Help_im_dying
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Summary
Starscream waited three weeks, then four, then five, before finally accepting that his beacon had failed.
Calling for help had been a futile waste of his efforts. Either no one was searching for him, or the effort it took it claim him back was too great to bother with. His trine were not coming. Megatron was not coming.
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An AU of ‘She Should Have Died Hereafter’; What if Starscream wasn’t rescued?
Series
- Part 2 of Hereafter
Bookmarked by Help_im_dying
13 May 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
1. When did he last face an opponent of worth? Starscream’s own Megatron faced Optimus Prime, in his prime, day in and day out. Surely that counted for something?[...]
“I’m sorry,” Starscream whispered to his distant trine. “I dragged you into my mess. Again.”
He could envision them now, their reactions to this. Skywarp would make some joke at his expense, cruel and fond in a way only he could pull off. Thundercracker would sigh in that long suffering manner of his, but smile anyway, like nothing he ever did could be bad enough to drive them away.
And now he may have gotten them killed.
They were never going to know what had happened to him.
He was scrubbing moisture from his face when he heard the heavy pedefalls of a large mech approaching out in the corridor[...]
It was much sooner than he had expected. Maybe Megatron’s attempts to reach his universe again had failed. He hoped so, and clung to that thought as he shuttered his optics and pretended to recharge, dreading what was in store for him tonight[...]
Starscream blinked, unable to believe what he was seeing.
Optimus Prime stepped over the threshold.
"Starscream?” he stared at him in wonder. "You're still alive?"
2. He shrank back, wary. He carried the sparkling of the Autobots’s greatest enemy, in a universe where everyone seemed to be a twisted, extreme version of themselves. The Optimus Prime he had known had been noble.
This Prime could be anything.
‘You’re still alive’ he had said, surprised, because his Starscream was meant to be dead.
“No. I’m not.” Starscream blurted, muddled by his panic but realising this mech assumed he was the Starscream thought long dead. The Starscream who was his enemy. “I’m not Starscream. I’m not your Starscream-“
"I know." Prime had raised a servo, gentle and slow, as he approached. The closer he drew, the worse he looked. His left arm was not his own. His chest plating was misshapen and dented like someone had tried to punch through it.
"Starscream, we know who you are-“
“He took me.” Starscream rambled, words tumbling from his mouth as he scooted back on the berth. Away. Prime was creeping closer.
“He stole me from my universe and forced me to- I'm not your enemy! My- my sparkling isn't a threat-!”
“Starscream," Prime’s voice was soft like a whisper. "I'm here to rescue you."[...]
He held out his servo -skeletal, bare of armour, the struts exposed- and waited for Starscream to decide.
Like Starscream was going to be stupid enough to trust him blindly. Maybe he thought months of captivity and manipulation had turned him into a simpering weakling, willing to trust anything someone said, even an enemy.
3. “Why? Where’s the hurry? When he’s already killed Thundercracker and Skywarp! When he’s already gotten me sparked! When he’s already gone to my home, to murder my trine! If you wanted to move quickly you would have gotten here a year ago, when he took me!”
“I’m sorry it took so long to reach you.” Prime told him sadly. “We hadn’t known, and If we hadn’t heard from Skyfire-“
“I saw Skyfire months ago! Months!” Starscream yelled, feeling hysterical[...]
“Because there is more at stake here than just you, Starscream.” Prime said firmly. “Whatever Megatron may like to tell himself, the war rages on. There are lives on the line. We couldn’t risk approaching you with Megatron so close, but your absence from public life led us to believe the worst. He hasn’t shown you off like he did the others.”[...]
He stopped suddenly, realising-
“…What do you mean ‘others’?!”[...]
It had always been a fear in the back of his mind, how replaceable he was because of how replaceable the original had been. Now he knew. He was just the latest in a long line of fakes.
“How many?”
“We can’t know for sure.” Prime murmured.
“Did he kill them?” Starscream wheezed, because he would be next. Megatron would grow sick of his attitude and his refusal to love him and he would kill him. And the sparkling would be left to face their psychotic sire alone.
“No.” Prime sounded too sure for Starscream’s liking. “None ever lasted as long as you have. Many couldn’t cope. Most died in their attempts to escape. Some … escaped by other means.”
4. “You’re the only Starscream we’ve gotten to alive. You know him better than anyone-“
Starscream scoffed.
“You do.” Prime insisted. “He’s killed everyone he ever considered a friend. Anyone who dared speak reason to him. Anyone he perceived as a threat. Do you think Soundwave was a casualty of war?”
Starscream swallowed, shaking his helm, not wanting to think about Soundwave, or any of the Decepticons notably missing from this universe. Mechs who weren’t his friends, but mechs he had known and lived with for centuries.
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Summary
“The alpha set the mug down in front of Max, and took his own bowl when Isaac offered it. Max stared at the steaming mug a moment too long—it was blue with white speckles, a chip in the handle—before he forced his eyes back down to his folded hands. As tests went, this one was obvious.“
A continuation of “Seeking Shelter” by sphagnum, opening from Max’s first morning with the pack, because be the sequel you want to see in the world.
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Bookmarked by Help_im_dying
12 Apr 2024
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Seeking Shelter sequel https://archiveofourown.org/works/15648981
NOTES
1. Max stared at the steaming mug a moment too long[. . .]before he forced his eyes back down to his folded hands. As tests went, this one was obvious. They’d set him up in a little triangle: his shoes off to his left, the mug in front of him, the other alpha on his right ready to correct him if he reached for something he hadn’t been given permission to have. He focused on his breathing, keeping himself calm and steady with the knowledge that this wouldn’t last very long, that there wouldn’t be a punishment because he wasn’t going to fuck this up.
The rest of them ate in relative quiet for a few minutes, until Wes broke it. He’s so still.
He’s terrified of us. The other omega spoke quietly[. . .]And it’s going to stay that way for a long time. We can’t even talk to him.
We should get him a notebook, since he can read and write. Can babels do sign language?
I bet we can work something out. Hey Max, sweetheart?
Max carefully looked up without raising his head, to find Isaac grinning and waving at him from the other side of the campfire.
You can finish your breakfast. Pete, he can finish his breakfast, right? Isaac mimed reaching for something on the ground in front of him, and bringing it to his mouth. He made the movement again, and when Max’s gaze flickered between Isaac and the blue mug in front of him, Isaac’s grin widened and he nodded emphatically.
Isaac, so far, had looked out for him. Max didn’t know what this meant, if Isaac was encouraging him to disobey for some reason or if he was trying to say that the test was over now, that Max could take the mug himself.
2. So fucking what if he wasn’t smooth and new all over? Nobody expected that of other dynamics, just omegas, and omegas certainly weren’t spared the rougher edges of life. That particular scar—five inches long, one inch wide, a burn that had melted the skin straight down the middle of his right forearm—was one Max happened to like. He’d done it to himself two years ago[. . .]
At the time, it had meant he was his own person, for once in his life. At the time, it had meant never again.
But then he’d gotten so hungry.
A shout from down the hill: Nick, beloved, I’m going to need you to unhand baby boy there before he has an aneurism, or I’m going to have to drop kick you into the river. Isaac was coming back with more water, and at his approach Nick dropped Max’s wrist.
Did you see, when he cleaned up last night? Are there any injuries we need to be taking care of?
Max took a half-step backwards out of Nick’s reach, and then stopped himself. He needed to remember not to flinch, not from this alpha. He didn’t get to do that, anymore. If Nick wanted to grab him, wanted to hurt him, he would, and nothing was going to stop him. Certainly not Max.
3. Max hadn’t realized how much of his life he’d spent waiting, before. Going where he was put, keeping his head down, being nothing while everyone else made all the decisions[. . .]And it had been so nice, to have that much say in his own life. Deciding when he woke up, when he went to sleep. What he was going to do that day, what he was going to do with all of his time. Making plans beyond the next few minutes had been a novel experience, but Max had loved it. And despite what everyone said about omegas he’d managed to be good at it, for a pretty long time.
That was over now, though.
4. Wes waved a little, to get Max’s attention. We , he gestured to the group. Defuse , he made a repetitive tearing motion with his hands. Nuclear missiles , he put both hands on the table and then popped them up, shaking them around in the air. Then he made an X with his index fingers, shaking his head with a serious expression. Max, are you good with that? He pointed to Max, and smiled with a thumbs up. Or bad with that? He made a thumbs down[. . .]
Max’s impulse was to shrink since he was obviously being asked some type of question he had no way to answer, but the others seemed more focused on Wes than on him.
For shit’s sake. Nick covered his face with both of his hands.
That’s what you’d sign for ‘nuclear missiles?’ Johnny seemed to be trying not to laugh.
5. The group, at least, seemed to recognize the absurdity in Wes’s attempt to communicate, which took the pressure off Max to try and take it seriously. Impulsively, he gave Wes a thumbs up, since it was clear they didn’t really expect him to have understood.
Most of the pack dissolved into laughter, and what tension remained vanished. Nick gave a small smile, but his eyes were appraising Max in a way that wasn’t entirely comfortable.
Jesus Christ, he made a fucking joke, Logan exclaimed.
He’s going to be okay . Isaac was merry too, but a little misty-eyed. He’s going to fit right in.
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Megatron went back to Kaon.
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- Part 12 of Transformers works
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Bookmarked by Help_im_dying
20 May 2026
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1. He’d eagerly clawed his way up the shaft towards the signal until he finally reached another tunnel, much higher up: one of the old mined-out sections[...]A heap of rubble had blocked most of his view, but he’d seen the light flickering over the helmet and face, leaning against the wall in repose, the optics shut—his first sight of another living mech since the sloping tunnel had fallen in on him[...]It hadn’t been until he’d made it around the tumbled debris that he saw the hideous wreck of the mech’s legs, gone to the knee with a pair of electrovoles gnawing with pleasure on a sparking, frayed power cable[...]He’d stood horrified, until even more horrifyingly, the optics had slid open, flickering to life, and the other lost miner had looked up at him.
Terminus had been down there since vorn 22074, more than a century. “The retrieval crew said they were on the way,” he’d whispered, thready and wavering[...]“They said it would be a while… I activated my emergency protocol. After a month, it started to shut me down automatically at intervals to keep my reactor from dying[...]”
But his sensors were still functional, and also he actually knew how to get to the surface. In Terminus’s day, miners hadn’t yet been classified as disposable. He’d been a low-caste laborer, working for a wage, occasionally allowed to come up to certain restricted areas. He shared a torrent of information about the world above as Megatron carried him up, Terminus slung over his back as easily as a quarter-load of raw energon. The stories sounded unbelievable. Light produced by stars, open air overhead stretching all the way to the infinite vacuum of space. On the less poetic side, Terminus had frequented a low-caste pub on his one day off a month, and once he’d even won at a gambling game—it had taken some explaining for Megatron to grasp the concept of a game[...]
The lurid, half-magical tales filled the week that it took Megatron to carve their way up to the tunnels just below the street, and there they’d found the ventilation shaft, the cover above limned with surface light. He’d shoved it open, and then he’d climbed out and laid Terminus down in the street before looking up and around, dazzled and bewildered, at the open sky, the glittering starscrapers, the reflected sunlight. After a moment he’d looked down to apologize for having thought that Terminus was insane, and found the miner dead at his feet, a trickle of lubricant running from each of the cracked optics, agony and relief mingled on his face.
So Megatron wasn’t really surprised, standing at the top of the slope collapse, to see that the overseers clearly hadn’t assigned a crew to so much as touch the rubble. They’d sent immediate responses to his daily messages, assuring him that progress was being made. Undoubtedly it had been an autoresponder, meant to keep him waiting, and only boredom and luck had saved him from simply starving to death. He wouldn’t have suffered the same fate as Terminus; his energon demands would have drained his reactor core dead after only a month or two at most, even if he’d just sat waiting. A thoughtful refinement of disposable-mech design. Perhaps intended as mercy, but the overseers had been extremely concerned about any deep miners getting out. A highly justified concern, in retrospect.
2. It was a shortsighted offer; Predaking immediately ran with it for several light-years in the wrong direction and started showing up twice a day demanding rematches. Three days later, he even came down into the mines where Megatron was actively holding up a tunnel roof while a rescue crew worked feverishly to dig out the two dozen mechs who’d gotten buried in a collapse, if they’d even survived. Predaking appeared and said, “Megatron! I come to challenge you!” after Megatron had been standing locked in the same position under roughly six thousand tons of rock for more than eleven hours.
“If you’re not here to help, shut up and get out, you useless heap of scrap aluminum,” Megatron snarled.
Predaking swelled up furiously, and then paused and actually noticed what was going on. He stood there for a few moments and then made an irritated noise, transformed, and shoved the digging crew out of the way with his nose and went at the pile with jaws and talons. He cleared the entire tunnel in less than an hour: he actually ate the spoil.3. “Orion,” he said, wondering if he might weep, and Orion blindly fumbled out his hands and clasped his one after another, snaking out thinner data cables to plug into him, satellite connections around the pulsing sun at the center of their bodies. Orion sighed his name back, deep and resonant, their minds touching: he did have words, joy, wonder, love and love and love, spilling over, and Megatron did gasp once, something like a sob, and bent to kiss him: he hadn’t known what it was, in fact; he hadn’t known what it was remotely.
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Summary
There was very little hope to be found within the Darkmount cell. What there was, Optimus clung to, for as long as he could.
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- Part 17 of Transformers works
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Bookmarked by Help_im_dying
20 May 2026
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NOTES
1. “Check the designation of the officer you’re assigned to!” Springload said.
“Optimus, right?” Fallout said, looking back up, and then stopped so short that Springload and Backlash both crashed into him. Optimus caught the three of them before they all toppled over, steadied them back onto their feet, then turned and continued down the corridor.
He expected that to be the end of conversation, but it only silenced Fallout for a total of 1.67 minutes before he crept back up alongside him and said tentatively, “But, you’re—you’re with us now, right? You swore allegiance.” He didn’t wait for an answer to the question, which was just as well since Optimus didn’t have one, and blurted out suddenly, “Do you—know Lord Megatron?”
Springload made a stifled noise of deep anguished mortification, and Optimus abruptly found himself on the verge of real laughter: it was absurd, and yet it was also, in a bizarre way, wonderful. He was walking freely through Darkmount with five squeaky-at-the-joints Decepticon soldiers, who’d come out of stasis straight into this unbelievable new world where they might never know the horrors of civil war—where, in fact, they were about to follow the former Autobot commander on a mission to protect civilians from a criminal gang—and they were asking him for gossip about Megatron[...]
“We’ve met,” he said, firmly repressing the urge to let the laughter burst out; he was confident that young Decepticons didn’t take themselves any less seriously than young Autobots, and he knew how it wounded their pride to feel exposed and silly before a senior officer.
2. All of the fivesquad paused, looking vaguely cheated. “So it wasn’t better!” Springload said.
“On the contrary. Tactics were not the only consideration. The third solution had significant operational benefits.” Optimus left it there and waited; this was the point at which any Autobot would almost immediately have gotten a sheepish look, but the Decepticons all just stood there frowning deeply, clearly pushing their tac units to the limit in the completely wrong direction.
Optimus finally said, gently, “What made the third solution substantially better was your argument. If I had made a choice between either of your solutions, one of you would have been pleased, and the other would have been resentful. Both of you would have been more likely to make mistakes. Going into a fight without unit cohesion has a far more substantial effect on outcome than the minor tactical differences over which you were arguing[...]”
They were all very quiet on the way back, in the silence of deep analysis, as if they had to really work at integrating this revolutionary new concept. They were still at it when Optimus dropped them back off in their barracks unit with a few words of approval and the promise of detailed performance reviews over the next few days, and went back to his tower workstation to submit a report.
3. He’d assumed Megatron wanted him to repudiate the claim publicly because it conflicted with his own desire to rule; it hadn’t occurred to him that Megatron thought he’d been lying about it, all these years[...]
“Megatron,” Optimus said, slowly, “Primus isn’t a deity, or mythical. He’s a corporeal entity physically present in the Hall of Primes.”
They stared at each other over the table, another odd dislocating experience; Megatron’s expression was one of total indignation. He spat, “You expect me to believe this absurdity? That you found the creator of our species living in the core of our planet, bestowing his benevolent approval upon the rule of Sentinel Prime—”
“No,” Optimus said. “He never went to the Hall of Primes. Primus mentioned that the last person to speak to him was someone called Esperan, who brought him back the Matrix. Alpha Trion later found a few fragmentary records that suggest he was the last Prime before the Quintesson occupation. We think—we found two bodies within the Hall, one of them a heavily armored warrior. We think that was him, that he died protecting Primus from the Quintessons. We couldn’t open the door ourselves; when we knocked, Primus opened it from inside and called us in.”
4. “If I could save them by torturing you and every last one of your soldiers to death slowly with my bare hards, I would,” he snarled, his voice distorting into savagery.
“My Decepticons, who signed on to do what was necessary…I’d do it to save Starscream alone. He’s worth every last one of you as far as I’m concerned. He walked away from your regime when he had a high place of his own, and it looked as though my side didn’t have a chance. But I had to make him a monster, make an army full of monsters, to destroy the monstrous. And now—in his rage and frustrated ambition—Starscream will winnow out the other monsters for me.”
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Overcome by thunderwear
Fandoms: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
16 Mar 2020
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Summary
“I don’t know if this technically counts as dual cultivation since I don’t have a core,” Wei Ying said as he lay sticky and sweaty, plastered to Lan Wangji’s side. “But it has to be in some way, right? That's why it helps so much.”
This sent Lan Wangji’s heart into a series of complicated and unexpected flips.
Every time Wei Ying couldn't think past the resentful energy swirling though him, Lan Wangji helped him through it.
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19 May 2026
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1. Wei Ying raised his hands to look at them before turning to Lan Wangji with a grin.
“Actually, yes,” he said sitting up, patting over his head and chest like he was searching for something. “This is the best I’ve felt in months!”
He still looked tired but the darkness around his eyes had lightened and his mouth was no longer stuck in that snarl that had been teasing at his lips since Lan Wangji first caught sight of him during their encounter with Wen Chao.
“Burial Mounds?”
Wei Wuxian stiffened for a second before he leaned forward to wrap his arms around his middle.
“Yeah, Wen Chao wasn’t lying,” he said, his voice soft, haunted.
Even in light of what they’d just done, Lan Wangji hesitated before placing a hand over Wei Ying’s. It was cold, but it was no longer shaking.
“I’m here now, though,” Wei Ying continued with a tired smile in Lan Wangji’s direction.
And that was worth all the corruption racing through Wei Ying now. If that dark energy was what brought Wei Ying back, Lan Wangji couldn’t bring himself to hate it.
2. When he probed a little deeper and found nothing still, he froze on top of Wei Ying, mind racing. He searched deeper, almost frantic now, and found a dark emptiness where Wei Ying’s core should have been.
“Lan Zhan, what—?”
But Lan Wangji ripped away from Wei Ying, gasping at the sudden emptiness when Wei Ying slipped out of him, even as he stumbled from the bed, shock and horror filling his chest.
Wei Ying didn’t have a golden core.
And suddenly, all the pieces clicked into place. The way he never carried his sword, the demonic cultivation he refused to give up no matter how it hurt him, all the lies and excuses.
Wei Ying sat up, concerned, oblivious to what Lan Wangji had just discovered.
“Are you okay?” He asked, moving off the bed to kneel beside Lan Wangji.
Even in the low light, Lan Wangji could see that faint scar over his lower dantian just above where his dick still lay hard and dripping from being inside Lan Wangji. What had Wei Ying said it was from? A training accident? Now that Lan Wangji was looking, he could clearly see the surgical precision.
He reached out to touch it before he’d even thought it through.
“Your core…” He breathed, without even meaning to.
Wei Ying jerked his hand back from Lan Wangji’s shoulder and he half-turned so that he was no longer facing him. Lan Wangji dropped his hand from where it had brushed against the scar.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His tone was clipped and defensive.
There was a pause wherein Lan Wangji tried to decide whether or not he was going to let Wei Ying avoid the subject.
He decided on not.
“That’s why you use resentful energy,” he said, ignoring the way Wei Ying flinched. “That’s why you don’t carry your sword.”
Wei Ying stayed quiet and he didn’t turn back to face Lan Wangji, but he was trembling, so Lan Wangji reached out to place a hand on his shoulder.
3. Wei Ying seemed to relax against him until Lan Wangji asked his next question.
“Was it painful?”
Wei Ying froze, and it was an answer as clear as if he would have spoken. When he shook his head to deny it, Lan Wangji tightened his grip.
“Don’t lie to me.”
Wei Ying was still cold where he pressed against Lan Wangji. He hadn’t dressed when Lan Wangji had, so he was naked curled against his side, and the thin layer of the blanket wasn’t enough to keep him warm. Lan Wangji pulled him closer until they were pressed completely together.
Wei Ying choked on another sob, and nodded against Lan Wangji’s chest.
“It hurt so much, Lan Zhan, I thought I was going to die.”
Lan Wangji was glad that Wei Ying’s face was buried in his chest so that he couldn’t see the tear that slipped over his cheek. He didn’t understand how anyone could call into question Wei Ying’s character or his morals. Wei Ying was the best person Lan Wangji knew and this only proved it.
How could one man be so selfless?
He held Wei Ying late into the night. They didn’t continue where they had left off, too emotionally drained, but they lay in each other’s embrace and listened to the sounds of everyone else celebrating around them.
4. “Meet me later in my room.”
If Lan Wangji hadn’t been so well practiced in self-regulation, he would have touched his fingertips to his lips in order to savor that kiss. He wondered if he should tell Wei Ying that he was in love with him later when they met up. He wondered how Wei Ying would react.
But they didn’t meet in Wei Ying’s room that night. Instead, Wei Ying was halfway to Yiling with the Wen remnants, and Lan Wangji was left in the rain where he’d let them pass, heartbroken and alone.