Smokescreen drags himself along a crevice toward the light whose source he's pretty sure he'll never reach.
He half-expects the narrow mouth to close on him as he squirms through, but its sawtooth edges merely scrape a few more patches of mesh off his armor. Leaking, his HUD clogged with warnings (low fuel, low charge, low everything), he collapses onto a ledge above yet another chasm dimly lit by raw energon veins and the diffuse radiance seeping up from the Core far below.
Too far below.
He's exposed here, a tempting target for the flying, screeching things — not Seekers, not Predacons, maybe not bots at all — that guard the accesses to Cybertron's depths. (And to think he'd been worried about the Allspark's safety. Ha.) But they'll have him sooner or later; the only question left seems to be how long Smokescreen wants to delay the inevitable.
He curls up into a tight, exhausted, painful ball, his body echoing the despairing loops of his processor. He told no one about his plan, not wanting to risk interference or raise false hope. Even if they guess where he's gone, they can't find him now, his signal overwhelmed by the planet's own pulse. He's going to offline alone down here, leaving his team, his family, to be enslaved by the Quintessons.
To believe he deserted them, when all he wanted — all he ever wanted! — was to help.
Smokescreen stares into emptiness and waits for the rush of wings to fill it with death.