Title: Trinity
Part 3: Starscream
By: Ceris Malfoy
Summary: The truth behind the Command Trine. Currently: Starscream is broken.
Inspiration: This part was actually influenced by my drabble "Burn" in It's A Screamer's World. Readers of both will undoubtedly recognize the similarities. I drew influence from the belief that monsters are made, not born – and my thoughts wondered how a monster of Starscream's caliber could have been formed.
Continuity: G1, some subtle references to the 1986 movie, and a few details from Megatron: Origin.
Status: Part 3 of 3
Starscream is not right; is not sane; is dangerously out of control, and he knows it.
Back when Cybertron was still whole, there had been no place on it quite like Kaon. Kaon was a festering blight upon the otherwise healthy whole of Cybertron that was acknowledged only when there was no other choice. It was the last home of those forgotten or hated by the elite among Cybertronian society; it was the hiding place of those broken and cast aside like useless toys. The whole of Kaon was a slum in of itself, so it could only be inferred that the actual slums of Kaon were the living Pit.
Those disease-ridden sectors of Kaon were most certainly no place for any sparkling, let alone a seekerlet barely out of his first frame.
Starscream liked to tell others that he had thrived in Kaon, and in some ways that is the truth, or as close to it as he can get. Because, for sure, something had thrived in Kaon; something had spread its virus-infused wings and took off. But the raw truth of the matter was that he had barely endured Kaon.
There had been other sparklings, the gutter-born as they were called, with which he should have been able to run with, but he had not been welcome amongst them. He had been too delicate, too fragile to help earn his keep in their groups. Instead, he had become a target. The energon he had sometimes nearly off-lined himself to get was stolen from him regularly; he had been often beat into the ground for no offense other than existing; had often been locked in small, enclosed spaces simply for the fun of hearing his maddened screams.
He was a fast learner though, and the same natural inclination towards speed and agility that would later make him a deadly opponent was the only reason he had remained alive. He had better reflexes, claws, and the sheer desperation to kill, but what use were they against groundlings whose much-thicker armor had been seemingly designed to take a beating, while the smallest touch could send his own sensors screaming? So, he had learned how to avoid them; how to run and hide. Coward, they called him, but he had lived, and that was all that really mattered as far as he had been concerned.
He had left Kaon as soon as he had figured out sustained flight, and had headed straight for Vos. He had taken with him from Kaon two rules of existence that he had cultivated and nurtured close to his spark. The first: He could rely on no one but himself. No other being would ever help him. Those that said they wanted to help always lied. Relying on others would always lead to pain, humiliation, or death. Always. The second: Nothing was free. There was always a price, and more often than not, that price was something he could ill afford to loose. If a deal looked too good to be true, it most likely was.
Despite these rules, he had been young and naïve enough to still have hope that Vos would be different. That maybe he had a carrier or code-writer who would surely take him in. That maybe he could become a ward of the city-state, which surely would have been better than living in the polluted streets of Kaon. He had hoped with every last pulse of his spark that things would be different, that things would be better.
There were no words to describe the hurt when he had received no welcome at all.
No one had cared that he was still a youngling in need of support and guidance. No one had cared that with a little training and education, he would have been a seekerlet any would have been proud to claim as their own. No one had cared that he was suffering the effects of long-term energon deprivation. No one had cared that the sensors in his wings were damaged and that every twitch and movement brought a fresh wave of agony that nothing could assuage. No one had cared that he was young, too young to even be flying on his own, and yet was already well-versed in what it meant to suffer.
No one had cared.
No one.
Bitter, he had sunk into the slums of Vos, taking comfort in the similarities between those refuse-filled streets and those of Kaon. He spent the next several vorns like a ghost, drifting from group to group; welcomed because he was a fellow seeker down on his luck and never noticed, exiled because he was wrong. He was too intelligent and too volatile; his systems too powerful and his frame too small and lithe to belong to a gutter-born seeker.
He had eventually became obsessed with his origins, wondering who his creators were and why he had been abandoned. Vosnian security and firewalls had been an absolute joke – barely any skill in hacking and yet he had been able to break into the system with ease. Public record had a smaller-than-average seekerlet matching his description as 'lost', the carrier of the seekerlet as 'self-exiled in grief'. Private record, however, said that his carrier had been executed for code-theft after the affair between her and his much higher-classed code-writer had been discovered; the resulting sparkling left in Kaon to die.
Fury consumed his being, and he had drifted in a hazy cloud of anger, violence, and deadly intent for many vorns afterwards. The few groups that had been willing to associate with him had dropped contact with him quickly – his rages were indiscriminate between friend and foe, and he was no longer the small seekerlet that was too weak to do much damage. No one even attempted to make contact with him during his few lucid periods, as his calm moments scared them twice as badly as his rages did. Had it not been for Thundercracker, he might have continued living in that maddened haze right up until the start of the Great War.
He remembered the little blue seekerlet with his stubby wing-nubs and bright, curious optics. He remembered how he had seen the innocence that lit the seekerlet's optics like a beacon and felt an unreasonable amount of anger for it. That seekerlet had never known what it was like to be so hungry he'd willingly cannibalize another just to have something in his tank; had never known what it was like to sit silent and pained as he was forced to watch as the ones who beat him drank his energon. That seekerlet had never known what it was like to be trapped in a small box and be deprived of the sky for the amusement of others; had never known what it was like to be used, over and over and over and over again. He remembered how he had been fully prepared to leave the innocent seekerlet to the harassment of the overcharged seekers the sparkling had run into; how he had wanted that innocent seekerlet to know what it was like to be a gutter-born.
He remembered how set he had been all set to leave them to it, and then how he had looked –really, truly, looked – at the seekerlet. All the rage he had felt had left him to be replaced with a strange, aching numbness. His crimson optics, his delicate frame, his elegantly-formed facial plating… the seekerlet had been the spitting image of him at that age, with only the difference of coloration and an un-dented frame to separate them. He had remembered the way his spark had clenched; the way everything froze for a brief moment before the rage had come back: a possessive rage that burned cold and steady in his spark, so different from the previous inferno that had tormented him.
He remembered how the crowd of overcharged idiots harassing his most-likely half-brother had moved as if to pick the seekerlet up and take him, and how he himself had moved, cold focus making his faster and stronger. He wasn't positive, and he had never bothered to check, but he thinks he may have offlined every last one of them. He does remember being covered in an inordinate amount of energon, and vaguely recalls something about embedding a dismembered wing into a wall, but mostly he remembers the ice-cold fury towards the code-writer that had dared replace him, the fierce sense of possession towards the tiny sparkling, and the vague-but-quickly-growing need.
He remembered how Thundercracker, despite having witnessed such brutality, crawled ever-so-trustingly into his arms, cooing and chirping and cuddling close to him. There had been a brief surge in his spark, strange and vaguely frightening, and he remembered knowing that this sparkling would one day be his.
He remembered how he had delighted in forcing his code-writer to acknowledge him, house him, and pay for his formal education. He remembers how he had watched both Skywarp and Thundercracker grow and mature, noting that while Skywarp was both an idiot and a coward, Thundercracker had showed promise. Thundercracker had been so young, so eager, so completely enthralled that Starscream couldn't help but come to care for him, in a manner of speaking. Certainly, neither their shared code-writer nor Skywarp were at all pleased with either Thundercracker's growing infatuation, or Starscream's careful encouragement of said crush.
He had left for the Iacon Institute of the Sciences, where he had met Skyfire. Skyfire, whom had soothed some deep ache in his spark that he hadn't even been aware he had. Skyfire, who loved him deeply despite his faults and desired him despite the fact that Starscream had been used too much, at too young an age to truly desire him back. Skyfire, who wanted to bond with Starscream, despite the fact that an earlier medical examination had revealed that there was an unstable mutation in his spark, one that would prevent him from ever bonding fully. Skyfire, who had given up a prestigious position on the Science Council so that they could travel space together.
Starscream remembered that time; remembered how Skyfire had shattered his whole world into tiny pieces and how he had been swept along into a realm of happiness, safety, and contentment that he had never known before, and would never know again.
True to form, nothing was free, and the price for his knowing such peace had been paid by both of them in pride and death. Skyfire: missing, assumed dead or abandoned on a distant planet. Him: unjustly accused of a murder he didn't commit and sent back to his code-writer in disgrace; stripped of his degrees, the right to call himself a scientist, and the right to work in any institution that might have been willing to hire him. The festering wound in his spark that had only just begun to heal under Skyfire's patient care had been ripped open and infected anew.
For three orns afterwards, he had sat in his room in his code-writer's house, staring out the window at a sky he irrationally hated because Skyfire would never fly in it again. The other seekers in the house drifted on the edge of his consciousness, none of them daring to enter his room and confront him. He remembered the harsh words and arguments, the disagreements about what they should do with him. He remembered that of all the seekers in that house, only Thundercracker stood up for him.
Which is probably why he had ended up in Thundercracker's room one dark night, staring down at his half-brother's recharging form, and thinking. His brief time with Skyfire had taught him something very important about himself: he couldn't stand to be alone. He had had enough of being alone in the slums; had had enough of being feared and hated simply because he was different. Thundercracker… Despite having abandoned the young seeker for first the academy and then for Skyfire; despite knowing him for what he was; despite knowing what he was capable of doing, Thundercracker still accepted him, still wanted him.
He knew he shouldn't do it yet, that he should wait until Thundercracker was fully of age; knew that if he did what he had been thinking of doing that there would be no going back, not for him and certainly not for Thundercracker. He knew that if he did this now, there was a chance he would never again find the kind of love and acceptance Skyfire had given him. He remembered how, at the end of that night, he had decided that he was alright with that because everything had a price, and he couldn't bear to pay that price again. And when he had Thundercracker beneath him, writhing and moaning and begging him ever-so-prettily for more, Starscream felt something in his spark wither and die.
He didn't care.
The years had passed in a blur of relentless training and sleepless nights of passion. He had been determined that Thundercracker would be as good in the air as he was – call him what they will, mock him as they wished, no one could deny that he was superior in the skies. He reluctantly trained with Skywarp as well, knowing full well that he needed a third in his trine and who better than one bound to him through Thundercracker? Thinking like this, he had started to design and build upgrades for the both of them. By the time he enrolled them in the Vosnian War Academy, Thundercracker could reach and maintain speeds up to Mach 3, which while slower than his own Mach 4, was much better than the rest of the seeker core – many of whom couldn't even reach Mach 2.5.
Skywarp, on the other hand, had been one of those unable to reach Mach 2.5. So, in order to prevent Skywarp from dragging them down, he had drawn inspiration from the tales of the first seekers: beings that could transport from one end of the planet to another with a simple thought and the correct coordinates. Building an internal teleportation device had been child's play. Constructing the coding from scratch so that even the most simple-minded idiot could use it without 'porting into a wall? A little bit harder, but not impossible.
Through his relentlessness and cold practicality, he pushed both his half-brothers until all three of them were the first amongst trines graduating the Academy, recognized, loved, and feared equally by the masses. There were no others quite like them – Starscream had seen to that. Sometimes quite violently.
It had come as no surprise to him when Soundwave had approached them. He had not planned on it, to be sure, but it came as no surprise. Soundwave was hardly the only mech to be seeking out his trine, offering little favors and sweet words to try and sway them into aligning themselves with a group/outfit/faction. Others tried to turn his half-brothers against him, unknowing just how badly Skywarp was afraid of him and just how eager to please him Thundercracker was. Others tried to coax the three of them, treat them all as equals. None of them except Soundwave had noticed that the status quo would never be as equals – they were his trine, and he would lead them where he willed as he willed it. Then again, considering Soundwave's little …peculiarity, it was hardly surprising that he had noticed.
Meeting Megatron had been like meeting a twisted mirror – one look and he had known almost immediately that here was a mech such as himself: broken and shattered long beyond repair, but still alive, still kicking, still demanding that the world shape itself as he ordered. Megatron was – is – madness personified, and he had known it then. Despite that knowing, he had wanted nothing more than to join the mech's cause, to belong to something greater than himself, even if he hadn't understood what it would cost him in the end.
Even if he had known the cost, he probably still would have pledged his undying loyalty that day so long ago. Even in the most conniving, back-handed, ego-driven acts of treachery, he is still in some strange way Megatron's. He knows Megatron knows it as well, which is his main suspicion on why he's been allowed to live so long.
And make no mistake about it, it is an allowance, nothing more, nothing less.
He doesn't remember when the madness, the taint in his spark, grew out of his control. He doesn't know if it was because of one-too-many blows to the helm coupled with a distinct lack of trained medics in the Decepticon Armada, or if it was simply that he had been dangling over the edge of the Abyss for so long that the Abyss simply decided to come to him – either way, he is peripherally aware of t all.
The way his intelligence slips and slides and eventually crumbles beneath the weight of his egomania and impatience; the way his cold practicality and colder rage melt under the mindless anarchy of war and become some raging, twisted thing bent on chaos and mayhem; the way his unparalleled skills in the air become a legend, a myth; the way he has forsaken the only being left in the universe that still cares for him; the way he could ever-so-casually toss his lover's battered form out to the vast coldness of space, simply because he can hardly toss out Megatron without tossing his trine, given their similar status of 'wounded'… he is aware of it all, in some deep, dark, secretive nook of his processor. That part of him is beyond furious with what he has become: a treacherous coward kept around for the amusement factor rather than for his worth. That part of him longs for the day when Megatron finally gets tired of putting up with him and simply ends it.
That part of him knows that though there are many similarities between the two of them, Megatron is different in one key matter: he is never out of control. Even when all the universe is deliberately doing everything in its power to thwart him, Megatron is still in control. Megatron has proven to him time and time again that there is nothing that he can do to his leader that Megatron can not come back from.
That small, secretive part of him knows this; knows that his time is approaching fast. That part of him welcomes Megatron's rage, grins and sits back to watch the world explode in beautiful cacophony the way it knows will happen when Megatron returns. Even as that small, secretive part of him watches as the mad other wearing his body struts around with a crown and cape and calls himself King, it waits.
He waits. Megatron will come, and, perhaps, he will be allowed the chance to apologize to Thundercracker before he goes to the Pit – he should have never touched Thundercracker, should have left the youngest of them to a brighter future and a lover that could have loved him back. Skywarp, however, could go burn for all he cared – the damnable glitch had caused more problems than Starscream knew how to deal with, and he will never forgive Skywarp for being there for Thundercracker when he wasn't, when he couldn't.
He waits, because Megatron will come back.
Megatron always comes back.
Part of this feels really rushed to me, and the other part feels a little too long-winded. So, don't be surprised if this chapter goes under some revisions later on. I hope you guys aren't disappointed by Screamer's section. I wanted him to be a raving lunatic at first, I really did, but …well, he decided otherwise. I kinda like the idea of him being a prisoner of his own mind – forced to watch as his body does things he would never have done and unable to do a damn thing to stop it.
I left this at just before Galvatron pops up and goes *kablooey* on Starscream, as I really didn't want to get into the whole immortality thing. Though, now that I think about it, I might end up writing a companion fic about it – you never know. I am definitely in the process of writing a companion fic for this called His Trine – it will be Megatron's POV on all of this. My working summary for it is currently: "Others suspected. Megatron knows." It won't be out for awhile, though. I want to finish up a few of my other fics first.