Picks up at the end of Episode 48 "Cramp." EPISODE SYNOPSIS FROM TRANSFORMERS WIKI: "Starscream pleads to Galvatron that Unicron's threat is real…hoping to convince his leader that perhaps an Autobot and Decepticon alliance is the safest course to ensure Cybertron's survival…Galvatron slaps his subordinate into a wall to silence him. The Decepticon leader is confident his military can overcome both the Autobots and Unicron...Starscream quits the Decepticons and challenges Galvatron to one-on-one combat. The two clash, quickly cutting into each other. However, Starscream displays skill beyond the last time he battled Megatron… [Starscream is eventually impaled on the Star Saber]. Despite his injury, Starscream stands up and reiterates his wishes for a truce between the two Cybertronian factions against Unicron. With his final desire said, Starscream joins with his Mini-Con to fire his Proton cannons upwards at Unicron. Unicron fires back, disintegrating Starscream, much to Galvatron and Optimus's shock. Aboard the Axalon, Alexis's luck charm breaks, and she runs outside to look out the window and sees Starscream's laser blast fade away. Realizing Starscream was right about Unicron's threat, Galvatron remembers their shared experiences and finally decides to join forces with Optimus Prime."
Everything inside Starscream was on fire. He was already dying so what did it matter? Galvatron had gotten what he wanted–the last word. But the last word was no longer what mattered. Unicron. Unicron mattered. Unicron was all that mattered. For Decepticons, for Autobots, for the human children.
His spark flared wildly, sputtering in its cracked casing as he poured all his rage, his shame, his fear into his proton cannons. In his final act, he would prove his point for all to see! For Galvatron, especially, to see the horror of the world-destroyer. Starscream had once dreamed of glory, of a time when his name would echo through the cosmos as a warrior, a liberator from Cybertron's old regime. But what had he become? Nothing more than Galvatron's punching bag, a scapegoat for every ill-conceived scheme. Years of sacrificing his ideals, numbing his spirit, and fighting for the approval of a leader who saw him as nothing but a tool. He was sick of it. Sick of Galvatron, sick of his broken dreams, sick of his own spineless hunger for recognition.
Perhaps his life had never mattered, but his death had to. Galvatron would never see reason; all he understood was force, and violence: the language of brutes.
Starscream was burning. Burning into a cinder. It seemed he had gotten Unicron's attention.
His circuits crackled. Flaming out one by one, the tip of his remaining wing melting. He heard voices, whose they were, he could no longer be sure. They were crying out for him, begging him to stop. Perhaps it was his mini-con Swindle... It was nice to believe the little bot would miss him.
Something was cracking now, splitting with a fiery snap. A child's scream of horror joined the cacophonous roar of Unicron's beam.
Alexis? But no, it could not be…She was miles away from here. Safe in the bosom of the Autobot's ship.
Goodbye, my little friend.
Suddenly, something tackled him, ramming like a freight train as it plowed him over.
He was soaring through the air, flying, falling, and then, as he hit the ground, the burning ceased. Starscream opened his optics, only to be greeted with static nothingness–his visual sensors had been the first to short out beneath the fury of Unicron's power. But while he could no longer see, not all of his sensors had ceased to function.
Oh, how he wished in that moment that they had.
In the span of a nanoclick, his processor erupted with warnings of pain, pain, pain, pain, pain! Starscream could feel his dripping viscera lurching inside the cavity of his chest. A glitching moan trickled from his throat, the sound twisted and hoarse, punctuated by his wheezing vents, trying and failing to cool his melting core.
Oh, Primus…It was white agony.
The hissing whine of steaming metal filled the air, his spark sputtering wildly in waves of throbbing fire, its essence bursting half-in and half-out of his body.
It was only in the vaguest outskirts of his consciousness that he recognized Prime's voice booming above him.
"Do not touch him, Galvatron. I am taking him back to our ship."
Two large servos scraped his raw extremis. They were two red flowers of pain in a field blooming with nothing but the same. He was lifted. Almost floating. It hurt so much.
Just let me die.
"He is my soldier, I will do with him what I please. What on earth did you do that for anyway, Optimus? He is as good as dead."
"Not yet, he isn't. And you heard him. He is no longer your soldier. As far as I am concerned, he is a civilian caught in the crossfire."
Starscream breathed damnation on Optimus's soft spark as he labored to vent past the fluid drenching his intakes. It seemed Prime had denied him an honorable death in exchange for this slow suffocation.
"You are nothing but a fool, Optimus."
Galvatron's voice quivered as he spoke and if it had not hurt so much Starscream might have smiled to think the tyrant was patently attempting to maintain the illusion of control. His little stunt had rattled Galvatron and that was enough to bring at least a moment's satisfaction.
"Starscream provoked that monster to prove a point to both of us and you want to stand here bickering like sparklings? If anyone is a fool here, Galvatron, it is you. I have called for a truce. I advise you to accept it. We have a bigger threat to worry about."
They had listened! Thank Primus, they had listened…!
Now, perhaps, he could at least die at peace.
The Autobot was moving now, carrying him, and every jolt and movement of the larger mech's hydraulics sent waves of agony crashing through his dying circuits. Yet in that agony, there was a strange comfort and a heavy, undeniable reality that he was being cared for. Starscream, a Decepticon, cradled by the very Autobot he had sworn to destroy. It was absurd, and humiliating, yet he couldn't ignore the faint, bitter warmth that spread through his circuits.
Prime had always been kind to him–so kind that it had confused and frightened the Decepticon defector, who had not known how to react to such treatment. It was only after returning to the Decepticons that he had come to appreciate Prime's constancy. His gentleness. It was why Starscream had thrown it back in Galvatron's face as he had lain impaled upon that hateful blade.
But a primal part of his processor cursed the Autobot leader's compassion. Starscream did not want to live. Everything burned. Everything was on fire. This…this was almost beyond repair. And what was there to await him? He was a traitor to everyone and to everything. Even if they survived Unicron, he would be useless, crippled, and alone.
Starscream's pride flared one last time, a desperate gasp of defiance.
"Die…let me...die…" He wheezed as Optimus carried him, each word felt like shrapnel in his throat.
"No, Starscream…" Optimus answered. "...You may not want to live for your own sake, but I know there is at least one human child whose spark you will break if you do not at least try to fight. If you cannot live for yourself, then at least try to do it for her. Prove to her that the world can be the good place she still thinks that it is."
Alexis's face flashed inside his mind, as he remembered the way she had looked at him when he had last seen her–when he had walked away. Her innocent eyes had looked so hurt…so spark-broken…
"Do you understand me, soldier?"
"Y-…." He rasped. "...y-esss…" He would cling to life, if only to shield her from further sorrow.
"Just hold on, Starscream." The words vibrated with fierce compassion that galvanized him as he resolved to do as Optimus had asked. Although it would have been well within the Autobot's rights, there was no mockery in Optimus's demeanor, no gloating over Starscream's change of allegiance or his failed stand against Galvatron. Just a solid, unshakeable presence that dared him to cling to life, despite every instinct screaming at him to let go.
He would try to live. He would at least try.
Time passed and he faded in and out, through jostling and murmuring. Swindle's chirping sometimes broke through the dark abyss, feeding glyphs of information to someone, Starscream could not be sure who. There were sounds of cutting, welding, sparking. He sank and rose, sank and rose, bobbing up and down in his own awareness. Then there was calm. Peaceful. Simple existence. Blissfully numb.
"You can sit with him, if you like." That was Red Alert's voice. "Even if it does not seem like it, he will know that you are there."
What in Primus's name were they talking about?
Something small and warm pressed against the side of his mangled chest, the sensation muffled and distant. As a rule, all living beings, organic and technological, have their own unique energy signature that responds and calls to those that surround them. For reasons he could not remember, this energy signature harmonized with the pulse of his wounded spark in a rhythm that soothed the scorched edges of his frame. Starscream could hear Swindle chirping with someone in the background. He wanted to ask him what was going on but found himself sinking once again, his spark lulled, as if by a lullaby.
Over the next few cycles, he woke and slept, and woke and slept. More often than not, the little warmth was burning there beside him, its life force clear and resonant, pressing on a frame that grew increasingly tender as sensation returned to the burned extremis.
Eventually, the fog of his comatose mind began to fade away, and he started to hear other words, and snatches of conversations, piecing together the world beyond his blinded optics. Because of him, it seemed, the Autobots and Decepticons had unified, and, in their united strength, they had defeated Unicron. For that victory, his spark sang its praises to Primus. There was a long road of healing ahead of him, but for the first time in a long time, Starscream was beginning to know what it was to hope.
He could hardly move or think, but Starscream knew now that it was Alexis who was coming daily to sit beside him. Optimus had been right, as he usually was, the poor girl was distraught to see him so badly damaged. He had heard her crying, begging him to come back like the sparkling that she was.
Just be patient, little one… He whispered inside his mind. I will not let you down this time…I will get better…I will get better and show you a universe worthy of your trust…
In her innocent simplicity, she had drawn out the good in him. Had reminded him of who he had once been. Of the honorable mech he had forgotten how to be. She was the reason he had challenged Galvatron. She was the reason he had warned them of the threat from Unicron. Not because it gained him any power. But because…because it had been right.
You saved me, Alexis. He murmured inside his spark. And soon enough, I'll tell you that myself.
Fin.
Of course, he eventually wakes up from a coma and rebuilds his life. Not meant as romance (I always found that kind of creepy, tbh). In case it wasn't clear, Optimus tackles him out of Unicron's beam. Everything else basically goes the same way as the episodes. PLEASE REVIEW, GUEST REVIEWS DON'T REQUIRE REGISTRATION.