A/N: Skywarp is a mix of movie-verse and G1 – aka 'pick and choose until he fit with his two trine-mates'.
"Brother," Megatron offered mockingly. "So kind of you to return my Seeker to me."
There were two certainties in Thundercracker's life and those were his trine-mates. Megatron was only a consideration for as long as the Air Commander – their trine-leader – deemed him someone to be loyal to – for as much as Starscream understood loyalty at all in concern to mere ground-pounders – and the War, for all that it had raged for most of their existence, had never been a certainty, either. There had been once when war had not been a concern and battle had been the focus, violence to protect trine and kin, mates and bonded. War had come later and late enough that Thundercracker actually remembered a time before. Some memories were clear, a far younger pair of Starscream and Skywarp a vivid image in his processors, and some were... hazier, perhaps, than they should have been. He knew this on some level but had never paid much attention to it. He took his cues from his trine-leader and Starscream did not consider those memories worth attention. They were weakness, he had once snarled in one of his moods, and Thundercracker had never pursued the matter any further.
It had been in the far earlier times of the War and there had been other things to worry about even then. It had not been easy to learn to cooperate with Megatron's troops – Seekers had not been intended to demean themselves enough to actually tolerate mere ground-pounders like that for prolonged periods of time – and only the fact that it had been on Starscream's command that they had sworn loyalty to the Decepticon cause kept Seeker-kin as a whole from simply leaving when the ground-pounders became too much of a pain.
Some had left eventually but none due to the ground-pounders themselves. Those things became a minor annoyance in time and something all of them eventually learned to ignore, safe in the knowledge of their position as something skilled, desirable, and important in the Decepticon army. The Seekers that had left had been no true Seekers in the first place, traitors that broke bonds and trines to bow at the Prime's feet instead and treat useless non-Seekers as equals.
Thundercracker almost respected the Prime on occasion – and certainly the mech's skills in battles – but there was no force short of Primus himself that could have spared an Autobot Seeker once it came into Thundercracker's sight.
He had even spoken those exact words on occasion, too, hissed them into the audio receivers of his helpless prey when he finally struck, to savour the fear and spark-deep desperation that followed before that spark was extinguished and returned to its creator as the miserable failure it was.
He had spoken those words as a taunt but now he found himself witnessing it before his optics and the overwhelming anger of his trine-leader's continued failure to simply offline the Autobot creature in his grasp.
It should have been, Thundercracker knew, a simply exercise. Seekers were as easy to kill as any other Cybertronian when you knew their weaknesses and Seeker knew Seeker best. Starscream had killed Autobot Seekers before, all of their trine had, but something now stilled his hand and made something freeze in Thundercracker's processors at Megatron's words.
"So kind of you to return my Seeker to me."
Except it wasn't, Thundercracker knew. Megatron's presence had not stayed Starscream's hand any more than Prime's had done in the past in the last moments of long gone Autobot Seekers' existences.
Nothing short of Primus could have spared a Seeker from the justified wrath of the Command Trine... which meant, Thundercracker understood with a clarity he did not fully comprehend or appreciate, that the young Seeker-fleshling was no more Megatron's than it was Prime's.
It was Primus', brought back by his hand and spared through his will alone, and that changed everything.
It was not a conclusion Thundercracker believed his trine-leader was calm or stable enough at the moment to comprehend on any other level than as an added insult on top of it all. Skywarp... a searching inquiry through their bond brought back a mix of confusion-frustration-anger that wasn't very surprising and while he, at least, would be stable enough to understand and listen, the processing power to actually comprehend it lacked. Thundercracker liked Skywarp – they had been trine-mates since they were old enough to bond, had learned at each other's side and adapted to the massive change a bond with the Air Commander had brought together – but his trine-mate would never be on Thundercracker's level in terms of processing power, much less Starscream's. He had been normal for a Seeker once, they all had been before Cybertron had been torn apart, but that had been a long time ago. Now, a lot went to control his teleporting abilities. He was more intelligent when that ability was offline and that to a degree where Thundercracker could actually feel it but right now they had all prepared for battle – against Prime or Megatron, whatever may come – and that teleporting ability was charged to be used at a moment's notice.
It was very useful in combat. Unfortunately, it also meant that Thundercracker was the only one of them with even some degree of common sense and realism working for him at the moment.
"He was never yours, Megatron," the Prime spoke through Thundercracker's musings – unlike his trine-leader, he actually paid some small amount of attention although it never mattered that much. It never changed, when it all came down to it. It was merely old habits. He was supposed to act as his Commander's Second and if Starscream did not wish to listen to the ramblings of ground-pounders, Thundercracker was there to ensure he missed nothing of importance.
Never Megatron's, Thundercracker agreed, and never Prime's either... although at least the Autoscum had never claimed actual ownership of Seekers the way that Megatron had on occasion. It was arrogance and overconfidence and had only been tolerated due to his position as Lord High Protector. Seekers respected power, even when wielded by mere mechs... especially when the mech in question was as powerful and influential as Megatron had always been.
Even as Lord High Protector, leashed by the expectations of the primitive society of ground-pounders and fated to be second to the Prime in all, Megatron had held power. Against all odds and safeguards, he had claimed it and used it ruthlessly and that, if anything, was what had earned him Seeker-kind, too.
Seekers sided with the winner, Seekers cared only for survival, and Starscream, whatever his numerous faults, had very few qualms when it came to ensuring that survival of his kind.
"He is a Seeker, Prime. They were always mine. Only the flawed ones came to you," Megatron sneered. "Little surprise when one considers the quality of your troops."
That would also imply more than a bit about the skills of the Decepticon side that the Autobots were still online, then, but Thundercracker ignored that. Ground-pounders did not have a Seeker's ability to posture through more than mere words and gestures and so they resulted to crude terms and insults instead. He didn't particularly mind. The words of mere mechs mattered little to the ego of a Seeker and he had hunted enough of the beings that any annoyance he might have left was insignificant. If they pushed too far, they would simply become prey instead and Thundercracker took great satisfaction in a good hunt.
Prime responded, some trite remark or another that Thundercracker had heard a hundred times before and he focused on his trine-leader and the world around them instead.
Experience had taught them all that Starscream's vision would narrow down to only the one point of his current obsession if left even the slightest chance to do so and Thundercracker had no doubt that such was the case now. It was an unusually strong tunnel vision to be capable of, even for a Seeker, and had been brought into being partially as a result of his increased top speed and partially as a result of Starscream's own personality.
It was not a trait that Thundercracker shared. As a good Second in Command, he was whatever Starscream needed him to be and someone to watch his back when obsession took over was high on that list.
A myriad of scanners kept an eye on the enemy – Autobot, fleshling, and Megatron – and another large number watched over his trine-mates. Skywarp had his back, the Prime and the Lord High Protector were momentarily distracted, and his Commander...
… was still focused solely on the fleshling turned Seeker.
No one had told Megatron about that minor fact and no one was about to, either. It might be useful at a later point and if not, there was still no reason to freely offer that information to anyone.
Starscream's anger took up most of their bond, enough to almost overwhelm the connection with Skywarp, but it was Starscream and they were used to such from him and so Thundercracker didn't bother to focus much on it at all.
He wasn't even sure where the strength of that anger had come from. True, the thought of a fleshing turned into a Seeker, with fleshling thoughts and fleshling weakness to taint it, was disgusting at the least but stronger bits of programming focused nothing on that at all.
It was a Seeker, with Seeker coding and a Seeker body and Seeker instincts, and that made the creature theirs. That it had been brought back as an Autobot did not anger him as much as some would have expected. He had been up against Sideswipe and Sunstreaker often enough to respect their abilities and Ironhide was not someone Thundercracker wished to hunt on a whim, and in this case he could even understand. The fleshling marks on the creature's wings told their clear tale – he was loyal, remained loyal even in the face of the Air Commander, and to have something like that awaken in Decepticon hands would have been... disastrous, for all involved. For all of its faults and questionable origins the creature was still a youngling at the most and not something that would have survived for long in their hands if it carried Autobot loyalties at its core.
It was also not a thought that should have crossed his processors at all and he knew that, too. He had felt the change in coding that had been passed on to them from Starscream and there had been little chance to stop it, much less work out what it would do to them. Part of him – the rational part that most Seekers had little of, the part that was clever enough, patient enough, to draw out a hunt rather than merely give into killing urges – suspected that there was already foreign coding in their systems. They should not have accepted it so easily, nor should his Commander's bond with the youngling have been as strong as it was.
Then again, the youngling shouldn't even have existed in the first place which only reminded him that there were powers far greater than himself at play. He had never been the most devout of Seekers – Thundercracker first and foremost looked to his Air Commander and trine – but he had never been one to challenge a being that much more powerful than himself, either.
Starscream had never had the same hold-up and Thundercracker was vividly reminded of that at the insult directed at said deity that he received with perfect clarity through their bond and Starscream's obsessive rage.
A 'Pit-spawned creature that would crush their wings and force them to the ground' was perhaps not the best term to use about something that had managed what the entirety of the remaining Seeker race had failed to do for a long, long time.
It had purposefully brought a sparkling into being and Thundercracker did not for a moment believe that he would have done so merely to see another of their race fall in war.
He heard the fleshling snarl back – Starscream's obsession kept little of it all away from their bond – and something in his processors shifted uneasily. Starscream was Starscream and didn't always display much in terms of sense or reason at all but this was... different. The youngling had carried a virus and none of them knew the first thing about what it would eventually do to them, much less whether it had any further surprises in store... and most importantly, why.
Primus had done this to them. The Hatchet, who knew them best out of all of Prime's, did not have the knowledge to do it and there was something about the coding that felt unnervingly familiar.
This, Thundercracker realised, was the way it had been supposed to be. It was coding as it should have been and no one, Megatron, Hatchet, or Prime, remembered that anymore. Skywarp had forgotten - Thundercracker didn't even need to ask – and Starscream ignored it, and Thundercracker felt lines of programming fall into place and shuddered almost imperceptibly at the most obvious bits of it. He could feel himself being rewritten – not much but all of it vital and most of it matching up to what they had done to themselves through aeons of War.
He didn't doubt that his trine-mates felt the same but he also doubted they understood the significance of it.
Primus had brought a fleshling back as a Seeker for the sole purpose of undoing what Starscream had done. Prime and Megatron and their worthless War would perhaps come later but the virus was Seeker-specific and that unsettled him more than anything.
Starscream could revert the effects of the virus in time, there was little doubt about that, but that left the question Thundercracker did not want answered: if they chose to defy this, what steps would Primus take then?
Perhaps he would merely give up on them and leave them to fight out the War alone, offlining by offlining until none were left, but if he had been willing to step in like that once and saw them just as willingly defy what he had given, who was to say that he would simply not settle the problem in such a manner that reversing the effects was not an option?
Primus had created them. How easily, then, could he remove them as well?
Unsettled by those thoughts, Thundercracker forced himself to focus on the situation and consider it again.
Primus would not have done this without a reason, this much he knew. The fleshling could have been merely a convenient vessel but the facts remained that both Seeker spark and fleshling could be felt through the bond, both of them arguing with Starscream, as well as the fact that Thundercracker and his trine had killed countless of the creatures before.
Primus had done it for a reason and for the first time Thundercracker forced himself to consider the being, Will, from an objective point of view.
He was young, couldn't even land properly, but age and lack of training and experience would account for that and that was something that could be fixed. He was bonded, with Ironhide and the Hatchet and a fleshling-
- And out of those three, Thundercracker realised as well, the fleshling – for all that it lacked anything worthwhile about it – was the one with the closest feel to what a proper mate should be.
He had picked out the memories through their bond as Starscream went through them, and while the walking cannon had loyalties split between many and the Hatchet would never have the ruthlessness for it all, the human understood. Survival mattered above all and that their youngling had marked Ironhide but carried the organic's soft little metal ornament willingly told everything Thundercracker needed to know.
Fleshlings as a breed were worthless at best but the affection their youngling Seeker felt carried over through their bond and however much Thundercracker knew the feelings were not his own, he couldn't help the glimmer of... something at the thought of the small creature that had apparently claimed a Seeker for its own. Approval, perhaps, of something strong and determined enough to know that the approval of lessors – even her own breed – mattered little against kin and mates, of something that would defy Autobot conventions and tell her Seeker mate to do the same if that was what survival took.
That small creature understood in a way that none of the Autobots ever did, that even most of the Decepticons would never grasp beyond the vaguest of ideas, and perhaps... perhaps their youngling would not be a completely lost cause with Seeker influence and something like her to affect it. It even had a home. An organic world, mostly water, infested with fleshlings, but... a home.
It had been a long time since Thundercracker had been able to claim the same.
Cybertron had been home but Cybertron was gone and he was never one to live in the past. Home was a place you could one day return to. Cybertron would never be that again.
Sudden, painful loss took over for an endless moment, twisted his spark with memories of skies long gone and places he would never see again, and something had clearly carried over through the bonds because Skywarp sent him the feeling of an unvoiced question and concern a moment later along with the soothing presence of a trine-mate that cared.
He wasn't sure if Skywarp would even understand but honesty compelled him to answer, anyway. He would not lie to a trine-mate, Skywarp least of all.
The youngling claims this planet home. When could we last claim anything as the same?
Skywarp's presence shifted uncomfortably through the bond – from the mention of home or Thundercracker's change in mood and focus he wasn't sure but he got the sense of understanding in return and that meant that he was at least not alone with those thoughts.
It would have been easy to blame on the coding but Thundercracker knew it had done little more than bring back what had already been there. It had never been natural to be so willing to leave home to fight a war, to see no new sparklings and kin brought into existence. It had made sense until now, still did on a conscious level, but something inside of him was already changing.
He could feel the Seekers left, his trine-mates the strongest and growing ever fainter until there was only the whisper of what could have been the ones still travelling in the darkness of space; unsure of their location and unable to communicate but at the very least aware that they were still online, and that had not been there even one recharge ago.
Thundercracker's programming was changing – against his will or not, it mattered little to the result – and he was rational enough to know that he would need to act on it, then. Things were falling into place; unnerving and familiar and daunting in a way that made even Seeker confidence falter, and even worse was the fact that Starscream would not have the reason to see it and Skywarp...
… Well, he wasn't actually sure what Skywarp would do but a brush against their bond would solve that fast.
Do you feel them? he asked and focused on the distant presences that were Seeker-kin.
There are more of us than Prime's, Skywarp sent back but his words both felt and sounded uncertain. Aren't there more?
More than Prime's, Thundercracker knew that and knew just as well that it wasn't what Skywarp asked, either. Of course they knew in theory how many were left. They hadn't been able to feel it with their coding changed to minimize those bonds and stress trine-mates and combat instead and in truth, they had never asked much, either. They knew an estimate, that was all, but that number felt painfully small when they were finally able to feel those presences again.
So few. So very, very few.
If they stopped now, if they lost no one else, if they spared that youngling, too, then-
- Maybe. Maybe.
So few.
And something in his coding shifted and clicked in a way it would not yet be able to with his trine-mates, brought out dormant survival protocols and shifted coding until he remembered, until he understood who and what he was and why Air Commanders had always needed Seconds and Thirds they could trust.
Air Commanders were strong, brutal, clever, but fickle; prone to impulsiveness at times and raw violence in a way that Thundercracker's carefully planned and savoured hunts had never been, and that was why he was there, then. Primus had undone the damage they had caused, had offered a second chance that Thundercracker believed they had only been granted as the true children of Primus, and they would not fail again, could not, or risk seeing the last of their kind fall into oblivion.
Thundercracker had given oaths to Seeker-kin once as the Second to the Air Commander and he had failed them.
TC? Skywarp, curious and concerned, but Thundercracker ignored him for the moment, tunnel vision taking over for once.
The Prime was weak, soft, generous; he would accept an offer of a truce for a shared planet – they would need to leave the fleshlings alone, of course, but there was little sport in hunting them, anyway; they would need to find somewhere that could be theirs, away from interference-
Thunder?
- And the fleshlings would doubtlessly interfere, warring, territorial little creatures that they were, but he could force the Prime into dealing with that or let them do as they saw fit in retaliation-
Thundercracker!
- And finally Thundercracker snapped out of it to the sound of his trine-mate's voice, offered instinctive reassurance that he was perfectly well, and then he finally felt what Skywarp had.
Uncertainty, strong and uncharacteristic from their trine-leader and perhaps... perhaps that would be the final step. If Starscream had actually had an idea of what they would do afterwards, of anything beyond raw power, then perhaps they could have managed, perhaps they could have been victorious, but they were not.
Thundercracker had no desire to become Air Commander, did not have all that it took, but that didn't matter, either. He was Starscream's Second and he knew his duties, however much it might take out of him to do it.
He didn't want to but had very little choice. They were all trapped in endless patterns, slowly but surely leading to the end of their kind, and Thundercracker would not – could not – allow that.
It would take a gamble and carried a strong risk of failure but to do nothing was unthinkable. Survival mattered above all else and Thundercracker would not fail again.
The sound of his weapons retracting felt unnaturally loud among the voices of his Air Commander and the ground-pounders and the way too many optics suddenly focused on him told him it was not merely his own perception of the sound.
Thundercracker? Low, deadly fury from Starscream – so quickly he forgot his uncertainty – and confusion but hesitant support from Skywarp, and then Thundercracker shifted slightly to stand taller and let his wings flare.
"A truce, Prime. This is... home now," he began, the words difficult and the added it's home now; it will have to be unspoken, "and we have a youngling. It has bonded with us. We will... not take it from its mates but we will not see it offlined in war, either."
Treason is punishable by slow, painful offlining, Starscream hissed in Thundercracker's mind, but perhaps I will have to settle for painful in this case. Explain yourself!
Thundercracker knew Starscream and he knew his fury very well. Experience and their bond had taught him more about Starscream than anyone but his trine would ever know and he used every bit of it now as he lowered every last wall and shield in his processors and left his spark open to the fury from Starscream's bond. No deceit, no lies, no secrets; everything he was, everything he knew, and everything he thought laid bare-
- And Starscream mercifully hesitated and Thundercracker did nothing to hide his spark-deep, grateful relief.
They will destroy us, Starscream sneered but the argument felt more like habit to Thundercracker than anything else.
Then we will deal with that when it comes, he conceded and didn't add or make alliances of our own at the memory of the small bit of decorative metal their youngling carried around and the creature that had laid the claim to it, but then, Starscream would already know. They will not stand against your might.
Was that not what our glorious Lord claimed as well? The words were mocking but there was almost amusement in them and Thundercracker's wings lowered almost imperceptibly as he responded to unspoken cues and stood down to his Commander.
The Prime had obviously noticed, though, because his attention turned to the Air Commander.
"Starscream?"
Nobody moved, too many weapons aimed at too many mechs, and judging by the burning glow in Megatron's eyes, someone would pay for it all. The Lord High Protector shifted fractions of an inch, too little for anyone to be able to afford reacting to-
- And then Skywarp's weapons were there, aimed solely at their hopefully soon to be former leader and Thundercracker released the tension he did not know he had felt until then.
"You will not hurt my trine-mates," Skywarp snarled, and that was it, the support he needed, two trine-mates against their trine-leader-
- And Starscream knew it.
"My trine-mate speaks for me," Starscream sneered, youngling and Megatron forgotten and his attention solely on the creature they would need to claim their home from. "Speak, Prime, before I change my mind."
And in Starscream-speak, Thundercracker knew, that meant victory.