(no subject)
Nov. 25th, 2012 03:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparklightTitle: Never a Good Time for Goodbye, or Five times Jetfire left the Decepticons
Rating: Adult (Spark and tactile)
Continuity: Dreamwave G1
Characters: Starscream, Jetfire
Summary: Five ficlets of varying circumstance in which Jetfire took the decision to leave the Decepticons.
If Someone Said Three Years From Now...
It was just a corridor.
Oh, it was the corridor that led to Lord Megatron's command centre within Kolkular, but in the end, it was just a corridor, if built for even the largest of mechs to pass through at least with a finger's breadth between the top of their helm and the ceiling.
It was just the corridor Starscream was passing through - like he had to - to get to said command centre, when his designation was called.
"Starscream." Quiet and steady, the voice brought both a bubbling annoyance - always so careful all the time, always critisising. They were doing great things here! - and a flare of smugness; he was still here, would give them a certain edge even Shockwave couldn't lend and it was all because of Starscream.
He had managed to convince Jetfire where other arguments and recruiters had failed.
"I am busy, Jetfire, you know Megatron just can't handle anything without me!" Starscream smirked, brushing a hand down his cockpit. Megatron was also short of temper, but that was beside the point. Jetfire tilted his helm in acknowledgement, but his hand on Starscream's shoulder-armour stopped the Seeker and he huffed, crossing his arms.
"I'm leaving."
"... What?" Starscream stared, completely flabbergasted. Jetfire couldn't have said what he'd just heard him say. Jetfire expelled a slow vent, optics dimming, rubbing a depressed spot to the left on his chestplates.
There was nothing there.
"I said, I am leaving. I thought... I considered the gains and losses, and further what I am willing to do and what I have done, and this? It has gone quite too far, Starscream." Jetfire frowned, crossing his arms even as Starscream's loosened over his cockpit and there was a slight flail before Starscream's hands tensed into fists at his sides.
"'Quite too far'? Jetfire, are you listening to yourself? This isn't even the beginning We've only started and you think this is the time to leave? You're not stupid, you know what has been going on, you can't claim the death of Sentinel Prime, or any number of Autobots, or whatever suddenly weighs so heavily on your... bah! conscience that it'd make you leave!" Starscream went from snarling to nearly yelling, before he cut his volume, giving a quick glare around the corridor, but there was no one else nearby. Jetfire was quiet for nearly a klik, and Starscream smirked as the seconds flowed on; obviously he had w--
"No, it's not. I have been ignoring it for far too long, in favour of..." Jetfire paused, optics briefly turning dark before they ignited again, the blue glow bright and almost defiant and that was an insult--- "In favour of certain loyalties and for myself, in favour of a frien--"
"You are worthless! Are you listening to yourself?! We're not here because we follow some diluted idea of friendship, consideration and the--- the discovery of science! This is to reshape society Jetfire, into what we want, and if we want that, want to get rid of the Council's regime and their Autobot sympathisers, we can't be as weak as they are! Useless!"
Jetfire stared silently as Starscream raged and then reached a hand up to both drag it down his faceplates and pull down the mask.
What had happened?
Starscream may never had put much stock in a wide circle of friends; he thought himself sufficient, but he'd never really implied such things to be weak, either. He also wouldn't have killed without question and... Jetfire shook his helm and suppressed the static sigh he felt like releasing.
"Starscream. I. am. leaving." With that, Jetfire turned around on his feet and stalked down the corridor. This had been... more than a vorn in the making, and he felt hollow. He'd taken too long to act on what he knew was right, but at the same time, despite the things Starscream had been saying, he still... felt like he was letting the Seeker down. As if he was doing something wrong.
Maybe he was giving up too easily.
Maybe he could, if he just stayed a little bit longer, if not make Starscream join the Autobots at least denounce the Decepticon path and---
Jetfire had just stepped out on one of the balconies of Kolkular, the closest one to the command corridor, when a laser burned right past the cockpit array on his right arm. It warped the colour nanites there if nothing else, and it was just due to his already-cycling thrusters and flight-ready systems as he tossed himself in the air that he avoided the null-ray blast that came next.
"What---" Jetfire broke off, turning around in the air at the same time as he dodged another null-ray blast; not exactly full strength shots, but hardly harmless either.
Starscream had just...
"You think you can just leave!? That now that your calculations and your damnable conscience says that it's time to leave, you can!?" Starscream literally shrieked, his usually acceptable - if slightly scratchy - voice going up to registers it was definitely capable of, but not in a good way. Jetfire dodged another blast, putting more distance between himself and the balcony Starscream stood on, but then the Seeker engaged his flight systems and tore after him.
"YES, I think I can! Starscream, I've been hesitating for more than a vorn, just because of you---" Jetfire cut himself off, cutting his engines to fall some distance as Starscream forewent all grace and finesse and tried to bodily ram him. It was more like two, nearly three vorns, to be honest, but he'd brushed his concerns off in that first vorn.
"Save it! I don't want to hear it, Jetfire! How long have you been lying to me? All this time? When I first offered? The Academy?!" Starscream erupted again, and while it might have been a bellow from somebody else, it was a near-painful symphony in Starscream's hands... or vocalizer, as the case may be.
The accusation hit hard, and Jetfire almost didn't veer away in time to avoid Starscream clipping him, attempting to kick him in the helm. As it was, Starscream's white-hot engine nozzles slammed into the upper part of the intakes for his boosters on his left side.
"I haven't been lying! Are you even listening to me, Starscream? I am saying that I've stayed this long because of you! And now I'm not sure that was a good idea, because I can't even recogn---" He cut himself off again, falling downwards in a corkscrew before he angled upwards again, dodging null-ray blasts that would do near-fatal damage to his systems, instead of just shutting them down. He should do more than dodge Starscream's attacks, but he couldn't make himself attack the Seeker. It was Starscream, and even with Starscream attacking him, accusing him of things that weren't true, he couldn't just... he couldn't make himself attack his friend.
But had they been that?
Yes.
He couldn't forget that, shouldn't forget it, just because he couldn't recognize this version of Starscream. This was all bits of what Starscream was, yes, but how had it come to this? All things came to an end, but he'd somewhere believed that this thing wouldn't have ended by them locked in battle, but at the natural deactivation of either of them...
"So you admit to this being a sham. You're a traitor. How long have you been feeding the Autobots what little secrets you did know about our operations, Jetfire?" Starscream sneered, and Jetfire growled, angled himself sharply and almost slammed into Starscream, one hand gripped about the Seeker's throat, the other holding one of Starscream's arms away from himself, but that didn't stop Starscream's other arm, and null-ray cannon, from being pointed straight at his helm.
"I haven't done anything like that! By the Matrix, Starscream, I wouldn't do that to you, but I'm starting to think you would---" Jetfire broke off, slightly ashamed at having fallen to the same levels as this... twisted version of his friend. Starscream smirked, and there was a whine from his null-ray as it fired up.
"You know what we do with traitors, Jetfire? Because if I can't have---" Starscream cut himself off, or maybe it was the blast from one of the high-pressure, seven-pulse ion cannons that seared past them that stopped him. Or maybe it was something else. They'd never know.
//Decepticon Flyers, no unauthorized aerial combat within Kolkular airspace.// The sharp, dispassionate reprimand from air control cut through the tension between them like it had been physical, and Jetfire and Starscream stared silently at each other for more than a klik.
"Get out of my sight, Jetfire. Before I really do take care of you as I should a traitor," Starscream snapped as he lowered his free arm, and Jetfire slowly let him go. Drifting backwards, Jetfire stared at Starscream through the visor of his helmet quietly for another full klik. He then fired up thrusters and boosters both, and peeled away from Kolkular and, eventually, Kaon airspace as well. Starscream hung alone in the air for another few moments, then sped back towards the Decepticon fortress, feeling angry, betr--- no, not that. You couldn't feel personally betrayed, because Decepticons didn't keep such relationships where personal betrayal would matter at all. He had a meeting with Megatron to get to, and some sort of assignment to pick up.
But...
He paused, right above the balcony and raised his null-ray again, shooting a full-strength blast from it. It dispersed long before it reached the spot they'd been in right before they'd received the warning shot from Kolkular Air Control. With a scowl, Starscream went inside.
If I can't have you... no one will.
***
The Last Kiss I'll Cherish
He smelled of death.
"... Starscream..." Jetfire reached out a hand, then pulled it back with a jerk before Starscream had even turned around fully, optics blazing, his wingparts flared and his stance wide.
"What, Jetfire?" Despite the sharp, jagged tone and the flutter of one hand as Starscream huffed and attempted to make Jetfire say what it was he wanted to say, there was no mocking attached to that short, if demanding question. No insult, no threat, no exasperation. In his own way, this was the picture of considerate patience this version of Starscream was able to give. Brittle, sharp, battle-hungry and hardened as he was.
And of course he didn't, exactly, smell of death. That smell involved the faint, barely there burn of static energon, charged atmosphere and evaporating plasma. The smell that lingered for no more than astroseconds on the inside of a torn-open spark chamber... But Starscream had, just kliks earlier, ripped someone's spark chamber out. Held said piece of vital internal equipment in one hand at this very moment and had been examining it as Jetfire approached. That smell could, technically, be lingering on his hands still, even if kliks instead of astroseconds had gone by since the spark had left its protective chamber after retreating there when the damage to the frame it was housed in had grown critical.
"I..." He closed his mouth, his vocaliser glitching silently and reset as Starscream stared at him, huffed and folded his arms over his cockpit. But he didn't leave. He stood there, waiting, sharp as the blades some Seekers attached to the wingparts on their arms for melee aerial or ground combat. He hadn't always been that sharp, or murderous. But the vorns, of not just battle, but earlier things attached to the forming of the Decepticons, the reshaping, maybe even the branding... Jetfire didn't know what it was, and maybe if he'd gone through a full similar experience he would know. But he hadn't. Starscream had said, dismissively and over his shoulder, that it was because Jetfire had joined late.
But Jetfire knew of those who'd joined when he had, or even later, and had spent longer in those reforging pits than he had. Had come out with weapons attached, thicker armour, sharper, more brittle... All he remembered was the refit of his armour and of course the branding, but that was all. Painful, yes, but the armour had saved his life multiple times.
"I just wanted... ah, a word." He was a coward. He should say what he'd come to say and then leave, but all he could do as Starscream cocked his helm and sneered at him, waggling the hand that held the ripped-out spark chamber and about to open his mouth to say something was take the three steps that separated them, and silence the unsaid words.
His hands on Starscream's shoulders, above the upper join of the wingparts, Jetfire leaned down, meshed their mouths together and pushed past lips soft with surprise. What was he even doing? Why hadn't he done this earlier instead of now? Jetfire didn't know, and it wouldn't really matter either in a few kliks.
Starscream's hands slid around his angled-down wings, squeezing hard and his thumbs stroking the plane of the wings as Jetfire hesitantly hummed. Their tongues slid together and sparked not just friction, but faint static cling, tingling against the sensitive insides of their mouths. This was the gentlest Starscream had been in hundred of thousands of vorns, and it just made it all so much clearer.
What he'd done, what he'd chosen, where the ideology was taking them and his spark fluttered, flickered... skipped a one-millionth of a pulse through his frame and lowered his core temperature with a fraction of a degree for an astrosecond. No one would notice. Jetfire shouldn't have noticed, but he'd figured a while ago that knowing the behaviour of his spark might be interesting, and so had worked on refitting himself... It'd ended up distracting enough he'd almost gotten himself killed in battle a time or two.
His hands tightening on Starscream's shoulders, he pulled Starscream closer a fraction. In response, Starscream chuckled and the noise, dark and soft and stinging in their mouths even as it melded with the friction vibrating down towards the circuitry around his spark chamber, hurt.
Jetfire straightened, and, helm tilted, managed to refrain from brushing a finger down Starscream's cheek.
"Well, if that's what a stuttering, hesitant 'Starscream, I want a word' is going to mean from now on, I don't mind. But we've got things to do. Meet me back in Kolkular." Starscream smirked at him and patted the nosecone of the cockpit array on his right arm as he passed by and then shot up in the air where Skywarp and Thundercracker were waiting.
Briefly, as he watched them disappear, Jetfire rested a finger against his lips, and shook his helm.
"No, Starscream... It won't mean that. But it was the only way I could say it." He wasn't even sure if joining the Autobots would work. How they'd take it, if they would agree to it, but he had to try.
He couldn't...
Shaking his helm, Jetfire snapped the mask of his helm down and took to the air himself, notably flying in the opposite direction compared to where Kaon, and thus Kolkular, was from the battlefield.
That had been the first kiss, and would be the last.
It'd have to do.
***
'Cause You Said Forever
The crash when his back met the wall sounded surprisingly loud, but then, Starscream had managed to surprise him and get him off-balance. All Jetfire was thankful for was that he didn't have his flight array hooked up, mostly because it was uncomfortable to get it smashed between himself and a wall. Or the ground.
"While I'm appreciating this, of course, what brought this, er... on?" One hand was automatically seeking out a wing, curling around the edges and sliding up to play with the ailerons as Starscream's left hand at his hip followed curves and seams down to the pointed centre part of his pelvic armour.
Starscream's right hand was playing along the rim of the depressed area on Jetfire's chestplate that held the Decepticon insignia even as he was scraping teeth down Jetfire's chin guard, an insistent, wordless demand for a kiss. Stroking his hand down the side of Starscream's back kibble, Jetfire bent over the amount needed to bring Starscream's nipping demand to a halt, even if it meant his lower lip briefly met the same fate, causing him to twitch, and his engine to stutter and then reluctantly rev. Mostly because Starscream's tongue followed his teeth, and that was already lightly charged, the static biting into his lips along with the soft metal before he prodded Starscream's tongue back into his own mouth with his own.
He was rather sure Starscream thought he liked the biting itself, but it was rather that tongue and the static it brought with it against his lips that he liked... and since Starscream never did that without biting, he endured. And it had, of course, become tied to desire itself, current already rising from the brief, scraping caresses along his pelvic armour, sensor nodes hit with startling sharpness.
::Someone implied... Nevermind!:: Starscream's comm. voice was razors and acid on metal, agitated in a way that fit his familiar but quicker, more impatient, touches. ::You're still here, so it doesn't matter. I knew you would be, so shut up and let's take this moment!::
Jetfire couldn't quite hide neither his jerking freeze, the stutter of his engine nor the slight tremble of his hand, but Starscream chuckled, his voice having tipped over into heated energon as stinging as his earlier tone, if in another way completely. Static laced the chuckle that threaded trembling vibrations into their kiss, but that could be attributed to Starscream stroking the barely visible seams that would lead to Jetfire's spark chamber being bared.
He shuddered, and as he pinched the wing tips and Starscream quaked beneath him, Jetfire couldn't deny the clever hand on his chest plates, couldn't deny that burning gaze glanced from under the edge of the front of Starscream's helm. Briefly Jetfire allowed himself a few quickly breathed words in his processor and cast a glance down at the ground as he hoped the few times they'd done this would hold the results gained, that spark merging didn't, in any conceivable way, allow for a "mystical, sub-processor" connection that allowed the two involved to read thoughts, emotions or even intents.
Groaning, Jetfire pressed down and in, kissing him again and gently forced Starscream's helm back with the insistence, even as his spark chamber was bared under the flickering, scraping twitches and caresses that were way too clever for Jetfire's good.
As Starscream's hand was laid against the outer layer of Jetfire's coalesced spark, his smirk bathed in the bright, whitish-blue light, Jetfire took a shuddering vent and pushed away from the wall to reverse their position, if only because...
Starscream jerked, shaking his helm as a moan slipped out as Jetfire pressed the heel of his hand in where a bunch of seams joined at the back kibble and the rest of it pressed up against the wall with just the amount of pressure to have Starscream's spark-pulse hitch and his spark nearly snap inwards as it coalesced. Sometimes, the close knowledge they had of their frames was almost terrifying, but it didn't matter now did it?
It didn't matter, because it wasn't as if either would leave or turn against the other. It was nearly laughable, no matter what had been rumoured..!
Starscream briefly turned the fingertips of the hand he had in the corona of Jetfire's spark into little claws and Jetfire shuddered, engine revving loudly enough to echo even in the crowded lab space. It had Starscream chuckling airily as his cockpit and then protective armour parted to bare his spark chamber and then the chamber itself opening.
Who cared what idiots said? They didn't know Jetfire.
Starscream did, as proven by how he got the large jet trembling underneath his hand in little jerking twists, not just because of how he was twisting his hand in Jetfire's spark, but because he had two fingers wedged into the gaps of Jetfire's hip joints between his thighs. He knew Jetfire, inside and out, and he wouldn't leave.
"Enough!" Starscream snapped, voice rough, and moved the hand he had in Jetfire's spark to curl around an elbow joint instead. Squeezing the joint, thumb rubbing against the workings, the pressure urged another type of action than hands brushing against sparks. Jetfire used the grip he had on Starscream's wingparts to bring them the last bit together, Seeker and Air Guardian shuddering as their sparks first touched merely in cast-off tendrils shot from the coronas, and then the coronas themselves met in little lightning flashes.
Heaving, the two sparks slid together like two separate pools of mercury meeting, joining together as much as they simply slid past each other, the tensions between these points causing charge to be violently spit out. These flickering charges of energy and current were led inwards to be soaked up by the circuitry around their spark chambers, which soon pulsed with white and blue energy.
Jetfire twisted, pressed in, and was held frozen as the tension between their sparks rose, charge like electrified energon and plasma-lightning twisting around their sparks, into the circuitry, and further into their frames. He didn't want...
To turn his optics online took a force of will and manually activating them, but he wanted to see... His cooling vents momentarily caught as he stared down at Starscream's open face, a grimace frozen on his face, teeth a white slash against the darkness of his faceplates and his optics wide, but offline.
Could he really... Really destroy that look? For all that Starscream was now, and that these moments were the most honest he'd ever see the Seeker nowadays..?
But he knew what they were doing. Knew that he'd miscalculated, even if he wasn't sure he could do the right thing and regret what he'd done until doing the right thing completely, because of what he held in his hands---
"Stop thinking, you scientific glitch!" Starscream snapped, barely managing to get the words out between static-fuzzed moans. Then, as Jetfire froze in guilty, desire-riddled fear that Starscream knew what he was going to do, pushed extra charge from his spark into Jetfire's, and the white lighting wave that had been carefully poised between them twisted into flickering fire and raked down their circuits.
Jetfire gasped static, failed to cycle his cooling vents properly, and succumbed to the white-out.
At least Starscream didn't know.
Yet.
***
I Wish I Could Still Call You Friend
He couldn't say why he did it. He wasn't even sure what it was, or why it mattered so much this time. Sure, he'd been planning to... But certainly not this very klik, or even this very battle.
Suddenly, though, as he crashed down from an atmospheric dive, the heat and shockwave from his re-entry warping the metal of the closest Autobots and sending them and those slightly further away flying through the air and slamming into the ground and Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp made a sortie, Jetfire felt the moment freeze.
He changed his course, as he had to less he crashed, angled upwards to stabilise his flight and saw the battle as it spread out among the ruins of Nova Cronum. Decepticon fire and stubbornly resisting Autobots, Decepticons taking bite after ruined bite out of Cybertron, and was this what their conquest would leave?
Jetfire angled himself, felt the fuzzy wash of encrypted Autobot communication on channels he didn't have access to, saw Starscream riddle a huddled group of Autobots with an anti-air missile tank they were protecting with null rays and then laughingly drop cluster bombs among the frozen Autobots and watched the explosion bloom.
This wasn't...
His flight flattened out and Jetfire turned upwards again, and when he slammed down the next time, Decepticons went flying, even if the shockwave was a lot smaller from the shorter dive. It was still devastating, considering the complete surprise. Another flattening and straightening of his flight, and Jetfire set himself on a collision course with Starscream and his trine.
::JETFIRE, WHAT IN GLITCHING SMELT ARE YOU DOING?!::
::... What I need to do. I'm sorry, Starscream.::
The three Seekers scattered as the larger jet barrelled through their flight vector, and Starscream rolled through the sky, tossed into his disturbed flight from the tailwinds of Jetfire's passing. Just a few kliks ago them flying close enough for the heat off their frames to meld wouldn't have disrupted the other's flight.
::You... I can't... What is even going through that processor... This is... YOU "TRAITOR!"::
Jetfire winced as the last word was shrieked out over the Decepticon emergency channel as well as verbally, Starscream's voice of course whipped away by the wind, but enough had heard. He wasn't even sure what would happen now---
Jetfire had to veer sharply as Blitzwing aimed fire at him, and there was no more time to think, even less keeping a sensor out for Starscream's white, red and blue tetrajet form.
***
I'll Keep You Locked in My Head
There were fine cracks running down the edge of the datapad where blue fingers gripped it, and the delicate, round holotrack in Starscream's left hand was making groaning noises from where it was being held and squeezed rhythmically.
'... was wrong. I can't say I regret it, except for the lives I have taken. Some part of me would still agree, I suppose, but agreement can't salvage this, Starscream. I still want to... well, you hardly need protection, especially not now, but I...'
Starscream could hear that soft, supposed-to-be-inoffensive mutter read out what he wanted to say as he carefully chose the glyphs for the message, attempting to reach a compromise between the stark, unavoidable reality, his ugly, foolish reasons and his pathetic, false and traitorous feelings. How dare---
'... still don't want to leave you without back-up. You have Skywarp and Thundercracker, of course, but they fill neither my function, nor the place I do/did have with you. But regardless of the logic behind the Decepticon cause, or the vision, this is... too many of us are dying, Starscream. I've seen what you do with the pieces, and while I must commend you on your artistic skill...'
HOW DARE HE--- The crack as the spherical holotrack hit the wall was loud in the silence. Loud enough Starscream started, surprised to realise that the soft, insistent and dispassionate drone was all in his processor. Snarling, feeling the urge to toss the datapad away, Starscream narrowed his optics at it again.
'... I know you can do so much more than that, in several ways. But if this is your choice, if this is how the changes have gone, there's not much else I can say. Except that I need to leave. I wish I could be your wing-shadow and guard your airspace still, Starscream, but this...'
He'd presume to toss around those words like he had a right to them anymore? When the labs he used were empty!? When he hadn't been there at the last battle, where he ought to be, keeping Starscream's plating free from scorch marks? When the berth he'd used for the last several thousand vorns, even before Starscream had managed to bring the glitch into his right mind, managed to make him listen to what he knew was right, was now EMPTY!
'... isn't something I can do any longer. I seem to have miscalculated. I'm sorry to leave you behind, Starscream, but I wouldn't presume to badger you into leaving, so I just want you to kn--'
The datapad broke with an electronic, bell-like sound amid static and the crunch of metal as Starscream first slammed it down against the edge of the table and then hurled it against the wall. The pieces fell to the floor.
How dare he---
"TRAITOR!" The bellow bounced around the room several times, echoing nearly oddly, and Starscream stormed to the door, only almost missing the discarded holotrack. He whirled back, stomping across the room and intent on crushing it with his foot.
But it turned on when he'd barely brushed the metal, showing an artifact-riddled scene of flight. It bounced between close-up flashes of Starscream's white, blue and red frame and Jetfire's white and red one, the contrails they were leaving behind them twisting together, their wings overlapping...
His foot pressed down, the device protested, and Starscream...
Paused.
Paused and couldn't quite bring his foot down the last bit. Rage still burned, bubbled like impure, poisoned energon in his fuel tank, but he still couldn't quite...
The blue-plated foot was removed, and he bent down and picked the holotrack up between two fingers, like it was hot, or was some disgusting piece of organic filth. It quickly disappeared into subspace, and Starscream stormed over to the pieces of the datapad and the lingering echo of Jetfire's voice, ignited his thruster and burned the scattered pieces.
The room filled with the bite of fire consuming air and the bitter fizzle of smoking circuits as the door slid closed behind the Seeker.
I just want you to know, I don't regret the time spent with you, even if I can't stay.
Rating: Adult (Spark and tactile)
Continuity: Dreamwave G1
Characters: Starscream, Jetfire
Summary: Five ficlets of varying circumstance in which Jetfire took the decision to leave the Decepticons.
If Someone Said Three Years From Now...
It was just a corridor.
Oh, it was the corridor that led to Lord Megatron's command centre within Kolkular, but in the end, it was just a corridor, if built for even the largest of mechs to pass through at least with a finger's breadth between the top of their helm and the ceiling.
It was just the corridor Starscream was passing through - like he had to - to get to said command centre, when his designation was called.
"Starscream." Quiet and steady, the voice brought both a bubbling annoyance - always so careful all the time, always critisising. They were doing great things here! - and a flare of smugness; he was still here, would give them a certain edge even Shockwave couldn't lend and it was all because of Starscream.
He had managed to convince Jetfire where other arguments and recruiters had failed.
"I am busy, Jetfire, you know Megatron just can't handle anything without me!" Starscream smirked, brushing a hand down his cockpit. Megatron was also short of temper, but that was beside the point. Jetfire tilted his helm in acknowledgement, but his hand on Starscream's shoulder-armour stopped the Seeker and he huffed, crossing his arms.
"I'm leaving."
"... What?" Starscream stared, completely flabbergasted. Jetfire couldn't have said what he'd just heard him say. Jetfire expelled a slow vent, optics dimming, rubbing a depressed spot to the left on his chestplates.
There was nothing there.
"I said, I am leaving. I thought... I considered the gains and losses, and further what I am willing to do and what I have done, and this? It has gone quite too far, Starscream." Jetfire frowned, crossing his arms even as Starscream's loosened over his cockpit and there was a slight flail before Starscream's hands tensed into fists at his sides.
"'Quite too far'? Jetfire, are you listening to yourself? This isn't even the beginning We've only started and you think this is the time to leave? You're not stupid, you know what has been going on, you can't claim the death of Sentinel Prime, or any number of Autobots, or whatever suddenly weighs so heavily on your... bah! conscience that it'd make you leave!" Starscream went from snarling to nearly yelling, before he cut his volume, giving a quick glare around the corridor, but there was no one else nearby. Jetfire was quiet for nearly a klik, and Starscream smirked as the seconds flowed on; obviously he had w--
"No, it's not. I have been ignoring it for far too long, in favour of..." Jetfire paused, optics briefly turning dark before they ignited again, the blue glow bright and almost defiant and that was an insult--- "In favour of certain loyalties and for myself, in favour of a frien--"
"You are worthless! Are you listening to yourself?! We're not here because we follow some diluted idea of friendship, consideration and the--- the discovery of science! This is to reshape society Jetfire, into what we want, and if we want that, want to get rid of the Council's regime and their Autobot sympathisers, we can't be as weak as they are! Useless!"
Jetfire stared silently as Starscream raged and then reached a hand up to both drag it down his faceplates and pull down the mask.
What had happened?
Starscream may never had put much stock in a wide circle of friends; he thought himself sufficient, but he'd never really implied such things to be weak, either. He also wouldn't have killed without question and... Jetfire shook his helm and suppressed the static sigh he felt like releasing.
"Starscream. I. am. leaving." With that, Jetfire turned around on his feet and stalked down the corridor. This had been... more than a vorn in the making, and he felt hollow. He'd taken too long to act on what he knew was right, but at the same time, despite the things Starscream had been saying, he still... felt like he was letting the Seeker down. As if he was doing something wrong.
Maybe he was giving up too easily.
Maybe he could, if he just stayed a little bit longer, if not make Starscream join the Autobots at least denounce the Decepticon path and---
Jetfire had just stepped out on one of the balconies of Kolkular, the closest one to the command corridor, when a laser burned right past the cockpit array on his right arm. It warped the colour nanites there if nothing else, and it was just due to his already-cycling thrusters and flight-ready systems as he tossed himself in the air that he avoided the null-ray blast that came next.
"What---" Jetfire broke off, turning around in the air at the same time as he dodged another null-ray blast; not exactly full strength shots, but hardly harmless either.
Starscream had just...
"You think you can just leave!? That now that your calculations and your damnable conscience says that it's time to leave, you can!?" Starscream literally shrieked, his usually acceptable - if slightly scratchy - voice going up to registers it was definitely capable of, but not in a good way. Jetfire dodged another blast, putting more distance between himself and the balcony Starscream stood on, but then the Seeker engaged his flight systems and tore after him.
"YES, I think I can! Starscream, I've been hesitating for more than a vorn, just because of you---" Jetfire cut himself off, cutting his engines to fall some distance as Starscream forewent all grace and finesse and tried to bodily ram him. It was more like two, nearly three vorns, to be honest, but he'd brushed his concerns off in that first vorn.
"Save it! I don't want to hear it, Jetfire! How long have you been lying to me? All this time? When I first offered? The Academy?!" Starscream erupted again, and while it might have been a bellow from somebody else, it was a near-painful symphony in Starscream's hands... or vocalizer, as the case may be.
The accusation hit hard, and Jetfire almost didn't veer away in time to avoid Starscream clipping him, attempting to kick him in the helm. As it was, Starscream's white-hot engine nozzles slammed into the upper part of the intakes for his boosters on his left side.
"I haven't been lying! Are you even listening to me, Starscream? I am saying that I've stayed this long because of you! And now I'm not sure that was a good idea, because I can't even recogn---" He cut himself off again, falling downwards in a corkscrew before he angled upwards again, dodging null-ray blasts that would do near-fatal damage to his systems, instead of just shutting them down. He should do more than dodge Starscream's attacks, but he couldn't make himself attack the Seeker. It was Starscream, and even with Starscream attacking him, accusing him of things that weren't true, he couldn't just... he couldn't make himself attack his friend.
But had they been that?
Yes.
He couldn't forget that, shouldn't forget it, just because he couldn't recognize this version of Starscream. This was all bits of what Starscream was, yes, but how had it come to this? All things came to an end, but he'd somewhere believed that this thing wouldn't have ended by them locked in battle, but at the natural deactivation of either of them...
"So you admit to this being a sham. You're a traitor. How long have you been feeding the Autobots what little secrets you did know about our operations, Jetfire?" Starscream sneered, and Jetfire growled, angled himself sharply and almost slammed into Starscream, one hand gripped about the Seeker's throat, the other holding one of Starscream's arms away from himself, but that didn't stop Starscream's other arm, and null-ray cannon, from being pointed straight at his helm.
"I haven't done anything like that! By the Matrix, Starscream, I wouldn't do that to you, but I'm starting to think you would---" Jetfire broke off, slightly ashamed at having fallen to the same levels as this... twisted version of his friend. Starscream smirked, and there was a whine from his null-ray as it fired up.
"You know what we do with traitors, Jetfire? Because if I can't have---" Starscream cut himself off, or maybe it was the blast from one of the high-pressure, seven-pulse ion cannons that seared past them that stopped him. Or maybe it was something else. They'd never know.
//Decepticon Flyers, no unauthorized aerial combat within Kolkular airspace.// The sharp, dispassionate reprimand from air control cut through the tension between them like it had been physical, and Jetfire and Starscream stared silently at each other for more than a klik.
"Get out of my sight, Jetfire. Before I really do take care of you as I should a traitor," Starscream snapped as he lowered his free arm, and Jetfire slowly let him go. Drifting backwards, Jetfire stared at Starscream through the visor of his helmet quietly for another full klik. He then fired up thrusters and boosters both, and peeled away from Kolkular and, eventually, Kaon airspace as well. Starscream hung alone in the air for another few moments, then sped back towards the Decepticon fortress, feeling angry, betr--- no, not that. You couldn't feel personally betrayed, because Decepticons didn't keep such relationships where personal betrayal would matter at all. He had a meeting with Megatron to get to, and some sort of assignment to pick up.
But...
He paused, right above the balcony and raised his null-ray again, shooting a full-strength blast from it. It dispersed long before it reached the spot they'd been in right before they'd received the warning shot from Kolkular Air Control. With a scowl, Starscream went inside.
If I can't have you... no one will.
***
The Last Kiss I'll Cherish
He smelled of death.
"... Starscream..." Jetfire reached out a hand, then pulled it back with a jerk before Starscream had even turned around fully, optics blazing, his wingparts flared and his stance wide.
"What, Jetfire?" Despite the sharp, jagged tone and the flutter of one hand as Starscream huffed and attempted to make Jetfire say what it was he wanted to say, there was no mocking attached to that short, if demanding question. No insult, no threat, no exasperation. In his own way, this was the picture of considerate patience this version of Starscream was able to give. Brittle, sharp, battle-hungry and hardened as he was.
And of course he didn't, exactly, smell of death. That smell involved the faint, barely there burn of static energon, charged atmosphere and evaporating plasma. The smell that lingered for no more than astroseconds on the inside of a torn-open spark chamber... But Starscream had, just kliks earlier, ripped someone's spark chamber out. Held said piece of vital internal equipment in one hand at this very moment and had been examining it as Jetfire approached. That smell could, technically, be lingering on his hands still, even if kliks instead of astroseconds had gone by since the spark had left its protective chamber after retreating there when the damage to the frame it was housed in had grown critical.
"I..." He closed his mouth, his vocaliser glitching silently and reset as Starscream stared at him, huffed and folded his arms over his cockpit. But he didn't leave. He stood there, waiting, sharp as the blades some Seekers attached to the wingparts on their arms for melee aerial or ground combat. He hadn't always been that sharp, or murderous. But the vorns, of not just battle, but earlier things attached to the forming of the Decepticons, the reshaping, maybe even the branding... Jetfire didn't know what it was, and maybe if he'd gone through a full similar experience he would know. But he hadn't. Starscream had said, dismissively and over his shoulder, that it was because Jetfire had joined late.
But Jetfire knew of those who'd joined when he had, or even later, and had spent longer in those reforging pits than he had. Had come out with weapons attached, thicker armour, sharper, more brittle... All he remembered was the refit of his armour and of course the branding, but that was all. Painful, yes, but the armour had saved his life multiple times.
"I just wanted... ah, a word." He was a coward. He should say what he'd come to say and then leave, but all he could do as Starscream cocked his helm and sneered at him, waggling the hand that held the ripped-out spark chamber and about to open his mouth to say something was take the three steps that separated them, and silence the unsaid words.
His hands on Starscream's shoulders, above the upper join of the wingparts, Jetfire leaned down, meshed their mouths together and pushed past lips soft with surprise. What was he even doing? Why hadn't he done this earlier instead of now? Jetfire didn't know, and it wouldn't really matter either in a few kliks.
Starscream's hands slid around his angled-down wings, squeezing hard and his thumbs stroking the plane of the wings as Jetfire hesitantly hummed. Their tongues slid together and sparked not just friction, but faint static cling, tingling against the sensitive insides of their mouths. This was the gentlest Starscream had been in hundred of thousands of vorns, and it just made it all so much clearer.
What he'd done, what he'd chosen, where the ideology was taking them and his spark fluttered, flickered... skipped a one-millionth of a pulse through his frame and lowered his core temperature with a fraction of a degree for an astrosecond. No one would notice. Jetfire shouldn't have noticed, but he'd figured a while ago that knowing the behaviour of his spark might be interesting, and so had worked on refitting himself... It'd ended up distracting enough he'd almost gotten himself killed in battle a time or two.
His hands tightening on Starscream's shoulders, he pulled Starscream closer a fraction. In response, Starscream chuckled and the noise, dark and soft and stinging in their mouths even as it melded with the friction vibrating down towards the circuitry around his spark chamber, hurt.
Jetfire straightened, and, helm tilted, managed to refrain from brushing a finger down Starscream's cheek.
"Well, if that's what a stuttering, hesitant 'Starscream, I want a word' is going to mean from now on, I don't mind. But we've got things to do. Meet me back in Kolkular." Starscream smirked at him and patted the nosecone of the cockpit array on his right arm as he passed by and then shot up in the air where Skywarp and Thundercracker were waiting.
Briefly, as he watched them disappear, Jetfire rested a finger against his lips, and shook his helm.
"No, Starscream... It won't mean that. But it was the only way I could say it." He wasn't even sure if joining the Autobots would work. How they'd take it, if they would agree to it, but he had to try.
He couldn't...
Shaking his helm, Jetfire snapped the mask of his helm down and took to the air himself, notably flying in the opposite direction compared to where Kaon, and thus Kolkular, was from the battlefield.
That had been the first kiss, and would be the last.
It'd have to do.
***
'Cause You Said Forever
The crash when his back met the wall sounded surprisingly loud, but then, Starscream had managed to surprise him and get him off-balance. All Jetfire was thankful for was that he didn't have his flight array hooked up, mostly because it was uncomfortable to get it smashed between himself and a wall. Or the ground.
"While I'm appreciating this, of course, what brought this, er... on?" One hand was automatically seeking out a wing, curling around the edges and sliding up to play with the ailerons as Starscream's left hand at his hip followed curves and seams down to the pointed centre part of his pelvic armour.
Starscream's right hand was playing along the rim of the depressed area on Jetfire's chestplate that held the Decepticon insignia even as he was scraping teeth down Jetfire's chin guard, an insistent, wordless demand for a kiss. Stroking his hand down the side of Starscream's back kibble, Jetfire bent over the amount needed to bring Starscream's nipping demand to a halt, even if it meant his lower lip briefly met the same fate, causing him to twitch, and his engine to stutter and then reluctantly rev. Mostly because Starscream's tongue followed his teeth, and that was already lightly charged, the static biting into his lips along with the soft metal before he prodded Starscream's tongue back into his own mouth with his own.
He was rather sure Starscream thought he liked the biting itself, but it was rather that tongue and the static it brought with it against his lips that he liked... and since Starscream never did that without biting, he endured. And it had, of course, become tied to desire itself, current already rising from the brief, scraping caresses along his pelvic armour, sensor nodes hit with startling sharpness.
::Someone implied... Nevermind!:: Starscream's comm. voice was razors and acid on metal, agitated in a way that fit his familiar but quicker, more impatient, touches. ::You're still here, so it doesn't matter. I knew you would be, so shut up and let's take this moment!::
Jetfire couldn't quite hide neither his jerking freeze, the stutter of his engine nor the slight tremble of his hand, but Starscream chuckled, his voice having tipped over into heated energon as stinging as his earlier tone, if in another way completely. Static laced the chuckle that threaded trembling vibrations into their kiss, but that could be attributed to Starscream stroking the barely visible seams that would lead to Jetfire's spark chamber being bared.
He shuddered, and as he pinched the wing tips and Starscream quaked beneath him, Jetfire couldn't deny the clever hand on his chest plates, couldn't deny that burning gaze glanced from under the edge of the front of Starscream's helm. Briefly Jetfire allowed himself a few quickly breathed words in his processor and cast a glance down at the ground as he hoped the few times they'd done this would hold the results gained, that spark merging didn't, in any conceivable way, allow for a "mystical, sub-processor" connection that allowed the two involved to read thoughts, emotions or even intents.
Groaning, Jetfire pressed down and in, kissing him again and gently forced Starscream's helm back with the insistence, even as his spark chamber was bared under the flickering, scraping twitches and caresses that were way too clever for Jetfire's good.
As Starscream's hand was laid against the outer layer of Jetfire's coalesced spark, his smirk bathed in the bright, whitish-blue light, Jetfire took a shuddering vent and pushed away from the wall to reverse their position, if only because...
Starscream jerked, shaking his helm as a moan slipped out as Jetfire pressed the heel of his hand in where a bunch of seams joined at the back kibble and the rest of it pressed up against the wall with just the amount of pressure to have Starscream's spark-pulse hitch and his spark nearly snap inwards as it coalesced. Sometimes, the close knowledge they had of their frames was almost terrifying, but it didn't matter now did it?
It didn't matter, because it wasn't as if either would leave or turn against the other. It was nearly laughable, no matter what had been rumoured..!
Starscream briefly turned the fingertips of the hand he had in the corona of Jetfire's spark into little claws and Jetfire shuddered, engine revving loudly enough to echo even in the crowded lab space. It had Starscream chuckling airily as his cockpit and then protective armour parted to bare his spark chamber and then the chamber itself opening.
Who cared what idiots said? They didn't know Jetfire.
Starscream did, as proven by how he got the large jet trembling underneath his hand in little jerking twists, not just because of how he was twisting his hand in Jetfire's spark, but because he had two fingers wedged into the gaps of Jetfire's hip joints between his thighs. He knew Jetfire, inside and out, and he wouldn't leave.
"Enough!" Starscream snapped, voice rough, and moved the hand he had in Jetfire's spark to curl around an elbow joint instead. Squeezing the joint, thumb rubbing against the workings, the pressure urged another type of action than hands brushing against sparks. Jetfire used the grip he had on Starscream's wingparts to bring them the last bit together, Seeker and Air Guardian shuddering as their sparks first touched merely in cast-off tendrils shot from the coronas, and then the coronas themselves met in little lightning flashes.
Heaving, the two sparks slid together like two separate pools of mercury meeting, joining together as much as they simply slid past each other, the tensions between these points causing charge to be violently spit out. These flickering charges of energy and current were led inwards to be soaked up by the circuitry around their spark chambers, which soon pulsed with white and blue energy.
Jetfire twisted, pressed in, and was held frozen as the tension between their sparks rose, charge like electrified energon and plasma-lightning twisting around their sparks, into the circuitry, and further into their frames. He didn't want...
To turn his optics online took a force of will and manually activating them, but he wanted to see... His cooling vents momentarily caught as he stared down at Starscream's open face, a grimace frozen on his face, teeth a white slash against the darkness of his faceplates and his optics wide, but offline.
Could he really... Really destroy that look? For all that Starscream was now, and that these moments were the most honest he'd ever see the Seeker nowadays..?
But he knew what they were doing. Knew that he'd miscalculated, even if he wasn't sure he could do the right thing and regret what he'd done until doing the right thing completely, because of what he held in his hands---
"Stop thinking, you scientific glitch!" Starscream snapped, barely managing to get the words out between static-fuzzed moans. Then, as Jetfire froze in guilty, desire-riddled fear that Starscream knew what he was going to do, pushed extra charge from his spark into Jetfire's, and the white lighting wave that had been carefully poised between them twisted into flickering fire and raked down their circuits.
Jetfire gasped static, failed to cycle his cooling vents properly, and succumbed to the white-out.
At least Starscream didn't know.
Yet.
***
I Wish I Could Still Call You Friend
He couldn't say why he did it. He wasn't even sure what it was, or why it mattered so much this time. Sure, he'd been planning to... But certainly not this very klik, or even this very battle.
Suddenly, though, as he crashed down from an atmospheric dive, the heat and shockwave from his re-entry warping the metal of the closest Autobots and sending them and those slightly further away flying through the air and slamming into the ground and Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp made a sortie, Jetfire felt the moment freeze.
He changed his course, as he had to less he crashed, angled upwards to stabilise his flight and saw the battle as it spread out among the ruins of Nova Cronum. Decepticon fire and stubbornly resisting Autobots, Decepticons taking bite after ruined bite out of Cybertron, and was this what their conquest would leave?
Jetfire angled himself, felt the fuzzy wash of encrypted Autobot communication on channels he didn't have access to, saw Starscream riddle a huddled group of Autobots with an anti-air missile tank they were protecting with null rays and then laughingly drop cluster bombs among the frozen Autobots and watched the explosion bloom.
This wasn't...
His flight flattened out and Jetfire turned upwards again, and when he slammed down the next time, Decepticons went flying, even if the shockwave was a lot smaller from the shorter dive. It was still devastating, considering the complete surprise. Another flattening and straightening of his flight, and Jetfire set himself on a collision course with Starscream and his trine.
::JETFIRE, WHAT IN GLITCHING SMELT ARE YOU DOING?!::
::... What I need to do. I'm sorry, Starscream.::
The three Seekers scattered as the larger jet barrelled through their flight vector, and Starscream rolled through the sky, tossed into his disturbed flight from the tailwinds of Jetfire's passing. Just a few kliks ago them flying close enough for the heat off their frames to meld wouldn't have disrupted the other's flight.
::You... I can't... What is even going through that processor... This is... YOU "TRAITOR!"::
Jetfire winced as the last word was shrieked out over the Decepticon emergency channel as well as verbally, Starscream's voice of course whipped away by the wind, but enough had heard. He wasn't even sure what would happen now---
Jetfire had to veer sharply as Blitzwing aimed fire at him, and there was no more time to think, even less keeping a sensor out for Starscream's white, red and blue tetrajet form.
***
I'll Keep You Locked in My Head
There were fine cracks running down the edge of the datapad where blue fingers gripped it, and the delicate, round holotrack in Starscream's left hand was making groaning noises from where it was being held and squeezed rhythmically.
'... was wrong. I can't say I regret it, except for the lives I have taken. Some part of me would still agree, I suppose, but agreement can't salvage this, Starscream. I still want to... well, you hardly need protection, especially not now, but I...'
Starscream could hear that soft, supposed-to-be-inoffensive mutter read out what he wanted to say as he carefully chose the glyphs for the message, attempting to reach a compromise between the stark, unavoidable reality, his ugly, foolish reasons and his pathetic, false and traitorous feelings. How dare---
'... still don't want to leave you without back-up. You have Skywarp and Thundercracker, of course, but they fill neither my function, nor the place I do/did have with you. But regardless of the logic behind the Decepticon cause, or the vision, this is... too many of us are dying, Starscream. I've seen what you do with the pieces, and while I must commend you on your artistic skill...'
HOW DARE HE--- The crack as the spherical holotrack hit the wall was loud in the silence. Loud enough Starscream started, surprised to realise that the soft, insistent and dispassionate drone was all in his processor. Snarling, feeling the urge to toss the datapad away, Starscream narrowed his optics at it again.
'... I know you can do so much more than that, in several ways. But if this is your choice, if this is how the changes have gone, there's not much else I can say. Except that I need to leave. I wish I could be your wing-shadow and guard your airspace still, Starscream, but this...'
He'd presume to toss around those words like he had a right to them anymore? When the labs he used were empty!? When he hadn't been there at the last battle, where he ought to be, keeping Starscream's plating free from scorch marks? When the berth he'd used for the last several thousand vorns, even before Starscream had managed to bring the glitch into his right mind, managed to make him listen to what he knew was right, was now EMPTY!
'... isn't something I can do any longer. I seem to have miscalculated. I'm sorry to leave you behind, Starscream, but I wouldn't presume to badger you into leaving, so I just want you to kn--'
The datapad broke with an electronic, bell-like sound amid static and the crunch of metal as Starscream first slammed it down against the edge of the table and then hurled it against the wall. The pieces fell to the floor.
How dare he---
"TRAITOR!" The bellow bounced around the room several times, echoing nearly oddly, and Starscream stormed to the door, only almost missing the discarded holotrack. He whirled back, stomping across the room and intent on crushing it with his foot.
But it turned on when he'd barely brushed the metal, showing an artifact-riddled scene of flight. It bounced between close-up flashes of Starscream's white, blue and red frame and Jetfire's white and red one, the contrails they were leaving behind them twisting together, their wings overlapping...
His foot pressed down, the device protested, and Starscream...
Paused.
Paused and couldn't quite bring his foot down the last bit. Rage still burned, bubbled like impure, poisoned energon in his fuel tank, but he still couldn't quite...
The blue-plated foot was removed, and he bent down and picked the holotrack up between two fingers, like it was hot, or was some disgusting piece of organic filth. It quickly disappeared into subspace, and Starscream stormed over to the pieces of the datapad and the lingering echo of Jetfire's voice, ignited his thruster and burned the scattered pieces.
The room filled with the bite of fire consuming air and the bitter fizzle of smoking circuits as the door slid closed behind the Seeker.
I just want you to know, I don't regret the time spent with you, even if I can't stay.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 08:01 am (UTC)