My Madness, My Saving Sanity
Chapter Seventeen: Too Stubborn to Die
By: Nightelfcrawler
Author's note: While this is G1 based, I've made Starscream a blend of his G1 and Armada personalities just because I find the dichotomy of it fascinating. It takes place in no particular timeline, following no particular events. Also, please review politely. If you haven't something nice to say, keep it to yourself please. Also, I despise nitpicking, please don't make comments about grammar or single spelling mistakes. Enjoy the story, don't be picky.
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Skywarp's jaw fell open. "Is that… no… it can't be."
"What?" Thundercracker asked irritably.
"It's something unusual, that is for certain." Ratchet mused. "And no, Skywarp… it's not what I believe you think it might be." He smiled wryly. "… it's not a sparkling."
"WHAT!?" Thundercracker sputtered startled. "What are you saying?!"
"It appears, Thundercracker, you are sharing your spark chamber with another spark."
The blue seeker stared incomprehensibly at the medic. "That's impossible."
"So I believed…" Ratchet murmured. "The reason sparklings are transferred after they grow too large is for this very reason. Their energy patterns interfere with the mech's normal operations. The symptoms are… headaches, short temper, lack of recharge, uncharacteristic behavior, and abrupt system crashes… the spark will try to take control, but it's typically incompatible with the hosts' systems unless given full access willingly. As you had no idea that this spark was here, naturally you did not give it permissions to take over your systems."
"But…how did another spark get into my chamber?" Thundercracker asked slowly, a frown on his face.
"TC… who you been fraggin' behind my back?" That earned Skywarp a dirty look.
"Nothing like that." Ratchet mused. "This spark is fully matured… and I've seen it before, as a matter of fact."
"You have?"
"Yes." Ratchet said with a small smirk down at the two confused Seekers. "You see… most mech's sparks are blue, like both yours are… I've only once before seen a white spark with rings around it…" He lifted his optics to the computer read-out, and punched a button. Starscream's schematics leapt onto screen. "In your commander."
Both of their jaws went slack.
"It's… Starscream?" Skywarp whispered, optics wide with sudden hope.
"Your wing commander is probably the most stubborn soul I know…" Ratchet muttered. "I have absolutely no clue how he managed to stay alive without being in his own body, but somehow it seems he managed." He frowned a bit. "I suppose it might have something to do with the anomaly of his spark itself, but I haven't had time to study it to find out WHY it is the way it is yet." Ratchet shook his head. "At least I will still have the opportunity to find out, it seems."
"So…he's ok?" Thundercracker said softly, one hand hesitantly hovering near his open chassis where the two sparks pulsed with different beats. His own spark was slow and steady, flickering blue in the med-bay's florescent lighting. The other spark flickered faster, almost flighty, as if it were anticipating something to happen.
"From what I can tell, his spark seems to be in perfect condition... just sharing space with yours."
"So…what do we do?"
Ratchet gave a small sigh. "That's the tricky part… Megatron destroyed his body down to the molecular level… I'm going to have to build an entirely new one from scratch." He gave the spark a dirty look, with a disgusted expression. "…again." A sigh emphasized his frustration. "Honestly, I should just start up an assembly line for his make and model… would save a lot of time."
"How long will that take?"
"Longer than it's safe to leave him inside Thundercracker." Warned the medic with a frown. "We're going to have to think of an alternative… otherwise it will come to the point where there will be a struggle between sparks… and someone's going to have to give…"
"I don't like the sound of that." Thundercracker growled darkly. "What can you do?"
"I'll have to think of some options… until then, I'm ordering you off duty. No rough-housing. Any amount of stress you put on your body and spark could trigger a catastrophe. I'm surprised you've not run into problems before this." Ratchet shook his head. "If you start to feel dizzy, headaches or violent tendencies, you are to come see me at once. Until then…" He presented a syringe and stuck it into an exposed energon line. "This should help with the headaches. If you start to feel strange, you might try giving in and seeing if Starscream's spark manages to take control or not… this is a unique situation, and I would be most curious to see how two sparks co-exist within one body… but don't do anything you don't feel comfortable with."
Thundercracker made a face. "I don't like the idea of letting him take over MY body… alive or not… it's still mine… and he's got more than enough ego for two bodies…"
"Fair enough." Ratchet chuckled. "I suppose were I in your shoes I'd feel the same, and you two are far closer to him than I ever want to be. Nonetheless, you're to take it easy… and not a word to anyone else…."
"Oops…" Skywarp said belatedly, drawing the glare from them both. "I erm… kinda already told Skyfire."
Ratchet sighed. "Well he's a level-headed bot… I'm sure he won't mention it to anyone else."
Famous last words.
It just so happened, the very moment Skyfire received Skywarp's communication, he'd had a mouthful of high-grade. It promptly ended up splattered all over Sunstreaker's face.
"WHAT?!" He bellowed, coughing and choking out the liquid, as Sunstreaker sat frozen, completely in shock as the liquid dripped off his face. "S…say that again, Skywarp?!" Everyone was staring at the large mech in surprise.
"Skyfire?" Optimus asked with concern. "What is it?"
The scientist blinked up at his commander, optics still wide with shock. "Sir… you're never going to believe this…"
Needless to say, the news traveled like fire through dry brush. By the time Skywarp was helping Thundercracker walk woozily out of the medical bay, the entire base knew, and were waiting for them just outside.
It was a very long day.
The questions Thundercracker had to field were nothing compared to the odd looks he got. Some didn't believe this was a coincidence, some found sick ways to twist it. Overall though, everyone took the news rather well. Optimus seemed quite pleased, and offered his support and assistance with anything that they might need. A few of the others weren't ultimately pleased, but they couldn't very well SAY they weren't glad Starscreams' spark had survived without sounding like cold sparked Decepticons. Thus, Thundercracker abruptly had several new allies watching out for his well-being like a femme carrying a sparkling. Ironically, it wasn't far from the truth, except THIS spark was not a passive child along for the ride, but like a parasite trying to wrest control.
Typical. Starscream never had been the type to just sit back and twiddle his thumbs.
The headaches continued, but now that he knew why they were happening, he made a point to start recharging in Ratchet's medical bay just in case an 'alternate' persona showed up. Since his initial outburst in his quarters, things seemed to have calmed down. Now, when he felt those violent tendencies start to surge to the surface, he knew they weren't his own, and did his best to try and relax, to let his own emotions try to calm the other spark fluttering wildly in his chassis. Now that he knew it was there, he could FEEL it within him… like a caged beast fighting to break free. Yet, Ratchet told him the spark probably had the ability to leave if it chose to, but it had to find another host, another energy source… and likely it didn't feel drawn to anyone else as closely as his wing mate, and he was the more stable of the two Seekers left alive.
Somehow, that didn't reassure him.
"The thing with sparks is that normally they cannot exist without a significant source of energon to keep feeding them. So when we do spark transplants we have to hook them up to a short-term stasis field, but it's never been done for an extended period. It's not meant for that… I suppose I could try to find a way to rig one up, but I'm concerned that it could do more damage than simply leaving him with you…" The medic was musing as sat talking to Thundercracker and Optimus about the situation. It had been a week, and the toll was already taking effect on the tired Seeker. He had to consume twice the usual amount of fuel, rest twice as long, and he still appeared exhausted and drained the whole time. The headaches had grown worse, as had his short temper… he was beginning to resemble his commander more and more as bursts of his personality shone through.
Skywarp's personality had completely turned around. He'd volunteered to re-paint Thundercracker to white and red.
That had earned him a dent in his helmet.
"So what are our current options, Ratchet?" Optimus asked solemnly, glancing at the Seeker who appeared about to nod off into recharge again.
"Well… as I said, I can try to construct a long-term housing chamber. But it'll be tricky as I'm sure the spark will not like being in it one bit. We're still not sure how aware sparks are during those procedures, but from the way it's been acting inside of Thundercracker, there's some amount of awareness, and it's driving him nuts. Now, I need some time to construct a new body from scratch… it's going to take a lot of parts I don't have… this isn't just field repairs. I have his schematics still on file thankfully, so I will be able to completely rebuild his most recent form." He paused. "There's just one catch."
"What's that?" Thundercracker asked tired, opening his optics blearily to stare at the medic.
"Well… sparks are souls, the essence and being of the mechs we are. But they don't store the entire life-experiences of a mech. A few memories here and there, the basic essence of the spark's personality, but the CPU is what we use when referencing experiences and memories."
Thundercracker's optics widened as he snapped to alert status. "You're saying even if you rebuild him, he won't remember who he is? His whole life? Anything?"
"We can download any information we need to into the new processors once I've built them." Ratchet said slowly. "But they'll be your memories, not his… he will essentially be a blank slate… We can give him the knowledge Skyfire has, the memories you and Skywarp have of being with him… anything you'd like to share. But they'll be from your perspective, and his own experiences are lost forever… His spark may be the same, but he won't be the same mech… essentially, he'll be a reborn spark. A completely new mech. A few choice memories may have ingrained themselves onto his spark, but most of his life will be gone."
Thundercracker's wings slumped a bit at the news and he stared blankly at the ground. "I… didn't expect that."
"I'm sorry." Ratchet offered with a sigh. "Unless he made a back-up copy of his data files somewhere, everything he is, every quirk, memory and personality flaw will be built again from the ground up. This might not be a bad thing for him… a fresh start, free of any bias…"
"He won't be Screamer, though." Thundercracker muttered. Suddenly he paused. "Wait a second…"
"What?"
"You said if he'd made a backup of his processor… we might be able to use that?"
"It's possible… why? Did he?" Ratchet stared at the Seeker in surprise. "Oddly enough, I wouldn't be surprised knowing how paranoid he was."
"He might have." Thundercracker said slowly. "There's just one catch…" Funny how that was becoming the catch phrase of the day.
"Let me guess." Optimus said solemnly, reading the answer immediately on the ex-con's face. "It's in Decepticon headquarters."
"If it still exists at all. For all I know, Megatron could have destroyed or deleted any data Starscream had kept… knowing him, he trashed his room and destroyed all data pads to start with, now whether or not this information was hidden somewhere protected… well, only Screamer knows."
"Why the frag would someone be THAT paranoid as to save their entire memory files…" Ratchet muttered. "The data storage would be phenomenal. You'd need a whole computer for it."
Thundercracker shrugged slightly. "Well…you don't know Megatron like we do. It's entirely possible Screamer was doing it just in case his processor got damaged by him… I think he's had some close calls before, short-term memory loss, then abruptly it came back to him… I never thought much about it, but if he'd made a back-up, it might make sense how he was able to regain those memories."
"You said this happened more than once?"
"Yes."
"Interesting…" Ratchet murmured. "This could be valuable data… if he made regular backups before he left the Decepticons, there would be information there he might have even dismissed after joining us, or even forgotten. I know he mentioned having fuzzy bits of memory about recent events…"
"It happened regularly, actually." Thundercracker said suddenly, looking thoughtful. "He'd get these foggy periods when he couldn't think straight, go for a recharge, then come back his old self. I just thought it was recharge deprivation, but now… I'm not so sure. Maybe Megatron knocked a few chips loose and he had to fix them."
"The question is, how will we get into his quarters, and if they're still intact, where would we find the data." Optimus murmured.
"Getting in isn't a problem, unless Megatron's put up scrambling telemetry to keep 'Warp out… he never did before, since you guys didn't have any kind of warp technology, and Skywarp put up a stink about not being able to teleport into the base… He might not have installed anything, then again he could have… But getting in isn't the problem, it's finding the data and getting out again. Soundwave'll know the minute we're there, unless he's recharging at the time."
"We'll come up with something… this sounds like it could be very important… but we don't have to rush into it, right Ratchet?"
"Hm, certainly not. I'll work on a containment chamber for Starscream's spark first and foremost… The critical move will be getting him out of Thundercracker safely, then stabilized long enough so I can build him a new body. That will DEFINITELY keep me busy for the next orns." He growled darkly with a sigh, rubbing his head. "I swear the idiot is just taunting me… This will be the THIRD time I've repaired him!" He shook his head in frustration. "At least I still have his schematics on file… but building a protoform from scratch is going to be difficult." His optics lifted to the gathered mechs. "You should focus on figuring out how to gather that information we think is stored, and how to get it safely back here. You're not going to be able to simply download all that information into something portable. I'll have to get some kind of massive storage device for you to carry in there and transfer the information. Primus knows how much there is to begin with if we know much about Starscream."
"More than I care to know." Muttered Skywarp. "We're not going to have to… you know… watch the stuff while it downloads will we?"
"I doubt it. The transfer will be rapid and fast, unless you can speed read."
"'Warp?" Thundercracker snorted. "I think not."
"Hey!"