Hello again!
Thundercracker limped into the Decepticon base and Starscream followed after him at an appropriately nonchalant distance.
As soon as he landed, Starscream made his way to the central command console, his presence would be expected and he was already going to have trouble enough explaining his absence in the hours after the battle. There was no sense in prolonging the inevitable. Megatron was going to be furious.
Much to his own relief, the command center was empty, save for Skywarp and Soundwave who had apparently been charged with keeping watch over the radar. However, Starscream's apparent reprieve ended almost as soon as Skywarp noticed his appearance and called out in a loud voice: "Hey Starscream, Lord Megatron wants to see you."
Of course he does. Starscream thought sarcastically.
"Very well. And where might I find our illustrious leader?"
"I think he's at target practice."
Starscream rolled his optics. Primus just wouldn't let him catch a break today. "Target practice," simply meant that Megatron had an itchy trigger finger that was just waiting for an excuse to shoot at someone, probably at Starscream—scratch that—definitely at Starscream.
Starscream was about to leave the command console when an excited murmur of voices caught his attention from behind his shoulder.
"Oh, look, I've got an Autobot bogey on the monitor." Skywarp commented to Soundwave with a kind of diabolical glee. Starscream's energon ran cold as he turned around and realized that Skywarp was tracking something on the monitor. Something large. And fast. And shaped exactly like Skyfire.
"What do you say I shoot him out of the sky?"
For a moment, the world slowed to a crawl as Starscream's processor raced.
"Don't be stupid Skywarp." He interjected smoothly. "If you shoot him down, the others will come running. Do you really want to bring more Autobots breathing down our necks today?"
Skywarp pouted and harrumphed, turning back around to stare longingly at the missile launch button.
"But Starscream…" He whined.
"Starscream's recommendation, optimal." Soundwave interjected, his voice toneless as ever. "Odds of successful termination, minimal."
Skywarp shot Starscream another dejected look as he made a sound of disappointment.
"Fine…" He mumbled, his optics still locked on the fleeing shape of the Autobot. Three sets of optics watched it go. But only Starscream gave an inaudible sigh of relief as Skyfire's signature disappeared from the monitor.
A crisis—which some part of his processor knew should not have been a crisis—had been averted. Skyfire was an asset, nothing more. And Starscream hated to be deprived of assets.
As Starscream turned to make his way toward the target range, he tried not to think too hard on the events that had just transpired beyond the walls of the Decepticon base. His processor had other obligations now. More specifically, it was time for Starscream to think of a lie that would help to mitigate Megatron's wrath. Not only had Starscream disappeared in the aftermath, the battle today had gone horribly—with those circumstances, there was no sparing himself from the warlord's wrath, only mitigating the damage.
And with that, he turned and made his way to his own punishment.
~0~
By the time Megatron was done, Starscream's wings were dotted with burns from the warlord's laser blasts.
This beating had been particularly vicious.
Even the ever-indifferent Skywarp had looked taken aback when Starscream appeared in the trine's shared quarters sporting fresh evidence of their master's displeasure. Thundercracker had already been returned from the med-bay, and now lay convalescing in his own berth
Though the injured flyer seemed unable to meet Starscream's optics as he passed.
Starscream ignored them both. He just wanted to lay down, slip into recharge, and never wake up.
Unfortunately, recharge did not come easily. As the night wore on, Thundercracker tossed and turned, quiet groans of pain echoing from his vocalizer as he struggled to get comfortable, bobbing in and out of a fitful recharge.
Starscream laid there, mindful of his aching wings, staring into the darkness as he listened to the sounds of Thundercracker's moaning. He should've left to recharge elsewhere. But the thought did not tempt him enough to rouse him from his berth. This was Thundercracker's fault. Or it should have been. If the oaf had been less careless, Starsceam would not have been forced to grovel and snivel quite so debasingly.
Eventually, Starscream opened his optics as he heard a sound and saw Skywarp steal from his bunk to creep over to where Thundercracker lay, looking down on the other flyer with a worried expression knitting his features.
Starscream paused as he watched the other Seeker. Skywarp's normally mischievous demeanor soured by concern. Starscream shouldn't have been surprised. The two had always been close. Far closer than Starscream had ever been to either of them.
"Stop fretting like a motherboard. He's going to be fine." Starscream grumbled. He wasn't sure where it came from but he felt the urge to say something.
The other Seeker flinched, his helm snapping to look at Starscream. Skywarp looked defensive, as though he'd been caught in the act of something shameful.
"Shut up, Starscream." Skywarp sneered. "I don't want to hear your lectures."
"I wasn't–" Starscream hesitated and then sighed. There was no point in trying to placate Skywarp. "I only meant that Thundercracker is tough." Starscream reiterated at last, unsure what else to say. Talking that way felt strange but it seemed oddly right.
Skywarp shot him a suspicious glance, before looking back to Thundercracker. "I know I shouldn't have but I looked for him," Skywarp confessed, more to himself than to Starscream,"when I didn't see him in the rocks where he went down, I thought the waves had taken him. I should've–"
The Seeker stopped himself. The guilt in his face spoke louder than words.
For the first time in a long time, Starscream's silver tongue failed and fumbled for a moment. He wasn't used to this. This was the first time in hundreds of years that Skywarp had come anywhere close to confiding in him about anything.
"He'll be fine." Starscream reiterated, turning back over. Thundercracker was tough. Certainly the toughest of the three of them. He would be fine.
~0~
Except, Thundercracker wasn't fine. The Decepticons were short on many things. But most of all, they were short on parts. They had patched the bleed but Thundercracker's fall had irreparably cracked his thigh strut and hip socket. They were holding together but only just barely. If the Decepticons did not find spare parts (or have another Seeker casualty), in time, the damaged parts would weaken until the metal failed altogether.
Over the ensuing months, Starscream watched as Thundercracker degraded, even if he never uttered a word of complaint.
To Starscream's irritation, Thundercracker's recharge in particular became a vicious spiral for all three Seekers, the more pain he was in, the less he slept, and the less he slept, the more pain he was in as his repair systems lost ground in maintaining the integrity of his damaged leg. Thundercracker spent the nights tossing and turning, grunting and groaning when he moved the wrong way, keeping the other Seekers awake along with himself. Heat was the only thing that seemed to give Thundercracker enough relief for sleep. More than once, Starscream found the oaf sitting slumped in the sonic shower, having carelessly fallen into recharge with its ion blast pouring on his damaged hip.
The first time, Starscream had found his trine-mate slumped in the corner of the shower. Thundercracker's face had been half-hidden by his forearm as he leaned heavily against the wall. And for just a moment, Starscream had feared for the worst.
"Thundercracker," Starscream said, his voice cutting through the humid air. He meant it to be sharp, commanding, but it wavered. Starscream hated it. Hated what the sight said about their reality. About the way Megatron's war ground even the strongest among them into husks.
No response. Not even a flicker of recognition. But Thundercracker's vents were still working, his chest rising and falling.
For a moment, Starscream hesitated. Then, with a scowl, he stepped forward and knelt in front of Thundercracker, his servos hovering awkwardly above his trine-mate's shoulder. The air was thick, suffocating with the humid warmth Thundercracker clung to for relief.
"Wake up, Thundercacker." Starscream snapped.
At last, Thundercracker stirred, his optics flickering dimly as they turned toward Starscream. The exhaustion in them cut deeper than any words could. His mouth twitched in an attempt at speech, but nothing came out. Instead, he leaned back against the wall with a hiss, wincing as his damaged thigh strut shifted.
Starscream felt a surge of frustration—at the Decepticons' lack of parts, at Megatron's incompetence, but mostly at Thundercracker for allowing himself to fall this far. "You're supposed to be better than this," Starscream snapped, though the words tasted hollow. "You're making us all look pathetic."
Thundercracker's optics narrowed faintly, still groggy with exhaustion, the barest hint of his old defiance flashing in them. "Slag... off," he rasped, his voice like metal grinding against stone. "I'm... dealing with it."
"Dealing with it?" Starscream echoed, his wings flicking with irritation. "You're sitting in a shower, falling into recharge. Is that what you call 'dealing with it'?"
A bitter chuckle escaped Thundercracker, though it quickly turned into a grimace of pain. "Better... than nothing," he murmured, his optics sliding shut again. "Go... away."
Starscream didn't move. He couldn't. Thundercracker's quiet despair settled like a weight in his chassis. He glanced at the sonic jets, and his optics darkened. It was all Thundercracker had to make the nights more bearable. But he couldn't stay here forever.
Starscream vented sharply, rising to his pedes. "If you can't walk to your berth, I'll have you dragged there," he said, his tone brokering no argument. "But you're not recharging here."
Thundercracker's optics cracked open, and for a moment, Starscream thought he might refuse. Then, with a low growl of pain, Thundercracker extended a servo. Starscream grasped it, his grip firm but not unkind. The effort it took to lift Thundercracker to his pedes was monumental, and it was a grim reminder of just how far his trine-mate had fallen.
As they staggered out of the shower, Thundercracker leaned heavily against Starscream. The Seeker gritted his denta, his expression a mask of irritation, but beneath it, his spark churned with conflicting emotions. Frustration. Anger. Guilt.
His delirious conversation with Skyfire rose unbidden in the back of his mind. Starscream hated to admit it, but Skyfire had been right. The war was killing them all. Slowly. Relentlessly. And Starscream didn't know how much longer any of them could hold out.
"You've got to toughen up," he muttered under his vents as they made their way toward the quarters. But the words felt like a lie, even to him. Because tough wasn't enough anymore. Not in Megatron's idiotic version of war, which was equivalent to a sparkling punching a wall until their servos broke.
If Starscream eventually caught Skywarp slipping a heating element stolen from the computer's mainframe into Thundercracker's berth, he didn't breathe a word of it to anyone else. That at least gave all of them some reprieve as it enabled Thundercracker (Skywarp and Starscream with him) to get a few more hours of recharge. But it certainly wasn't enough…
To be continued...