Disillusioned

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

PG
IDW:AHM
Starscream, Skywarp
spoilers for AHM perhaps?  Takes place before “Uneasy Lies the Head”
For tf_rare_pairing  prompt Starscream/Skywarp 'disillusioned' (why yes, once again the title of this fic is *dazzlingly* original)

 

 

“Skywarp.”  Starscream’s voice crackled, annoyed, into the darkness.  He should not need to hunt down the other jet.  Skywarp was his, even now, and Starscream needed him more since Thundercracker’s…absence.

“I’m here,” Skywarp’s voice was as flat as the dull glare of his optics from the gloom, thudding through the silence. 

“What are you doing in here?”  Two questions, folded into one—why aren’t you doing anything? And why are you here and not with me? Starscream couldn’t ask them honestly—he’d lost the ability for directness ages ago.

“Nothing.”  A sullen, unspoken blame in the voice. 

Starscream shrugged it off, his ailerons twitching.  “I have need of you.” Another shrouded statement. Truer than he wanted to admit. 

“Find someone else.”

Starscream’s optics grew harder at the rejection. For a  long moment, he said nothing.  Then, his voice brittle, “I am your leader.”  This should not need to be said. Had never needed to be said  when Megatron had given orders.  Starscream looked down at the Matrix of Leadership attached to his chassis.  Useless.  Effete.  A mere symbol, a gutted hope.

“Leading us…where?”  

Skywarp always did play dumb.  Only his intimates realized how much of it was for effect.  Starscream knew this, and it hurt all the more seeing it aimed at him.  Because the question cut to the core of everything.  Leading them where?  He didn’t know. Without enemies, without war, what were they?  “Does it matter?”  He tried to keep his edge. His silhouette threw itself into the room, wings seeming to melt into the darkness, joining with it.  Losing boundary and contour.

A snort. “Better to move than sit and rust?”  Not as un-self-aware as he seemed.  Skywarp’s intelligence betrayed itself at times like this. 

“Is that the option you are demonstrating?” Starscream countered.  “We can’t find our way unless we look for it.”

“Find everything but our way.” 

Starscream felt the dull anger that had been burning in him since Optimus’s challenge flare to a white flame.  “Do you have a better option?”  He stepped in the room, joining shadow with shadow, as the door cut closed behind him.  His fists tightened.

“Would you even listen?” Skywarp’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. 

The question mocked him, seeming to echo from the enveloping darkness.   “Did Megatron?” he threw back, viciously. 

Skywarp stood up, leaning in, aggressively. His jaw hinge creaked with tension. “Of all mechs, you have no right to hold Megatron up as some sort of…model.” 

Starscream could feel unleashed rage, unfocused emotion, shimmering off Skywarp like heat. Which he matched with his own, breaching the distance between them with one, weapon-like stab of a finger against the silver chassis.  Megatron, sucking up valuable energon in regeneration, rescued by Starscream himself, who would not let Megatron fall to the hands of the Autobots, would not seize leadership through random happenstance. “I have every right.”   

 “You fled,” Skywarp accused, sharply.

“I left certain death to rain upon the Autobots. As they deserved.”  Megatron’s final victory, become Starscream’s—taking one step closer to his goal.  How dare Skywarp accuse him of cowardice when he had acted as a loyal Seeker?  He flung a dart he knew would stab right through Skywarp’s brittle bubble of defiance. “Unless, you, too have doubts?” 

He saw the blow strike home, his optics accustomed to the gloom.  He saw Skywarp’s face flicker from raw pain to betrayal to rage, to…some fierce constraint.  “Protecting the leader of the Empire,” he spat.  “That’s what you said.”  He laughed, each sound  a bark of bitter pain.  “You preserve your own ambition. Only. Always.”

“And what would you have me serve?” Starscream snarled.  “What, in your infinite perspective and wisdom, would you prefer?”  He curled his lips around his last, most devastating dart. “Honor?”

Skywarp’s optics flew wide, red light flaring over Starscream’s armor in shock and insult.  Starscream reveled in the moment—he could practically see the memory unspooling across Skywarp’s cortex, as the black jet had, in his own crisis of faith, shot his own Trine mate.  For this dubious and intangible ‘honor’.  He could not rule the Decepticons, not yet, but this, this he could control.  Words had never failed to be his most faithful, serviceable weapons. He had entirely forgotten the mission he had for Skywarp, completely forgotten everything except that now, his most trusted, the mech whose name was a byword for blind loyalty, was challenging his authority.  Challenging the very thing that was his foundation. 

“If you like,” Skywarp hissed. “Your honor—which saves your rival but allows a dumb weapon to claim the final glory of defeating our enemies—is too slippery for me.” 

My honor, Starscream thought bitterly, his optics dropping to that other dumb weapon, the Matrix, is too slippery for me, as well.  Another thing I can’t get a hold of.  Another thing that eludes my grasp.

“Very well,” he snapped, determined not to let his wound show.  Warriors did not show pain before their enemies.  “You may stay here, sulking, in the darkness.” He spun so hard his heel thruster cut sparks from the floor. 

“Enjoy the light,” Skywarp spat, as the door spilled the corridor’s brightness in, for a moment dazzling Starscream’s optics with his own white armor, with sharp glints from the Matrix’s scratched frame. “While you can.”

 

Comments

[crimsonseastorm.livejournal.com]

Oooooh very nice. You don't see enough of interaction between these two and it's only more awesome that it's about TC, yessss. Interesting to see how far the trine's fallen from Megsy: Origin

[toyzintheattik.livejournal.com]

I'm probably one of the few who really enjoyed the seeker/Megatron interactions in AHM, so this ficlet was win for me! You accomplished a level of tension and depth that McCarthy would have only grazed over had he been given this scene. Now, if only IDW would hire you. =)

[zatnik.livejournal.com]

Neeern. :(

I want to read more, but you make me feel so sad.