This one took a while, originally it was Starscream and Arcee bonding time, HOWEVER, I decided it was waaaaay too early, AND, I have come plans later for the story so instead we've got a bit of angst flying back and forth, enjoy...

Arcee awoke and groaned when she felt the loud thumping in her head. Her processor was a complete mess, with random and irregular images floating through it, she'd gotten herself completely lost. She remembered drinking with Starscream but after that there was a complete blank, this is why she never drank too much.

She rose, once she had her bearings, and quickly lost them again as her helm throbbed and she clutched it, trying to steady herself as she slowly ascended to her feet. Her room was a small one, with cupboard and drawers, she had a window that overlooked the city on one wall and on the opposite a picture of Team Prime in all its glory. Smokescreen and Bumblebee were smiling and waving at the front, Wheeljack and Bulkhead stood back to back on the right with Bulkhead waving and Wheeljack smirking. Arcee stood to the left with folded arms but a small smile with the titan of Ultra Magnus striking a similar pose next to her and in the centre stood Optimus… she saw this picture every day and over time she had learned to stem the tears. She smiled as she saw Jack, Miko and Raf all at the feet of the autobots and smiling widely. She missed them dearly sometimes and on occasions she and Jack would talk over voice messages between Cybertron and Earth, but she didn't have the time. Her duty was to Cybertron, not Earth, something she had to remind herself far too often as she walked into the main room.

The first thing that caught her optic upon entering was the former decepticon lying over it. His head was rested on an arm rest with his legs dangling off the other end. He lay on his front, with his wings sticking up noticeably from the sofa. His clawed hands lay over the side, twitching now and again in an odd manner. He looked oddly peaceful as he lay there, optics closed. She kicked the sofa once as she passed and the mech jerked awake, rolling off the sofa and onto the ground with enough noise to send Arcee cringing and her processor to go haywire for a moment before rectifying itself. Arcee glared at Starscream as he rose slowly, clutching his helm.

"By the all spark," he muttered as he rose to full height before stretching his arms behind him and knocking his helm three times, "it's been a while." It was then his red optics spotted her and he frowned slightly. "You woke me up?"

"You've slept for long enough."

"I beg to differ," Starscream grimaced as he stretched his wings before smirking slightly, "what now then? Do I just follow you around like some pet?" As Starscream said this Arcee played the messages on her communicator. Magnus had given her a day off so as to 'restrain' Starscream and bring him to heel. That was far easier said than done.

"We'll stay here today." Starscream's small smile faltered at this.

"That's not much fun."

"It'll let you get up to date on the city and conditions on Cybertron, that way you won't go telling people things they shouldn't know." Arcee concluded this would be the best thing to do. She didn't trust Starscream, not by a long shot, and one night of drinks wasn't going to change that. She could only hope Starscream would keep to his word and not cause any trouble whilst she taught him about the new world.

"Is that how it is?" asked Starscream as he sat himself on the sofa, "Am I so threatening, Arcee, because I may tell them the truth."

"Because you may spread disorder with it."

"It's our races past."

"Not theirs, they don't need to carry our burdens." Starscream and her glared for a moment before Starscream huffed.

"Fine. How does this contraption work?" Glad to change subject, Arcee's optics turned to the cybervision. The cybervision was a project that Knock Out, Bumblebee and Smokescreen had originally worked on together in an attempt to replicate the television system on Earth. In fact a lot of the design was based off the original invention of the television, just with upgraded technology and different channels. With the arrival of new bots had come new channels, new forms of media and new stars, much in the way it had been on Earth. Arcee cared little for those who claimed fame through the media but knew a few prominent names.

"It's a cybervision," explained Arcee as she grabbed the remote and turned it on, flicking to a news channel, "it's a wide range of broadcast systems designed to supply entertainment and news." Starscream glared at the screen with some distaste before muttering something to himself and lying back.

"Fine." He almost snarled as he crossed his arms and glared at the news channel. She simply glared at him before sitting down watching the news.

"I wouldn't mind a drink." Arcee's optics swivelled round to the stern Starscream who still glared at the screen.

"Get it yourself." His optics turned to her and a small smirk formed on his face.

"Dear, Arcee, currently I am unarmed, you wouldn't want me to get something to cut you're pretty little optics out with, would you?" Arcee glared at the decepticon… only a decepticon would ever speak as he did. Arcee had forgotten what Starscream was, he was everything she hated, a deceitful, lying, treacherous murderer who had no pity or shame. She scolded herself for forgetting that for even a moment.

"No, you can go get it yourself." Starscream's smirk turned to a glare.

"My processor is having a party in my helm."

"Well so is mine, but I'm not complaining." Starscream glared before sitting back and watching the screen. Arcee just watched him and became curious as a small smile appeared on his face.

"What's so funny?" she inquired darkly, irritated when Starscream flashed her a devilish smile.

"Care to check the screen?" he almost whispered and she whipped her helm around to the screen before her expression changed to one of utter shock.

The cyberscreen was on one of the news channels which was covering a news story. On the screen was a picture of her and Starscream at the bar both of them in fits of laughter and others watching in surprise. The headline on the bottom wrote 'Mystery Mech Breaks Femme of Steel' she turned her optics to Starscream who had an eye on her and he smirked. She was about to physically attack her when a voice came through.

"Commander Arcee," she linked the call through when she heard Ultra Magnus.

"Sir?"

"Are you watching the news, commander?" She felt her core sink drastically.

"Yes, sir."

"Then you'll be seeing what I'm seeing."

"Yes, sir."

"Explain yourself." His voice did not even rise, somehow that made Arcee more intimidated.

"It was after he was released last night sir… I thought drinks would help him to relax back into the planet."

"Well Starscream seems to have had a ball of a time, and he is not the only one, commander." Arcee's fans kicked in almost automatically at her embarrassment.

"I was just-"

"We cannot afford for Starscream to become a subject of discussion to the public," Magnus said sternly, making Arcee straighten even when he was not present, "if that becomes so people will ask questions and suddenly we'll be forced to lie openly, no one can know of the war. Keep Starscream under your control."

"With all due respect, sir, this is his world too."

"I don't care whose world it is, Starscream is a danger, if he reveals what he knows this planet could be launched into another war. People will look at what Megatron did and some will want to continue his work, they'll see inequality where there is none. I will not make a martyr out of Megatron, is that understood commander?"

"Yes, sir." Arcee replied until the line went dead and she sighed, her head turning to Starscream who was watching her carefully.

"What?" she snapped and he smirked slyly before turning back to the cybervision.

The day passed quickly from there onwards with Starscream and Arcee mostly keeping silent and Arcee refusing to leave the apartment. There were knocks on her door throughout the day but she knew they'd be here about Starscream, no matter who they were, they wanted to know if what they'd seen was true. It wasn't but no one would believe that because they believed the media, they always did, the human populace of Earth was much the same.

As the day wore on she grew steadily more and more bored, she could work from home but she didn't trust Starscream to not cause trouble. It would be all too easy for him to transform into his human jet form and race out of the window before she even knew he'd stood up. Hence she had spent almost the entire day watching Starscream or watching the cybervision with him. He would sometimes ask questions and she would reply curtly, silencing him as he observed the images on the screen. She could tell she was not the only bored one, Starscream may have been stern but interested before but now he watched the cybervision with a distinctly bored facial expression as the bots recreated a battle scene. It was one of the first movies ever created on Cybertron, 'The Rise and Fall' it had been called, an action movie created quickly but with good scenes here and there. Arcee understood that one of the two mechs, the protagonist, was now quite famous on Cybertron although she couldn't remember the name for a second.

As the fight scene began between the two main characters she saw Starscream lean forwards, his face now blank as the images flashed before his optics. The fight was a good five minutes long with energon and wires flying everywhere before the hero left the villain so badly wounded he had to flee and Starscream turned his optics to her, a small sneer now upon his face.

"You watch fighting as if it's some kind of sport." He sounded very distant, as if far away.

"Yes."

"You allow them to watch this, a fake war, when you know full well that one has already past? How can you watch this scrap?" Arcee detected a hint of aggression in his smooth and otherwise harmless words.

"Well that scrap is considered a classic here."

"How can you?" snarled Starscream, his eyes a fury of red, "Am I the only fragging one that remembers what happened not so long ago? You autobots preached peace and prosperity, and congratulations you won, so what do you do with you're victory? You lie to your people, deceive them and create a fake world for them, in the faint hope that they will never know their own history. Yet you create these films, war games, mere imitations of what I've witnessed and you dare enjoy it? You created a mere hallucination of war whilst I was left as a chew toy to the predacons. You're no better than the deceptions." He finished with his trademark sneer, as if condemning her for eternity and Arcee clenched her metallic fist. Out of all the mechs who had ever lived fragging Starscream had no right to lecture anyone. She stood up so she had height over the former con and glared down at him.

"No better? We weren't the ones who killed millions just to secure the rule of a tyrant! We weren't the ones who forced us off our own planet! We weren't the ones who tried to destroy entire worlds just to get what we wanted!" As she finished Starscream stood, now towering over her but bending down so their helms stood at an equal height. Arcee realised for the first time she was actually quite intimidated by Starscream.

"That wasn't what we were," Starscream snarled glaring into her own optics, "That was never what the Decepticons were meant to be. I joined in the hope of freeing the restrictions the almighty council clamped down on us, Megatron saw that corruption and he rose up against it, he may have killed millions but he saved billions from oppression. He lost his way, I saw that, that's why I would have been so much better. I joined to make a better Cybertron, not to destroy it." Arcee had a hard time believing that, the memory of all the horrors she had witnessed rushing to mind with on very prominent one of a red mech, which she knew for a fact a certain decepticon had offlined.

"Is that what you told Cliffjumper?" she pushed angrily, their helms almost meeting as they gazed into each other. His optics may have been a red pit to destruction but hers were a whirling whirlwind of mayhem. "Is that what you told him when he asked why? Is it?" she roared, her words echoing around them. Starscream stayed silent, before a small smirk graced his face.

"No. He didn't say anything at all. He was dead before that." Arcee hit him, hard, across the face, knocking him to the floor since he had been crouched to be on the same level as her. She intended to strangle him, but as her hands came down he grabbed them and pushed himself up, pushing her onto her back and him on top.

She brought her leg up and kicked him in the side, loosening his grip and enabling Arcee to push him off her as she struggled up into a sitting position. Starscream sat opposite her, his eyes still deathly red and his claws looking remarkably sharper all of a sudden. She transformed her hand into a laser and pointed it at him and he smirked again. He slowly stood from his position but did not move.

"Are you going to shoot me, Arcee?" he asked almost politely as he stood on the spot, "go on, do it. I won't ever take my own spark, I might be a coward but I live by the belief that no matter what, things can always get better, I'd like to live to see that. But you could end it, now, if you like. My last hope was that this was the Cybertron I remembered, the one I loved, but I can see it isn't, because you can say it a million times in a billion different names but it isn't Cybertron, it's Cybertron the Second, and I hate it." Arcee didn't even blink as Starscream spoke, his optics moving out of the window in her apartment that looked over the city.

"I hate the people, I hate the restrictions and I hate these new inventions. Sometimes it seems so similar to the world I knew that I can almost touch it, but then I see an oversized mech or a small cybervision screen and I realise this isn't what I wanted at all, this isn't the world I fought for. So, Arcee, if you're going to kill me, and I know there is a very high possibility you will, just do it. Free me from all this hate, from the hate you pour on me, the hate I have for everything and this abomination of an existence. I'd rather die here in your miniscule apartment than live another day in this… reality. If you don't I'll face the day anyway, I'll face it time and time again, like I always have, but if you kill me now, I welcome it. I killed Cliffjumper, I had my reasons, he was an Autobot, I was a Decepticon, we were enemies. If I hadn't killed him then Megatron would have, trust me I did him a favour there, and I know you hate me for it. You've killed Arcee, you were forced to, so was I, it's a hard truth… but it is the truth, should I hate you for that?" She still refused to lower her guard, certainly not near Starscream.

"To be honest I hate you for a great many things. But do I hate you for killing my allies? No. I've made mistakes, Arcee, we all have. But I assure you, killing Cliffjumper was not one of them." His speech ended and Arcee's finger pulled almost all the way, even a twitch would set it off now, but she didn't. She should kill Starscream for his last sentence alone, yet she couldn't. She'd wanted this for years and yet she couldn't do it. She released the trigger and put the laser away, the hand replacing it as she almost sobbed on the floor.

"He… he was my friend… Starscream… my best friend, the best thing I had since… Tailgate. The rest of them were always there, of course they were, but he was the best of them, the one who really got me. It was never anything intimate, we were just the best of friends. I wanted to forget about Tailgate and Cliffjumper did just that, he gave me so much friendship that I forgot, I moved on, and then… then you had to come… didn't you? You had to come and tear him away from me… I was so close to moving one but when you took him, it all came back. I know it was war, Starscream, but you had no right to hurt me like that… no… right…" she avoided his optics as she continued, "I didn't know… for so long who did it, until you let it out. I want to kill you, Starscream I really, really do… but I can't… how pathetic is that? After all this time being in a frigging war, after killing con after con and fighting just to avenge them, those that I failed, I can't even kill you. The person who killed him. You're everything I despise… and yet I can't kill you Starscream. I should, but I can't." She was silent and Starscream watched on for a good ten minutes, she didn't cry… neither did he. She looked up to see his optics watching her, she wondered for a moment if he thought her weak and feeble, probably, it was Starscream. He looked away from her to the cybervision before sneering and returning his optics to her briefly before moving into the washroom and shutting the door behind him.

She sat there for some time after Starscream had gone into the washroom, uncertain on how to proceed. That hadn't been a constructive first day, if anything she had been the one who had gotten out of control and she hated him for it. She wanted to kill Starscream more than ever for the sole reason that she now knew she could never avenge Cliff. For too long, perhaps, she had mourned Cliff's passing, longer even than Tailgate's, she had vowed to Cliff that she would find the con who did it and rip out his spark. It shouldn't have surprised her that it was Starscream. After Cybertron had begun its reconstruction Arcee had found a video recording on The Nemesis of when Starscream had killed Cliff. She had watched it ten times, each time vowing to destroy Starscream. And now she knew she couldn't do it. She was weak, after killing cons for so many years, she couldn't kill the one she hated the most and she did hate him. She hated him more than anything and yet she couldn't kill him. Deciding that she didn't care if Starscream did something anymore, she went to her bed, spying a picture of Cliffjumper on the wall and allowing a single energon tear to fall down her face as she succumbed to sleep.