shadow_vector | Melting Ice

PG
G1
Skyfire/Starscream
ummm, angst?
for

aeroferret , who loves this pairing and gave me syringes for Bo! I hope this is what you were looking for?

The bite of the cold reminded him, always. Skyfire walked over the plain of snow and ice, his feet crunching through an ancient crust, white and cold and crystalline. He hadn’t wanted to come up here, if for no other reason than these memories, assaulting him, dry and cold, as if hope and joy and color were leached out of the world by the sheer bitter cold.

But he…really didn’t want to be on this mission. He was afraid of what he’d find. He…didn’t know what he wanted to find: Starscream, alive, spitting vitriol, poignant and prickling, or damaged, weak, and needing rescue.

He’d…never seen Starscream wanting help before. Needing it, yes. Willing to accept it? No. And especially not from an Autobot. Especially not Skyfire.

Skyfire didn’t want to be here, but he didn’t want anyone else to find Starscream either. An ironic conundrum that he wished he had the humor to appreciate. Maybe later, in the warm security of the Autobot base, but not now, the double worry of ice and its brutal embrace and Starscream and all that he meant to Skyfire seeming to fill his vents every cycle, circulating through his systems like some sharp energy.

He adjusted his grip on the blaster, his palm plates warm against the pistol’s grip, finger flirting with the triggerwell, but outside it, just as he had been trained. Weapons were so…unnatural to him. And he doubted his ability to pull the trigger. Oh, not against an enemy. But against Starscream?

A floe of ice jutted up before him, the shear lines stretching like blades overhead. He leapt, landing atop the flat surface, using it as a vantage, running a scan. He hesitated for a handful of kliks, debating the ethics. But he had a flash of memory—the cold a chrysalis of pain around him, immobilizing him, sapping his heat, leeching charge from his limbs. And the thought that the same might be happening to Starscream decided him. He had the white Seeker’s energy signature from aeons ago, when they were partners. He had Starscream’s distress-channel.

He used both. He’d take blame, recriminations, as long as he knew.

//Starscream.//

A feeble, garbled response, and the note of puzzlement sent a tremor of worry through his lasercore.

He locked onto the signal, as best he could. It wasn’t precise, but it gave an approximate vector and range. He folded himself down into his shuttle mode, slow and lumbering, but exactly what he needed for this kind of search. //I am coming. Please hang on.//

Another soured blat of noise, clogged with static. Skyfire tried not to think about it, as he launched. Starscream would be there and he’d rage and yell at Skyfire, call him a traitor, accuse him of betrayal, as he always did. And Skyfire would welcome it, as long as it meant Starscream was well.

There. Below him, a bit of red, a tiny splotch against the white. And for once he was glad for Starscream’s gaudy colors, as he circled lower toward the red.

And black, he realized, the unnatural smudge of char. His systems sputtered, dropping him faster toward the ground, so that he landed hard and heavy on the heavy plate of ice, the mass crackling under his weight. He dropped further, letting momentum pull him down to his knees beside the twisted mass of metal. Starscream had burned in, one engine a burst shape of white, one wing nearly rent from his frame. The problem with the Vosian frames, always—the vulnerability of the wing-joins.

“Starscream,” he said, on regular audio. His hands snatched at the ice that had closed around the frame, which had landed so hard it had punched through to the water below. Ice cracked under his hands, shattering into bright fragments, skittering on the snow pack around him, as he excavated, with frantic haste, the white and blue and red frame.

Cold, he thought. Starscream was so very cold, ice eating into his systems, water before freezing, expanding, pressing out on his joints, into his servos, cutting the ability of his actuators.

Skyfire knew this too well, the burning cold, the feeling of ice tearing him apart from the inside out, agonizing, slow pressure. He scooped the mech against him, the heat of his engines, he knew, nearly scalding against the frigid frame. Ice melted against him, suddenly slick, dripping down his frame, into his thighs, his knees. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered but the cold body against his, the damaged frame limp in his arms. “Starscream,” he murmured, optics prickling with emotion, pressing his mouth against the black helm. “Please.” He didn’t know how to continue, what he was begging for. Just that Starscream…move.

The body stirred in his arms, feebly, vocalizer crackling, out of charge and shorted from screaming. Skyfire gave a sympathetic whine of pain, his hands caressing the wings. //Starscream,// he repeated, over comm.

//Let…go of me,// Starscream said, masquerading his usual haughtiness, a thin echo of his ego. But determined to try. That concept was so…essential to him, Skyfire knew—Starscream had always needed to present himself as invulnerable, harder than he was, harder than any mech could be.

Obediently, Skyfire…half-obeyed, lowering Starscream until the black edges of the thrusters touched the ground, loosening his arms. But not letting go completely. Let Starscream think it his weakness, his reluctance to let go: that was…not far from the truth. He’d had so few opportunities to touch Starscream, to feel that white armor against his, the high thrum of Starscream, his distinctive EM, unchanged after all these vorns, after all his changes—armor made heavier, weapons loaded to his arms. So few opportunities, and he’d take Starscream’s scorn for it, as well.

But that scorn never came. Instead, red optics searched his frame, brightening as his systems’ own heat began to melt the remnants of ice. //Foolish of you to come.//

//I…had to.// So much freight in those words, left open for Starscream to choose. Which Skyfire would he see: the loyal Autobot or the mech who still ached for him?

Skyfire wanted to know, because he couldn’t see himself, he couldn’t make up his own mind, and Starscream, always so decisive, would not hesitate.

A flash of a smile. //I never do what I ‘have to’.//

Skyfire felt an answering grin, tremulous, as if glittering under ice, the cold seeming to fade before him, the whiteness of the world changing from barren sterility to stark purity. //I know.// And it was a bond between them that bridged the years, the distance between them: that after all, under it all, under the crust of ice and duty and obligation, they still knew each other so well.

Too well.