status of a refugee has no benefit in my... unique situation."
The easy agreement made Optimus wary. "You will be interrogated," he reminded Starscream needlessly. "There is nothing I can do to stop that, even if I wished."
"That's a lie," Starscream sighed. "But I accept, nonetheless. Go on, take me to the brig."
"You need more repairs first." Optimus was already informing the officers of Starscream's decision. "Enough to be self-functioning, anyway."
Starscream waved him off. "Yes, yes," he said in a bored tone. "If you're going to waste my time, do it somewhere I can't see you. And send the incompetent medic who can't tell if a mech is dead or alive back in to finish me up. I've got more important matters to deal with than your ridiculous moral conflicts."
Optimus did eventually leave, brushing past Ratchet and pretending to be deep in thought when his friend asked if everything was alright.
How could it be alright, he wondered? What had started as an annoyance was rapidly degrading into madness. What he had assumed was the Matrix taking a liking to Starscream was in fact attempted homicide. Everything Optimus thought he knew was wrong, and he did not know how to fix it.
There was only one mech he trusted with his doubts about the Matrix and its "relationship" to Starscream's apparently immortal spark. He didn't have much time to rectify this entire debacle. Starscream was plotting again, he was sure, Megatron would not be kept in the dark as to his former second-in-command's continued existence for long, and the Autobots were already paying closer attention to their Prime than Optimus liked. The Matrix, a symbol of hope and light, their last remaining connection to Cybertron and to their god, was failing them all - and simply by doing what it had been designed to: absorb the spark energy of the deceased and bring them back to the Well of Allsparks.
Optimus activated the private terminal to Teletraan-1 in his quarters and sent the communication request.
