Chapter Text
When a trinemate dies, there are a couple differing reports of sensations in the spark. Some feel a blinding, tearing sort of pain, like their self is being rent in two. Some feel an aching, building ghostly pain, not unlike phantom limb, an ache in the absence of what was.
Skywarp felt something like the opposite, a brush over his spark like Starscream was still there, like he was out there somewhere, in the distant cosmos, living his life unimpeded, dodging stray laser fire, taunting enemies carelessly, piloting ramshackle ships that were cobbled together just enough to make it out of range-
Skywarp was lingering in the hallway leading to the hangar, staring out the small window into the open depths of space. It was infinite out there, it seemed wrong that such a constant could just be gone.
Now his spark burned, his throat felt tight, maybe this was the pain Hook said those old medical datapads had mentioned, maybe this was the ache of the absence. But no matter how he tried, Skywarp couldn’t shake the sense that something was still there.
“You have an early patrol shift tomorrow,” Thundercracker’s voice sounded behind him. Skywarp turned and saw him leaning against the hallway wall, optics watching him carefully, posture appearing relaxed, though Skywarp knew the burden he carried.
Thundercracker just wouldn’t talk about it. He’d talk around it. Starscream’s head had exploded, then his spark a second later, eviscerated by sniper fire, and they put him in a coffin and put said coffin on the space bridge back to Cybertron. Thundercracker had given a eulogy then, on that space bridge, and that was the last Thundercracker had wanted to talk about Starscream.
“You should recharge,” Thundercracker’s voice cut into Skywarp’s reverie.
“Do you miss him?” Skywarp asked, tapping his finger on the glass of the porthole, no particular beat or rhythm in mind, more to fill the long, aching silence that stretched between them.
“I also have a shift tomorrow and I can’t cover for you if you decide to sleep in. If you get another demerit, Soundwave is going to have you scrubbing the hangar floor on your knees,” Thundercracker went on to chastise him as if he hadn’t heard Skywarp’s question at all.
Skywarp sighed. Maybe this was Thundercracker’s own, stupid way of grieving.
“Fine,” he acceded, and turned to go off to their shared room, where they still hadn’t packed out Starscream’s annoyingly messy portion, still strewn with impossible to decrypt datapads, electrical bits and ends, and the occasional odd crystal he’d picked up from planets here and there and then refused to explain the value of keeping.
Sometimes Skywarp thought about teleporting it all out into space, the way factions sometimes jettisoned an unclaimed frame. But deeper down, he knew, he would miss the reminders of Starscream’s absence, and would have to level with the fact the Decepticons would continue without him, and as time ticked on, perhaps things would become as if Starscream had never been there at all.
—
Waking up in a dark confined space had been an interesting turn of events as well as one of Starscream’s immediate least favorite experiences. He had struggled to free himself from the damn thing. Pushing against the surface above him provided nothing but the slightest give. If he could have leveraged his legs, he could probably have lifted whatever it was, but lying horizontally, that was not an option.
He scanned his surroundings. The image the scan gave back was only vaguely helpful. It seemed he was on a shelf of some kind. Starscream sat pondering his predicament for a minute, audials becoming attuned to the crushing sound of silence.
The scan hadn't turned up any sign of life nearby. It also crossed his mind that he wasn't sure how long he had been in said container, but it must have been a while. His fuel reserves were low. So it wasn't likely anyone would be coming to rescue him. When had they ever?
Starscream mulled over his thin options, the silence stretching, the darkness of the container becoming tighter, more confining. He could barely shift without some part of himself scraping unpleasantly.
Then, in a beat of frustrated desperation he had discovered that throwing all his weight in one direction led to the container shifting just the slightest bit. So running precariously low on fuel, Starscream repeatedly thew himself against the wall of the container, listening to it scrape and scrape and scrape, like a limp pede over rough cement, hoping that after each push he would feel that telltale tilt-
Finally, he felt it, the container was leaning, first gently, then more severely as he shifted all his weight to lean against the far wall. As the container gave a precarious lurch Starscream’s spark leapt with victorious hope. He threw his frame toward the edge one last time and at last the container slid over.
Starscream found himself in a painful heap on the floor. One of his wings was probably dented from the weight of his prison bearing down on it, but that was no matter. He was free. Starscream stood up and took a look at what he had been encased in.
It was an oblong, smooth metal container, utilitarian and bare of decoration except for two areas. There was a cracked screen projecting a pink, flickering hologram of himself for a few moments before winking out. Below that was his designation written in Cybertronian script, "Starscream of Vos". Under that was a large pointy looking insignia that Starscream couldn’t recognize. It didn’t strike him as something he’d ever seen in Vos, that was for sure.
Starscream looked around himself to realize that he was in a mausoleum of some kind. The container had been his coffin. He could mull on that later, for now he needed to find his way out of here.
He stepped out of the coffin’s wreckage, and walked down the narrow hallways, passing by numerous holograms of varying colors, all flight frames. Their light was the only thing illuminating this cavernous, dank space. A small voice in his processor worried about how deep underground he was and if the exit had been sealed.
Starscream stared at the high ceilings with dangling, ornate fixtures he assumed had once been used to light this space, but now only served to cast eerie alien shadows in the gloom. Something about the area, its spaciousness, the arches and pillars carved with whimsical swirling patterns, itched at a part of his processor. Then it hit him.
He was in the catacombs of Vos. The now seemingly abandoned catacombs of Vos, judging by the amount of dust that had accumulated on the ground. He didn't remember how he knew this, no particular memories of being here before surfaced, he just knew that he knew. A chill went through Starscream’s frame as he peered down the murky dim depths.
Then something on the floor caught his attention.
Pedeprints. Pedeprints in the dust that trailed all the way to where his coffin was and which stopped in a little huddle in that area. Starscream could see that there had been a small group of mecha who had put him here from the path on the floor. Curiously, not all of the prints on the floor seemed to belong to seekers. The long dragging steps of one in particular seemed to belong to some sort of tankformer.
Starscream struggled to think of who he knew that had pedes that would match those clunky dragging steps, and all he could name who even approximated that size, was Skyfire. Had something happened on one of their expeditions? Unless he had intentionally been put here alive?
But why would he have been put here alive? Some bizarre punishment or hazing ritual? Starscream wracked his processor, first for a reason, and then for an idea of who or what. Then he tried to recall anything that had happened in the last few days. Nothing. Weeks. Nothing. Years. Nothing.
As he reached for something, anything to remember, all he came up with were distant memories of his time in academy. Fond memories of Skyfire, tinged with an edge of melancholy he did not understand. Nothing in his memory actually served to tell him why he felt that way.
Starscream checked his chrono and was stunned by the date read out to him. It had been countless millennia since academy. When he poured through his own logs in disbelief, he found that the size, quantity and intricacy of them supported this fact.
Starscream felt his processor reel dizzily at the revelation, and he leaned against the wall, contemplating. That wasn’t good. Something had happened, and whatever it was, it had caused a fresh system restart and seemingly his memory process had gotten tangled up or disrupted somewhere in that.
Starscream searched through his file system, finding a curious directory that was labeled “If lost, start here.” Starscream scanned through it, not actually reading much of anything. The document was vague and at the end there was a garble of nonsense that Starscream’s brain itched at. It was surely an encrypted passcode, but as to what it was and what it unlocked, Starscream hadn’t the slightest idea.
He noted the file and continued in his search, digging through his internal logs ultimately finding nothing of immediate use. He did find scores of personal logs, also encrypted. He’d leave that puzzle for later. He could tell from the date on his logs that he hadn't been out more than a few months.
Reopening the file he read it through again, this time more carefully. He had most likely been "indisposed" and transported to Vos. Starscream squinted at that line. What kind of mecha did he deal with that sealed an injured mech away alive, and left them in a catacomb? For what end? Starscream tucked those questions away for later and read on.
There had been a war, Vos was currently abandoned, as was most of Cybertron. He had become aligned with a faction called the 'Decepticons'. The coordinate location apparently held more context about that. The log advised him to be wary of either of the two combatant factions.
Then there were coordinates. Starscream plugged them into his navigation system and saw that it was a short flight from Cybertron. There was no description of what it was, the line preceding the coordinates merely read “Supplies and further reading can be found here. Fuel in subspace.”
Sure enough Starscream found three cubes of energon within his subspace. He opened two and drank them greedily, soothing his aching tanks. The last he put away.
He glanced up at the ceiling again. Those swirls were definitely meant to evoke the winds, or maybe the clouds. He remembered being told once that Vos' catacombs had been designed so that mecha laid to rest underground wouldn't be too discomforted.
The other option was letting a mech's frame go in some distant part of space. Starscream found the thought existentially perilous. He imagined clawing his way out of his coffin only to find he'd drifted into the furthest edge of space where comm signals no longer reached.
Starscream brought his hand over his spark and felt its thrumming pulse, allowing a grin to spread across his face. If someone had wanted him dead, they'd done a poor job of it. He then found his way up the exit stairs. It was a long, spiraling and tedious walk up to the top, but Starscream made it. When he stepped out, he was greeted with a wide, dusty street.
Starscream glanced down either direction and found that there was absolutely no sign of life. Windows in nearly every building were shattered, leaving behind holes that were empty sockets staring blankly out into the streets. Half of the structures visible to him were gutted open, their innards crumbling down to block the street ahead.
Starscream lit his thrusters, flying up several stories to the top of one of the buildings. From this vantage point he could see quite a bit of Vos, or rather, what remained of it. Vos had not been abandoned. Vos had been ransacked and destroyed.
Towering buildings that had once pierced nimbly into the sky, proudly soaring above the clouds, had either been knocked down completely, or reduced to pale, crumbling shadows of what they had once been. Several buildings' skeletons dotted the skyline. He had never seen the air as quiet as it was today, had never seen the city look so hollow and empty, bled of its life force and grace.
Gone were the musical chimes that rang out the time of day, gone were the shimmering spires and mirrored skyscrapers that held the reflection of the sky on a thousand spotless, gleaming panels. Starscream stared out at the ruins, spark aching in his chest as he wondered whether his old self had felt the same sensations gazing at the shambling city that had once been called home.
—
The coordinates took him to what looked like a bunker, half nestled in the ground of some dirtball asteroid that was locked in orbit around an equally uninteresting planet.
The bunker was long abandoned as was indicated by the many chips and dings in the exterior. A few bullet holes and some suspiciously colored stains gave Starscream an unpleasant inkling of what likely happened there, but he suppressed the urge to find the narrative resolution to those mysteries. He had his own to pursue.
Starscream scanned the room to find scant of use or interest, except for a banged up storage locker and a giant computer screen on one wall. It looked like the bunker had been primarily a communications post.
Starscream remembered the random garble of digits that came after the coordinates and entered them into the locker. It popped open, revealing a bug out bag full of a slew of guns, a few more sealed cubes of energon, and what appeared to be a datapad at the very bottom.
Starscream lifted one of the guns, a carbine, and instinctively nestled it easily against himself resting his cheek against the stock as he aimed down the sights. He fingered off the safety, firing at the headrest of a chair across the room, striking it dead on with a laser blast. The pungent smell of the burnt metal wafted over to him. There was something familiar and comforting about it. Starscream knew this smell well, had encountered it often, routinely.
He returned the gun to its bag and turned his attention to the giant screen that covered most of one side of the room
The computer system he booted up was fairly advanced to what he remembered engaging with. Though it did not take him long to crack through its security. Starscream could only hope that his presence within the system would go unnoticed with how unattended the base itself was.
He was greeted with a dull gray interface with a query box. Starscream typed his own name into it. Considering he had woken up in a casket, he was, for all the world knew, the least likely mech to be entering this query.
Dozens of reports popped up with his name highlighted, but at the very top was a result outlined in bright yellow, with the label “personnel file” attached to it. Starscream clicked it.
A giant red banner with “Terminated” was sprawled across the picture of him pinned to the side of the file. His own visage leered back at him, luminous red optics narrowed, grin sharp, face cast half in shadow.
Decepticon Second in Command. Starscream grabbed the first word of that title and searched it. Skimming the results he gathered it was the enemy faction of the outpost he currently occupied.
He pulled up his own personnel file again, rereading it.
“Second in command, Air Commander Starscream. Adverse relationship with Decepticon lead Megatron. Potential to be exploited,” Starscream murmured aloud to himself.
He dug into Megatron’s background further, pulling up his personnel file. Not amenable to truces or concessions. Unpredictable. Violent when cornered.
Starscream eyed the mech pictured in the profile. He certainly looked formidable as he glowered at the camera in his photo. He was a gladiator. Starscream couldn't imagine how he had lasted so long working under someone who seemed so volatile and brutish.
Starscream then queried his and Megatron’s names together and filtered the date by ascending. The reports indicated their engagements against the Autobots had been increasingly out of sync over the years of the war. His own actions had been outright mutinous while Megatron was reactive and eager to stamp out his dissent, with force if necessary.
More recently, reports of their public disagreements had slowed, but when Starscream came to the most recent report, he found that he had likely been attempting to execute an unsanctioned, borderline mutinous, flanking maneuver when he’d been shot and terminated.
Megatron had already called a retreat leaving Starscream in a vulnerable position when he was shot. The report stated it had been ambiguous as to whether Megatron had intended to leave him positionally bereft or if it was merely fortunate circumstance.
Starscream drummed his fingers impatiently on the console as he furrowed his brow. This was an Autobot console, on an Autobot outpost. It was doomed to be biased, only telling a portion of his story, but it seemed like there was a very real chance that any Decepticons he encountered could be hostile.
From what he could glean, his relationship with the current Decepticon lead had been… complex. Approaching without proper tact and timing could be disastrous. If approaching was necessary at all. Starscream felt no particular pull or desire to return to this faction. He appeared to have been grappling for power for years with little to show for it.
Whatever conflict he had gotten embroiled in had gone on for far too long. He found personal logs in his system that lined up some with the reports he’d read on himself. It seemed he had become disempowered, rebellious, embittered, taking more and more violent risks, degrading his own standing and reliability as a result.
There was no safety among the Autobot faction either, and from what Starscream had gleaned from sparse interactions and reading reports, their faction fared not much better. Besides, any approach for help was likely to be met with immediate violence and suspicion, due to his high station and duplicitous reputation, Starscream anticipated.
One report said he was the type to “sell a dying mech their own energon” which had shook loose a laugh from Starscream when he read it.
Starscream's biggest issue at the moment were the blaringly obvious insignias signaling his former faction alignment on his wings. He wondered if it was worth the effort to have them painted over. It’s not as if the symbol meant anything to him now. Not to mention his unique paint job. Perhaps a full frame detail would be in order. Something low key, inconspicuous.
Starscream sighed and flipped through a couple more files, until one caught his eye. Lockdown. Whereabouts unknown. Bounty hunter. Starscream squinted at that title. A mech for hire.
He turned back to his own profile, noting its length and his extensive list of accomplishments. He did not have his wartime memories, but it did seem his trigger finger and combat reflexes were as good as they ever were. If joining a faction for safety was out of the question, this self sufficient route was an interesting one to pursue.
But first, getting rid of his insignias was probably the move. A new paint job generally, was probably the best shot he had at not being immediately outed and offlined by either faction. The colors his old self had chosen were far too bold and striking, especially for a flight frame. They were a tactical nightmare as well. He wondered where in the world a mech got the obscene confidence to wear red in combat, let alone a flight frame.
Maybe he had just gotten lucky. Or careless. But whatever it was, his old self's time had run out. Starscream smiled to himself. He would do things differently.
—
Digging through his systems the next morning, he comes across his internal roster of contacts and finds his navigation system littered with points of interest. One of them is a seedy outpost not far at all from the way station. Starscream is pleased to find, upon investigation, that there is a business there that does paint jobs. He has a half cube of energon and then he sets off.
The outpost is a rundown affair made of scrap metal and rust, clinging to existence on a dwarf moon so insignificant it doesn't appear on most maps. It's operated by some techno race that is lower on the pecking order than Cybertronians, judging by the way they hesitate to look Starscream in the optic. They are considerably smaller, not even reaching Starscream's waist, and appear very light in build. He goes there with some stashed credits and pays for a paint job. It's a complete black out. It's boring but functional.
He also gets a battle mask. If he's going to be skulking around the galaxy, he may as well make sure that no one could easily recognize him. From the reports, he'd certainly amassed a lot of enemies, and very few friends.
They scraped off his Decepticon badge and handed it to him. When Starscream tried to tell them through a mix of Cybertronian and hand gestures, that they could throw it away, they refused.
"Too valuable," one of the mech working on him said, holding out the badge to him like it was something volatile and venomous. "Too dangerous."
Starscream could only assume they meant the physical evidence of an association with the Decepticons. Fair enough. He took the badge back, examining it for a moment, turning it over in his hands and watching it glint in the light. Then he subspaced it. Perhaps it could be of use some other time.
He fiddles with his comms for a while, changing his encrypted comm over to a new id. Then he hits up Swindle's private commline.
"Looking for work," is his simple entry. It takes a few hours but Swindle gets back to him.
"Are you any good?"
Starscream just sends him a picture holding one of his guns in his hands.
"I've got the tools."
"Affiliation?"
"Unaligned."
"We'll put you on a trial basis, start you on organics. How's that sound?"
Sounded like easy money to Starscream.