Future Tense - Chapter Five

Disclaimer: As ever, author neither claims nor intentionally implies ownership of the 'Transformers' brand, or any canon character or concept herein, who are copyright 1984-present Hasbro/etc and used with much love and respect to their creators.

"This has gotta be a trick," Skywarp groaned, softly, leaning his head into his hands. "There's no fraggin' way I can have been gone that long and not known about it." He cast a pleading glance at Thundercracker. "Please tell me it's a trick. You've made your point, I don't know where I am or what's going on and I'm in no position to fight you or-or... look, I'll even go peacefully, if you just tell me this is all some big scheme to get me to do what you want."

"And I really wish I could, no word of a lie." Thundercracker vented exhaust in a long sigh. "If only to help my own peace of mind! I just-... I'm sorry, Warp. I wish I could explain it. All I know is that you've been gone a long time." He vented a long, slow pulse of stale air. "A very, very fragging long time. Seeing you here today, it's like… seeing a ghost."

"But it-… I've been missing for the same time it took Cybertron to go round the star three thousand times. How's that even possible?" Skywarp despaired. His wings were steadily sagging lower and lower. "Are you sure I wasn't in that dump the whole time? Really like 100% absolutely definitely sure? I mean, what if I'd been laid up somewhere, in stasis? And you just, just-… maybe my antenna wasn't working, so you couldn't find me?"

"I'm sorry, Warp. We looked everywhere for you. Literally, everywhere," Thundercracker explained, quietly. "Spent every spare waking moment for the first couple of vorns just searching. Must have roped in the entire station to help out for a good chunk of that time. We went through every single residential block, every last rubbish tip and derelict building on the entire planet at least twice, and scanned through every cubic metre of rock you could have possibly reached with your gate. If you'd been out there somewhere? We'd have found you."

Skywarp felt his fingers trembling, and closed them into fists in his lap in an attempt to control them. "My clock would have kept ticking even if I'd been unconscious, too, right? Not… turned out forty vorns wrong. Primus." He drew in a long pulse of cold air. "I can't have fragged things up this bad just from being un-… just from one tiny freakout. Every day of my fragging life, as a Con, I used my teleport and it was fine. We're just starting to get our lives back on the rails, and make a go of things without getting the everloving slag shot out of us? And I manage the biggest screw-up of my life." He covered his face with both hands. "I teleported through time, TC." His groan emerged muffled by his fingers. "That's what you're saying, isn't it? How is that even possible?"

"You're asking the wrong mech." Thundercracker kept up the gentle, soothing pets on his wings, reassured by the way Skywarp was heeling gently to the left and into his hands. "But Starscream may know. We'll ask him, when we get back."

"…yeah. I might need you to translate for me."

"That's assuming I'll know what he's going on about!" Thundercracker chuckled, and lowered his voice to add; "If he doesn't use short words, we can assume that means he doesn't really understand it either."

Skywarp snorted his amusement, remaining mostly silent for while longer, appreciative of the gentle touches but clearly deep in thought. When he spoke up again, his voice was small. "Look, I'd been thinking. What if this is a parallel universe? You don't think I've maybe just... swapped places with your Skywarp, or something?"

Thundercracker gave him a funny look, trying to gauge whether his friend was joking. "Our Skywarp…?"

"Well I mean, I can't travel through time, TC, come on. Just the idea is like I'm living in some stupid Squishy sci-fi. And look at you, all curvy and plastic-looking." Skywarp gestured. "There's no way the Thundercracker I know would have volunteered for such a, a… feeble-looking refit, so I must have teleported into the wrong universe, somehow, where you guys didn't spend half your lives getting shot at. So, maybe I swapped places with the other Skywarp that lives here, and since everything started forty vorns earlier, that's why my clock's wrong." He gave Thundercracker an optimistic look. "Right?"

"Well, I guess it's not completely outside the realm of the possible." The blue jet couldn't help a little smile, in spite of the insults. "But I think you are our Skywarp, Warp. Only you could possibly come up with the idea that time travel is impossible, but teleporting into a parallel universe is just fine."

Skywarp shot him a pursed-lips resentful half-glare. "What makes you think that your Skywarp wouldn't have the same idea? Him and me might be really similar. You're implying he's not exactly brainy." Another thought hit him. "You're gonna send me back, right?"

"What-?"

Skywarp matched stares with his wingmate's tired crimson. "Right?" he chased. "You're gonna make sure I go back to where I came from, and don't skip over everything important that's happened?"

Thankfully, the pale features curved into a small smile. "Sure," Thundercracker agreed, gently. "Soon as we can figure out how you got here in the first place. Did you feel anything unusual when you teleported?"

"I-… well-… no." Skywarp pursed his lips. "I mean, my diagnostics didn't pick it up so I figured it didn't mean anything. It was probably nothing…" He frowned and tried to recapture the sensation he'd thus far tried to forget had happened. "There was-… sort of a… cold feeling, I guess?"

"Cold?" Thundercracker nudged him to elaborate.

"Well, like…" Skywarp frowned, seriously, and after several seconds of intense thought finally came up with; "like everything had just stopped for an astro-second or two. But it-it must have been nothing. My diagnostics didn't record that anything even happened." He gave his friend a glance. "What do you think that means? How… how did that put me here?"

"I don't know." Thundercracker shook his head, disappointed. "Starscream might have a better idea. Soon as we get you back to hospital, we can ask him."

Skywarp hunched his shoulders a little, and gave him a sidelong look, lips pursed. "Great. Like he needs any excuse to yell at me."

Thundercracker managed a faint, knowing smile. "You only want to know if you need to pre-emptively prank him."

Skywarp snorted. "Yeah, TC; I'll play zombie and throw body parts at him until I fall over again." His smile withered. "He's gonna really chew on my audios this time, huh. Not many mechs are skilled enough to break time itself."

"Aw, Warp. Don't be a glitch." Thundercracker slung an arm across his friend's shoulders, gave him a squeeze; Skywarp leaned in, still trembling ever so slightly. "He moped for ages because your last conversation was an argument. And moped because we couldn't find you. And moped because he missed you. You know he keeps his spark on a tight leash, and yells because it's pretty much the only emotion he knows how to express."

Skywarp at least managed a staticky little snort of laughter.

"It'll be fine. I'll wallop him for you, if you can't reach." The blue Seeker put up a hand to his upper arm and gave an invisible something a squeeze – his outline flickered, very briefly, and the excess mass, the familiar boxy design, faded out.

Skywarp gave him a distressed pout, eyeing the holoemitter strapped around the blue jet's upper arm. "Can't you put that thing back on?"

"The holograph?" Thundercracker arched a brow. "Why? You still not completely sure I'm me?"

Skywarp gave him a brief visual once-over. "No, because you look wrong." He gave him a tentative little poke in the arm. "Like a big plastic toy, or something."

"Well, you're going to have to get used to it sooner or later," Thundercracker soothed. "Might as well get it out of the way now."

Skywarp grunted unhappily, and folded his arms around himself, again. "How did you get used to it?" He studied his scuffed foot, distractedly, waved it aimlessly in the void. "Weren't you worried that someone would come along and swat you out of the sky?"

"Yeah, it did take a while. The first version was a little… flimsy," Thundercracker accepted. "And Screamer did get 'swatted' a few times before he managed to design the strength back in. We've been running with this design for a good eleven vorns now, though, it's light, strong, fuel efficient-"

"Wait, are you saying Starscream built them?" Skywarp gave him another look, and couldn't quite hide the doubt in his gaze. "Screamer, who has a knack for getting himself as smashed up as possible? What is he, suicidal? You're not even armed."

"Ah-ah." Thundercracker tapped the little hatches on his upper arm. "They're inside. Not so easy removed by fleshlings with an angle-grinder and a grudge."

Skywarp winced. "That's not even funny." Last he remembered, Thundercracker was barely able to even think about Egypt without going into full shaking retreat, let alone joke about it. He cast a critical glance over his wingmate's lean frame. "It looks ridiculous. Like you're made out of polystyrene. Primus. Even that useless teeny yellow Autobot could poke holes in you." The teleport gave his wingmate a hesitant, very underpowered shove on the arm, then folded his arms, protectively. "You're not getting me wearing it. You can just fix my leg." He waved his stump, meaningfully. "Then I can keep you bunch of skinny little gliders safe if anything actually dangerous comes along."

Thundercracker smiled, sadly. "It's been well tested on the battlefield. This 'silly skinny new refit' helped win the war for us."

Caught off guard, Skywarp could only stare, for a moment or two. "War's over," he echoed, quietly. "You mean, properly over?"

Thundercracker picked up the subtle undercurrent of something else I missed in his friend's words. "Pretty much," he apologised. "Things still rumble on in the background, a little bit. Little skirmishes here and there, that sort of thing, but… it's been… quiet, the last dozen or so vorns, since we took ownership of the space bridge. Megatron's stuck on the wrong side of it-"

"Hey, whoa. Stop, stop! You better stop talking, TC, I can't go back knowing all this!" Skywarp waved his hands. "Bad enough I've seen you lot looking all skinny and weird, if you tell me anything else I can't go back, I'll break history."

"Technically you've already broken history," Thundercracker reminded him. "But that's not such a big deal, right now, because when you go back, the future won't happen this way, any more. Because we won't have had to live without you for all those vorns. Right?"

Skywarp allowed his hands to drop back into his lap. "I still don't think you should tell me much. Just in case." He studied a dull scuffmark on his thumb, where Footloose – little Footloose, real Footloose, not strange green impostor 'Footloose' – had crashed into him in the cavern, just before the aliens had attacked him. "Did you find those fuzzy things?" He glanced up. "What are they?"

Thundercracker shook his head. "We didn't and we haven't." Sensing the disappointment that rolled off his wingmate in great heavy waves, he hastily added, before the dark Seeker could protest; "we were sort of preoccupied by you vanishing, if you remember? Then the Triplechangers came along to cause trouble and… well, chasing your gremlins down in the Rift just got lower and lower on our list of priorities."

Skywarp winced, in sympathy. That couldn't have been a good thing. "Triplechangers? What did they want?"

Thundercracker gave him a tired smile. "Mostly? A fight, we figured." He shrugged, one-shouldered. "We're not sure if they were following orders, or just trying to improve their standing with Megatron by being self-directed. Either seemed pretty likely, given what else was going on."

"…uhh… what else was going on?"

"You don't want to know, remember?"

Skywarp pouted, and gave his friend a little resentful glare. "Ha ha."

Thundercracker gave him a playful shove. "We were already tight for fuel before you disappeared, remember? Which is why Screamer was near-on having a breakdown, trying to pay those overinflated prices our suppliers demanded to keep us all in the air-"

"Prices that Shockwave initiated, the mean one-eyed old slagger."

"Exactly. Well, Megs finally told Shockwave to embargo all the supplies they were sending through. He cut off everything, even those few little dribs and drabs at his usual extortionate prices. I think the hopes were that we'd get so starving and desperate, we'd go crawling back to his mercy, you know? We're sorry, we'll do whatever you say, you win, just please feed us?" Thundercracker shrugged, amiably. "All it actually did was made his loyalists rebel. The fleet didn't take too well to being grounded."

Skywarp wrinkled his nose, unimpressed. "How can a mech riot if he's too tired to do anything?"

Thundercracker smiled, and these was a flicker of that familiar old Decepticon guile in his expression. "Our eminent wingleader saw an opening, and chased it for all it was worth – approached all the grounded Seekers with an offer. If they fell in with us, promised their loyalty to us instead of Megatron? We'd get them refit and back in the air. We knew what they needed, what was important, 'takes a Seeker to know a Seeker', and all that."

"I'm sure they were all overjoyed when they ended up looking like plastic toys. And they actually went along with it? Didn't go straight back to Megs once Screamer had sorted Shocky out?"

"Hey, come on, some of us have a sense of loyalty." Thundercracker gave him another affectionate little shove. "It's hard to be exclusively loyal to a leader who'd been absent for thousands of vorns, and more interested in hounding the leader of the enemy faction than rebuilding what was left of the world." His lips quirked into a lazy half-smile. "Acid Storm's out co-ordinating the rebuild at Vos."

"They're rebuilding?"

"Ehh, after a fashion. It's mostly ground clearance, at the moment." Thundercracker gave his wingmate a sad glance. "Still good and flat over there, you know? Be a prime building spot, once the ordnance has all finally been removed. We might even move back, some day – if they'll still have us." He offered his hand. "Come on. At least lemme get you back to hospital and cleaned up, yeah? We can talk all you like, once you're feeling better."

Skywarp studied the proffered hand, with its unfamiliar little fingers. "…all right," he agreed, hollowly. "I guess it'll be easier to bully Screamer into sending me back if I can stand under my own power again. You're gonna have to get me some fuel, though. I'm too depleted to teleport any more."

"What do I look like, a courier?" Thundercracker curled his lip, gently teasing. "I'm not flying back and forth all orn. I'll carry you."

"You'll what? You, and that… that… polystyrene refit?" Skywarp involuntarily leaned backwards, away from him, brows arching, alarmed. "Like frag I'm gonna let you carry me! I'm lost, not suicidal."

The blue jet made a gently chastising come-hither gesture with both hands. "Just trust me, all right?"

Trust me. Skywarp stared down at the dark palms for several long seconds, the words just hanging between them. When has TC ever let you down, huh? Hesitantly, he slotted his own (strangely oversized) hands into his wingmate's. "If you crash us, I'm gonna kill you," he promised, quietly, allowing his friend to help him to his one unsteady good leg.

"Well, if we do, I promise to stand still so you can get a good shot." Thundercracker made sure he had a good grip before engaging his primary drive. "All right? Secure?" he coaxed, poised to launch, the chilly backwash from his wings sending scraps of old detritus fluttering away.

We're SO gonna crash. Skywarp winced. "No."

The blue Seeker gave him a reassuring smile. "Just hold on tight, eh?"

In spite of the ease with which Thundercracker lifted off, the unnatural quiet of his engines left Skywarp feeling unnerved – as though his engines were running down and they may just... fall out of the sky, at any second. His fingers tightened their grip, involuntarily.

They arrived back to find a scarlet waiting party standing watching them from the street outside the hospital, a glare pinching its dark features, arms firmly folded, foot impatiently tapping.

"Well you two certainly took your time," a familiar glass-etching voice cut across the air between them, very distinct and classically screechy, even over the increasing pitch of Thundercracker's engines as he pulled them up for a landing. "What took you so long?"

"We were talking, for a while. It's still allowed, isn't it?"

"Well thank you so much for keeping me in the loop and letting me know you were sat out there timewasting." Starscream stabbed an arm in the direction they'd just come from. "I mean, it's not as though I was wondering if I should send for a search party, or anything."

Thundercracker just smiled, amiably, and helped Skywarp hobble past him. Somewhat deflated by the lack of response, Starscream muttered something huffy under his breath, and followed his wingmate.

"All right, Warp. Comfortable?" Thundercracker asked, once Skywarp was finally settled back in his (horrible, small) private cubicle.

Skywarp shrugged and pulled a semi-resentful face. "I guess." He waved his foot, aimlessly. "Not like I've got much choice in the matter, huh."

Thundercracker hesitated in the doorway. "We'll get to the bottom of it," he promised.

"And send me back home," the teleport reminded, waving a finger at his wingmate's departing back. "And get me a drink?"

"Is he going to stay put, this time?" Starscream wondered, out in the main area, in an intentionally-loud voice. "Because he can find his own way back next time."

Skywarp sneered at the wall, and demonstrated his knowledge of Earthly hand gestures to whoever cared to be looking.

The voices outside his cubicle carried on at a more hushed level. Whether they didn't realise he could hear them, or just didn't care – or frag, maybe they wanted him to hear – Skywarp couldn't tell. He listened in, anyway, feeling... small. Jittery, inside. He willed his pumps to shut off, but it didn't help as much as he'd hoped.

"So what's your opinion? Is it him?"

"What are you asking me for? You're the one who's been sat poring over the scans the hospital managed to take before he made a run for it. What do you think?"

"…you're the one who just spent the last ten breems sitting on a roof and talking to him. Scans were about as inconclusive as last time. All I want is an opinion, Thundercracker, if you don't want to put your money where your mouth is, just tell me so."

"All right. Honestly? I think it is him, this time."

Starscream huffed quietly. "And your reasoning?"

"Nice to see your usual faith in my ability to recognise our trine-mate, there. I just think it is! There's just too much that fits for it to be anything else. All the little things match up, for a change."

"They have had plenty of practice, Thundercracker. What is this, number three, now?"

"See, that's just it. I don't care how much practice they've had, he's too... too him... you know? If he's a facsimile, then he's a brilliant facsimile-"

Skywarp froze. Facsimile?

"-absolutely perfect, right down to the little idiosyncrasies in his speech, and his special personal brand of handwavium. This isn't some… repainted, relabelled puppet built of spare parts. Which you'd realise, if you went to talk to him. What are you so scared of? "

Starscream lowered his voice, to a soft growl of mixed threat and concern. "I'm not scared. I'm just not getting attached again. Not until we've got good, concrete proof. Last time, it nearly destroyed us, finding out that… thing wasn't who it said it was." He actually sounded genuinely wounded. "I'm not going through all that again. I don't-… I don't think either of us would… cope."

"And what about him? Suddenly slapped down here, thirty vorns into the future, completely lost, needing our comfort and friendship?"

"You haven't precisely been a beacon of glee at seeing him. You're as scared as me, and just as reluctant to get close to him. Keep him at arm's length, in case he turns out to be just another replica."

A frosty silence took hold for a good few seconds.

At last, Starscream spoke again. "I have to go talk to a surgeon." The hollow thoks of his thrusters on the hard ground marked his departure.

Skywarp rebooted his pumps in an effort to shed the tense, tight sensation in his chassis. Was this what the squishies meant by 'having a lump in the throat'?

Well, it sure explained Thundercracker's reserved response, didn't it? Don't see your bro for almost forty vorns? No big deal. They didn't think he was actually him. That he was the impostor, not all these weird skinny 'refits'. He still wasn't even completely sure that he wasn't in a parallel universe. Or that someone had gone to huge amounts of trouble forging a replica of the whole of central Deixar, to trick him into giving up information.

A long-suffering sigh showed that Thundercracker hadn't accompanied his wingmate. Skywarp hastily directed his attention out of the window, hoping it made it look like he'd not been eavesdropping – and just in time, when the blue jet poked his head through the screen.

"Don't know what you heard, there, but, eh. Sorry about that," Thundercracker apologised, awkwardly. "Just... Screamer being Screamer. You know."

"Pfft, I know better than to listen in when he's in a bad mood." The teleport poked out his tongue, making an effort to look his usual irreverent self. "I actually value my auditory sensitivity."

If Thundercracker suspected him of lying, he didn't admit to it. Just... smiled, in a funny, vague sort of way. "Listen, I've got a couple of things I need to attend to," he excused himself. "How about you get some rest, huh? You need to relax, get your head in order, before we start thinking about getting you fixed. I'll get some energon sent down. Sound good?"

"Yeah," Skywarp studied the floor, quietly.

"...it'll be all right, Warp."

"…how can it be, TC? When I've managed to bypass what should have been the most important chunk of my life so far?"

Thundercracker forced a smile. "It'll be all right, because we'll fix it, somehow. We'll send you home, so you don't."