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 throughout. There may be other minor changes from the original, as well, but nothing plot-significant.

8: Fallen Eagle

It had been far too easy to shoot down Starscream.

Swoop had gotten pretty good at combating the Seekers over the years, sure, but she knew that she wasn't that good, certainly not when pitted one-on-one against the aerial wizard that was Starscream. Even with her new and upgraded body, he had millennia of experience on her, was easily three times as fast as she was, and could probably fly circles around her while half comatose. So really, it was obvious to Swoop that Starscream had wanted her to shoot him down, if not actually to destroy him. The last and somewhat frantic communiqué that he'd transmitted to her on a frequency meant only for her had been telling, not to mention weird and disturbing.

"Please make it stop, Swoop," he had said.

There had been un-Starscream-like quiet desperation in his voice, but Swoop had had no idea what he had meant. Make what stop? And he'd said please? And before that he'd been babbling like a raving lunatic, the only coherent thing he'd said pretty much being to beg her to come out and meet him, alone? She'd been about to ask him just what the hell he thought he was doing, but it was at that point that a large number of naturally-concerned Autobots had arrived on the scene. Once that had happened and it was clear what was about to happen, Starscream had uttered a desolate, desperate, "For the love of Primus, just do it!" at her, screeching loudly enough that probably everyone had heard it. He'd bellowed this at Swoop just before firing every weapon that he possessed at her.

Starscream knew Swoop well. They'd been particularly bitter opponents for twenty-four years now, so he knew that, if fired upon, her instincts were to fire back, uncoordinatedly and without putting much thought into it at all. He used the tactic against her all the time, much to her frustration. She was getting better at containing the wild and distracting counter-impulse now, if she wanted to or if the situation called for it, but it was still very much a work in progress. This, too, Starscream knew. His aim had not been true when he'd fired at her, but it was obvious to her that he hadn't been trying to damage her. Under normal circumstances, Starscream rarely missed, so it seemed to Swoop that his intention had been to force her to react, not to destroy her, and he had achieved his objective. Dodging his barrage but for a glancing, stinging laser blast that lightly singed the top of one of her wings, she had fired her own barrage back at him. One of her air-to-air missiles had impacted him squarely at the juncture of one of his wings and his fuselage, a Seeker weak spot that she always targeted.

She'd landed much better shots on Starscream in the past, and he'd shaken them off with relative ease, faltering only slightly in flight for a moment or two as his systems compensated for any damage that she'd managed to inflict on him. This had usually lasted only long enough to allow her to escape his clutches, however momentarily. But this time, he had completely lost control, eventually spiraling down to Earth, slamming into it almost directly nose first and with a level of force that had made Swoop wince in sincere sympathy. He'd skipped along the ground a few times after the initial impact before coming to rest in a heap, and then he had been utterly still.

Losing control and crashing like that was very much out of character for Starscream, who was perhaps the most dazzling and the most capable, albeit reckless, flier ever to grace their species. But now, hours later, Swoop had some idea as to why it had happened. Although Starscream's crash had looked horrible, the damage that it had inflicted on him hadn't been life-threatening. He was a tough nut to crack that way. Except for a badly-crumpled wing that had taken some of the brunt of the initial impact and that would be much easier to simply replace than it would be to repair, the damage had mostly been a fairly easy fix.

It was rather ironic, repairing damage that she herself had caused, but Swoop had something of a vested interest in doing so. Starscream had put her, specifically, into an awkward position, and she wanted answers as to why. And as of now, early in the evening after the bizarre encounter that had made Starscream their guest early that morning, he lacked only a few parts that Wheeljack was grudgingly fabricating for her, including the wing. She was keeping Starscream offline, and therefore harmless and not requiring extra security arrangements, in the interim.

Really, it was everything else that was wrong with Starscream that had Swoop worried. None of it had been caused by her or by the crash, but it did perhaps have the potential to answer some of the questions that she had. It had already given her some possible theories as to why Starscream had come to Autobot Headquarters, alone, energy depleted, and half-crazed, in the first place.

Swoop was frankly amazed that Starscream had been able to make the trip at all. Many of his systems were shut down. All indications from the diagnostics that she'd run were that Starscream had been almost completely drained of energy well before he'd arrived in Autobot Headquarters's airspace. Worse, several of his more vital systems were in a state of near-terminal degradation, which among other things indicated that he hadn't properly recharged in weeks. And then, when she'd run a few deep-level diagnostics on him, it had revealed peculiar, precise, and systematic instances of physical damage to various but specific sensory relays as well as, more disturbingly, damage to his spark chamber itself.

At the moment, Swoop was busily poking around in Starscream's wide-open chest, cataloguing all of the issues at hand so that she could speak intelligently with him about all of it when she brought him back online. She was so absorbed in her task that she didn't notice Ratchet's approach until he determinedly planted himself on the other side of Starscream's berth. Swoop looked up at him in time to see him folding his arms over his chest, glancing down with distaste at her patient, and then giving her an appraising and distinctly displeased look.

"What?" Swoop asked defensively as she returned to her work.

"How are you doing?" Ratchet asked gruffly in return.

"Me?" she responded, looking up at him again in surprise. "I'm fine." She lightly tapped the center of her chest a few times and added, "It's feeling more than a little crowded in here now, but I imagine that's normal."

"I suppose so," Ratchet said dispassionately. "You shouldn't have gone out there today," he added, gracelessly changing the subject to what was really bothering him. He was not exactly subtle about such things. Swoop paused in her work, stood up straight, folded her arms over her chest to mirror Ratchet's posture, and stared defiantly back at him. "Those," he continued before she could say anything, pointing at her chest, "will be ready to come out soon. You endangered them all with that stunt you pulled."

"I had to," Swoop answered simply, flatly, narrowing her eyes stubbornly at him.

"You had to?" Ratchet echoed incredulously. "Swoop, you—"

"He asked me to," she interrupted quietly in order to avert Ratchet's impending rant, gesturing down at Starscream.

Ratchet looked at her askance.

"He asked you to?" he echoed, scowling severely at Swoop. "What, with smoke signals?"

"Private frequency," Swoop growled, giving Ratchet an unamused glare. "Don't know how he got it but…He asked for me, and I decided to go. Figured I owed him that much."

Ratchet's expression shifted in an instant to one of angry disbelief.

"You don't owe him anything!" he asserted. "And in case it's slipped your mind or something, may I remind you that he tried to kill you?"

Swoop snorted and then waved a dismissive and impatient hand at him.

"If he'd wanted me dead, Ratchet, I wouldn't be standing here. You know that. And I think," she added, tapping her chest significantly again, "that I do owe him."

She was trying her best to remain calm. She'd learned the hard way that, at this very late stage of the game, if she allowed herself to become upset or to experience any sort of stronger emotion, then the developing sparks tended to become very agitated, and as a result of their agitation, her insides became very painfully overcrowded very quickly. She tried to avoid that sort of situation now, if possible. It wasn't so much for her own comfort, but more because she was concerned that the little ones might be damaged. Since she'd upset them enough by going out to meet Starscream and then being fired upon, Swoop felt it wise not to upset them again today.

"He had no choice about that," Ratchet was saying scathingly, meanwhile. He was scowling fiercely at Swoop in disbelief.

"He had no choice about coming, yes," Swoop agreed evenly, still holding on to calm, going back to scanning and poking at Starscream's innards as a kind of distraction while she spoke. "And he had no choice about…about…well, you know. But he had many possible choices otherwise. If nothing else, he could have made the experience horrible for me, but he didn't. At all. He was…good to me. Very good, actually," she finished with a fondly reminiscent chuckle.

Ratchet went very still after that, and Swoop looked up at him in amusement, taking in his stunned expression as he realized the implications of her words.

"And if I know Megatron," Swoop added as Ratchet just continued to blink dumbfoundedly at her, "he was under orders to kill me, and he chose not to do that, either, for whatever reason. I'm sure his reasons were completely selfish, but I still owe him. We all owe him. Unless," she finished acidly, "you have more queens hiding out in stasis somewhere?"

That set Ratchet back on his heels for a moment. He scowled at Swoop, glared at her prodigiously, but he kept his mouth shut; it was a very rare occasion when he didn't have a clever retort in an argument. But it really couldn't be denied that, when it came to Swoop, Starscream had done the right thing, and pointing this out to Ratchet very effectively shut him up. As far as Swoop could remember, it was the first argument against him that she'd ever won.

"In any case," she added with a sigh when Ratchet didn't say anything but also didn't stomp away in exasperation, "I'm pretty sure that his goal was to try to convince me to shoot him down." Lowering her voice, she added, "Ratchet, I'm 98% certain that he had no intention of harming me and simply wanted to be captured. I think he asked for me alone so that he wouldn't have to deal with the rest of us trying en masse to kill him."

"What makes you think all that?" Ratchet asked, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully at her.

"The last thing he said to me," Swoop explained, "was 'Please make it stop.'"

"Make what stop?" Ratchet asked, scowling again, but this time more in puzzlement than in anger.

"My question exactly!" Swoop responded. "It'll be the first thing I ask him when I wake him up. But when I didn't answer him because I was too busy trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about, that waswhen he fired at me. And it was desperate. You were there by then. I'm sure you heard what he said just before he fired at me."

"Mmmm," Ratchet grumbled unhappily.

"And then," Swoop added, gesturing at the pièce de résistance, the minute damage she'd found, "there's all of this."

Frowning, Ratchet bent down to have a closer look at the damage that Swoop had indicated.

"What in the seven hells…?" he murmured fervently, squinting as he visually traced the progression of the damage, just as Swoop had done earlier, when she had first discovered it.

"I'm pretty sure it's all self-inflicted," she said quietly as Ratchet poked around at Starscream's innards for a bit and then ran a few scans of his own to confirm her findings.

"I would tend to agree," he said absently a minute later, frowning thoughtfully at the results that his scanner was spitting at him. "It's too precise and too isolated to be anything else. But…why?" Ratchet wondered, apparently putting aside his irritation with Swoop in the face of a mystery. "This would hurt. A lot. Ow," he added, wincing as he took in the damage on Starscream's spark chamber. "Hell, I'm surprised that that didn't kill him."

The damage to which Ratchet was referring was indicative of Starscream's spark absorbing spikes of energy, some of them quite powerful, that it really had no business absorbing and that, by all rights, should indeed have killed him; his spark was not at all meant to do such a thing. Somehow, he hadn't been killed. Nevertheless, the pain would have been intense, and Swoop knew what that sort of thing felt like. In fact, she wondered if Starscream had been dubiously inspired by her. But whatever the case, he must have been quite desperate to resort to such a thing.

"I know it would hurt a lot," Swoop answered Ratchet softly. "Believe me, I know."

"I suppose you do," Ratchet replied, giving her a half-smile that made her think that she was forgiven, for the moment, for her rash actions earlier in the day. "But what makes you think that someone else didn't do this to him?"

Swoop shrugged and answered, "There are very painful ways to torture someone that don't kill the subject as a result. A dead subject can't tell you anything."

Ratchet grunted an agreeing noise, but didn't say anything.

"And I did a little bit of reading," Swoop added quietly as Ratchet poked cautiously at Starscream's spark chamber, "about self-abuse." At Ratchet's questioning look, she explained, "There isn't much in our databases about such a thing, but the humans… They're quite creative about hurting themselves."

Ratchet snorted disgustedly at that.

"Why am I not surprised?" he muttered, then added something under his breath that Swoop couldn't quite hear but that definitely involved the words "organics" and "fruitcakes."

She chuckled and then said, more seriously, "Oftentimes, they do it to distract themselves from something else that's bothering them, something that they see as much worse than the pain that they inflict on themselves."

"And you're thinking that's the case here?" Ratchet answered, looking up at her skeptically, narrow-eyed.

"Maybe," Swoop answered with an uncertain shrug. "It appears to me that none of the damage is older than…than when he was with me," she added pointedly.

"Swoop…" Ratchet said warningly, but she spoke over him.

"It looks like he started back here," she said, ignoring Ratchet, setting about demonstratively tracing the damage back to a secondary sensor node nestled in the middle of Starscream's forearm, "and then when that wasn't enough, he—"

"Moved on to something more sensitive, from secondaries to primaries here," Ratchet said flatly, finishing Swoop's thought and indicating a sensory nexus that was normally nestled in the depths of the circuitry in Starscream's shoulder; Swoop had carefully teased it out from the surrounding circuitry and wiring that normally concealed it so that she could examine it. "And then eventually," Ratchet concluded, tracing down to the middle of Starscream's chest, "to his damned spark chamber itself."

"And then when that wasn't enough," Swoop tentatively theorized, "maybe… Maybe he figured that I – that we – were the only ones who could help him."

"Swoop…" That cautioning tone was back.

"I did imprint on him, Ratchet," she pointed out quietly.

"That," he answered, frowning at the change of subject but quickly figuring out what she might be getting at, "shouldn't be having any effect on him now. Normally—"

"Ah, but I'm not normal," Swoop pointed out. "I especially wasn't normal when I imprinted on him and when I was…with him."

Ratchet frowned severely at her.

"Unless there's something really important that you're not telling me here, Winglet, what you two did was a direct one-way energy infusion from him to you. Not the other way around. None of your issues should have backwashed into him. It's not like it was a mutual sharing kind of thing, like a merge."

"The key words there, Ratchet," Swoop pointed out, "are 'should have.' Can you be sure about that?"

"Well, no," Ratchet hedged. "You are rather unique, but—"

"He said," she added determinedly, speaking over Ratchet, "'Make it stop.' The only thing that I can think of that from his point of view I, specifically, might be able to 'stop' is the imprint. If it never went away, then it must have been – must still be – driving him crazy, and maybe pain was the only thing that stopped the craziness for a while. Or maybe it was just a welcome distraction. But whatever the case, when it didn't work anymore…Well, here he is."

Ratchet stared at her a thoughtful expression on his face. Then he gave her a more penetrating look.

"That's complete speculation," he said sternly. "And it's far-fetched to boot."

"I know," Swoop answered evenly. "But it does explain some things."

"It does, yes," Ratchet agreed distractedly, staring thoughtfully down at Starscream for a long moment, his eyes narrowed. When he looked back up at Swoop, he was more focused as he added, "There is one thing we can check that would support your theory." When she just looked back at him questioningly, he explained, "Part of the purpose of the imprint was to align his spark energy with yours so that your spark could safely accept input from his. It's rather like a bond that way, but temporary. Point is, it would have altered his energy signature, but not yours, and his should have reverted when the imprint wore off. If his is still matched to yours…"

"Then I'm right, and the imprint never wore off," Swoop finished triumphantly. "So, we need to run a comparison."

"Yes, Wingnut," Ratchet said affectionately. "We do. But I'm not about to go poking around at your spark at the moment. Bad enough that I transplanted you." She chuckled as Ratchet continued, "Plus, all the Juniors dancing around in there now would likely throw off any readings, anyway. So it'll have to wait until you've…uh, delivered."

Swoop nodded understandingly and asked, "Should we keep him offline until then?"

Ratchet sighed, shaking his head as he stared down at Starscream's inert form, frowning at his dim and weakly-pulsing red spark, a bit of worry furrowing his brow despite himself and despite the identity of the object of his worry.

"I'm not sure that's the best idea, either. You're at what? Thirty days or so now?"

"Thirty-three," she confirmed.

Ratchet nodded.

"So you've got three or four days to go, if things go normally. I don't think it's a good idea to keep him offline that long, especially not if the idiot's managed to damage his own spark with his shenanigans." He paced around Starscream's berth, frowning thoughtfully down at him. "We'll bring him around tomorrow afternoon," he decided. "Wheeljack should have his important bits done by then and he should be fully re-energized by then, too. And it'll give me time to calm Optimus down about the whole business."

"Don't forget Red Alert," Swoop put in lightly. "I'm sure he'll want very special security arrangements in place well in advance."

"Mmmm," Ratchet grumbled. He was never happy about having to deal with extra security in his domain.

"The CMO's work is never done," Swoop said, quirking a teasing grin at him.

"Watch it, you," Ratchet responded grumpily. "Or I'll retire and give you the job."

"Can't," she teased again, grinning delightedly. "Aid's got seniority."

Ratchet responded with a snort and a wordless grumble. Then he gave her a critical, narrowed-eyed look and said, "You look tired. You've been at this all day now, so…Get out of here." When Swoop opened her mouth to protest, Ratchet spoke over her, saying, "No, no, that's an order, Swoop. I won't have you endangering the Juniors any more than you already have today. Go."
Swoop sighed exasperatedly at that, but knew that she had no choice but to obey. Not only did Ratchet have his "CMO Voice" on, but he also had his "Dad Voice" on. Whenever that happened, there was no protest in the universe, no matter how logical, that she could offer that he would listen to. She was glad that, very soon, he and everyone else would have a dozen or so fewer reasons to mother-hen her.

"I'll keep an eye on this one for you," Ratchet was quietly assuring her meanwhile, inclining his head down at Starscream.

Swoop snorted at that.

"Oh, I'm sure you will," she answered.

And with that, she headed toward the medbay doors. Ratchet was right; she was tired, but she was also still keyed up from Starscream's unexpected arrival. She wasn't yet ready to settle down for the night. Plus, she had some unfinished business with the historical databases and now was, suddenly, the perfect time to finish it.

Hmmm…Ratchet really crept into this story big time, didn't he? I'm only just noticing it as I'm posting this, actually. Sneaky little medic. I guess I felt a need to explore his relationship to Swoop a bit. Or a lot, apparently. I mean, it's pretty well-known how Wheeljack feels about the Dinos, but Ratchet? Not so much. Guess I felt a need to fill in that blank, at least when it comes to Swoop, to whom Ratchet is for obvious reason the closest. Funny how that happened…

Anyway…Review replies!

Starfire: The 4th karma victim…actually hasn't shown yet. But he will, although he doesn't have a huge role in this story at all. You're right about the other three, though. Poor Swoop's just a victim of circumstance, so no karma for her. At least, not in this story. ;)

And no, Starscream's ramblings about cowardice and such aren't really a reference to the movies. It's actually me trying to keep Screamer canon-y (at least for now, in this part of the story) even though I've plunked him into a very non-canon circumstance. Trust me to have to write an AU to make Starscream more like his canon self. :D But anyway, the second movie obviously attempted to make Starscream more G1-y (Not entirely successfully, IMO, but I have a very jaundiced view of that movie, so this opinion might just be snippiness on my part), so I guess we kind of thought along similar lines that way. But I actually wrote the original of this chapter back in May, according to the date on the draft (I date everything. It's a fetish, I'm afraid), which was before ROTF was released; that stuff survived the subsequent rewrite.

Trapped in Reality: YAAAAAAY! Someone picked up on my bug inspiration! Termites, specifically, I should add. My favorite social insects. I'm continuing the grand tradition of making aliens a lot like bugs, indeed. As for the rest…Yeah, the movieverse has Megatron-as-disruptor-of-social-order in its backstory, indeed. I can't honestly say whether that influenced me or not. I had dreamed up a similar sort of idea many years ago, in an attempt to make my own logical backstory for the whole civil war thing, some of which is being incorporated into this 'verse. But perhaps the movies did bring the concept back to the forefront of my attention again…

But I can't see what you're seeing as Beast Wars-ian… Then again, I haven't watched BW in…well, about ten years now, so there might be a connection I'm not making.

But, yeah. Sorry for the brain hurt. It's only gonna get worse, I fear…

Shadir: He is Marvin! I swear! All he needs is the little skirt and the funny hat and the little tennis shoes. And the Illidium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator, of course. ;) And K-9.

And dude! You're from Chile! That's awesome…

Jenn: I guess Screamer's a cute crazy rather than a scary crazy. Well, until he starts blowing things up, of course. ;) The comment about TC survived the first draft, which was more stream-of-consciousness, which is why it was bugging me. But in it he went off on this bizarre riff, comparing TC and Soundwave. Like, TC's blue and so is Soundwave, only Soundwave is dark blue and TC is light blue. So TC became "Soundwave Light." So there were some funny bits in there, but in the end it just didn't really "fit." But I did keep a bit of TC/Soundwave comparison. Because it was, in my mind, just too fun.

Carmilla: Well, the 'Bots haven't truly welcomed Screamer…yet. But they will. ;)

Next time: Swoop. Mirage. A battle to the death. OK, not really. But they do have a chat! About stuff! And things!