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. There may be minor changes from the original, but nothing plot-significant.

2: Off-White Lies

The rising sun was chasing Starscream as he flew toward Decepticon Headquarters. It was as if it was eternally prolonging the moment that he had found himself awakening to the sunrise and to the unfamiliar but nevertheless very pleasant sensation of Swoop paying some very meticulous attention to his canopy.

I could get used to this, had been the first bleary and blasphemous thought that had sighed its way through Starscream's mind. Once more rational thought took over, he had simply been strangely happy that Swoop hadn't just chosen to leave without saying a proper good-bye, since she had obviously recovered from and awakened from the previous night's exertions before he had. She had told him, with almost endearing shyness given the nature of those previous exertions, that she had fully intended to leave, but then she had decided that she wanted to thank him for what he had done for her.

And thank him, she did. Gloriously.

It had been quite the chore to drag himself away from her, especially knowing that the next time he saw her she'd be trying to kill him and he her. So it had strangely been one of the hardest things he'd ever done when he had pulled Swoop to her feet and had indulged in a prolonged good-bye kiss and had then tossed himself off the edge of the cliff. He had allowed himself a bit of heady freefall before transforming and skimming along the surface of the river until it became too narrow to accommodate his wingspan, and he'd had to pull up in order to clear the jagged spine of the Andes, anyway.

The pull that Starscream still felt toward Swoop was disquieting. Greatly disturbing. Really, it had not waned in the slightest, and he could only hope that the lingering effect of the imprint would go away soon. As in, "before he got back to Headquarters" soon, preferably. Of course, that didn't happen; Starscream rarely got his way when it came to just about anything. So as he flew into the gaping maw of Headquarters's raised docking tower, he was fighting a very strong impulse to bank right back around and fly out again.

To go back to her.

To find her wherever she was, even if she was smack in the middle of Autobot Headquarters by now.

To have her again and again and again.

It was very difficult to quell the urge to obey the impulse. Had Starscream not been almost completely drained of energy from the previous night's and the morning's activities, he might very well have lost the fight. As it was, he had barely enough energy left – maybe – to report in and then to go crash somewhere. If he was lucky, the crashing wouldn't end up happening in a public corridor.

Starscream transformed as the huge docking tower door wheezed unsteadily shut behind him. Someone needed to get in there and overhaul its control mechanisms; it probably hadn't been done in the twenty-five years that had passed since the door had been constructed. One of these days, the damned thing was going to refuse to function at all, probably at the most inopportune time. He made a mental note to have it seen to, realizing as he did so that thinking about such mundane things – normal things – was almost soothing. It was a distraction that momentarily gave his mind something to think about other than what had happened during the last eighteen hours or so, but the effect was ultimately fleeting.

Glancing around himself, Starscream found that he was alone in the hangar bay as it retracted back into the depths of Headquarters. That meant that he had a few solitary minutes to collect himself, especially because he knew well the few spots in the hangar bay that were out of the view of the security cameras. He stepped wearily over to one of those places and slid unsteadily down against the bulkhead, ignoring the indignant screech of metal on metal, until he was sitting on the deck plates. He found that he was shaking, and he willed himself to stop. Eventually, grudgingly, his body obeyed. Taking a deep, calming breath, Starscream tried to shove all memories of the past night out of the forefront of his thoughts. It was very, very difficult to do so, but he knew that he needed to be calm and collected and, most importantly, attentive and wary when he reported to Megatron.

Megatron had to suspect nothing. He had to believe that Starscream had carried out his mission, exactly as ordered. Starscream knew that he would find out that Swoop was still alive eventually, but likely not any time within the coming weeks. Starscream deeply suspected that the Autobots would keep Swoop on a very short leash until she could be delivered of the new sparks that were most certainly already beginning to develop within her. The Autobots might prattle on ad nauseum about freedom, but he was certain that Swoop would have none for the foreseeable future. For Starscream, that was a very good thing. But after that, once the Autobots let Swoop out of her cage and once Megatron had definitive proof that she still lived, there would be very unpleasant repercussions for Starscream unless he could devise a way around them, and he was confident that he would do so, eventually. But until then, Starscream would simply evade and outright lie his little tail rudders off.

As usual.

Starscream grinned to himself at the thought, slowly starting to feel more in control of his own mind, more like himself. Utter chaos still lurked just under the surface, but he'd managed to construct a veneer of calm control over it. Which was a good thing because, a moment after that, a soft bump indicated that the docking tower had completed its descent. It was time to face Megatron.

Walking through the corridors of Decepticon Headquarters, Starscream garnered more than a few surreptitious but curious glances and double-takes from the Decepticons that he encountered. He glared at those who were less than surreptitious about their quizzical inspection of their second-in-command, and they subsided, averting their curious gazes with alacrity. But Starscream knew that the looks were understandable. He was covered in dirt, riddled with dents both small and somewhat large, scored with deep scratches, and there were a distressing number of armor-penetrating bite wounds all over his body, some of them quite large, a few of them sparking fitfully. Starscream was, under normal circumstances, quite fastidious about his appearance. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't be caught dead parading through the corridors looking as he did at the moment. But this time, Starscream was wearing his dirt and everything else with aplomb. With pride, even. This, he imagined, was not at all what his comrades would expect to see. So, they stared. Or at least they glanced, if they weren't bold enough to actually stare. Inwardly, all of it amused him.

When he arrived at the bridge, Starscream squared his shoulders in the second before the doors slid apart in front of him. Having no desire to answer a lot of questions about the previous night's events, he had every intention of making the necessary encounter as short as possible. But for the short time that he was there, he knew that he had to appear and behave as normally as possible, to avoid raising undue suspicion that he might be up to something, as, indeed, he was. Or had been, at least. As the doors opened, Starscream strode through them confidently, posture straight, shoulders square, expression as haughty as he could possibly make it.

Megatron turned away from the viewscreen as he heard the doors slide open…and then he froze and stared at Starscream for a long moment as his second approached him. A bewildered expression soon settled over his face, and his head slowly tilted to one side, as if he thought he could make better sense of Starscream's disheveled appearance from a more diagonal perspective. Starscream held his gaze levelly, chin raised challengingly. He was waiting for the inevitable withering comment and was already formulating an appropriate possible response, but then, off to the side, he heard Skywarp attempt but utterly fail to suppress a snicker at his expense, ruining the moment. Starscream glared at him. So did Megatron before he turned back to Starscream.

"Welcome back, Starscream," he rumbled snidely.

Starscream adopted an insolent air and folded his arms across his chest, staring levelly back at the Decepticon leader.

"Thank you," Starscream answered with a judicious touch of airy impudence, but that was all that he said. Megatron hadn't demanded that he say anything else, and Starscream had decided not to offer up any information that he wasn't directly asked to provide.

Megatron continued to stare at Starscream, apparently waiting for him to say something else. When he offered nothing, he emitted an irritated little sigh that greatly amused Starscream.

"Well?" Megatron finally, exasperatedly demanded, glaring his customary glare at his insolent second.

"Mission accomplished," Starscream reported brightly, with a crisp, entirely proper, but still somehow mocking salute; it was the little things like that that tended to wedge more easily under Megatron's armor and that therefore amused the Seeker the most. And what Starscream told him wasn't a lie, exactly. He had accomplished his own mission; Megatron hadn't specifically asked him if he'd accomplished his mission. "I trust that you do not want a full public accounting of all the sordid details, however," Starscream added pointedly, and it wasn't a question.

Megatron considered that for a moment, glancing around himself. None of the room's current occupants – like Skywarp, for instance, who was watching the two of them with surreptitious but still avid curiosity – knew exactly what Starscream had been up to yesterday evening. And Megatron knew that it was better, for his own sake, if not too much was said now on that particular subject. Starscream had been counting on that, or at the very least he'd been hoping that there would be uninformed personnel on the bridge when he arrived to report in.

"Not really," Megatron finally growled distastefully when his gaze returned to Starscream, his eyes raking over him in disgust. He crossed his arms over his massive chest and gave Starscream a very displeased glare for good measure, in payment for Starscream having effectively thwarted his attempt to extract more information. This, too, amused Starscream.

"Good," Starscream said, nodding in satisfaction. And then he pointedly turned his back on Megatron and swept decisively and somewhat imperiously toward the doors of the bridge without being dismissed. "I'm going to go clean up, then," he announced dismissively over his shoulder as he headed toward the doors. "And then, I am going to recharge for the rest of the day. And I had better not be disturbed," he added threateningly, as the doors slid closed behind him and he made good his escape.

Next time: Swoop sleeps in. Way in.