Welp, I decided how this story's gonna end. But…GAH! This part gave me utter fits. It needed quite a bit of re-write to accommodate elements needed for the new plotline and ending, and I had a hell of a time with it for some reason. I don't really know why. Just did. So much so that I had to put it aside for a while and just let it sit and stew in my head for quite a while. This was originally in Starscream's POV and was originally a lot different. And a lot shorter. *laughs* But it became stilted when I reworked it and…UGH! So I changed it to Swoop's perspective, but that didn't really work, either. Really, I needed elements from both viewpoints. So then I decided to split the chapter into two sections and change "narrator" at the break. That still didn't work because then it felt too rehash-y, and that kind of weighed things down and…UGH!
So, after taking four different stabs at this part of the story, my ultimate solution…was to completely rewrite the chapter again, this time in 3rd person. (Which is what this whole story should be in anyway, given what it's evolved into from its humble initial concept, but that's beside the point .Maybe one day I'll entirely rewrite it.) So…uh, sorry? Both for the switch in narrative voice (again) and for the huge delay. Blame Starscream. I always do.
On the bright side…Well, since this chapter gave me fits and I had to walk away from it multiple times, I worked on other chapters. So I've got a good number of chapters after this one all set to go. Plus…uh…*cough*…four other short stories in this continuity, all of them done. Everything else was coming to me nicely, especially "future" stuff, but this chapter…? Not so much. SO not so much. *grumblegrowl* But…I'm through with wrestling with it, for better or worse. Now that it's done I could more-or-less easily switch it all back to 1st person, but…meh. Deal with it. :) Anyway, after all that rewriting, it became long, so you're actually going to get it in three, possibly four chapters, just so it's not an overwhelmingly long read. I'll upload it all over the next few days.
Anyway, as always, my deepest thanks go out to those of you reading, watching, and especially commenting on this story. It flabbergasts me that more than 30 people have put this crack on alert, as I thought it would have very limited appeal, but it truly does warm my heart. And it makes me feel somewhat less of a weird-o for coming up with all this crazy stuff in the first place, knowing that there are weird-os out there who like it well enough to keep track of it, at least. *laughs* Again, my apologies for the wait. I sincerely hope that doesn't happen again. But even if it does, rest assured that I am committed to finishing this story. Because, all frustration with this part aside, this AU is very fun for me. Just to let you know, we're about half-way through this story. I think it's going to be 22 chapters besides the notes and the prologue. Maybe 24. It depends on if/how I break up the climax…
Swoop was perched cross-legged on top of the bank of supply cabinets that lined one wall of the treatment room, leaning back against the wall behind her and frowning at the datapad that she held in her hand. She glanced back and forth between the small device and Starscream laid out on the berth close by, close enough that she could touch him if she just reached out her hand. She was trying and largely failing to comprehend exactly what the pad was telling her. With a sigh, she dragged her attention away from the datapad, and, not surprisingly, she found that a moment later her attention was settled, all unconsciously, on Starscream's still and silent form, staring at him.
Swoop was absolutely certain now that Starscream was still imprinted on her. Her certainty arose not from any tests or comparisons that she could or would run but simply because she'd found that, whenever she was around Starscream, even though he was offline and unconscious, she felt…something. Some shivery something tugging at her. It was faint, but it was definitely there. And it was familiar, too, like a faded echo of the undeniable and gravity-like pull that she'd felt toward him before their encounter in Bolivia. And the closer she was to him now, the stronger the tug became. Now, in the same small room with him, it was hard not to constantly touch him, not to run her hands over him as if to reassure herself that he was there. She found herself doing so, often, if she wasn't careful to keep herself focused otherwise. It unsettled her. If she felt this way when he was offline, she truly couldn't imagine what she'd feel when they brought him back online later. Nor could she imagine what he would feel, since the tugging on him was apparently far stronger than it was on her, strong enough that he'd been begging for it to end, even perhaps welcoming death if it meant that it would end. For that reason if nothing else, Swoop was almost afraid to bring Starscream online again, even though she wanted – needed – answers.
Still, Swoop could not deny that the closer she was to Starscream, the more…contented she felt. There was no other word for it. Even the infant sparks within her, ready to be taken from her and put into stasis any day now, seemed more settled and calm when she was nearer to Starscream. They seemed to stop jerking about as much, to stop bumping up against each other and against her own consciousness in often annoying-to-each-other ways that sent strong and unsettling surges of energy skittering through Swoop's systems at the most inconvenient of times.
All of this, in Swoop's opinion, was conclusive evidence that supported her theory that the imprint had not dissolved far better than the results of any mere scan ever could. She accepted her conclusion as true without giving it any further thought, even though Ratchet still wasn't convinced. The question remained, though: Why did the imprint still exist? So far as Swoop had read, it shouldn't. She could find not a single case, in carefully-preserved records dating back hundreds of thousands of years, to the time of her many-times-over-great-grandmother, of an imprint overstaying its welcome, much less its necessary and intended purpose. So, there was something very strange going on here, and there were, so far as Swoop was concerned, only three possibilities as to why: the answer to the situation could lie with her, with Starscream, or with the particular combination of the two of them together.
If it was the first possibility…Well, that didn't bode well at all. She would, over the course of her lifetime, experience thousands of cycles, and if she drove her partner crazy like this every time… She shuddered at the thought. Definitely not good. On the bright side, though…Swoop was fairly convinced that the answer to the situation lay in one of – or perhaps both of – the latter two possibilities. Because there was definitely something odd about Starscream, beyond the obvious odd things.
She'd hardly been able to recharge the previous night. The combination of the things she'd learned during the many hours she'd ended up spending talking with Mirage and the questions about Starscream, specifically about the peculiar damage to his spark chamber, had served to plague her thoughts, steadfastly refusing to be quieted. Eventually, she'd entirely given up the effort to sleep and had simply gone back to the medbay, many hours before her scheduled duty shift. She didn't care about the lost sleep, though. She needed some answers.
Which led her back to the datapad that she still held loosely in one hand. Tearing her gaze away from Starscream's peacefully unconsciousness face, she returned her attention to the pad. The results of the tests and simulations she'd run during the course of the wee hours of the night bore out that which, really, she had already known: The only way to produce the kind of damage that she'd discovered on Starscream's spark chamber was to infuse the spark that the chamber contained with fairly strong bursts of energy, and that just didn't make any sense. In general, the easiest way to kill a member of their species was to direct a massive energy burst, with an energy weapon or otherwise, directly into the individual's spark. The only exception to that rule was…well, Swoop herself. Her spark could accept massive inputs of energy and either harmlessly disperse the excess energy through her systems if she wasn't in cycle, or otherwise assimilate the energy and use it to produce new offspring sparks. This specialization was, indeed, what made her a queen. Of her entire species, she alone had this ability.
Except that, apparently, Starscream had it, too. Swoop somehow, perhaps instinctively, doubted that he had the ability to reproduce as she did, but his spark could indeed accept energy inputs without it killing him. Without it even damaging him, really, except for the casing damage, and that was certainly fixable. He could do this, apparently, as easily – albeit as painfully – as she could. Swoop had thought, at first, that perhaps he simply possessed an unusually-insulating spark chamber, but she'd quickly determined that that wasn't the case. Rather, he simply possessed an unusual spark, able to do almost exactly what hers could do. And it wasn't inconceivable to Swoop that this was why the imprint had not dissolved. Perhaps their sparks were too similar, and this had caused some sort of strange reaction between the two of them during the energy infusion that he'd given her.
Swoop shook her head, trying to focus, her gaze involuntarily straying to Starscream again.
She could not, for the life of her, comprehend how it might have happened that Starscream had ended up having this very odd thing in common with her. She wondered if it was something that had been done to Starscream, some sort of modification that had perhaps been inspired by or even perhaps reverse-engineered from royal-caste physiology. The thought was greatly disturbing, but it almost made a certain amount of sense as well; developing such a thing would have been a project right up the Decepticons' alley. In fact, such a project would have been right up Starscream's alley, specifically. It certainly made Starscream very hard to kill, and that would be a distinct advantage to Starscream personally and to the Decepticons in general. On the other hand, if that was the case, then certainly it would have been done to all of the Decepticons, or at least to a number of them. And that just didn't seem to be the case, since, other than Starscream, they seemed to be killed as often and as easily as Autobots were.
So maybe it was something that had just happened. Some freak event. Even something evolutionary, perhaps. And if that was the case, Swoop found herself wondering if Starscream himself was even aware of his ability, his nigh-immortality. And then she found herself wondering if it was a trait that could be passed down… Her hand, of its own volition, moved up to stroke thoughtfully at her chest then, tapping against her armor absently, her mind settling into contemplating possibilities.
Swoop's meandering thoughts were interrupted, long minutes later, when she realized that someone was knocking lightly on the treatment room's locked door. Craning her head around so that she could see through the small window by the door, she saw that it was Wheeljack. He had a Seeker wing slung over his shoulder, and he didn't look happy. Sighing, Swoop reached over and tapped at the panel by the door, entering the unlock code and silently gesturing for Wheeljack to enter.
Wheeljack stomped into the room, dumped the dull grey, unbranded wing on the floor, and propped it up against the wall. Straightening, he muttered something under his breath that Swoop couldn't quite catch and then unceremoniously and wordlessly turned around again, obviously quite intent on leaving immediately now that he'd made his final delivery. Swoop sighed again and then reached out to lay a hand on his arm, hoping to forestall his departure.
They'd been avoiding each other. It had started shortly after the threat of her dying had lifted and then had only greatly and quickly intensified with Starscream's arrival and with Swoop's insistence on working on him, on helping him. Swoop was no idiot; it was obvious that Wheeljack was angry with her. She thought that even now he'd ignore her effort to keep him from storming away.
But this time, Wheeljack halted his departure. He turned. He stared at her almost expectantly. Under his scrutiny, Swoop wasn't entirely sure what to say for a moment. So, she said the only thing that occurred to her.
"Please talk to me," she said quietly.
Wheeljack's eyes narrowed, his expression displeased, and then he angled a wary glance at Starscream.
"He can't hear you," Swoop assured him. "Please, Wheeljack."
"What do you want me to say?" Wheeljack asked as he dragged his distasteful gaze away from the inert Seeker. His voice entirely lacked its usual, jovial warmth, and Swoop shuddered for its loss.
"You're angry at me," she answered, unfolding her legs and sliding down from her perch on the supply cabinets. Standing a few paces away from him, she looked up into Wheeljack's face earnestly.
"I'm not angry at you," Wheeljack protested flatly, without inflection, but his words rang false even in his own audios, much less in Swoop's.
"Don't lie to me," she said firmly. "Tell me. Tell me so that…so that I can fix whatever I did. I don't like it that you're angry at me," she added in a small voice.
"You can't fix it, Swoop," Wheeljack answered, his voice slightly and involuntarily rising. "What's done is done."
"This is about him, then?" Swoop inferred, jerking her head at Starscream.
"No," Wheeljack countered, "this is about you."
Swoop frowned, not understanding. And then Wheeljack, his brow fiercely creased with a scowl, reached out and snatched at her forearm. The one that was attached to the hand that had unconsciously taken to stroking up and down Starscream's forearm.
"Look at yourself!" he cried, shaking her own hand in her face. "How can you not hate him?! How can you be so…so OK with what happened to you? So OK that you do this now," he finished, shaking her arm again.
Swoop reared back from him, jerking her arm out of his grasp with a scowl of her own. Anger was rising in her, too, now that she knew that Wheeljack was displeased with her for reasons that were entirely unjustified, now that she knew that she had done nothing wrong, nothing to truly earn disapproval.
"Maybe it's because I had no choice in the matter," she answered quietly at first, but she found that her decibel level rose, defensively, as she continued. "Maybe it's because I know that he had no choice in the matter, either. Or here's an idea: Maybe it's because I'm fragging glad it was him! You ever think of that? Huh?"
Wheeljack just stared at her, narrow-eyed; he couldn't remember ever seeing Swoop so angry. So vehement. And the question on his mind was obvious even with his limited expression.
"If it had been anyone here," Swoop growled, anger still simmering as she answered Wheeljack's unspoken question, "it would have been horrible. Afterwards, I mean. I don't know what I'll do when it happens again."
"Swoop—" Wheeljack tried to interrupt, his voice and his demeanor softening quickly when he detected the fear underscoring her words, but she continued to speak over him, if she'd even heard him at all.
"It's so humiliating," she was saying, the words pouring out of her, anger slowly bleeding out of her. "You have no idea how humiliating it is. It makes you do things you don't want to do with someone you don't want to do it with, someone you don't even know, and when I even begin to think about it happening again…" She shuddered, then added, "If I'd grown up royal, Wheeljack, I would have been praying that this didn't happen to me. But it did. But somehow, having it happen with Starscream…That, I can deal with. Because I don't have to face him every single day. He isn't one of us…and somehow that just makes it all so much easier."
Wheeljack could only stare at her, suddenly feeling like the universe's biggest jerk. He'd thought – Everyone had thought, really – that Swoop was handling things so well, but he'd just discovered that if one merely pricked lightly at the surface of her composure it shattered and fell away, suddenly revealing the terrified and bewildered child behind the façade. His own terrified and bewildered child, no less.
He'd completely missed the emotional implications of Swoop's status and of the things that it had forced and would in the future again force her to do. He'd assumed that the fact that it had been Starscream that she had…needed…would have been as repulsive to her as the mere thought of it was to him when, really, it had strangely made the situation much easier for her. He had not taken that into account, and he'd been angry at her because of it. Wheeljack imagined that being angry at his own kid because of his own insensitivity was way up there on the scale of ultimate jerkiness,
"Oh, Swoop," he murmured, suddenly and thoroughly chastened, his shoulders slumping. "Primus, sweetie, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize... I thought…"
She gave him a hard look, golden eyes glittering at him. It served to silence him.
"You thought that I have feelings for him now or something," she surmised.
Wheeljack nodded.
"And the thought of that just…" he said apologetically. "And now you touch him, and…"
"I know," she answered quietly, her own shoulders slumping now. "It's the imprint. It's still there, and if I don't pay attention to what I'm doing, it just…happens. I can't seem to help it, but it doesn't mean anything. But I'm afraid of what will happen when I wake him up. And I'm just afraid of what's going to happen to me, period."
Wheeljack approached her then, close enough to be able to see the shudders that were passing through her small body every now and then. Without thinking about it, he reached out to her, pulling at her and gathering her into his arms. She neither protested nor resisted, instead snuggling in as closely as possible against him, resting her cheek over his spark and listening to its slow and always-comforting pulse, just as she'd done all her life when something was upsetting her. It was a privilege that only she had had since she was the only Dinobot small enough to fit into Wheeljack's lap, and she had many warm, fuzzy memories of drifting off into recharge while snuggled against him, listening to the pulse of his spark and wrapped in his arms as if they were living blankets. Now, her body shook uncontrollably; it happened often when she was alone now, without having to put up a front, when she found herself considering the larger and quite overwhelming implications of her status.
"It's OK," Wheeljack comforted her, just as he had done when she'd been a few months old, when she'd been just as bewildered as she was right now, only in a different way and for different reasons. He worked his arms around her wings so that he could stroke her back gently, and he rocked her slowly back and forth, as if she was still that bewildered newborn. "It'll be OK, little bit," he whispered. "We'll figure it all out, I promise."
And somehow, just as she always did, Swoop believed Wheeljack's promise. Because somehow, some way, he always seemed to manage to make good on them.