Not long after Thundercracker led The Line far away from Alexis, his systems informed him of the arrival of the Decepticon unit. Listening into their transmissions, his suspicions of his true purpose on the Relentless became clearer. Megatron didn't give a frag about the fallen Deceptions. Those that had managed to get themselves killed, by humans no less, would have been seen as weak excuses for warriors. The humans had unintentionally done the Decepticon lord a favor by culling out the unworthy.
"Purge the ship of its infestations and bring the craft and the data recorder to me," Thundercracker heard the rasp of Starscream through a long-distance transmission, commanding the Decepticon force.
Nothing was ever as it appeared with Megatron. TC never doubting that allowed him to readily assimilate the new information, the not at all surprising diversion that he had been forced to play, the deception that agitated him more because he had been wasting his time.
"I don't like things kept from me," TC hissed out, knowing that through their personal link Screamer would pick up his words as if he was standing right next to him. A long time had transpired since he was used so callously and treated so trivially and knowing that his trinemate had been the force behind it all made his words brittle and ill-disposed.
Megatron keeping the truth from his soldiers was expected, but his own wingmate continually obscuring things from him was creating a rift between them that was intent on expanding.
Starscream huffed at TC's words. "Spare me, TC," the Supreme Seeker blithely responded. "Who is the one that didn't bother with the usual questions? Who purposely ignored the obvious just so he could be with a human without the idea of deceiving her, again? Such obscene compunctions of internal diversion is what kept things from you, not I. Now I suggest you either help procure the data recorder or stay the slag out of the way. I have far more important things to do than sway toward your sudden proclivity toward distraction. This conversation is terminated."
Maybe stopping The Line wasn't Megatron's main concern, but when he heard the sounds of screams and the scampering of running from the humans that had dared to stay on board, he knew the Decepticon overlord wasn't beyond taking care of them all the same.
Thundercracker didn't intend to be separated from her for so long. But between leading what humans he could find to the escape pods to dealing with The Line's remaining security force and then dragging their inert forms to safety took far longer than it should have. He wasn't prone to such mercies. However, knowing the cause of his renewed kindly forbearance made the task a tolerable one.
When he heard a report made of the intrusion on the landing bay by an Autobot and human, he took off toward familiar corridors, ignoring everything else.
The landing bay was a mess. The deck was burning, filled with the stench of weaponry and grenades and Energon, the obvious signs of several variations of battle.
At first it appeared empty. Walking past a downed Con with lifeless optics, he moved beyond a Decepticon shuttle that was now marred and melted, cracked and hardly recognizable except for the rounded exhaust ports.
He found Sideswipe. A two second scan confirmed that the Autobot was gone, terminated, by the angle and look of the weapon's marks, a human.
Thundercracker searched for Alexis after rounding around the Bot. All he found was three unconscious humans that oddly hadn't shown up on his scanners at all. They were cloaked by a technology he couldn't readily identify. May was the closest. Doing a scan of scattered weapons and comparing bio signatures, he deduced relatively easily that the fallen female was the one who had ended Sideswipe. Also, he identified what had happened to the humans after, most importantly May.
He bent down and slapped the female awake.
Brown eyes flickering with anger, they stilled into the experienced glare of suspicion.
"I suggest you wake your comrades, or the Decepticons will find you and end you," he commanded of her, his tone strict and precise, allowing for no argument.
Her eyes shifted to where her weapon now rested, then back to him. For reasons unknown to him, her eyes softened.
"Come with me?"
She still believed him to be human, to be Timothy. Angered because it reminded him of things that had been done and things that hadn't been avoided, he roughly pulled the small woman to her feet.
"Alexis. Where is she?"
The hard lines appeared on May again, shifting her frown into an indelicate scowl.
"The Autobot collaborator?" She huffed, unconsciously rubbed her forehead where a large bruise discolored her flesh. TC knew who had given her the pronounced blemish, knew whom the woman had fought, unsuccessfully. "I tried to give her another chance, but she refused to hear reason. Hopefully one of the Cons got her by now."
TC wasn't inclined toward rage, but at her badly chosen words, rage had him in its thrall. His hand wrapped around the small woman's throat. He pushed her back until she tripped and fell, her body bent and bowed in an unintentional position of supplication. Just a little squeeze, a small twist of flesh, it would be so simple to end the insolent meatbag. But that didn't stop his fingers from tightening. Savoring the moment, he watched the last light of comprehension dawn in the organic's eyes. And then she passed out, stealing away from him what would have been a most satisfying act.
He released his fingers and slowly turned. May's comrades had revived and were now approaching him with intentions to engage. Decepticon weapons' fire had them scattering and picking up the downed May before they ran like the cowards they were.
Evading the Decepticons, he diverted more of his energy to doing a scan of the area. He found Alexis where he didn't expect her, where visually he had already searched. She was folded in and protected by the dead Autobot's hand.
He tried to get her out. The Autobot's clasped hand wouldn't budge. Thundercracker diverted energy to his fingertips. The power surge had dormant circuitry rerouting and digits unbending.
The Seeker's first sight of her left him sickened. Her face and clothes were tainted by drying Energon. Touching her immediately repulsed him. And when Alexis opened her eyes, the green orbs glowing with an energy that didn't belong to her, he felt the harrowing, undeniable murderous intent from the Autobot's transgression.
If Sideswipe hadn't been dead, Thundercracker would have killed him.
Thundercracker never thought he would ever reach a point that he would not want to touch Alexis.
The Autobot's energy was completely saturated in Alexis' body. Taking what had been an infatuating biological signature and corrupting it with identifying marks of Sideswipe's possession that made her skin hum, her flesh radiate.
Not only did he not want to touch her, he didn't want to look at her either. And the sensory modules that lined TC's human flesh wouldn't stop assaulting him with disturbing, highly perverse data.
He knew the Autobot admired her. But rumors of the twins far too many dalliances had not allowed him to believe that it meant anything more than a lingering affection. An affection he couldn't fault anyone after knowing Alexis as he did.
But now that Sideswipe had claimed her in the finality of his death, he recognized just how blind he could be when it concerned Alexis, just how distracted. Sentiment was dangerous, was weakening. Jealously throttled and strangled him. A possessiveness causing the sick feeling inside of him to mutate into a justification for his own claiming.
"He's... he's dead," Alexis suddenly spoke, the warbling of her voice ravaged even further by the scratchy, stressed inflection of her tone.
Twenty minutes had passed since the Seeker found and took her, cleaned her up and led her away, deep in the bowels of the ship as he organized their escape.
Things would have been easier if he wasn't human. Unlike Sideswipe though, he hadn't smuggled his real body on board. Justified paranoia would not allow him to place himself in such an unpredictable position. And the first thing he had done after boarding the Relentless was create and organize several escape positions and plans for the most common situations.
The alarms that had been quieted but had still been raging for hours, suddenly stopped. The self-destruct had been canceled.
No matter.
Isolated in a lower deck cargo hold, he activated one of his contingency plans. The power core would now be working on overloading. Once it did, all the ship's major systems would fail, including the power drives.
The ship's momentum ceased.
Now all he had to do was wait as the Decepticons searched the ship for the saboteurs, then lead Alexis to a shuttle he had repaired and hidden away in an area on the space craft that even The Line had not been aware of.
"May killed him," she spoke up again, this time making room for open acrimony.
"I know," Thundercracker finally acknowledged her, causing Alexis to lift her head up.
Tears filled her eyes, covered her face, streaks of dried Energon still coated her flesh. She had a horrible scratch on her chin. An unnerving shake to her limbs. And her energy reading, the persistent glow of her flesh, created too many concerns that he was unfamiliar in dealing with.
"What did Sideswipe do to me?" Alexis asked, wiping her face off with the back of the palm, still trembling when she took her disarray of hair and wrapped an elastic band around it. Her forehead now exposed, he saw a dark purplish bruise on her temple.
"I feel him inside me. I see things. I hear a voice. I, there are thoughts that aren't my own." She rubbed her temple, pulling back sharply when she came to the ugly bump. "Like dreams, no, memories." Alexis took a hard swallow, her voice fragile and full of fear. "Have I been possessed?"
He couldn't maintain the distance. The antipathy that had more to do with himself than the female was bypassed as he sought her out.
Still, as he boldly brought her into his arms, his skin tingled at the contact, an ever sickening reminder of what the Autobot had done. He shivered.
"TC?"
His name being said forced him to pull back, to look down at her. And when her hand lifted and was softly placed on the side of his face, he couldn't help but lean into the unexpected contact, his eyes closing.
"I will fix things, Alexandra. I promise," TC vowed.
"Fix things? What things?" she asked of him with rising panic. "And why does it feel so strange when you touch me? Why do you cringe? What has happened to me? What did he do?"
"The truth?"
"Yes. The truth."
He told her.
"As soon as we get away, I will be able to purge him from your system. I would do so now, but so soon after his violation would only prove to..." His voice faded away when alarm flashed on Alexis' face, her eyes widening and her skin turning so white he was sure she was going to off-line.
Replaying what he had just said, he cringed at his choice of words, at the truth that was so much worse.
"Did he hurt you?" Thundercracker asked the question that didn't want to leave his mouth, his inquiry cautious.
Alexis' eyes narrowed at him, causing his breath to become trapped in the thinning passageway of his throat.
"He didn't hurt me. He's dead," she defended the Autobot with a burst of venom that was entirely unexpected. "I still don't believe..."
Thundercracker grabbed to her hand and held on tight. He watched as she recoiled and reacted to the energy that danced between their merged hands. The Seeker noticed something else as well. The energy was already adapting and changing, merging and morphing into a more enhanced version of the female's bio signature that still held remnants of the Bot's already fading presence.
"He bonded to you, Alexis. There is no question of his intentions," he told her with barely hidden disgust and affront.
But she didn't choose the Bot. That and other factors were creating a barrier between what the Autobot tried to force on her.
"I still don't understand what this bonding is. Sideswipe never said anything about such a thing. He just..." She stopped, heaved out a loud breath.
"He had feelings for you," Thundercracker said, recognizing what she was about to say, unable to stop the astringency of his inescapable proclamation.
"He cared for me. Yes." She frowned, cringed and grabbed her temple as her eyes closed. A blush rose onto her cheeks, bright on her pale flesh. "No, no that's not true," she spoke, only it wasn't to Thundercracker.
At that display of mental disarrangement, a ripple of further disturbance flashed through his fleshy confines, traveling vast distances in order to make his spark respond in unfamiliar terror.
Turning around, shifting onto his knees, he bent over Alexis, who sat on the floor near him. He grabbed her hand. Her eyes flashed open.
Gasping, eyes narrowing, she began to cry all over again. "I hear him, his thoughts... how he felt. I had no idea. I thought..." Tears rained down her cheeks that riled the Seeker further from her misplaced altruism. "Why does everyone die around me?" Her voice quavered. "Just when I thought we could be friends... he... Oh, God. He's dead. Dead! And I..." Alexis' words became caught in her throat as she fought to breathe.
"Stop this," Thundercracker demanded. He squeezed her hand, then slammed his free fist into the wall behind her, then smashed it once more on the floor. "Not after what he did to you. Your sympathy is misplaced. The damage he could have caused you and..."
His words died. She didn't know. Alexis had no idea what was happening inside her own body. Or how her Vildan mate had altered her.
"He didn't want me to be alone."
"What?" he asked with riled astonishment, sure he misheard her.
"Sideswipe said he wouldn't leave me alone."
"You yourself told me once that you are never alone. That your God was always with you, and that as long as you had him..." He shook his head, a pressure igniting inside his skull. "Make no more excuses. I refuse to hear any more!" The Seeker lashed out with anger, his voice uncommonly loud with stifling irritation.
"Thundercracker?"
He backed away, far enough but still so close, her face lifting up toward his own. His name, he wanted her to say it again, just like that. The familiarity it allowed. The intimacy it created. The obstacles it managed to momentarily eradicate.
"I'm scared," she finished honestly. "And I feel so strange. Please, don't be angry, that doesn't help." Her hand connected with his arm, slid up, creating an ache in his belly, an increase of endorphins in his bloodstream. How quickly his own body adapted to her own changes. Soon, all he would feel was Alexis. "You're bleeding."
Even after everything that had happened to her, she still registered concern over him. Already, she was tearing off a piece of her shirt and wiping his fist off.
TC took his hand away from her. Thundercracker felt disappointment and a pull toward the female that hadn't failed to diminish. Concentrating, the bruising and blood disappeared from his hand.
"Let me tend to you."
"I can do it myself."
"Let me tend to you," he repeated, this time allowing the exposure of concern in his vocals, his request now an entreaty.
Alexis nodded her head. He ignored the clenching of his gut when she moved closer, skin touching skin.
"You will let me pass, now," Thundercracker ordered.
Alexis was deteriorating rapidly. Her injuries had been tended to, but what was going on in her mind was something that needed more delicate handling.
Clinging to his arm, she didn't seem to see the Decepticon that stood in their way, nor the weapon that was pointed at them.
It started with mumblings and strange reactions until Alexis drifted away internally, far away and yet so close. Now his protectiveness of her was in overdrive, creating a new program that wouldn't alter until her safety was obtained.
He would not be deterred from his destination. And the fact that the Con was an obstruction in his path was not a concern.
Activating a program the Seeker had thought he would never use, an image of his Cybertronian self ghosted over his human form, stretching outward and up, announcing his identity with a pulse of data that he had intentionally created to have quite a sting when it was received.
The stunned Con fell to his kneeplates.
Thundercracker walked on.
He had been so close. The shuttle in sight, the area clear. So when an entirely too calm Sunstreaker appeared with optics only seeing the female that now rested in Thundercracker's arms, a modified renz rifle aimed with precision and a highly illegal cloaking field shadowing the Bot from all sensors, all the Seeker could do was make sure that when he was shot, Alexis wouldn't be damaged.
The foreseen blast came, knocking him off his feet and shattering the human form of Timothy.
An echo of disturbing words followed Thundercracker into his excruciating destabilization.
"She is mine."