20: Responsibilities

Swoop stared at the wall across from her, deep in thought.

She was lying on her own berth in her own little sunny corner of the Dinobots' shared quarters, enjoying the quiet and the mellow wash of warm afternoon sunlight that flooded the room and, most of all, the solitude. She was curled up on one side, one wing carefully folded down and back to allow the position. She'd drawn her knees up into her midsection because she'd long ago discovered that it was comfortable to do so. Humans called the position the "fetal position" because it was the position that their unborn children naturally assumed inside their mother's wombs as they developed, waiting to be born.

Swoop wondered, idly, what her unborn child looked like now and what he would look like when he was born. She wondered what he was doing, if he was capable of doing anything at all at this very early stage in the process of his formation. It had only been a little over two weeks.

It was, Swoop reflected, the strangest sensation, the strangest knowledge. It was nothing like simply carrying offspring sparks. It was so much…deeper. More profound. More personal. She had been aware of the presence of those sparks when she had carried them, yes. They had been a part of her, were still a part of her and always would be, but she hadn't been able to feel them. Hadn't been able to know them. But she could feel the other life within her now as surely as she could feel the pulsing of her own spark.

She knew that the life inside of her was male, although she was at a loss to explain how she knew that. She'd been quite relieved when Mirage had told her, during one of his frequent visits in the week that Ratchet had kept her confined and under close watch in the medbay, that their mother had always instinctively known the gender of the children that she had carried, too, although she didn't often announce it to anyone. So at least Swoop knew that the knowing was normal. She also knew that, eventually, she would know this life inside of her as well, well before he was born. Even now, even though he was only sixteen days old, she could sense that he had fledgling…not thoughts or feelings, really, not yet, but she knew that he could already perceive things. She knew that he was aware of her, and that the awareness was growing, almost by the minute, just as her awareness of him was growing. And for now, that was enough. They had a little less than five Earth months to get to know one another beyond that, before he'd be born into the world and would no longer be hers alone.

She did not resent his presence, not in the slightest. She welcomed him, in fact, with all that she was. She loved him. Already. Intensely. Protectively. Immediately. The others, they didn't understand. No one, really, understood. No one could, and Swoop couldn't really blame them. Perhaps another female might have had some inkling of what she was feeling, but there were no other females on Earth at the moment. But then, even if there had been other females present, they only had the capability to create bodies, vessels for lives but not the lives themselves. That gift was Swoop's alone amongst her species, and a gift it most certainly was.

She recalled what she'd said to Wheeljack not so very long ago at all, the words that she had spoken in despair about hating what she had become, about it being humiliating and degrading, and she couldn't believe now what she'd said. And really, she didn't know what had changed since then, either. There had been no epiphany, no sudden flood of angelic light and a heavenly chorus that conveyed some great truth to her, no single dramatic event that had completely altered her perception of the universe and her place in it. There was absolutely nothing different about her now except the presence of another life within her. And in the end, maybe that had been all that was required to compel her to acknowledge the enormous gift that she had been given, and, more importantly, to compel her to appreciate the gift.

Whatever the case, those who surrounded her couldn't understand why she had absolutely no desire to destroy the life that was growing inside of her, that was already sharing and draining her resources and that would soon begin to co-opt internal parts of her body in order to create his own. He had been fathered by their greatest enemy. She had lost track of the number of individuals who had told her over the past few days, in an attempt to make her "see reason," that he had humiliated her, brutalized her, traumatized her in the worst possible way in order to bring about the life that she now harbored within her, as if merely doing so could make her hate that life. But no. She could hate Megatron, but she could not hate an innocent life and, really, she couldn't understand why no one could see things her way, why they couldn't see reason. But they couldn't, and that was sad. For them.

Part of the explanation for Swoop's equanimity regarding the situation was very simple: For her, the life growing inside of her was not a reminder of physical and psychological trauma, of brutality, of…rape. She had absolutely no memory of what had happened to her. Her recent memories ended abruptly in a small, frigid room in an abandoned Decepticon base in the Gobi Desert and only began again in the warmth of the Autobots' medbay, with an angry and anguished Ratchet telling her what she had already, instinctively, known the instant that she had regained consciousness: That she carried Megatron's child. Ratchet had further told her that Megatron had altered her programming in such a way that was designed to put her into cycle and to make her more…receptive. That he had subsequently raped her. That shortly afterwards she had killed him in an uncontrollable and frightening-to-witness flood of fury brought on, so she had apparently said at the time, by a combination of things, but mostly because, of all things, she hadn't wanted Megatron to kill Starscream.

But when the altered programming had been removed, so, too, had all recollection of the events that had transpired while she had been under its sway. The result was a yawning void in Swoop's mind, a loss of almost a week, including the act that had brought about the life that she harbored now. But this did not greatly trouble her. She was thankful for it, in fact, if it helped her to accept, to love, to cherish the life that she bore now.

Her son. Megatron's son.

Because even if Swoop had perfect recall of the events surrounding her son's conception and even if the events truly had been traumatic and horrifying…she would not have destroyed her child, and this was what no one could understand. She was hard-pressed to understand it, herself, but she had come to the conclusion that it was because of her role in Cybertronian society and, really, her role in the universe as a whole.

Swoop had been born, the second time around, to be a life-taker. She had been intended and uniquely designed to damage, to maim, to kill, to cause nothing but havoc and pain and suffering. And even though she was killing and inflicting pain upon those whom she was told were her enemies, doing so had never sat well with her, on a deeply-felt instinctive level that she understood perfectly well now but that had made no sense to her at all for most of her life. At the time, the feeling, the deeply-held knowledge, that something was very wrong, that something was wildly out of place, was simply the driving force behind her eventual desire to be a medic. Swoop had remolded herself in that manner because she had felt, very deep down, that she had to do so. She had felt that the role that she had been given in life was wrong, not just wrong for her, individually, but wrong in a cosmic and general kind of way. So the life-taker became more often a life-protector, an individual who thwarted the life-takers when she could, when it was possible to do so, and it was deeply satisfying.

And now she knew why. Because her true destiny was to be what she truly was: A life-giver. A life-creator. A sustainer of yet-to-be-born life. Her mother had known this somehow, insisting that she, the little infant Eclipse-who-became-Swoop, would be her successor. And she had been right, and it wasn't, Swoop knew now, only because of the circumstances as they had eventually played out, leaving her the only surviving female in the family. No, Swoop knew now that she would have arisen as queen even if her mother had died peacefully of advanced age, even if she had been loved by all until the very moment that simple entropy claimed her life. She knew, deep down, that she had simply been chosen, although again she did not understand how she knew this.

Her lack of understanding was irrelevant, however; that she knew was sufficient, and she found that, now, she could not only accept but truly embrace what she had become. And part of that meant that she could not, would not, take life. She would wound if she was forced to do so, in order to deter those who would take life, but she would not kill. Not anymore and never again. The fact that she had apparently killed Megatron – deliberately, slowly, cruelly, taking malicious advantage of the fact that he'd already been greatly weakened by the combined efforts of others – disturbed her far more than the objective knowledge that he had impregnated her against her will, far more than the notion of carrying and raising and loving his child did. She knew that she could blame the effects of the altered programming for the killing, of course – and indeed it was ultimately to blame, for she hadn't been in complete control of her actions – but that didn't at all mitigate the abhorrence she felt toward what she had done, toward what she was obviously capable of doing. She was, in fact, ashamed of herself.

This, too, no one could understand. Others looked at her with awe that sometimes, disturbingly, bordered on something like worship, all because of whom she had killed. That was distressing. In Swoop's estimation, no one should be revered for killing, no matter whom they killed, no matter how horrible that individual was. No one.

And then Swoop sighed as a soft noise interrupted her philosophical musings. It was the door of her room sliding aside, and she was instantly annoyed; she'd told her brothers that she wanted to be alone. But as it turned out it wasn't one of her brothers who was visiting her.

Starscream poked his head into her room, unflinchingly met the irritated glare that she angled at him, and said, "Hello?"

Swoop sighed again, but she found that she couldn't be annoyed with him, not with Starscream, not really. And she had no idea why.

"Hello," she answered quietly, at the same time gesturing that he could come in.

He did so wordlessly, approaching her and silently offering her one of the containers that she just then noticed that he was carrying. Swoop pushed herself up into a sitting position in order to accept it, and she saw that it contained energon, concentrated and high-quality energon. She smiled appreciatively up at Starscream. Her body's energon demand had already greatly increased, and she had been feeling a little peckish, not enough so that she had gotten up to do something about it yet, but enough that she had been thinking about it. Somehow, it didn't surprise her in the least that Starscream had anticipated that and had arrived prepared.

"I guess you'll do just about anything to stay on the good stuff," Starscream said to her, watching as she sipped appreciatively. His tone was light, but even so the words cut into Swoop like a laser scalpel, and the smile fell abruptly from her face.

"So you think I'm crazy, too," she said resignedly, slumping back against the wall behind her with a defeated sigh.

"No," Starscream immediately, reflexively responded. "Well, yes," he amended after a moment's thought. Then, looking around the room, he spied the one chair that was in the small room. It was too small for him, but he wedged himself into it anyway, thinking it a better option than sitting on the floor because he wasn't at all sure that he'd be welcomed on Swoop's berth, even just to sit on it. "But I don't think that you're any crazier than any of the rest of us," he finished.

Swoop regarded him, askance, but didn't say anything. Starscream sighed and slumped back in the too-small chair, giving Swoop a nebulous look that she didn't know quite how to interpret.

"Look…Swoop…" Starscream offered hesitantly after gathering his thoughts for a moment. "I really, truly don't understand why in the universe you want this child, his child, not after what he…after everything. I don't think anyone can understand it, really. In fact, if someone did claim to understand it, I would question their sanity."

Swoop nodded silently; he wasn't telling her anything that she didn't already know. But then, rather unexpectedly, he continued.

"But what I do understand," Starscream said quietly, "is that it's important to you that you keep this child for…whatever reason." He shrugged carelessly as he added, "And that's good enough for me."

Swoop gawked at Starscream for a long, long time after that, emotions suddenly roiling within her, surfacing and sinking in such rapid succession that she couldn't identify any individual one before it slipped off into the depths again. But once she could talk again, she choked out, her voice wavering gratefully but pitifully, "Well. Just when I think I've got you all figured out, jetboy, you throw me a curve ball."

Starscream gave her a lop-sided smile.

"If you'll recall," he said quietly, "I did once warn you that I was capable of many things that might surprise you. I wasn't lying, you know."

Swoop smiled at him, trying and failing to prevent the smile from having a good measure of sap in it. To deflect the sap, she teased, "And to think that just three months ago I would've given half my spark to rip your head off and shove it up your—"

Starscream laughed out loud, interrupting her, and he raised his container of energon in salute to her, declaring, "And the sentiment was entirely mutual, my dear, I assure you."

Laughing, too, leaning over to reach out across the short distance between them, Swoop clinked her container of energon gently against his.

"To not getting what we wanted," she said, suddenly very serious.

"I'll drink to that," he answered, in the same tone. And so he did, downing what energon he had left. Swoop did the same. Then:

"Now get out of my favorite chair before you break it," she ordered him indignantly. Patting the spot next to her in invitation, she added, "Berth's big enough for two, but don't you go getting any bright ideas."

"Me?" Starscream responded, all exaggerated innocence, as he extricated himself from the too-small chair. "Bright ideas? You give me far too much credit, my queen."

Swoop snorted at that.

"Speaking of credit," she said as Starscream settled himself next to her, "how'd you get past my phalanx of faithful guardians out there, anyway?" She scooted out of the way of Starscream's wing as he leaned back against the wall, and then she sat back against it once he'd settled himself alongside her, so that they were shoulder to shoulder, her own wing still neatly folded out of the way.

"Oh, that," Starscream said dismissively. He shrugged and answered, "Snarl owed me a bit of a favor."

Swoop snorted at that again. It figured. Starscream seemed to have an uncanny ability to worm his way into other people's good graces, even when those other people didn't exactly like him. She'd have to ask him how he managed that feat one day. If they had more days…

"So…What will you do now?" Swoop asked quietly, seriously, of Starscream.

Thundercracker had made his future plans eminently clear to her during her stay in the medbay: Now that he had found her, he wasn't about to abandon her, certainly not in her current condition, no matter what the Autobots had to say about it. But she wasn't at all sure about what Starscream might have planned, if he had any plans at all. And Starscream shrugged in answer to her question. He was going for a casually nonchalant shrug, Swoop could tell, but she could feel the sudden tension in his body.

"I haven't the faintest clue," Starscream answered her quietly, honestly, and with a drawn-out sigh. "And isn't that strange? I always thought that once Megatron was dead, my path would be brilliantly clear." He made a resigned gesture in the air, miming a wide, straight, unobstructed path.

"Except," Swoop pointed out, nodding sympathetically, "that in your daydreams, it was always you who killed him. And if that had been the case…"

"…Then my path would be clear," Starscream finished. He heaved a weary, regretful sigh, and then paraphrased, "The best laid plans are often completely obliterated by a crazed Dinobot." Swoop snickered sadly as Starscream continued quietly, "I suppose my only consolation is that the utterly brainless one amongst my wingmates is every bit as clueless as I am. So after all is said and done, I find myself exactly like Skywarp. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic."

"You've been in contact with Skywarp?" Swoop asked, surprised.

Starscream nodded.

"He finally lowered himself to talk to me not twenty minutes ago. Mostly, I think, because he's worried about Thundercracker because Thundercracker hasn't spoken to him, not since he left Headquarters to meet with you." He sighed and then added reluctantly, "And Skywarp told me that things are…not fun…at Decepticon Headquarters. I made a mess when I left, and then, not too long after that…Well, you know."

"Mmmm," Swoop unhappily murmured.

Starscream was quiet for a time, but then he confessed, in an uncharacteristically pained voice, "It's chaos over there, Swoop. Soundwave can't keep things under control even if he wanted to, and he's made it very clear that he doesn't want to. I wouldn't have expected that of him. I really thought he'd just…take over. But instead he's holed himself up with his 'kids' in his quarters and…and it's total anarchy. Skywarp's technically next in line, but he's completely out of his league. So…They won't survive, not for long. They'll pick each other off one by one because fighting and killing is what they do, and right now they have no one to fight or kill but each other."

Starscream was quiet for a long while after that, thinking, and Swoop was content to let him think. But then he sighed and added, "And here I sit, in a comparative lap of luxury, drinking excellent energon with a beautiful female." When Swoop jerked reflexively next to him and turned her head to stare at him in wide-eyed shock, he smiled and teased sadly, "Oh, come now. No false modesty, my dear. Sludge is an artist, indeed."

Swoop only continued to gawk at him in return. Impulsively, amused by the thunderstruck expression that remained on her face, Starscream leaned toward her and kissed her chastely on the forehead. But then he pulled away from her, waxing melancholy and silent again, staring at the wall across from him.

Swoop sighed. She could almost feel the opposing impulses that were tearing at Starscream, the desire to stay far away from the chaos and the concurrent but opposite desire to try to bring order to it. She knew now the reason for his unexpected visit, and she was glad that she hadn't refused him. She reached over then, took one of his hands in one of hers, and squeezed it encouragingly. Surprised, he turned his head to look at her.

Before he could say anything, she said quietly, simply, levelly, her gaze not straying from his, "They need you. You should go back to them."

Starscream shook his head.

"No," he said sadly. "No, they don't need me. No, I was thinking more along the lines of having a chat with Optimus Prime and convincing him that he needs to go over there and put them all out of their misery because that's what's best done with broken animals. Ones that you can't fix."

"No," Swoop insisted vehemently, immediately. "No more killing. There's already been far, far too much of it."

Starscream was startled by her sudden vehemence. The look that he gave her said as much.

"You really mean that," he said wonderingly after he'd studied her face for a moment, noting the determined lines into which it had set. It wasn't a question.

"Yes, I do," Swoop answered firmly anyway. "I've given this, all of this, a lot of thought over the past few days." Letting go of Starscream's hand, she laid both hands on herself, one on top of the other, below and slightly to the left of her spark chamber, directly over her developing son, and explained, "I'm life, Starscream. A force for life. A creator of life. And life shouldn't, can't, sanction killing."

Starscream blinked, and in the space of that blink something that had made absolutely no sense to him before began to make perfect sense, which was always disconcerting.

"And that's why you won't terminate this," he said, laying a hand over her two. "That's why you wouldn't terminate it even if you could remember what happened." Again, it wasn't a question.

"Yes," Swoop answered quietly again, nodding solemnly. "Exactly."

Starscream looked at her with grudging respect, and he said, almost unwillingly, "I understand."

Swoop smiled at him then, gratefully but teasingly, and answered, "Well, then. You'd better skip off and go have your sanity checked."

Starscream smiled in kind.

"I suppose so," he agreed quietly.

Companionable silence settled between them for a few long moments, both of them contemplating the future. Eventually, Swoop felt the tension begin to return to Starscream's body, and she sighed, reluctant to say to him what she needed to say to him, to ask of him what she knew, now, that she needed to ask of him.

"Starscream?" she ventured hesitantly, quietly.

"Hmm?" he murmured distractedly.

"I need you to go back to them," Swoop said quietly after only a brief moment of hesitation. She gazed earnestly up at him while he turned his head to frown quizzically down at her.

"You need me to?" he asked, surprised and bewildered. "Why?"

"Because if I'm 'she who will restore' the royal line," she said, gesturing at the glyphs on her forearm, "then I need someone to be 'he who picks up the pieces of what's left of the warrior caste and welds them kicking and screaming back together again.'" At Starscream's completely dubious look, she added, "I need them, Starscream. Or at least I will need what they're supposed to be doing. And I need you to pull them together."

Starscream snorted dismissively at that. He even got up off the berth…and then just stood there, indecisively.

"You have plenty of warriors here who could do that," he eventually pointed out to Swoop, staring down at her. "You even have Prowl, the ultra-super-finest-example-of-honorable-warriorness-who-ever-deigned-to-grace-us-with-his-shining-and-glorious-presence here. You don't need me."

Swoop sighed exasperatedly.

"Think about it, Starscream," she said imploringly. "Those warriors over there are what? Maybe half of those who still exist? And they're Decepticons and have been for thousands of years now. Do you seriously think that they're going to listen to Prowl? Or to any warrior who ended up siding with the Autobots?"

"Do you seriously think that they're going to listen to me?" Starscream immediately, unthinkingly countered, his eyes flashing with sudden anger.

Swoop got up off the berth then, too, her own eyes narrowed in annoyance. She paced toward him, stopping just out of arm's reach, but her gaze burned up and into his.

"You certainly used to think that they would," Swoop reminded him quietly, her calm tone counterpointing his angry one. She folded her arms over her chest and raised her chin at him challengingly. "So were you just deluding yourself all along, then?"

Starscream stiffened.

"That was a low blow," he accused a moment later, stabbing a finger at her to emphasize the point.

"I'm a Dinobot," Swoop answered equably, with a dismissive shrug. "I don't fight fair. And you have a responsibility here, Starscream, much as you might not like it," she added quietly. Starscream merely stared at her, frowning at her in confusion, so she explained, "Before the uprising, Megatron was War Leader, and you were his Second. Megatron is…gone. By my reckoning, that makes you, not Prowl, War Leader now. Whether you want to be or not. Just as I am queen, whether I want to be or not."

Starscream stared at her, thinking, for a while longer, and then his shoulders slumped, and he turned away from her. He was quiet for a long while after that, but then he said, his voice barely above a whisper, "You don't want to trust me with this, Swoop. I will make a mess of things, and that will be nothing short of disastrous for you. Do yourself a favor: Forget about me, and ask Prowl. He's far more…worthy."

The sheer honesty of his words surprised Swoop. She went to him, standing a pace behind him for a long and indecisive moment, uncertain of what to do. Finally, she let instinct guide her, and she reached out a hand to stroke it back and forth across the width of one of Starscream's wings, offering comfort. He stiffened at first, but he eventually relaxed under her soothing touch.

Swoop lightly traced around the Decepticon sigil on the back of his wing, wishing that she could see his face as she eventually said softly but with rock-solid certainty, "You will not make a mess of things, Starscream. And I need you, not Prowl."

"Sure you need me," Starscream retorted with a bitter snort. "Every six weeks or so."

"This has nothing to do with that!" Swoop flared, and Starscream whirled to face her.

"No?" he asked, reaching out to grip her shoulders tightly enough to cause a twinge of pain, but she didn't complain about it and made no effort to break his grip.

"No," she confirmed calmly, staring up at him steadily. Slowly, his grip on her shoulders relaxed, but he didn't let her go. "And least…not beyond the fact that…that…has forged this relationship between us," Swoop added softly. And then she sighed and explained quietly but very seriously, "If I'm to do this, Starscream, I need friends."

"You certainly do not lack for friends, Swoop," Starscream countered with a disbelieving snort, releasing her shoulders so that he could cross his arms over his chest.

"Yes, I do," Swoop answered honestly. "Siblings and parents are not the same things as friends. And now, it will be even harder to have friends, especially ones who aren't afraid to tell me what I need to hear instead of what I want to hear. But you will, and I need that. And I need you to bring the warriors together for me. And then I'll need you to hold them together for me."

Starscream opened his mouth to protest, but Swoop continued on, heedless.

"Prowl can't do it," she told him. "He hasn't the people skills for it, and even if he had," she continued, raising her voice a bit because Starscream had opened his mouth to protest again, "the Decepticons won't listen to him. You know that. To them, he is a traitor, and he's always been a particularly sought-after target because of it. That's not going to change anytime soon. And there's no one else with the experience that you have, besides Thundercracker, and he's…he's…"

"…Complicated?" Starscream supplied when her voice trailed off helplessly. "Not to mention a surprisingly good liar," he added ruefully. At the odd and possibly reproving look that Swoop gave him, he sighed and wearily amended, "Oh, don't look at me like that. I may be kicking myself for not figuring it all out a long time ago, but…I might have done exactly the same thing, in his place. It's not as if I can fault him for doing whatever he had to do in order to protect his…daughter." He grimaced during the lengthy pause before the final word he'd said.

"It's weird to me, too," Swoop said quietly, sympathetically, immediately understanding the reason for the grimace.

Starscream snorted.

"I think," he said, only half joking, "that there are at least five regulations against doing what I've done – quite a few times now! – with my wingmate's daughter."

Swoop hitched a halfhearted smile at him.

"The brig's that way," she said, pointing backwards over her shoulder.

"But I think it only fair that my accomplice should be locked up with me," Starscream answered, smiling halfheartedly, too.

Swoop sighed and, turning away from him, she settled herself uneasily on the edge of her berth again.

"To be honest," she said, almost to herself, staring at the floor, "locking myself away from the world is a very…tempting prospect at the moment, and the brig's as good a place as any to do it."

Starscream watched her for a moment, frowning, and then he moved to crouch down in front of her, concerned.

"You can't do that," he said to her quietly, simply, seriously.

"I know that," she answered, equally quietly and equally seriously. And then she lifted her gaze to lock it with Starscream's and said, "I also know that I can't do all of this by myself, Starscream."

"No one expects you to," he answered evenly. "You have plenty of help here. Disparate brothers. Comrades. Prowl and all his…Prowlness. Optimus Prime and his millennia of experience holding a ragtag group of individuals together as a…competent-enough fighting force. Plus, lest you forget, far too many fathers."

"But I need you," Swoop insisted. "I need your support."

"Why mine?" Starscream asked, frowning at her, genuinely baffled.

"Because I want it!" Swoop answered before she really thought about it, and it was only then that she realized that it was the stripped-down truth and, further, that it was the truth that had been driving her. Starscream blinked at her in surprise and, partly to smooth over her completely irrational and entirely emotional outburst, Swoop hastily added, "And because…if only because you have a connection with the Decepticons that no one here has, I think that you can help me to do some of the things that I can't do, even with the help of everyone here."

"Such as?" Starscream prompted curiously.

"Such as reconciling the warriors, as I said. And healing the Autobot/Decepticon rift. And attempting to resurrect some kind of functioning government. And – oh, yeah! – dealing with a certain uncle of mine who seems to be under the impression that he owns Cybertron now. And then facing…whatever else comes our way. I can't do all of that on top of birthing and caring for and raising this child and somehow, somewhere squeezing in producing three or four possible successors, just to be safe. Please," she finished imploringly, reaching out to Starscream and laying a hand on his canopy, directly over his spark. She let every last bit of the vulnerability and confusion and fear that she felt – and there was a lot of it – show on her face as she finished, "Please help me."

Starscream stared at her for a long time after that, surprised by the naked emotion that she was suddenly willing to reveal to him – a first – yet not knowing quite what to do with it at the same time, precisely because she'd never been so willing to show this side of herself before. She always seemed to be hiding behind a frivolous, witty mask, and because of that Starscream was suddenly discovering that he didn't know quite what to do with an honest and suddenly vulnerable Swoop. Wit he could handle and return in kind and in spades, but emotional honesty…not so much.

So he said, quietly, "You could command me to do this, you know. If you did, I'd be…compelled to obey you."

Swoop shook her head slowly, leaving her hand lying over his spark. Even through the various thick layers of armor that protected it, she could feel its rhythm, still and probably forever matched to her own. Its steadiness was reassuring.

"Somehow I doubt that," she said quietly, smiling at him wryly. "But even if it was true…I won't do that. I'm not going down the coercion road because I know what it eventually did to my mother. Do this – or not – because it's what you want, Starscream."

Starscream sighed wearily. He rose from his crouch in front of her and paced away, pausing shortly to stare at the wall, lost in thought. A long moment later he whispered, "Fine." And then he turned to Swoop and added, in a tone of voice that spoke of layers of meaning behind the words that he uttered, "I'll do what you want me to do. For you. Only for you."

The brilliant smile that Swoop gave him in response was reward enough. But then she was standing up, too, approaching him…and the kiss that she impulsively gave him once she'd reached him and wrapped herself around him…

"You know," Starscream said dazedly and more than a little breathlessly when the kiss ended what seemed to him to be hours later, "you could have just done that and dispensed with all the talking."

Swoop's response was to duck her head shyly. Since Starscream still had his arms wrapped loosely around her after the kiss, she hid her face by nuzzling her forehead against his chest. The gesture was, Starscream thought, one of her more endearing quirks. It was childlike and a very strong reminder of how very young she was. He sometimes forgot that she was, in all the ways that mattered, only twenty-four years old, mere months into what was an extremely early maturity by their species' standards and that had likely been brought on by biological necessity, by the fact that her mother was long dead and their population dangerously low. She was, in the end, a child thrust unexpectedly and entirely unprepared into a very demanding position.

"Thank you," she was saying quietly, her voice further muffled against his chest.

Starscream sighed and said, "Forgive me, Swoop, but I'm not entirely certain that you're welcome yet. What you're asking of me… It's not going to be easy. At all."

"I know," Swoop answered solemnly as she raised her face again to meet his gaze. And then she poked his chest with one finger and added, with a suddenly saccharine and teasing grin, "But I believe in you!"

"Oh, please," Starscream groaned, and Swoop snickered.

"No, seriously," Swoop said, her tone of voice indeed serious again. "I wouldn't ask you to do it alone. We'll talk to Optimus Prime about it. I'm certain that he and his 'ragtag group of individuals' will do what they can to help."

"Because you'll sweet-talk him," Starscream surmised, smiling down at her.

"That's the fun part of being the queen," she informed him, smiling sadly back up at him. "Well, that and the really good energon," she amended.

Starscream chuckled, and then a thought that brought him up short occurred to him.

"Wait, was I just sweet-talked?"

Swoop thought seriously about that for a moment, biting her lower lip, her brow furrowing delicately, but then she shook her head soberly.

"No," she said in complete earnest. "No, I think that you and I are a bit beyond sweet-talking now. We need truth between us, Starscream, and I gave you just that. I'm…completely overwhelmed. There's so much that must be done, and most of it must be done soon, and I…I…"

Starscream still had his arms wrapped loosely around Swoop's waist. She hadn't seemed inclined to step away from him, and he hadn't felt any particularly urgent need to push her away, either. She was comfortable to him now, familiar. And suddenly, she was shaking. Immediately, protectively, Starscream tightened his arms around her, and she, not offering even a sliver of resistance, simply melted against him, gratefully accepting the comfort that he was offering to her.

"It's all right, Swoop," Starscream murmured soothingly to her after a moment, after her shaking had lessened somewhat. "We'll get there. One step at a time."

"We?" Swoop echoed in a small and hopeful voice, not daring to look up at him.

"We," Starscream confirmed quietly, nodding solemnly even though Swoop wasn't looking at him.

And the surprising thing, to him, was that he meant it.

And finally: All good things must come to an end. And then begin again. Or something like that, anyway.