Hey people! New chapter again (well, duh) and I've been a bit behind with my reviews...so I'm putting them all here! (beams and looks pleased with herself.)

Soryu: O.O' Am I that transparent?! You'll find out about the ray later, but Ripplewing's ''secret' is here...

Simply Crisis: Don't worry. I'm not going to kill off my Screampuff, but it ain't pretty...

Skins Thunderbomb: Yeah, it killed me to do that to him, but... it had to happen. Or something like it - and yes, the brothers'll get their comeuppance, but not..just...yet. I haven't worked that part out yet ;)

Canis maior: I'll only make it slash if the story lets me. If it doesn't, I won't, but if you've seen any of my other stuff you'll know how I think about Tf 'slash', but I won't put it in for the sake of a PWP quickie. Is it the 'guy-guy' thing you don't like or the actual PWP-sex-scene parts? I'm not being snitty, just curious and nosey 0:)

Cobalt Cat: I can't say -yet - but look! I did! Or soon-ish, anyway. Speaking of which...

Here we go again!


Consequences

They sat, side by side, savouring the night breeze drifting aimlessly around the tower-tips of the Academy. Skyfire didn't think to question how they had arrived; Starscream was sitting quietly next to him, the stars were shining in the warm night above... nothing else mattered. They sat in silence - there was no need to speak, nothing that needed to be said. Everything was right, utterly right, and the scientist could feel it resonate in his core. Everything was fine.

After a while, he slowly became aware of something disturbing the rightness, nudging insistently at the total, absolute serenity of the moment. He frowned absently, fumbling vaguely for whatever it was that could possibly be important enough to interrupt so he could deal with it and get back to gazing at the stars.

Realisation eventually floated gently to the top of his consciousness, oddly nebulous though it was, that he had meant to tell Starscream something. What was it now... Ah, yes, that was it. He turned to his student, dimly noting that the movement felt slow, a little...strange... He batted the feeling aside as unimportant. He had to concentrate to remember what, exactly, it was that he...ah yes.

"I'm glad you're all right Starscream" he said, turning his face to the young flier with a warm smile. "I was worried; I should have stopped you testing the ray."

"You needn't have been" Starscream said, turning his head slightly but not looking fully at Skyfire. The flier's face was half in shadow from the nearest tower, his optics burning steadily half in glittering starlight, half wrapped in wraith's tails. The effect was a little...unsettling, despite the snug, fuzzy cloud reassuring him that it's fine, everything's wonderful. You're here, and everything's right, isn't it? Skyfire tried to activate his other sensors to see him better, but couldn't quite manage it somehow.

Now, despite the numbing pink fog, he was beginning to feel a little uneasy, but Starscream was still talking. "You needn't have worried, Skyfire" he said, pulling his legs around so he sat side-on, half crouching. "It didn't hurt."

Now bumps were appearing in the fog, hinting of jagged edges and white water. Skyfire sluggishly reached for the branch of normality keeping him out of the dark current he could sense just beneath the fog - "It looked painful. Your arm was a mess..."

The flier smiled up at him dreamily. And now there was a voice screaming at him through the mist, foggy and muted through the vapour, Get out of this you fool, get out!

It was then he realised that there were no higher towers.

The young mech laughed, as if Skyfire had made a particularly simple, funny mistake, and he had to correct him as you would a child.

"Oh, Skyfire! Of course that hurt. That hurt a lot. But dying isn't painful...you just "

And the flier smiled at him, smiled with his jaw and cheek dented beyond recognition and his right wing an oozing stump; his chest gaping wide with rigs sparking and his right arm a straggling tangle of spurting, clotted wires with fuel lines dragging behind...

"It's all right, Skyfire" Starscream sighed, voice throttled and wet as the fuel bled in gouts from his throat and wires scraped against Skyfire's carapace as he sat there, frozen, unable to move with the cold, creeping horror of guilt and death.

"...you showed me. It doesn't hurt..." the corpse murmured, reaching up one fuel-oozy hand to grab his shoulder...

Skyfire came shrieking back to reality like an express train, falling into consciousness with a jolt so abrupt he almost felt it, clinging feverishly to the bench for support. Head snapping up, optics wide and panicked, he saw a slight, shadowy figure standing before him - he almost screamed again, then reason roared loudest in his mind and showed him it was-

"Ripplewing," he gasped in relief; then sudden panic swamped him. "How is..."

"Stable, stable" she snapped. "Like the last time you asked. I told you - he won't be anywhere near all right for a good while yet, let alone able to talk to you or anyone else. That infernal surge shorted out his radio, self-repair systems, most of his sensors - anything with connections sensitive enough to be fried was fried. Don't even get me started on his arm and wing. So for Primus' sake as well as mine and the medics, will you refrain from asking inane questions!"

Skyfire hung his head and propped it on his hands with a sigh. "I'm sorry... it's my fault. I should have done something; insisted a drone tested it, I tested it, something..."

Ripplewing's optics narrowed. "Beating yourself up about it won't help him or anyone else" she said crisply.

Stalking rapidly around the larger scientist, she sat next to him on the wide bench. The Academy wasn't used to serious accidents, and this waiting room was rarely used, if ever. As such it had a neglected air, despite the attentions of the diligent sweeper droids and the odd conscientious tech, adding its own gloomy weight to the already guilt-racked scientist taking up most of the corner bench. Not that this impressed Ripplewing.

"Look at yourself. You're no good to him, the medics or the other students" she said, waving a hand at the door. "Herding the students out and letting them loose for the rest of the lesson was irresponsible. Not being strict enough with the flyboy was sentimental foolishness. It happened, now deal with it."

Skyfire looked up at her, shocked and a little hurt. Ripplewing saw the look but rolled right over it. "Welcome to the real world. Bad things happen to people, so you fix them up as best you can and send them out to fight another day, a little wiser and a lot sorrier, and they either come back stronger or they come back dead. That's how life works, at the core of it, and if we'd bashed out more of that mech's cockiness he wouldn't be in this mess."

"But then he wouldn't be Starscream" Skyfire murmured faintly, groping for firm ground under his feet as he tried to brace himself against the torrent of harsh words.

Ripplewing snorted. "He'd be alive, and safer - and so would we! I was a war-medic, Skyfire - I know all about what happens when flyboys let loose. They get killed, and take others with them."

Under the smothering weight of guilt and fear and the remains of the nightmare, a breath of anger whispered over the embers of Skyfire's spark. "You have no right to condemn him, Ripplewing" he grated, "and neither does anyone else in this so-called Academy. The mech has potential, so much it's obvious, but if you're willing to throw him away on bad memories and a single mistake...!"

"Yes, good, that's enough." Ripplewing cut in, holding up one long-fingered hand as Skyfire stood and glared down at her. "Now we've cut through all the guilt and the self-pity, can I at least start on fixing you?"

Skyfire looked at her in consternation, then as she flicked her gaze pointedly at his wing and shoulder he noticed his white plating was peppered with shards of metal from the null-ray. His internals constricted for a microsecond when he saw the jagged slivers of red and silver embedded into his arm.

He looked back to Ripplewing, the anger ebbing swiftly as it had arrived as he saw how worn and depleted she looked. "I can manage..."

"Phloxes and prettification" she snapped absently, yanking him onto the floor by his other arm and level with her shrewd purple optics. "If I don't the medics'll have to, and they're busy enough."

This time Skyfire saw the distracting bluster and sharp words for what they were. "Thank you."

She snorted, but started working out the splinters.

He knew there was nothing he could do for the flier other than get in the way of the medics, but after Ripplewing had methodically pulled and sealed each of the splinter wounds Skyfire headed down to the infirmary. It wasn't that far from the waiting room, thankfully, but the crisp pale corridor seemed to stretch into infinity as Skyfire hovered uncertainly by the entrance. He knew there was no way of talking to Starscream, or even what he'd say if there was, but the remaining guilt creeping behind his optics coupled with his friendship with the mech kept him standing there waiting, indecisive and anxious, until a leaving tech took pity on him and waved the scientist in.

The medics had had to work fast if they were to stop the flier going into stasis permanently, so they hadn't been gentle removing Starscream's outer plating. Most of his red chestplate lay in piles of ragged strips on the floor, and what remained of his wing had been opened up like a cyberbiology specimen so they could get to the ruined sensors and fuel lines beneath. Starscream's helmet and lower faceplate were a shattered wreck, almost a mockery of how he had once looked.

"It's not as bad as it looks" the tech said, correctly interpreting Skyfire's low gasp of shock. "We had to practically pull his plating off to get at the major damage, it was so dented, but it's only cosmetic. Your friend was lucky - his fuel and fluid system was this close to igniting but we managed to stabilise him a while ago and got his self-repair up and running." She turned to give Skyfire a weary, comforting grin and clapped him carefully on the shoulder. "He'll be fine. May not come out of stasis for a while, but that's his internals checking him over and pulling power for repairs, so nothing to worry about. He's lucky."

Skyfire shook with relief, legs suddenly shaking and unable to hold him as if he'd been the one injured. The tech smiled sympathetically. "Kid's lucky to have someone here for him." Skyfire nodded absently, unable to think as his mind, seemingly spinning for hours on end, suddenly fell into thankfulness and he proved incapable of doing more than nodding. The tech, understanding, made for the door as patiently as she could in her exhaustion and said kindly "Look, he might wake up today, it might be next week, but you're welcome to sit with him, if you want, so's he's not on his own."

That, Skyfire could respond to easily. "Thank you. All of you...for everything you've done."

"No problem" she said, an honest, pleased smile shining through the fug of energy monitors wailing thinly for recharge and turning her plain, masked face into a picture. She left, and the door hummed softly shut behind her as Skyfire settled himself next to Starscream's still form.

The flier didn't wake that day, or the next, and Skyfire still had classes to go to despite his preferences, so it was with dismay late one evening that he walked into the medical bay to hear that Starscream had reactivated that morning without him.

He almost ran into the younger mech's room, casting hurriedly around only to see him recharging on a berth. The medic came in to tell him quietly that, as the damage was so severe, a few systems weren't totally fixed yet like his radio and vocaliser, but the main routines were up and running.

Skyfire thanked him absently; the medic, noting the scientist's absorbed expression, left him to his own devices.

The scientist moved to the unconscious Starscream's side and stood over him almost protectively. The medics said you asked for me when you woke up... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I wasn't there - I let you down all over again...

"I'm sorry Starscream" he whispered, hands clenching again and again at his sides as he relived the explosion and the terrible waiting after; the scream, the flash, the look on his face...

"I let you down again."

Total silence filled the room.

Then...

Skyfire...?

The scientist started and looked around.

"Starscream?"

He looked down to see the red optics flickering, growing stronger and flashing into full, flaming life.

You never let me down.

"Wha...How...?

Internal radio, remember? The flier grinned, the familiar shining sprite-smile restored to its possessor.

"The medic said it was offline..."

Starscream shrugged. I suppose I fix fast.

Skyfire smiled hugely, tension pouring from him like steam from a smelter as anxiety and fear cooled and vanished. The beam became a laugh, and Starscream looked at him in amused bewilderment as the scientist roared with laughter that almost bordered on the hysterical. Skyfire didn't care; he had his sprite back, and all was well.

Elsewhere, a pair of mechs twinned in dark hues of not in spirit glowered as they schemed.

"You should've let me shoot the slagger Dar! Then we'd be sure!"

The sleek musclecar leant elegantly against a wall as his brother raved and paced, as different in temperament as they were alike in looks. "Patience, Combine. I told you, that is not the way. The Balance must be kept. The Program must be equal."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, Dar, but the runt's still alive and foulin' up our air! When're we gonna get him?!"

"Patience!" Derby repeated, sharply this time. "If you run ahead and we are caught, our chance to rid Cybertron of more flying garbage is lost and the Balance will be undone. There must always be conflict, and death is only a means to the End." A vicious smile gleamed like righteous fire in the dark. "And if some miserable guttersnipe has to suffer to preserve the eternal Balance, well..."

Optics locked in honourable, ignominious murder. "Then the end justifies the means. Don't you agree, brother mine?"

"Yeah!" Combine grinned.

"Time for some...fun."


As ever, please read and review. I just found this line-thing - very handy. much tidier now. ;)

Little notelet - Derby is pronounced Englishly, ie. Dahr-by, and Combine like the Harvester or the gun or whatever (Com-bine, as opposed to "Constructicons, com-bine!" It's all in the emphasis.) Pardon my little eccentricities.

I don't own anyone/thing except for Ripplewing, the Unnamed Tech and the two little gits bugging my seeker whom I have finally named after a brainstorming session with my Dad. (note to the above: Thanks!) and the get out you fool bit was inspired by The Wind In The Willows. Please don't sue me anyone.