shadow_vector | For the Heart I Once Had

G
G1
Skyfire/Starscream
slightly angsty

For the prompt "for the heart I once had", for

Something, something had hitched in Starscream’s laser core when he saw the white mass drop out of the sky trailing an ominous cloud of black, like a strange comet slicing across the daytime sky. This, he thought, this is what I missed all those vorns ago. Skyfire plummeting from flight, without comm, without help or hope. This is what it looked like. This is what had changed…everything

And this time, his Autobot friends abandoned him. Unlike that time, when I wasn’t even there. Even so, I searched. I searched. I did not abandon him. I howled into the teeth of the winds that drove him down. I did not turn tail and run.

Panicked flight from the battlefield, the Autobots fled in a mad dash in front of the terror he and Skywarp and Thundercracker flung in front of them. Starscream didn’t know—hadn’t seen—which of them, the idiot or the fool, had fired the crippling blast. That was a thing for another time.

//I am going in to make sure of the kill,// he spat across comm. Defying them to contradict him. Publicly. He spiraled in, hard and fast, his wingflaps aching with the pressure of his quick descent. Skyfire, he thought, agonized, following the billowing trail of smoke, and as he got nearer, the acrid stench of burnt wire insulation and heated metal.

Anyone else, and he would have approached warily. If it were Skywarp or Thundercracker, he would have circled first. Megatron? He would have done a victory loop. But it was Skyfire, and after all that…he raced to the larger mech, his fingers still, after all this time, racing surely, confidently, to Skyfire’s auto-fire-suppression online.

Skyfire groaned, trying to transform himself.

“Not yet,” Starscream snapped. “Your systems are overheated and your armor is heat-swollen.”

“Starscream?” Skyfire’s voice, that familiar chalky rumble, seemed to go right through Starscream. “What are you doing?”

“Repairs,” Starscream snapped. Insulted. It should be obvious. Did Skyfire trust him so little? Had the Autobots poisoned his mind? He flicked open the secondary access panel, entering manual codes to tamp down pain signals, optics worriedly studying the readouts. “Since your Autobot friends have abandoned you.” Hard to keep the sneer out of his voice.

“I am…I will never join the Decepticons,” Skyfire said.

“I didn’t ask you, did I?” Starscream choked on resentment. He would not ask again. Tacit rejection was painful enough. “You do yourself the great service of presuming you would be an asset to the Decepticon cause.”

The remark stung: he could feel it whip home across Skyfire’s ego. Too easily too harsh, he thought. This is what the Decepticons have made of you. He tried to mollify. “Skyfire, you are not cut out to be a soldier.”

“Neither are you.”

Starscream sizzled. Not this tedious argument again. “That’s been settled, long ago. And I have seen too much of your Autobot cause and their hypocrisy to join you.” It still hurt. It was still a raw wound. After how many vorns of loss, the sharp joy of discovering Skyfire’s survival had been cut short by what he could only deem Skyfire’s betrayal. Throwing away their entire past on an instant’s acquaintance. Yes, Starscream. That’s how much it was all worth to him. That’s how little he valued the potential of rekindling that.

“They are not hypocrites. They hate war.” Skyfire groaned again, as he sent another transformation signal through his systems. Armor catches released with sluggish snaps.

“Then they could simply surrender.” Starscream shifted down to Skyfire’s thrusters, his blue fingers helping pry up a bent plate at the transformation seam. Skyfire shifted, pushing himself up to a propped sitting position.

“They can’t do that,” Skyfire said. “You know that, Starscream.”

“Sarcasm,” Starscream snapped. “Time was you at least got my sense of humor.” He didn’t care about the hurt look on Skyfire’s face. It matched his own.

“I’m sorry to see that war has changed you so much,” Skyfire said.

“Oh, has it?” Starscream said. He shifted around with a new hose clamp to seal off a leaking energon line.

“You’re…hard. It appears that your values have become twisted.”

“It appears that I have left the battle to aid an…enemy.”

“For some motive.”

Starscream’s black helm ducked down over one of Skyfire’s own thrusters. “Yes,” he said, bitterly. “For my entirely own selfish motives.” True. Too true. Motives that had nothing to do with the war. Nothing to do with Autobot or Decepticon, winning or losing. Motives he couldn’t bring himself to name.

“That’s not what I said.” Skyfire winced as he struggled to sit up, reaching one white hand toward Starscream.

“It's what you meant. It's what you always meant.” A brief look up, ignoring the outstretched hand and all it might offer. To him, it was just an empty hand. “Or don't you remember that, either?”

“Remember…?”

Starscream’s hands flopped impatiently. “Remember that you have always considered me selfish. Oh yes, you called it ‘driven’ and ‘focused’. You had a host of diplomatic synonyms. ‘Ambition’ came closest.”

Skyfire looked down over the bulk of his own body, at Starscream, kneeling by his side. “You had more drive.”

“Another turn of phrase.” Starscream was deliberately dismissive.

“You…changed your focus, though, Starscream, and that is what…has come between us.”

“Your scruples have come between us,” Starscream snapped. “None other.”

“I—“

Starscream cut him off. He couldn’t bear hearing any more. Better to fill the void with the sound of his own voice, fill the air between them with pomp and vainglory. Perhaps it would insulate him from what he was desperately trying not to feel. “You need not explain yourself to me, Skyfire. I have not forgotten how you are. I can, unlike you, still bring myself to admire that.” Even though it has come between us. Even though it seems like I am the only one who can remember. “Sad, really,” he sneered. “Since I’m the one with all that time to have forgotten.”

“Starscream. I…haven’t forgotten,” Skyfire’s voice was unsteady. From the pain? From concern? It didn’t matter. It was a vulnerability. Warriors pressed vulnerabilities. Skyfire was…not an enemy. Not a friend. He was some painful in-between Starscream could not bring himself to hate.

But he could bring himself to hurt him, even as he ached at seeing Skyfire in pain. “I suppose not. Then I simply wasn’t worth much to you in the first place.” The core, really. Why this ate at him so. The one, the ONE, who had turned away, turned him down. The one who DARED look on Starscream with…pity. Even Megatron wanted…something out of Starscream. Even Megatron did not pity him.

“That’s…not true.” Skyfire sat up, grabbing Starscream by the upper arm—smudged fingers against the jet’s white upper arm. “Why are you doing this?”

“Repairing you? Because perhaps I am not the monster you think I am.” But I am not a thing of virtue either. And I want you to hurt, but not to die. I want you to feel what I have felt over vorns. I want you to question. To wonder. I want you to feel unsettled, disturbed, in pain. I want that to have MY name at its root. In lieu of what I really want, I will take your pain.

“I never thought that you’re a monster,” Skyfire said, quietly. “I think there’s something inside you that can still feel. I think your core speaks to you. Still.”

“And I think that you’re a fool,” Starscream said, jerking his arm from Skyfire’s grasp. This is not about my laser core. This is for the core I once had. Which you broke. Broke open, and made me feel. Again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

waaa this is soo sad!! It's wonderfully written, I'm glad that something came of this prompt, I really felt for them both in this I wanted to hug Starscream.

So beautifully tragic, I love it.

Well I think I owed you for that prowl/jazz prompt you freed me from. (Or, really, spared the world from more of the AAAAUUUUGGGH that is my faily attempt at pxj!)

Glad you liked!

This. It's just fantastic. They're both so open and raw here, Starscream more so since he's had so much longer to quite literally live with the "what ifs" and "maybes" that Skyfire really and truly seems content to push out of his thoughts entirely.

I'm probably one of those rare few Starscream fans who dislikes Skyfire. There was never anything really about his that I found appealing on any level, and I have to admit that so many pairing fics just make me go "uh... 'kay?" because I just don't get the appeal. Because like you mentioned from Starscream's own vocalizer, he's always been the way he is now, just maybe focused in a different manner, and I hate the trope that "he's just broken and hurt but the power of Skyfire's luv will fix him." Please; he ain't broken, and if Skyfire can't accept that... then it wasn't gonna be, was it?

And, that went off in a totally different direction, didn't it? Suffice it to say, I loved every little detail of this story and it made me think a bit more on why Sky/Star just won't work in my head ^^;

I want to punch Skyfire out. A LOT. I think that's why I bumped him off in Bayverse. This way, all of the angst but none of the...Skyfire-ness. *sucks as writer*

It always does fascinate me that Starscream's been 'alive' longer than Skyfire, and gone through so much, and in a way, he's not really, well, more *mature* than Skyfire? But he's had things happen that Skyfire's not yet had to face. So the whole pity/sympathy Skyfire always radiates makes my little *hypocrite* bell go dingdingding.

(I actually have a whole...thing written about their names and how even just the difference between 'sky' and 'star' make them...forever not workable. <--does way too much backstory work)

oh yah,
last paragraph says it all ---

(those two could be in a Shakespearian tragedy, I swear)

Poor Starscream. I think most of his struggle is within himself. :C

Glad you liked it!

I will never, never not want these two to work things out. It's a horrible affliction of mine, I admit, but in my heart, I just want Skyfire and Starscream to be happy together and to overcome ANYTHING for their love (and they're not even my OTP; FIGURE THAT OUT). So, this was both really achy because, damn it they just can't make it work but all the same Starscream really has that "this is forever" sort of mentality that I love to read about.

Because damn it ... THEY ARE SO AWESOME TOGETHER AND I JUST WANT THEM TO SAY "YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK ALL YA'LL WE'RE GONNA DO OUR OWN THING" and have kinky sex and stuff. Because, DAMN. *loves*

This was, as always, an incredible fic. So much love! ♥

They're really the only crossfactional pair that doesn't make me feel...weird, but they have everything that I say just stands in the way of crossfactional romance. :C Sometimes I wonder how it would have worked out if the war, etc hadn't happened, because their personalities are sooooo different.

Thank you for reading!

For the Heart I Once Had

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