shadow_vector | Sky and Ground 25 Ancient History

PG-13
Bayverse, Sky and Ground AU
Barricade, Starscream
disturbing content

Barricade commed Starscream during his shiftbreak and left a message. He didn’t want to bother the jet, but Skywarp’s request, and the strange urgency in his voice, had eaten at Barricade the entire first half of shiftcycle. “Ask Starscream. Ask him about Thundercracker.” He had tried to ignore the gnawing worry in his cortex, but it won out. He could ask. He could ask by message and leave it up to the Air Commander to decide if the personal request was worth his time. He did not check his own message queue until the end of shiftcycle. Starscream had responded, text only. Yes, he would, but tonight, and Barricade must agree to recharge with him. Barricade frowned. It seemed such an…odd request. But if the jet had meant interface, well, he wasn’t shy about it—he’d taken Barricade (or the other way around) in front of half the crew in the refectory before. Recharge? Yes. He would. Even if it was the Air Commander suddenly being coy. His curiosity, his worry, would pay any price to have this burning worry assuaged.

Barricade had to restrain himself from racing to the large Seeker’s quarters as the time Starscream had set on the message approached. The last thing he wanted to do was bother the jet…more than he had to. He chimed the door ten whole picokliks after the time Starscream had set. The door gave an ‘enter’ response and whooshed open.

Starscream sat on the berth, leaning against the wall, three empty cubes stacked in a little pyramid beside him. “Come in,” he said, opening the seal on another cube. “I hope,” he gestured, a little loosely, with one hand, “that you do not mind that I have begun preparing myself.” Barricade froze. That…did not sound good.

“No,” he said, quietly. “’M sorry. Don’t have to do this.”

“Nonsense, Barricade.” Starscream patted the berth. “You may join me. This is not exactly unfamiliar terrain for you.” He managed a weak grin.

Barricade climbed up next to him, unsure of what to do next. Starscream handed him an unopened cube. Barricade toyed with it nervously, his talons clicking over its surface.

“You said you wished to know about Thundercracker.” Barricade nodded. “Skywarp told you to ask me?” Another nod. “Ah.” The jet tossed his head back, taking the entire cube in one swallow. He let the empty cube and his hands drop to his lap, and sat, head tilted back against the wall, face to the ceiling. Barricade watched him, uncomfortable. Had the jet overcharged? Fallen into recharge? Was he ill? He shifted uncomfortably on the berth.

“Please wait,” Starscream whispered. “Just a moment.”

Barricade stilled himself, forcing himself to study the slosh of the pink Seeker-grade energon in his still-sealed cube. He was getting a distinctly bad feeling. No, that wasn’t right. He’d had a bad feeling from the instant Skywarp had suggested this to him. This? This was just the resounding thud of his bad feeling being hammered home. He couldn’t think of anything that would be this bad. Didn’t want to think of it.

What he wanted right now most of all was to throw his arms around Skywarp protectively, which was ludicrous—he was half the Seeker’s height, a fraction of his mass. Not to mention parsecs away. What Barricade could protect Skywarp from? Nothing. Maybe…maybe he just wanted to hold Skywarp for himself. To make himself feel better.

He found himself clutching the cube instead, lamely, when Starscream tilted his head down. The Seeker’s optics rotated blearily, as if struggling to focus. Definitely, Barricade thought, overcharged.

“This is the boring part,” Starscream said, idly rearranging his pile of empty cubes. “We are not, technically, a Trine. We were originally a Quaterne.” He placed the four empty cubes in a diamond pattern. “Four of us,” he said, softly. Barricade couldn’t move, afraid any gesture would break the jet’s train of thought. “Skyfire died,” Starscream said, pushing one cube gently away from the others. His voice was scratchy and thin, as if it actually hurt him to say the words. “He died and then there were only the three of us.”

A long pause. Starscream looked over at the full cubes on his other side, as if trying to decide.

“It is foolish to argue which of us was closest to him. Which of us suffered most at his loss. But we were young, and so we argued. Bitterly. We had no,” he swallowed around a lump of something., “…no other way to understand our pain. Our loss.” He turned back to the four empty cubes, picking one up and turning it over in his hands. The light glittered off the barbs on his hands.

“It is too bright in here,” he said, suddenly. “I shall dim the lights.” He waited for some sign from Barricade.

“Okay,” Barricade said, clumsily. The lights dimmed and his optics cycled to lowlight, the jet’s face becoming a mosaic of contoured shapes, harder to read.

Starscream continued toying with the emptied cube. “We…failed in our training. Task after task. We had gone from everyone’s hope—the miracle of a functioning Quaterne—to the most inept Trine in our training cycle. It was…quite a fall from grace.” His voice hitched. “Have you ever suffered a loss like this?” the jet asked. “You do not recover so easily from such a loss. You feel…hollowed out of everything good and rich and beautiful. You are, you feel like…at best a dry husk simply waiting, endlessly, to finally blow away. Waiting, almost impatiently, for that final wind.” He held the empty cube up, as if it were a symbol.

Barricade ached, desperately wishing he knew what to do. Wanting to stop the jet from speaking, from feeling the pain he was so obviously feeling. Awkwardly, he reached out one hand to touch the jet’s lowest leg joint. Starscream looked up at him, his optics struggling to focus. He smiled, sadly.

“It is all right, Barricade. It does not bother me to speak of it.” A lie. Raw and redder than the jet’s optics. He stroked one long talon down Barricade’s hand, tracing around the wrist-tire. In any other circumstance it would have seemed flirtatious—now, it just seemed…unutterably sad. “And you have a right to know.”

“We did…not cope well. I blamed myself—have always—“ the jet corrected, his hand tightening on the empty cube, “blamed myself. There are reasons, which are irrelevant now. Suffice to say, I was…a drain on the others. Skywarp compensated by, I suppose, faking a lightheartedness he did not feel. He would design these…escapades, really, that would almost always be found out, and be punished for them.” The jet’s long talons traced idle letters on Barricade’s forearm.

“I suppose, looking back on it, that he was doing that to try and be punished. To work out his own guilt. It is rather selfish of me—but I have always been selfish, I have been told—to imagine I lost more than the others. But…I was so busy trying to die that I could not pay attention to anyone else. And that is also, also my guilt.” Starscream reached for another cube. “And, he knew that his tricks were the only things that made me laugh.” He pierced the seal of the cube, and took a long sip. “He saved me, more than once.”

“Sorry,” Barricade said. There was so much to apologize for he couldn’t even begin to narrow it down. Just…the naked pain on the jet’s face. Yes, he’d been one of those who had written Starscream off: vain, arrogant, self-aggrandizing. He had never expected…this was underneath. He felt bad for his own shallow judgment.

A half-hearted smile from under downcast optics. “Skywarp has always deserved better than he has given himself.” It was somehow a compliment, Barricade realized, just…somehow muddled by Starscream’s overcharge. The bronze jet grabbed Barricade’s wrist, hauling him forward. As the smaller mech watched, Starscream retracted his chest armor. “I want to show you this,” Starscream said. “Maybe it will help you understand.”

Barricade’s capacitor fluttered in a kind of fear. This was so close to what he wanted—with Skywarp, the spark chamber there, open to the air, just…an arm’s reach away. But this was not Skywarp.

Starscream tapped his chamber cover. It looked battered, dented. “Skyfire’s,” he said, softly. He craned his own neck to look down at it, tracing the contours as if it were his most beloved possession. “Thundercracker got it for me.” His talons curled over it possessively. Barricade wondered what it would be like—to wear the armor of a dead mech. It was a tradition among the warriors, a way to commemorate fallen comrades.

Barricade couldn’t think of anyone who would do that for him. Except Skywarp, who held his spark cover as if it was too fragile to be real. But he wouldn’t want to have to be dead. He wouldn’t want to cause Skywarp the pain the Starscream had felt—obviously still felt.

“Thundercracker,” Starscream began. Hesitated. Reached for the half-full cube and took another long drink. “Thundercracker decided that what had failed all of us—Skyfire, me, Skywarp—was a lack of discipline. A lack of respect and order. I imagine that was his way of coping, as well—to match his feelings of lack of control with demonstrations of absolute control.”

He took another drink, reluctantly sliding his armor closed. “What can I say? We…accepted his control because it punished us, and for a long time it felt like love. Felt like someone taking care of us, giving us what we deserved. The spark chamber cover, for example. A loving, poignant gesture. Also, though, a reminder—of Skyfire’s death, and my obligations.” He looked up, seeing the still sealed cube in Barricade’s hand. “Please, have some? I shall feel like a truly poor host if you do not.”

That wasn’t the real reason, Barricade thought. Even for Starscream. He felt like he was beginning to be able to see through the arrogance, the sarcasm, to…this. Something awful was coming up—even more awful—and Starscream wanted him to have the cushion of overcharge. He obediently opened the cube and drank. The warm fizz of the energon raced through his systems. Before it had felt like joy: now it merely fueled his worry, tasted like soured hopes.

“Thundercracker controlled us, as much as one can control anyone. Which is, perhaps, more than you think.” Starscream tilted his head back against the wall. “I apologize. The overcharge is making me…inept with words.”

Barricade waited, fighting the rising charge from the energon desperately.

“It helped our drills, Thundercracker’s domination. We suddenly began performing well. A miraculous comeback.” His smile turned bitter. “Yes. And…he…well, I do not know his motives. Perhaps he considered that his control would make us happy in other ways. Perhaps he merely desired to see how much we would endure, how much of ourselves we were willing to give over to him.”

“I do not mean to upset you, Barricade. But this must be said.” Starscream pulled the smaller mech against him, not even noticing when the action sloshed energon into his elbow joint. Barricade found his face shoved somewhere between the jet’s arm and torso. Starscream smelled warm and clean and far too much like Skywarp. “Skywarp was forced to—forced to, please understand—violate me.” His arm tightened around Barricade as the smaller mech stiffened. Even with this admission trying to protect Skywarp, protect Barricade. “Yes,” Starscream said, soothingly. “It was ages ago, Barricade. Ages. It is all right.”

Barricade felt himself tremble. Skywarp? For a klik he couldn’t see it, but then it was as if things snapped into focus and he could—Skywarp’s mocking tone, the first time, commanding Starscream to involve Barricade in the first place; ordering the bronze jet to spike him; Starscream’s meek submission to his dark-armored Trine mate. But no, part of his cortex howled. Skywarp…. …had avoided—and then this too snapped into focus, hard and sharp enough to cut—spiking him. Only that once. And Barricade could see—as if it was a datatrack spooling out in front of him—Skywarp throwing Starscream down, thrusting into him, growling like a feral thing.

“Not…ages ago,” he managed. Why would Starscream even want to touch Skywarp?

“No,” Starscream murmured. “He gives me what I need now.”

“And…Onslaught?” Barricade thought shamefully of the other night when he had walked in on that.

“Onslaught can fill some gaps.” The jet’s hands stroked soothingly down Barricade’s back kibble. “But that is my damage, and nothing for you to concern yourself with.”

“Skywarp….”

“Is terrified that he will hurt you, yes. Thundercracker…brings out a darkness in him that you have not yet seen, and he…does not want to lose you. Or, I imagine, himself.”

“Won’t,” Barricade said, aware of the petulance in his own voice.

“He will push you away—for your own safety perhaps. Perhaps to assuage his ego—reject you before you reject him.”

Barricade’s talons tightened into the servos of Starscream’s arm. “Won’t let him.”

“Good,” Starscream breathed. He hauled Barricade up onto his lap, pressing the smaller mech’s back against his cockpit. “Do not let him.” He folded his long arms around Barricade, squeezing him for comfort—but whose?

“Hate Thundercracker.” Under the jet’s heavy arms, his talons balled into fists. Nowhere near as lethal looking as Starscream’s or Thundercracker’s heavily barbed hands, chain-gunned forearms, but furious enough. For what he had done to Skywarp. To Starscream, even, that the bronze mech, whom he’d once written off as detestable, arrogant, could speak so calmly of his own mistreatment. Could forgive it.

I would forgive Skywarp anything, Barricade thought. But even so….

“Do not, little Barricade. Hate will not solve anything.” Starscream ducked his head, nuzzling into Barricade’s helm. Barricade could smell the energon on his vents—the air almost prickling from it. “Hate never solves anything. Skywarp and I have learned that lesson.”