"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
AN- Title and summary belong to the Eagles, not to me.
I'm not adapting everything (or even the majority) from the aligned games or novels because how many contradictions they have with each other and TFP/RID
"All hail Starscream!"
Oh, what a delight to hear!
But why was he hearing it?
Starscream had the distinct feeling he wasn't hearing it. Not in person. He was observing. Well, this sort of celebration was quite often imagined. Perhaps...but no. He had heard this. The cry of the vehicons, the prompts he threw back.
He even heard those prompting "I can't hear you"'s being tossed by him to the crowd.
They just weren't emanating from his mouth.
So...Starscream grew curious only for a moment.
Then a distinct pedestep echoed around this strange landscape and he spun down to face the exact person he did not want to.
How?
"Wh-what?" he pointed his missile at the unflinching face. Strange. Hadn't he used up his missiles?
What sort of concern was that? Knock Out would replace any lost missiles...Knock Out? That grounder? He wasn't on the Nemesis yet.
...yet?
Something very odd was going on here.
Deja vu, the presence of Megatron, and the words being spoken by him from some other Starscream standing on the bridge made the illusion break down.
Because an illusion was all it had been. A flux, a memory, a vision. Now the dreamlike blindness ended. Starscream became aware of everything.
Being ambushed on the Harbinger. Being dragged away from his base of operations- Megatron, unspeaking still. Soundwave, picking up the Apex Armor and opening a groundbridge. The creation of the bridge had brought his stunned functions back and Starscream had started struggling. No matter how many swipes he took at the warlord's arm, that massive servo would not release him.
To his surprise, they didn't arrive on the bridge of the Nemesis. The seeker would have assumed that they would be there, where the cameras were situated and the vehicons could watch what had to be an execution.
They arrived at the medbay instead. Starscream recognized it from what he could see through the gaps in Megatron's fingers.
"Knock Out!" he yelled. "Knock Out, come rescue me, you ungrateful little-"
Before he could finish his half insulted/half desperate sentence, he was shoved up against a berth and the cuffs slid into place.
All of this seemed rather odd for a murder, his rational brain had to admit.
The panicking side of him had no time for such wonderings.
On a berth nearby, Megatron stomped over and lay back.
The rational side thought that was rather important too.
Soundwave was standing by the wall without any sort of revealing expression. And instead of Knock Out, some vehicon was walking behind his berth.
Oh, right. If Breakdown had been working with the Prime in the antarctic, the mad doctor was as well. Starscream had forgotten that tidbit of information in his panic.
Wait.
A vehicon?
Trying to clip something onto the back of his helm?
I'm no expert with this thing, but I hear one slip up can fry a neural net
Perhaps Shockwave was, loathe as he was to admit, capable of using the cortical psychic patch without doing so, but some untrained drone?
The seeker had tried to fling himself up against the bindings but an unwavering servo grabbed his head, pushed it back gently into the reach of the cable, and then-
And then he was here.
Reliving memories.
With the unfortunate side effect being that Megatron was here too.
Ehe. He tried for a nervous smile.
"You're inside my head, aren't you."
The other didn't match the expression of innocence.
Enough of this. Starscream made a pointless shuffle back and flexed claws he knew didn't truly exist here in the mindscape.
"Why play around?" he snarled. "Why are we here?"
The blank expression seared on Megatron's face reminded the seeker far too much of the cave.
Staring at him with the rock heaved down, down, down
And he'd begged and hoped with all his spark, in the moment of emergency, to be rescued while the earth above crushed downward. It had taken all that before the warlord had broke his blank expression to smile.
Was that what Megatron wanted now?
The bridge of the warship faded into gray. A light was somewhere above them but it revealed no features of their new surroundings. Only those features on the two of them were shown.
This felt far more threatening than facing down Megatron in a memory. At least there he'd been surrounded by others.
The warlord leaned down ever so slightly. Starscream felt his knees beginning to buckle and sent furious commands to their systems to halt the instinct.
"I have a theory, Starscream," Megatron said.
Cold, just like that of the arctic, froze down his backstruts. It was nothing but a physiological reaction. One Starscream was unfortunately familiar with.
It precluded the short words of wisdom his processor shot to him.
Run. Grovel. Fight. Run.
Really, it would be nice if his processor could at least agree with itself.
"Erm..." he tried, stepped back again. The light above them remained centered exactly overhead no matter if he moved. It made for the disconcerting feeling that he hadn't moved at all.
"A theory," the warlord leaned down, "regarding where your true loyalties lie."
There was no conscious decision to make the memories move once more. Starscream watched them happen without being able to direct which incidents appeared and which did not.
As someone scientifically minded, he had long before read Shockwave's reports on the cortical psychic patch. It operated on two fronts; the biological and the psychological. Obviously, the patch targeted a mech's biology by 'patch'ing into a neural net. But the technology was still influenceable.
If he was skilled enough at it, Starscream would be able to influence the patch. He could force the tables over and pull through Megatron's memories instead. He could-
But he couldn't. Starscream hadn't ever had the time to play around with such cognitive training and, besides that, he just happened to hate the patch. The very idea made his plating tight.
It seemed the warlord had no such qualms. A part of him wasn't even surprised to discover that Megatron had, in fact, read those same manuals and quite possibly even trained with it. Wasn't that how he had escaped his near-death state after the space bridge incident anyways?
As if summoned by those thoughts, the mindscape moved to the space bridge remains. Debris, hovering in space. His master's body among such trash.
If only it had stayed there.
The Starscream of the memory crawled atop the dying warlord, pulling the dark energon free and kicking the helpless body aside with a taunt.
The Starscream of the present decided he hated the cortical psychic patch and its accursed creator.
He barely made himself turn away from the memory to look at his former master.
"My...loyalties?" he tried slowly. "Why, to-to you, of course! My-"
It sounded just as fake to say as it no doubt did to hear.
"Quiet," Megatron growled and the seeker obeyed without question. "Do not try to lie to me. I am here to determine the answer to my theory through your actions, your very thoughts, and not what lies you've always told me."
Flashes of Cybertron slid around them. The old institute. The gladiatorial arenas where he, as a high ranking citizen of Vos, got prime seating to watch as the infamous Megatronus tore some organic beast apart. The returning cycles at his tower reading the radical, beautiful proposals and speeches of Megatron of Kaon, as prescribed by some archivist named Orion Pax.
The current Megatron's face had softened watching those moments of old.
But those cycles were long past. They both had to know how such awe and idolizing long ago faded into a hatred they both shared.
Then it was Earth. Optimus was telling him to "turn" from Megatron's path. Then the Nemesis, where Starscream was screaming at Knock Out to address him with his proper title.
"All hail Starscream" the vehicons chanted passionlessly. "All hail Starscream."
They'd never believed in him. They'd never truly accepted that he was the leader of the decepticons. Not even Knock Out, the one who was attempting to join him in leading the decepticons of Earth, had ever looked at him with respect and adoration and fear.
Anxiety, maybe, when he'd carved lines through the medic's perfect paint, but not true terror.
The lack of that emotional trio should have let Starscream know the truth long before Megatron had returned to life and beat it into him: he would never be the leader they desired.
But-But-all this was why he had left, frag it! Why drag him back now? Why drag him back to the cortical psychic patch rather than termination or a more typical trouncing?
Somewhere behind him, Megatron let out a long chuckle.
"A word of advice?" he laughed, "Stop thinking out loud."
Scrap, had he said all that? Starscream looked behind him at the monster and broke into that nervous grin once again.
"Master," the seeker tried, "What is this about?"
One massive arm waved out over their surroundings. He danced back away from its reach, although the gesture was far from touching him.
"To see where your allegiances lay. What interesting answers I seem to be getting..." Megatron mused, looking back out at another scene during his stasis. "You deem yourself more capable of leading the decepticons than I am?"
It was-
It was not a question.
But it still demanded an answer.
"Wh-no! You misread me-"
The dreamscape changed again. Starscream was prowling proudly in front of his clones.
"Esteemed members of my armada," he began to perorate, "You now stand upon the very precipice of glory. To meet the destiny which I have so tenaciously worked towards!"
Instead of being allowed to continue his grand speech, one of the clones interrupted him. "Dynamic leadership of the decepticons!" it had declared.
No matter how insulting being cut off was, the sentence was proof that they were him.
They were one, thought as one, dreamed as one- and that was the destiny he had longed for.
"As long as their master remains in limbo, so does their cause." He told to a smug Knock Out in the medbay. "The decepticons deserve a strong, alert leader."
Strong as he physically was, the warlord on the berth was not that leader.
Not anymore.
After realizing, however slowly the discovery took to dawn on him, that Megatron was no longer the masterful leader he had started as, the army had started their collapse. As a lieutenant, although not yet the first lieutenant, Starscream had done his best to keep it together.
And he determined he could do it better than Megatron could. The war had driven his master mad. Or maybe he always had been; even when he was the inspiring gladiator speaking from the arena floor about a world so much more fair and wonderful than the horrid state they lay in then.
How absolutely infuriating that this instability was exactly what the decepticons wanted. No matter how he tried to lead them, they disrespected his rule and waited for Megatron to return again.
Every. Single. Time.
Even though Megatron was the type to toss them all aside. Wasn't he proof of that?
Was he?
This was, after all, the opposite of being tossed aside. This was being dragged back.
For death? For agony?
...For a place in the army again?
Now he was trying to pitch a coup idea to Airachnid. She failed just as badly as Knock Out had, although in a far different way. From that cave came Skyquake's grave; dark energon in his servo and broken aside.
Wait! Lord Megatron! Not your spark chamber! You do not know what it will do!
Symbiosis. Wonderful, addicting, sickening symbiosis. How thrilling it had been to feel someone so tied to his spark, so unable to disobey him-
And how easily he had ripped the dark energon back out of his spark only moments later.
That was not how he wanted his army. That wasn't how he wanted himself.
With the dark claws of something else looming over his frame always.
It was bad enough having to live under Megatron. Whatever it was waiting for him to slip up while he had dark energon in his spark chamber?
"Loyalty." Megatron spat, reminding Starscream that the warlord was there. The gray mech stood over him, casting him in shadow.
Always that same spiky, dangerous, comfortingly familiar shadow that he despised so thoroughly.
"Your every waking impulse has been to thwart me! Undercut me! Overthrow me!"
Oh ho? Was that so? Sure, sure; when he'd so far as told Soundwave that he accepted his place underneath Megatron, that was just unarguably him trying to undercut the warlord!
There was a flash of rage from his mental companion. The seeker's wings sank down.
"...I...I said that too, didn't I?"
Enough of this. Though he was far from hoping to expedite his own death, Starscream didn't like to prolong anticipation either. He made his wings flare up in righteous anger.
"I'm done!" he tried to growl, though it sounded weak, like a whimper, to his audials. "I don't want to play this game anymore!"
He didn't even know what the game was, frag it! If he had no access to the rules, how was he expected to manipulate any sort of favorable outcome from this?
"We stop when I say we do," Megatron denied him.
But of course. Oh, of course. Always on his time, always at his pace-
"Stop what? Stop what?" Starscream asked frantically. "What purpose do you have? What is it you're hoping to do here?"
Besides humiliating him? So far as he remembered, and he was sure he'd never forget it, that was what the warlord like to do.
Megatron let out a sigh. The memories around them returned to the gray of neutrality.
Or the gray of the dead, if he thought of it that way. Starscream preferred not to. He really, really did not want to die in his own processor (or at all).
"In the past, you have been an asset to the decepticons. While your loyalty has never been to me-"
Another set of memories wherein Starscream tried to get their leader's life support turned off backed this claim up nicely.
"-your goals have never seemed to be to destroy this army. Just...to give them the 'dynamic leadership' that they 'deserve', wasn't it?"
Starscream sneered.
"Perhaps in the past," he waved and the memories blew away. "But I am not welcome in the decepticon army anymore- or did your new pet Dreadwing tell me wrong?"
He shouldn't be sneering. He really shouldn't be taunting.
But he did have the habit of saying too much and then falling pointlessly into praise as if that could cover up the earlier hostilities.
"No one asked you to leave the decepticon fold," Megatron argued.
Oh, hah! That was a joke.
Maybe he wasn't actually here at all. Maybe his energon deficiency had left him hallucinating, because this entire situation was just too laughable.
"I wasn't exactly made to feel welcome at the time," he shot back.
This time, the dreamscape moved to support his sentence rather than one of Megatron's.
That fusion cannon causing his face plates to sear in heat as it pointed uncaringly at him in the cave. Soundwave's unmoved visor recording him as he said he'd learned his place...only for their master to toss him aside in favor of Airachnid. Airachnid! A proven traitor!
The irony of that was not lost on him, but Starscream also refused to humor it.
The agony of each clone as it fell to that same threatening cannon. The pede crushing him down to the floor of the Nemesis just because he had the 'audacity' to try to kill Optimus Prime and end the war. The threats and hits and growls over the vorns.
To no surprise of his own, Megatron did not seem moved by the collage of pain and fear.
It made Starscream want so badly to kill him.
But he did not seem amused or gleeful to see the memories either.
And that made Starscream want so badly just to see a bit of regret on those scarred faceplates.
Just one ounce would be enough.
It'd drive him to his knees in relief. Devotion.
"What about now?" the warlord asked rather than showing either of the expressions Starscream half-hoped to see.
Anything was better than this unreadable limbo.
"What. What do you mean?" he blinked.
Flaring red optics looked away from the memories and locked on him.
On him, not his optics.
Megatron could see right through him and somehow never saw him at all.
"Are you ready to give up on your play at independence?"
Starscream considered his 'base' of operations. One half of a run down ship without any energon in its stores. No company to hurt or comforts. No safety but no master.
"You..."
What was he supposed to think? 'Ready'? Megatron acted like he was a sparkling, leaving his tower too early and being picked up by the watch and carried back to his carriers. It made him bristle.
"...you want me back?"
So why did his voice go so small?
Why did he say that instead of an insult?
The expression on the warlord's face was guarded. Starscream couldn't tell if he'd seen a flash of disgust or if that was his imagination.
"The decepticons do need capable soldiers. Not a leader or one who would waste his waking hours trying to be that unneeded leader. But officers, fighters, scientists, strategists- we have lost more recruits than we have gained. We face not only our autobot enemies, but scavenging rogues as well. Would you rather be one of us, or one of them?" Megatron frowned. "These rogues do not work together. They are alone with enemies everywhere. Is that truly what you want for yourself?"
But-
But-
"I'm not-I'm not...I threw you all away. I can't-I'm n-"
Why couldn't they have stayed gone?
Why couldn't he have stayed gone?
"You are far from ideal," the warlord waved him off and Starscream's wings hiked up, this time without his consent.
"F-fa-r f-from ideal?" he stuttered. "Excuse me?"
The bigger mech shook his head. "You were not even the greatest lieutenant I had ever had watch my side. A side effect, I'm afraid, of your tendency to try to stab that same side rather than guard it."
Oh, like that wasn't the sort of dynamic all decepticons had.
As if they weren't always turning on eachother and stabbing each other in the back after promising to protect it and fighting for Megatron's attention.
It was undoubtedly better here on Earth than the chaos had been at the height of the war, but still.
"I'm sure even your beloved," the seeker curled his lip. As if any lieutenant of Megatron's could be beloved. As if any of them could be valued more than he, the longest running second in command, had been (which, apparently, was not at all) -"Dreadwing isn't perfect."
And there Megatron's expression softened.
"No one is perfect, Starscream."
The oddly gentle tone made the smaller mech wilt down on himself.
"But-"
Of course there would be a 'but'. Of course any attempt at reassurance would come with a clause.
"-like his departed twin, Dreadwing understands honor."
Irritated once more, Starscream lost his subdued air and snorted again.
"Of what use is honor?" he jeered and the gray around them changed into memory. Skyquake, falling aflame to the ground where he made his fatal impact. Skyquake, rising again to Starscream's commands.
"So quick to reject my authority while you lived", he had said. They always rejected his authority. If not for the unnerving sensations dark energon brought him, the substance could have tempted him to awaken more dead warriors. How amusing it would have been to revive all those who had mocked him over his subservience to Megatron in life and watch their undead minds obey his every whim.
"Honor led him to his death," Starscream pointed at the memory of Skyquake as the dreamscape changed back to the green seeker falling to his demise. "And it no doubt will lead good little soldier Dreadwing to his as well."
Despite what he expected as a reaction to those words, he heard Megatron laugh.
"Indeed." Sharp dentae flashed, but it was not in threat. It was amusement. It was agreeance. It was pride. "Honor is a silly concept. Not even Optimus adheres to it anymore."
Wait, wh-
Questions for another time, it seemed, since Megatron did not pause to elaborate on that odd statement.
"I need someone who is willing to be cunning. Someone willing to lure in enemies and then indulge his penchant for treachery by tearing them apart. Someone who is not held back by the codes and morals that those like Dreadwing and even Soundwave are. Someone," he turned to the seeker, "like you."
Starscream's mouth gaped open without word.
"Well, Starscream?" his former master extended a servo and let it hang there. "Will you join us again? Will you provide the decepticons you believe in their edge towards victory?"
A part of him wondered briefly how real this offer even was. Wondered what would happen to him if he did say no.
But not even Megatron needed to know what would be done in that scenario.
Because they both knew it would never occur.
Not now.
While half his decision to gingerly take the servo was in fear that his refusal would get him killed, the rest was delusioned delight that Megatron himself had come to him to beg for his return.
"R..." he murmured nervously, "Really? This wasn't a trap? You aren't going to kill me?"
The servo folded closed over his and tugged him upright. Such dangerously sized appendages. So able to crush him. So able to hurt.
It did not squeeze tight enough for any hurt.
"You are more valuable besides me than against me," Megatron said and all Starscream heard was those words that mattered most.
Valuable to him- not as a person, but as a commodity, as a game piece.
But frag if being a vital game piece did not feel far better than living alone without resources or direction or validation of any kind.
"Infighting has nearly destroyed the Decepticons during your absence. We must operate as a united front if we are to win the war for Cybertron."
And, just like he had when he had been vorns younger and flew to join the new faction on their planet, Starscream found himself forgetting the planet was dead in favor of believing they, together, could win it.
AN- In some ways, the Megatron and Starscream of this fic are a bit like the Knock Out and Breakdown of it; possessive and dependent messes respectively. Just on steroids.
