Note: This chapter was updated 1/5/10, mostly as part of the effort to fix this story's overall narrative voice to make it consistently third-person. But in this chapter's case the ending is a little different as well. But not in any way that really matters, plot-wise. I just liked it better.

24 years later…

1: Imperative

Swoop was precariously perched on the lip of a mist-shrouded gorge that was a thousand meters deep, carved over long eons by the river that wended its way through the bottom of it. He…She was staring single-mindedly into the gorge's depths. Her knees were drawn tightly into her chest, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her bent legs, hands clasped over her shins and fingers determinedly interlaced, as if she was struggling to keep herself from flying apart. Despite the sweltering equatorial heat and its dripping humidity, she was shivering, violent tremors wracking her small body in cyclical waves. Occasionally, sounds emerged from her, little sighs and gasps and whimpers and hitches in her breath that had whiffs of pain and deep distress about them.

Starscream almost expected her to fly off at his approach, like a panicked bird flushed from its roost. He was prepared to fly after her if necessary, to pursue her until they both had not enough energy to fly and so would have no real fight left in them; it might have made things easier. But Swoop didn't move. Her senses on full and overly defensive alert, she had stilled and lifted her head the moment that she had detected Starscream's approach, her posture instantly stiff and wary, but other than the involuntary tremors and twitches, that was the only move that she'd made. When Starscream was a mere five meters from her, she turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were wide and feral, glowing an unnaturally bright blue-white against the gathering purples of encroaching twilight. The glowing intensity of her eyes, coupled with the watchful and vaguely threatening expression on her face, gave Starscream pause, and he took a small step backward, all unwillingly.

He had had some ideas of what he'd be facing with Swoop, but even under normal circumstances she was potentially lethal and always unpredictable. Now, she was giving him a wild-eyed look that clearly communicated a serious intention to eat him alive. She was also panting, her body fighting to cool itself. The combination was enough to make something within Starscream lurch as he stared at her. It strongly compelled him to move toward her, but he checked himself, held his ground, and decided that he needed to be in some semblance of control for as long as he could be in control. He watched Swoop warily, willing himself not to move, not even to twitch, waiting for her to make the next move. But she didn't move, either. Instead, she spoke, which surprised Starscream; he hadn't expected much in the way of conversation.

"If you know what's good for you, Starscream, you'll turn around and leave," Swoop growled after a long moment spent staring heatedly at the Seeker. Her voice was low and growling, her gaze burning wherever it touched him. "Before I'm forced to do something we'll both regret," she added.

She was far gone. Starscream could tell that this was so simply by the look on her face and the sound of her low, guttural voice. The latter was changing just as much as practically everything else about her was changing, at least internally; she was undergoing a transformation the likes of which Starscream couldn't and didn't want to imagine. On the other hand, it occurred to Starscream that if she still felt a need to warn him against being here, then she was apparently not quite so far gone that she was beyond trying, with typical Dinobot single-minded tenacity, to fight what was happening to her, to fight what she was becoming, even though she had to know that it was a fight that she could only lose. Nor was she beyond fighting the fact that it would, inevitably, be Starscream. But ultimately, she had no choice. Neither did Starscream.

Not for the first time, Starscream marveled at the fact that the Autobots had managed to create her in the first place, without resources from Cybertron. Now he was forced to marvel as well that somehow, in a way that was beyond his ability to comprehend, she was a queen. It made no sense. Queens came from queens. The queen had been dead for thousands of years – He had watched her die – and Swoop had been created a mere twenty-four years ago. It was puzzling, indeed. A Primus-wrought miracle, perhaps.

Starscream was of a scientific bent; he didn't truly believe in deities, his own or anyone else's, and so he didn't believe in divinely-wrought miracles, either. Yet, he couldn't deny Swoop's status. He felt the pull toward her, strong and threatening now, with close proximity, toward overwhelming. He had known, instantly and from thousands of kilometers away, exactly where she was even before he had left Decepticon Headquarters. He knew, deep down on an instinctive level that he hadn't even known that he possessed, that she was exactly what the Autobots claimed that she was. And he knew that, very soon now, they would be…Best not to think on that, at the moment, Starscream decided.

The Decepticons had been "lucky" enough to have captured Swoop, making her their guest for ten days or so. During that time, Starscream had been determined to analyze, replicate, and determine the weaknesses of the extremely light but excessively strong armor that Wheeljack had created specifically for Swoop, which granted her the ability to hover and to glide for extended periods of time, greatly reducing her energy consumption without sacrificing strength, structural integrity, or defensive capability. He had been planning to figure out how Wheeljack had managed this feat even if he had to rip off every last bit of Swoop's armor and then melt it down in order to analyze it down to its constituent elements. This had kept him in very close proximity to Swoop for the better part of a week. And unbeknownst to anyone, including Swoop herself, she had begun the royal transformation even before she had been captured, and during the time that she had spent alone with Starscream, she had imprinted on him.

But then the Decepticons had exchanged Swoop for Soundwave, whom the Autobots had captured during the course of the same battle during which Starscream had managed to shoot down and disable Swoop. Starscream had argued vociferously against the exchange, wanting, so he'd thought, to continue his work; now he realized that his extreme unwillingness to let Swoop go had really been fueled by something else entirely. Still, in the end, Swoop had gone back to the Autobots with her armor more or less intact. Once returned to the Autobots, her "condition" had apparently progressed quickly, and they had eventually figured out what was "wrong" with her.

Hence, Ratchet's call only the day before, informing Starscream that his "services" would be required. He had immediately and scathingly refused, insisting that the Autobot medic was lying for some reason. Ratchet, in response, had given him a pityingly amused look and had sardonically predicted that he'd be changing his tune in about ten hours.

And Ratchet had almost been right, Starscream ruefully reflected. In the end, it had only taken a little less than seven hours before he was basically climbing the walls, filled with desperate excess energy and barely refraining from howling to be let out of Decepticon Headquarters so that he could go find Swoop. Hence, he now found himself somewhere in the wilds of the Bolivian rain forest, the place that she had chosen for this rendezvous. The hot, dripping environment seemed appropriate for the occasion, and it was neutral ground. It was very remote, completely unpopulated, and near neither of their headquarters. And as Starscream watched another wave of powerful tremors wrack Swoop's small frame, he found himself confirming the decision he'd made as he'd journeyed from Decepticon Headquarters to Bolivia.

Megatron had ordered him to terminate Swoop. It was an understandable order, really; the revelation of her status had made her a powerful and immediate threat to him. His position had been more or less secure for a very long time now, rebellious Autobots notwithstanding, but he knew that a perhaps significant number of those currently loyal to him would desert him, perhaps even turn on him, in favor of a new queen should one somehow arise. This was particularly so now, now that many Decepticons – himself included, of course – were growing increasingly disgruntled with Megatron as the conflict with the Autobots dragged on with no end in sight, as Megatron's myriad promises made thousands of years ago somehow never managed to materialize, and as he rather ironically became more and more like the hated queen that he had deposed. So now, Megatron wanted Swoop gone, and he wanted her gone yesterday, before it could become widely known what, exactly, she was. And Starscream understood why. Looking at things from Megatron's point of view, his orders made perfect sense.

But Starscream had decided that Swoop wasn't going to die. He had realized that it wasn't in his own best interests to kill her at all, that it was only in Megatron's best interests to do so. Over the years, and particularly so of late, Starscream had developed a general habit of only doing what was in Megatron's best interests if doing so also benefited himself in some way. In this case, Starscream has simply realized that Swoop's continued survival was potentially far more to his advantage than was her death. If her destiny was to challenge and perhaps be the instrument of Megatron's eventual downfall, then her destiny was in alignment with his own goals. If her destiny was to avenge her predecessor's assassination in some grand, karmic kind of way, then forging a link to her, giving her a reason to refrain from destroying him as well when the time came, was not a bad idea at all. And if all of that wasn't her destiny at all…There was no strong downside that Starscream could see to creating such a link and allowing her to live, anyway. At the very least, when her status was undeniably revealed to everyone, it would cause even more unrest amongst the Decepticons, which would only be to his ultimate advantage.

Naturally, when Megatron inevitably found out that Swoop was still alive, when he found out that Starscream had failed to carry out his assigned mission, there would be repercussions. Personal ones. Very unpleasant ones. But even those seemed to Starscream to pale in comparison to the possible future benefits. So Swoop would live.

Starscream ended the uneasy stalemate that had quickly developed between Swoop and himself by decisively closing the distance between them and boldly sitting down next to her, his legs hanging over the rim of the gorge. He leaned far forward, contemplating the wide, placid, green-brown stretch of the river at the bottom for a beat. Dizzying heights, of course, did not bother him, just as they did not bother Swoop. For Starscream, great heights were instead comforting, and he wondered if the same might be true for Swoop and if that was why she had chosen this particular spot for this event.

Swoop gave Starscream a heated, askance look as he sat down next to her, even though he was careful not to touch her…yet. But he was certainly close enough to feel the excess heat that was radiating from her body; it made him shiver. The rate of her panting sped up as she gazed at Starscream, somewhat more eye-to-eye now that he wasn't standing and therefore looming over her, and as their gazes met, it was suddenly all Starscream could do to refrain from pulling her to him. He tucked his hands firmly under his thighs to help stave off the impulse, even though he knew that it was only delaying the inevitable.

"That was…" Swoop was meanwhile informing Starscream haltingly, between pants, "really not good…for you."

"Fortunately for you, I'm not known for doing what's good for me," Starscream replied with a cavalier shrug. Which was true more than she knew, given his decision to disobey Megatron's orders. By the time they parted, she would not only have begun to fulfill her intended purpose in life, but she would live to tell the tale.

Swoop scowled at Starscream for his flippancy, and the human saying about looks killing flitted through his mind. Her gaze was a mixture of scorching desire and deep revulsion, an odd but somehow enticing combination, and after a moment or two spent staring at each other, the nearness of her was overwhelming. As if in some mutual hypnotic trance, Starscream leaned toward her at the very same time that she leaned toward him.

The first kiss between them was chaste, but it was electric, nevertheless. Starscream was a rather experienced individual, but the contact was like nothing that he had ever experienced. Energy and heightened sensation lanced like liquid fire through his entire body and at breathtaking speed, starting at the very moment of contact. It was like a lightning-induced power surge that merrily fried circuit pathways as it passed through him. Unlike a power surge, the sensation wasn't doing any damage other than to his self-control, but like a lightning bolt, the contact was very short-lived.

Something clicked in Swoop's rational mind that was still somehow managing to cling to control. She realized what was happening between them at about the same moment that she decided that she didn't like it at all, and she abruptly broke the kiss and jerked away from Starscream with a noise of disgust. She scuttled backward, crab style, ending up a dozen meters away from the Seeker.

Starscream watched her retreat, reflecting that, on the plus side, she hadn't taken off and flown. Not that he couldn't catch her if she'd chosen to do that, of course. It entered his mind that a little game of chase might have been stimulating, even. But it would also have wasted time and energy, as the conclusion was foregone. The imprint was such that he'd be able to find her, and vice versa, no matter where she ran. And eventually, Starscream knew that neither of them would want to hide or run from the other at all.

The mere thought prompted a small and anticipatory shudder to work its way through Starscream's body, and suddenly Swoop wasn't the only one who was panting. Instinct had kicked in for Starscream as well, greatly fueled and suddenly jolted into very high gear by the brief physical contact between himself and the Dinobot. Desire suffused his body with quickening heat, thrusting aside little things like opposing factions and long-standing rivalry and even mutual hatred. If anything, those fanned the flames higher and hotter. Starscream had gotten an all-too-brief taste of her, and he found that he wanted more, much more. And he would have it.

Starscream twisted away from the edge of the gorge with a growl that, had he been more in his right mind, he might not have believed had come from himself. And then he crawled on hands and knees toward Swoop. She held her position, having backed herself up against the dripping, moss-covered trunk of an impressively tall tree. She was staring at the Seeker half in wariness and half in challenge as he moved inevitably closer, her chin raised at him defiantly. And then she was suddenly moving, too, shifting fluidly forward to her own hands and knees and then crawling to meet Starscream. Her movements were uncertain, but they possessed a predatory grace and sleekness that Starscream found himself noticing and appreciating. Her expression was still that odd combination of desire, timidity, and hatefulness, but she was moving toward him. Willingly. He reached out to her once she was within arm's reach again, slid his hand around to firmly cup the back of her neck, and then insistently drew her toward him for another kiss.

This one was as stimulating as the previous one had been, and it lasted a lot longer. It wasn't long before Starscream felt as if parts of his insides were melting, and a moment or two after that, he felt Swoop relax under his hand as well, the tension that had held her entire body stiff suddenly draining from her…until he began to encourage her to open her mouth, tracing along her lips with his tongue as he kissed her. She abruptly broke the kiss then, tension slamming back into her full-force. She jerked away from Starscream again, but this time she held her ground. It was an improvement, he decided. She opened her mouth to say something, but Starscream wasn't in the mood for conversation.

"Just…let it happen," he hissed at her impatiently, heading off whatever she had been about to say. "It'll be much easier for both of us that way." And then he leaned into her again.

Swoop met him quite enthusiastically this time, which Starscream hadn't expected at all. He had been thinking that a lot more coaxing and perhaps even some force would be in order. But apparently the last remaining sliver of rational Swoop had decided to stop fighting the situation and him, had decided to squeeze her eyes shut and take a nice little vacation. And this time she didn't hesitate to open her mouth under Starscream's when he silently asked for entrance. He slammed his tongue boldly into the virgin territory of Swoop's mouth, and this, like a key unlocking a door, seemed to ignite something within her that she hadn't even known that she possessed. She found herself growling and pressing aggressively into the kiss, moaning softly and sweetly into the raging, devouring fire of it. Her tongue stroked against Starscream's in an exploratory, uncertain, but deeply sensuous way, and without breaking the kiss, she moved into him, wrapping her arms possessively around him and molding her body as closely as possible to his. They fit surprisingly well together, and Starscream faintly noted that the heat that she was radiating was delicious against him, even though their surroundings were already sweltering.

Taking all of her actions as something of a hint, Starscream bit lightly and experimentally down on Swoop's tongue, just to see how she would react to the gesture. In response, she dug her fingers into his back, and the digging quickly turned into curious, exploratory probing. When Starscream groaned in response to her attentions, she instantly found herself uncertain and stopped what she was doing, pulling her hands away from him as if they'd been burned. But Starscream was having none of that. Reaching behind himself, he grabbed her hovering and suddenly uncertain hands, slamming them down right back where they had been. At the same time, he broke the kiss between them, connected his gaze with her suddenly confused one, and heatedly growled, "Don't you dare stop!"

For a moment, Swoop just stared at him, wide-eyed and startled, before she blinked slowly once, twice, and a wicked little smile of dawning and then growing comprehension spread over her face. Warm little fingers started poking Starscream in all the right places again and then started moving, exploring boldly outwards from where they'd originally landed. One hand went down, the other slid slowly, languidly around to his flank, stroking and tracing angles and contours and armor seams, probing hesitantly at first and then with increasing confidence and aggression as she assiduously watched his reactions to what she was doing to him.

Starscream had just discovered that she was a delightfully quick study, bless her little spark.

"Mmmmm," he murmured appreciatively under her exploratory assault, his head drifting forward and down until his forehead rested heavily on the top of her shoulder. He greedily drank in the sensations that she was wrenching from his body, biting down hard on his own lower lip to stop himself from shrieking when she unwittingly happened upon that one exquisitely sensitive little armor seam in his left flank. Her attentions to it alone soon had him shuddering in her arms, and this she exploited mercilessly, continuing to probe away at him.

"Atta girl," Starscream encouraged her quietly, his voice shaking in a way that should have been embarrassing but somehow wasn't, and then he turned his head to nuzzle and nip at the side of her neck.

In response, Swoop's eyes flew suddenly wide, and she growled a deep, throaty, alien-animal growl, a sound that she'd never heard emerging from herself, that she wondered at it even as entirely new sensation began to consume her, radiating out from her neck and pushing her farther toward a precipice that she didn't quite understand, not yet. On Starscream's side, the sounds that she was suddenly making were stimulating enough, sending shivers racing through him, but the vibrations of the sound also passed from her body to his, as closely entwined as they were. This took yet another bite out of his rapidly-dwindling self-control, and he began to explore the side of her neck in aggressive earnest.

Nuzzling kisses and licks soon devolved into sharp little nips and then full-on bites as passion rose between them. Judging by the rapturous sounds she made in response to a rather deep bite he'd inflicted on her, Starscream decided that Swoop appreciated his rougher attentions well enough, as he was most certainly appreciating hers.

This continued on for some time, this mutual and not-always-gentle exploration of each other, teasing, tracing, licking, and biting. There were soft murmurs, appreciative whispers, and cries of pleasure and mutual encouragement that were slowly increasing in volume and urgency. As Swoop slowly lost control, there was deep animal growling and snarling, too, which Starscream decided then and there was quite possibly the most erotic sound in the universe when it came from an intelligent and, so he was discovering, delightfully responsive being. They were wrapped around each other, such that it was difficult to tell where Starscream ended and Swoop began. Energy was slowly building in Starscream, spreading throughout his body, a tingling and not-unpleasant pressure building up within his spark just as it should, just as it needed to do for their official purpose here. They were both still on their knees, and Swoop was squirming against Starscream, scratching roughly at him and making soft, sweet noises that were indicative of a need that he wasn't sure that she understood on anything more than a clinical level.

But she would fully understand soon enough, he decided.

Starscream began to nudge at Swoop then, repeatedly leaning his much heavier weight insistently into her until she glommed on to what he wanted. She shifted around so that she could lie back, and she pulled his unresisting body down with her as she went, smiling a smile at him that was partly shy and uncertain but mostly feral and needy. Once Swoop was down, Starscream had access to all of her, and he took full advantage of that, exploring the parts of her body that he hadn't been able to reach while they'd been upright. Swoop squirmed and moaned and occasionally cried out in response to what he was doing to her, and with a building sense of urgency, he began to search for an interface port. She had several of them in various places on her body, as they were used for many purposes other than the one that he intended, but none of them were blatantly advertised.

Swoop, perhaps not quite as clueless about these things as he'd thought she was, realized rather quickly what he was looking for. Moaning wordlessly but needfully, she grabbed one of his hands and guided it down so that it rested half way up the inside of her right thigh. She even helpfully opened the small, protective panel for him while she was down there. Fortunately, the location of that port was quite compatible with one of Starscream's own, situated on the outside of his hip. He recognized faintly that, as a medic, she had probably known that and had guided him accordingly.

Grinning wickedly, he kissed her quickly and then brightly said, "Thanks for the assist, ma'am."

"Anytime," she responded breathlessly, squirming impatiently.

And then she cried out as Starscream jacked into her and immediately sent her a long and high-frequency energy pulse that left her writhing and whimpering in need when he eventually let it ebb. She went still for a moment after that, panting as she processed the experience and the sensations that were pulsing through her in response. Then, wild-eyed and moving quickly, leaving Starscream no chance to resist or even to react, she pulled him fully on top of her, bearing his full weight, and then jacked into him blindly but with medical precision. She reciprocated the energy pulse, instinctively knowing how to do so, and then she clenched her jaw, mewling softly around it as she weathered the echoes of his pleasure, coming as it did so hard on the heels of having experienced her own.

This went on for some time as well, exchanging energy pulses, caresses, and kisses. It was all new for Swoop, so Starscream slowed their pace, taking his time, allowing passion and urgency to build slowly between them. It wasn't as if they had a deadline, and he was very much enjoying her responsiveness. He found, much to his surprise, that he wanted to prolong things between them as much as he could.

Eventually, though, the energy pulses they shared became more powerful and less controlled. Kisses became more frantic and needy, to the point of bruising violence. Gentle, teasing nibbles became brutal bites that dented and eventually penetrated armor, small rivers of energon flowing freely from numerous wounds that neither of them really felt, any pain sensations completely subsumed in overwhelming and counteracting shared pleasure. Caresses became scratches and desperate, pleading, armor-denting clutches. Swoop's legs wrapped themselves around Starscream as if of their own volition, crushing him to her as closely as possible, their bodies grating and scraping against each other, stressed metal squealing in protest but neither of them caring. Neither of them even heard it, as completely lost in each other as they were becoming, drowning in the mutual sensations that they were experiencing, that were amplified and transmitted back and forth to each other by the interface connections, first to the point that it was impossible to discern whose sensation was whose and then to the point that neither much cared who was feeling what so long as the sensations never stopped.

Swoop was soon very close to overload, writhing and shuddering and crying out desperately under Starscream, her legs squeezing him mercilessly as energy pulsed into her and sensation cycled between them in an endless feedback loop. She was keening and wailing and snarling, all control lost. All that was left was her animal self. Wild. Demanding. Violent. Starscream found that he very much liked this side of the Dinobot when it was being used for this purpose rather than to try to kill him. The sounds that Swoop was making and the things that she was doing to him were inflaming and completely different from anything he'd ever experienced with anyone else, and he could only assume that it was because she was, indeed, partly an alien animal.

But if this was what being with an alien animal meant, Starscream found that he had absolutely no cause for complaint.

Swoop tore with abandon, both with fingers and with razor-sharp little teeth, into his armor in order to get at what lay underneath it, which received only slightly gentler treatment. It should have hurt. It did hurt, but Starscream didn't care; the pleasure and the pain commingled nicely, and he wanted it to go on forever. He did everything that he could to encourage her, whispering naughty things at her, concentrating focused attention with his hands and his mouth on various areas of her body that he'd discovered were very sensitive. He kept her mindless with passion and desire but did not let her overload for as long as he possibly could.

Still, occasional coherent pleading did escape Swoop, begging Starscream for something that, for the moment, she didn't know quite how to ask for. Very soon, it was too much, all too much for both of them. Swoop was balanced precariously on a tightrope, and Starscream was well aware that all it would take to send her spiraling into a blinding overload – her very first one – was one judicious little push. Which he was suddenly all too happy to provide: one precisely-controlled push of energy and sensation across the interface connection while he also bit down brutally into her shoulder and dug insistently into an extremely sensitive armor seam that he'd discovered at some point in their mutual journey so far. All of it was guaranteed to shatter her mind.

And it did. Starscream could feel the shattering, the tearing, the overwhelming pleasure that exploded within the small Dinobot who was suddenly struggling and thrashing beneath him, all of it translated, muted only slightly, across the interface connection between them. Swoop cried out, shuddering violently, energy arcing through her and off of her, scorching Starscream in tiny pinpricks wherever it touched him. She arched helplessly up into him, and her legs tightened spasmodically around him with crushing strength. Her mouth was frozen open in silent ecstasy for a fleeting moment, but then she began to wail like the animal that, for the moment, she was. The sounds that she was making, the sheer amount of energy coursing through her, and the bright, powerful echoes of her ecstasy crashing across the interface connection dragged Starscream right along with Swoop into a wash of white heat and light that obliterated all conscious thought and that very nearly knocked both of them completely offline.

Seconds, or minutes, or hours later, once his processors could function again, Starscream found that his forehead had come to rest against the front of Swoop's shoulder as aftershocks rolled lazily through both of them, making both twitch randomly. It faintly registered with Starscream that Swoop was quite literally cooing like a happy dove. He found the sound alone, alien as it was, very pleasing, not to mention the fact that the sonic vibrations transferred quite soothingly to him, as well, as closely pressed against her as he was; his full, much-heavier weight was resting entirely on top of her, although she didn't seem to mind in the slightest. Had they not had other pressing and important matters to attend to, Starscream was convinced that he could have easily allowed the soft, soothing sound that she was making to lull him into a quite contented sleep. But they did indeed have a pressing matter to attend to, and Starscream somehow managed to summon the strength required to lift his head. He gazed down at Swoop's face. She was smiling a soft and deeply contented smile up at him, the fingers of one hand gently tickling up and down the back of his head, the others stroking soothingly along the trailing edge of one of his wings. It twitched and shuddered, of its own volition, under her ministrations.

"You're very good," Swoop murmured appreciatively as their gazes met, her voice low and trilling. She was sated for the moment, completely relaxed. One of her legs was still wrapped loosely around Starscream, a dead but pleasing weight resting heavily on the small of his back.

"I know," Starscream said, aiming an insufferable grin at her before inching slightly down her body, careful not to break the interface connections between them, kissing and nibbling his way soothingly around her chest.

"Very humble, too!" she asserted then, none-too-gently whacking one of his shoulder vents with one hand while incongruously encouraging his efforts with the other, fingers digging gently into the back of his head as he nibbled and licked at her.

Starscream tore his mouth away from Swoop's body and glanced in haughty amusement up at her face for a moment before returning his attention to her body.

"Humility is for lesser beings," he murmured against her.

Swoop snorted at that, but she didn't have a chance to offer more of a rebuttal because Starscream had again zeroed in on that one certain spot on her side that he'd discovered. It seemed to freeze her processors completely in their tracks when he manipulated it…just…so…

Long moments later, when he'd let up on his assault, slowly moving on to other targets that he'd discovered and cataloged, Swoop breathlessly announced, "All right, all right, I agree. You have no need of humility. Ohhhhhhh…Don't stop. Please, please, please don't stop…Please…"

And then her voice devolved into moaning, gasping, and animal keening punctuated here and there with occasional needful whimpers as Starscream worked at her and grinned wickedly against her. This was nice, he decided. Delightful, even. A begging Autobot – a begging queen, no less – was shuddering and squirming and whimpering beneath him. The interface connections between them were transmitting strong echoes of all the sensations that she was experiencing to him, and energy was building up in him again, nice and steady.

Swoop wasn't completely passive, though. Her mouth was busy on the tip of a conveniently-close shoulder vent of Starscream's. She nibbled and licked and nuzzled away at it, biting down hard on occasion in response to the things that Starscream did to her as he worked his way ever so slowly around her body. Her bites shot pain/pleasure impulses through him, encouraging his efforts. Meanwhile, her talented, medically-trained fingers were scrabbling and scratching along each of Starscream's wings, stroking what she could reach of the flats of them, teasing and tweaking roughly along their edges, and digging mercilessly into particularly sensitive spots when the mood struck her. In very short order, she wasn't the only one who was emitting uncontrolled hisses and cries of pleasure.

Pressure was building in Starscream's spark again. Overload had temporarily eased it, but now it was back with a vengeance, much stronger than it had been before and demanding release in a way that, this time, would not be denied or even delayed for very much longer. He slowly inched himself back up Swoop's body so that he could kiss her mouth, a kiss that she returned with manic fervor, clinging to him, managing to wrap all four limbs around him for a moment. But then she abruptly broke away.

"Starscream," she ground out around desperate, cooling gasps for air, "I want…need…need you to…need…Ah!"

"Shhh," he shushed her, since it seemed that she wasn't quite coherent at the moment. "I know, Swoop. So do I," he soothingly assured her.

And it was the truth. It was time.

While nibbling and licking his way along Swoop's neck, Starscream fumbled with one hand around and along the sides of the stylized pteranodon head that was cradled along the centerline of her torso, blindly searching for a catch of some sort, certain that her spark had to be under there somewhere. Eventually, impatiently, Swoop batted his hand away and unlatched it herself, then made a few further adjustments after that that he didn't see, as busy as he was. Once her movements had stilled, Starscream tore his mouth from her throat and stared down at what she'd revealed to him.

Her spark chamber, indeed. It was radiating a feverishly over-bright golden glow, pulsing fast enough that it almost seemed as if it wasn't pulsing at all, humming at a constant fever pitch that was almost a whine, needy and desperate. This, more than anything else, made real and immediate for Starscream exactly what was happening here. Mature royal sparks were golden and, once her transformation was completed, Swoop's eyes would be as well. No one could deny what she was, now, as harsh golden light seeped from between the arms of the protective casing that embraced her spark; it was bright enough to softly illuminate the entirety of their surroundings. The enormity of what Starscream was about to do – creating new lives with her – suddenly weighed heavily on him. Tearing his gaze away from her spark, Starscream looked back up at Swoop's face. She was smiling at him patiently, her eyes bright and knowing, and she raised a hand to stroke his face almost gently, almost comfortingly.

She easily surmised the thoughts fueling his sudden apprehension, and she whispered softly, reassuringly, "It's all right, Starscream."

Then, still smiling and her gaze burning into his, her hand moved away from Starscream's face, her fingers trailing lightly down his throat, and then slowly, teasingly skipping down along his canopy. She blindly but expertly found the catch there, popped it open, and then, digging around a bit, she slid aside a few thick, protective internal armor plates. All of this was done with infinite gentleness and with practiced, confident ease – She was a medic, after all – until his own spark chamber was revealed as well. His spark glowed a brighter-than-usual and fast-pulsing red, counterpointing the golden pulsations of Swoop's at first but then instinctively detecting her rhythm and matching it exactly, pulse for heady, quickening pulse. Tracing around the protective casing – again blindly because by that point she'd levered herself up so that she could kiss him again – Swoop found the connector that would physically link his spark chamber to hers. She yanked on it gently, and then carefully uncoiled the thick but short cable that was attached to the connector as she pulled back slightly from the kiss.

"Just let it happen," she murmured playfully against Starscream's lips, echoing his own impatient words to her that he'd spoken what seemed like forever ago. He could feel her smiling, amused at his expense.

Smirking against her in response, Starscream took possession of the cable she'd unwound and then re-deepened the kiss that she'd started, pushing her roughly down to the ground again and holding her there, pinning her by her shoulder, even though she was offering no resistance whatsoever. His other hand traveled down to her exposed spark casing and busied itself with tracing around it for a moment or two. In response, Swoop emitted a rather cute little squeak, and her spark flared even brighter, which he wouldn't have thought possible. She shifted restlessly under him, making increasingly urgent and impatient noises.

Starscream had to break the kiss in order to make the actual connection; he wasn't a medic, so he couldn't do it blindly. After inching slightly down her body so that he could see what he was doing and then squinting into the harsh glare of the light spilling copiously from her greedy, needful spark, he located the small port on the casing, made the connection, and then inched back up her body, careful not to break the now-multiple connections between them. Since he didn't have much wiggle room now, he laid himself alongside but still partially on top of her.

"I'm sorry," he murmured sincerely against her audio once he'd settled himself. "This is going to hurt quite a bit," he warned her, just in case she wasn't aware.

"I know," Swoop replied stoically. And then she reached down and nonchalantly disconnected the interface connections between them. "I don't know about you," she said almost regretfully, "but I don't particularly want this cycling back and forth between us." And then, half a second later, she screamed a piercing scream as the pent-up energy from Starscream's spark rushed to infuse hers in a cascade of frightening power, white-hot sparks leaping between them. It was all Starscream could do not to reflexively jerk away from her.

Swoop writhed, crying out in blinding, spark-rending pain. Her spark was absorbing an enormous amount of energy from Starscream's, all of the extra energy, and then some, that had been building up in him since she'd imprinted on him and that had increased exponentially once they were together again. The infusion would trigger her spark's division into new ones, entirely new lives. This was what her spark, and hers alone, was specialized to do, but that didn't mean that it was at all pleasant for her.

Starscream found that it was unexpectedly difficult to watch Swoop struggle with excruciating pain for what seemed like hours, although he knew it was only a minute or two, at most. As she writhed and thrashed and cried out to the heavens, fingers scrabbling at and digging into the dirt and leaf litter underneath her, her body arching helplessly off the ground, he reflected that the line between agony and ecstasy was a very thin one, the physical reactions to both very similar. And he resolved that, when the pain was done, when they had fulfilled their duty, he was going to do his damndest to make Swoop forget the agony by giving her an overbalancing amount of ecstasy. It was, he knew, almost-tenderness toward her, and it was unaccustomed, greatly disquieting….and entirely the effect of the imprint. But at the moment, he didn't care.

By the time that the energy transfer was complete, Swoop was reduced to whimpering softly, helplessly in pain. Her entire body was shuddering violently, near to convulsing, and excess energy was fitfully arcing off of her. Her face was scrunched up in agony, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her breath gasping and labored. Her spark flared a deep, fiery orange for a moment, as it greedily absorbed the last bit of energy from Starscream before slowly returning to placid soft gold, pulsing more slowly and regularly now. The light that seeped from around its casing muted almost instantly from harsh, feverish brilliance to mellow, liquid glow, sublimely beautiful to behold.

Starscream stared at the essence of her for a long while as Swoop recovered, wondering at it and at what they had just done. Then he terminated the connection between them, whimsically laid a gentle kiss on her spark casing, gently slid thick, protective internal armor plates back into place, and then carefully restored the pteranodon head to its rightful place down the centerline of Swoop's torso. Then, pushing himself up to lean on one hip alongside her, propped up on one arm, he stroked his other hand soothingly up and down the length her body, murmuring mostly-wordless but comforting sounds at her. He kept doing that until the pained tension entirely left her, her breathing slowing and smoothing. It took a while to do so, but eventually Swoop relaxed, opening her eyes and looking up at the Seeker, her gaze curiously and questioningly searching his.

"I'm sorry," Starscream murmured to her again, still stroking her, before she could say anything to him.

Swoop gave him an odd look at that, squinting up at him as she tried to determine his intentions now, frowning deeply.

"There's no reason to be," she eventually replied, going for a level, disinterested tone, but her voice was still roughened with the pain that she'd just experienced. "It's just how it is. I knew that, going into this."

"That doesn't mean that I can't be sorry," Starscream answered her softly. "Or," he added pointedly, "that I can't make it up to you."

Leaning down then, not giving Swoop a chance to respond or protest, Starscream kissed her. She was surprised and disconcerted at first, having expected nothing of the sort from him, having expected only indifference at best as the imprint between them began to dissolve, having expected him to leave her without so much as a backward glance – or, worse, to try to kill her – as soon as they had accomplished their task, thus freeing him of his physical obligation to her. But he didn't do any of that.

Instead, he was kissing her with utterly startling gentleness, with feeling, with tenderness, and she found herself responding, eagerly, in kind, reaching up to touch him hesitantly at first but with increasing confidence as the kiss progressed and then as he broke it to pepper smaller kisses along her jaw line and the down the side of her neck. He paused to suckle gently at the juncture of her neck and her shoulder for a while, and she shuddered in response, the reaction emanating from the deepest parts of her.

Surprising. So very surprising.

But the night had been full of surprises, for both of them, and once Starscream expertly re-established the mutual interface connections between them they did not hesitate to completely lose themselves in each other again. Swoop managed to reverse their positions this time, so that she was straddling him, giving her fuller access to his body than she'd had when she'd been pinned under his weight, and she made excellent use of that advantage. Starscream was soon gone, helplessly drowning in her surprising and apparently endless depths, not even entertaining the thought of rescue.

Uh, yeah. This would be the longest chapter of the story so…ahem…thanks for slogging through it. :)

In case anyone's curious…I have this habit of picking real-life spots to set my stories/chapters, even if I don't explicitly spell out where that story/chapter is taking place. This one is no exception. The gorge in this chapter is Bala Gorge in Bolivia. I've been there. It's gorgeous, hot, wet, and remote, so it seemed a good place. If you're even more curious, here's a pic of the area that I dug up on the webs:

www4. clikpic .com/ jamesbrunker /images /Rurre13 .jpg

There are curiously few pics of the area on the web, actually. It's quite the shame because it is, as I said, gorgeous…

Next time: Starscream goes home. Not the most exciting chapter in the universe, but there is a bit of foreshadowing here and there in it, so pay attention. Take notes. There will be a quiz later. OK, not really, but still…